Why CIA’s Richard Helms Lied About Oswald: Part 1

By Peter Dale Scott


This is a rumination on lies — layer upon layer of lies — told by US intelligence agencies and other officials about what Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone pretending to be him, was allegedly doing in Mexico City just weeks before the Kennedy assassination. The original goal, it seems, was to associate Oswald, in advance of the events of Dealey Plaza, with the USSR and Cuba.

The essay focuses on tales told by Richard Helms, a top official of the CIA in 1963 who later became its director — and is based on a talk given by Peter Dale Scott.

Scott is the popularizer of the expression, “Deep Politics,” and a virtuoso when it comes to what sometimes seems like grabbing smoke — capturing proof, however elusive, of motives and objectives that could explain the machinations of US intelligence agencies — and then analyzing the residue.

Not all of the chicanery Scott describes is subtle. For example, in an apparent attempt to bring the Russians into the picture, someone delivered to the FBI’s Dallas office a purported audiotape of Oswald calling the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. That failed, though, when FBI agents decided that the voice did not seem to be Oswald’s.

Then, two days later, the FBI got on board the subterfuge by falsely reporting that “no tapes were taken to Dallas.” Because of this lie, an investigation more than a decade later by the House Select Committee on Assassinations would erroneously declare that there was no “basis for concluding that there had been an Oswald impostor.” (The existence of an Oswald impersonator in the months before the president’s murder would in and of itself have been prima facie evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death.)


Why CIA's Richard Helms Lied About Oswald.

a reply to: mike dangerously


Helms known as "The Man Who Kept The Secrets" committed perjury several times during the hearings of the WC not to mention the various other investigations.Nixon knew without doubt that Richard Helms was at the very least a part of the plot to kill JFK and maybe even RFK as well.A direct link to the conspirators which also made him a dangerous enemy.Which Tricky Dick and his underlings found out the hard way.

Helms’s Rationale for Committing Perjury

We can begin to understand Helms’s behavior from his repeat performance in the Watergate era, when he was fined $2,000 and given a suspended sentence of two years in jail, for failing to tell the Senate Foreign Relations committee about CIA operations in Chile. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Helms’s oath to the committee to tell the truth was at odds with an earlier oath he had taken when he was CIA director never to divulge classified information.

Helms had no hesitation in choosing to protect the CIA and its secrets, rather than serve the goals of truth and law and an open society. After exiting from the court, Helms promptly “described the conviction to the media as ‘a badge of honor.’”[1] (Although the Post did not mention this, the CIA was also charged by the National Security Act of 1947 with the protection of its “sources and methods”.)

Helms faced the same legal dilemma after he swore to the Warren Commission to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (5 AH 121). Helms was then asked “Can you tell the Commission as to whether or not you have supplied us all the information the Agency has, at least in substance, in regard to Lee Harvey Oswald?” Helms’s answer was, “We have, all” (5 AH 122).[2] This was, I submit, both perjury, and obstruction of justice.[3] In 1964 the CIA secrets he protected concerned an operation involving the name of the man reported to have been the president’s assassin.
Part 2.

Protecting the family jewels or more like protecting himself? He also did everything he could to keep Allen Dulles from any real scrutiny even after his death.He was neck deep in the CIA and Mob's anti-Castro ops.

The CIA’s Obstruction of Justice in 2015

Now let us compare the CIA’s lying performance in 1964 with its lying performance in 2015. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, members of many U.S. agencies, including also the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force, and the Secret Service, withheld relevant information from those investigating the murder.[1] But to my knowledge there is in 2015 only one U.S. agency that is still actively maintaining the cover-up – and that is the CIA.

I am referring to the CIA’s declassification and release of a previously classified CIA study by CIA historian David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”[2] The essay is worth reading, and it contains interesting information on such matters as McCone’s relationship with Robert Kennedy. It is also significantly selective: it does not mention for example that McCone only learned late on the night of November 22 that “the CIA had known beforehand of [the alleged] Oswald’s trip to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City,” nor that as a result McCone “was enraged, ripping into his aides, furious at the way the agency was run.”[3]

Buried within Robarge’s discussion of John McCone and the Commission – a pertinent but hardly central topic – are a more important thesis statement and conclusion about the CIA itself. In the light of what I have just said about Helms, I would charge that both of these statements are false – so false indeed as arguably to constitute, once again, obstruction of justice.

Part 3.

The Agency today is following Helms example now releases a IG report on what former DCI McCone knew about the assassination an interesting tidbit I've came across from reading this article McCone only learned about Mexico City the night of Nov 22nd.The rest seems to be rather selective.