Part 2: JFK Killed over UFOs (and other crocks)

‘It had one eye, and it was purple. It had one horn. It flew. I'm sure it ate people too’

~ Sheb Wooley, 1958; ‘Purple People Eater’

The Monroe-JFK-Aliens guff in 1992 set something of a precedent for what was to come. For seven years later, in 1999, Tim Cooper had a burnt nine page document ‘sent to him’, the infamous ‘Burned Memo’, seen here -- and here. These memos posited that Kennedy’s dabbling in and around the UFO field was likely what got him killed. Let’s cut the bull and show you why not…..

The JFK ‘Burned Memo’ is a Crock

A complete dissection of the ‘Burned memoranda’ really isn’t in order as Cooper has disowned every MJ-12 document he was ever sent or was privy to. Yet from here till Part V, we return to this juicy morsel of disinformation for some rather large nibbles, in particular when we examine Moulton Howes travesty of an interview with Bob Wood, which has been splashed around the world. But I guess while we are here we can touch on some aspects of the Burnt Memo hoax. The cover letter for starters from Source-1 or S-1 is a good place to start.

S-1 was supposedly an insider in Jim Angleton’s camp who apparently rescued the documents from incineration after Angleton’s death (we’ll get to that aspect a bit later). S-1 thought that Cooper’s decision to work with Dr. Woods ‘a good one as he has credibility’ (not any more), and that he and ‘Dr. Wood’ had started a ‘shit storm’ in Washington.

Thanks to S-1 the Woods proudly brandish a document called the ‘Counter IntelligenceCorps/Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Report’ which states on the 22nd of July 1947, Congressman John Fitzgerald Kennedy was privy to information about aliens crashing at Roswell. The document never explains why he was privy to this information, bar his brief stint with naval intelligence and being Joe’s son. Joe was apparently sitting on a 12 member board called the ‘Commission on Organisation of the Executive Branch of theGovernment’, geez, sounds scary doesn’t it? Well the reality of the board is that its true function was frighteningly banal. And why Herbert Hoover and Dr. James Kerr Pollock would be privy to anything bar the paper clip expense is beyond me.

Enough of that silliness, let’s take a look at the actual ‘Burned Memo’ and the incendiary quote which appears on its very first page.

“As you must know LANCER [JFK] has made some inquiries regarding our activities which we cannot allow.” 
- Director of Central Intelligence (MJ-1)

For starters, through the work of people like Lisa Pease, we know the CIA cryptonym for Kennedy was GPIDEAL. ‘Lancer’ was Kennedy’s Secret Service code name. At the time the document was surfaced it was well known that JFK’s Secret Service codename was ‘Lancer’. But Lisa’s work in the CIA files did not surface until about three years later. Thus the manufacturer of the document was hardly in command of a secret. In fact this makes the author of the undated and unsigned memo (supposedly John McCone or Allen Dulles according to ‘expert’ Robert Wood) look kind of stupid.

If someone as well-known as JFK was a threat to those in power, in particularly skilled covert operators like, say Dulles, then they wouldn’t use him by a name he was well known in the system by. They probably would have called him something like ‘Homer’. But taken one step further, Dulles would have to be as brainless as Austin Powers to even commit this sort of thing to paper. And Angleton or anybody else who received it would have been exceptionally stupid to have even kept a copy. It would have been destroyed immediately. Yet in Linda Howe’s interview with Bob Wood in 2008, he champions an utterly ludicrous premise:

“I would presume that the scenario involved is that MJ-1 is dictating this burned memo to a secretary. He, MJ-1, does not want the secretary to know that he is saying, ‘We ought to kill JFK.’”

The above ridiculous statement leads one to ask the inevitable: “Dictated to a secretary”? How many people actually knew of MJ-12, that is the allegedly secret group meant to seek out the truth about interplanetary travel by space creatures? For a top secret operation it seems as if every ‘Tom, Dick and Secretary’ was in the loop. Including Kennedy’s own secretarial and clerical staff, as this memo seems to indicate.

What’s inherently bogus about this document is that it’s trying to make out as if Kennedy was aware of, or involved in, some ‘psy-op’ element behind MJ-12. Now as we have seen previously, the CIA had been running their non MJ-12 counter intelligence as an in-house operation. To try and tie Kennedy to it is reminiscent of Lamar Waldron’s attempts to tie Kennedy into the bogus invasion of Cuba, or E. Howard Hunt falsifying documents manufacturing Kennedy’s role in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem.

These points aside, the Majestic Documents webpage it is located on states the following:

The Kennedy signature looks genuine, but he often used an autopen so that is not an important authentication point. There seems to be no reason to doubt that this is a valid memo.

Ignoring the last sentence, let’s think about the first for a second. Autopens were used primarily on mass mailed letters, and for general orders/directives/edicts/checks etc. to go around government departments. However, for top secret information, especially for something as delicate as MJ-12 is made out to be, we are asked to believe that Kennedy couldn’t be bothered to take the time to sign his name? Let’s have a look at what Kennedy’s lethargy would entail in two colorful scenarios:

(1) Not wanting to sign the document, he casually walked over to the autopen machine and spent anywhere up to ten minutes setting the thing up and then turning it over to his secretary Evelyn Lincoln. Possibly with his suit jacket off or a dry cleaning note attached for ink spillages. (2) He gave this sensitive letter to Mrs. Lincoln, who handed it onto to the ancillary staff who likely went on to use the autopen to sign this sole top secret document, posting it, and then sending it off.

Were Allen Dulles, John McCone and JFK truly that inept?

Returning to the first page of the ‘Burned Memo’ we can see that this ‘moronic incontendo’ affliction had become contagious throughout US intelligence. The document has been sent to a number of individuals, ‘MJ’s’ ‘2-7’ to be precise. That’s a fair chop of people to have a top secret document routed through the cabals. Indeed, I encourage anyone to take a peek at the Woods’ master tabulation of operators involved with MJ-12 operations - it’s quite a guest list.

One will notice the number of names mentioned in the documents as being part of, or knowledgeable of the operation. In reading the documents and then this list, individuals like Bill Colby (who apparently knew of Angleton’s supposed directive level), Dulles (whom had received memos on the issue and whom Wood suspected in the Howe interview as being a hidden MJ-12 Kingpin, John McCone (the individual apparently concerned about his poking his nose around MJ-12 business) knew. Yet Truman (who started it all) did not. Yet Bruce Pitzer and Lee Harvey Oswald did know?

How many more people ‘not’ mentioned in this list knew what was going on? Indeed is this the correct question to ask? Shouldn’t the questions be how could anybody be so conceited enough as to fall for such a sham? Not to mention, could this sort of thing get any worse? Well it does and we haven’t even touched on the ludicrous ‘John F. Kennedy to CIA, November 1963’ and what I now term the ‘Bogus Colby Memo’ which will be discussed later. I

Did the Pres really give a fig about UFO’s?

I have no recollection of precisely when I first encountered the disinformation pertaining to Kennedy’s assassination enacted because of his crossing MJ-12. But it was in the period between 1997-1998 in my chrysalis phase of research when I stumbled upon the often ‘silly’ but surprisingly entertaining graphic novel The Big Book of Conspiracies from the local library. Kennedy and Monroe, to my puzzlement, were depicted at the tail end of the book, on page 212, in bed discussing the UFO topic. From there on I noted that it was discussed on some UFO forums a long time before its current popularity. But I also noted it was a dead topic on the Kennedy ones. Thus I smelled a rat with this MJ-12 thing fairly early.

The big problem with all of this is that outside of these utterly hilarious MJ-12 documents (and the reasoning of the Woods), Kennedy really wasn’t all that interested in flying saucers; he was busy fighting the ‘Martians’ in his own administration. As Larry Hancock explains:

In addition to Hancock’s comments, there is a letter from the National Aeronautics and Space Council’s, Maxwell W. Hunter to Robert Packard in July of 1963.

If one has read the first Preamble, one can see it’s possible that Kennedy may well have uncovered Dulles’ dabblings in and around the UFO counter intelligence area, in particularly from Bob Lovett. But I may be a little melodramatic here, as there’s also the chance that Dulles, in a cooler period between the men, may well have told Kennedy of a few counter intelligence tricks that had been played in the interests of National Security.

Possible Conversations about UFO’s

Conversations with the likes of Lovett or Dulles aside, UFO’s are such a broad topic Kennedy could have chatted to anybody about them at any time. But it’s safe to say he never had any discussions with the likes of George Adamski. Nor did he discuss anything on the matter with the likes of Bill Holden aboard Air Force One, nor did he make any comments that his ‘hands were tied’ on the matter.

Thus it was good to encounter true believers in UFO’s like Robert Barrow, whom showed all due respect for the subject by digging up information on some of Kennedy’s closest advisors (it’s a shame some of his links like Grant Cameron show very little of his common sense). As we can clearly see, Bob McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, was not a fan of them. Nor was Robert Kennedy, himself a victim of ‘UFO infatuation’ hoaxes. This is why the list of people in official capacity that JFK had been associated with in the area and could have shot the breeze about the topic is short. 

James Webb

Kennedy without a doubt had contact with Webb about matters of the Cosmos, like this important one here to NASA chief exec James Webb (). Yet it seems this document was the basis for the utterly silly ‘Bogus Colby Memo’. It was after having a look around for information on this subject that I came across some good research which may indirectly hint at some possible discussions Kennedy may have had about them. First up, Bernice Moore found an interesting article which indicates that the ‘Pres’ was extremely concerned about the potential for a major PR failure with his space initiatives. Note that in this article both Kennedy and Webb were deeply concerned about gaining support for increased NASA funding for the project. Which makes the idea of Webb somehow being the man who ‘bit the hand that fed him’ over the issue of UFO disclosure somewhat hard to swallow. Kookery aside, Kennedy may well have discussed the issue of Alien existence with the likes of Webb. But there is no real evidence of this occurring, at least in an official capacity.

Another figure Kennedy could have discussed the topic with was an individual called Captain Arthur C. Lundahl whom CIA Historian Gerald K Haines mentions Kennedy was rather taken by.

Captain Arthur C. Lundahl

In Gerald K. Haines rather lukewarm and misleading CIA public relations ploy, ‘CIA’s Role in the Study of UFO’s 1947-1990’, one of the few things I did not disagree with him on was what he writes about Lundahl. Lunhdahl was the head of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Centre (NPIC), a leading light in aircraft and satellite based reconnaissance. He was also a skilled de-briefer on these activities and briefed President Kennedy on the presence of Soviet Missiles in Cuba which sparked the missile crisis. Though evidence suggests he only became involved in the UFO related field in the late sixties in any official capacity, he was hired by the CIA after their investigations into UFO’s in the wake of their Robertson Panel hearings in 1953 for his skills in the area of photo recon. Indeed, Luhndahl apparently had a personal interest in the field of UFO’s and he may well have shot the breeze with JFK on the subject. But, as said, his interest in the subject appears to have started after Kennedy’s murder. However, if Luhndahl has piqued the reader’s interest there’s some good non Cameron articles on Lundahl at JFK researcher Bill Kelly’s Blog.

