50 Years After JFK Murder, the Finger Finally Points to Pentagon Chief Lemnitzer

Fifty years after the JFK assassination, 11/22/1963...

Evidence Points to New Suspect as Architect of JFK Murder Plot: Pentagon Chief Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer had Motives, Means, and Track Record, says Gladio expert

Did hawkish JFK-hater Lemnitzer reap revenge for his demotion from Chief of Staff to NATO Commander? In Europe, his NATO-Gladio death squads specialized in assassinating heads of state... he also had long-standing links to the Sicilian Mafia... and to JFK murder suspect Col. Lansdale... His utter contempt for JFK was well-known.

San Diego, Nov. 5, 2013. Author Richard Cottrell has turned up an exciting new lead in the JFK murder, from his research into the little-known record of ardent Cold Warrior Gen. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) from 1960 to 1962, and NATO commander from 1962 to 1969.

Lyman Lemnitzer is probably best remembered today for the 1962 Operation Northwoods plot to spark a war on Cuba, nixed by Kennedy. It was to employ classic Gladio-style false-flag operations. Overflowing with fantastic schemes, it showed how well prepared Lemnitzer was to transform NATO's "stay-behind" paramilitary units into terrorist special forces.

Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were bent on removing Castro, and they took JFK's "No" on Northwoods hard. Researcher James Fetzer has proposed the JCS may have meant JFK's killing itself to be a Northwoods episode, with the patsy Oswald having Russian and Cuban connections.

Lemnitzer was a great favorite of Eisenhower, who helped him rise rapidly to the top spot of JCS Chairman in 1960. When Kennedy took office in 1961, the two became the chief antagonists in a titanic struggle over civilian vs. military control of the armed forces and foreign policy, and above all over the preference for war or peace. They sharply disagreed on Cuba, Russia, nuclear warfare, and escalation in Vietnam. When Lemnitzer formally proposed a first-strike nuclear attack on Russia in 1961, a pet idea of Air Force chief Curtis LeMay, JFK humbled Chairman Lyman by walking out of the meeting in disgust.

For fifty years, Lemnitzer has escaped the suspicions of JFK assassination researchers simply because he was transferred to Europe in November 1962, a year before Kennedy's murder. The move gave him both a motive and a perfect alibi -- "out of sight, out of mind." Although he was stationed "over there," the Joint Chiefs remained resentful of JFK and loyal to him. As soon as JFK was out of the way, the top brass got the war on Vietnam they wanted.

In fact, Lemnitzer remained so far above suspicion that President Ford could appoint him to the commission investigating the CIA's role in the JFK murder. Yet the appointment itself is suspicious, as it gave LL the perfect opportunity to deflect inquiries that might uncover his own role.

In Cottrell's book, "Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe," he also documents a new twist on the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Lemnitzer intentionally allowed this CIA operation to fail, to undermine both Kennedy and the rival CIA, whom JFK was letting onto military turf.

Researchers seem to agree that the JFK assassination involved high-level CIA and military figures, with lower-level Mafia and Cuban exile participation. Lemnitzer's Mafia ties go back to his first major command, running the 1944 invasion of Sicily in close cooperation with top Mafiosi. He worked with the Cosa Nostra again as head of NATO, to build up the Gladio death squads -- as indicated in Cottrell's subtitle, "the Pentagon-Mafia-Nazi Terror Axis."

The Nazi element refers to the recruiting of Nazi assets after the war, another Lemnitzer commission. Fascist talents were used to set up the Gladio structure. LL was among those who felt "we fought on the wrong side." With his Nazi sympathies and rabid militarism, he saw Kennedy as a traitor, soft on communism, who deserved to be eliminated.

In 1965, on Lemnitzer's NATO watch, a plot to kill Gen. De Gaulle led to the eviction of NATO HQ from Paris to Brussels. Cottrell documents the extreme contempt LL felt for both JFK and De Gaulle. He also fingers Gladio in several of the most high-profile European assassinations of our times, including Aldo Moro, Pope John Paul II, Olof Palme, and the Umbrella Murder.

In 1961, when LL and JFK first collided, their mutual enmity was apparently common knowledge, as it became the theme of a best-selling novel in early 1962, "Seven Days in May." JFK himself encouraged the production of the film version. As Cottrell writes, "The sensational plotline featured a fictional president (called with scarcely-concealed finger pointing, 'Lyman') who becomes the target of a Right-wing coup staged by the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the JCS at the time, said CIA black ops expert Ed Lansdale orchestrated the JFK shooting, and appeared in photographs taken of the "three tramps" in Dallas; they are generally believed to be the hit men. This earned a "Lansdale" character a part in Oliver Stone's film, "JFK."

Lansdale was a fervent anti-Communist and gifted veteran of imaginative psy war ops in the Philippines and Vietnam. Cottrell reports that as soon as Gen. Lemnitzer became army chief of staff in 1957, he hired Col. Lansdale to run special ops, notably Operation Mongoose, a covert project to topple Castro. The two remained close associates, and Cottrell believes Lansdale inspired the Northwoods memos, as well as Lemnitzer's black-op Gladio philosophy.

To sum up, Lemnitzer had deep ideological and personal motives for killing Kennedy. As NATO commander, he had all the necessary means at his disposal, with the advantage of distance and military discipline to keep it secret. Under him, NATO tried to assassinate Pres. De Gaulle, a head of state who was an ideological and personal adversary, and several other highly respected figures. Lemnitzer had deep and long-standing Mafia connections, and the contemporary political thriller and film "Seven Days in May" dropped a very broad hint that "Lyman" would lead a coup against Kennedy. Col. Lansdale, who also had scores to settle, was the ideal deputy to carry out the hit on JFK for his general.

It's enough to make one wonder, after the last 50 years of chasing up every conceivable JFK conspiracy angle, how has Lyman Lemnitzer escaped notice?

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Richard Cottrell is the author of "Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe -- The Pentagon-Mafia-Nazi Terror Axis." In the book, he points to the much-decorated General Lyman Lemnitzer -- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff fired for insubordination by JFK, then exiled to Europe -- as the architect of the culture of criminality that overtook the Gladio sleeping soldier network. In a completely fresh approach to Lemnitzer's largely unexplored legacy, Cottrell makes the case that the general extracted his ultimate personal revenge on John F. Kennedy.

Link to this page: http://www.progressivepress.com/blog-entry/50-years-after-jfk-murder-finger-finally-points-pentagon-chief-lemnitzer

When they killed Kennedy, they killed the American Dream...
They made it clear, that we can never have a president who works for the people.
All we can do is wake up from the dream, and face the nightmare reality.