Daniel P. Sheehan

[Tim Gratz]

I asked John:

If you are now aware of any evidence that supported plaintiffs' claims [in the Christic Institute case], let's hear it!

To which John replied:

Tim, it was just a matter of time before you came in to defend the corrupt activities of the CIA/Republican Party. That is in fact your main purpose on the Forum. Don't you have even the slighest doubts about the way these two political organizations have worked together in order to undermine democracy in the United States

Any objective reader will note that John did not reply to my request for any evidence to support the claim. Not one single sentence to support the "merits" of the case. Instead, John immediately engages in an ad hominen attack on me since I had the temerity to attack the leftist "conventional wisdom". There is one word to describe this: typical. You see, like many members of the left, John cannot be detrerred by the facts. This is really McCarthyism on the left.

Then John shifts the subject to attack another aspect of the Bush administration. Of course, this has nothing to do with the merits of the Christic Institute case.

John, have you read Susan Huck's "Legal Terrorism"? (Of course you have not!)

***************************************************

To Pat:

In general I agree with your point. There should be greater judicial control exercised when one side is required to pay another's legal fees.

One clarification, however: the plaintiff may lose on a summary judgment issue but the defendant is normally not awarded actual legal fees unless the court determines that the entire case is frivolous. That sanction is authorized by Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the Christic Institute case, four judges agreed that the case was indeed frivolous: the district court judge and three judges of the Court of Appeals.

John, however, who has not read a transcript of the proceedings, believes he knows better than the combined wisdom of these judges. When all I did was post the appellate decision so members could make an informed decision, all he could do was accuse me of defending the evil CIA/Republican Party.

Pathetic, actually.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[William Kelly]

Tim,

Why you always trying to pick a fight with John?

You're not in the same weight class.

And Dawn,

The name of the former Jesuit priest is William J. Davis - not Davies.

BK

[Tim Gratz]

Bill,

I do not need to be "in the same weight class" to demonstrate that John is in no position to refute the findings of four federal judges who ruled on the case.

And I ought not repeat it, but one year ago I debated with John the involvement of the Mafia in the assassination. I will say that it is to John's credit that he now realizes that Blakey was right about the probable involvement of Marcello and his buddies.

Finally, I note that if the premise of "Ultimate Sacrifice" is correct, one of the major objections to my scenario of Cuban involvement in the assassination disappears (the objection that Castro would not have struck at JFK for fear of prompting a U.S. invasion is vitiated if one was indeed planned for December of 1963).

Again, I have said for months that I think that Professor Michael Kurtz probably identified the major players in the assassination decades ago. The facts that are emerging add additional support to the scenario he posited.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Gerry Hemming]

I asked John:

If you are now aware of any evidence that supported plaintiffs' claims [in the Christic Institute case], let's hear it!

To which John replied:

Tim, it was just a matter of time before you came in to defend the corrupt activities of the CIA/Republican Party. That is in fact your main purpose on the Forum. Don't you have even the slighest doubts about the way these two political organizations have worked together in order to undermine democracy in the United States

Any objective reader will note that John did not reply to my request for any evidence to support the claim. Not one single sentence to support the "merits" of the case. Instead, John immediately engages in an ad hominen attack on me since I had the temerity to attack the leftist "conventional wisdom". There is one word to describe this: typical. You see, like many members of the left, John cannot be detrerred by the facts. This is really McCarthyism on the left.

Then John shifts the subject to attack another aspect of the Bush administration. Of course, this has nothing to do with the merits of the Christic Institute case.

John, have you read Susan Huck's "Legal Terrorism"? (Of course you have not!)

***************************************************

To Pat:

In general I agree with your point. There should be greater judicial control exercised when one side is required to pay another's legal fees.

One clarification, however: the plaintiff may lose on a summary judgment issue but the defendant is normally not awarded actual legal fees unless the court determines that the entire case is frivolous. That sanction is authorized by Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the Christic Institute case, four judges agreed that the case was indeed frivolous: the district court judge and three judges of the Court of Appeals.

John, however, who has not read a transcript of the proceedings, believes he knows better than the combined wisdom of these judges. When all I did was post the appellate decision so members could make an informed decision, all he could do was accuse me of defending the evil CIA/Republican Party.

Pathetic, actually.

-------------------------------------

Sheehan promptly filed a "Motion for Rehearing", and days later, a "Motion for Rehearing Enbanc" [asking that the "Full Court" review the decision of the 3 judge panel which initially ruled on the case] The full court of the 11th Circuit (7 appellate judges) refused to revisit the case !!

Both motions were rejected, and the first reason given was that: When "moving" for an "Enbanc" hearing, both motions must be stapled together, and thereby delivered to the clerk simulataneously -- which he had failed to do. [see: Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure - 1986].

Judge Rosemary Barkett, more than once, later cited this case as being: An extreme example of both "Abuse of Procedure", and "Fraud upon the Court".

[she was born in Mexico, and later took her vows as a nun in the Catholic Church. During the early 1980s, she was appointed by Democrat Governor Graham to the Florida 4th Circuit Court of Appeals]

During the 1990s, and despite Republican political protests (that she was an extreme left-wing liberal); she was appointed as Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

President Clinton, during the mid. 1990s -- appointed her to the Federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

[Tim Gratz]

Excellent information, Gerry!

So it was indeed a bipartisan panel that determined the suit was frivolous!

And I suspect you can confirm that the legal defense cost some of the defendants dearly.

I also suspect they were not able to recover all of their legal expenses from the plaintiffs.

Legal terrorism indeed.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

I asked John:

If you are now aware of any evidence that supported plaintiffs' claims [in the Christic Institute case], let's hear it!

To which John replied:

Tim, it was just a matter of time before you came in to defend the corrupt activities of the CIA/Republican Party. That is in fact your main purpose on the Forum. Don't you have even the slighest doubts about the way these two political organizations have worked together in order to undermine democracy in the United States

Any objective reader will note that John did not reply to my request for any evidence to support the claim. Not one single sentence to support the "merits" of the case. Instead, John immediately engages in an ad hominen attack on me since I had the temerity to attack the leftist "conventional wisdom". There is one word to describe this: typical. You see, like many members of the left, John cannot be detrerred by the facts. This is really McCarthyism on the left.

Then John shifts the subject to attack another aspect of the Bush administration. Of course, this has nothing to do with the merits of the Christic Institute case....

One clarification, however: the plaintiff may lose on a summary judgment issue but the defendant is normally not awarded actual legal fees unless the court determines that the entire case is frivolous. That sanction is authorized by Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the Christic Institute case, four judges agreed that the case was indeed frivolous: the district court judge and three judges of the Court of Appeals.

John, however, who has not read a transcript of the proceedings, believes he knows better than the combined wisdom of these judges. When all I did was post the appellate decision so members could make an informed decision, all he could do was accuse me of defending the evil CIA/Republican Party.

Pathetic, actually.

I need to point out that I am not able to respond to every question straight away. I have to earn my living as well as participate on this Forum. I work for myself and unlike Tim I am not able to spend my employer’s time on the Forum. If you were still a lawyer like Dawn, you clearly would not have the large amounts of time to spend on this Forum.

The evidence that Daniel Sheehan obtained to bring his case came from informants within the CIA. In some cases they were or had been full time officials of the agency (Carl Jenkins, Kevin Mulcahy, Donald Nielson, John Murray, Dolores Murray, etc.), others, like Gene Wheaton, worked for the CIA on a freelance basis. The problem for Sheehan was that these CIA officials were unwilling to go on record about the activities of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Edwin Wilson. They were in a difficult position because of the legal documents they had signed concerning information they acquired while working for the CIA. In fact, they faced the possibility of long spells in prison if they provided information on these illegal activities.

