The Death of Yuri Nosenko

Yuri Nosenko, a former KGB official and defector to the United States has died. Nosenko claimed to have handled the file of Lee Harvey Oswald for the KGB and said the KGB never took an interest in Oswald. Nosenko's story was treated skeptically at CIA and they ordered him kept in confinement where he was subjected to hostile interrogation methods. Nosenko said he was tortured and given LSD at one point.
From the Associated Press:
Ex-KGB spy, CIA's `most valuable defector,' dies
By PAMELA HESS – 11 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A KGB spy who switched allegiances at the height of the Cold War and was considered by the CIA as its "most valuable and economical defector" has died.
Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko defected in Switzerland in 1964. Confined to a safe house in Clinton, Md., the former Soviet spy was interrogated for about four months in 1965 until transferred to a specially constructed jail because he was suspected of being a double agent, according to decades-old CIA documents released last year. He was held until October 1967, then resettled under an assumed identity.
"While I regret my three years of incarceration, I have no bitterness and now understand how it could happen," he said, according to the documents.
The 81-year-old Nosenko died Saturday, a month after the CIA delivered to his home a ceremonial flag and a letter of thanks from the agency's director, Michael Hayden, honoring his service to the United States, according to intelligence officials.
The CIA considered him the "most valuable and economical defector this agency has ever had," the long-held documents said, noting his information resulted in the arrest and prosecution of spies.
The CIA put Nosenko under a polygraph in 1964, 1966 and 1968 about Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's possible ties to the KGB. Nosenko told his interrogators that Oswald was not a KGB operative, according to a 1979 report to Congress.
Nosenko's death after a long illness was first reported in Wednesday's Washington Post, which said he lived in a Southern state."


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JFK Researchers Receive Prestigious Award

Researchers at Texas A&M University that did careful scientific work to debunk previous analysis of the bullets used in the murder of John F. Kennedy were granted the 2008 Statistics in Chemistry Award by the American Statisitical Association. Dr. Cliff Spiegelman and Dr. Simon J. Sheather, professors of statistics in the Texas A&M Department of Statistics, and Dr. William D. James, a research chemist with the Texas A&M Center for Chemical Characterization and Analysis published their work in 2007. Using new compositional analysis techniques that were not available in the 1960's they concluded that the bullet fragments used in the murder were not at all as rare as previously concluded. Their work cast serious doubt on the Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) relied on by the House Assassinations Committee under its chief counsel, Robert Blakey. In light of the new study Blakey now refers to the NAA analysis as "junk science".
Also sharing in the award for their roles in the joint project: William A. Tobin, former Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) agent and forensic scientist; D. Max Roundhill, former head of the Department of Chemistry at Washington State University and a current consultant with Austin-based Chem Consulting; and Stuart Wexler, a humanities and advanced placement government instructor at Highstown High School in New Jersey.

See: http://media-newswire.com/release_1071753.html

For more background on the study see:




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601967.html

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Chris Columbus to direct new film on RFK

Chris Columbus, director as well as producer of two "Harry Potter" films and many others, has acquired the rights to Thurston Clarke's "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America". Clarke's book is a New York Times bestseller and Columbus will adapt it for the screen and also serve as director for the project.

From Variety, Aug. 10, 2008:

In his first deal since forming a first-look alliance with India-based Reliance Big Entertainment, Columbus and his 1492 Prods. have acquired screen rights to the Thurston Clarke book "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America."
Columbus will produce with 1492 partners Michael Barnathan and Mark Radcliffe. Columbus will write the script solo or invite another scribe to work with him. That choice will depend on his availability, as Columbus is currently finalizing a directing project for early next year.
Kennedy's idealistic campaign, which focused squarely on poverty, racism and ending the unpopular Vietnam War, resonated with Columbus and his 1492 partners. While losing his iconic brother made him wary of crowds, Kennedy refused to insulate himself from the public during his run.
"Chris was inspired by the fearlessness Robert showed in those 82 days," Barnathan said.

