The CIA School of Assassination at Fort Bragg

The CIA School of Assassination at Fort Bragg

"Sometime in the early Fifties ... assassination became an instrument of U.S. national policy. It also became an important branch of our invisible government, a sizable business, and a separate technology involving weapons and devices the ordinary taxpayer paid billions for but was never permitted to see, except perhaps in the technicolor fantasies of James Bond flicks." --Andrew St. George, journalist for Life magazine, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation

Fort Bragg and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

"...Military and intelligence officers did not take kindly to Kennedy's attempts to restrain the [military-industrial] conglomeration. Kennedy angered these men by refusing to use U.S. military power to salvage the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Then he added fuel to the fire by rejecting recommendations by the joint chiefs to bomb the missile emplacements in Cuba and to refrain from signing a nuclear test ban treaty with the Russians.... Some generals -- including Dallas mayor Earle Cabell's brother, Gen. Charles P. Cabel -- even went so far as to brand Kennedy a 'traitor.' Cabell, after being fired by Kennedy as deputy director of the CIA, resumed responsibilities in the Pentagon." --Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy

Bobby Kennedy came up talking to John Kennedy and saying, "You know, if you go too far in negotiations with Kruschev and with the Communists, you're going to get assassinated. People in this country don't want the President of the United States to make deals with the Communists." --Pierre Salinger (JFK's press secretary), video interview

Interview of Lt. Col. Dan Marvin -- A Graduate of Fort Bragg's Guerrilla Warfare School

transcribed from the documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy: Part 6: The Truth Shall Make You Free

Narrator: Lieutenant Colonel Dan Marvin has spent his life serving his country. A veteran of eight combat campaigns, he earned twenty-one awards and decorations. Fifteen years a paratrooper, he served in the elite Special Forces, the Green Berets. Just a few weeks after the assassination [of President Kennedy], he volunteered for specialist guerilla training at Fort Bragg.

Dan Marvin: Almost all of the instruction in the guerilla warfare school was classified. The most secret was the top secret training in assassinations and terrorism. And, at that time, we went to a different building that had a double barbwire fence around it, and guard dogs.

On the John F. Kennedy situation -- that was brought to our attention as the classic example of "thee" way to organize a complete program to eliminate a nation's leader, while pointing the finger at a lone assassin; and it involved also the cover-up of the assassination itself.

We had considerable detail -- they had a mock layout of the plaza, in that area, and showed where the shooters were and where the routes were to the hospital. I don't remember where those were now. They had quite a bit of movie, film coverage ... it seemed like, you know, thinking back to that time, and some still photos of the grassy knoll and places like that.

They told us that Oswald was not involved in the shooting at all -- he was the patsy. He was the one that was set up.

We did -- myself and a friend of mine -- form a very distinct impression that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination. During a coffee break, we overheard one of the CIA instructors say to the other: "Things really did go well in Dealey Plaza, didn't it?" or something to that effect. And that just reinforced, or really added to, our suspicions and we really felt, before the end of training was over, that one of those instructors may have been involved himself in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

"In my last conversation with him [President Kennedy], I'll always remember that he said, 'As soon as the election is over, I'm going to get the boys out of Vietnam.'" --Tip O'Neill, former House Speaker, interviewed in the documentary, Beyond "JFK": The Question of Conspiracy

"If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected." --John F. Kennedy, quoted by his special assistant Kenneth O'Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Kennedy had proved his manhood in the Solomon Islands and did not have to prove it again. He was a prudent executive, not inclined to heavy investments in lost causes. His whole Presidency was marked precisely by his capacity to refuse escalation -- as in Laos, the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the missile crisis." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., President Kennedy's special adviser on Latin America, Robert Kennedy and His Times

"...President [Kennedy] heroically kept the country out of war -- against relentless pressure from hard-liners in the Pentagon, CIA and his own White House, who were determined to militarily engage the enemy in Berlin, Laos, Vietnam and especially Cuba. Kennedy knew that any such military confrontation could quickly escalate into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And he realized that a full-scale invasion of Cuba or Vietnam could become hopelessly bogged down, turning into a bloody and endless occupation.... The only reason Cuba didn't become the Iraq of its day was that Kennedy was too wise to be snookered by hard-liners into this trap. He had already been misled early in his administration by the CIA, which convinced him that its ragtag army of Cuban exiles could defeat Castro at the Bay of Pigs. JFK vowed that he would never again listen to these so-called national security experts...." --David Talbot, "The Kennedy Legacy vs. the Bush Legacy," Salon, 2 May 2007

"Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in his book 'Robert Kennedy and His Times,' documents other episodes showing President Kennedy's determination not to let Vietnam become an American war. One was when Gen. Douglas MacArthur told him it would be foolish to fight again in Asia and that the problem should be solved at the diplomatic table. Later General Taylor said that MacArthur's views made 'a hell of an impression on the President ... so that whenever he'd get this military advice from the Joint Chiefs or from me or anyone else, he'd say, 'Well, now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince General MacArthur, then I'll be convinced.'" --Roger Hilsman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under President Kennedy, letter to The New York Times, 20 January 1992

