Robert Greenwald, bless him, is gathering signatures in an effort to persuade the History Channel to act like a History Channel and not like an adjunct of Rush Limbaugh, distorting history to serve an agenda.
Greenwald sees this as a politically motivated effort. I see something more sinister, as I’ll explain in a minute.
This upcoming miniseries is produced by Joel Surnow, producer of “24” and written by one of his writers on 24, a guy who claims to be a liberal but does not appear to have made any political contributions to any liberal candidates.
Watch the clips here, and then sign the petition at http://stopkennedysmears.com/.
Here’s what actual historians – not all of them fans of Kennedy – have to say about the script:
Here’s what an outraged David Talbot, the creator and former Editor-in-Chief of Salon.com, said when he heard his book Brothers was used as a source for the miniseries:
And here’s a clip of Robert Greenwald talking on MSNBC yesterday about his effort:
I’ll ask again – please sign the petition at http://stopkennedysmears.com/.
I also encourage you to find a copy of the book Jim DiEugenio and I put together. There are a couple of articles in that book by Jim that you can’t find online, including Jim’s seminal essay on “The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy.” Because Jim’s essay describes why projects like this our made: if John Kennedy was a horrible person, who cares who killed him? Bottom line, that’s the agenda.
Jim’s article goes into the details of two women most often linked to Kennedy – Judith Campbell “the Government wants me to talk again” Exner and Mary (wife of CIA heavy Cord) Meyer, and shows how flimsy the accusations are that they in any way shaped policy or had any serious influence on Kennedy.
And I can’t help but remember walking by the newsstand one day and seeing another woman claiming to have slept with Kennedy. I burst out laughing, but then felt like crying because I was one of a handful of people in the country who got the joke. The woman was Priscilla Johnson McMillan, a journalist who interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald four years before Kennedy was shot, and who wrote a book afterwards titled Marina and Lee that Marina, Oswald’s wife, called a pack of lies. Would it surprise you to learn that Priscilla’s CIA file listed her as a “witting collaborator”?
When I saw that, I began to wonder how many other of Kennedy’s supposed paramours were also CIA assets, perhaps on assignment to smear the man so no one would care enough to look for the CIA’s hand in his death?
So while Greenwald sees this as a political maneuver, I believe this springs less from Joel Surnow’s relationship with Limbaugh and the right and more from his connections to the intelligence agencies in general and the CIA in particular. The strongest evidence in this case points to high-ranking members of the CIA being involved in the plotting and cover-up of the assassination of President Kennedy. (See our book for a plethora of evidence in this regard, presented with solid factual references to actual CIA documents housed at the National Archives.)
But maybe Greenwald is right. Maybe Joel just hates everything Kennedy did and stood for. And maybe his sidekick writer is just gullible enough to fall for all that bogus sex stuff that’s been added to the record. I have a strong suspicion some of his “source” material came from C. David Heymann, whose books are so factually inaccurate I felt the need to expose him in full. See my essay on his fabrications and listen to me talk about him on Black Op Radio.
Either way, the show absolutely is not history. It is fiction. And not even close or loosely adapted fiction, but outrageously wrong, inaccurate, fiction. Do you really think that should be presented by the “History” channel? I don’t.
Please join me in signing that petition. And please stick your neck out a bit and ask your friends to sign up too. No one deserves to have not only their life taken from them, but their legacy as well. That’s a crime against Real History.
So sign the petition already! Thanks for caring. http://stopkennedysmears.com/.
I read somewhere that someone was planning to sue (Ted Sorensen?)
TS could sue if some clearly defamatory falsehoods about him end up being shown on teevee. Of course, Ted being a public figure, it’s all the more difficult to sue successfully.
Otherwise, I’m not sure I understood what he was getting at in one of his segments where he stated that the filmmakers would need extra legal help given the nature of the script. The dead can’t sue, as he himself noted, and unless there are false statements put into the mouths of living people related to or connected to JFK, it’s all libel-proof filmmaking, no matter how false or outrageous the statements.
