Peter Dale Scott – The American Dream of Enlightenment Itself

Overview: The Mexican CIA-Mob Nexus

Those who have spent years trying to assess the role of the Kennedy assassination in US history are accustomed to the debate between structuralists and conspiratorialists. In the first camp are those who argue, in the spirit of Marx and Weber, that the history of a major power is determined by large social forces; thus the accident of an assassination, even if conspiratorial, is not an event altering history. (On this point Noam Chomsky and Alex Coxburn agree with the mainstream US media they normally criticize.)

At the other end of the spectrum are those who talk of an Invisible Government or Secret Team, who believe that surface events and institutions are continuously manipulated by unseen forces. For these people the assassination exemplifies the operation of fundamental historical forces, not a disruption of them.

For years I have attempted to formulate a third or middle position. To do so I have relied on distinctions formulated partly in neologisms or invented terms. Over forty years ago I postulated that our overt political processes were at times seriously contaminated by manipulative covert politics or parapolitics, which I then defined as “a system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diministed.” 1 Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and The Deep Politics of War (New York: Skyhorse, 2013), 171.

In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, I moved towards a less conspiratorial middle alternative. I discussed instead the interactions of what I called deep political processes, emanating from plural power sources and all only occasionally visible, all usually repressed rather than recognized. In contrast to parapolitical processes, those of deep politics are open-ended, not securely within anyone’s power or intentions.

In 1995 I brought out Deep Politics II (since reissued as Oswald, Mexioc, and Deep Politics), 2

Peter Dale Scott, Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics (New York; Skyhorse, 2013) which I thought of at the time as a case study in deep politics: how secret U.S. Government reports on Oswald in Mexico became a reason to cover up the facts about the assassination of JFK. But it was also a specialized study, since in this case most of the repressed records of events, now declassified, occurred within the workings of the CIA, FBI, military intelligence, or their zones of influence. It was hence largely a study in parapolitics. It verged into true deep politics only near the end, when it described how a collaborating Mexican agency, the DFS (Direccion Federal de Seguridad) was deeply involved in the international drug traffic. Deep Politics, in contrast, looked continuously at the interaction between government and other social forces, such as the drug traffic.

Both books represented an alternative kind of history, or what I call deep history. Deep history differes from history in two respects. First, it is an account of suppressed events, at odds with the publicly accepted history of this country. (One might say that history is the record of politics; deep history, the record of deep politics.) Second, deep history is often restored from records which were themselves once repressed. In short, deep history is a reconstructed account of events denied by the public records from which history is normally composed. 3. There are previous examples where the actual events of American history are at odds with the public record. Allen Dulles represented the conventional view of John Wilkes Booth when he represented Booth to the Warren Commission as a loner, ignoring both the facts of the case and what is known now of Booth’s secret links to the Confederate Secret Service (Scott, Deep Politics, 295; cf. Tidwell, William A., with James O. Hall and David Winfred Gaddy, Come Retribution: the Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).

A key example concerns a tape of someone calling himself “Lee Oswald,” claiming in a Soviet Embassy phone call about having met a consul there by the name of Kostikov, a KBG agent. As we shall see, this tape should have been preserved and investigated as a prime piece of evidence to frame Oswald as an assassin. We have documentary evidence, initially suppressed, that one day after the President’s murder this tape was listened to by FBI agents in Dallas, who determined that the speaker was in fact not Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet almost immediately this event was denied by other reports, including cables claiming – falsely – that the tape had already been destroyed before the assassination.

A brief but important digression here about history. Most people assume that “history “ simply refers to what has happened but is now gone. In fact the dictionary reminds us that the first meaning of the word (cognate to the word “story”) is to a narrative or record of events, and only after that to “the events forming the subject matter of history.” 4. American Heritage Dictonary, s.v. “history,” emphases added….

…What of events whose records are destroyed or falsified? These dictionary definitions seem to assume that what is true is also what is recorded.

There is thus a latent bias in the evolution of the word “history” that is related to structuralists, rationalist assumptions referred to in my first paragraph. History (or at least what I like to call archival history) has always been the way a culture chooses to record and remember itself; and it tends to treat official records with a respect they do not always deserve.

Managed Oswald Stories

In the days after the murders in Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded with dubious stories, most of them swiftly discredited, linking Oswald to either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which most preoccupied the FBI and CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories exhibited certain common characteristics.1.    They all came from either directly from an intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an intelligence agency. Nearly always the agency involved was the Mexican DFS or secret police. The DFS, along with the Nicaraguan intelligence service, which was also a source, were under CIA tutelage.

