John Scelso and Angleton

[TLR]

An old article I stumbled upon.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-10-06/news/1996280045_1_angleton-scelso-cia-official

The chief CIA investigator of President John F. Kennedy's assassination has testified that another high CIA official -- noted for seeking conspiracies -- disobeyed orders in repeatedly conferring with the Warren Commission shortly after the murder.

The witness also said a colleague once told him that the CIA official, the late James Angleton, "has ties to the Mafia."

Almost 33 years after the assassination, the identity of the witness, who held various top-secret CIA jobs, is considered so sensitive that federal authorities insist on withholding his true name. He is known only by the alias "John Scelso."

While Scelso testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, his 192-page testimony was kept secret until now.

At one point in the 1978 House testimony, committee attorney Michael Goldsmith asked Scelso, "Do you have any reason to believe that Angleton might have had ties to organized crime?"

"Yes," replied Scelso, who is now retired and lives abroad, government sources said. He said the Justice Department once asked the CIA to determine the true names of people holding numbered bank accounts in Panama because the Mafia was hiding Las Vegas "skim" money there.

[Peter Lemkin]

An old article I stumbled upon.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-10-06/news/1996280045_1_angleton-scelso-cia-official

The chief CIA investigator of President John F. Kennedy's assassination has testified that another high CIA official -- noted for seeking conspiracies -- disobeyed orders in repeatedly conferring with the Warren Commission shortly after the murder.

The witness also said a colleague once told him that the CIA official, the late James Angleton, "has ties to the Mafia."

Almost 33 years after the assassination, the identity of the witness, who held various top-secret CIA jobs, is considered so sensitive that federal authorities insist on withholding his true name. He is known only by the alias "John Scelso."

While Scelso testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, his 192-page testimony was kept secret until now.

At one point in the 1978 House testimony, committee attorney Michael Goldsmith asked Scelso, "Do you have any reason to believe that Angleton might have had ties to organized crime?"

"Yes," replied Scelso, who is now retired and lives abroad, government sources said. He said the Justice Department once asked the CIA to determine the true names of people holding numbered bank accounts in Panama because the Mafia was hiding Las Vegas "skim" money there.

Well, the CIA was doing business with and using 'Mafia' men on multiple levels and for multiple programs of theirs. One might even without exaggeration call and consider the CIA a kind of 'Mafia' if its own. One could go one for pages, but John Roselli was deeply involved with JM/WAVE and allowed to enter this top secret base. He was saluted by the guards when he entered and always signed in as Col. Ralston - although he never had that name or any rank. I've never heard that JJA had specific ties to the 'old' Mafia, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit. He'd befriend anyone who could get him the information he wanted in his endless mole hunts...[or was he the mole?!]. Not to the exact point, but Hoover too had many big Mafia bosses as friends. The whole of US Intelligence was and is still connected to and part of the 'Mafia', IMHO.

[Leslie Sharp]

Fully respecting all of these facts about Mafia connections with the CIA and vice versa, I agree with Dick Russell who in the early days said:  but the Mafia could not have managed the cover up. 

I haven't studied Russell's recent position on the issue, but I doubt very seriously that Henry or Claire Luce, Norman Chandler, Joe Dealey's family in Dallas, the Hobbys in Houston, and whomever owned the Chicago papers at the time (names escape me), let alone those behind CBS (Frank Pace of Crown's General Dynamics, Prescott Bush), NBC/RCA (former Navy Brass including a member of the board of Bell Helicopter) or ABC (including the Colemans with ties to ultra conservative Catholics like J. Peter Grace) took their marching orders from Roselli, Trafficante, Marcello, or Campisi.  If Angleton or Helms orchestrated the media cover-up, it was not without support from a higher authority, and given that, I even doubt that Dulles could manage the media without the imprimatur from his superiors.

[TLR]

The mob was in bed with almost every major group and player in the power structure back then, so to say "the Mafia did it" is meaningless. As I used to argue with Bob Harris, you can't disentangle organized crime from the rest of these people. Some old-time mob leaders were put in prison in the 1980s, but the Mob wasn't destroyed, it just went "legit." Its operations and rackets were absorbed into Corporate America.

[Phil Dragoo]

Scelso's 1978 HSCA testimony released in 1996 the year former DCI Colby took his canoe ride leaving dinner on the table

And what's the big gee-whiz--Angleton was mob-linked

Sure, and Joannides was CIA gatekeeper to HSCA and HSCA was headed by mob-maniac and CIA ass-kisser Robert The Liar Blakey

Scelso boo-hoos to the arrogant elitist who says "you go tell him"

The article says Angleton thought there was a mole--the hell you say

The article says Nosenko was "dishonest" that he "dissembled"

You know the real reason Angleton put him in a tiger cage and fed him rat piss for 1400 days was that he blew up Angleton's Red Pinata

Angleton withheld the phoney Kostikov-Oswald meet and what it meant from Hoover until the day of the assassination

As for crime and the CIA

Helms had Harvey get Maheu to get Roselli to get Giancana and Marcello and Trafficante and Nicoletti

Angleton didn't have LINKS to organized crime--what is CIA

When Ike warned of a military industrial complex, when Kennedy did NSAMs 55, 56, 57 and wanted to break it into a thousand pieces, when Truman wrote in the Washington Post December 1963 Limit CIA to Intelligence Role it means three presidents realized a monster was loose

Angleton created the entire Oswald package and John Newman in Oswald in the CIA second edition makes it clear nobody but CIA and somebody deeply involved in the files with knowledge and power could have manipulated them, not mob, not KGB, not Castro, not Cubans, not oil men.

Dulles met Hitler and Goebbels and admired Goebbels' enthusiasm and provided Gehlen and a few hundred Nazi criminals immunity to play Cold War--

--while McCloy aided Barbie's escape--and if we look further:

In Simon Dunstan and Gerard Williams' Grey Wolf and in Peter Levenda's Ratline Hitler used a body double to escape the bunker and die in Patagonia in 1962 or in Indonesia in 1970, in either event with the cooperation of Allen Dulles.

An organization which goes into Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and elsewhere to conduct systematic murder, which smuggles drugs on the largest scale of any organization in the world, which surveils and summarily kills at will need not bother to "consort with organized crime"

Angleton was still with the agency when Nixon used agents involved in drug smuggling to form the DEA to remove the Corsican competition.

Luciano was a pre-CIA intelligence asset who with Lansky formed a heroin outfit in Havana in 1947 using Traficante.

George Carlin's remark regarding smoking sections of restaurants and peeing section of pools applies to CIA and its deniable assets

Thanks for everything, Hoffa and Giancana (1975 baddabing), Roselli and Harvey (1976 baddabang), Nicoletti and DeMohrenschildt (1977 baddaboom)