The Role of the Left in the Cover-Up of the JFK Assassination

[John Simkin]

4. The main fault of the piece is that it tries to say that somehow this was all part of a grand conspiracy played on the left. I don't agree. The idea that somehow Jason Epstein was a CIA asset is untenable. This is a guy who later sponsored and edited the best book on Watergate--JIm Hougan's Secret Agenda, and the best book on the RFK case, the Turner-Christian book.. Both of these works target the CIA.

Jason Epstein confessed to his work with the CIA in an interview with Frances Stoner Saunders in New York in June 1994. As he pointed out, he was a member of the Non-Communist Left and was only too pleased to take a strong anti-Soviet line in the books that he published: “Who wouldn’t like to be in such a situation where you’re politically correct and at the same time well compensated for the position you’ve taken? And this was the occasion for the corruption that followed.” (Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, page 346)

Epstein helped to establish the New York Review of Books with CIA money. It came in via Jack Thompson, Executive Director of the Farfield Foundation. Epstein was a personal friend of Thompson and claims that he held the job under contract to the CIA for over a decade (page 243). Epstein told Stephen Spender, editor of Encounter, that the journal was being funded by the CIA. Spender told Epstein that he did not believe him. However, according to his wife, he knew as early as 1955 that it was CIA money. This supports CIA’s Tom Braden’s account. Lawrence de Neufville, who was Braden’s boss, commented: “Who didn’t know, I’d like to know? It was a pretty open secret.” (page 394)

Epstein commented: “What most irritated us was that the government seemed to be running an underground gravy train whose first-class compartments were not always occupied by first-class passengers; the CIA and the Ford Foundation, among other agencies, had set up and were financing an apparatus of intellectuals selected for the correct cold-war positions, as an alternative to what one might call a free intellectual market where ideology was presumed to count for less than individual talent and achievement, and where doubts about established orthodoxies were taken to be the beginning of all inquiry.” (page 409)

Epstein, like I.F. Stone and Carey McWilliams, broke with the CIA over Vietnam: “come Vietnam, and our anti-Stalinism gets used to justify our own aggression. These people (CIA funded writers) get into a real bind now. They’re caught with their pants down: they have to defend Vietnam because they’ve toed the anti-Communist line for so long that otherwise they stand to lose everything. They did help make Vietnam possible.” (page 369) In fact, they made the CIA cover-up of the JFK assassination possible.

As Deborah Davis pointed out in her book on CIA infiltration of the Washington Post newspaper, Katharine the Great: (1979): “The practice, the old intelligence principle translated, contained the seeds of political blackmail: once the newsman or his organization has been compromised, the politician can threaten to expose his (its) lack of independence unless he (it) cooperates further. Many Mockingbirds have been faced with this choice.” (page 190)

To his credit, Epstein, like Stone, refused to give in to this threat of blackmail. Epstein, played an important role in the establishment of the New York Review of Books. It was here that Epstein rebelled and took a strong anti-Vietnam War stance. As CIA officer, Lee Williams, who was involved in the media project, later admitted: “We had a big problem with the yin and yang of the New York Review crowd, especially when it got so anti-Vietnam, and so left-wing.” (page 361) This was the reason for the CIA leaking stories about these Non-Communist Left writers in 1967.

[John Dolva]

Is Communist = Stalinist TRUE ? No. As long as the two are equated, any discussion on the left that must rely on notions like a non-communist left reveals a fundamental flaw, irrespective of truisms that may follow.

[John Simkin]

Is Communist = Stalinist TRUE ? No. As long as the two are equated, any discussion on the left that must rely on notions like a non-communist left reveals a fundamental flaw, irrespective of truisms that may follow.

I use the term "Non-Communist Left" because they were the words used by the CIA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Later, they became hostile to anyone left of centre.

[Bill Simpich]

John,

This is a terrific article that offers an important and detailed historical analysis. We are in your debt. This is one of the most important discussions I can think of. Thanks also to Jim DiEugenio, Peter Dale Scott, and others who weighed in with additional facts that ultimately offer further support to your story. I was intrigued by your afterword about Jason Epstein.

