Final_Judgment

[220] Final Judgment 281
This article is interesting in many ways. First of all, one of the coauthors,
Joseph Trento, admitted under oath during the E. Howard Hunt-
Spotlight libel trial that he had actually seen the controversial memo in
question. Trento also noted that he knew James Jesus Angleton of the CIA
and had utilized him as a source on occasion.
In fact, we know, as a consequence of the Hunt libel case against The
Spotlight that intelligence writer, William R. Corson—a longtime
Angleton asset in the media—was actually the immediate source of both the
Marchetti and Trento stories. Corson was obviously working as Angleton's
"cutout" passing on the information that appeared in the two stories.
(And it's probably no accident that one of Corson's associates, in later
years before Corson died, engaged in a longtime and determined covert effort
to undermine the distribution of Final Judgment and to personally destroy
this writer, but to also undermine Mark Lane, whose courtroom victory over
Hunt [and effectively over Angleton and Corson] left the intelligence
community reeling. But that's another story for another time—but
significant still indeed.)
That Angleton was the author of the memo addressed to his CIA
superior (and longtime patron) Richard Helms is also of interest, considering
Angleton's close working relationship with Israel's Mossad (documented in
Chapter 8).
While the Trento story claims that the CIA memo was ostensibly
drafted in 1966, the actual date the memo first appeared is subject, of course,
to question, as is the actual intent of the memo itself. The article itself
notes that a "high-level CIA source" considered the memo to be "very odd"
in that it recorded—in writing—the alleged presence in Dallas of longtime
CIA operative, Hunt, at the time of JFK's murder.
The evidence suggests that the reason why Angleton's memo was put
on paper—and then subsequently released—was that Angleton wanted the
story to be leaked to the press—as part of a continuing cover-up of the real
origins of the JFK assassination. Hunt—a lower level CIA operative
(already tarnished by Watergate)—was being hung out to dry and the real
conspirators at the top were washing their hands of the matter.
WAS THE MEMO LEAKED DELIBERATELY?
Did Angleton and Helms really worry, as the article suggests, that the
agency would be damaged by the revelations, or did they, instead, arrange for
the memo to be leaked so that there would be, as Victor Marchetti's
aforementioned article suggested, a "limited hangout" which would absolve
the CIA as an institution of any involvement in the crime?
Joe Trento has subsequently revealed that Angleton did in fact leak the
memo to the House Assassinations Committee. However, according to
Trento, ''It was all handled in such a way that Angleton was not the
source. ”593