July 2010
There are two main phases to Kennedy’s efforts.
The first is a series of executive actions he began on February 19, 1961 to place cold war psychological warfare programs under the control of his national security advisor, and later in June 1961 to implement Presidential executive oversight over covert CIA operations through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These executive actions coincided with Kennedy’s efforts to gain access to the activities of a highly classified project dealing with UFOs and extraterrestrial life - MJ-12 Special Studies Project.
The second phase began on September 20, 1963 when Kennedy embarked on a high risk political strategy of getting NASA to cooperate with the USSR on joint space and lunar missions.
This brought to a climax a confrontation over the release of classified UFO files with the CIA & those in control of the MJ-12 Special Studies Project.
This
article reviews testimonies, documents and events concerning
Kennedy’s interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, and how this
culminated in a deadly behind-the-scenes confrontation with the CIA
and MJ-12 in the final month of his life.
In the background of this publicly announced initiative with powerful Cold War implications was a more secretive attempt for the Kennedy administration to gain access to classified UFO files. Leaked documents reveal that Kennedy instructed the CIA to release classified UFO files to NASA as part of the cooperative space effort with the Soviet Union.
If Kennedy had succeeded, there would have been joint space mission to the moon and greater sharing of classified UFO files between the CIA, NASA, and the Kennedy administration.
This would have ensured eventual public release of
classified UFO files by both the US and USSR.
Kennedy was offering to put an end to the space race and start joint missions with the Soviets.
According to Khrushchev’s eldest son, Dr Sergei Khrushchev, this was not the first time that Kennedy had proposed joint space and lunar missions with the USSR. Sergei Khrushchev revealed that at the June 1961 Vienna Summit, less than ten days after Kennedy’s famous May 25 speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress promising to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade,[2] Kennedy secretly proposed joint space and lunar missions to his father.
Khrushchev declined as his son later explained:
In the period immediately after his September 1963 UN speech, Khrushchev once again rebuffed Kennedy’s offer - the Soviet government did not officially comment and the Soviet press ignored it.[4] At the same time, there was considerable opposition to Kennedy’s initiative in both NASA and the U.S. Congress.
Just before his UN speech, Kennedy briefed his NASA administrator, James Webb, about his initiative and asked:
According to the official NASA history,
According to Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara,
In the weeks after his bold initiative,
If Khrushchev were to eventually accept his offer,
Kennedy would need to move quickly to overcome resistance in
Congress and NASA to implementing any joint space agreement.
In one interview, Sergei Khrushchev said:
Sergei Khruschev confirmed that finally Nikita Khrushchev accepted Kennedy’s offer in early November 1963 around a week before his assassination.[11]
According to Hoagland and Bara, the exact date can be traced to November 11 when a key Soviet Mars mission had failed:
Khrushchev’s abrupt turn around, after two years of secret and
public overtures by Kennedy, led to a series of immediate
Presidential executive actions by Kennedy on the next day.
The subject header was "Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters,” and the key passage was:
The Memorandum (above image) furthermore went on to say that the cooperation was a direct outcome of Kennedy’s September 20 proposal,
The Memorandum was
classified “Confidential” and addressed to James Webb (NASA
Administrator). It was declassified on October 13, 1981.
Kennedy identified the Secretary of State as a key person in implementing the process by which dialogue over the cooperation would take place:
This would ensure that the State Department and other U.S.
government agencies would have access to the information to be
shared with the Soviets under the cooperative space initiative.
Dated the same day of November 12, 1963 the subject header of the file (below) was: “Classification review of all UFO intelligence files affecting National Security.” The Top Secret Memorandum went on to say:
JFK with his CIA Directors, Allen Dulles & John McCone in 1962 It’s important to note that Memorandum to the CIA Director refers to the National Security Action Memorandum issued to Webb on the same day.
Even though the leaked Top Secret Memorandum to the CIA has not been officially acknowledged (it has been ranked medium-to-high level of authenticity), [15] there is no question about the legitimacy of the National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 271.[16]
NSAM 271 (image far above) clearly showed that Kennedy had decided to
cooperate with the USSR on “Outer Space Matters.”
This suggests that the USAF and the other military services were secretly required to direct their most important UFO files reported through the CIRVIS (Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings) system created for reporting vital intelligence data by Joint Army Air Naval Publication 146, to the CIA. [17]
This is confirmed by a Memorandum by Brigadier General C.H. Bolender on October 1969.
He said:
Put simply, there were two sets of UFO files being collected by the USAF during the Kennedy and later presidential administrations.
