Global Research, May 09, 2016
(image) Rafael Cruz
During a Fox News telephone interview in which he criticized his fellow presidential aspirant Senator Ted Cruz, Donald Trump cut loose with potshot that Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of president John F. Kennedy.
Shortly after this incident, Ted Cruz ended his 2016 presidential bid. But the incident itself and its ramifications remain significant. The fact that Trump dared bring up the JFK assassination is remarkable. It is a further demonstration that Trump is unpredictable—and why he is feared and reviled by the Washington establishment and ruling elite.
Whether it was done thoughtlessly or with more studied intent, it does not matter. In evoking the JFK assassination, Trump yanked aside the curtain of secrecy just enough to cause a small firestorm, allowing another glimpse at the forbidden truth that the American elite has spent 53 years covering up.
Trump’s statement and the media counterattack
Here is a clip of the Trump interview:
In it, Trump says:
“His (Cruz’s) father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being—you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this? Right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
Trump is referring to a report originally written by Wayne Madsen:
This piece was later picked up by the National Enquirer. Cruz and the mainstream corporate media and its network of CIA-controlled organs swiftly and forcefully attacked Trump, dismissing him as a conspiracy, and the story as insane “tabloid” trash.
POLITIFACT, a so-called “fact checking” organ of the “Pulitzer Prize winning” Tampa Bay Times , leaped to Cruz’s defense, slapping down Trump as a liar. But they also ignored the Cruz-Oswald-JFK connection, ignoring more than 50 years of historical material and investigation on the CIA and the JFK murder (books by Jim Garrison, Fletcher Prouty, James diEugenio, Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, among many others). Amusingly, Ted Cruz himself once called POLITIFACT “noxious yellow journalism”. In this case, he should thank them for their embrace of Warren Commission “politi-fiction”.)
TIME Magazine’s counter to the Trump/Cruz/Oswald story was the most telling of all: Donald Trump, Oswald, and Cuba
In this piece, TIME simply repeated the CIA’s original Kennedy-era propaganda deception that Oswald was a Communist; that the New Orleans leafletting incident should be accepted at face value. According to TIME, “Oswald and Cruz were on different sides”, thus rendering Trump’s accusation wrong. And that only “conspiracy theorists” could think otherwise.
TIME clearly remains one of many CIA propaganda organs, content to repeat the lies of the Warren Commission. The article reads like something that could have been written in 1964.
Was Cruz there? Was he CIA?
Here is the television clip of the actual August 16, 1963 Oswald event in New Orleans, a key event in the setup of the November 22, 1963 assassination in Dallas:
Here are photographic stills of the same event:
As exposed by Jim Garrison and numerous JFK researchers (and fictionally depicted in Oliver Stone’s film JFK), the CIA began setting up for the JFK assassination by creating a propaganda legend for Oswald, their chosen “patsy”. Oswald was set up to appear to be a pro-Castro Communist agent provocateur.
What you see is this CIA propaganda operation in motion. Lee Harvey Oswald is handing out pro-Castro leaflets at the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, which at the time was teeming with anti-Castro Cuban exiles, CIA assets intent on murdering JFK. The International Trade Mart was owned by the CIA and run by CIA operative Clay Shaw. Oswald was part of the CIA’s Operation Mongoose, code name for numerous covert operations aimed at toppling Fidel Castro, in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The Mongoose team and its network of operatives and assassins also carried out the JFK hit. But Oswald, unbeknownst to him, was being set up.
The Newman Building in New Orleans housed the CIA (Guy Bannister’s office of 5312 Lafayette Street), Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee FPCC front (544 Camp Street), and numerous anti-Castro groups that it was managing. It also housed offices with Mafia connections.
At the behest of his CIA handlers, which included George DeMohrenschildt, Bannister, and Shaw, Oswald’s orders were to play a pro-Castro Communist sympathizer for the media cameras. This event also included a “fist fight”, staged purely for propaganda deception, with Cuban exile and CIA asset Carlos Bringuier, of the militantly anti-Castro/CIA/Mafia-connected Cuban Revolutionary Council, and the anti-Castro student group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil), or DRE. This was followed by a radio debate between Oswald and Bringuier, also staged in order to set up Oswald’s credentials as a Communist and oddball.
Oswald’s FPCC leaflets were stamped with the address of 544 Camp Street. Oswald’s mistake later infuriated CIA operative Guy Bannister, who found out about it shortly after JFK was killed. Bannister was frantic that his cover would be blown.