"In retrospect, the reason for the assassination is hardly a mystery. It is now abundantly clear ... why the C.I.A.'s covert operations element wanted John Kennedy out of the Oval Office and Lyndon Johnson in it. The new President elevated by rifle fire to control of our foreign policy had been one of the most enthusiastic American cold warriors.... Johnson had originally risen to power on the crest of the fulminating anti-communist crusade which marked American politics after World War II. Shortly after the end of that war, he declaimed that atomic power had become 'ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it' -- a Christian benediction if ever there was one. Johnson's demonstrated enthusiasm for American military intervention abroad ... earned him the sobriquet 'the senator from the Pentagon....'" --Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins

"[Richard] Schweiker told me in his opinion the CIA was responsible for the [JFK] assassination. That's a heck of a statement to come from a United States Senator and one who had even been Ronald Reagan's running mate in 1976...." --Robert Tanenbaum, former Deputy Counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, "The Probe Interview: Bob Tanenbaum," Probe, July-August 1996 (Vol. 3 No. 5)

"When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice-president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy." --Jack Ruby's comment to reporters while being transferred to his prison cell. When asked to explain what he meant, Ruby (Oswald's killer and a probable conspirator in the JFK assassination) replied, "Well the answer is the man in office now [Lyndon Johnson]." Note: Adlai Stevenson advocated a concilatory approach to international affairs in stark contrast to Democratic Party hawks like Lyndon Johnson. Johnson assumed the presidency following JFK's murder and escalated the Vietnam War exponentially. With his comment, it seems that Ruby was dropping a hint about the assassination -- that the JFK conspirators could not have achieved their goal of putting a hawk in the White House had Stevenson been Kennedy's vice-president instead of Johnson.

"Just let me get elected and then you can have your war." --Lyndon Johnson, quoted by Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (Johnson made this comment to the joint chiefs of staff at a White House reception on Christmas Eve 1963, one month after the JFK assassination.)

"I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went." --Lyndon Johnson, quoted by Tom Wicker, J.F.K. and L.B.J. (This is what Johnson told Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in the Executive Office Building, on the Sunday afternoon following Kennedy's murder.)

"Well, what [Lyndon] Johnson did was, he did one thing before he expanded the war [in Vietnam] and that is he got rid of one way or another all the people [in the Kennedy administration] who had opposed making it an American war. Averill Harriman, he was Under Secretary of State, he made him roving ambassador for Africa so he'd have nothing to do with Vietnam.... He found out that I'd spent part of my childhood in the Philippines, and he tried to persuade me to become ambassador to the Philippines.... Johnson was a very clever man.... He knew who were the hawks and who were the doves. He systematically rid the top layers of the American government of the doves...." --Roger Hilsman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under President Kennedy, interviewed on CNN.com/ColdWar

Fort Bragg and the Character Assassination of President William J. Clinton

"If it can be done to John F. Kennedy in 1963, it can be done to another president in the future. And we can't afford to have coup d'etats in America, no matter how cleverly orchestrated and sinisterly contrived they may be. That cannot be permitted to happen. And the way you prevent that from happening is to expose those elements of government and society in this country that were responsible for the killing of John F. Kennedy." --Dr. Cyril Wecht, interviewed in the documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy: Part 1: The Coup D'etat

"Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here [to Fort Bragg]. He better have a bodyguard." --Jesse Helms, Republican Senator from North Carolina, speaking on the 31st anniversary of the JFK assassination, November 22, 1994. (Helm's comment reflected the widespread hostility of the military establishment, and its right-wing allies in Congress, to President Clinton's efforts to decrease military spending in the post Cold War era, and allow gays to serve in the military.)

"There are other ways to kill a leader these days -- you can assassinate his character." --former presidential candidate Gary Hart, quoted by David Talbot, "The Mother of All Cover-Ups," Salon, 15 September 2004

"There is a right-wing [apparatus] and I know what it is, I've been there, I was part of it and, yes, they were trying to bring down Bill Clinton by damaging him personally ... by any means necessary." --conservative journalist David Brock, appearing on CNN's Crossfire, 10 March 1998

"It was a small intricately knit right-wing conspiracy -- and I'd like that clarified." --Ann Coulter, far-right TV pundit, admitting her knowledge of an anti-Clinton conspiracy, quoted in The Hartford Courant, 25 June 1999

Linda Tripp -- Former Operations Assistant to Delta Force at Fort Bragg

Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky's "friend," stated on her resume that she had been an "operations assistant" to Delta Force at Fort Bragg and an "administrative assistant" at U.S. Army Intelligence headquarters at Fort Meade. Linda Tripp described her Army intelligence work as being an "assistant to the director, handling correspondence, tracking of classified case files ... assisted in the coordination of a far reaching political, international mission." In her testimony before the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1995, Tripp said: "I've worked on the covert side of the Department of Defense..." Beyond that she wouldn't elaborate, saying "the nature of this position is classified." Tripp also speaks German fluently, suggesting intelligence training.

