The Second Crucifixion of
Oliver Stone

By Dennis Effle

Published in Probe 5/22/95. Probe is a publication of Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination.

Oliver Stone, the director of 1991’s mega-hit “JFK” is being crucified in the press yet a second time. Once again a purloined draft of a script for an upcoming film, this time a biography/entertainment offering on the enigmatic American political figure Richard Nixon, is the basis for preemptive strikes by the media.Has Harold Weisberg been disbursing another stolen screenplay, or is Stone’s office the most infiltrated since Garrison’s?

In the March 20, 1995 TIME magazine, under the footnote of “esoteric findings,” there is a list of several items that TIME writers characterize as “cud for the director’s conspiracy-theorist fans to chew on.” Leaving aside the umbrage that readers should feel at being referred to as a multi-stomached lower phylum species, it is odd indeed that the specific items selected to denigrate Stone with have a genuine basis in historical fact. Reality, it appears, is not the proper defense for press hyperbole.

Points from this script that TIME takes issue with are: Nixon organized a separate operation from the Bay of Pigs (referred to as Track 1) and three years later this same cell (referred to as Track 2) turns to hit Kennedy; Hoover uses his knowledge of this to threaten Nixon during the 1968 election; E. Howard Hunt blackmails Nixon due to his knowledge of these events; Nixon himself personally erases the infamous 18 1/2 minutes “Gap” because it refers to “Track 2” and Alexander Haig pressures (blackmails?) Nixon into resigning by implying that someone else had a pristine copy of this tape.

Do We Have Time To Deal With This?

But why do these assertions cause TIME so many problems? Let’s take a look at some of the true history concerning these events and see if we can understand TIME’ s reluctance to deal with these issues openly and honestly.

Nixon was White House action officer for Operation Pluto in the Eisenhower administration and deeply involved in the day-to-day planning as well as oversight of the entire war against Castro’s Cuba. As the record points out, Nixon had knowledge of and worked with many of the extremist factions of this program as well as those involved in the “Caribbean wars” of that era.

Nixon knew and worked with Bosch, Cordona, Kohly, Hunt, Phillips, Maheu and Helms; as well as many others who harbored and financed these cells. The ill-fated “Bay of Pigs” invasion plan was a product of the Eisenhower administration and was only later adopted and tacitly carried out by the Kennedy administration. Factions of these same elements close to the vice-president did go into remission only to arise once more under the Nixon presidency. In fact, some became permanent fixtures of the covert apparatus all the way through the Reagan/Bush years.

What this article refers to only as “Track 1” and “Track 2” plans could very easily be a reference to any of the panoply of operations began under Eisenhower/Nixon leadership. Operations Condor, Phantasm, Goldflow, Lake, Red Cross and “40” were all progeny of that administration and known to the White House action officer for these activities, then Vice President Richard Nixon.

TIME’S limited viewpoint needs expanding. It is astounding that the material existence of this apparatus is still being denied by TIME in 1995. These are the historical realities and facts we should be informed about and then taught to deal with. Instead we are presented “the facts” in a context that TIME derisively characterizes as “cud” and intimates is not worth our continued concern. But while we’re at it, let’s digest a few more of these tasty morsels.

The available declassified histories of those times show that with the change of administrations in 1960 some elements of this not-so-secret war disbanded; some were incorporated into other operations; while others simply went inactive and a few went independent, ready to spring into actions of their own choosing at any self determined point in time. And once more, as the available historical record repeatedly shows us, many of these programs were operating without any official direction from the next administration.

Indeed, the HSCA itself investigated several of these allegations at the time of their cursory reinvestigation into the President’s murder. One of the HSCA’s main areas of focus was the Bayo/Pawley raid of September 1963. This particular incident saw an entire band of U.S. sponsored assassins dispatched to kill Castro captured—then surreptitiously released back to the U.S. mainland. The HSCA thought that this event was somehow relevant to the President’s assassination in Dallas, as recently released documents show.