See: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117990332.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562

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FBI files released to Washington Post; Gerald Ford served as spy for Hoover on Warren Commission

It has long been known that Gerald Ford functioned as a spy for J. Edgar Hoover on the Warren Commission. But today's Washington Post has an "exclusive" story which includes new details on how Ford not only spied for Hoover, but also actively worked to manipulate other Warren Commission members into believing that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. In times past, Ford stoutly denied that he operated in such a way for Hoover and tried to suggest that previously released FBI documents were just a result of FBI official Cartha DeLoach trying to "puff" his own reputation. Today's documents give the lie to the late president's previous denials. Ford's reputation has already suffered considerably in recent years, such as in 2001 when documents were released which showed both he and Henry Kissinger aided and abetted Indonesia's 1975 attack on East Timor, which resulted in 25 years of slaughter in that country. (See: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/index.html) By arming Indonesia for this purpose Ford and Kissinger plainly violated U.S. law which does not allow arms to be sold to any country except for defensive purposes. The revelations in today's Post will further besmirch his reputation as it leaves no doubt his work on the Commission was tarnished by an all too cozy relationship with the FBI. This too casts a shadow over the independence of the Warren Commission itself. Ford sought from the beginning to paint Oswald as a lone assassin as Hoover wanted.
From the article:
"A December 1963 memo recounts that Ford, then a Republican congressman from Michigan, told FBI Assistant Director Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach that two members of the seven-person commission remained unconvinced that Kennedy had been shot from the sixth-floor window of the Texas Book Depository. In addition, three commission members "failed to understand" the trajectory of the slugs, Ford said.
Ford told DeLoach that commission discussions would continue and reassured him that those minority points of view on the commission "of course would represent no problem," one internal FBI memo shows. The memo does not name the members involved and does not elaborate on what Ford meant by "no problem."
Ford also told DeLoach that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who headed the commission, had told its members that "they should strive to have their hearings completed and the findings made public prior to July, 1964, when the Presidential campaigns will begin to get hot. He stated it would be unfair to present the findings after July." They missed their deadline, concluding in a report issued Sept. 24, 1964, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination. "

See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080702757.html

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Dallas D.A.'s Reputation Sinks Amid Reversals: New D.A. blames "cowboy" mentality; 19 convictions overturned..

The reputation of Dallas D.A. Henry Wade who gathered evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald and also prosecuted Jack Ruby is under assault. The Associated Press reports tonight that 19 of Wade's convictions have been overturned by DNA evidence; and 250 more of his cases are under review: No other county in America — and almost no state, for that matter — has freed more innocent people from prison in recent years than Dallas County, where Wade was DA from 1951 through 1986. Current District Attorney Craig Watkins, who in 2006 became the first black elected chief prosecutor in any Texas county, said that more wrongly convicted people will go free.
"There was a cowboy kind of mentality and the reality is that kind of approach is archaic, racist, elitist and arrogant," said Watkins, who is 40 and never worked for Wade or met him. "

The new DA and other Wade detractors say the cases won under Wade were riddled with shoddy investigations, evidence was ignored and defense lawyers were kept in the dark. They note that the promotion system under Wade rewarded prosecutors for high conviction rates.
In the case of James Lee Woodard — released in April after 27 years in prison for a murder DNA showed he didn't commit — Wade's office withheld from defense attorneys photographs of tire tracks at the crime scene that didn't match Woodard's car.
"Now in hindsight, we're finding lots of places where detectives in those cases, they kind of trimmed the corners to just get the case done," said Michelle Moore, a Dallas County public defender and president of the Innocence Project of Texas. "Whether that's the fault of the detectives or the DA's, I don't know."
John Stickels, a University of Texas at Arlington criminology professor and a director of the Innocence Project of Texas, blames a culture of "win at all costs."
"When someone was arrested, it was assumed they were guilty," he said. "I think prosecutors and investigators basically ignored all evidence to the contrary and decided they were going to convict these guys."

Read the full story here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hYTWVc0ujswSRFycyBOqB-ATyd3QD927LK980

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Caroline Kennedy Helps Obama Select VP

Video from ABC News

WATCH: Caroline Kennedy to Choose VP?