Moreover, the CIA and the Pentagon have a history of placing intelligence operatives in low-level staff positions at the White House.* Tripp was originally hired by the Bush administration and, under Clinton, was one of the few holdovers, serving as an assistant to the White House Counsel, the office of Vince Foster. Given what is now known about Tripp's exploits, it is likely that she was a mole in the Counsel office, passing information to the Pentagon and/or the CIA.

With Vince Foster's "suicide" in 1993, right-wing pundits -- notably Christopher Ruddy and his employer, CIA-connected billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife -- began to circulate stories that Foster's death was not a suicide, but rather a murder and that President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary were behind it. However, others have intimated that, instead of the Clintons, it is suspected intelligence operative Linda Tripp who should be scrutinized, having been the last person in the White House to see Vince Foster alive. Indeed, it was Linda Tripp who served Vince Foster his last meal, a cheeseburger and some M&M's, which she brought to him on a cafeteria tray.

The fact that Linda Tripp's resume included a stint as an operations assistant to Delta Force has raised eyebrows. According to NBC investigative reporter, Robert Windrem, Delta Force personnel have, over the years, been recruited by the CIA’s Special Activities Staff (SAS) for use in assassinations.

If foul play was involved in Foster's death, a possible motive would be Foster's role in the White House travel office firings. In early 1993, as the president's wife, Hillary Clinton was putting together her Health Task Force, details of the plan began to leak to the press. The First Lady regarded such leaks as an attempt by conservative forces to derail health care reform. Hillary Clinton suspected that the source of the leaks was the White House travel office and, in response, summoned her former law office partner, Vince Foster to investigate.

As Vince Foster began examining the affairs of the travel office and its director Billy Dale, Foster discovered that Dale had secured a no-bid contract from the charter airline company, UltrAir. Indeed, Dale told aviation broker Harry Thomason that "no combination of price or service" could convince him to accept bids from any other charter firm, even though the GAO suggested that as many as fourteen airlines would have been interested in bidding for the travel office business.

UltrAir -- which allegedly shipped weapons to the Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s -- was financed by Geneva-based Potomac Capital, a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976. After UltrAir fell into financial difficulties, President Bush leased the planes for White House use in a highly questionable deal.

Given Billy Dale's special relationship with UltrAir, and UltrAir's CIA dealings, Hillary Clinton's suspicions about moles in the travel office appeared to be on firm ground. In May 1993, Billy Dale and the travel office's six other employees were discharged.

Right-wing pundits were outraged by the travel office firings, including columnists at the Wall Street Journal, who attacked Vince Foster in a series of editorials.

Some time later, Clinton loyalists began to suspect that Linda Tripp was also a mole. In March 1994, the new White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler removed Linda Tripp from the Counsel office, replacing her with another assistant. Tripp was described by one White House co-worker as a "dangerous commodity" and a "loose cannon."

In August 1994, Linda Tripp left the White House and immediately landed a job at the Pentagon as a "public affairs specialist," a position that curiously had no job description. The Pentagon paid Tripp an annual salary of $69,427, an increase of $20,000 a year over her old White House salary. Two years later, the Pentagon increased Tripp's salary to $88,000.

Meanwhile in June 1995, twenty-one-year-old Monica Lewinsky was hired as an intern at the White House. Ten months later, Lewinsky transferred out of the White House and "coincidently" got job at the Pentagon in the same public affairs office where suspected intelligence operative Linda Tripp was working.

Linda Tripp befriended Lewinsky who soon confided to Tripp that she was having an affair with President Clinton. As their "friendship" developed, Lewinsky shared details of the affair with Tripp in numerous telephone conversations. Tripp secretly tape recorded these conversations and later turned over the recordings to Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation.

Ken Starr decided to make public the explicit details of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. With the character assassination of President Clinton at full throttle, right-wing forces in the media and society attempted to turn public opinion against Clinton and pressure him into resigning. However, a majority of Americans continued to support the President. When Clinton refused to resign, he faced impeachment by a Republican led Congress. President Clinton survived impeachment and went on to complete his second term.

*Another documented case of Pentagon spying on the White House occurred during the Nixon administration. It "...involved a young enlisted Navy man named Charles Radford, who shuttled between offices in the Pentagon and the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) as an admiral's assistant. Unbeknownst to White House staff, he had been collecting countless documents from White House wastebaskets, burn bags, and mailroom sources and passing them on to his superior [Admiral Rembrandt Robinson] at the Pentagon.... A little more than a year later, thousands of pages of material -- photocopied and returned to the desks or burn bags from whence they came -- lay in Pentagon safes. They ranged from NSC policy papers and minutes of confidential meetings to information about White House plans for troop withdrawals from Vietnam. [Admiral] Robinson felt the spying was warranted. It is one of the ironies of the Nixon administration that the president -- whose intemperate anti-communist rhetoric had been part of the political lexicon since the McCarthy era -- became a skillful proponent of a whole litany of efforts that the Pentagon viewed with apprehension. They included nuclear arms control, Vietnam troop reductions, and the improvement of diplomatic ties with communist China and the Soviet Union."
Richard Lamb, "Tale of the Shadow Chaser," George magazine, October 1998