Boycott of The Nation Magazine

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Today on part 2 of their series on The CIA and the Nation Magazine Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone called for a boycott of The Nation Magazine. This is a left-liberal magazine that has been accused by some of being a playing a "left-gatekeeping" role for the CIA regarding the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11.

The program was specifically devoted to the role of Max Holland, a Nation editorial board member, who has also been published by journals run by the CIA and on the CIA's website.

What do members think of this strategy?

Do you think it is possible--given Operation Mockingbird and the history of the CIA and "left" publications-- that the CIA is embedded in The Nation?

The program, which is very easily downloadable by googling Taking Aim, makes much of The Book The Sword and the Shield, which it claims is work of CIA disinformation, designed to show that the Italian Communist Newspaper quoted by some JFK researchers in reference to CLay Shaw, was a tool of the U.S.S.R. Schoenman makes a strong case that this was not the case, and suggests that The Nation is aware

the Max Holland is deliberately practicing disinformation in using this book as a source.

I have been thinking of The Nation in this light for some time, not just with reference to Max Holland. Someone who has always made me suspicious is David Corn, whose appologetics for the zombie like DLC-DNC has always seemed incongrous with the magazine's "left image"

Has anyone here read Corn's bio of Ted Shackley called Blond Ghost? What do you think of it? Someone recently told me they thought it was an extended puff piece.

I think a boycott of this magazine could have an impact for the same reason that it might prove attractive to the CIA: it is in a niche market, and its significance is more in its strategic postion on the media-political-spectrum, than in its circulation.

[Robert Howard]

Do you think it is possible--given Operation Mockingbird and the history of the CIA and "left" publications-- that the CIA is embedded in The Nation?

Not only possible but probable, indeed I believe Mr Woodward is on record as saying something to the effect that CIA asset's in the media have grown much larger. A boycott is a noble idea, but if one wanted to get register a greater impact, I would suggest something like 'a significant portion of the American people' band together and file a lawsuit challenging the various 'media outlets' which serve as little more than 24-7 op/ed pieces for whatever government sanctioned story is being run at the time.

Look up 'Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism' on imdb.com.

Having said that I would ask Forum members if they were familiar with Anthony Sutton, he has written some very engaging material regarding 'The Skull and Bones,' organization so familiar to many of us long before Alexandra Robbins ever thought about it.

To expound further, or as Fox News so disingeniously put's it 'some people say' Sutton's worldview embraces a rather foreign concept to the current 'I Hate Republican(s)/I Hate Democrat(s) Reader outlook.'

Sutton arguably advocates the perspective that its not about Democrats vs. Republicans it's about 'Us vs. Them.'

History is full of examples of societies that turned down the wrong road, thinking everything was under control, or being so paralyzed with fear that nothing was done of any consequence. [see Paris 1789, Russia 1917 or Germany 1934]

To expound even further, there are phrases in the current American pop lexicon that have a most foreign 'underlying current.'

Such as? Try the phrase 'politically correct' but don't take my word for it, do your own digging. 'Framing the debate' is another 'good one.'

It could be argued that those fearless purveyors of the findings of the esteemed Warren Commission who shall remain nameless, have 'framed the debate' over the issue of conspiracy (with a little help from their friends) with such success that in my opinion we are now ostensibly living in an era where mythos has become reality, even while even the much maligned 'American people' (at least the older demographic) realize it is pure ca-ca. But as 'time marches on' the only important thing for scandals in high places to succeed is to keep the official version intact until those most scandalized have entered into eternity.

Question: How can a country that somehow senses that 'something is terribly wrong' overcome the condition, when the correct answer is politically incorrect?

[Jim Hackett II]

The Nation is not the Rag it once was or they wouldn't tolerate the outright LIES of the right wing like Max Holland's lunatic ravings in support of the Warren Commission after all these years. Clear enough a demonstration of asset function for me.

Boycott? It worked for Cesar Chavez.

Also just know thy enemy in the media and out, in educational systems and out, in the body politic and out.

Also I like Antony Sutton's works more than just S & B stuff.

He is right to my opinion about the parties don't matter a d*mn, it really is "us n them".

This is how all police state operate and Us and Them is also an effective concept for any political organizer.

Not being a member of the Bar, I wonder if We The People (Yanks) could effectively sue a corporation of news LIARS for their exercise of choice as to material covered. If we can CBS and the NYTimes should have been bankrupt by the cover ups back to the early 1960s.

If that were possible it would be great. I can think of a couple of thousand uses for Rupert Murdock's billions like feeding the needy in the USA and see that people have medical coverage in this country.

Older folks in too d*mn many cases are doing without EFFECTIVE medical care an issue both parties have refused to address all my 50 year life time. Too many of our grandparents and parents are eating pet food for lack of money to get the "new" medicare Rx "benefits" after taxes and bills. To many children of them are too willing to pretend they do not know or are also too poor to help.

There can be little more effective or rapid way of killing the elderly poor off to save Social Security money to be stolen for the NYSE as per GW Moron Bu$h's desires.

Think about it high stress, poor diet and no real medical care equals a quick blameless death.

Who are the politcos fooling?

This is inexcusable in a nation as wealthy as the USA.

Cry the Beloved Country!

It is my position that the country was stolen when We The People weren't paying attention. Long before 2000.

Citizens should have the SAME Medical coverage as the members of Congress.

All the conditions that so offend thinking people are directly tied back to the Op Mockingbird like deceptions of the Media and both parties.

Or do any folks really thing that Americans approve of pre-emptive war and torture?

The majority most assuredly DO NOT.

The majority are not aware of the trillions of dollars given away as Corporate Welfare but are very much aware of supposed "welfare mothers" living off "my" taxes.

And that fallacy too is a product of the CIA mouthpieces like The Nation and CBS and NY Times and Fox Nazi News.

I wonder when the democrats will recall the GOP campaign slogan "Had Enough Yet?" (1948 or 1952?) and mount an effective campaign against the Fascists that have taken over the GOP.

It is no longer the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. But of the "US" that have.

A "party" of thieves and robber barons as it was once before.

FWIW

Jim

Edited March 29, 2006 by Jim Hackett II

[John Simkin]

Do you think it is possible--given Operation Mockingbird and the history of the CIA and "left" publications-- that the CIA is embedded in The Nation?

The main objective of Operation Mockingbird has always been to control the “liberal” media. Tom Braden revealed this in his 1967 interview. As he pointed out, those on the right were willing to write pro-CIA articles for free. It was the ability to get CIA disinformation into the liberal press that was really important.

It is significant that Phil Graham was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird. His Washington Post was seen as a "liberal" newspaper. Cord Meyer, who ran Mockingbird in the late 1940s and early 1950s was seen as left-wing (he was denounced by Joe McCarthy as a communist).

Jack Anderson is the classic example of an investigative reporter who was manipulated by the CIA and the FBI. Even the great Drew Pearson went along with this occasionally if it meant the opportunity to hurt his enemies (see the Owen Brewster/Howard Hughes case).

I am also suspicious of David Corn. Blond Ghost is a good read and contains a lot of interesting information. However, I think this is an excellent example of what Victor Marchetti called a “limited hangout”. See his article about Howard Hunt and the assassination of JFK here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3841

Here is the relevant quotation:

Victor Marchetti, The Spotlight (14th August, 1978)

A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency.

The topic of discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? (Spotlight, May 8, 1978.) A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever "limited hangout" when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month.

A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

The Washington Post reporting on Watergate was another example of a "limited hangout".