To this date, files on the full war against Cuba have only partially been released. But the cumulative historical record so far released does document important facts relating to this war and reveals that this information was known only to a compartmentalized cadre of officials within the covert intelligence apparatus, Hoover’s Federal police force, select Bureaucratic/Business circles in Washington as well as superior figures from organized crime. All of these elements came together to form integral parts of the planning and implementation stages for these escapades, and Richard Nixon was at the highest level of responsibility dealing with all of these elements. But we should not forget the fact that Dick Nixon was a major player in Cuban covert policy long before “Pluto” heated up.

Gonna Tell On You

If there has been one constant revealed through the study of modern intelligence literature (as well as the study of political science and corporate development during the same comparative time frame) it is that information is power. Blackmail, or as some have put it, “the strategic application of known fact” has been one of the prime driving forces in how information is either exchanged, discovered, or applied.

In the world of intelligence, operatives must be able to get information, establish an archetype for the source and establish a basis for that input to be properly evaluated. Fear of blackmail has been one of the constant concerns of the spy game since its beginning and has always been one of the three standards established for motivation of conduct: Greed and Ideology comprising the others. This was the process accepted as litmus qualifications for establishing Trustworthiness.

Another paradox that has to be dealt with is the proven existence of competing groups using Blackmail against the Blackmailers. This is the warp in the convex mirror of intelligence. This single event has biased the function of intelligence more than any other in this century.

Hoover helped develop it and was one of the few to have survived to perfect the craft. Dulles, Angleton, and Helms (among others) also developed this discipline to a science. The primary question has always been, and likely always will be, who has what on whom? The answer to that question allows us to view the material in its true light; allows us the ability to see it devoid of motivational spin and ideological prejudices.

By its very nature this discourse produces evaluations to be made of finer gradients on the Big-Bigger-Biggest blackmail secrets scale. What was the Biggest secret known, and who held it against whom?

Nixon and the ‘68 Elections

By 1968, when Nixon finally reached the White House, many truths relating to events that occurred during the Kennedy administration were known to a slightly wider group of intimates. And lest we forget, many of those events were of major importance: the failed Cuban invasion; the erection of the Berlin Wall; the wars in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia; the summits in Vienna, Moscow and Washington; the brinkmanship of the Missiles of October, and the United Nations resolution that became the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

To give some historical perspective to this, we should also remember that these major events were going on against a backdrop of: military revolts; NASA’s rise and the ascendancy of the Technological/Scientific/Atomic triad; missile accuracy and preemptive strikes programs; deployment of space based ASAT systems; the “Polaris” tactical advantage; establishment of Hot Line communications directly with the enemy; electric company “Executives” put behind bars and steel company dictates reversed by the administration.

The questions of whether Richard Nixon was involved in any of the political machinations that occurred during the 1968 campaign season, to either the Democrats (Bobby and Martin were killed and McCarthy neutralized) or the Republicans, (George Wallace, his competition, was eliminated) have to remain open until more of the sequestered files are fully released. In any event, the true events of the Kennedy administration were indeed known to a wider (but still selective) circle of associates in slightly broader circles by 1968 and it was the Nixon camp that wound up benefiting from the manipulation of much of that information.

An objective study of the entire panorama of information available to us at the present time—at the very least—shows that Nixon is a man who merits special attention concerning many events from the Kennedy presidency including those surrounding his assassination. That’s why it’s difficult for many people to understand why TIME finds it so hard—when faced with an accurate recording of our own history and in light of the available truth about these events—to pose any of the above mentioned points as being in any way implausible.

Revisionism Vs. Truth

One of the main points to have escaped TIME’s view is that revisionism is necessarily built into the classification process and thus the process of properly recording our “true” history. This process dictates that we constantly revise our correct understanding as more documents of our true history come to light. But TIME doesn’t seem to have kept up with the times, nor the release of this new documentation!

When the truth of any event is first classified and then mastered by small interconnecting circles of individuals within the government/intelligence/business bureaucracy, and then begrudgingly released in piecemeal fashion over an ensuing time frame (often decades—and in some cases centuries) we must reconsider past interpretations.

