Hot Spots

Frank Church's Senate Intelligence Committee, withstanding a last-minute attempt to suppress its bombshell report on CIA assassination schemes, is the hottest item on the home front. Especially provocative is the new information on the Company's eight attempts on Fidel Castro, which the history books will have to be rewritten to include. It seems one of these schemes was in process on the very same day that JFK was murdered twelve years ago, while Kennedy was making serious diplomatic initiatives to improve relations with Cuba. Could we be talking about a double hit? Kennedy, of course, who once commented to the effect that he would have liked to break the CIA up into little pieces and scatter it to the four winds, was notably unimpressed by the Company's pet project, the Bay of Pigs. In fact, during the Missile Crisis (if you recall), he promised Fidel it wouldn't happen again, thereby tacitly accepting the existence of a socialist state 90 miles from Florida.

In spite of such considerations, efforts continue to try to pin the assassination of Kennedy on Fidel. This line of argument surfaced most recently when David Belin, who worked for Nelson Rockefeller on his own so-called "investigation" of the CIA, used the occasion of the 12th anniversary of Dealey Plaza to call for the reopening of the Warren Commission Report. Belin, who was also one of the major "investigators" in that effort, simply thought it would clear the air, he says. The Castro scenario was apparently first suggested to him while working for Rocky's CIA commission. If there is a new Warren Commission soon, it might be wise to keep Rocky out of it. Keeping in mind his undying wish to be President, it would serve him primarily as a tool to get at Jerry Ford, the Warren Report 's chief living apologist.

Jerry's old friend Dick Nixon has been back in the news lately, lamenting in his first major interview in some time how "cynical" we've grown. No mention was made, of course, of anything Dick himself might have done to make us feel that way. Just to add to your Nixon scrapbook, however, the Church Committee did decide that Dick gave the direct order to the CIA to do what it could to prevent the election of Salvador Allende to the Presidency of Chile. This was so hot that Dick kept it from State and Defense. Meanwhile, now that it's in vogue to talk in public about what the CIA was doing between 1960 and 1970, how about some efforts to ride herd on their current activities? We still haven't heard much from our intrepid Congressional committees about Chile, Portugal, or any number of other places where things have been turbulent lately. In Angola, for example, recently granted independence by Portugal, at least two so-called "liberation movements" are fighting the popular-based MPLA for control of the country. Wire service accounts speak openly of "white mercenaries" and admit that one force is subsidized by South Africa, the other by "European governments," but never a mention of our old friends, the CIA.

By the way, the New York Congressman who was leading the advocacy for resuming U.S. relations with Cuba piously withdrew his support upon learning that Fidel made so bold as to send troops to help the MPLA. Could there be a double standard in operation here?

Noticed that only three or four countries bothered to send anyone to the installation of Juan Carlos as King of Spain last week. Among the small party were a pretty pair, Gen. Pinochet of Chile and our own Rocky, who later paid his respects to the corpse of Generallisimo Franco.

New Times is on the street with a piece on one of the Pentagon's contingency plans for domestic insurrection, called Operation Cable Splicer.... Win (Box 547, Rifton, NY 12471), is out with another thoroughly-researched expose, this one of the U.S. extensive research into, and military use of, weather modification. Now we know how to cause droughts, as well as how to make it rain.

aAs you may know, Rep. Michael Harrington of Massachusetts is being called on the Congressional carpet for not asking the CIA before releasing damning information about them. Some people are quite serious about getting rid of Harrington. The Harrington Committee (Post Office Building, Salem, Mass. 01970) is organizing support for him.