Those with least national security significance were made available to the public through Project Blue Book - the ‘official’ public investigation of UFOs by the USAF that formally ended in 1970.[19]
The more important, and classified UFO files, were directed into another project that was under the control of the CIA.
In particular, CIA’s counter intelligence department controlled access and reported directly to the MJ-12 Group. In requesting the CIA to share UFO files with NASA, that would in turn lead to it sharing this information with the State Department and other agencies as stipulated in NSAM 271.
Kennedy was therefore directly confronting
the CIA over its ultimate control of classified UFO files.
The aim was to avoid the risk of a mistaken military confrontation over UFOs. The document is allegedly a Top Secret NSA intercept of a “Hot Line” conversation between President Kennedy and Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev dated November 12, 1963.[20]
The Hot Line was first established three months earlier on August 1, 1963, and according to the New York Times:
Though it is claimed the Hotline was first used on June 5, 1967 during the six day Arab-Israeli war, the leaked NSA document suggests that Kennedy and Khrushchev did get to use soon after it was established.
Photo: US National Park Service In the alleged November 12 Hotline conversation, Kennedy and Khrushchev discussed the importance of their respective UFO working groups to deal with the UFO problem to avoid the risk of future conflict.
Kennedy told Khrushchev:
Kennedy was certainly referring here to the National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 271) released on the same day, November 12 1963. Kennedy also said,
While the NSA intercept has not been conclusively determined to be authentic (it has been ranked medium-to-high level of authenticity),[24] it is "consistent with the November 12 NSAM 271."[25]
Most importantly, circumstantial evidence for the genuineness of the Hotline transcript comes from Sergei Khrushchev’s admission that his father had accepted Kennedy’s offer on the day before on November 11.
To repeat, this was the same day that a Soviet Mars mission ‘Cosmos 21’ had failed leading to Khrushchev’s change of heart on Kennedy’s offer of space cooperation. For the Soviets, continuing the space race would be very expensive, and drain resources from other more important areas.
Kennedy’s offer was a face saving way
out of the dilemma now confronting the Soviets.
This gives more confidence that the Hotline document is genuine.
The
issuing of NSAM 271, which is an authentic public document also
confirms that Khrushchev had only just accepted Kennedy’s offer and
that a hotline conversation between Kennedy and Khrushchev had only
just occurred.[26]
This required both leaders instructing their respective UFO working groups to share information. Kennedy did this through a Top Secret Memorandum to the Director of the CIA to share UFO files with NASA and the USSR. His November 12 Memorandum was relayed on to the James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence. Angleton controlled access to the most highly classified UFO files in the U.S., and was in direct communications with MJ-12 - the UFO working group within the “MJ-12 Special Studies Project.”
In responding to Kennedy’s request, Angleton followed a Top Secret/MJ-12 set of directives. One of the secret directives, revealed in the leaked partially burned Top Secret/MJ-12 document forensically dated to 1961, was a cryptic assassination directive. In case any senior U.S. official did not cooperate with MJ-12, the directive sanctioned political assassination.
The leaked document is smoking gun evidence that
former CIA Director Allen Dulles was involved in drafting and
approving with other MJ-12 members a cryptic “assassination
directive.” The MJ-12 “assassination directive” was later
implemented by Angleton in response to President Kennedy’s November
12, 1963 request to the CIA to release classified UFO files.
Kennedy, according to a leaked Top Secret Memorandum titled “Review of MJ-12 Intelligence Operations” (below image) requested Dulles to give a brief summary.[27] In response and unknown to Kennedy, Dulles drafted a set directives shortly before his November 1961 retirement.
Dulles’ draft document was addressed
to another six members of MJ-12 requesting comments and their
approval. It had clear instructions that under no circumstances
would any U.S. President or his national security staff be briefed
or given access to classified UFO files.
In full, this states:
Dr Robert Wood who is the foremost expert in analyzing MJ-12 documents using forensic methods, has concluded that the burned document is an assassination directive.
In an interview discussing
the burned document, he pointed out that the cryptic phrase “it
should be wet” originates from Russia, where the phrase ‘wet works’
or “wet affairs” denotes someone who had been killed and is drenched
with blood.[29]
The term “it should be wet” therefore was a coded command to kill someone. In drafting this cryptic directive, Allen Dulles was seeking approval from six of his MJ-12 colleagues, to lay the justification for the assassination of any elected or appointed official in Washington DC whose policies were “non-conducive for growth”.
The cryptic directive was a
pre-authorization for the assassination of any U.S. President who
could not “be influenced any further” to follow MJ-12 policies.
