Richard Cain, Mexico City, Bill K. Harvey and Staff D

[Alan Dale]

"Arguments for exclusivity go only so far. The better question is how explain the Kurt Vonnegut Cat's Cradle line turned to song:

Nice, nice, very nice
so many people in the same device"

~Phil Dragoo


The Mexican Security Police, known as the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, or DFS, was a government security agency created in 1947 during the presidency of Miguel Alemán. Organizationally part of the Secretaria de Gobernación, the DFS was assigned the official duty of preserving the internal stability of Mexico against all forms subversion and terrorist threats. Following a drug scandal that concluded with criminal prosecution of its top executives, the DFS was abolished with operational elements restructured and merged into the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN) in 1985.

Professor Peter Dale Scott has written that the DFS was in part a CIA creation, and "the CIA's closest government allies were for years in the DFS." DFS badges, "handed out to top-level Mexican drug-traffickers, have been labelled by DEA agents a virtual 'license to traffic.'" Scott says that "The Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking network in the early 1980s, prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the DFS, under its chief Miguel Nassar (or Nazar) Haro, a CIA asset.

What is relevant to our interests is the fact that the DFS, in addition to being deeply involved with illicit drug related organized crime and a corrupt tool of enforcement for the state, staffed and monitored the CIA's Mexico City telephone intercept program LI/ENVOY, the source of the infamous "Oswald" tapes which were transcribed by husband and wife team, Boris and Anna Tarasoff.

http://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/MoreMexicoMysteries/MoreMexicoMysteries_2.htm 

What this means is that the LI/ENVOY operation which produced the original reports (subsequently transcribed) of an Oswald speaking with Soviet and Cuban diplomatic officers was not only technically insecure, it was manned, apparently, by Mexican State Police whose activities were well documented as being open to manipulation by criminal elements.

Which leads to...


Richard Cain 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cain

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcainR.htm

Richard Cain (alias Scalzetti) can properly be described as a notorious Chicago mob figure, a veteran who served in the US Army stationed in both Japan and the Virgin Islands, an allegedly crooked Security Officer for UPS, an allegedly corrupt Chicago Police Department detective and employee of the Cook County Sheriff's Office, a lie-detector operator, a Spanish speaking associate of pro-Batista, anti-Castro Cubans, a close personal friend of Chicago mob boss, Sam Giancana (at whose request was allegedly brought into the CIA's Castro assassination plans), a business operator (Accurate Detective Laboratories), a recruiter for Spanish speaking volunteers sent to South Florida and Central American CIA training camps specializing in guerrilla warfare/commando tactics, an FBI informant, an electronic surveillance expert who specialized in telephone tapping, and, among many other things including being shot in the mouth at point blank range with a shotgun on 20 Dec., 1973, the person identified in official CIA files as having visited the CIA's Mexico City Station in April of '62, at which time "he stated he had an investigative agency in Mexico...for the purpose of training Mexican government agents in police methods, in investigative techniques, and in the use of the lie detector."

During the period of 1950 - 52, Cain had tapped the telephones of Cuban revolutionary leaders on behalf of the US supported Batista regime. In 1960 he was approached to install phone taps on behalf of former Cuban President, (and exiled resident of Mexico) Carlos Prio. The Chicago Tribune reported that the CIA had engaged Cain in 1960 because of his Havana mob contacts, and also to wiretap the Czech embassy in Havana.

It seems plausible that "technical assistance" referred to in official CIA reports confirming that the CIA Mexico City Station provided support to the DFS on the LI/ENVOY operation was in the form of a man who was deeply and personally connected with Sam Giancana, Giancana's anti-Castro CIA intrigues, and the Chicago underworld milieu of Jack Ruby.

A detailed examination of Richard Cain suggests that from 1960 through '63, he was close to or possibly deep inside the connection between the CIA and the Mafia's recruitment to assassinate Fidel Castro. An HSCA report presents credible arguments that Cain was not only involved (by Giancana) in the plots against Castro, but that he himself may have been the "assassin-to-be" mentioned by his boss, Giancana, on 18 Oct., 1960.

Which leads to...