New suit seeks FBI papers withheld from Congress

Carlos Marcello (1910-1993)

Gregory Scarpa (1928-1994)

A new suit is being filed seeking information from the FBI concerning longtime New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who died in 1993. This information was previously withheld from Congress during their investigation of the murder of JFK. It seems as if the FBI is also in violation of the JFK Records Act as all material relevant to the assassination of John F. Kennedy was to have been released to the JFK Review Board in the 1990's. Here are some excerpts from the Times' story:

"The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington by the paralegal, Angela Clemente, asks the Federal Bureau of Investigation to make public any documents it may still hold related to the mobster, Gregory Scarpa Sr., who for nearly 30 years led a stunning double life as a hit man for the Colombo crime family and, in the words of the F.B.I, a “top echelon” informant for the bureau....In her suit, Ms. Clemente asked the bureau to release all papers connected to Mr. Scarpa (who died of AIDS in 1994 after receiving a blood transfusion), especially those related to Carlos Marcello, a New Orleans don suspected by some of having played a role in the Kennedy assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Ms. Clemente filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Mr. Scarpa’s file in April, and the F.B.I. acknowledged her request in a letter on June 9, saying that bureau officials would search their records for relevant papers. Ms. Clemente’s lawyer, James Lesar, said that the F.B.I. had not yet told her if it would release the file or not, but that under federal law, a lawsuit can be filed compelling the release of records 20 working days after such a letter is received....

In pursuing the Scarpa file and its potential to flesh out Mr. Marcello’s possible role in the Kennedy killing, Ms. Clemente is following a trail blazed in part by G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame who also served as the chief counsel and staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which from 1977 to 1979 investigated the killings of President Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
While the Warren Commission said there was no link between Mr. Marcello and the president’s death, Mr. Blakey’s report to the House was considerably more circumspect, saying the F.B.I.’s “handling of the allegations and information about Marcello was characterized by a less than vigorous effort to investigate its reliability.”
Ms. Clemente is in possession of several heavily redacted papers from the Scarpa file, which suggest, however vaguely, she said, that Mr. Scarpa, who spied on numerous gangsters for the F.B.I., may also have spied on Mr. Marcello.
Professor Blakey, reached by phone at his office at Notre Dame on Monday, said he had seen the papers, adding that no matter what the unredacted versions might eventually reveal, he was convinced that he should have seen them 30 years ago, while conducting his Congressional investigation.
“The issue here is not what’s in them,” Professor Blakey said, “so much as that they seem to have held them back from me. I thought I had the bureau file on Marcello — now it turns out I didn’t, did I? So I’m not a small, I’m a major, supporter of what Angela is trying to do.”

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/nyregion/22docs.html?ref=nyregion

This is the second time in a year that the FBI has suffered a major embarassment as a result of its relationship with Gregory "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa. In October of 2007 the Brooklyn D.A. dropped murder charges against a former FBI agent when it was learned that a mob moll had given contradictory testimony against the agent's involvement in Mafia hits. But the presiding judge blasted the FBI for its complete lack of ethics in its relationship with Scarpa.

""I was particularly struck by the testimony of Carmine Sessa, former Consigliere of the Colombo family and multiple murderer, and who testified that when he and his fellow mobsters were discussing the possibility that Greg Scarpa was an FBI informant, they ultimately discounted the idea, reasoning that it was impossible...that it would be antinomic for the FBI, charged with fighting crime, to employ as an informer a murderer as vicious and prolific as Greg Scarpa. Apparently, and sadly, organized crime attributed to the FBI a greater sense of probity than the FBI in fact possessed," wrote State Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach.

"Not only did the FBI shield Scarpa from prosecution for his own crimes, they also actively recruited him to participate in crimes under their direction. That a thug like Scarpa would be employed by the federal government to beat witnesses and threaten them at gunpoint to obtain information regarding the deaths of civil rights workers in the south in the early 1960s is a shocking demonstration of the government's unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime. It is redolent of the current mindset of some in the government who argue that the practice of terror and torture can be freely employed against those the government claims are terrorists themselves: that it is permissible to make men scream in the name of national security. These are shortcuts that devalue legitimate police work, their yield is insignificant and the cost to the fundamental values they debase is enormous."

Link: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/judge-in-aborte.html

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