Michele Metta is an Italian journalist whose recent discovery of documents concerning Centro Mondiale Commerciale-Permindex has resulted in a number of groundbreaking essays on the interconnections between Italian fascists, US and Italian politicians, and the intelligence communities.
MM:
Hi, Jim. First, let me say I am honored to interview one of the best experts in the world on the plot that killed JFK. Welcome. An introductory question, just to break the ice: your name suggests Italian roots. Is that so?
JD:
Yes, both my parents were Italian.
MM:
Where does your passion towards that fundamental watershed of history, John Kennedy’s assassination, come from?
JD:
One day, many years after it was published, I picked up the Playboy interview with Jim Garrison. I was really puzzled because the guy seemed to make so much sense to me, much more sensible than the Warren Commission. So it seemed to me that he had been unfairly attacked by the media. So that posed the question as to why he had been attacked. Which meant that the mainstream media was not interested in getting to the bottom of the JFK case. And that has been verified by the new document releases that came out this year. Unfortunately we had to wait fifty years for those documents.
MM:
You are author of several astonishing books that I strongly recommend to everyone. One of them, Destiny Betrayed, highlights the greatness of Jim Garrison. Would you please explain it to our readers?
JD:
In the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, we see two things at work. First, how a very small bit of information, the address of Guy Banister on a pamphlet Oswald was handing out in New Orleans, mushroomed into the first real investigation into the Kennedy assassination, three years after JFK was murdered. In other words, the peeling back of Oswald’s true role as an undercover intelligence agent began to rearrange the circumstances of the crime. Second, the massive force used by the CIA, the FBI and the mass media to smear and to squelch Garrison’s investigation was unprecedented on a domestic level at that time. It’s usually the kind of campaign the CIA would use abroad to attack a designated political opponent. That is how seriously they took Garrison as a threat.
MM:
Why did JFK have to die?
JD:
In my opinion, this is not just a matter of any one policy issue. Some people say it was over Cuba, some over Vietnam. Kennedy was breaking with the status quo over several issues, both domestically and in foreign policy. And he did it pretty quickly. For example, he changed Eisenhower’s Congo policy within a matter of days after being inaugurated. In Indonesia, he decided to back Sukarno, when the CIA had previously tried to overthrow him. Domestically, he wanted to open up more state banks as opposed to Federal Reserve branches to make it easier to borrow money, and, unlike Eisenhower and Nixon, he really was going to move ahead on civil rights, through his brother Bobby Kennedy. In retrospect, it’s really kind of remarkable how much he did in less than three years to further the liberal ideal of progressive change. And by 1963, the Powers That Be said, “Enough is enough.”
MM:
What are the biggest bombshells you reveal in your excellent books?
JD:
In the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, I think it’s the fact that Allen Dulles went to see former president Harry Truman in April of 1964, while Dulles was sitting on the Warren Commission. Truman had written an editorial for the Washington Post, which was published about one month after Kennedy’s death. But he started it about 8 days after the assassination. He said the CIA had gotten out of control and he never foresaw such a thing when he signed the National Security Act. Dulles wanted him to retract that editorial. Truman would not. But as Dulles left, he said words to the effect that Kennedy had not really chastised the CIA for usurping his policy in Vietnam. Meaning, Dulles thought that this is why Truman had written the editorial!Which is a remarkable admission, because no one at that time thought the JFK murder was over the Vietnam issue. The other aspect was the number of infiltrators the CIA sent to obstruct Garrison’s investigation, and the lengths they went to in their surveillance and in misleading him. One of them, Gordon Novel, was hired by Allen Dulles himself to bug Garrison’s office.
MM:
You do more than write books. You are also the soul of other projects. For example: websites. Do you want to talk a bit about this?
JD:
Me and a friend of mine, Al Rossi, maintain the website kennedysandking. com, and I think it’s a good site with news and stories and visual essays about the assassinations of the Sixties: both Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The Internet is one of the last bastions of freedom of speech in America. And I think it’s important to take advantage of it while it lasts. Because, with very rare exceptions, the mainstream media does not cover these cases to any serious degree. But yet, they are central to history in my view. Things would have been quite different if those four men had lived.
MM:
Are you satisfied or disappointed with the very recent release of documents about John Kennedy?
JD:
I am not satisfied with the way it was done. I do not think President Trump should have yielded to pressure brought upon him at the last minute by the CIA and FBI to thwart the actual letter of the law. This has allowed literally thousands of pages of documents to be released in redacted form, or even with whole pages blanked out. This battle will now have to probably be waged in court because Trump gave in.
MM:
As you know, I uncovered the CMC documents. Centro Mondiale Commerciale was the Italian branch of Permindex. On the CMC Board of Directors there was Clay Shaw. Thanks to those exclusive documents, I demonstrated the importance of so many Italian characters for a real understanding of what’s behind November 22, 1963. However, to my surprise, on this I met with the hostility of some US researchers. Fortunately, there are excellent exceptions: one is Oliver Stone, who has openly praised my findings. Another excellent exception is you. After taking this opportunity to warmly thank you both, I also want to ask you please to explain the risks of an examination of the JFK Assassination too confined to the US side.
JD:
I think it constricts the picture. Because what Kennedy was doing was not limited to just the USA. Therefore, his murder had an impact that was worldwide. And the people who were opposed to him were very aware of the things he was doing in his foreign policy. In regards to that shadowy entity called the CMC, the revelations about it are still coming out today, through people like you. And as far as Italy goes, in David Talbot’s book, The Devil’s Chessboard, he shows how Kennedy was pushing for a policy to pull the socialists into the mainstream of Italian politics. A policy opposed by William Harvey, a CIA officer stationed in Italy, and also the publishing family the Luces. In my opinion, after Kennedy’s death, that policy was countered by the “strategy of tension” that began to terrorize Italy. See, it always puzzled me that Clay Shaw said he was a Wilson-FDR-JFK liberal. If so, why did he have the name and address of a member of the Borghese family in his address book?And why was he a part of this Permindex association with so many wealthy, and rightwing, worldwide members in it? Because, as the new documents reveal, Clay Shaw lied on the stand when he said he was not associated with the CIA. He was a highly compensated contract agent, and his role with the CMC was a part of that, according to FBI agent Regis Kennedy. But further, the CIA we now know did all they could to cover up this part of his life, including destroying documents about him that would show how useful he was to them. In my opinion, his association with Permindex in Italy was the key to opening the door on Shaw.