Thanks anyway to Real Hist Lisa for bringing this important matter to people’s awareness. Looks like we’re getting some good old-fashioned anti-JFK character assassination upcoming on THC to go with some good old-fashioned history falsification on HBO with the Tom Hanks Lone Nutter pro-Bugliosi propaganda.
I’m outraged about character assassination without facts to back it up.
Bugliosi, on the other hand, has all the facts in the murder case and they all point to Oswald.
Let’s not conflate the two.
Jim DiEugenio has written a comprehensive review showing Bugliosi’s work is simply untrue in all kinds of ways. Start here. There are several parts to this review of his book.
Note: Jim has always liked Vince Bugliosi. But he likes the truth more.
Part one of Jim’s response – Questioning the prosecutor:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_review.html
Part two – What’s Missing? Oswald’s Defense:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_2_review.html
Part three – The Whole story about Chicago and Mexico City:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_3_review.html
Part four – Bugliosi on the Zapruder Film and the Autopsy:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_4_review.html
Part five – Bugliosi vs. Garrison and Stone, or, How to Investigate a New Orleans Conspiracy from Pasadena:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_5_review.html and http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_5b_review.html
Part six – Bugliosi on the first 48 Hours, or, How the Dallas Police Really Didn’t Screw Up:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_6_review.html
Part seven – Bugliosi on the FBI, or, How Hoover didn’t Cover Up anything in the JFK Case:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_7_review.html
Part eight – Bugliosi Hearts the Warren Commission: or How the author learned to like Allen Dulles, Gerald Ford and John McCloy:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_8_review.html
Part nine – Bugliosi vs. Herodotus, or Why Advocates don’t make Good Historians:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_9_review.html
I couldn’t get past the third paragraph of the first link. This guy’s complaining that the book is too long. He wanted short and snappy instead of thorough. I guess there’s a reason for that – the conspiracy buffs can’t write a long book because they have no evidence to insert therein.
You want me to believe you read 1600 pages of Bugliosi’s BS but couldn’t read two paragraphs here? You’re such a joke. I know who you are, even if BooMan doesn’t.
It’s really this simple.
The gun couldn’t have been fired by Oswald. He had no nitrate on his cheek.
And for all the ridiculous pseudo explanations given over the years as to how he could have fired the rifle and NOT had any nitrate on his cheek, the simple truth is this:
Not one person was able to fire Oswald’s rifle, by himself, not not get nitrate on his cheek. The FBI tried and failed, which is why Cunningham told the Warren Commission it was his “personal opinion” that Oswald COULD have fired the gun and not gotten nitrate on his cheek.
He had no scientific basis for his statement, which is why he framed it as his “personal opinion.” Can’t get charged with perjury for that, not that anyone cared. He told the Commission what they wanted to hear, and Bugliosi dutifully repeats that uncritically years later. And you dutifully believe it, or pretend to – there’s really no difference. It’s simply not credible on any level. Pretending it is won’t change that simple fact.
Case closed.
Ed J.
They really are everywhere, aren’t they?
Let me ask you a question:
Why do you think that Bugliosi wrote this book?
Seriously.
Is he being paid by the PermaGov?
Is he simply a fool who has made a career out of busting Manson?
Has he lost it entirely?
Any combination of the three above possibilities?
Just curious…the truth of the matter is that this set of falsehoods and mini-coups that started w/JFK’s assassination is going to have to run its course just as does any other societal disease, and the further truth is that we approach a crisis point in the progress of that disease as we speak. People are almost daily taking mentally and emotionally unbalanced actions against the PermaGov state…Joe Stack’s being the most heavily publicized, but just read the news…and that says to me that we have reached a crux point of some kind in this process. Either the system will eventually implode of its own contradictions and a real force for change will be elected (Call it progressive; call it libertarian; call it what you will.) and/or we will experience some form of widespread martial law soon after the next so-called “conservative” President is elected in 2012.