Captain Bob Collins (an individual you will get to know very well later) made a bold statement that all Presidents are briefed about the UFO ‘situation’ upon assuming office. Kennedy was thus one of them. Well that’s if you believe dubious researchers like Grant Cameron who in turn believes dubious frauds like Collins, Timothy Cooper and Adamskyite Lou Zinsstag. Richard Dolan has long been pumping an angle that journalist Todd W. Zechel, was close with Luhndahl and was told that Kennedy had a great interest in the study. Yet after much looking around, I have found that Zechel himself never seems to have said anything about it, and the fact it comes from a huckster like Dolan doesn’t fill with me confidence.

Thus if anyone could find the briefing in question Id like to have a peek. But, let’s put this aside judging by the rather lo-fi comments about Aliens abounding during Kennedy’s tenure. If true, Kennedy may have just shot the breeze (Presidents are allowed to speculate about UFO’s you know, Bill Clinton was a big fan after all and so was Carter).

John McCone

As we have seen John McCone, Dulles’ replacement, is also another overlooked avenue. Haines reported that the first internal government investigations in the sixties were more or less sparked in 1964 by CIA director John McCone whom Kennedy had appointed in 1961. Of course this was a convenient cover yet again for the CIA’s own in-house investigations following the assassination but I’ll leave that up for the reader to mull over. Could McCone have discussed the UFO issue with Kennedy at some stage prior to his assassination? Once again there’s no credible evidence to suggest so (remembering that the documents that purported these happenings have been disowned by the original recipient). But considering the generally good relations between the two it’s another remote possibility. Regardless of this, McCone’s concerns about UFO’s, and his internal investigations compiling the best evidence and analysis of the situation at the time, flies in the face of him being an insider and shadowy player in the big bad world of MJ-12, which Cooper attempted to paint him as.

Prouty Redherrings

Major General Charles P. Cabell

Major General Charles P. Cabell was a well-known figure in the Kennedy saga, being fired as the Deputy Director of the CIA alongside Richard Bissell and Allen Dulles as a result of the Bay of Pigs debacle. Cabell appears to be a key player in the promotion of UFO’s within government circles, and if anyone was the prime candidate to have talked with Kennedy about UFO’s, Allen Dulles or Cabell were prime candidates. But if they did, well McNamara and RFK, as we have seen, didn’t buy it.

Colonel L Fletcher Prouty

Like Mae Brussell, Colonel L Fletcher Prouty has long been used and abused by lone nut and Nexus Magazine folk alike. Prouty, a decorated pilot, was a high level liaison between the CIA and the USAF. He has become precious to many individuals in the para-political field. Thanks in part to appearing in numerous documentaries and being the inspiration behind Donald Sutherland’s ‘Mr. X’ in JFK. Prouty, by his own admission, was not a ‘researcher’ of the assassination but an observer and commentator on it, as his books the Secret Team and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy provide testament to. Prouty himself was also a believer in UFO’s, as he wrote in 1983 (http://www.prouty.org/coment16.html):

There are some crossovers in the Kennedy/Space field out there. But most of these were discussed in Preamble I. We all knew JFK wanted to send a man to the moon, while everyone is familiar with the nefarious activities of Fred L Crisman and that hoax on Maury Island. (If not I refer the reader to Part I of the Preamble). Not to mention how Crisman popped up in Garrison’s investigation. Had Garrison been capable of convicting Shaw and tying him effectively to Crisman in any capacity, perhaps he may have brought into question some of the Dulles created camouflage surrounding UFO’s.

But the point I am making here is this: someone is creating specioius documents trying to connect the UFO world with JFK and his assassination. We have now seen it twice: with the JFK-MM-Angleton con job (which was also exposed by John Newman), and the so called Angleton “Burned Memorandum”. And clearly, whoever is faking this stuff understands the suspicions about Angleton that have surfaced in the last genration about his involvement in the JFK murder. They then seem to have tried to transfer his importance in the JFK research field and transpose it to the UFO field. Therefore trying to gain traction in both areas. Now, whoever is doing this, they are clearly up to mischief. Much valuable work on Angleton, by people like John Newman and Lisa Pease, is now being hijacked for the purposes of diversion and distraction.