2.    The Stories changed over time, to support either a pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase Two”).

3.    The Warren Commission was led to believe that the“Phase One”stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed.

4.    As just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture… In retrospect, these stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if we refer to the stories, not as ‘information’ or even as ‘allegations,’ but as MANAGED STORIES. To say this leaves open the question of who were the ultimate managers – the DFS, U.S. Officers in Mexico, or higher authorities in Washington.

The full history is complex and confused, with many unanswered questions. But nearly all of these managed stories, along with others outside Mexico…..resolve into this simple pattern of a Phase One/Phase Two evolution.

I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited ‘Phase-One’ stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a ‘Phase-Two’ interpretation of Oswald’s movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon.

To this day both ‘Phase-One’ and ‘Phase-Two’ versions are trotted out from time to time. These control public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination seize the debate from genuine critics who have less access to the media.

The Importance of the Managed Oswald Stories

Most critics have given only passing attention to the role of the Oswald Mexico stories in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.

The “Phase-Two” accounts of his visit to the Embassies (to obtain a visa), because of their abundant corroboration, are almost universally accepted, even by severe critics of the Warren Commission narrative. 4. Among those who accept the “Phase-Two” version as real are Newman (pp. 356-57) and Russell (pp. 492-94).

It is not my intention at this point to challenge the “Phase-Two” version, except to urge caution in accepting it. As noted in Deep Politics II (pp.117-30), the CIA and FBI have also managed the visa story told by Silvia Duran on November 23, editing and re-editing this story on at least four different occasions.

I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited “Phase-One” stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a “Phase-Two” interpretation of Oswald’s movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon. 4 Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2013), 496-98 etc.

Even Gus Russo, whose book is throughout a defense of CIA integrity, concedes that the CIA withheld information that “could have given the public the misperception that the agency had a relationship with Oswald.” 5. Russo, Live By the Sword, 218

But according to Russo, Dulles’ cover-up activities on the Warren Commission were intended chiefly to protect Bobby Kennedy, rather than the CIA. 6 Russo, Live By the Sword, 363.

“A full disclosure of Mexico City matters,” Russo argues, “would have bared the Kennedys’ plans to murder Fidel Castro….Such disclosure would certainly have diminished JFK’s mistique as an innocent martyr.” 7. Russo, Live By the Sword, 218. (In other words, what I shall call in Chapter 6 a “Phase-Three” story.)

David Phillips is the one man who seems to cover all aspects of the CIA-Oswald operation and cover-up in 1963. David Phillips even had one friend, Gordon McLendon, in common with Jack Ruby. McLendon, a sometimes intelligence officer and Dallas owner of radio stations, had known Phillips since both men were in their teens. (The two men would in the 1970s join in forming the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.) 7

McLendon was close to two other wealthy men in Dallas who have attracted the attention of JFK researchers, Clint Murchison and Bedford Wynne. 7

What is not yet known is why McLendon, whom Ruby described as one of his six closest friends, embarked on a sudden and surprising trip with his family to Mexico City in the fall of 1963. 7

This situation, an interaction between what is documented and what is not, also forces us to enlarge our thinking about history. As we have seen, history is defined in dictionary terms as a narrative or record of what is known. A successful assassination plot, by contrast, represents an interruption of this record by the unrecorded, the unknown.

Thus the defense of succeeding political legitimacy becomes undistinguishable from a defense of the integrity and dominance of the public historical record. This defense propels people to trivialize the assassination as an accident, the work of a “lone nut.”

But of these two variant explanations focus on a cover-up designed to cover up anti-Castro assassination plotting in 1963: plotting in which both CIA personnel (certainly) and Bobby Kennedy (possibly) were involved. But neither Mahoney [1. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: the Days of Jack and Bobby Kenendy (New York: Aracde, 1999), 303;] nor Russo point out the degree to which the 1963 post-Mongoose plotting involved the sources and managers of the Oswald Mexico City stories.

Those of us who genuinely wish to see overt, rational forces prevail in the world must reject a superficial and spurious defense of our institutions. The ideal embraced by our society, that it be based on truth and openness, is not a cynical cliché, but a real condition for our institutional health.

The pursuit of leads hinted at in this essay may seem frustratingly difficult, esoteric, and above all slow. But to abandon this pursuit is to break faith with the American dream of enlightenment itself.