Either way, the foofaraw over the various conspiracies that have masqueraded as government in the United States of Omertica over the past 50 years or so will not likely open up the vault of secrets in Langley and elsewhere. They will go down with the ship, just as did Hitler; no one will be the wiser and the mystery of so-called human “history” will continue just as it has continued for thousands of years.
Can a sleeping person really explain his dreams?
Of course not.
As above, so below.
What we laughingly call history is a dream.
Bet on it.
AG
That’s all you’ve got? The paraffin test?
There is no gap between the chamber and the barrel of a rifle through which gases can escape. The paraffin test was devised to test for handgun fire. There IS a gap between the chamber and barrel of a revolver.
Oswald’s hands both tested positive for nitrates – from when he murdered J. D. Tippit while on the run from the first murder he had committed that day.
And the BS to that is the not one FBI agent – and several tried – could fire the gun and NOT get nitrate on their cheek.
So your so-called explanation is utter bullshit. And Cunningham knew it, which is why he carefully said “in my opinion” to the Warren Commission so it wasn’t the flat out lie you present here.
fire three rounds from Oswald’s Manlicher Carcano rifle. The result of the subsequent paraffin tests were negative for both his cheeks and his hands.
Please Lisa, try to find some facts. Try reading Bugliosi’s book – It’ll open your eyes.
I read more of it than you’ve read of the rebuttals.
The “sealed chamber” of the rifle still sprayed nitrates all over the test shooters’ cheeks.
But not Oswald’s.
You can’t explain that away. You and every other disinformationist on- and off-line have tried. But that one’s solid gold. The only explanation: Oswald didn’t fire the rifle.
what?
There’s no talking to someone who will ignore a mountain of evidence if it interferes with her preconceptions.
Stop looking in the mirror, Ed.
What mountain of evidence?
The best Bugliosi offers is the two-shooter scenario – one shoots, and one cleans the gun between the shots. He doesn’t put it that obviously – he tries to fudge that over with Cunningham’s testimony. But that’s the only way they ever got a false negative. And you would know that if you read anything OTHER than the prosecution’s brief.
Prosecution is not history, Ed. Hate to be the one to break it to you. There’s another set of facts that Bugliosi left out. His chapter on the CIA sticks out as a really stellar example of lying by omission. No mention of the CIA’s high-level (went up to the ADDP) on the big lie re Oswald the CIA put out to other agencies of the government, while telling the truth in a communication written within the same two hours by the same people that was distributed within the Agency.
This was one month before the assassination.
No mention of James Angleton’s team suggesting CIA assets get the Cuban consul drunk when he came through DC in 1965 and get him to talk about Oswald (presumably to get him to retract his saying that the guy in the consulate claiming to be Lee Oswald was NOT the same guy shot by Jack Ruby in Dallas.)
You’re the one who presents only personal attacks on me and no evidence. You’re the one who thinks the audience is too dumb to see that.
Let’s see it.
Who killed John Kennedy? Where was he when he fired the shots? What weapon was used?
I can answer all those questions with, yes, a MOUNTAIN of evidence – hard evidence which obeys all the laws of logic and physics.
Let’s see your scenario.
What happened?
But you haven’t, have you? I’ve supplied data through this thread. You offered one discredited scenario.
I’m not surprised. My answers follow:
Lee Harvey Oswald. Sixth floor book depository. Manlicher-Carcano rifle.
Your turn Lisa.
I’m not into the JFK assassination the way you two are, but there are three pieces of information that bug me.
It’s the consciousness of guilt in both the erased conversation with Hoover and the intentional flipping of the Zapruder stills that raises the reddest flags for me.
And, who was impersonating Oswald two months before the assassination, and for what purpose?
I never claimed to know what happened. I just know that we don’t know the full story.
this issue in the same way that I’m interested in all history. You’re doing the same thing Lisa does – nitpicking the case against Oswald. The investigation was not perfect. No investigation is. But the overwhelming evidence is that Lee Harvey Oswald committed both murders and that he did it alone. I’ll be happy to listen to any other theories but I’m not hearing any.
