(Testimony of Prof. Revilo Pendleton Oliver)
Mr. Oliver.
part it operates by taking the facts that are publicly known and simply turning them upside down. That way you see they will look just right to liberal intellectuals."
Mr. Jenner.
By the way, he uses--would he be classified as a liberal by most people or does he claim to be ?
Mr. Oliver.
I think he tries to give That-Mr. JENNER. I am curious now.
Mr. Oliver.
My opinion is that of the people who read that book perhaps 75 percent will say to themselves this man is a great liberal, a believer in civil rights, et cetera. And a champion of the underdog.
"It starts, for example, with the strange detour in the Presidential procession that made Kennedy an easy mark for a marksman in the Book Depository--to which, I believe, I was the first to draw attention. But the author argues that a sweet little Communist like Oswald couldn't possibly have known about it, much less had the target set up for him. Poor little fellow. The detour must have been arranged so that the nasty rightwing extremists could frame him for the assassination.
"And the book makes much of the possible activities of our Central Intelligence Agency, This is designed for readers who have memories so poor that they will not recall the long list of events from the fake invasion of Cuba known as Operation judas because it betrayed the anti-Communist Cubans into the hands of Castro, to the recent assassinations in Vietnam in which our Central Intelligence Agency with its army of 17 to 40 thousand faceless agents and the billions of dollars with which you taxpayers supply it every year, has evidently done the work of the Soviet Secret Police. It is designed for readers who will not remember that a defector from the Soviet Secret Police has sworn that his colleagues in the Central Intelligence Agency used your money directly to subsidize, (a) the Soviet Secret Police; (b) the official Communist Party in Italy; and (e) the official Communist Party in the United States."
I should interpolate that this is obviously a reference to Lieutenant Colonel Goleniewski.
Mr. Jenner.
Whom you have heretofore identified ?
Mr. Oliver.
Pardon me?
Mr. Jenner.
Whom you have heretofore identified, or at least you made reference to him earlier in the afternoon?
Mr. Oliver.
I do not recall that.
"On the contrary, the author of this incredible hogwash like the authors of some other books recently published expects you to believe that the CIA is a rightwing organization probably run by the John Birch Society. I do not know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA, but I hear that there was testimony before the Warren Commission that he was. There would be nothing improbable in that. The CIA worked for Castro in Cuba before he came to power."
And I will interpolate here that that is a reference primarily to the testimony of Ambassador Earl Smith before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and also a reference to the testimony of the elected president of Cuba who was driven from Cuba by Castro, and there are some further indications of some significance in at least the second edition of Nathaniel Weyl's "Red Star Over Cuba," and still further indications in a recent book that apologizes for the CIA's fiasco in Cuba and at the same time criticizes them rather severely. I am sorry, the names do not come to my mind at the moment; the authors are two newsmen, I believe, both of them with New York newspapers.
Possibly one from the Times and one from the Herald Tribune. It is just a vague impression.
"It is believed to have instigated and financed the Communist smear against General Walker." I interpolate here and refer to the
Mr. Jenner.
When you say interpolate, you mean the source from which
Mr. Oliver.
Yes, I am now interpolating from my speech, text of my speech, to say in making that statement I was relying on the considerations that the Central Intelligence Agency may be operating Inter-national Media, the publishers of the "Oversexed Weekly," as it is generally called, "Overseas Weekly" as it appears on the masthead, the three editions of Drum in Africa, and some other publications. That is partly based on the identity of a stockholder and officer of
|