How the CIA Controlled the Media in the Wake of the JFK Assassination

The following is an excerpt from my book JFK and the End of America:

Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite co-anchored a CBS special in 1967 called “CBS News Extra: November 22 and The Warren Report.” (It pre-empted “Mr. Ed,” the show about a talking horse; in retrospect, a talking horse was more credible than the information Cronkite and Rather provided.) The special opens with a view from the sixth floor window of a car turning onto Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. A voiceover, accompanied by string music to add profundity, says, “You are watching an official re-enactment of the murder of John F. Kennedy, filmed from the window where the alleged assassin crouched.”65 One minute into this supposed objective journalistic endeavor, we are led to believe Oswald was guilty.

CBS compromised any honest investigation when it consulted with Allen Dulles before and after the program. Dulles was allowed to inspect the transcripts and was said to have had some minor objections to the content. This was Dulles’s shrewd way of letting CBS think it actually had some independence while still controlling what was broadcast. In the end, the CIA had nothing to fear. The network’s news director at the time, William Small, exchanged a series of letters with Dulles in which Dulles “…commended Small for a job well done.”66 Such was the broadcast media’s obsequious subservience to Dulles and the CIA. Fact finding lost out to the secret state’s official version of assassination. As a result, a false history of America was created; one that is still deeply embedded in the mythology of this country’s past.

Rather and Cronkite, and their ilk, were willing accomplices in this fraud. Why did they do it? Were they just blissfully unaware of the genuine truth? Did they gullibly swallow whole what was fed to them by the plotters? Or were they just ambitious men, consumed with the prestige and influence their mere faces and voices transmitted, and unwilling to surrender their lofty positions by actually challenging the men who really ran the country? Whatever their motives, it is hard to believe that they did not recognize the Warren Report for what it really was—an implausible fairy tale concocted by flawed men to cover up the ugliest political crime in American history. But instead of summoning the courage to face that ugly truth, CBS and all the other Mockingbird assets chose the path of least resistance. The CIA’s Frank Wisner once bragged that Operation Mockingbird was like his own personal Wurlitzer: he could play any tune on it he wanted, and America would follow along. And consider these chilling declarations from Dulles’s successors—William Colby (CIA Director from 1973-76): “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media”67; William Casey (DCIA from 1981-87): “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”68

Even that giant of the television medium, Walter Cronkite, was not immune to corruptive influences. As a fellow Texan (Cronkite spent his youth in Houston), Cronkite had an affinity for Lyndon Johnson. Johnson “treated him more like a second cousin than a fourth-estate adversary.”69 Cronkite’s boss at CBS, Frank Stanton, was a close friend of Johnson’s. According to Cronkite’s biographer Douglas Brinkley, “[LBJ] hoping to exert control over CBS…would routinely call Stanton to grouse about on-air content…[and] whenever LBJ went to New York, Stanton would fete him with limousines, cocktails, and coffee…to keep him happy.”70

Cronkite was also linked to Allen Dulles. In 1976 an ABC News reporter named Sam Jaffe claimed that he had seen Cronkite’s name at the top of the list of journalists who worked for the CIA. Jaffe also confirmed that Cronkite had received a briefing from Dulles as part of his normal duties. When Cronkite learned of Jaffe’s allegations, “…the anchorman sprang into damage control mode, traveling from New York City to Langley, Virginia, to confront George H.W. Bush [then CIA Director]…Cronkite demanded the list of news people who had actually been CIA agents.”71 Bush refused to release it, but later the CIA “confirmed that…CBS correspondents had worked for the agency.”72 Beyond Cronkite’s understandable consternation at having his journalistic reputation compromised, it is revelatory to note here that a list of CIA journalist assets apparently DID exist. And George Bush, head of the CIA, kept it secret. Cronkite did not deny being a CIA asset, nor did he seek a disavowal of his collaboration with the agency from George Bush. Instead, Cronkite sought to verify that he was only one of many newsmen who had worked for the CIA, as if public knowledge of such common practice would legitimize it. It speaks to the power of Operation Mockingbird. If the CIA had ensnared Cronkite, the number one television journalist of the 1960s, what newsman was immune to the agency’s perfidious influence?

