Alan Dale is a full-time professional jazz musician and band leader, a lifetime student of American history whose parents were active as supporters and volunteers in the political campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy. He is the administrator of jfkessentials.com and is a contributing editor to the Assassination Archives and Research Center (aarclibrary.org). To campaign for compliance in enforcing the JFK Records Act, and to ensure the scheduled declassification of JFK assassination related files, he has joined with other interested parties in setting up 2017JFK.ORG.
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Joan Mellen on The Mob Chronicles, Episode 24
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Joan Mellen at the AARC 2014 Conference
The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures [a conference sponsored by the Assassination Archives and Research Center, September 26-September 28, 2014, Bethesda, Maryland].
INFILTRATIONS: On the corruption of government investigations: How CIA and the FBI infiltrated the Garrison, Church Committee and House Select Committee investigations into the murder of President Kennedy, as revealed by documents released under the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.
By Joan Mellen
My research into the Garrison investigation let me to studying CIA, Garrison’s chief suspect in the Kennedy assassination, and Cuba, since it was in the area of Cuba that CIA operated most openly.
Let me begin by mentioning three myths connected with CIA and Cubans:
- That CIA worked in any way to further the efforts of the Cuban exiles in removing Fidel Castro. Pp. 109-110, of The Great Game In Cuba: de los Reyes meets with Allen Dulles.
- That DRE, the revolutionary student directorate, was interested in the JFK assassination. Only Carlos Bringuier was and his antics in New Orleans with LHO were repudiated by the DRE leadership. So that George Joannides being among the DRE handlers and then became CIA’s liaison to HSCA liaison did not represent a conflict of interest.
- Its is inaccurate and a serious understatement to suggest that Joannides’ being placed with HSCA was the main way CIA corrupted HSCA. This view is false, and an example of what CIA calls a “limited hangout.” Rather, CIA interference began on day one of Robert Blakey’s tenure as HSCA counsel and was a daily intrusion. *It culminated in Scott Breckinridge’s control of HSCA’s final report. Breckinridge worked out of the Office of Legal Counsel of CIA, high up.
I’d like to begin with the House Select Committee’s corruption by CIA since I had direct sources, not only in documents but having interviewed some major players. One group I met with was the leadership of DRE in Miami; the other was HSCA’s Louisiana team of Robert Buras and L. J. Delsa. I’ve also interviewed Carlos Bringuier, Gaeton Fonzi, and DRE leaders Juan Manuel Salvat Roque, Antonio Lanuza, Isidro Borja and Dr. Fernandez Rocha. I consulted the papers of Scott Breckinridge of CIA’s Office of General Counsel at the National Archives.
What has concerned me for some time was the premise that the HSCA fell under CIA sway based on the fact that the liaison George Joannides somehow had a conflict interest because he had been a handler of the group known as DRE, the revolutionary student directorate.
In the year 2003, Blakey would complain that the Agency did not reveal that its liaison to HSCA, George Joannides, had also been the handler for a time of an anti-Castro group called DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil) and that this compromised the committee’s investigation. This was, to say the least, misleading.
The Canterbury Lectures — Lecture One: The CIA in New Orleans and Cuba
Lectures given for Dealey Plaza, UK, Canterbury, Kent, UK. April 26th and April 27th, 2014. Canterbury Christ Church University.
By Joan Mellen
I’ll speak today about CIA, in New Orleans and in Cuba, and tomorrow about my current project, a book about Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace.
The theme of my talks is “Murder Wol Out.” I cannot resist invoking Geoffrey Chaucer, because this was what Jim Garrison believed, even in the face of the dishonesties of Robert Blakey and the House Select Committee On Assassinations. Blakey made his deal with CIA early in his tenure, and it wasn’t long before he corrupted the good investigation pursued with thoroughness and subtlety led by Miami investigative reporter, the late Gaeton Fonzi.
“Judge, this is going nowhere,” former New Orleans homicide detective L. J. Delsa told Jim Garrison.
The Canterbury Lectures — Lecture Two: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace, Sunday April 2
Lectures given for Dealey Plaza, UK, Canterbury, Kent, UK. April 26th and April 27th, 2014. Canterbury Christ Church University.
By Joan Mellen
For those who may be new to the Mac Wallace/Lyndon Johnson scenario, Mac Wallace was a young Texan who has been linked to a series of murders of witnesses to the scams and schemes of a Texas con man named Billie Sol Estes. These crimes implicated Lyndon Johnson as a U.S. Senator, as a Vice-President, and then as President of the United States. According to the urban legend that grew up around Mac Wallace, and that was based entirely upon the accusations of Estes, Mac Wallace has come down in history, if he has, as a hit man in the pay and service of Lyndon Johnson.
According to this scenario, Mac Wallace murdered between eight and seventeen people, culminating, for some, in the assassination of President Kennedy. What we can state as fact is that Mac Wallace committed one murder for which he was tried and convicted of murder with malice, what in places other than Texas was called “murder in the first degree.”