Actually, there’s NO evidence Oswald did it.
When you really get into it, he didn’t order the rifle. (The rifle doesn’t even match the bullets, or the rifle on the video shown earlier in the day, but never mind facts).
Oswald couldn’t have fired the rifle, period.
And EVEN IF HE DID, which he didn’t – then you have to explain why the CIA was tracking Oswald back in 1959, hiding his files in the black ops section of Counterintelligence (CI/SIG, rather than the larger CI group, and really, his files should have been in the SR group if the CIA’s explanation of their interest is to be believed).
You’d have to explain why the CIA deliberately, knowingly, and at a high level, lied about Oswald to other agencies of the government just a month before the assassination.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? How could you, if you’ve only read Bugliosi’s magnus disinformationus.
Of course he ordered the rifle. Oh, that’s right, the rifle was ordered by someone named A. Hidell. Only one small problem for you Lisa – Lee Harvey Oswald was carrying ID in that name when he was arrested. Oh yeah, he was also carrying the Smith & Wesson .38 which he had used to kill Officer Tippit.
He bought the rifle, he bought the revolver and he used them to commit two heinous murders.
The trail is much too complicated for you, evidently. It isn’t about aliases. It’s about money orders.
And it was never proven that he killed Tippet, either. The witnesses who saw two men run from that crime were ignored or ridiculed. And why were there three Oswald “wallets” that day? One at Ruth Paine’s, one at the Tippet scene, and one in his pocket.
How many wallets do YOU carry, Ed? 😉
There’s an interesting book out called Breach of Trust that shows that the Warren Commission effort was deliberately deceitful – not accidentally so. I mean – they even switched stenographers as needed so that they could guarantee how a transcript of a session would come out.
And the HSCA’s stories are even worse. I’m friends with Dan Hardway, one of the investigators under Robert Blakey. Hardway and Eddie Lopez were young law students at the time. Hardway is a staunch right-winger. But he knows for a fact records have been altered since their investigation. He respects his secrecy oath, but also feels the government broke faith with him.
He was given a room at CIA where he and Eddie ostensibly had carte blanche to request whatever files they wanted. Some of the records he read no longer exist, according to the CIA. He even took notes on them, which also no longer exist. Nor do any documents point to the fact that those records ever existed. These are not the kind of docs one could forget, for reasons I won’t talk about here. But that’s how the crime continues to stay covered up. Whenever something surfaces, it disappears.
This happened when the Dallas DA put files online that had been discovered recently. I noted an entry in a Ruby to letter from an anonymous correspondent referring to their “mutual friend” who was involved in the Kennedy assasssination matter. That letter no longer exists in that collection, and that may be my fault. I pointed it out on the ‘tell us of anything of interest’ page. I did, and that document disappeared. And I’m kicking myself for not printing a copy FIRST. Lesson learned.
I once held in my hands a document showing Gerry Patrick Hemming’s QJ designation. As you know from the Church Committee, QJ/WIN was one of the CIA’s top assassins. The document had at least ten QJ designations WITH REAL NAMES. It’s the kind of file no one would release had they seen it. It wasn’t supposed to see the light of day. I only saw it through an accidental release. As soon the file was brought to the archivist’s attention, it too disappeared.
That’s how you keep the truth from coming out. It’s not like it’s not out there. But you’re not allowed to see it.
All of this, btw, is a distraction from this diary. The point is that false history should not be presented on the History Channel. Do a hit piece on the Kennedy’s on A&E or whatever other outlet one wants. But don’t call it history.
But the FBI already conclusively proved Oswald didn’t do it, Ed.
I don’t have to prove who did to show who didn’t.
Nice theory. Doesn’t match the facts, though.
But the FBI already conclusively proved Oswald didn’t do it, Ed.
I don’t have to prove who did to show who didn’t. (Btw, Booman, this is standard procedure. I argued with spooks for five years. They say this is what happened, prove otherwise, ignore your evidence of Oswald’s innocence and then demand “proof” of your conspirator. I refuse to play that game.)