As a facts-oriented guy, I think you've cited plenty of sources to prove most of your points. One minor concern is about the suggestion that I F Stone and Carey McWilliams of the Nation somehow got a warning from governmental officials about a Soviet conspiracy. There's no evidence of it, and I think it weakens your approach. There's no question that the spectre of "40 million dead" was made to Earl Warren and others by LBJ - you can even hear those discussions in the LBJ tapes available for listening at the Mary Ferrell site. I think that spectre was evident to people like IF Stone and McWilliams, and they censored themselves like the Left historically does when it feels threatened. The Nation refuses to cover these kinds of stories to this day, which is really unfortunate.

An additional aspect that I'd like to see you address is the historic tension between the Left and independent researchers. On one hand, as I'm sure you're aware, many of us on the left and in various walks of life do not like to see an issue presented as "a conspiracy". Conspiracies have been aptly described as the prosecutor's darling, and this scare tactic has been used historically to crush dissidents and the oppressed with very real punishment. It's an unfortunate word, a word that the research community would be far better off not using. Words matter. It's more effective to use descriptive words like "joint action", "coordination", "planned action" and "group". Loaded phrases like "conspiracy", "scheme", and "cabal" often turn off the listener.

On the other hand, the left is unwilling to take on the national security state in issues like the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, the scandals of Watergate, Iran-Contra, or moments of shock such as 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Part of it is because those running the small left institutions in the USA are afraid of offending their funders. That's what I think the problem is with the Nation. The bigger aspect - which I see throughout society, not just the left - is the fear of being marginalized. As you point out so well, the media is on bended knee to the intelligence agencies and other power brokers and will do their bidding at virtually every turn. Most books on the subjects mentioned above cannot even get a review in a major media publication. Taking on these stories is a threat to one's career, and hence one's financial well-being.

The progressive forces in the USA do best when dissidents or oppressed people are under attack - the Scottsboro Boys, the civil rights martyrs, the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Sandra Moffitt come to mind. Mainstream leaders such as JFK, RFK, and even MLK present more of a problem. I have often thought that the assassination of Malcolm X was easier for people on the left to address because of his dissident stance. Writers like Michael Albert candidly admit that they want people to think "structurally", not about assassinations, scandals, and shock. I agree with people like Michael Parenti, who focus on the importance of educating ourselves and others about the nature of the national security state - and that effective resistance is not only possible but critical.

[Don Jeffries]

One of the subjects I examine in the book I'm presently marketing is the fact many high profile "leftists" were co-opted by the CIA. The CIA ties of Timothy Leary and Gloria Steinem, for instance, are well documented. I.F. Stone, on the other hand, may well have been some sort of Soviet agent. There have been numerous allegations to this effect (and one of those involved in this issue has been Max Holland) since the KGB files were opened in the early 1990s.

As William Colby said, "the CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

[John Dolva]

Is Communist = Stalinist TRUE ? No. As long as the two are equated, any discussion on the left that must rely on notions like a non-communist left reveals a fundamental flaw, irrespective of truisms that may follow.

I use the term "Non-Communist Left" because they were the words used by the CIA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Later, they became hostile to anyone left of centre.

Ok, that makes understanding parts of the post easier for me. (A lot is of course anyway). A thought provoking article.

[John Simkin]

One of the subjects I examine in the book I'm presently marketing is the fact many high profile "leftists" were co-opted by the CIA. The CIA ties of Timothy Leary and Gloria Steinem, for instance, are well documented. I.F. Stone, on the other hand, may well have been some sort of Soviet agent. There have been numerous allegations to this effect (and one of those involved in this issue has been Max Holland) since the KGB files were opened in the early 1990s.