Here is where we come to the Cuban men helping Oswald hand out leaflets. They have never been identified or they were dismissed in the official assassination panels. But logic dictates that they had to have been CIA assets. The Agency would have allowed outsiders into the midst of a delicate operation.
But was one of them Rafael Cruz?
According to Wayne Madsen, the man in the photo with Oswald strongly resembles Rafael Cruz, and “there is strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with the Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations”.
Given that the photo and tapes are not clear, there is no way to prove the claim. Veteran JFK assassination researcher and author Jim diEugenio concludes the same. “Because of the questionable source, and the lack of substantiation, the story should have no legs”, according to diEugenio.
Even if the man in the photo was not Cruz, this still begs the question: was Cruz a CIA asset? That also cannot be proven. But it is reasonable to speculate. The elder Cruz’s background is sketchy and full of holes. Rafael Cruz claims to have joined the Cuban revolution as a teenager, and having been tortured by Batista police, but managed to flee Cuba for the United States in 1957.
Cruz’s account is disputed by Cruz’s Cuban peers, his resume as a fighter highly dubious. The tale he has told about his immigration to the United States appears full of deceptions and lies. He claims to have come to the US knowing no English and just $100 sewn into his underwear. Yet he was enrolled in the University of Texas and earned a mathematics degree in short order, all while learning English only by watching movies.
But Cruz does claim to have become an outspoken anti-Castro advocate following a return to Cuba in 1959 that soured him permanently on Castro. Did Rafael Cruz become radicalized enough to have joined other Cuban exiles in working for the CIA at any time?
After working in Houston consulting for (unnamed) oil companies, Rafael Cruz moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen in 1973. He started and ran his own seismic mapping company for the oil industry. His son Ted, the eventual Senator, was born in Calgary in 1970. After the family moved yet again back to the US, Rafael became an influential and deeply connected right-wing political player and Dominionist Christian minister in 1975, eventually becoming part of the influential Religious Round Table.
While the elder Cruz’s activities are circumspect, and he did become deeply connected to Republican inner circles, there is no way to prove that he was an intelligence asset.
The Bay of Pigs-CIA-Bush legacy
What is certain is contained in the bigger picture, and it is perhaps of greater importance: White House aspirants Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio, whose presidential bid also failed, are end products of the milieu made possible by the Bay of Pigs and the JFK assassination that followed.
These politics were, and continue to be, stoked by Washington and the CIA, and the Bush power network in particular. Cruz, and especially Rubio, are direct beneficiaries.
Both Rubio and Cruz carry water for the powerful Cuba lobby opposed to the lifting of the embargo on Cuba and all measures towards the warming of relations with the United States.
The emergence of right-wing Cuban-Americans to high office, all the way to the White House, helps promote the causes dear to generations of the exile community, while (for the CIA) nurturing the highly useful intelligence/paramilitary cells in Florida and the Gulf states, and into Latin America.
The history of right-wing Cuban networks is inextricably connected to the CIA—and the Bushes:
- 1940s-1953. Pre-revolution Cuba is a Mafia and American financial paradise, lucrative and surrounded by offshore oil.
- 1953. Then-CIA operative George Herbert Walker “Poppy” Bush founds Zapata Petroleum in Texas. Zapata and its incarnations, including Zapata Offshore (which operated offshore near Cuba under the Batista regime, but forced to leave under Castro), was a CIA front.
- 1953-1959. Cuban revolution topples the Batista regime, forcing American capital, oil, Mafia, and military-intelligence out. The massive exodus of Cuban exiles begins. From 1959 to 1980, 500,000 Cubans leave for the United States. By 2010, the Cuban-American community numbers more than 1.9 million.
- 1961. Bay of Pigs. The CIA had organizes and trains Cuban exiles for the overthrow of Fidel Castro, with assistance from CIA-connected elements of Florida- and Gulf-based Mafia. President Kennedy pulls the plug on the operation, infuriating the CIA and its functionaries, leaving a massive intelligence-crime apparatus intact across the Gulf States from Florida to Texas. Operation Mongoose anti-Castro covert operations begin, featuring CIA operatives in various roles, including James Jesus Angleton, George H.W. Bush, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips (believed by many to be codenamed “Maurice Bishop”), Felix Rodriguez, Ted Shackley, James McCord, Barry Seal, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister, George De Mohrenschildt, and a large network of anti-Castro Cubans (that could also have included Rafael Cruz).
- 1962-1963. JFK assassination is planned and carried out by CIA, FBI, Cuban exile militants and elements of the Mafia. Sophisticated and far reaching coup d’ etat involves government agencies, politicians, elites and business figures, and anti-Cuban exiles. George H.W. Bush was deeply connected to the assassination and others who were involved, according to Russ Baker.
- 1968-1973. Richard Nixon becomes president, with Florida right-wing Cuban support, notably the wealthy and CIA-linked Bebe Rebozo.
- 1973 Watergate Break-In for Nixon is carried out by anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives tied to the Bay of Pigs and the JFK hit: Felix Rodriguez, Bernard Barker (former Cuban secret police), Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, and Eugenio R. Martinez. Nixon tapes later reveal that the objective was to hide evidence regarding “Dallas” and “that Bay of Pigs thing”. Bush assists the cover-up and the stonewalling of Congress.
- 1976. George H.W. Bush becomes CIA Director. Numerous CIA operations are directed against Castro. Bush stonewalls Congress regarding the aerial bombing of a Cubana airliner and a car bombing of a Chilean diplomat by anti-Castro CIA asset Luis Carriles, whose superior is Felix Rodriguez (who boasted to have killed Che Guevara). During Bush’s CIA directorship, Rodriguez and other CIA figures close to Bush carry out the infamous Phoenix Program in Southeast Asia, and the gigantic heroin smuggling operation, Air America. The CIA’s lucrative international drug trade mushrooms.
- 1982-1986. Reagan-Bush era. Vice President George H.W. Bush and CIA Director William Casey oversee Iran-Contra.
According to Al Martin, retired Naval Intelligence officer and Iran-Contra insider, “Iran-Contra” was a euphemism for a massive CIA criminal enterprise that included drug trafficking, weapons, and numerous forms of financial fraud and money laundering. This operation is detailed in Martin’s book The Conspirators, and many accounts by whistleblowers and investigative researchers. Each member of Bush family is active in all phases of the enterprise, as are CIA operatives and Cuban exiles, “the old Cuban Bay of Pigs crowd”. While George H.W. Bush described by Martin as the man at the top, Jeb Bush emerges as the operation’s key operational player.
Felix Rodriguez and other Bay of Pigs veterans coordinate the contra resupply programs in Latin America under Oliver North and cocaine shipments into the United States, with bases across the American Gulf coast. The operation based in Mena, Arkansas flourishes under then-governor Bill Clinton.
- Jeb Bush becomes head of the Florida Republican Party. Jeb, known as the “smart one” in the Bush family, is the link with the Cuban community, the contras, Nicaraguan exiles. During this period, Jeb aligns with Leonel Martinez, a Miami-based right-wing Cuban-American drug trafficker associated with contra dissident Eden Pastora. Jeb forges ties with right-wing Cuban Miguel Recarey and major contributor to PACs controlled by George H.W. Bush.
- 1988-1992. George H.W.Bush as president. Panama is invaded and toppled. Former CIA ally, contra associate and narco-trafficer Manual Noriega is captured. Cuban operatives assist. Jeb remains a tireless supporter of reactionary Cuban-American political causes, such as the freeing of terrorist Orlando Bosch, who was responsible for more than 50 anti-Castro bombings. Jeb also supports projects such as the Cuban American National Federation (CANF), and Radio and TV Marti propaganda broadcasts into Cuba, in violation of telecommunications laws.
The Bushes, especially Jeb, are deeply involved with Florida-based BCCI bank and money laundering operations.
- 1994. After benefiting financially and politically from oil and CIA ties to his father, George W. Bush becomes governor of Texas. He maintains a huge following among right-wing Latin-American and Cuban-American voters.
- Jeb becomes Florida governor in 1998 with strong backing from the right-wing Cuban community and CIA. Jorge Mas Canosa, president of the ultra-right wing CANF hails Jeb as “one of us”. Jeb proudly flaunts the fact that he speaks Spanish fluently. The entire Bush clan does—a job necessity for the Iran-Contra CIA narco-trafficking and continuous meddling in Latin American politics. Jeb becomes supreme in Florida and his influence expands throughout Latin America.
- The Elian Gonzalez affair ignites Florida, setting off partisan conflict and violence. Anti-Castro Cubans are incensed at the Clinton-Gore administration and turn to the Bushes and the Republicans.
In the 2000 presidential election, Jeb “promises to deliver” Florida to George W. Bush. He delivers both the fraudulent vote count, securing the White House for Bush. In the Gore challenge, the recount is stopped by violence from mobs of intelligence-connected right-wing Cubans. Jeb serves as governor to 2007 but remains an important Republican player behind the scenes until 2015, when he decides to run for president.
Cruz, Rubio, Bushes
There is nothing benign about the Bush family or its power network. Any connection to this network demands scrutiny.
After graduating from Princeton in 1992, and Harvard Business School in 1995, Ted Cruz entered politics. In 1999, he was advisor to George W. Bush. As legal advisor to Bush’s election campaign, he helped the theft of the White House in the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court. Cruz met his wife Heidi during the Bush campaign. After successful tenures in Texas state offices, Cruz returned to private law practice before becoming a senator in 2012.
Despite his having worked for him in the past, George W. Bush recently stated that he “didn’t like the guy (Cruz)”—a comment that Cruz did not take personally. Nevertheless, Neil Bush (Iran-Contra savings and loan bandit) became Ted Cruz’s finance director shortly before Cruz’s presidential campaign ended. Jeb Bush endorsed Cruz, also before Cruz quit the race.
Marco Rubio’s arc is similar to Cruz’s but also different. The Rubio’s story is also full of inconsistencies, half-truths and lies, many of them promoted by Marco himself. He has been accused of exaggerating his family’s flight from Cuba to resemble the stories of anti-Castro fighters who fled persecution. It is closer to fact that the Rubios left Cuba for economic (not political) reasons.
Marco’s father, Mario, boasted that as an 18- year old, he participated in a failed plot to assassinate Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. The veracity of this story, which suggests a background as a fighter, is something else that cannot be confirmed. What is known is that the elder Rubio worked in casinos owned by mobster Meyer Lansky (coincidentally a CIA asset), in Florida and Las Vegas.
Marco Rubio’s political career began in the 1980s as an intern to Cuban-born Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, followed by a fast rise through Florida state politics. Marco Rubio became Congressman in 2000 and Senator in 2010, where he has proven himself to be an aggressive right-winger.
For the next several years, Rubio was mentored by Jeb Bush, but the relationship was testy and competitive, akin to a Mafia godfather and an ambitious, ungrateful lieutenant who wants to take over from the boss.
Bush-Cuban bid for the White House: failure or harbinger?
The 2016 presidential election should have been about the return to power of the Bush network. The deck on the Republican ticket was blatantly stacked with Jeb Bush himself, and Bush products Cruz and Rubio.
All three failed.
Rubio, considered many to be a Jeb Bush protégé, quit after rudely betraying his former mentor. The Cruz campaign seriously considered the idea of Rubio as vice president on an all-Cuban ticket, but the ambitious Rubio was not interested. Jeb Bush’s endorsement of Cruz also failed.
The Trump wrecking ball ruined all of it.
This raises fascinating questions. Why wasn’t one of these Bush cabal options successfully pushed forward? How and why has Donald Trump gotten this far? What has prevented the usual powers that be from somehow removing Trump from contention? Will he remain a wildcard, or will he eventually be pressured (threatened) into behaving more like an establishment politician?
Where are the Bilderbergers and New World Order types, who usually choreograph “elections” well in advance? They are massing behind Hillary Clinton—who is the continuation of the line of succession going back to the murder in Dealey Plaza. The Clintons are closely associated with the Bushes. Their networks overlap, their geopolitics shared. In the most important ways, Bill and Hillary Clinton have always been Bushes.
Meanwhile, do not expect Cruz and Rubio, or the Bushes, or the militant Cuban Lobby to disappear. Rubio, who is still young, especially seems hell-bent on another run at the White House. Jeb’s half-Mexican son George P. Bush is a rising star in Texas, and his steady rise up the Republican ranks is a calculated appeal to Latin and Cuban sympathies.
The CIA is stronger, more omnipresent, and untouchable than at any time in history. The world drug trade is flourishing. Wall Street is enjoying a new golden age. And the assassination of John F. Kennedy remains the subject of intense cover-up and a deafening silence that is breached only when someone audacious dares bring it up, for reasons both good as well as noxious.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry Chin, Global Research, 2016
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