Corn’s book is interesting for what it does not include. The section on Ted Shackley’s relationship with Edwin Wilson is very poor. There is also little in the book on his involvement with Paul Heliwell in the operations against Fidel Castro. This is no coincidence. The same is true of Evan Thomas’ The Very Best Men. Again it is full of fascinating information but is once again a “limited hangout”.

I think Joe Trento is another one who falls into this category. Like Anderson, Pearson, etc. he publishes some good stories based on CIA leaks. Unlike Corn and Thomas, he is not paid to protect Shackley.

However, he is very keen to believe any information he receives that suggests that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. As you will remember, Tim Gratz used to keep on pointing out “Trento is on the left”. That is of course the message. “He is trustworthy because he has a reputation of exposing the CIA”. This is also true of Corn and Thomas. It is all part of the “limited hangout” strategy.

You will find a good summary and links to other articles here:

http://www.oilempire.us/the-nation.html

[William Kelly]

Today on part 2 of their series on The CIA and the Nation Magazine Ralph Schoenman

OF COURSE RALPH SCHOENMAN IS JOAN MELLEN'S HUSBAND, FORMER SECRETARY TO BERT RUSS, AND ORIGINAL SOURCE OF ITALIAN PERMINDEX ARTICLES TO JIM GARRISON, WHO I SHARRED LUNCH AND A CAR RIDE AROUND DC WITH ABOUT EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

and Mya Shone called for a boycott of The Nation Magazine. This is a left-liberal magazine that has been accused by some of being a playing a "left-gatekeeping" role for the CIA regarding the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11.

The program was specifically devoted to the role of Max Holland, a Nation editorial board member, who has also been published by journals run by the CIA and on the CIA's website.

What do members think of this strategy?

EXCUSE ME FOR BUDDING IN HERE BUT I WAS WORKING ON A REVIEW OF MAX HOLLAND'S WORK WHEN I WAS INTERUPTED BY SOME OTHER THINGS, BUT HAVE A FEW POINTS TO MAKE ON THIS SUBJECT, WHICH I HAVE PUT A LOT OF TIME INTO.

BOYCOTT WHAT? READING? BOYCOTT IS NOT A STRATEGY HERE, JUST SOLVING THE JFK ASSASSINATION IS A STRATEGY NO ONE ACTUALLY WANTS TO DO. READ EARLY NATION ARTICLES ON JFK ASSASSINATION AND YOU GET A DIFFERENT SLANT. THESE GUYS - CORN, HOLLAND ET AL, ARE JUST LACKIES - LOOK WHERE HOLLAND'S $ COMES FROM - NATION, MILLER CENTER (DIRECTED BY ZELIKOW 9/11 ABLE DANGER REDACTOR AND DECEPTIVE JFK TRANSCRIPTS), COLUMBIA/CIA AWARD AND A GERMAN VENICIAN BLIND COMPANY - NOW THAT'S MORE SHADDY THAN SPOOKY THAN MARK LANE AND JOESTEIN BEING BANKROLLED BY KGB.

Do you think it is possible--given Operation Mockingbird and the history of the CIA and "left" publications-- that the CIA is embedded in The Nation?

THE NATION'S EDITORIAL POSITION IS SET IN POLICY STONE BY THOSE WHO ARE IN EDITORIAL CONTROL, APPART FROM A FEW CIA STUGES ON BOARD. WHEN GARY AG AND OTHERS TOOK THE FACTS AND EVIDENCE TO THEM, THEY DIDN'T WANT TO HEAR THE TRUTH, AS THEIR AGENDA WAS WITH THEIR POLICY.

The program, which is very easily downloadable by googling Taking Aim, makes much of The Book The Sword and the Shield, which it claims is work of CIA disinformation,

THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD BY V. MITROKIN IS ITSELF A WORK OF DISINFORMATION, ESPECIALLY IN REGARDS TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION, WHICH IS MENTIONED IN THREE DIFFERENT THREADS -1) THE KGB BANKROLLING OF J. JOSTEIN AND M. LANE ( UNKNOWN TO THEM, WHILE HOLLAND CERTAINLY KNOWS WHOSE BANKROLLING HIM ); 2) THE DEAR MR. HUNT LETTER A KGB FABRICATION (NEITHER MARY FERRELL NOR MYSELF BELIEVE THIS); 3) THE CASE OF NSA CLERK ROBERT LIPKA, WHO MITROKIN EXPOSED A DECADE AFTER HE LEFT NSA, WHICH HELPED ESTABLISH MITROKIN'S BONIFIDES. NOT SAID HOWEVER, IS LIPKA'S IDENTITY IN COURT OF THE INDIVIDUAL NAMED IN NSA DOCUMENTS AS THE REAL ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY: LOUIS ANGEL CASTILLO.

THE IDENTIFICATION BY MITROKIN, FORMER KGB ARCHIVIST, OF PUBLICATONS FINANCED BY THE KGB, DOES NOT DISTRACT FROM THE TRUTH OF THE ARTICLES THEY PUBLISHED ABOUT PERMINDEX OR CLAY SHAW'S ASSOCIATION WITH PERMINDEX.

....designed to show that the Italian Communist Newspaper quoted by some JFK researchers in reference to CLay Shaw, was a tool of the U.S.S.R. Schoenman makes a strong case that this was not the case, and suggests that The Nation is aware the Max Holland is deliberately practicing disinformation in using this book as a source.

I MET MAD MAX HOLLAND IN DC AT A CONFERNCE, AND HAD HIM SIGN MY COPY OF HIS BOOK ON THE JFK ASSASSINATION TAPES, AND I THOUGHT HE COULD BE PERSUADED BY THE FACTS AND THE TRUTH, BUT HIS LATEST PIECE ON LAWERS CONVINCED ME HE IS LIKE POSNER AND MERELY A HIRED GUN WHO HAS BEEN TASKED TO SAVE THE FATE OF THE WC. A HARD TASK INDEED.

I have been thinking of The Nation in this light for some time, not just with reference to Max Holland. Someone who has always made me suspicious is David Corn, whose appologetics for the zombie like DLC-DNC has always seemed incongrous with the magazine's "left image"

LIBERAL CONSERVATIVE; LEFT RIGHT; WHO GIVES A CRAP ABOUT THE LEFT OR RIGHT IF ITS THE TRUTH YOU ARE AFTER.

Has anyone here read Corn's bio of Ted Shackley called Blond Ghost?

GOOD QUESTION. I HOPE SOMEONE WHO HAS READ THE BOOK WILL ANSWER IT.

What do you think of it? Someone recently told me they thought it was an extended puff piece.

I think a boycott of this magazine could have an impact for the same reason that it might prove attractive to the CIA: it is in a niche market, and its significance is more in its strategic postion on the media-political-spectrum, than in its circulation.

THE NATION DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF ADS, AND CANCELING SUBSCRIPTIONS DON'T MEAN DIDDLEY. BOYCOTT WHAT? THERE IS NO STRATEGY. THE ONLY STRATEGY IS TO PUBLISH THE TRUTH THAT THE NATION WON'T PRINT AND JUST SOLVE THE DAMN CASE, ENDING THE DEBATE.

