We have an opportunity to redeem ourselves when the president pays us a visit next month. Whatever our political affiliation, whatever our political choice, the presidency of the United States is the world’s highest office, and the man who holds it should be accorded the highest respect possible. But good behavior is not enough. This cancer on the body politic must be removed. There is a precedent Dallas can remember with pride. When the Ku Klux Klan in the early twenties barreled through the South, Dallas was the Southwest hate capital of Dixie. But men and women of good will were ashamed. They saw their shame turn into courage. They stood against this whirlwind of hate, repudiated it, and saw it fade and die. What has been done once, can and must be done again.
–Earle Cabell on the Adlai Stevenson incident[1]
By Steve Roe
Last July, the National Archives began releasing previously withheld and redacted documents from the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives.
Two documents attracted the attention of John Newman, a prominent conspiracy theorist looked upon favorably by Oliver Stone. Both concerned Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas on 22 November 1963, who was subsequently elected to Congress in 1964.
Although Cabell had not figured in Newman’s conspiracy theorizing about CIA involvement before, suddenly, on the basis of these two documents, the mayor was promoted to leading culprit—although neither Newman nor others enthusiastic about the revelation ever bothered to explain exactly what Cabell’s alleged role was. Guilt by loose association (with the CIA) was sufficient to insinuate that Cabell was now a key cog in the conspiracy.[2]
One of the two documents was a standard “Secrecy Agreement” with the CIA that Cabell signed on 17 October 1956. The agreement stated that Cabell might possibly receive information regarding CIA operational matters and bound him not to reveal this information publicly. The other document was a standard “201” personality file that the CIA opened on Cabell on 23 May 1957. A 201 file is nothing more or less than information about the subject of the file. It might contain personal information; information about operational matters; or anything else related to the subject, including newspapers clippings.
The aspect that cemented Cabell’s alleged role in a conspiracy, according to Newman’s innuendo, was the fact that Earle Cabell’s brother, Charles Pearre Cabell, had been deputy director of the CIA under Allen Dulles from April 1953 to January 1962. Theorists have long been aware of this public coincidence, of course, and have speculated in the past that Dulles and Charles Cabell ostensibly conspired against JFK because they were forcibly retired from the CIA following the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961. In this sense Newman—and the conspiracy website Who.What.Why., which was the first to report this “major revelation”—are merely picking up an old, threadbare tale and attempting to give it a sinister new life. Earle Cabell did not conspire merely out of some misplaced sense of fraternal solidarity with Charles, you see. He did so because he was also an agency asset.[3]
Even though Newman offered not a scintilla of proof that Cabell interfered in the motorcade route—or in any other aspect of what was supposed to be a brief presidential visit to Dallas—questions naturally arise. Who exactly was Earle Cabell? And how did he ever come to need or receive a security clearance from the CIA?
To answer that question, it’s useful to put Cabell in context by understanding his family background and career arc.
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