Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

36 Withheld Regis Kennedy files 


See also:
16 The camera original of the Nix film

"FBI Agent Regis Kennedy (no relation to the president) is among several witnesses connected to the events in Dallas in 1963 who died before they could be fully questioned. Kennedy reportedly suffered a heart attack the day before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury on confiscated home movies of the assassination. The unreleased files contain an untitled communication from Justice Department files from Regis Kennedy to the special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans field office on May 18, 1967."

(www.politico.com, 4 feb 2016)

SEVEN TOP FBI OFFICIALS DUE TO TESTIFY AT HSCA:

7706 LOUIS NICHOLS Former #3, responsible for JFK investigation; heart attack
7706 REGIS KENNEDY Oswald handler, confiscated home movies of assassination; heart attack
7708 JAMES CADIGAN Document expert; died from a fall in his home
7708 ALAN BELMONT Liaison to Warren Commission; natural causes
7710 J.M. ENGLISH Head of Forensic Sciences Laboratory; heart attack
7710 DONALD KAYLOR Fingerprint chemist; tied to bogus Oswald “print” on rifle; heart attack
7711 WILLIAM SULLIVAN Headed Division 5 (Counter-espionage/ intelligence); Gunshot accident

(Richard Charnin, Reclaiming science)



Erasing the Past...Discussions

38 "Well over 2,000 pages on CIA-asset June Cobb"


See also:
37 The identity of the person who returned Oswald's library book after the assassination


"At the request of FBI SA Raymond P. Yelchak, Dallas, [Director of the Dallas Public Library] Lillian Bradshaw provided the FBI with another copy of Lee Harvey Oswald's delinquent book The Shark and the Sardines, which the FBI noted in its reports as having been "authored by a former president of Guatemala, Juan Jose Arevalo, translated form Spanish by June Cobb and Dr. Raul Osegueda.

(...)

Within a matter of days, the FBI's February 25, 1964 report on The Shark and the Sardines was forwarded to FBI headquarters in Washington D.C, and to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There is no indication in anay available FBI records that the Bureau made any special not of the name "June Cobb" in the report. Nor are there any available CIA records sent to the FBI, or anyone else, concerning the fact that June Cobb, at the time of the FBI's Dallas investigation and thereafter, and months before the assassination, was was employed as a contract CIA asset in Mexico City, Mexico.

(...)

Indeed, while some documents are now available that very sketchily portray Cobb's work and activities for the CIA, it is estimated that well over 2,000 pages on Cobb remain classified for "national security reasons".

(H.P. Albarelli Jr., A Secret Order, 2013, p. 84-86)



The existing information in the spy agency’s declassified files depicts Cobb as an American Mata Hari—an adventure-loving, death-defying globetrotter who moved to Cuba to work for Fidel Castro, the country’s newly installed strongman, then found herself recruited to spy for the CIA after growing disenchanted with Castro’s revolution. The era’s rampant sexism is obvious in her job evaluation reports: Cobb’s CIA handlers wrote down speculation about her sex life and her failed romance in the 1950s with an opium farmer in the jungles of South America. And the reports are filled with appraisals of Cobb’s looks, noting especially her fetching blue eyes. “Miss Cobb is not unattractive,” her CIA recruiter wrote in 1960. “She is blonde, has a slender figure, although she has a somewhat hard look, making her appear somewhat older than her 33 years.”

( ... )

What did June Cobb know at the time? Historians of the Cold War—and anyone with an interest in JFK’s 1963 assassination and the possibility of Cuban involvement—are on the verge of learning much more about the extraordinary, often bizarre, sometimes tragic life of the American spy who was born Viola June Cobb, the full name that appeared on her birth certificate back home in Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1927. The National Archives has recently acknowledged that it is preparing to release a 221-page file of long-secret CIA documents about Cobb that—for reasons the Archives says it cannot yet divulge—are somehow linked to JFK’s murder.