BK

BKJFK3@YAHOO.COM

[Pat Speer]

I am also suspicious of David Corn. Blond Ghost is a good read and contains a lot of interesting information. However, I think this is an excellent example of what Victor Marchetti called a “limited hangout”. See his article about Howard Hunt and the assassination of JFK here:

I think you're wrong about Corn. I was on his blog earlier today, and he REAMS Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Hard. He accuses them of Big Brother like tactics, and makes his case. While one might say he's doing this to protect the CIA, I don't see it. I think the CIA knows that if the American people turn on Bush and Cheney, the CIA will go down with them.

http://www.davidcorn.com/index.php

[J. Raymond Carroll]

THE NATION DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF ADS, AND CANCELING SUBSCRIPTIONS DON'T MEAN DIDDLEY. BOYCOTT WHAT? THERE IS NO STRATEGY. THE ONLY STRATEGY IS TO PUBLISH THE TRUTH THAT THE NATION WON'T PRINT AND JUST SOLVE THE DAMN CASE, ENDING THE DEBATE.

BK

BKJFK3@YAHOO.COM

I agree with Bill Kelly. I could never boycott a mazine edited by a hot babe with a Mona Lisa smile. http://www.nationinstitute.org/images/vanden-heuvel-cp.jpg

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

THE NATION DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF ADS, AND CANCELING SUBSCRIPTIONS DON'T MEAN DIDDLEY. BOYCOTT WHAT? THERE IS NO STRATEGY. THE ONLY STRATEGY IS TO PUBLISH THE TRUTH THAT THE NATION WON'T PRINT AND JUST SOLVE THE DAMN CASE, ENDING THE DEBATE.

BK

BKJFK3@YAHOO.COM

I agree with Bill Kelly. I could never boycott a mazine edited by a hot babe with a Mona Lisa smile. http://www.nationinstitute.org/images/vanden-heuvel-cp.jpg

I think a boycott of this magazine is real because it will point out how the media effectively silences critics of the government story. Think of how many readers, ready to be critics of the Governments lies about JFK and 9/11 are being dissuaded from critical reading by writers they trust.

We know from the CIA's creation of Encounter Magazine that they are more likely to be in left-liberal magazines than in right wing magazines. This much is history, not speculation.

Bill suppose you write a book like Joan Mellen's, which, in spite of flaws, makes major breakthroughs as far as CIA direct influence in the Corporate media and direct efforts to sabotage an investigation. Then a mag, like the Nation dismisses it as conspiracy theory in a hatchet job maner, without even mentioning its arguments. Immediately 10,000 first month readers will be dissuaded from reading it. Moreover these are teachers and professors who influence millions of others? Don't you think this needs to be contested?

Would researchers on this site be content with "discovering the truth" if only a hundred other people read their work? A boycott might not "solve" this, but it at least can challenge in a more open way the CIA's chistening some peoples's work as "history" and other's much more solid research as "conspiracy theory".

Just what do we who are devoted to discovering the "truth" about the JFK assassination to light mean by the "truth"? Doesn't this necessarily mean challenging the narrative authority of "the official truth tellers," by letting people know of thier deeply compromising relationship with the political class?

[Dawn Meredith]

I think instead of worrying about any one magazine, the internet is the real battleground. And there is one website on the net that must start coming up "second" and "third". That is disinformationsit John McAdams. He has studied this case in detail and for a new student trying to learn, who is not aware of this person, this site can probably sound very authorative. Just about every name I google, or combination of names, seeking to further my own research leads me FIRST to McAdams' webpages.

I think it has been well documented by now that Holland is paid CIA- I mean he's on the agency's own site, so this needs to be public. Nation readers need to ask why he's employed there. The problem I have always found however is that this issue is not one of left vs. right. In fact the right seems to be way more conspiracy aware than the left . And right leaning conspiray thinkers CARE far more. Most of my leftist friends could care less who killed JFK. SUre they can't stand Bush or the war in Iraq, but they also don't seem to be interested in learning our true history. And leftists like Noam Chomsky can take some credit for this failure.

I also agree with Bill Kelly.

Dawn

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

Because sunlight is still the best disinfectant, the best defense against those of Holland's ilk is to expose each and every misstatement, misinterpretation, misreading and misdirection effort. A number of learned persons have already done so, and I've appended their responses below, so that members here can judge for themselves whether Holland's reportage is accurate, and whether it is sponsored by CIA [an allegation that seems to earn only the most breezy of non-denials from Holland himself, as he notes below.]

First, Peter Dale Scott:

Editor:

In the June 1994 Reviews in American History, you published an essay by Max Holland concerning my book, Deep Politics, which he had already attacked in the Wilsonian Quarterly. His article opens with a reference to "fantastic conspiracies through innuendo, presumption, and pseudo-scholarship" (p. 191); it closes with his own innuendo about "palpable, cunningly manufactured falsehoods" (p. 209).

Surely it is gross intellectual cowardice to allege or imply falsehoods without supporting this accusation. One might have thought that in a 19-page attack on my "opaque prose" and "fevered imagination" (p. 191), there would be at least a paragraph dealing with what I had actually written. I can actually find only one dependent clause on the penultimate page, referring to "the fantasy that Kennedy was on the verge of pulling out from South Vietnam" (p. 208). Even this is not very close to what I actually wrote: "that in late 1963 Kennedy had authorized an initial withdrawal of... troops... to be substantially completed by the end of 1965" (Deep Politics, p. 24). I went on to note how "time after time... critics, from Leslie Gelb in the Times to Alexander Cockburn in the Nation, have replaced this verifiable issue of fact by an unverifiable one: whether or not JFK would have pulled the United States out of Vietnam" (pp. 25-26). Holland, a long-time Nation editor, has, you will note, once again resorted to this simple trick of devious substitution.

Why do we find in an academic journal the turgid rant and wildly mixed metaphors ("unfathomable crossroads," p. 193) of the Nation? Holland demonstrates at the outset that he has done no basic research on Oswald, whom he believes to be the only person important in the case. He writes that "Prior to that Friday [November 22, 1963], no one called him Lee Harvey Oswald" (p. 193). In fact he had been called Lee Harvey Oswald in newspaper accounts of his 1959 defection to the USSR (and 1962 return) in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Herald Tribune, Washington Star, Fort Worth Press, etc. to name only some of those press accounts filed under "Lee Harvey Oswald" by the FBI, ONI, Texas Department of Public Safety, etc. (It is true that the CIA chose for its own reasons of state to label one of its three files on Oswald "Lee Henry Oswald," but Holland would be very foolish to adduce this as proof that to the CIA Oswald was unimportant.) The very first State Department cable from Moscow (1304 of 10/31/59) referred to "Lee Harvey Oswald," and this cable was also filed by other federal government agencies, as well as reproduced in the Warren Commission volumes (18 WH 105). Holland's theorizing about the ignored Oswald's supposed "desire to prove his central importance" (p. 199) is based on, and misled by, perverse secondary sources -- notably Gerald Posner's Case Closed.

Holland also has it wrong when he says that "the FBI and CIA had lied by omission (my italics) to the [Warren] Commission" (p. 204). Officials of both agencies had lied in much more constructive ways, to the Commission as well as to each other. The CIA for example supplied a radically falsified version of "Lee Henry Oswald's" 201 file, which Richard Helms then certified to be accurate and complete. The FBI falsely denied a pre-assassination contact with Oswald, and compounded possible perjury about this (5 WH 13) with criminal destruction of relevant evidence. (I refer you on this last point to Posner's Case Closed, pp. 214-16.)

In my view, these undisputed falsifications of the record after the assassination (which I did not even bother to mention in my book) are much less significant than the misleading games played with the Oswald files of the CIA and FBI (with innuendos of a possible KGB plot) just before the assassination. I gave prominent place to these in my book, and Holland, predictably, ignores them. The newly released documents prove the pre-assassination deceptions to be far worse than I described them. Given these facts, it is surprising that an academic journal supposedly committed to inquiry, shortly after tens of thousands of important new documents have been deposited in the National Archives, would publish Holland's fatuous excuse for not bothering to look at them (they "ultimately will only prove one thing: the Warren Commission got it right" -- p. 208).