As William Colby said, "the CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

I do not agree that Stone was a Soviet agent. I know this is suggested in his FBI files but that was because they lumped all the left together. Stone was always a harsh critic of the Soviet system. Anyway, what information did he have that would have been of use to the Soviets that he did not publish in the I.F. Sone Weekly? These smears against the left are on virtually every left-winger on Wikipedia. The KGB recruited spies who appeared to have right-wing views. The Kim Philby group were all recruited in the 1930s. The first thing they were told was to join right-wing political groups. It was from these groups that they were recruited into MI5/MI6. The KGB was fully aware of how the SIS found its agents. I am sure the same was true of the United States.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

If it is published in a """"left""""" publication in the year 2012, it is almost certainly not really left. Someone thought about the quo and made it the price of a thousand quids, because it was a 20 lane expressway traded for a one- lane blacktop.

Foundations give to "left" publications in order to exert control over them. We don't know the quo in terms of a legal contract. But we can see it clearly enough, because the clearly leftward implications of learning the truth about the assassination are covered up most aggressively by ALLEGED leftists. That is why the quotation marks MUST be around leftists. To not put them there is the blindspot called Amerika.

[John Simkin]

As a facts-oriented guy, I think you've cited plenty of sources to prove most of your points. One minor concern is about the suggestion that I F Stone and Carey McWilliams of the Nation somehow got a warning from governmental officials about a Soviet conspiracy. There's no evidence of it, and I think it weakens your approach. There's no question that the spectre of "40 million dead" was made to Earl Warren and others by LBJ - you can even hear those discussions in the LBJ tapes available for listening at the Mary Ferrell site. I think that spectre was evident to people like IF Stone and McWilliams, and they censored themselves like the Left historically does when it feels threatened. The Nation refuses to cover these kinds of stories to this day, which is really unfortunate.

I agree there is no evidence that I.F. Stone and Carey McWilliams were in the pay of the CIA. In fact, all the evidence that we have in the forms of their writings indicate a permanent hostility to the CIA. I have also read the two major biographies of Stone: D. D. Guttenplan, American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone (2011) and Myra MacPherson, All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalists (2006). They also make no references to any suspicions that Stone was compromised by the CIA. The same is also true of Peter Richardson’s American Prophet: The Life & Work of Carey McWilliams (2005). However, all three writers are extremely sympathetic of their subjects and they are clearly not looking for such evidence. They also show no interest in the way both men reported the assassination.

It also has to be said that when the CIA decided to discredit so-called left-wing writers by exposing their involvement in CIA-fronted organizations, such as Dwight McDonald, Louis Fischer, Arthur Koestler, Jason Epstein, Arthur Schlesinger, Mary McCarthy, Melvin Lasky, etc. they never mentioned Stone and McWilliams. However, I think that is understandable. They played such an important role in the JFK assassination cover-up that they would not have liked them discussing the one occasion when they followed the CIA line on a subject.

I agree what I have said is pure speculation. It is just an attempt to explain what I find puzzling behaviour. I can understand why they did not immediately suspect a conspiracy (I will return to that point later). However, I do find it strange that they were extremely hostile to the idea that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy (for example, Stone’s reaction to Ray Marcus and McWilliams’s reaction to Mark Lane). I am especially intrigued by Abraham Wirin’s comments on 4th December 1964 while discussing the Warren Report: “I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God bless him for what he has done in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin.” (1)

An additional aspect that I'd like to see you address is the historic tension between the Left and independent researchers. On one hand, as I'm sure you're aware, many of us on the left and in various walks of life do not like to see an issue presented as "a conspiracy".

Interestingly, the left in the UK did not have any problem with viewing the JFK assassination as a conspiracy. The “Who Killed Kennedy Committee” established by Bertrand Russell in the aftermath of the assassination included all the leading figures of the left at the time: Victor Golancz, Michael Foot, Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley, John Arden, John Calder, Kenneth Tynan, Mervyn Stockwood, etc.

Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine wrote in March,1964: "Is the possibility of a treasonous political conspiracy to be ruled out? Not the least fantastic aspect of this whole fantastic nightmare is the ease with which respectable opinion in America has arrived at the conclusion that such a possibility is absurd; in most other countries, what is regarded as absurd is the idea that the assassination could have been anything but a political murder." (2)

One of the main reasons that the left in America have not embraced the idea of a conspiracy behind the death of JFK is that they did not see him in 1963 as posing a threat to the status quo. If you read the work of people like Casey McWilliams and I.F. Stone in the early 1960s they see JFK as a traditional Cold War warrior. What is more, they disapproved completely of Robert Kennedy as his attorney general. The main reason for this was the Kennedy’s involvement with McCarthyism and the purge of the left in the 1950s. Stone and McWilliams felt so strongly about this that they actually joined other members of the left in supporting Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating when RFK was campaigning to become the Senator for New York in 1964. (3)

What the left did not realise in November 1963 was that JFK had changed his views on the Cold War and that he was secretly negotiating with the Soviets at the time. This of course did pose a threat to the status quo and JFK was clearly more dangerous than he was perceived by the left at the time.

Of course, we now have the documents to show that JFK was a reformed Cold Warrior. Why don’t those on the left, such as Noam Chomsky, accept the fact they made a miscalculation in their assessment of the assassination in 1963? Mainly, for the same reasons why members of this forum are so reluctant to change their minds on subjects relating to the assassination. People find it very difficult to accept they are wrong.

Anthony Summers made a very good point when he commented on the way journalists reacted to the publication of the HSCA report in 1979. “The American press, to its discredit, has generally played down the achievements of the Assassination Committee or brushed its conclusions aside. This lethargy may stem in part from the fact that-sixteen years ago - there was no serious attempt at investigative reporting of the Kennedy assassination. In those days, before Vietnam and Watergate, investigation was left to the government.” (4) I think this also explains why Stone and McWilliams did not reassess their view of the assassination after the publication of the report.

1. Abraham L. Wirin, speech, Beverly Hills High School (4^th December, 1964)

2. Norman Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine (March, 1964)

3. Myra MacPherson, All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalists (2006) page 223

4. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy (1980) page xxi

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"I agree there is no evidence that I.F. Stone and Carey McWilliams were in the pay of the CIA"

"One minor concern is about the suggestion that I F Stone and Carey McWilliams of the Nation somehow got a warning from governmental officials about a Soviet conspiracy"

In no way did I suggest that it would be necessary either for these journalists to be "in the pay" of the CIA or "get a warning from governmental officials about a Soviet conspiracy".

I don't think they needed to.

This needs further discussion and I will explain these points when I get a minute. In the meantime go back and look at what Fred Cook actually says about McWilliams response when Cook raised doubts about the WC.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"One of the main reasons that the left in America have not embraced the idea of a conspiracy behind the death of JFK is that they did not see him in 1963 as posing a threat to the status quo"

Yes, this is largely true, IMO. The reason for this lag time in the left catching up to what was really going on btw. 61-63 is what I call the Violent Chrysalis phase of the National Security State. The President and the National Security State were in an ambiguous and conflictual chrysalis in these 3 years, because the NSS was a teeny bopper who had been growing up with an avuncular president -- but also one with whom it had conflicts-- in 8 of its first 13 years. So by the time JFK came around there was real conflict about who was going to make foreign policies the president or the NSS. Who would be the butterfly, who the protective coating? Veil, shower curtain in Psycho etc. Then Hitch turned the water hotter and we got the butterfly wings of Dulles and Helms.

This Conflictual Chrysalis-- e.g. as expressed in the secret Excomm meetings, the Vietnam discussions and tons of other examples-- would not have been evident to the permissible "left" writers in Cold War America. They would have had only their literal paper models of the National Security Acs of 1947 and 49 to look at. Sometimes the dashboard just does not reflect the engine. Sometimes there's some wraslin in the chrysalis. It takes time for journalists to catch up to speed. Especially when they soon learn it can pay quite well to be slow.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

The conflict within the Democratic party-- during the JFK admin. -- was expressed in terms of JFK's battle with the National Security Bureaucracy. Since these included the most dangerous moments in world history, and included many that still are only now beginning to be recognized such as just how close the US was to a nuclear first strike in the summer of 1961,it should not surprise us that left-liberals -- largely subsidized for their understandable but not forgivable timidity in the wake of McCarthyism-- should have failed to see inside the chrysalis.