Bill K. Harvey and Staff D

The most sensitive and restricted operation by the CIA against Castro was run out of CIA's Staff D (FI/D), headed by William King Harvey. Officially, Staff D was "a small Agency component responsible for communications intercepts." Quoted from Inspectors General Report, 37. In fact, the very stringent restrictions on clearances for COMINT (communications intelligence) made FI/D especially well suited to house sensitive operations that CIA officials (such as Agent In Charge, Harvey) wished to conceal from the rest of the Agency. The most notorious of these projects was ZR/RIFLE, Harvey's program for "Executive Action Capability."

FI/D was responsible for the LI/ENVOY program in Mexico City. LI/ENVOY reports were filed regularly from Mexico City Station to Harvey at CIA HQS. It is important to know that Ann Goodpasture, Mexico City Station officer responsible for bringing DFS intercept product into the station and who supplied mistaken and misleading identification of Oswald as being "age 35 and balding," was an FI/D employee.

Harvey's Staff D controlled the CIA-Mafia assassination plots and it controlled the LI/ENVOY intercept intake inside the Mexico City Station. If Richard Cain trained and possibly supervised the recruitment of Mexican (DFS) monitors, the CIA-DFS-LI/ENVOY collaboration represents a pre-assassination matrix connecting three possible conspiratorial elements in operations which would be seen post-assassination to have very great significance in the implication of Lee Harvey Oswald.

This is a model of an ultra-secretive compartment of CIA, elements of the Mafia already associated with the CIA in their Castro assassination plots, and the infiltration of an officially recognized Mexican agency which would have been thought to have acted in the service of the CIA in its reporting of electronic listening posts, working with each other in ways not apparent to any who would have been uninvolved.

For us to truly recognize what this may mean in terms relevant to the hypothesis that LHO was set up to take the blame for an act he did not commit, it's essential that the above should not result in a rush to judgement that these elements at work through the actions and associations of Richard Cain, Sam Giancana, Ann Goodpasture, and Bill K. Harvey represent proof of their collaboration on the incrimination of Oswald as part of a sinister plot to kill President Kennedy.

While exploring the possibility that the incrimination of Oswald was piggy-backed upon authorized counterintelligence operations which employed these resources and were possibly directed by these authorities we raise more questions than we answer. It is important to acknowledge that at the time of the president's murder, Harvey had been fired from Cuban operations (at the request of Attorney General Robert Kennedy) and was stationed in Rome. It is equally important to understand that, regardless of his current assignment, other than James J. Angleton, no one knew more or understood more about these operations and their inner workings than William King Harvey and, perhaps, elite members of his inner circle stationed at Miami's jm/wave such as David Sanchez Morales.

Essential reading: Deep Politics II, Peter Dale Scott

My thanks to Phil Dragoo whose contributions here should be required reading for all.

[Alan Dale]

Plausible suspect: William K. Harvey
February 14, 2013 jeffmorley

“William King Harvey is worthy of our attention,” writes Alan Dale. In 1962, Harvey served as chief of Task Force W, the CIA’s anti-Castro operation, and then lost his job after an argument with Attorney General Robert Kennedy. When Congress investigated JFK’s assassination in the 1970s, the CIA pulled a 123-page file on Harvey’s operational activities.

All of that file remains secret, according to the National Archives online database.

Dale writes of Harvey:

“His role inside Staff D, as the sole proprietor of ZR/RIFLE, as a free-wheeling loose cannon who developed close professional and personal relationships with infamous Mafia executives, who controlled and dispensed unauthorized anti-Castro guerrilla teams at the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis when any such provocations were dangerous and destabilizing to the authority of our government’s executive branch, and whose career was effectively ended by the stroke of a pen set in the hand of the 37-year-old Attorney General of the United States, [makes him], in my opinion, not a completely unjustifiable suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy.”

One CIA colleague who knew Harvey well did not disagree with that assessment. In 2006, Bayard Stockton, a former CIA officer who worked with Harvey in Berlin and went on to become a Newsweek correspondent, published a critical but fair biography of the man. Once an admirer of Harvey, Stockton concluded that he ultimately became a menace. The book offers a careful assessment of Harvey’s possible role in JFK’s assassination.

Flawed Patriot
A biography of Harvey by a former colleague, Bayard Stockton.

I recommend “Flawed Patriot” to anyone interested in the CIA during the Kennedy years.