There is only one quotation in Holland's essay about Oswald from an actual Oswald contact: a Dallas assistant district attorney (Bill Alexander), who complained that Oswald was so smug "I was going to beat the xxxx out of him" (p. 201). This quotation is much more revealing than it sounds. It is taken from Gerald Posner's Case Closed (p. 345), the latest rehash of the Warren Report for true believers. Alexander is not just a proven xxxx (as are so many of Posner's preferred sources), he is, only three pages later in Posner's book, a self-admitted xxxx!

Posner is a lawyer, and we are quite used to seeing lawyers turn to known liars for facts they cannot obtain elsewhere. But why is a self-admitted xxxx quoted as a source in a supposedly reputable academic journal?

In the first chapter of my book I noted how the Kennedy assassination, and related topics such as Kennedy's late 1963 authorization of troop withdrawal, had become for many disreputable and indiscussible topics (pp. 12-16). Even so, I was disappointed to see those who have published me attacked vigorously for doing so by a major historical journal. I continue to believe that it is the job of the academy to open minds, not to close them.

Peter Dale Scott

Professor of English

Now, from the letters section of The Nation:

Pennington, NJ

I'm the author of A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination and the Case That Should Have Changed History, my seventeenth book, whose credibility is attacked by Max Holland. Nation readers might give pause to Holland's five-year campaign of outright falsehoods about the investigation into the Kennedy assassination by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that have appeared in a range of publications from The Wilson Quarterly, The Atlantic, New Orleans and the Washington Post to, now, The Nation.

Garrison focused on the clandestine service of the CIA as sponsor of the Kennedy assassination as a result of facts he discovered about Lee Harvey Oswald, specifically Oswald's role as an FBI informant and low-level CIA agent sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA's Chief of Counterintelligence, James Angleton, as part of a false defector program. What Garrison had not yet discovered was that Oswald also worked for the US Customs Service in New Orleans.

Contrary to Holland's assertions of the innocence of Clay Shaw, the man Garrison indicted for participation in the murder of President Kennedy was indeed part of the implementation of the murder and was guilty of conspiracy. That Shaw was acquitted does not exonerate him for history. New documents indicate overwhelmingly that Shaw did favors for the CIA. On his deathbed he admitted as much. Shaw's repeated appearances in Louisiana in the company of Oswald demonstrate that Shaw was part of the framing of Oswald for Kennedy's murder. Shaw took Oswald to the East Louisiana State Hospital in an attempt to secure him a job there, one event among many never investigated by the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

Holland's assertion that Garrison based his conclusion that the CIA sponsored the assassination on a series of articles in an Italian newspaper is also incorrect. Garrison had focused on the CIA long before he learned that Shaw was on the board of directors of a CIA-funded phony trade front called Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), based in Rome. Indeed, the newspaper Paese Sera broke the story of Shaw's involvement after a six-month investigation into CIA interference in European electoral politics, only to discover that Garrison had indicted Shaw a few days before the first article was to appear. Moreover, the new documents reveal that CMC and its parent outfit, Permindex, were indeed CIA fronts.

The 1992 Assassinations Records and Review Act has disgorged dozens of documents showing that Shaw was a CIA operative. This is directly contrary to what Holland suggests--that Garrison was a willing victim of "the KGB's wildest fantasy." To cite one example, Shaw was cleared for a project dubbed QKENCHANT, which permitted him to recruit outsiders for CIA projects. Shaw was no mere businessman debriefed by the CIA. One document reveals that among those Shaw recruited in New Orleans was Guy Banister, former FBI Chicago Special Agent in Charge running an ersatz New Orleans detective agency whose side-door address (544 Camp Street) Oswald used on a set of his pro-Castro leaflets, until Banister stopped him.

The former editors of the now-defunct Paese Sera, whom I interviewed, from Jean-Franco Corsini to Edo Parpalione, insisted adamantly that neither the Italian Communist Party, nor the Soviet Communist Party, nor the KGB had any influence on the paper's editorial policy. Outraged by Holland's accusations, Corsini said that he despised the KGB and the CIA equally.

The roots of Holland's charge that Garrison was a dupe of KGB propaganda may be traced to an April 4, 1967, CIA document titled "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report." In it the CIA suggests to its media assets that they accuse critics of the Warren Report of "Communist sympathies." In April 1967 Garrison was at the height of his investigation: He is clearly the critic the CIA had in mind.

In 1961 Richard Helms had already developed the charge that Paese Sera was an outlet for the KGB and for Soviet propaganda. Helms was indignant, but the truth had appeared in Paese Sera: The attempted putsch against Charles de Gaulle by four Algerian-based generals had indeed been supported by the CIA. Holland has merely picked up where Helms, later to become a convicted perjurer, left off--repeating a scenario developed for him by Helms, with the addition of making the accusation of Soviet influence on Garrison.

My book is hardly a "hagiography of the DA," as Holland states. I present a flawed man who exhibited great courage in facing down both the FBI and the CIA in his attempt to investigate the murder of the President. Indeed, Garrison family members were dismayed that I did not present him in a more idealized form. I depicted him as an ordinary man who rose to distinction because of his single-minded commitment to the investigation.

Among the many errors in Holland's latest diatribe is that Shaw died "prematurely," as if somehow Garrison's prosecution hastened his end. In fact, Shaw was a lifelong chain smoker and died of lung cancer. Holland attacks Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the HSCA, for using acoustic evidence to suggest that there was a conspiracy in the Kennedy murder. In fact, the acoustic evidence of at least four shots being fired has been established scientifically by Donald Thomas in the British forensic journal Science and Justice (see also Thomas's well-documented paper, available online, "Hear No Evil: The Acoustical Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination," delivered November 17, 2001).

Blakey certainly can be criticized for his close relationship with the CIA throughout his HSCA investigation. His letters of agreement with the CIA are at the National Archives. The CIA decided how key witnesses were to be deposed, and Blakey acquiesced in all CIA demands and intrusions upon the investigation.

Before Blakey was hired, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg considered accepting the job as counsel. Knowing that the CIA had at the least covered up the facts of the assassination and at worst been involved, Goldberg telephoned CIA director Stansfield Turner and asked him whether, should he take the job, he would have full CIA cooperation. Silence emanated over the wires. Goldberg, naïve perhaps, asked Turner if he had heard the question. "I thought my silence was my answer," Turner said. Goldberg declined the job. Blakey took it. It is no surprise that Holland, who has consistently defended the CIA, does not raise the issue of Blakey's cooperation with the CIA during his HSCA tenure but focuses instead on Blakey's conclusion, forced by the irrefutable acoustic evidence, that there was a conspiracy.

It is one thing for Holland to spread his disinformation in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence. It is quite another for The Nation to allow him continued access without debate to its pages to obfuscate, slander authors like myself and deny evidence fully established--in particular about Jim Garrison and how the new documents establish his credibility and reveal how close he came to the truth, and in general about the Kennedy assassination's sponsors and accessories.

JOAN MELLEN

Charlottesville, Va.

It began with a CIA document classified Top Secret. How do I know that? A decade after the assassination of President Kennedy, with the assistance of the ACLU, I won a precedent-setting lawsuit in the US District Court in Washington, DC, brought pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. The court ordered the police and spy organizations to provide to me many long-suppressed documents.