The only one of these informers willing to appear in a court to testify against the CIA was Gene Wheaton (the same man who gave the interview to William Law and Mark Sobel on the JFK assassination). However, Wheaton was not a member of the CIA and so on 23rd June, 1988, Judge James L. King was able to rule that Sheehan's allegations were "based on unsubstantiated rumor and speculation from unidentified sources with no firsthand knowledge". King was fully aware why Sheehan’s other sources had been frightened into silence but still ruled in February, 1989, that Sheenan had brought a frivolous lawsuit and ordered his Christic Institute to pay the men he accused $955,000. This of course brought an end to Sheenan’s investigation into the illegal activities of the CIA (including the CIA’s involvement in political assassinations).

The CIA and the leaders of the Republican Party then turned their attentions to the other aspect of this scandal, the Iran-Contra issue. As Sheenan pointed out, what happened was Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor in the Iran-Contra scandal, gave prosecutorial immunity to 14 defendants and indicted six people. Then, when George Bush lost the election in 1992, one of the last few things he did before leaving office was to pardon all of the people the special prosecutor had indicted. Therefore, not one of those involved in the illegal Iran-Contra deal were ever punished (Clines did go to prison but that was for unpaid taxes on his business deals with Edwin Wilson concerning Libya).

There are of course close links with other CIA/Republican scandals. Nixon was given a pardon by Ford and was therefore never sent to prison for his Watergate activities. As a result the CIA role in Nixon’s dirty tricks campaign was never fully exposed.

There are of course parallels with the current Libby/Rove scandal. The fear is that George Bush has stopped people talking by promising them that he will pardon them before leaving office. As I have pointed out, this is a tactic that the Republican Party has used several times before. I suspect that is something every other member of this Forum except Tim Gratz believes is immoral. However, Tim’s view on morality depends on the effect it will have on the fortunes of the Republican Party. It is why I believe you are a hypocrite. It is also why I believe you are not really interested in exposing the truth about the assassination of JFK or any other scandal that involves criticism of the CIA or Republican Party. Your sole purpose on this Forum is to spread disinformation. As I have said several times before, I do not believe you are being paid for this activity, mainly because it would be clearly a waste of money because you are so bad at it. However, I have refused to ban you from the Forum. Partly because of my belief in freedom of speech, but mainly because you are such a good example of a right-wing political illiterate. Hopefully, your involvement on this Forum provides votes for those politicians who oppose your right-wing extremist views.

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

The evidence that Daniel Sheehan obtained to bring his case came from informants within the CIA. In some cases they were or had been full time officials of the agency (Carl Jenkins, Kevin Mulcahy, Donald Nielson, John Murray, Dolores Murray, etc.), others, like Gene Wheaton, worked for the CIA on a freelance basis. The problem for Sheehan was that these CIA officials were unwilling to go on record about the activities of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Edwin Wilson.

John, what basis do you have that Sheehan had information from any of these people?

And of course the problem is that one cannot bring a lawsuit unless one has the evidence to support it. If someone tells you something but refuses to go to court one cannot bring a case. By definition, that would be a frivolous filing. In other words, you must not only have a good faith basis for believing a fact essential to your case, you must have admissible evidence to present in court to support it.

Put the shoe on the other foot. Assume someone sued a leftist based on rumor and innuendo. You, I suspect, would be the first to object to the injustice of it. It is fundamental that an accused have the right to confront his or her accuser in court. What if someone charged someone with being a Communist spy, and the claimed source was "CIA informants who cannot go public". This would be McCarthyism by defintion, would it not?

John wrote:

There are of course close links with other CIA/Republican scandals. Nixon was given a pardon by Ford and was therefore never sent to prison for his Watergate activities.

The Nixon pardon is defensible. Caroline Kennedy gave Gerald Ford a "Profile in Courage" award for his action in pardoning Nixon. But perhaps Caroline also belongs to the evil right-wing conspiracy? To turn an old saying around, I think you see right-wing conspirators under every bed.

