John Newman: Countdown to Darkness available soon

[Douglas Caddy]

John Newman posted the following on Facebook today:

 

The revised edition of Where Angels Tread Lightly, coming out in about two weeks handles the correction for the identity of Merton as Stewart and also explains why I thought, for a while, that it was not Stewart, who actually was the right person. In volume II, Countdown to Darkness, which will be available in about 10 days, I report, in part, this about Jack Stewart:

Jack S. Stewart was born on 26 March 1917 in Marfa Texas, to William R. and Pearl Edna (nee Tole) Stewart. ...His brother, William Jr., was born in 1916, and he had two sisters, Bettie Marie, born in 1921, and Pearl Jeanne, born in 1925. The family lived for four years in Clearwater and Saint Petersburg, Florida. His father died there in 1937, at just 38 years of age. Jack went to Purdue University and graduated with a BS in electrical engineering in 1941. He served overseas in the army for five years and held the rank of captain in 1946. He earned his MA at the University of Chicago in 1947.
After that, Stewart’s civil records become somewhat murky. He was married to Phoebe Hopkins by July 1949, at which time they sailed on the Santa Clara from New York to Venezuela, for a two-year assignment in Maracaibo, the second largest city in the country. The State Department Foreign Service Register lists Stewart as a State Department clerk in Maracaibo that same month (July 1949). His assignments listed in the register are confusing, out of order and, in at least one important case, wrong (I will get to that below). Before the July 1949 Maracaibo entry in the register, is this entry: “Govt. exper. 53-55: pol. anal. Dept. of Army.”
However, declassified CIA records indicate that “Andrew F. Merton” was working for the CIA in Guatemala from 1950 to 1955, and was an assistant paramilitary officer, using the alias Vincent C. Pivall in the Agency’s operation to overthrow President Jacobo Arbenz—PBSUCCESS. Andrew Merton was a pseudonym for Jack Stewart. According to the register, Stewart was transferred to Havana in December 1955, where he worked under State Department cover as a political officer until November 1959. He was then transferred to the embassy in Mexico City, and worked undercover as a consular officer. The State Department Foreign Service List for Havana agrees that Stewart arrived in Havana on 22 December 1955, and his name is missing from the 1960 Havana list. However, declassified CIA documents show that Jack Stewart did not go to Mexico in November 1959. He was in Havana working on high priority challenges, exfiltrating Cubans and investigating security flaps, during November and December 1959, and continuing into January of 1960.,

[Larry Hancock]

I don't see any sign of either on Amazon yet, am I missing them?

[Anthony Thorne]

Three new / updated John Newman books, including COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS, are appearing on Amazon sequentially over the next few weeks.  The links to all of them on Amazon will be up soon.

The updated new edition of JFK AND VIETNAM is out on January 15th. John Newman posted the new preamble to the book on Facebook. I've reprinted it below. There is substantial new supplementary material in the volume.

The all new COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is out on January 25th. Noted John - "Vol II is a big surprise. Completely changed my view of Eisenhower. And the Joint Chiefs were seditious on the Bay of Pigs plan--not good."  The back cover of this long awaited volume features long quotes of praise from Bill Simpich, Peter Dale Scott and others.  It will be very enticing to see where John's study of the assassination is leading.

The revised edition of 2015's WHERE ANGELS TREAD LIGHTLY is out on January 31st. "One substantive change in Vol I is Merton is Jack Stewart, not Phillips. Otherwise there are minor changes, a few new crypts etc."

PREAMBLE TO THE 2017 EDITION OF JFK AND VIETNAM – 
On Amazon January 15th 2017.

Quote

Brigadier General Joseph A. McChristian was the intelligence chief of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), during General William Westmoreland’s command of MACV (1964-1968).

McChristian’s insistence on telling the truth about the size and determination of the Viet Cong caused a premature end to his tour at MACV in June 1967. He was perhaps the army’s most distinguished intelligence officer. He had served as General Patton’s intelligence chief in the breakout from Normandy in WWII. After MACV, McChristian became the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), at Headquarters, U.S. Army.

I met McChristian during my assignment at Fort Huachuca in 1988, when he was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of fame. We spoke privately for more than an hour. When he learned the topic of my PhD dissertation was about Kennedy and Vietnam, he opened up to me, not only about what had happened to him in Vietnam, but also about what happened afterward. He told me that many of his records at the Army Center for Military History had been surreptitiously removed. He encouraged me to go forward with the project, and to find the officers who had been in Vietnam during the 1961-1963 period and interview them. McChristian was happy to find out that Don Blascak and Sam Adams were going to help me do just that.

I decided to write this short preamble about a profound comment that General McChristian once made, and that I had quoted in the original manuscript of this book. Unfortunately, my editor at Warner Books—who held a very senior position at that publishing house—told me I needed to remove it. She said that nobody would be able to understand what the comment meant. Reluctantly, I went along with her wish, and I have regretted it ever since. So, rather than just reinserting it in its original location at the end of Chapter Thirteen, I want to put it up front here. I want to frame it. I want to call it out, so that those among our citizenry who have not served in a military uniform can understand the kind of general officer we need the most.

The comment by McChristian to which I refer, took place on camera as CBS was producing its famous documentary on General Westmoreland and MACV: “CBS Reports, the Uncounted Enemy—A Vietnam Deception.” In Westmoreland’s lawsuit afterward, the prosecution deposed McChristian on the question of whether or not Westmoreland had lied. They regretted doing that, as the intelligence chief, under oath, told the truth, and said that lying about the enemy violated the West Point motto—duty, honor, country. For the first time in history, one West Point graduate accused another of doing something “dishonorable.”

But the comment I am thinking about took place during the production of the CBS documentary. In that on camera setting, McChristian refused to answer whether or not Westmoreland had lied. He agreed, however, to address the issue if the question was posed to him in this way: producer George Crile asked, “What does it mean to lie about the enemy in a time of war?” This was McChristian’s answer: “It jeopardizes not only the lives of the soldiers on the battlefield, but also the future liberty of your people at home.” It is my heartfelt hope that my editor was wrong, and that I do not have to explain the meaning and eloquence of McChristian’s response.

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Anthony Thorne

[Douglas Caddy]

John Newman posted the following on Facebook today:

The revised edition of “Where Angels Tread Lightly” is now available at the CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/3494380
The revised edition will not be available at the main Amazon site until 3-5 business days from today—the earliest 1/19/17 and the latest 1/23/17. Do not buy a copy from the main Amazon site until you see the front cover with “REVISED EDITION” on it.
Those who do not want to purchase the revised edition can print out this note on the 2017 chang...es to fold and place inside their book:
The most substantive change from the original 2015 edition is the correction of the true name for the pseudonym Andrew F. Merton. It is Jack Stewart, not as I originally thought, Dave Phillips. Some of the reasons for that misidentification will be evident in Appendix Three to Volume II, which draws attention to a mistake in the State Department Foreign Service Register. It suggested, wrongly as it turns out, that Stewart was in Mexico at a time that Merton was actually still involved (for about three more months) in several important operations taking place in Havana. That matters less than getting the identification right. I want to acknowledge and thank Jerry Shinley for sharing his extensive data on Stewart, which made the oddity in the register irrelevant. It also enabled me to develop a very detailed life history of Stewart from civil records. I will continue to follow his story, including his continuing friendship with Earl Williamson. I have made some adjustments to other pseudonyms in Appendix Two: the most important (aside from Merton) is the discovery that Reichardt and Karnley are both pseudonyms for Ken Crosby—who was living only twenty miles from me in the Shenandoah Valley until a few years ago. The others are minor adjustments to the pseudonyms for Gerry Droller, Henry Hecksher, Justin O’Donnell and William Harvey. In Appendix Four, the correct date—5 September 1957—is given for the naval uprising at Cienfuegos to overthrow Batista.

 

[Guest]

On ‎1‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 4:44 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

Jack S. Stewart was born on 26 March 1917 in Marfa Texas, to William R. and Pearl Edna (nee Tole) Stewart.

http://www.livescience.com/37579-what-are-marfa-lights-texas.html  The Marfa Lights, mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the West Texas town of Marfa, have mystified people for generations.  According to eyewitnesses, the Marfa Lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white, blue, yellow, red or other colors.

I'm just sayin' ...

[James DiEugenio]

Bulletin about John and his books. 

John has agreed to do an interview at the end of the month for BOR on his books.

He doesn't do too many of these so this should be a treat.

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Now available:

https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Darkness-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/1511503947/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484919266&sr=1-3&keywords=Countdown to Darkness

 

[Michael Walton]

I'm not sure who wrote the blurb on the Amazon buy page, but it's very valuable information. This is especially for those LN-ers who, to this day, love to say, "Oh, Oswald was just a random, troubled loser who decided on a whim to take his rifle to work with him on 11/22 and score one of the most spectacular feats of shooting in world history."

The book's first chapter contains new revelations about how Oswald was a witting false defector to the USSR in a CIA plan to surface a KGB mole in the CIA.

 

[Guest]

Lest we forget, this is the same author of Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus In the Light of Yogic Mysticism, which postulates that Jesus was an adept of quasi-yogic practices whose mystical teachings were completely misunderstood by his followers and that the Gospel of Thomas, which the scholarly community recognizes as a late Second Century gnostic text, is in fact the real key to Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus, the author maintains, practiced “marveling—the practice of an altered mind-body state that eventually leads to the kingdom.”  See http://wisdom-magazine.com/Article.aspx/2202/ for a general description.  Published in 2011, the book as far as I can tell has generated zero interest within the community of Christian scholars.  (One can legitimately draw parallels between Jesus' teachings and those of Eastern religions; one cannot simply reinvent Jesus and the history of Christianity.)

That’s right, the author is a Jesus Conspiracy Theorist.  Mainstream Christian scholars, and indeed mainstream Christian believers, are Jesus Lone Nutters.

15 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

The book's first chapter contains new revelations about how Oswald Jesus was a witting false defector to the USSR an adept of yogic practices in a CIA plan to surface a KGB mole in the CIA plan to introduce marveling to the First Century Jewish community.

Take your pick - either one is about as likely.

 

[Thomas Graves]

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

Lest we forget, this is the same author of Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus In the Light of Yogic Mysticism, which postulates that Jesus was an adept of quasi-yogic practices whose mystical teachings were completely misunderstood by his followers and that the Gospel of Thomas, which the scholarly community recognizes as a late Second Century gnostic text, is in fact the real key to Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus, the author maintains, practiced “marveling—the practice of an altered mind-body state that eventually leads to the kingdom.”  See http://wisdom-magazine.com/Article.aspx/2202/ for a general description.  Published in 2011, the book as far as I can tell has generated zero interest within the community of Christian scholars.  (One can legitimately draw parallels between Jesus' teachings and those of Eastern religions; one cannot simply reinvent Jesus and the history of Christianity.)

That’s right, the author is a Jesus Conspiracy Theorist.  Mainstream Christian scholars, and indeed mainstream Christian believers, are Jesus Lone Nutters.

 

Lance,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Newman

(FWIW: Wikipedia is a "Least Biased" news source with "High" factual reporting according to https://www.mediabiasfactcheck.com )

--  Tommy

Edited January 21, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Michael Walton]

John Newman is a former intelligence employee.  He clearly and methodically documented his work in Oswald and the CIA.

Just because he's a Jesus freak doesn't mean he can't accurately write a book about what took place, based on documentation, of a man who "defected" to the USSR and came back and lived to tell about it.

Really, Lance, don't you find it the least bit strange that during one of the craziest moments of the Cold War, when Hoover and the other paranoids in DC were looking under every nook and cranny for Communists, Negroes, and other subversives, that a former Marine, who actually worked on the base that monitored U2 flights, defected to the US's sworn enemy, stayed, there, then pretty much waltzed back into the US with nary a peep?

But I know who you are - you're the guy who goes around saying, "Oh, I have no vested interest in this case so I'm looking at it strictly in black and white" blah blah blah.

I've worked in the multimedia business for 30 years now.  I could write how to do this or that in multimedia.  I also have no religious affiliation.  Does that mean if I write about why I don't believe in god that it also means I can't write about multimedia?

Really, Lance, I thought smart lawyers knew better than that.

[Douglas Caddy]

John Newman wrote this on Facebook yesterday:

NEW OSWALD HIGHLIGHTS IN VOLUME II

According to a legendary senior CIA counterintelligence officer, who was once on track to become the director of the Agency, Lee Harvey Oswald was a witting false defector sent to the USSR in 1959 as part of a mole hunt. This revelation is discussed, for the first time, in Chapter One of Countdown to Darkness.

In Chapter Eighteen (which covers the late opening of Oswald's CIA 201 file in December 1960), incontrovertible new evidence is presented showing that the Agency's mole-hunting unit (specifically, Birch O'Neal and Ann Egerter) used the false name Lee Henry Oswald as a marked card strategy in the mole hunt.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 1/21/2017 at 8:15 AM, Lance Payette said:

Lest we forget, this is the same author of Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus In the Light of Yogic Mysticism, which postulates that Jesus was an adept of quasi-yogic practices whose mystical teachings were completely misunderstood by his followers and that the Gospel of Thomas, which the scholarly community recognizes as a late Second Century gnostic text, is in fact the real key to Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus, the author maintains, practiced “marveling—the practice of an altered mind-body state that eventually leads to the kingdom.”  See http://wisdom-magazine.com/Article.aspx/2202/ for a general description.  Published in 2011, the book as far as I can tell has generated zero interest within the community of Christian scholars.  (One can legitimately draw parallels between Jesus' teachings and those of Eastern religions; one cannot simply reinvent Jesus and the history of Christianity.)

That’s right, the author is a Jesus Conspiracy Theorist.  Mainstream Christian scholars, and indeed mainstream Christian believers, are Jesus Lone Nutters.

 

Hi, Lance....

Let's get back on topic here, eh?

20 Facts Indicating “Lee Harvey Oswald” was a CIA Agent

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott said he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”

2. Antonio Veciana said he saw LHO meeting with CIA’s Maurice Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in Dallas in August 1963.

3. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

4. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

5. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 

6. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA agent who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

7. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, left his family to marry (and no doubt monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

8. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.

9. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

10. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

11. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

12. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

13. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

14. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

15. CIA Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, but the CIA ignored his warnings.

16. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved. In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations.

17. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs….

18. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

19. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, and “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

[Paul Brancato]

Also Lance - if I might, (if you prefer we can take this discussion to another place) I didn't read the whole book that Newman wrote about Jesus and early Christianity. I read some though. It's weird for you to diss Newman because you think he was out in left field on Christian history.  I have read a lot about that history, as I'm pretty sure you have. Surely we could agree on one thing - that the church, meaning the Catholic Church, has a view of its own history that has been honed over the centuries, starting in the 2nd century with the dismissal of so called Gnostics as full of hubris and not representative of the true church. Did you by any chance buy that argument? If you did, of course you will not appreciate where Newman, and other alternative views of Christian history, are coming from. But just think for a minute about one word - hubris - and remember that the movement that lies, nearly forgotten, at the base of Christianity, was a revolutionary Jewish movement, in which the concept of hubris would have no place whatsoever. It's absurd on its face to believe the early 'fathers' of Catholicism on this point. Gnostic churches were refreshingly varied in their approaches. Women often had rights of priesthood for instance. Heirarchy had no place in their concepts. Newman, and others, have examined this early history and see a power grab. History, I would say, has proven them right. 

[Paul Brancato]

And Lance, bear in mind also that it is Paul that is the real father of this heirarchal male dominated Christian movement. And the guy never met Jesus. I suggest you read up on Paul in some of the alternative writings. If you want, I'll suggest some reading material.