The CIA document stated that it was deeply troubled by my work in questioning the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The CIA had concluded that my book Rush to Judgment was difficult to answer; indeed, after a careful and thorough analysis of that work by CIA experts, the CIA was unable to find and cite a single error in the book. The CIA complained that almost half of the American people agreed with me and that "Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results." This "trend of opinion," the CIA stated, "is a matter of concern" to "our organization." Therefore, the CIA concluded, steps must be taken.

The CIA directed that methods of attacking me should be discussed with "liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)," instructing them that "further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition." The CIA stressed that their assets in the media should "point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists." Further, their media contacts should "use their influence to discourage" what the CIA referred to as "unfounded and irresponsible speculation." Rush to Judgment, then the New York Times number-one bestselling book, contained no speculation.

The CIA in its report instructed book reviewers and magazines that contained feature articles how to deal with me and others who raised doubts about the validity of the Warren Report. Magazines should, the CIA stated, "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics," adding that "feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose." The CIA instructed its media assets that "because of the standing of the members of the Warren Commission, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society." The CIA was referring to such distinguished gentlemen as Allen Dulles, the former director of the CIA; President Kennedy had fired Dulles from that position for having lied to him about the Bay of Pigs tragedy. Dulles was then appointed by Lyndon Johnson to the Warren Commission to tell the American people the truth about the assassination.

The purpose of the CIA was not in doubt. The CIA stated: "The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims" of those who doubted the Warren Report. The CIA stated that "background information" about me and others "is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments."

With this background we now turn to Max Holland's Nation article, which states that there was a "JFK Lawyers' Conspiracy" among four lawyers: former Senator Gary Hart; Professor Robert Blakey; Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and later a state judge in Louisiana; and me.

Before I wrote Rush to Judgment I had never met any of the other three "co-conspirators." I still have not had the pleasure of meeting Senator Hart, and I know of no work that he has done in this area. I met Professor Blakey only once; he had been appointed chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and at that meeting I told him that I was disappointed in his approach and methods. Not much of a lawyers' conspiracy.

Each of the other statements as to alleged fact are false and defamatory. Holland states that I am not scrupulous, that I am dishonest and that I spread innuendo about the sinister delay in the Warren Commission investigation, an assertion not made by me but fabricated in its entirety by Holland. As a silent echo of his CIA associates Holland does not point to one assertion as to fact, of the thousands I have made about the facts surrounding the death of our President, that he claims is inaccurate.

Finally, Holland strikes pay dirt. He uncovers, are you ready for this, the fact that I had asserted that "the government was indifferent to the truth." I confess. Is that now a crime under the Patriot Act? Isn't that what The Nation is supposed to be asserting and proving?

Holland states that the KGB was secretly funding my work with a payment of "$12,500 (in 2005 dollars)." It was a secret all right. It never happened. Holland's statement is an outright lie. Neither the KGB nor any person or organization associated with it ever made any contribution to my work. No one ever made a sizable contribution, with the exception of Corliss Lamont, who contributed enough for me to fly one time from New York to Dallas to interview eyewitnesses. The second-largest contribution was $50 given to me by Woody Allen. Have Corliss and Woody now joined Holland's fanciful conspiracy?

Funds for the work of the Citizens Committee of Inquiry were raised by me. I lectured each night for more than a year in a Manhattan theater. The Times referred to the very well attended talks as one of the longest-running performances off Broadway. That was not a secret. I am surprised that Holland never came across that information, especially since he refers to what he calls "The Speech" in his diatribe.

Apparently, Holland did not fabricate the KGB story; his associates at the CIA did. There is proof for that assertion, but I fear that I have taken too much space already. For that information, contact me at mlane777@cs.com.

Am I being unfair when I suggest a connection between Holland and the CIA? Here is the CIA game plan: Fabricate a disinformation story. Hand it to a reporter with liberal credentials; for example, a Nation contributing editor. If the reporter cannot find a publication then have the CIA carry it on its own website under the byline of the reporter. Then the CIA can quote the reporter and state, " according to..."

Holland writes regularly for the official CIA website. He publishes information there that he has been given by the CIA. The CIA, on its official website, then states, "According to Holland..." If you would like to look into this matter of disinformation laundering, enter into your computer "CIA.gov + Max Holland." You will find on the first page alone numerous articles by Holland supporting and defending the CIA and attacking those who dare to disagree, as well as CIA statements attributing the information to Holland.

A question for The Nation. When Holland writes an article for you defending the CIA and attacking its critics, why do you describe him only as "a Nation contributing editor" and author? Is it not relevant to inform your readers that he also is a contributor to the official CIA website and then is quoted by the CIA regarding information that the agency gave him?

An old associate of mine, Adlai Stevenson, once stated to his political opponent, a man known as a stranger to the truth--if you stop telling lies about me I will stop telling the truth about you. I was prepared to adopt that attitude here. But I cannot. Your publication has defamed a good friend, Jim Garrison, after he died and could not defend himself against demonstrably false charges.

You have not served your readers by refusing to disclose Holland's CIA association. The Nation and Holland have engaged in the type of attack journalism that recalls the bad old days. If I fought McCarthyism in the 1950s as a young lawyer, how can I avoid it now when it appears in a magazine that has sullied its own history? The article is filled with ad hominem attacks, name calling and fabrications, and it has done much mischief. I will hold you and Holland accountable for your misconduct. I can honorably adopt no other course.

To mitigate damages I require that you repudiate the article and apologize for publishing it. That you publish this letter as an unedited article in your next issue. That you do not publish a reply by Holland in which he adds to the defamation and the damage he has done, a method you have employed in the past. That you provide to me the mailing addresses of your contributing editors and members of your editorial board so that I may send this letter to them. I am confident that Gore Vidal and Bob Borosage, Tom Hayden and Marcus Raskin, all of whom I know, and many others such as Molly Ivins, John Leonard and Lani Guinier, who I do not know but who I respect and admire, would be interested in the practices of The Nation. In addition, I suggest that ethical journalism requires that in the future you fully identify your writers so that your readers may make an informed judgment about their potential bias.

If you have a genuine interest in the facts regarding the assassination you should know that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the United States Congress) concluded that probably a conspiracy was responsible for the murder and that, therefore, the Warren Report that Holland defends so aggressively is probably wrong. In addition, the only jury to consider this question decided in a trial held in the US District Court in a defamation case that the newspaper did not defame E. Howard Hunt when it suggested that Hunt and the CIA had killed the President. The forewoman of the jury stated that the evidence proved that the CIA had been responsible for the assassination.

I have earned many friends in this long effort. Those who have supported my work include Lord Bertrand Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Dr. Linus Pauling, Senator Richard Schweicker, Paul McCartney, Norman Mailer, Richard Sprague, Robert Tannenbaum and also members of the House of Representatives, including Don Edwards, Henry Gonzales, Andrew Young, Bella Abzug, Richardson Preyer, Christopher Dodd, Herman Badillo, Mervyn Dymally, Mario Biaggi and, above all, according to every national poll, the overwhelming majority of the American people. I have apparently earned a few adversaries along the way. Too bad that they operate from the shadows; that tends to remove the possibility of an open debate.

MARK LANE

Washington, DC

While many thought the 1979 report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations was the final word on President Kennedy's murder, it wasn't. In 1992 Congress passed the JFK Act. As a result, a huge volume of new materials are available for study.