John also wrote:

There are of course parallels with the current Libby/Rove scandal. The fear is that George Bush has stopped people talking by promising them that he will pardon them before leaving office. As I have pointed out, this is a tactic that the Republican Party has used several times before. I suspect that is something every other member of this Forum except Tim Gratz believes is immoral.

Once again John you make wild factual assertions with no basis to support them. Name one Republican President who has extracted a pledge of silence by promising a pardon. You cannot do so and you know you cannot do so. Obviously if something like that happened it would be hush-hush between the president and the pardonee, both of whom would be most unlikely to talk about it. So all you can do is raise an inference which may very well be completely false. As Joseph Welch famously said to sen, McCarthy: "Have you no sense of shame, sir?"

For the record, however, if any president promised a pardon for a person's silence, I certainly agree that would be immoral behaviour, and may very well be illegal as well.

Finally, you have the temerity to claim I am a "disinformation agent". John, you really ought to apologize, unless you can identify any information I have ever posted which is known to me to be false. (Well, forget my humorous post Sunday night from "The Onion".) On the other hand, I think I can point out numerous allegations you have made for which there is no historical or evidentiary basis.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

John wrote:

The evidence that Daniel Sheehan obtained to bring his case came from informants within the CIA. In some cases they were or had been full time officials of the agency (Carl Jenkins, Kevin Mulcahy, Donald Nielson, John Murray, Dolores Murray, etc.), others, like Gene Wheaton, worked for the CIA on a freelance basis. The problem for Sheehan was that these CIA officials were unwilling to go on record about the activities of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Edwin Wilson.

John, what basis do you have that Sheehan had information from any of these people?

Most of the information I used on this matter comes from David Corn’s book Blond Ghost (1994). Going by his references he got this information from the official Iran-Contra Final Report and interviews with all the key participants, including Daniel Sheehan. He also uses the court affidavit of Sheehan and the depositions of people like Gene Wheaton, Carl Jenkins, Donald Nielson, Cresencio Arcos, Ted Shackley, etc. The CIA memos of John Murray and the letters to Corn by Dolores Murray.

Similar information to that provided by Corn appears in other books on the Iran-Contra scandal. Corn is extremely hostile to Sheehan in his book as he seems to disapprove of his left-wing political views. He also rejects Wheaton’s claims about the CIA assassination team in operation in 1963. However, Corn was writing before the AMWORLD documents were declassified. We now know that Wheaton’s story was true, however, in 1988 he was claiming that Ted Shackley was running the operation, although we now know that it was his fellow informant, Carl Jenkins, who was in charge of this operation. That is not to say that Shackley was not in charge, it is just that he never put his name on any of the relevant documents. That was of course not uncommon with covert operations and gives people like Tim Gratz the opportunity to say it is all some sort of left-wing plot to destabilize the CIA.

It has always been the policy of the CIA to deny the truth of these allegations whilst smearing the good name of the investigators. This has been true of all those who have investigated the role of the CIA in the assassination of JFK. Some like Tim Gratz are only too keen to believe these smear stories. In fact, at every opportunity, he takes the side of the CIA against these investigators. The only ones he is willing to praise are those that Cleveland Cram exposed as being willing to take part in this CIA disinformation strategy.

I have asked Daniel Sheehan to join the Forum so he can put his side of the story. However, he is very busy working as a lawyer. Unlike Tim, he has not been debarred from the profession.

I also received a large batch of recently declassified documents this morning. Some of these relate to the original claims made by Gene Wheaton and Carl Jenkins. I will be posting some of these documents on my website over the next few days. I will also be adding them to the relevant threads. I believe these documents reveal important information about the role the CIA played in the assassination of JFK.

[Lynne Foster]

John, I really do not think that the role of the CIA was that significant, unless you think that Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Robert Maheau, J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Ruby and the Mafia, did not have a significant hand in the assassination and the subsequent cover up.

Again, if you talk about the CIA without being specific, I think it was Mr. Dolva who suggested that you are talking about a "black hole" that inadvertently helps to cover up the truth, because you blame everybody and nobody at the same time --like the Vietnam quagumire.