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Trump Reneges on Promise to Release All JFK Assassination Files

This is a reprint of a story from the Associated Press:

President Donald Trump boasted last fall that he would open all remaining John F. Kennedy assassination records. So far, Trump hasn’t made good on the “great transparency” he promised then.
Trump announced on Thursday that the public must wait another three years or more before seeing material that must remain classified for national security reasons — more than five decades after Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

The National Archives released its last batch of more than 19,000 records on Thursday. But an undisclosed amount of material remains under wraps because Trump said the potential harm to U.S. national security, law enforcement or foreign affairs is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”

He ordered the CIA and other agencies to take yet another look at each blacked-out section of their documents during the next three years to see what more can be released.

CIA spokesman Nicole de Haay said the agency has already released more than 99 percent of CIA information that was in the Kennedy assassination records collection. “CIA narrowly redacted information in rare instances only to protect CIA assets, officers and their families as well as intelligence methods, operations and partnerships that remain critical to the security of our nation,” she said.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of a book about Kennedy, lamented that it might be 100 years post-assassination before everyone has a more complete picture of what happened. “I envy the scholars of, say, 2063,” Sabato said.

The files released Thursday — mostly FBI and CIA records — detail how authorities combed through tips in the wake of Kennedy’s death, including a report from a woman who claimed she saw a man who looked like Oswald at a party in Mexico City.
Another file shows ex-CIA officer David Atlee Phillips being grilled by lawmakers about whether he believed Oswald was the lone assassin. Phillips said he wished there was information showing the Soviets or former Cuban leader Fidel Castro had played a role “because there are so many people, especially on college campuses who are convinced the CIA did it.”

But Phillips said since there was no evidence showing Cuban or Soviet involvement, he had to believe Oswald was just “a kind of loony fellow who decided to shoot the President.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t miss, and the American public doesn’t want to believe that one man could murder Camelot,” Phillips said. [Phillips was lying to the committee. See the *Note below for clarification of Phillips' role in setting up Oswald as the CIA's patsy in the assassination.]

The records are still being released today because in 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. The act ordered the archives to disclose all information collected — some 5 million pages of material — on the assassination within 25 years — barring any exceptions designated by the president.

Those 25 years ended Oct. 26, 2017 and Trump had to decide whether any of the documents should still be kept secret. Several days before the deadline, it appeared Trump had no plans to withhold anything.

“Subject to the receipt of further information,” he tweeted on Oct. 21, 2017. “I will be allowing, as president, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”

Again, on the day before the deadline, it appeared every last shred of the government’s material was headed for release. “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!” Trump tweeted.

A lot of documents were released, but not all. Bending to appeals from the CIA and FBI, Trump blocked the release of hundreds of records pending a six-month review. “In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about everything to public!” Trump tweeted in October.

His six-month review ended Thursday when all documents, he said, were to be released “with redactions only in the rarest of circumstances.”

While happy for what’s been released so far, Sabato said more than 15,000 of the 19,045 in Thursday’s National Archives release have redactions — “some quite substantial.” He said more than 500 files were held back in their entirely for various reasons.

“Trump has set the next official argument over further disclosures at October 2021, when he may or may not still be president,” Sabato said.

[*Note: David Atlee Phillips later admitted that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed for the murder of JFK. Phillips was in charge of the "Mexico City scenario" in which an Oswald impostor visited the Russian Embassy in Mexico City and met with Valery Kostikov, a KGB officer who ran the Soviets' assassination program. When the impostor was caught on audio and video tapes, Phillips destroyed the recordings. This was necessary when it was revealed that the real Oswald was in Dallas at the time that his impostor was in Mexico City.]

Read more at www.amazon.com/dp/1948260085