One significant revelation is the extent to which the CIA was a focus of the committee's probe. Another is the discovery by Jefferson Morley, a columnist for WashingtonPost.com, that the CIA corrupted the committee's probe. The CIA brought former case officer George Joannides out of retirement to handle the committee's inquiries about the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and DRE, a CIA-funded Cuban exile organization. The CIA never told the committee that Joannides was DRE's case officer when Oswald and DRE were in contact. Joannides then thwarted committee efforts to obtain CIA records about the DRE-Oswald relationship. Thus, the last official word on the assassination is that of a Congressional committee that was subverted by an agency that itself was a focus of the investigation.

These facts raise serious issues. The CIA's conduct undermined democratic accountability and compromised the integrity of Congressional oversight on a matter of national security. Shouldn't Congress now investigate to determine why the CIA sabotaged the probe? Was it because, as some former committee staffers have said, an element of the CIA was involved in the plot? Or is there some other explanation?

In 2004 and 2005 the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) held conferences to discuss the JFK assassination. On the issue of conspiracy, two scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discredited the last remaining basis for the single bullet theory (SBT), which theorized that both Kennedy and John Connally were hit by the same bullet, fired from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle--the sine qua non for the lone assassin theory. These eminent scientists said that due to scientific advances not only can the SBT not be substantiated but the fragments tested could have come from one--or as many as five--bullets, including a Remington or some other rifle. Holland mentions none of this.

Holland denounces the acoustics evidence proving there was a conspiracy. He misrepresents acoustics as being the only evidence the committee had of a conspiracy and mistakenly says that it is uncorroborated. In fact, the first acoustics panel was corroborated by the second. Both were further corroborated and strengthened by Donald Thomas's study. Holland doesn't mention Thomas, but does obliquely refer to the work of Richard Garwin.Thomas debated Garwin at the AARC conference. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Lardner reported, Thomas "upstaged" Garwin, showing "how the noises coincided precisely with frames from the Zapruder film and echoes off buildings in Dealey Plaza reflecting the gunfire." Lardner also noted that Garwin said he "had not studied the echoes." Again, none of this is in Holland's account.

Holland, winner of a CIA award for Studies in Intelligence, has been working on a book since 1993 defending the Warren Commission. In applying for an Anthony Lukas work-in-progress award in 2001, he said that as a result of his study "the Commission can emerge in a new light: battered somewhat but with its probity and the accuracy of its findings intact." He also stressed that he had spent a full year researching "the remarkable effort of KGB disinformation on Garrison's probe." Holland debated this thesis with Gary Aguilar at the 2004 AARC conference. In my view, Holland lost hands down (a DVD of the conference is available through aarclibrary.org). In advancing his thesis, Holland relies on dubious materials, including the word of former CIA director Richard Helms, who was charged with perjury but copped a plea of withholding information from Congress.

Holland now uses the AARC's 2005 conference to theorize that a vast conspiracy of lawyers "less scrupulous" than those at the Warren Commission spread KGB disinformation and convinced Congress and the American people that the Warren Report was wrong. This is a McCarthyite tactic for discrediting the AARC conferences and Warren Commission critics generally. It seems no one ever saw the Zapruder film showing JFK thrown violently to the left rear, no one ever looked at the Magic Bullet and concluded it was so undeformed it could not have done all the damage alleged. No, it was them bloody KGB disinformation lawyers that brainwashed them.

In 1967 the CIA directed its stations to tamp growing criticism of the Warren Report by discussing it with "liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)" and "point out that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists." The dispatch further instructs that stations "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics," saying that "book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose."

Holland's piece on our conference looks as if it were written to specification. While I had not expected favorable coverage from Holland when I overrode the advice of friends and associates and honored The Nation's request that he be given journalistic privileges and courtesies, I hadn't expected an attack of this character. The general opinion of attendees, repeatedly expressed to me personally, was that the 2005 conference was the best ever on the subject. Max Holland echoed this in an e-mail to me: "Having Garwin, Hart and Blakey give presentations made the conference superior to any I've attended. I'll do my best to get an article in."

JIM LESAR, president, AARC

Vallejo, Calif.

Max Holland has engaged for years in propagating disinformation on behalf of the CIA concerning the investigation of its role in the official execution of John F. Kennedy. Holland's Nation article expatiates upon his fabricated thesis that Jim Garrison's evidence of the CIA's role in the Kennedy murder derived from a series of articles in Paese Sera in 1967.

I sent those articles to Jim Garrison in my capacity as director of the Who Killed Kennedy? committee in London, whose members and supporters included Bertrand Russell, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Arnold Toynbee, Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck and Lord Boyd Orr. The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, of which I was then executive director, had conducted an extended investigation of the role of the CIA in fomenting and coordinating brutal repression, disappearances and assassinations, which culminated in a military putsch in Greece. Our Save Greece Now Committee unearthed concrete data regarding the role of the CIA and the Greek colonels that helped mobilize the movement for which Deputy Grigoris Lambrakis paid with his life. In the aftermath, our committee and its Greek leader, Michael Peristerakis, led a demonstration of more than 1 million that brought down the regime.

CIA activity across Europe led Paese Sera to undertake a six-month investigation into the role in Italy of the CIA, with its plans for a military coup. The CIA colonels' coup in Greece unfolded shortly after Paese Sera's prescient series. Prominent writers and intellectuals, including Rossana Rossanda, K.S. Karol, Lelio Basso, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, supported Paese Sera.

This investigation was entirely unrelated to events in the United States or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was fortuitous that the CIA front organizations in Italy that emerged from CIA plans to overthrow the Italian government included Centro Mondiale Commerciale and Permindex, of which Clay Shaw was a director in New Orleans.

Jim Garrison was well on the trail of Shaw and his role as a CIA handler of Lee Harvey Oswald before Paese Sera published its series of articles. When I sent them to Garrison, he had already charged Shaw in relation to the murder of Kennedy. Jim found the Paese Sera series confirmatory and important, but the articles were not admissible as evidence in court.

Holland has written repeatedly that Paese Sera was a "communist" paper and a conduit for KGB disinformation. In fact, Paese Sera was not unlike The Nation before Holland's infiltration of it as a contributing editor (except Paese Sera was less inclined to defend the leaders of the Soviet Union than was The Nation during the decades since the 1930s). The Paese Sera fiction is real intelligence disinformation arising not from the KGB but from an April 7, 1967, directive by Helms to CIA media assets, "How To Respond to Critics of the Warren Report."

What emerged from the investigative work of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and Paese Sera was the full evidence of the forty-year campaign of the CIA in Italy, now known as Operation Gladio, a campaign of terror that included the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the bombing of the Bologna railway station.

I worked with Jim Garrison for twenty years and sent him many documents, e.g., Secret Service Report 767, which cites the disclosure by Alan Sweat, chief of the criminal division of the Dallas Sheriff's Office, of Lee Harvey Oswald's FBI Informant Number S172 and Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade's citation of Oswald's CIA number 110669.

Finally, Philip Zelikow, national security adviser to both Bush administrations and appointed by George W. Bush to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board immediately after the 9/11 attacks, has endorsed Holland's specious charges in Foreign Affairs, even as he and Holland were colleagues at the Miller Institute. Zelikow, as head of the 9/11 Commission, has been a point man in covering up the role of US intelligence in the planning and implementation of the events of September 11.

It is fitting that the very individuals who protect the treason at the top that defines the official assassination of President Kennedy are performing that role in relation to the events of 9/11--a precise correlative to Operation Gladio, first exposed by the investigative work of Paese Sera, which linked the CIA murder apparatus in Italy to the one that murdered the head of state in America.