 

Comments

    Alan Dale
    February 15, 2013 at 12:51 am   

    According to Prof. Peter Dale Scott, the most sensitive and restricted operation by the CIA against Castro was run out of CIA’s Staff D (FI/D), headed by William King Harvey. Officially, Staff D was “a small Agency component responsible for communications intercepts.” Quoted from Inspectors General Report, 37. The very stringent restrictions on clearances for COMINT (communications intelligence) made FI/D especially well suited to house sensitive operations that CIA officials (such as Agent In Charge, Harvey) wished to conceal from the rest of the Agency. The most notorious of these projects was ZR/RIFLE, Harvey’s program for “Executive Action Capability.”

    FI/D was responsible for the LI/ENVOY program in Mexico City. LI/ENVOY reports were filed regularly from Mexico City Station to Harvey at CIA HQS. It is important to know that Ann Goodpasture, Mexico City Station officer responsible for bringing DFS intercept product into the station and who supplied false identification of Oswald as being “age 35 and balding,” was an FI/D employee. It might also be important to know that David Sanchez Morales was transferred from the Mexico City station for reassignment to jm/wave in South Florida at Harvey’s request.

    Harvey’s Staff D controlled the CIA-Mafia assassination plots and it controlled the LI/ENVOY intercept intake inside the Mexico City Station.

    While exploring the possibility that the incrimination of Oswald was piggy-backed upon authorized counterintelligence operations in Mexico City, it may be appropriate to review what we know about the DFS (Mexican Security Police which manned the CIA’s clandestine listening posts) and Chicago mob figure and electronic surveillance expert, Richard Cain. Both may be connected to LI/ENVOY which produced the infamous Oswald tapes transcribed by husband and wife team, Boris and Anna Tarasoff.

    See Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba by Peter Dale Scott, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 1996, 2007



    February 19, 2013 at 3:54 pm   

    Chilling and sad in retrospect. No matter how many times I read the attached, I can’t help wonder that written and published shortly after the assassination a former President is warning us.

    The Washington Post
    December 22, 1963 – page A11

    Harry Truman Writes:
    Limit CIA Role
    To Intelligence

    By Harry S Truman
    Copyright, 1963, by Harry S Truman

    ——————————————————————————–

    INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
    I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President’s performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
    Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
    But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what’s worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
    Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
    I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
    Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being “upset.”
    For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
    I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
    With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about “Yankee imperialism,” “exploitive capitalism,” “war-mongering,” “monopolists,” in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
    I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
    But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
    We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.


        Bill Pierce
        February 20, 2013 at 1:46 pm   

        LMB: The timing of Truman’s letter was interesting, to say the least. Wonder what he was hearing from insiders? Only a dozen years earlier, he had fired General MacArthur, top guy in Korea, to prove that the civilian government was still in charge.

        Truman’s successor Eisenhower began his administration with the so-called “Chance for Peace” speech (1953) characterizing military expenditures as “theft” and contrasting the costs of military hardware with the costs of important domestic priorities. Eight years later in his Farewell Address, Ike slapped the military again. Doubtless both of those speeches – coming from the former Supreme Allied Commander and top representative of the ‘War Party’ – were deeply galling to military brass, contractors and political hardliners.

        Eisenhower’s MIC speech was intended to alarm complacent Americans and pave the way for his successor to make the politically unpopular decisions necessary to restrain the military. How else to interpret it?

        Putting it mildly, the civilian government appears to have had reasonably strong anxieties about military overreach. After all, Truman and Eisenhower – representing both Parties – had taken politically uncomfortable positions relative to the histrionic military-political propaganda of those days . . . propaganda that had gullible Americans believing that the Dirty Commies were only microns away from poisoning their precious bodily fluids if the Rooskies weren’t nuked first.

        Then came Kennedy. He fired General Walker. Resisted CIA manipulation during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Fired the top guys at CIA. Stood up to the military during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wanted to disengage Vietnam. The rest is history.

        Reply   
            jeffmorley
            February 20, 2013 at 2:34 pm   

            I wrote a short piece on Truman’s piece for JFK Facts in December. It tells a little bit more of the story.

            http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/on-this-date/dec-22-1963-truman-calls-for-abolition-of-cia/