Even scholars have a difficult time setting the record straight. The total number of documents that are made available each year is also staggering. There are many centers across the country that withhold government documents; more still that possess classified presidential papers and innumerable others that retain the private papers of people who once served in positions of public trust. Add to this the scant volume of papers available from public and private corporations and biographical information available on their Board memberships and we can see that the amount of actual truth that makes it through the classification process to the general population each year is scant indeed.

If that new information is then filtered through a media lens that focuses on “old” histories and disproved myths while resisting new interpretations and the correct understandings they impose, then the act of understanding historical reality is next to impossible to obtain.

This situation has led one of my intimates to once cry out in frustration, “Documents, documents, everywhere—and not a page to read!”

But is it any wonder? Revisionist books aren’t produced in great numbers to start with, and that’s the primary source of exposure of the new documentation. Only on occasion do we see the visual media picking up on these revelations—usually in a scant book review segment or soundbite mention on the evening “Snooze.” While all the morning shows want to book the latest novelist, they shun the academic as boring, the radical as fringe and the refuting author as a heretic—then hide that censorship behind: “not visual enough,” “low ratings” and “no sex appeal.”

Since the majority of the population doesn’t read to start with and most of the literature sold deals in a fictional milieu, then the number of people actually participating in the edification process—and the debate that it engenders—is minute at best.

In our society today, the popular media is delegated far too much importance in shaping our perception of the “truth” of historical reality and it all too often reduces us to the lowest common denominator—nothing more than a soundbite mentality.

The “Real” Paper Chase

This brings up another crucial and materially related point. Why has Richard M. Nixon been allowed to control his presidential papers, still locked up in litigation, (in what today amounts to posthumous possession) and still held beyond anyone’s access to official disclosure?

Nixon’s infamous lawsuit blocking release of these files has journeyed through a rather lengthy discourse. Now years in the courts, it currently is right back where it started from, and awaits renewed litigation. If any effort to release these files is to be even partially successful, then additional and specific legislation will obviously be needed to accomplish it.

The call should be heard to legislate for the release of all papers, files and related artifacts associated with Richard Milhouse Nixon’s Presidency. For only by comparative analysis can anyone ascertain whether the “true” events of his presidency relate to and impact on the wider issue of the accepted history of those times, including the Kennedy assassination. What were the continuity streams from his vice presidency to his presidency, and which ones were active during the Kennedy/Johnson years? Only then can anyone attempt to answer truthfully whether Nixon had knowledge of, participated in, or supported any of these relevant events.

When Richard Nixon is considered in relation to this vortex of power, the additional release of the documented history in regard to those events should not be precluded from release, but instead should be the very first demanded. The record must be factually clarified and the public enlightened about this man and his activities.

Nixon not only had some knowledge of all these events but was a major part of the eventual revelation of much of the truth underlying our myths due in large part to the Watergate debacle. Someone did erase that 18 1/2 minutes, and the order to do so, if not the actual act itself, could just have easily come from Nixon himself. We need the full records to make an informed judgment!

But why is TIME continuing to extol the myths from our most recent past?

Myths that the Government serves the people and not the corporate elite in an ever expanding “World” marketplace.

Myths that Nixon’s foreign policy achievements outweighed his occasional domestic transgressions.

Myths that continue to perpetuate a persona of John Edgar Hoover as a diligent crimebuster, when he undoubtedly would have been convicted—with conviction upheld—if any of the programs he oversaw had become known during his tenure of power.

Myths that continue to obscure the reality behind the real war that ravaged Asia.

Myths that the Pentagon Papers were the official “truth” about that war.

Myths that cover stories and deceptions aren’t part of the “Standard Operating Procedures” (SOP) of our intelligence agencies and it’s government.

Myths that we’ve been told the “truth,” or something approaching it, about any of the seminal events of our most recent history—all of which remain awash in a sea of lies.