That's why I always point to writers like Dorothy Kilgallen who were very specific when they blamed somebody.

Don't you think that J. Edgar Hoover was a more significant force than the CIA was, when it comes down to trying to understand the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

[John Simkin]

Again, if you talk about the CIA without being specific, I think it was Mr. Dolva who suggested that you are talking about a "black hole" that inadvertently helps to cover up the truth, because you blame everybody and nobody at the same time --like the Vietnam quagumire.

I would name David Morales and Carl Jenkins as two CIA officers who organized the assassination. I am fairly sure that Ted Shackley, David Phillips and Tom Clines were aware of this operation before it took place. All senior members of the CIA helped to cover-up after the assassination. The assassination was carried out by CIA freelancers and assets.

[Shanet Clark]

Your material on Mr. Clines is relevant here.

Shackley, Clines and the big indian David Morales, and Barnard Detorres all point this way

Organized crime never put the angry counter revolutionaries ashore at the Bay of Pigs......

[Lynne Foster]

Again, if you talk about the CIA without being specific, I think it was Mr. Dolva who suggested that you are talking about a "black hole" that inadvertently helps to cover up the truth, because you blame everybody and nobody at the same time --like the Vietnam quagumire.

I would name David Morales and Carl Jenkins as two CIA officers who organized the assassination. I am fairly sure that Ted Shackley, David Phillips and Tom Clines were aware of this operation before it took place. All senior members of the CIA helped to cover-up after the assassination. The assassination was carried out by CIA freelancers and assets.

Thank you. I'm sure your research is sound, but I still think that this document proves that Hoover was the key, cover up artist. I also think that Nixon implicates himself when he and Hoover decided that Oswald had tried to kill him, before he allegedly killed the President.

[John Simkin]

Again, if you talk about the CIA without being specific, I think it was Mr. Dolva who suggested that you are talking about a "black hole" that inadvertently helps to cover up the truth, because you blame everybody and nobody at the same time --like the Vietnam quagumire.

I would name David Morales and Carl Jenkins as two CIA officers who organized the assassination. I am fairly sure that Ted Shackley, David Phillips and Tom Clines were aware of this operation before it took place. All senior members of the CIA helped to cover-up after the assassination. The assassination was carried out by CIA freelancers and assets.

Thank you. I'm sure your research is sound, but I still think that this document proves that Hoover was the key, cover up artist. I also think that Nixon implicates himself when he and Hoover decided that Oswald had tried to kill him, before he allegedly killed the President.

It started earlier than that. See the transcripts of the telephone conversations between LBJ and Hoover after the assassination.

[Lynne Foster]

Again, if you talk about the CIA without being specific, I think it was Mr. Dolva who suggested that you are talking about a "black hole" that inadvertently helps to cover up the truth, because you blame everybody and nobody at the same time --like the Vietnam quagumire.

I would name David Morales and Carl Jenkins as two CIA officers who organized the assassination. I am fairly sure that Ted Shackley, David Phillips and Tom Clines were aware of this operation before it took place. All senior members of the CIA helped to cover-up after the assassination. The assassination was carried out by CIA freelancers and assets.

Thank you. I'm sure your research is sound, but I still think that this document proves that Hoover was the key, cover up artist. I also think that Nixon implicates himself when he and Hoover decided that Oswald had tried to kill him, before he allegedly killed the President.

It started earlier than that. See the transcripts of the telephone conversations between LBJ and Hoover after the assassination.

Thank you. I didn't even know that existed.

[Pat Speer]

John, before you continue down this road of defending all things Sheehan, you should read this article. Avirgan, on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed, eventually pressed for Sheehan's disbarment. While Sheehan was right about investigating "The Secret Team," he was clearly WRONG in his methods.

http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/3/spooky.asp

CJR - Big Stories, Spooky Sources, by Chip Berlet

Edited December 7, 2005 by Pat Speer