Holland seeks to present the investigators into official murder in America not as people of principle and daring but as disinformation tools of an intelligence service. When it comes to being a pimp for the imperium, Mr. Holland, Physician, heal thyself!

RALPH SCHOENMAN

HOLLAND REPLIES

Washington, DC

Apparently, a word needs to be said about the article I wrote for Studies in Intelligence, a journal published by the CIA. The first iteration of this story, which exposed the impact of Soviet disinformation on Jim Garrison's persecution of Clay Shaw, actually appeared in the Spring 2001 Wilson Quarterly. However, the Quarterly, like The Nation, does not run footnoted articles, and I wanted a fully documented version to appear, since I had conducted extensive interviews and research in Italy, and into CIA documents at the National Archives. There are only four English-language journals that print scholarly articles on intelligence (and if one is so inclined, it is a snap to "prove" they are all CIA-connected). Studies is the oldest, and I went there first. That's the whole story, except that, yes, the article (available online) then also won an award.

Now to some brass tacks in the space I have available. Both Joan Mellen and Mark Lane make much of a CIA document that sounds very sinister--until you actually read it and put it into context. The document was written in April 1967, the height of the bout of madness otherwise known as the Garrison investigation. As one of the government agencies now being accused of complicity in the assassination, the CIA was very concerned about having such allegations gain widespread acceptance abroad in the midst of the cold war. "Innuendo of such seriousness affects...the whole reputation of the American government," observed the CIA. So the agency launched a campaign, using its media assets abroad, to counter criticism of the Warren Report by the likes of Mellen, Lane and others. Is that really shocking?

Joan Mellen's penchant for accuracy can be summed up in the fact that she cannot even bother to spell correctly (here or in her book) the names of Gianfranco Corsini and Edo Parpaglioni. Ordinarily, this would be nit-picking, but in this instance her elementary sloppiness is as good a window as any into the miasma of bald lies, misrepresentations and truthiness that she calls a book.

The claim that Paese Sera's lies about Shaw were the fortuitous result of a "six-month investigation" is a belated fiction embraced by Mellen and other Garrison acolytes. The co-author of the articles in question, Angelo Aver, claimed no such thing when interviewed in 2000, nor did any Paese Sera editors I contacted (including Corsini).

I find it illuminating that Lane has taken no legal action (not even in Britain!) against the authors (Christopher Andrew and KGB archivist-turned-defector Vasili Mitrokhin) and publishers of the 1999 volume that revealed "the [KGB's] New York residency sent [Lane initially] 1,500 dollars to help finance his research" through an intermediary. That doesn't necessarily mean it came in a lump sum. And neither Andrew/Mitrokhin nor I alleges that Lane was a witting recipient, just a useful one.

All the reliable forensic and scientific evidence developed around the JFK case either positively supports or does not negate the findings of the Warren Report. An explanation of the so-called acoustic evidence can be found at mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell.

Jim Lesar has often attempted to impede The Nation's coverage of AARC conferences when I have been designated to cover them. On this go-round he hinted (before backing off) that a press credential would not be forthcoming unless The Nation guaranteed there would be an article. After the conference, impressed as I was by AARC's ability to attract the likes of Dr. Richard Garwin, former Senator Hart and Professor Blakey, I wanted to assure Lesar that I would do my best to submit an article that the editors would deem worthwhile, even though it's harder than ever to get into the magazine when writing about a largely historical subject. That didn't mean, however, that I had checked my brains at the door.

MAX HOLLAND

Man Holland and Gus Russo are merely two meagre and ultimately fruitless parts of an on-going rear-guard action designed to absolve CIA of all suspicion relative to the JFK assassination; to depict those who critique the Warren Commission [and HSCA, come to that] as charlatans, hucksters and Commie dupes; to lend an unearned patina of sophisticated scholarship to those who defend the Warren worldview; and to lay blame for the assassination at the Commies' doorstep, by any means necessary, fair or foul.

It wasn't too long ago, we had a member here who specialized in the same approach.

It shouldn't be too suprising to learn that their output is seized upon by the spooks themselves. Hence, a quick visit to the website of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers illustrates just how CIA's own [ex-?]personnel utilize that output:

SECTION IV - BOOKS AND SOURCES

THE JFK ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY THEORY -- The widespread conspiracy theory that linked the Central Intelligence Agency to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has its roots in a sophisticated Soviet disinformation campaign, according to an analysis by author Max Holland that is published in the latest issue of the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence.

According to Holland, a Soviet-inspired report in an Italian newspaper tying businessman Clay Shaw to the CIA led New Orleans district attorney James Garrison to his conclusion that the Agency was implicated in a cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. This view would later be dramatized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK.

Holland's scholarly detective work makes perhaps the best use to date of the rich inventory of documents that were declassified at the direction of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

See "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination" in the Fall-Winter 2001 edition of Studies in Intelligence here:

(http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html)

Interesting that the orchestrated campaign encouraged by the infamous 1967 CIA document "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" continues to this very day, brought to you by people who insist that while that document was a perfectly reasonable response to international doubts about the Warren Commission, they themselves are not actually pawns of the CIA.

[Brian LeCloux]

As a long time reader of The Nation I can only say that this article by Holland was ridiculous. It hardly touched on any facts about the case and Gerald McKnight has commented on this site about his problems with Holland.

I agree with Pat Speer about David Corn and would extend that to the magazine generally. They've laid out a case for Bush's impeachment, they publish the excellent Alexander Cockburn who regularly criticizes the CIA and wrote a book about how the mainstream media covered up the Contra CIA cocaine connections.

The Nation is generally critical of government investigations highlighting problems with the Watergate, Iran Contra, and many, many other government cover ups. Just in this one instance do they support the official line. Why?

One line of speculation would be that the official investigation was headed up by a Nation magazine hero, Earl Warren.

But they did publish an early article on the case by Mark Lane, I believe. And Fred Cook, a long time Nation writer was very critical of the official lone gunman theory.

The Nation is America's leading journal of opinion and is generally, as actor Paul Newman claims, the smartest magazine.

Therefore, instead of boycotting, the views of many fine writers here should be passed on to them. Press the press. As an option write Corn and see what he thinks. Not every writer for the Nation believes in the single bullet theory. They're a pretty diverse group.

[John Simkin]

Robert - thanks for posting these excellent letters. The fact that the Nation published these articles suggests that it is worth buying. I would like to use extracts from these letters on my web pages on Mark Lane and Joan Mellen. Could you confirm that they appeared in the March 20, 2006 issue.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

Robert - thanks for posting these excellent letters. The fact that the Nation published these articles suggests that it is worth buying. I would like to use extracts from these letters on my web pages on Mark Lane and Joan Mellen. Could you confirm that they appeared in the March 20, 2006 issue.

Yes, indeed, John. [Posted on their website March 1, 2006]

Holland seems to be little more than a cheap shot artist who hits and runs. The fact that his output is published in scholarly journals grants him credibility, and earns him epithets from the ill-informed such as "reputable historian" [just one of the terms I found in visiting various websites that rehash his stuff.] That he is also published by The Nation only spit-shines his "liberal" credentials.

Holland's attack on lawyers [they're the ones responsible for sustaining the otherwise groundless anti-Warren hysteria], his vivisection of Nigel Turner ["half-truths, omissions, distortions, and outright lies"], his continuing argument that Jim Garrison was played for a fool by the Soviets [and Mark Lane was paid by them], and his unwavering assertions that all those who seek to investigate this non-mystery are "people intent on attracting attention to themselves or trying to make a dollar off of the tragedy of John F. Kennedy’s murder," should tell us much of what we need to know about this "reputable historian" and how he operates. That he is demonstrably wrong on virtually each and every assertion he makes about this case - as illustrated by the letters I posted from those who do know about this case - doesn't seem to cause him a moment's lost sleep. Truly, a "true believer."

Of course, if a boycott of The Nation were to have any success, it would only serve to divide and conquer what little remains of the "left" in the USA. Then again, for those who have an interest in the Kennedy assassination, The Nation has been all but useless. The trend among US left-ish intellectuals [Chomsky, Cockburn, et al] published by The Nation is to disown any and all conspiracy motifs, and thereby draw a distinction between their ostensibly "moderate" selves and the baying conspiracy jackals whose existence draws these intellectuals into disrepute at Manhattan cocktail parties.

The CIA's 1967 instruction paper ""Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" suggests the various methods that might be employed by the Agency's "media assets." Holland seems to have followed this instruction paper closely, and adheres to each of its directives. His work is published by CIA-funded journals, the output of which is then regurgitated by CIA and its various proprietary organizations. Moreover, it is clearly apparent to any impartial mind that Holland's purpose is not merely to "counter criticism of the Warren Report," but to absolve CIA of any and all suspicion of involvement in either the crime or its subsequent coverup. What possible inferences can one draw from this set of facts, if not that Holland is a witting tool of Langley? [Holland would, of course, use such a question to point out the preposterous paranoia of the "conspiracy buffs."]

That he finds editorial space in The Nation to conduct his literary character assassinations should give us pause for thought. This is the one issue that The Nation's editorial board refuses to see clearly, and rational minds should ask themselves why this is the case.

[John Simkin]

Man Holland and Gus Russo are merely two meagre and ultimately fruitless parts of an on-going rear-guard action designed to absolve CIA of all suspicion relative to the JFK assassination; to depict those who critique the Warren Commission [and HSCA, come to that] as charlatans, hucksters and Commie dupes; to lend an unearned patina of sophisticated scholarship to those who defend the Warren worldview; and to lay blame for the assassination at the Commies' doorstep, by any means necessary, fair or foul.

It wasn't too long ago, we had a member here who specialized in the same approach.

It shouldn't be too suprising to learn that their output is seized upon by the spooks themselves. Hence, a quick visit to the website of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers illustrates just how CIA's own [ex-?]personnel utilize that output:

SECTION IV - BOOKS AND SOURCES

THE JFK ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY THEORY -- The widespread conspiracy theory that linked the Central Intelligence Agency to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has its roots in a sophisticated Soviet disinformation campaign, according to an analysis by author Max Holland that is published in the latest issue of the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence.

According to Holland, a Soviet-inspired report in an Italian newspaper tying businessman Clay Shaw to the CIA led New Orleans district attorney James Garrison to his conclusion that the Agency was implicated in a cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. This view would later be dramatized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK.

Holland's scholarly detective work makes perhaps the best use to date of the rich inventory of documents that were declassified at the direction of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

See "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination" in the Fall-Winter 2001 edition of Studies in Intelligence here:

(http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html)

Interesting that the orchestrated campaign encouraged by the infamous 1967 CIA document "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" continues to this very day, brought to you by people who insist that while that document was a perfectly reasonable response to international doubts about the Warren Commission, they themselves are not actually pawns of the CIA.

It is interesting how the CIA and their assets still use the Cold War trick of describing critics as “communists”. As you say, Tim Gratz used to use the same tactic. There is an interesting article in today’s Guardian about how this approach is currently being used to attack those American citizens complaining about Bush’s foreign policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1746121,00.html

It is true that the left have been very reluctant to get involved in exploring conspiracy theories. I think this is because the media have successfully portrayed us as “weirdoes”.

However, I have to admit I do not understand the CIA strategy of attacking people like Joan Mellen, Mark Lane, etc. I would have thought that the best tactic is to ignore what researchers produce. For example, see how they have dealt with the case of Scott Enyart. He says in the radio interview that his case received no publicity at all.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6487

http://www.blackopradio.com/inc_favorite.html

These letters reveal Max Holland for what he is. I would have thought that this exchange has only damaged the reputation of the lone-gunman theorists. Hopefully we have gained a few supporters from the readership of The Nation.

[Antti Hynonen]

John Simkin Posted Yesterday, 02:04 PM

QUOTE(Robert Charles-Dunne @ Apr 2 2006, 08:19 PM)

Man Holland and Gus Russo are merely two meagre and ultimately fruitless parts of an on-going rear-guard action designed to absolve CIA of all suspicion relative to the JFK assassination; to depict those who critique the Warren Commission [and HSCA, come to that] as charlatans, hucksters and Commie dupes; to lend an unearned patina of sophisticated scholarship to those who defend the Warren worldview; and to lay blame for the assassination at the Commies' doorstep, by any means necessary, fair or foul.

It wasn't too long ago, we had a member here who specialized in the same approach.

It shouldn't be too suprising to learn that their output is seized upon by the spooks themselves. Hence, a quick visit to the website of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers illustrates just how CIA's own [ex-?]personnel utilize that output:

SECTION IV - BOOKS AND SOURCES

THE JFK ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY THEORY -- The widespread conspiracy theory that linked the Central Intelligence Agency to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has its roots in a sophisticated Soviet disinformation campaign, according to an analysis by author Max Holland that is published in the latest issue of the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence.

According to Holland, a Soviet-inspired report in an Italian newspaper tying businessman Clay Shaw to the CIA led New Orleans district attorney James Garrison to his conclusion that the Agency was implicated in a cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. This view would later be dramatized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK.

Holland's scholarly detective work makes perhaps the best use to date of the rich inventory of documents that were declassified at the direction of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

See "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination" in the Fall-Winter 2001 edition of Studies in Intelligence here:

(http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html)

Interesting that the orchestrated campaign encouraged by the infamous 1967 CIA document "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" continues to this very day, brought to you by people who insist that while that document was a perfectly reasonable response to international doubts about the Warren Commission, they themselves are not actually pawns of the CIA.

It is interesting how the CIA and their assets still use the Cold War trick of describing critics as “communists”. As you say, Tim Gratz used to use the same tactic. There is an interesting article in today’s Guardian about how this approach is currently being used to attack those American citizens complaining about Bush’s foreign policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1746121,00.html

It is true that the left have been very reluctant to get involved in exploring conspiracy theories. I think this is because the media have successfully portrayed us as “weirdoes”.

However, I have to admit I do not understand the CIA strategy of attacking people like Joan Mellen, Mark Lane, etc. I would have thought that the best tactic is to ignore what researchers produce. For example, see how they have dealt with the case of Scott Enyart. He says in the radio interview that his case received no publicity at all.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6487

http://www.blackopradio.com/inc_favorite.html

These letters reveal Max Holland for what he is. I would have thought that this exchange has only damaged the reputation of the lone-gunman theorists. Hopefully we have gained a few supporters from the readership of The Nation.

John, I have always wondered about this. I can not understand the American fear regarding communism. To me communism is simply a far left form of socialism, existing in a few countries around the world. In the last few decades communist regimes have been dwindling, so I can not see any meaningful threats regarding the spreading of communism.

This tactic made a little more sense in the 50's and perhaps the 60's, but definitely not in the 21st century. As far as I can tell the threats to the traditional white republican Americans in the 50's and 60's were more visibly the rights of minorities, such as those of African Americans.

With regards to Enyart and the lack of publicity with regards to his story, I can only guess, but perhaps it is operations such as Mockingbird, which control what is publicized and what is not.