Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1992 03:54:00 CST
From: <U54778@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject:    REEVALUATION OF CASTRO/CONSIDERATION OF RAGGONO

Two subjects in the arena of speculation.  Fact police, please remain calm.

The latest Frontline centering around Raggono's tale was very interesting.
Since I have already come across most of what Raggono testifies to, I was
mainly intrigued by how much they covered of Raggono's close relationship
with Hoffa and Trafficante through the years.  One does have to pause for
thought with the ending scene, where they tell you that Raggono is up for
sentencing again.  Is he telling us true tales because it is part of his
deal with the gov.?  Or is he telling us convincing fibs for the same
reason?
  After reading Davis, Moldea and others, it is hard to believe that
the Mafia did not have something to do with the assassination.  And after
reading Seth Kantor and others, it seems pointless to claim that Ruby
had no connections to the mob.  But the "Mafia did it" scenario always
feels to me to be lacking finality to it.  That Ruby was connected in some
way is strong.  That LHO may have come to the Mafia's attention through his
Uncle Dutz is possible but not that strong.  That the Mafia would be able
to manipulate those who could manipulate LHO is again possible but not
strong.  Where I find weakness is the Mafia's level of wisdom in knowing
that LHO was such a fine choice for holding the bag.  It seems to me that
they were unlikely to have made such a fortuitious choice unless they had
help from someone in a much more elevated position to see how the tangled
connections would cripple any deep inquiry into LHO.  And of course, now
we are talking about someone in intelligence circles or Justice circles and
it is no longer a pure Mafia plot.

   I have always discounted the KGB/Kruschev(sp?) scenario as outright
laughable.  Someone over there would have to be insane to have launched
such a venture.  Kruschev does not strike me as being that insane a person.
Whatever would have made him angry enough to hatch the plot?  In repose,
he would think over: What would be gained by killing JFK?  LBJ!  JFK had
just handed him protection for Cuba and retraction of the Turkey missiles.
JFK had started stumping for peace talks after the scare of the Cuban
Missile Crisis.  Much to be lost here.  And if the USA had uncovered
their complicity, they would have launched a clandestine war which would
have made the cold war look like a schoolyard fight.  By all accounts,
we had massive superiority in retaliation (well, not all accounts. there
are still those diehards who argue over those flimflam stories of the
missile gap).  The KGB, as a body, would not want to push the tension to
the point of real war.  One could pose a Deighton scenario of someone
in the KGB who was insane enough to want mutual annihilation but I see this
as unlikely with the amount of control and looking over the shoulder
skills that these fellows had to have to survive purges.
  I have always thought that the same gain/loss motivation could be applied
to Castro until recently.  A&E, PBS and several prime networks have aired
specials on the Cuban Missile Crisis in the last month.  In them, one of the
most crucial facts revealed was that Russian troops guarding the island had
short range, nuclear tipped missiles at their disposal and they were given
prior options to decide whether to use them or not by their commanders back
in Russia.  There was on camera testimony by some of these troop commanders
to the fact that in the face of a US armada invading Cuba ( an invasion
force that was being put together at that time for real) they had already
decided that they could not survive if they didn't use the nukes.  If they
had, I can't see anyway out of inevitable world nuclear holocaust.

The point of all this is Castro's reaction (both on camera and reported)
to Russia's backing down from the confrontation.  He was depressed!!!!
Santa Baranza!!!!! Great Zeus in heaven!!!! The man is absolutely insane!!!
He seems to have no capacity to see what all this was going to lead to.
If his judgement was so crippled in such a monumental event, can we be
sure that he would be able to see with clarity the consequences of
assassinating JFK.
  Lets look again at the logistics.  The people who manipulated LHO who
we posed as being controled by the Mafia can be turned over to Castro and
his intelligence agents (quite propituous considering that the leader of
Alpha-66 has recently confessed to being a double agent in the employ of
Cuba) and viola, this fits much better.  Without getting too fussy about
all the facts, LHO could easily be sucked into some kind of plot by
promising him shelter and glory back in Cuba.  What then are to make of Ruby?
And the Mafia?  Why should they cleanup after for Castro when they had
more to gain by letting LHO live with the connections pointing back to Cuba,
encouraging another invasion or reinvigored assassination attempts?
Do we have to go back to believing that Ruby was truly just a lone nut?
Again, hard to swallow.
   In summary,  if we pose the Mafia as the core plotters, we have strong
ties with Ruby but weak ties with LHO.  If we pose Castro, the reverse is
true.  Again, I speculate that the buck stops at neither party.  One of
the reseachers I talk to on the phone often
has  posed a two layered scenario where the Mafia and/or
Castro has manipulated LHO into some scheme that he thought didn't actually
involve the killing of JFK and someone else, farther up, able to see all
the juicy connections turned a non-lethal plot into a lethal one, surprisin
all concerned.  This scene is a bit stressed but strikes me as possible.

(to round this all out,  I pose that the CIA as a body could not have been
the core initiator.  The argument that with so many people in on the plot,
there would be no way around decension and/or whistleblowing to reveal
the plot as the years roll by is stronger than the assertion that these
bodies are already conditioned to keep secrets of such magnitude in my
opinion.  The FBI, perhaps in cohoots with the Mafia or alone????
The same argument applies.  Hoover?  Only if we don't know the depths of
his evilness.  What we do know points to Hoover being a blackmailer and
intimidator, not a plotter of deaths.  That he knew but didn't prevent?
Entirely possible but then he wouldn't be the core plotter.  Dulles and/or
others at his level   or   at a lower level, Helms, Lansdale, Harvey or
Phillips?  Yeah but very tightly circled.
The more mouths and minds to win over the more you have the same
arguments for a breakdown in silence.   I won't waste time arguing against
large conspiracies due to evidence of the massive coverup.  I have posted
numerous items pointing to the coverup as a phenomena of high level
government reaction to the mess they would have on their hands if they
ever would have to admitt that LHO was not alone.
With what they had, they had no choice but to create the cover story.
Anything else would have been disasterous for the country in 1963. Those of
you too young to have been around at the time, do not appreciate the
prominence of the ultra-right and the pervasiveness of the anti-communist
attitude the public was whipped up into.)

Shuffling around the game markers, can other speculative scenes be
conceived that would fit the overall picture better????

What do the rest of you out there in netland think??????

ALAN ROGERS
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk