I read Dan Barry’s piece on Nick Beef in which he asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, and the sentence definitely stopped me short and stuck in my craw. I didn’t write in to complain because I have better things to do and the article wasn’t trying to carry any water for the lone gunman theory anyway. Mr. Barry just dropped the sentence in passing, forgetting to use the word “alleged.” I didn’t think there was anything sinister about it, although I shook my head at the fact that 50 years on we still have people who are not skeptical that Oswald acted alone.
I’ve studied the JFK assassination very thoroughly, although never with the commitment of a certified theorist. I have some theories on the case that I’ve come to feel pretty confident about. I think David Atlee Phillips and David Morales were probably involved. I think James Jesus Angleton was put in charge of the investigation because he had a 201 file on Oswald. I think George Joannides was made the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) because he had been involved with Oswald while Oswald was still alive. I think a decision was made within a day of Oswald’s death that an investigation would be held and that it would conclude that Oswald acted alone.
There are other things that I find impenetrable. Did Oswald ever go to Mexico City? If he did, when did he go? Who was impersonating him in Mexico City? And was he actually one of the gunmen? Did he really kill Officer Tippit? And, if so, why?
The more I studied the assassination, the less I focused on Oswald and the more I focused on the behavior of the people under suspicion. David Atlee Phillips’ own brother refused to talk to him because he believed he was behind the assassination. David Morales’s closest friends said that he had confessed to them. This is not the behavior of innocent men. Why would the CIA surreptitiously bring a man out of “retirement” to be the liaison with the House Select Committee on Assassinations who was in charge of running Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) agents against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? When the HSCA general counsel, Bob Blakey, learned of George Joannides’s role, he said that Joannides’s had obstructed Congress and committed a felony.
That he did so should be beyond dispute. But do innocent men commit that kind of felony?
All of these questions fade into the background when you take your eyes off of them and put them squarely on Oswald. Trying to put the puzzle together has defied every researcher, but the one thing that has become clear over the years is that Oswald was working as an FBI informant and was also being closely monitored by counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who was put in charge of the investigation of the assassination.
Considering everything that researchers have uncovered, it really is journalistic malpractice to write that Oswald killed Kennedy without attaching some degree of skepticism to the charge. The HSCA concluded that Oswald was one of the gunman, but not the only one. But, of course, their investigation was infiltrated by one of the prime suspects.
No surpise here by the NYT, both as to its failure to properly qualify Oswald’s guilt — they’ve been leaving off the “alleged” for most of the last 50 yrs — and also as to its tendency to focus on irrelevant, peripheral items loosely connected to Dallas, probably more to once again try to convince people about their favorite lone nut theory. And to divert and distract and ultimately bore people about the truly horrendous, hugely important and still unsolved events of Nov 1963.
Also par for the course is the way the rest of the MSM consistently falls in line with the NYT on this story. As with, just an hour or so ago, Msnbc running an interview with Mr. Beef, by black weekend anchor So and So, a silly softball chat where the anchor of course didn’t fail to echo the Times in characterizing Oswald in the usual official terms.
In fact, is there any major MSM reporter or anchor, now or in the past 50 yrs, who has gone on air expressing a different, skeptical or conspiratorial pov? I don’t think so. Career suicide it must be, according to the intraoffice memo that doesn’t really need to be sent out. Smart, normally skeptical people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow? Both in the Lone Nut camp, although they never get around to explaining exactly why. Too busy chuckling and rolling their eyes about “conspiracy theories” probably.
Why kill Kennedy? He was a reliable cold warrior, who showed he was clearly willing to blow up the world at least twice — Berlin, and Cuba. The covert-and-unconventional community never had a better friend in the White House — Bay of Pigs. The NSA’s shiny headquarters at Ft. Meade, the one with The Ninth Floor on its ninth floor — opened in 1963. It’s even money you get Vietnam in Kennedy second term.
Replacing Kennedy with Johnson — and you get Johnson, this isn’t a decapitation strike followed by a military coup — is a marginal improvement.
Kennedy and the Unspeakable is not ultimately entirely convincing in its conclusions, but it is very, very strong in detailing relations between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
Simply put, the Cuban Missile Crisis freaked them both out and they became allies (of a sort) against their own advisers and intelligence agencies.
In other words, Kennedy ceased being a reliable cold warrior. You’ve probably heard about this in the context of Vietnam, but it was actually quite a bit deeper than that. At the time, Vietnam was not at the forefront of everyone’s mind when it came to U.S.-Soviet relations.
Here’s a mainstream review.
I’m more with researcher DiEugenio on the Douglass book — it’s one of the outstanding books in the field in recent decades but one flaw is the author badly underestimates the degree to which Kennedy long before becoming president had become less of a cold warrior and more of an independent thinker interested in the anti-colonialist struggle.
His brief but very fruitful 1951 trip to VN helped convince him the west should not be over there trying to impose its will by force upon the indigenous populace. Then his late ’50s speeches on the floor of the senate denouncing colonialism, specifically France in Algeria.
Even early as pres he signalled he would not be a typical cold warrior by severly limiting the direct involvement of US military forces in the BoP operation — and stuck to that even when the invasion began going south. Just prior to that I believe, he’d nixed a Pentagon call for sending US troops into Laos (Ike had also advised such stupidity to Kennedy). And throughout 1961 he repeatedly rebuffed the JCS as they sought to get him to introduce US combat troops to VN.
In 1962 he sought to enlist amb John K. Galbraith to work behind the scenes to achieve a negotiated compromise political solution for VN (but, iirc, Averill Harriman, a true cold warrior, was enlisted by JFK to relay these instructions to Galbraith, and Harriman, probably finding the goal distasteful, re-wrote them in their essential aspects, torpedoing the initiative).
These are a few items showing a decided lack of proper, reliable cold warrior attitude in Kennedy, all before the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Douglass and others, supposedly was the catalyst that finally turned his attitude in the right direction.
But Boo, I’d be interested to hear which conclusions of Douglass you disagree with.
You’re assuming that it was institutional motives, not personal ones.
J. Edgar Hoover did not attend the funerals of either John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy, according to a biographer. And had a great distaste for the entire family.
Richard Nixon had been beaten by Kennedy in 1960 and could not make a comeback in 1962.
Lyndon Johnson was one step away from the Presidency (and the play MacBird, popular in the 1960s capitalized on that narrative)
George Herbert Walker Bush got interested in Republican politics sometime shortly before 1964.
An army of segregationists in the South had lots of personal reasons for animus against the Kennedy brothers for upsetting their way of life and their sons and daughters would cheer the announcement of President Kennedy’s death.
Then there is Allen Dulles and his staff:
(Wikipedia entry on Allen Dulles)
And of course any of Allen Dulles’s friends or proteges in the CIA.
And then there is Gen. Curtis Lemay, later George Wallace’s running mate in 1968.
The problem with the “why?” question is that there are too many possible reasons and thus too many suspects.
A personal grudge killing couldn’t call upon the vast unseen armies of the intelligence underworld.
If it could, it wouldn’t be a personal grudge killing. And then we’re back to motive.
I don’t want to come across as arrogant or anything, but I think you’re going about this in an unproductive way.
Given the suspects: Angleton, Morales, Phillips, Joannides, etc., we’re talking about a backlash against JFK for going soft on Cuba specifically and the Soviet Union more generally.
Now, just briefly, the four I mention above all showed evidence of guilt.
What I am suggesting to you is that you can’t solve this murder on your own or unpeel all the layers of the onion. But you can see plainly that the chief suspects gave themselves away.
Assassinating the President over Cuba is a disproportionate response — and it isn’t like LBJ got Castro removed in ’65 or anything.
Michael Corleone would not have done it.
The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty could also have been a motivating factor.
Only if you read Seven Days in May as history….
Was the coup in Iran or the coup in Guatemala a disproportionate response? People in the coup business aren’t necessarily settling grudges so much as seizing power.
But aside from that, there are pictures of an unknown man impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City six weeks before the assassination. At the time Oswald was supposed to be a nobody. Why would someone impersonate a nobody and tie him to the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy six weeks before before the nobody became a national villain? A student prank? Maybe the Cubans and Soviets wanted to assure that Oswald was tied to them in the future assassination but the real Oswald was at a bullfight on those days? Please.
Hm. The evidence you quote against Angleton is a speculative claim about hiding evidence: a tape record last seen in 1964 which someone assumed 41 years later to be hidden in a personal safe whose contents were seized by Angleton in 1971, and destroyed in 1986. But that tape could have gone anywhere in those seven years until 1971, and the safe could have contained several sensitive materials not related to Oswald (like the Tlatelolco massacre). The claims regarding Morales and Phillips come from sources which are either inconclusive or cast into doubt. Meanwhile, the modern 3D reconstruction of the route of the projectiles points in Oswald’s direction – negating the “grassy knoll” theory, and only leaving the unprovable possibilities of a second shooter next to Oswald’s position or someone shooting in Oswald’s place. IMHO in JFK’s case, if there was foul play, then in coaching Oswald (see your evidence re Joannides).
I think there is much much stronger evidence for a second shooter in the RFK case.
I agree, surprisingly (to me), the case for a second shooter is even stronger in the RFK case. It surprised me because the RFK conspiracy theories get no oxygen, but the autopsy speaks for itself. Contact burns to the back of RFK’s head are hard to explain.
You weave a convoluted chain of evidence claim about the tape in Win Scott’s safe, but that rather misses the point. It’s not about what Angleton actually found, but about how he behaved. It’s not normal for a man to learn of the death of a colleague and then travel to Mexico City to rummage through his personal effects, and confiscate the contents of his safe.
As for Morales, his friends said that he took responsibility for both murders. Why would they lie about a friend and implicate him in something so notorious?
As for Phillips, there’s a lot more to it than his relationship with his brother, but I think it is significant that his own brother so suspected him of responsibility that he stopped talking to him for six years and then demanded to know if he was in Dallas on the day of the murder, and when told that ‘yes’ David had been in Dallas, didn’t need to hear anything else and hung up the phone on his dying sibling.
Was his brother crazy or something? Why didn’t David simply deny responsibility/
A few possible explanations re why the RFK case obvious conspiracy isn’t more discussed: 1) the JFK was so huge and shocking that it still sucks most of the conspiracy talk oxygen out of the room; 2) the existing RFK case film (still photos taken by a teenager during the shooting were confiscated by police and never returned) is scanty, while Dallas has the famous Z film; 3) the RFK autopsy was not brought up by Sirhan’s attys in his defense — evidence right there of something fishy going on in that case; 4) forensic examiner Noguchi had his rep smeared in the media by his superiors — allegations of immoral/unethical wrongdoing — in the yr following the murder; Noguchi was demoted and by implication his autopsy findings were too (he later managed to get his old job back, long after the damage was done);
5) the obvious weirdness of Sirhan’s behavior that night, seeming to be in some sort of hypnotic Manchurian Candidate trance — too weird apparently for the MSM to want to handle; 6) RFK, coming so soon after Dallas, is one conspiracy too many for some — even for a long while to many serious JFK conspiracy-inclined researchers who mentally blocked about accepting the facts of RFK or who didn’t want to appear too much of a conspiracist by proposing conspiracies in both Dallas and L.A.
Today, 45 and 50 yrs later, most of these initially very reluctant researchers have now come around to accepting conspiracies not just in Dallas, but in L.A. and Memphis as well.
Re any “3D” or computer reconstructions done in recent yrs, the ones I’ve come across backing the Lone Nut Theory — be careful of the garbage in-garbage out factor. These computer-derived reconstructions have a very appealing surface appeal, the more so as they’re presented in slick MSM (e.g., NOVA/PBS back in the 80s and, iirc, Peter Jennings on ABC a few yrs later) high-production value format. If they don’t jibe with the known facts and best evidence of what really happened, they’re useless except as propaganda for the official story.
Such simplistic and misleading so-called high-tech anaylses of the case also tend to disregard eye- and earwitness testimony putting at least one gunman firing a weapon on the knoll. Even olfactory — numerous witnesses — including 2 top Kennedy aides riding in the followup car — reported the noticable scent of gunpowder emanating from the direction of the knoll.
As for the RFK vs JFK cases and a second gunman: this is the Vince Bugliosi position (or at least a couple of decades back he was arguing for a 2d gunman re RFK). I think his recent massive doorstop book of a whitewash of the WC (see, e.g., the detailed, lengthy review of the book by DiEugenio at ctka.net) discredits him as a serious researcher in this field — and it’s noteworthy that he didn’t have the cojones to appear in any forum, especially in the couple of JFK assass’n online forums where current authors of all stripes appear, to answer questions about his book. In fact, I’m not aware of his appearing in any media format where he was subjected to informed, tough, skeptical questioning.
I don’t see how JFK’s relationship to Bay of Pigs supports the notion that he was a good friend to covert ops. Kennedy had only been in office a few months when the plan to invade Cuba, hatched under the care of Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, was launched. As a very green Commander-in-Chief he stood up to enormous pressure to allow the military to join in the invasion. In the aftermath, he fired Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell, and his continuing relationship with the agency, particularly its covert ops wing, was strained at best.
If you’re implying that JFK’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis showed eagerness to ignite nuclear war, you’ve departed even further from the historical record. The chiefs urged him to launch a full-scale invasion of the island. It didn’t come out until much later that there were far more Soviet troops on the ground than intelligence had estimated, and that they had both the capability and authorization to respond with short-range nuclear missiles.
Davis, the fact is that Kennedy was killed and most evidence points to people within the CIA (as Booman notes above; I’d add Allen Dulles to the cast of characters). Because you don’t see a difference between JFK and LBJ doesn’t mean that his enemies didn’t see the difference. If you can’t discern the difference fifty years later I suggest you pick up James DiEugenio’s book, the new edition. It should set you straight as far as the differences between the two.
The other thing to understand is that people don’t throw a coup on Friday and go back to their desks on Monday. You have to seize power not only to gain your objectives but also to protect yourself from justice. Even if JFK and LBJ were identical, the difference between Friday and Monday is those who threw the coup, not the President, become the ultimate power. Many coups in third-world countries have less to do with philosophy than who holds the power.
The arc of American power and policy didn’t bend an inch, except maybe on civil rights.
The assassination was worse than a tragedy, it was a blunder. Because it was unnecessary.
Next up: Moon Landings vs. the Van Allen Belts…
Btw, speaking of substance not trivia and distraction, I’m just starting an interesting book by mainstream film biographer and academic Joseph McBride — Into the Nightmare — who looks deeply into one angle of the case heretofore barely or poorly explored, the Tippit murder and its connection to the case and Oswald. He concludes Oswald did not shoot either JFK or Tippit (LHO was orig arrested for that murder) and that officer Tippit may have a) been one of the shooters on the GK and b) may have gone to Oak Cliff, miles from the assassination scene, with instructions to eliminate Oswald.
Interesting too (mostly gleaned from recent online interviews w/author) that mainstream author McBride, whose book is a product of 31 years of research, believes LBJ was probably among the major assassination plotters. That makes an increasing number of solid authors in recent times who have publicly expressed such a controversial view, one which I tend to share btw (even as I don’t agree with some of his other observations/conclusions). (But we’re still lacking a book-length working dealing solely with the LBJ angle, by a respected author/researcher who isn’t afraid to look in dark places, as this aspect of the events clearly points to.)
It’s likely though this serious if imperfect work of research will get short shrift in the MSM coverage leading up to the 50th anniversary of Dallas, busy as they are propping up the lone nut myth with their usual parade of predictable popular historians who can always be relied upon not to rock the boat with anything controversial.
I assume you have looked at “The Texas Connection: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”, by Craig Zirbel? If not it might be worth a look.
Yes, read that about 20 yrs ago, not long after it came out, about the time in my study of the case I had become satisfied the CIA/Military Brass/FBI were major players in the plotting. Lyndon was the obvious next question.
For years I felt he may have had no more than foreknowledge — though that’s saying plenty — but recently as more established authors have expressed a more hands-on role for him in the plotting stage, I’ve come to lean in that direction.
Generally I think it’s true that one way to learn who might have been involved in the plotting is to take the Watergate example (Jos McBride’s approach), see who is running the coverup and work back from there. I also strongly doubt that such an important undertaking in Dallas, LBJ’s home turf, that would directly affect him could have escaped his attention — that dude was very well connected and plugged in to what was happening beneath the surface in his home state. Witness, e.g., in the weeks leading up to Dallas his getting word while in Brussels at a NATO meeting, that reporters from around the country, mainstream publications, were scurrying about the state trying to uncover dirt on him — so he was told by his contact back in D.C.
The story of that in a book, by a close Johnson loyalist, entitled The Thirty-First of March reveals a good deal of the very concerned and troubled mindset of Lyndon — thinking that Bobby probably was behind the probes — in the period immediately prior to the assassination. He thought his political career would soon be over, and was greatly upset about what he was learning of events back home.
The Zirbel book — a TX lawyer, but far from a major mainstream author which I think would be helpful, maybe even necessary, to carry such a controversial and incendiary thesis — I found interesting in parts, but overall thinly sourced, and a disappointment. Gave it one read and put it aside.
There’s a stronger case against Lyndon made, and in more depth, in a long chapter of the uneven but mostly worthy book Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman, which I only read in the orig hardcover version (he might have written an updated e-book recently).
Thanks for the reply, I’ve got some reading to do. đŸ™‚
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Hervé Lamarr of French intelligence contacted Jim Garrison. Did Robert Kennedy order a private investigation into his brother’s murder? JFK was admired across the globe, however the Kennedy clan irritated some powerful people during his presidency. I came across this book for the first time, can anyone shed some light on its value?
Read an introduction about the book here.
Farewell America :: How French Intelligence Wrote a Book about the Kennedy Assassination (by Bill Turner)
JFK assassination debate – Bill Turner
French intelligence was quite busy in their old-colonial empire of West-Africa. A shocking and revealing documentary can be found on Al Jazeera. It involved black operations of intelligence coordination in an office near President Charles de Gaulle and run by Jacques Foccart (1960-1974). The brutality how democratic leaders were disposed of either by assassination or election fraud. Explains the state of affairs today in Africa and is an indication how the major powers (permanent members UN Security Council) ran their affairs. In the 21st century with Internet and the social media, those covert actions may be more difficult to hide.
The French African Connection
According to “Brothers” by David Talbot, RFK made quiet inquiries into his brother’s death while maintaining a public show of support for findings of the Warren Commission. Reading the book, I found Talbot’s thesis difficult to maintain considering some of RFK’s unequivocal public statements, but in January, RFK Jr. confirmed that his father did not share the Warren Commission’s conclusions.
Somewhere I read (Talbot? or another author of recent vintage) that, according to Frank Manckiewicz, RFK’s press sec’y in the 1968 campaign, at a campaign appearance (March? ’68) at Cal State Northridge (then San Fernando Valley St College) RFK had answered a student’s question about whether he would reopen the investigation into his brother’s death if elected president by saying he had some questions about the Warren Report and would be inclined to do so, or words to that effect. The students apparently enthusiastically applauded his refreshingly candid answer.
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any film or audio existing of that Q&A exchange, but the source is about as good as they get.
We also know that just a few weeks after Dallas, the Kennedys okayed a previously planned cultural-official trip to Moscow by JFK’s close friend artist Wm Walton. Walton, it has been reported in several books, apparently told top Soviet govt officials that the family believed the president had been killed as a result of a high level US govt plot.
I always thought Bobby’s constant public refrains when asked about Dallas all seemed too simple, pat and canned, as if he was merely saying and repeating things he didn’t really believe. Ditto, to a lesser extent, for Ted. Jackie, who had an extremely keen sense not only of the real nature of people but of events, also didn’t buy the WR, which Talbot also covers. (Jackie also clarified things to an unknowing/naive Ted Sorensen about the real nature of the JFK-LBJ working relationship, which TS was about to misrepresent in a positive direction in one of his books from a few decades ago; Jackie laid down the law about what JFK really thought about Lyndon — she held similar negative views — and the erroneous passages were removed)
Hell, the Warren Commissioners didn’t believe the tripe they were selling. Especially Sen. Richard Russell.
Even Lee Rankin thought it was crap, and he basically ran the thing.
Well, Rankin — reminds me a bit of Rbt Blakey on the HSCA, both chief counsel, both tried to keep their investigations too narrowly focused lest certain unpleasant facts come to light, both sought to cut off further investigation into potentially fertile fields, both years later, after the damage was done, did a partial limited hangout rollback in certain remarks about their investigation’s conclusions and how they were stymied at the time by the big feet of Hoover or the CIA, both years later suggested a possible Mafia role in the assassination.
Nice, but too little too late.
But even the guy who engineered the WC coverup, Lyndon, said years later, in effect, he didn’t believe his own commission, pointing the finger later at the Mafia, Castro, then in 1967, to Marvin Watson (relayed to a top FBI official) suggesting he wasn’t sure the CIA hadn’t been involved.
And Earl Warren himself supposedly thought the Kremlin was involved in putting Oswald in place. (Well, Warren was never a very deep thinker …)
Commissioners Hale Boggs and John Sherman Cooper, along with Russell, also were said to be skeptical that LHO acted alone (back in 1964, it was almost beyond the pale for anyone to suggest Oswald was innocent of any shooting as now seems to be the case).
Kennedy had just declared that he’d like to see massive reductions of all forms of arms, a direct threat to the emergent MIC and those who felt it was required to combat communism. And he liked poor people. Kennedy was therefore both an enemy of the state, of capital and of our war mongering elites.
Yet George Bush Sr. never rarely a mention? He was connected to tons of folks involved, had the juice to impose/assist in a cover up, came from the amoral war financier family that helped bring us WWII yet was rewarded with a Senate seat and obviously had tons to gain from his personal interest in Caribbean oil, deeper co-operation with the CIA and vested interest in spreading armed conflicts. There are memos from the FBI, including Hoover himself that name him as hailing from the CIA, yet the public claim is that his first dealings with the agency came after he was appointed to head it.
He made documented calls to investigators immediately after the assassination and once Kennedy was dead suddenly had a career of appointments that led him to the White House. It’s almost like he was in on some devastating secret that cleared his way straight to the top.
Just sayin’
I never saw much of a whiff of Bush Sr.’s involvement. And he won a lowly seat in the House, not the Senate. Of course, Republicans from Houston were pretty rare back then.
BooMan,
As usual, if you look at the bad shit that’s happened in this country over the last 3/4’s of a century, most of the times, a Bush is there – or, nearby.
Google, “where was george hw bush during the jfk assassination?”, and look at all of the hits.
Here’s just one of them:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/16/was-george-h-w-bush-involved-in-the-assassination-of-jfk/
Now, I’m not saying he was directly involved – but, there are people who are providing a lot of evidence that he was at Dealey Plaza.
Now, Google “was George hw bush involved in the bay of pigs invasion?”, and see how much pops up.
Again, I’m not saying he was involved in any of these, but it kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Is Bush Sr, our political “Zelig?”
Actually, Russ Baker’s book on the Bush Family, “Family of Secrets”, spends some time on Bush’s probable long relationship with the CIA, his whereabouts on the day of the assassination, and his communications with George de Mohrenschildt just before the Count committed suicide just before he was to testify in front of Congress in ’76. At that point Bush was CIA Director.
Keep whiffing then.
I was referring to his family in that sentence. Prescott served as Senator as you well know, despite an act of Congress forcing him to stop trading with the Nazis looooong after we took sides in WWII.
Damn little evidence of this JFK in the historical record… Henry Wallace, he was not.
Given that Henry Wallace supported Nixon over Kennedy in 1960, I agree it’s safe to say that JFK was no Henry Wallace!
JFK was a lot more liberal than we’ve seen in the White House over the last fifty years. Don’t confuse what the CIA’s foreign policy was with Kennedy’s.
How more liberal? “Less corporate” more liberal? “More attached to individual constitutional rights” more liberal? Or just “More liberal than Nixon or Reagan” more liberal?
JFK was absolutely mainstream Democratic, in a party that was still in thrall to its white, Southern, racist roots.
Dennis Kucinich, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even either of his brothers….
“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life…”
Not the peace of the Grave..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUjJa9jnynA
Poking the wrong eyes..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeYgLLahHv8
Damn plenty actually. Try the Google.
Quite a subject for me. I was on a grade school class trip from my little hamlet 50 miles to the west in NJ to the United Nations, on November 22, 1963.
I saw them Lower the Flags of the Nations of the World in the UN Plaza.
I realized much later, (after a re-awakening to politics), that it was a potent symbol (oh, and so many hard realities more) of the corporate takeover of the country (and a large part of the world, too).
But we live in a time where truth wants to break out, big time.
I just saw this MINUTES before opening Boo’s diary. Might be the most pertinent info in this thread. What do you think?
Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20167
Predicated on Kennedy being some kind of threat or obstacle to the corporate takeover of the country? Assuming it hadn’t already happened at that point?
Considering that JFK fired Allen Dulles, it’s not unreasonable that the man behind many coups, and his agency, may have wanted not only to get rid of him but to gain control of the levers of power. You know, like when they pulled off coups in other countries.
Very interesting comments. Boo, in your research into the assassinations have you ever read a 1992 Book entitled “The Man Who Knew Too Much” by Dick Russell? It is about the later life of one Richard Case Nagell who claims he was hired to prevent the assassination of JFK by killing Oswald, among other things. Another more recent work, “Legacy of Secrecy” published in 2008 by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman, (the guy who replaced Al Frankin on the ill-fated Air America) delves into the Assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King claims that the Kennedy’s were about to assassinate Castro and spark a coup in Cuba. So many individuals with motives for killing them makes searching for the “truth” like walking into quicksand. Was Oswald involved? Most probably. Was he a shooter?? I don’t think so, but maybe one of the shooters.
I don’t trust Lamar Waldron.
Nor should you.
Dick Russell wrote a most interesting, informative book — which also happened to be about 300-400 pages too long. A massive tome that should have been pruned down considerably, which I think the author later did (or acknowledged). Good researcher, solid. And that was quite a story re Nagel.
Agree with Boo on Waldron. Similar feelings about Hartman — on this case (I generally agree with his overall political views). I think TH once admitted on air — interestingly, curiously — that in the past he’d done work for the NSA and CIA. I’ve heard he admitted that once during a public book tour. He strikes me as a gatekeeper on the left — build cred with liberals by taking the right stand on most of their issues, but one vital role for him is to steer them away from asking certain questions about Dallas (and the assassinations of RFK and MLK), keep things no worse than a focus on Mafia involvement in the conspiracy, not CIA. My sense of it.
And their thesis about JFK about to topple Castro at the end of 1963 is ludicrous — what, not long after the 2 superpowers almost went to nuclear war over Cuba, Kennedy is going to reopen that can of worms and roll the dice again? Silly.
If you think Russell’s book is too long, beware of John Armstrong’s “Harvey and Lee”. About a thousand pages. His theory, which he documents quite thoroughly, is that the CIA created two Oswalds, the Lee who was a son of the South and spent his early years between Texas and New Orleans, and Harvey from New York City whose family spoke Russian, who assumed the Oswald identity as a child. If you know nothing about the case it sounds crazy, but Armstrong’s remarkably detailed research shows two different people with Oswald’s identity. J. Edgar Hoover even wrote a memo about someone using Oswald’s identity while he was still in the Soviet Union.
Booman refers to whether or not Oswald went to Mexico City. How could Oswald be in Fort Worth at the same time Oswald was in Mexico City? (There is actually still someone else who was photographed impersonating Oswald in MC.) How could Oswald, without a license and not knowing how to drive a car, take a car on a test drive while simultaneously working at his job at the Book Depository? There is the problem that Oswald worked in New Orleans and belonged to an astronomy club while Oswald was in the Marines in Japan. Oswald lost a front tooth in a fight in high school, but the Marine records show Oswald had all his teeth and the exhumed body of Oswald in 1981 had all his teeth.
Right, Armstrong you mentioned here a few weeks ago and I noted I became aware of it some yrs ago in the DiEugenio assassination journal. Absolute mindblower of a story, easy to dismiss as it appears to be the sort of fictional take that a drug-crazed Hunter Thompson might have concocted. But then there are all those stubborn facts Armstrong dug up about Lee and Harvey, laid side by side for people to consider.
And even before Armstrong came along, it was clear from the evidence then available that someone clearly was systematically impersonating Oswald in the months leading up to Dallas. But the WC chose to dismiss these claims — as they tended to do whenever faced with evidence that didn’t fit their storyline. As with the famous Silvia Odio incident.
A book dealing with a highly controversial thesis about a crucial player — even if Just A Patsy — featuring years of original research, may well need that sort of length to do it justice. But the oversized Russell tome on a peripheral player, fascinating though the story is — that one needed cutting back.
I came across this PDF,
http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Harvey_And_Lee.pdf
which is apparently the entire book of Harvey and Lee. Set aside some time and read it. amazing stuff. I’d also pick up DiEugenio’s recent book.
From page 51 of Harvey and Lee:
In January 1953 the HUAC in New York made reference to a “Mrs. M. Oswald” in a CIA Office of Security file. T he file contained references to 1941, Nazi’s, and New Jersey. Judge John Tunheim, of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), wrote to Henry Hyde in an attempt to get the HUAC files on Lee and Marguerite Oswald re leased, but his request was refused.
Ponder that. When was Marguerite Oswald in New Jersey? Nazis? 1941? And why would Henry Hyde want to keep the file hidden?
If they think Hale Boggs was a Republican, why should I read one word further?
A slightly different historical footnote that someone called to my attention.
(Wikipedia article on Church Committee)
You remember that Gerald Ford was a member of the Warren Commission, and that his CIA Director was George HW Bush?
Which is why I added it to this thread. I remembered both of those.