Later this conflict would be much more visible in the 1968 RFK campaign. To the extent that they ever mention it, today's Foundation Funded Fake leftists use the Clean with Gene ploy so politely offered by dry cleaning foundations and their friends in North Virginia.

[John Simkin]

I have taken Jim's advice and added Fred Cook's contribution to the left's response to the JFK assassination. Cook was The Nations's main investigative journalist in 1963 (Stud Terkel called him the best investigative journalist working in America. He was unconvinced that JFK had been assassinated by a lone-gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. He wanted to investigate the case at the scene of the crime in Dallas but Carey McWilliams was unwilling to fund the trip. Cook did carry out research on the Mannlicher Carcano, the alleged murder weapon, and came to the conclusion that no assassin would have used such a "grossly inferior rifle". However, "Carey McWilliams was not enthusiastic about the trend of my researches" and the article was not published.

After the publication of the Warren Commission Cook decided he must write an article on the Kennedy assassination. Warren Hinckle, the editor of Ramparts Magazine, agreed to publish the 20,000 word article. It was delivered in September, 1965, and was due to appear in its December issue. However, at the last moment it was pulled. He was told it would be in the January 1966 issue. Once again Hinckle failed to keep his promise and in March he told Cook that he had decided not to publish the article. Cook told Ray Marcus that it was "the worst double-cross I have had from a publisher". In April, 1966, Cook received a "token payment" of $500, along with his unpublished manuscript.

Cook now returned to Carey McWilliams and asked him to publish it in the Nation Magazine. Again he refused but when Cook told him that Edward Jay Epstein was about to publish Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, it might help him to get in before him. McWilliams saw the logic of the argument and the two-part article was published in June, 1966. Both parts of the article appeared with editorial disclaimers.

The first part, published on 13th June, was entitled Some Unanswered Questions and concerned itself with the way the Warren Commission dealt with the events in Dealey Plaza. Cook pointed out: "Not a single eyewitness the commission heard saw the action in the way that the commission decided it had happened. All, without exception, were convinced that the President and Governor Connally were felled by two separate, wounding shots." Cook went onto argue that he considered the evidence linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the purchase of the weapon, to the same weapon discovered on the TSBD sixth floor, and the ballistics linking CE 399 to that weapon convincing: "To contend in the face of all this - and more besides - that Oswald was innocent is to endorse absurdity." However, he added that it was impossible for him to believe that Oswald acted alone.

The second part of the article, published on 20th June, was called Testimony of the Eyewitnesses. He argued that in spite of the speed with which Dallas authorities all but closed the case against Oswald, with a lone shooter, three-shots-fired theory, "a surprising number of spectators insisted with varying degrees of certainty that they had heard four, five or six shots." Cook went onto point out: "Exhibit 386, is a back view of the President's head and shoulders; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder, not always in the middle of the back, but well above the shoulder level on the right side of the President's neck. In other words, the location of this wound has been changed!".

On 11th April, 1966, Nation Magazine published an article by Jacob Cohen, criticising the work of Cook and Edward Jay Epstein for not accepting the findings of the Warren Commission. This time there was no editorial disclaimer. Cook was furious with Carey McWilliams and insisted he ran his reply without deleting a single word, or he would never write for the magazine again. McWilliams agreed to do this and Cook's letter that appeared on 22nd August dismantled every point that Cohen had made.

I have ordered a copy of Cook's autobiography, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting (1984), to see if he had anything else to say about the assassination.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcookFJ.htm

[David Andrews]

It may be useful to review Best Evidence for David Lifton's experiences with Warren Hinckle at Ramparts - Hinckle seems to have been something of a huckster, perhaps unconcerned with political idealism.

Edited December 12, 2012 by David Andrews

[Bernice Moore]

Here is the link to an older very interesting thread...thanks..if interested....b

http://educationforu...topic=7343&st=0

Edited December 12, 2012 by Bernice Moore