(Phil Shenon , From What Could a Mysterious U.S. Spy Know About the JFK Assassination?, Politico, May 20, 2017)


The New York field office file proved to be much more voluminous than the Dallas file and yielded more assassination records. A number of the records that the Review Board staff designated as assassination records from the New York file involved June Cobb, 100 a woman who was an intelligence asset during the 1960–64* period, primarily for the CIA but also for the FBI, regarding Castro, Cuba, and the FPCC. In addition, Cobb was the asset who first informed the CIA of Elena Garro De Paz’s allegation that Oswald attended a “twist” party in Mexico City with Sylvia Duran.

(ARRB report, chapter 6, part 1)



Anderson['s Post story] (...) was also read by the propaganda section of the CIA's Task Force W, which handled Cubam Matters/
In June 1963, June Cobb was approved by security for her new role "as an informant" for WH/3-Mexico, D.F."

(...)

While the CIA was securing approval to keep Cobb on assignment as an informant for WH/3/Mexico, the Dallas Office of the FBI was in the process of "losing" Oswald.

(John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 2008 edition)

*More from Newman on Cobb:
JUNE COBB'S PENETRATION OF CASTRO'S INNER CIRCLE


Erasing the Past...Discussions

40 The original autopsy notes by Commander James J. Humes


See also:
Herbert Blenner, Revisions by Boswell and Humes

Dr. Perry's revelation that the president had a bullet hole in his throat must have astounded Dr. Humes. At the
autopsy, the three pathologists observed only the large tracheotomy incision in the neck. The reason was
simple. Dr. Perry had sliced right through the bullet hole as he made the tracheotomy. Thus, no bullet hole was
visible by the time the autopsy began. But now, James Humes faced a serious dilemma. He and his colleagues
had failed to include one of Kennedy's wounds in their autopsy findings. Dr. Perry's description of the wound as
very small and round sounded like the description of an entrance wound. But with no exit wounds anywhere in
the body and no bullets found still in the body, Humes was puzzled. It appeared that both the bullet that
entered the president's back and the one that entered his throat had not exited, yet had somehow disappeared.

After thinking about this, Dr. Humes telephoned Dr. Perry again to obtain a more precise description of the throat
wound. During their conversation, Humes had a sudden inspiration and shouted, "so that's it!" He went home,
attended a school function with his son, and slept for several hours. Then he took his original autopsy notes,
stained with John Kennedy's blood, and burned them in his fireplace. Then he drew up a new autopsy protocol
based on the new information he had gleaned from Dr. Perry The new report stated that a bullet had entered
Kennedy's neck and exited from his throat. Even though there was only slight medical evidence to confirm this,
Dr. Humes concluded that it provided the only reasonable explanation for the wounds in Kennedy's body.

(Spartacus Education)


Commander Humes in the middle

Dr. Humes rose to be the Navy's director of laboratories, based at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the Kennedy
autopsy was performed. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1967 and was awarded the Legion of Merit
decoration.

Over the years, he was president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, of the College of American
Pathology and of the Association of Clinical Scientists.

(Eric Pace, James J. Humes Dies at 74; Did Autopsy on Kennedy, New York Times, May 12, 1999)

42   Second version of the autopsy report predating the one in the National Archives

We also know that the three pathologists [Finck, Humes and Boswell] met, reviewed and signed an autopsy report during daylight hours on Sunday, November 24. But I do not believe the autopsy report signed on November 24 -- the second version -- is the one in the archives today. I say this because Warren Commission staff director J. Lee Rankin is quoted in an executive session transcript from the end of January 1964 as saying that the autopsy [report] shows a bullet fragment (by implication, from the headshot) came out the front of the president's neck -- a conclusion that is most definitely not in the autopsy report in the record today.

(Interview with Douglas P. Horne, Dick Russell, On the trail of the JFK assassins, p. 288)



According to Edward Epstein's "Inquest" (publishing by Viking in 1966, and the outgrowth of his Cornell Master's thesis in which he interviewed the seven members of the Commission, and almost all of the legal staff), Rankin was primarily an administrator and lent a decent guiding hand in shaping the investigation.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 5-2-2019)