Nice theory, Ed. Doesn’t match the facts, though.
You can’t name a killer or a location or a weapon.
You’re like the Republicans, Lisa. The party of “No”. They can’t come up with a health care plan of their own but they want to shoot down the Democrats’ plan. You can’t come up with a remotely plausible scenario for that day in Dallas that doesn’t match Bugliosi’s research. So you just say “No”.
Give me a killer, a location or a weapon.
See, you can’t refute my facts.
So you make up BS and try to attack me personally.
It won’t work. Believe me, your buddies at CIA tried for five years and failed to discredit me. You think you’re going to do it all by your lonesome here? Fuggedabouddit.
And to the specific point (which all disinformationists on the Internet love to repeat) I’ll say it again:
It is not necessary to prove what DID happen in order to prove what DIDN’T happen.
I don’t have to name a single shooter to show that Oswald is innocent.
No honest court in the world would have ever convicted this guy if he’d gotten a fair trial. All the evidence falls apart under closer examination than you have either done or are willing to do.
I used to think you were just misinformed. Having just read your comment in the piece about Harry Reid’s daughter I realize that you’re a conspiracy absorbed loon. Talking to you is a complete waste of time.
Ed, I used to think you were an honest poster. But seeing your attempts to discredit me, I recognize the pattern from elsewhere.
I’m not a conspiracy absorbed loon. I simply ask the questions others won’t think to ask. I didn’t say I believed that was the case. It’s just something we should all consider, because that kind of stuff actually happens, more than most people realize.
And again – you haven’t refuted any facts I’ve presented. You’ve just tried to attack me.
Here, for anyone reading this in the future – is the link to the comment in question. Simple comment. http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/3/11/214541/582#3
And you can get nitrates on your hands from handling cardboard – which Oswald did all day at his work.
False positives are common. False negatives impossible, until it became necessary to alter scientific reality to try to make the magic bullet less magical.
Boy, Ed. I hope some day you are framed for a crime you didn’t commit, so you know how it feels.
My favorite Tom Hanks moment came in The Simpsons Movie, where the Tom Hanks character said, the government’s lost all credibility so it’s borrowing some of mine. Sadly, Hanks’ own credibility is on the line per his efforts to run Bugliosi’s untruths into history.
someone, I think at the orange place, posted a video enactment of part of the script which was definitely porn not history. iirc that’s where I read they have given TS lines he never said and that’s a problem. (I thought I already posted this comment already but I don’t see it anywhere. apologies if it suddenly shows up)
previous diary on this.
RH Lisa, I nominate you and Jim DiEugenio to do public televised battle, following the screening of the HBO atrocity (if indeed it’s ever produced), against Vince Bugliosi and one other pro-WCR propagandist of his choice.
On the subject of JFK and his presidency, you could team up with pro-JFK author James Douglass and Ted Sorensen, and/or we could have James K. Galbraith or Gordon Goldstein on board to argue on the subject of Kennedy and withdrawal from VN, versus Surnow and Heymann and one more JFK denigrator.
Minimum 90 minutes on HBC, THC, or ABC’s Nightline.
Not gonna happen I know. But this, or something along these lines, should happen — there should have been a debate on tv years ago in fact. But it’s never been done, to my knowledge, at least not in this country in true and fair debate format. The occasional radio or online radio debate, yes, but nothing on nationwide tv/cable that has gotten wide exposure to millions of viewers.
I wish, Brodie!
Jim DiEugenio destroyed John McAdams in a multipart radio debate at http://www.blackopradio.com recently.
The day the mainstream media tells the truth about this case will be the day we start living in a real democracy again. Until then, every day the media reminds me we live in a covert kleptocracy.
Speaking of Oswald, as we were above – check out this brand new article about Oswald’s long paper trail in the CIA from way before the assassination:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/THE-JFK-CASE–THE-OFFICE-by-Bill-Simpich-100310-266.html