Due to NSAM 271, issued the same day, this would ensure that classified UFO files would be shared not only with the USSR, but with the State Department and other U.S. agencies.[31] In short, the two memoranda Kennedy issued on November 12, would ensure that access to classified UFO files would be extended to more government agencies, ultimately resulting in direct Presidential access.
Direct
access had been denied to him by McCone’s predecessor, Allen Dulles
who retired as DCI in November 1961, but likely continued on in his
other position as MJ-1.
On the bottom of Kennedy’s Memorandum to the CIA, next to the signature space appears the following handwriting:
Colby is here acknowledging that Angleton, two days before Kennedy’s assassination, had the MJ directives - the burned document - and would use them to respond to Kennedy’s Memorandum.
This handwriting directly implicates Angleton in the Kennedy assassination due to the cryptic MJ-12 assassination directive.
CIA CounterIntelligence Chief There is more evidence to directly implicate Angleton in the Kennedy assassination.
Lee Harvey Oswald was among a small group of American citizens to have defected to the Soviet Union in 1959. Though the CIA admits to having established a file on Oswald in 1960, Alan Weberman, on of the first authors to write on the Kennedy Assassination, claims that CIA counterintelligence were monitoring Oswald even earlier.
Weberman cites evidence that Angleton was
directly involved through an intermediary, Gerry Hemming, a former
Marine who knew Oswald and was recruited by the CIA. [32]
Oswald’s subsequent association with a number of CIA assets provided opportunities for Angleton’s counterintelligence to not only monitor, but to manipulate Oswald.
Clay Shaw
New Orleans businessman The most documented source of a CIA link to the Kennedy assassination was the investigation by Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans.
Garrison found much documentary evidence to demonstrate that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in a conspiracy led by Clay Shaw. Garrison discovered that Shaw had an "extensive international role as an employee of the CIA."[33]
While Garrison was unsuccessful in earning a conviction against Shaw, Garrison was partly vindicated in 1979 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
The Committee concluded:
Kennedy’s assassination by a hit team organized by a CIA asset, Clay Shaw, directly implicates CIA counterintelligence.
Ensuring Oswald’s
participation in the Kennedy assassination, no matter how minimal,
provided a powerful rationale for preventing a thorough
investigation of the Kennedy assassination. As a former communist
defector, Angleton and the CIA could persuasively argue that
Oswald’s involvement directly implicated the USSR. This allowed the
CIA to successfully argue to the Warren Commission, through Allen
Dulles who was a member, that a thorough investigation was too
dangerous due to the risk of nuclear war if the Soviet Union was
implicated.
Col Fletcher Prouty, in his well documented book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, reveals that Kennedy was attempting to end the CIA’s influence over covert operations.[35]
Chief among these was the escalating U.S.
involvement in Vietnam that Kennedy wanted to end and was why he was
assassinated. There is, however, a more compelling reason for why
the CIA wanted Kennedy’s removal for office - the CIA’s role in
controlling classified UFO information, and denying access to other
government agencies including the office of the President.
It was Dulles and another six unknown MJ-12 members who sanctioned the directives found in the burned document including a political assassination directive against non-cooperative officials in the Kennedy administration. While Dulles and his six associates pre-authorized the assassination of Kennedy, it was the CIA counterintelligence chief who gave the final orders that culminated in Kennedy’s assassination.
In doing so, James Angleton arranged for
a communist defector to be involved so as to eventually take the
blame and ensure that no thorough investigation would follow by
federal or congressional authorities.
Col Fletcher Prouty, in another well documented book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, reveals that Kennedy was attempting to end the CIA’s influence over covert operations.[36]
Chief among these was the escalating U.S.
involvement in Vietnam that Kennedy wanted to end, and was a reason
why he was assassinated. There is, however, a more compelling reason
for why senior CIA officials wanted Kennedy’s removal for office - the role of CIA counterintelligence in controlling UFO information
and implementing the directives of the secretive MJ-12 Group.
This
would have led to them being shared with the USSR, the State
Department and other U.S. agencies as NSAM 271 required. The
extensive data sharing required under NSAM 271 would have given
Kennedy and his national security staff a means for eventually
gaining access to classified UFO files.
To date, there is no evidence that the MJ-12 directives drafted and passed in some form by Dulles and six other MJ-12 members in 1961 has ever been rescinded. Documents and facts bear witness to the complicity of senior CIA and other unknown officials in the assassination of President Kennedy.
The implications of leaked MJ-12 documents
relevant to Kennedy’s efforts to declassify UFO files require a
thorough public investigation.
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