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William W. Turner


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William W. Turner has written several great books about the JFK assassination and related events. I would highly recommend the following.

Hoover's FBI: The Men and the Myth (1970)

Power on the Right (1973)

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1978)

The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (1981)

Deadly Secrets (1992)

Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails (2001)

Mission Not Accomplished: How Bush Lost the War on Terrorrism (2004).

I hope to persuade Bill to discuss these books on the Forum.

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You can find out more about William W. Turner here:

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

The Namebase entry is here:

http://www.namebase.org/main4/William-W-Turner.html

Blumenthal,S. Yazijian,H. Government by Gunplay. 1976 (57, 266)

CounterSpy 1976-W (63)

Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#17 (47)

Donner,F. The Age of Surveillance. 1981 (111)

Hinckle,W. If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade. 1990 (199, 206-8, 231)

Lobster Magazine (Britain) 1992-#24 (12)

Melanson,P. The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination. 1991 (168, 342)

Moldea,D. The Hoffa Wars. 1978 (256)

Pepper,W. Orders to Kill. 1995 (248, 295)

Probe Magazine. June/July 1989 (17)

Seven Days Magazine 1978-04-21 (17)

Summers,A. Official and Confidential. 1993 (229-30, 259)

Swearingen,M.W. FBI Secrets. 1995 (iii, 55, 161)

Thomas,E. The Man to See. 1991 (199-200)

Turner,W. Christian,J. The Assassination of RFK. 1993 (20-4, 29-30)

Turner,W. Hoover's FBI. 1993 (3-61, 124-9)

Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001

Wise,D. The American Police State. 1978 (150)

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  • 7 years later...
The Cuban Connection: Nixon, Castro, and the Mob

by William Turner

Book Description

Release Date: May 14, 2013

A former FBI agent and investigative journalist examines the fateful meeting between Castro and Nixon and the murky connections that existed between official Washington, the CIA, and organized crime in Cuba. His vivid narrative provides insider information that many in power never wanted the public to know. In April 1959, Fidel Castro toured the United States at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Though he was wary, Castro entertained some hope of establishing an approchement with Washington. But after being snubbed by President Eisenhower and receiving a less-than-cordial reception from Vice President Richard Nixon, Castro got the strong impression that US intentions toward his new Cuban government were hostile. Based on firsthand interviews with many of the key players involved in Cuban-American relations of that era, plus thorough background research, Turner raises a host of disturbing questions. Before the ouster of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by Castro, why did Vice President Nixon often socialize at Havana casinos with his Cuban friend Bebe Rebozo? How was the rabid anti-Communism of the Eisenhower administration, especially its instant dislike of Castro, connected to its cozy relationship with the former mob-controlled dictatorship? How did all of this set the stage for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and, ultimately, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the JFK assassination?

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1616147571

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Everyone MUST read Turner and Christians book on the Assassination of RFK. And check out the publication history of this book....

When a friend of the authors called Epstein about the book's fate, he replied he did not want to speak about it. But what appears to have occurred is that when Random House was sold to Si Newhouse-Roy Cohn's family friend-Bob Loomis's star ascended, and Epstein's began to fade. As readers of Probe know, Loomis was once married to the secretary for James Angleton. He has been a mentor and shepherd for the likes of Sy Hersh, James Phelan, and Gerald Posner. In other words, he is dedicated to upholding the official story no matter how porous it may be. When asked why the Turner/Christian book was burned, Loomis replied, as Daryl Gates did about the disposal of crime scene evidence, "To make space for others. They do that with books." Not to apologize for Loomis, but if I was him, I would want to make this book disappear too. It is devastating to the official story. Because of an attorney named George Davis, Turner and Christian were on the case almost from the beginning. Davis was the San Francisco based lawyer for a man named Rev. Jerry Owen aka The Walking Bible. In 1968, Owen was like a low-rent Jerry Falwell, a traveling evangelist preacher. Owen had voluntarily gone to the Los Angeles Police Department with information about his meeting with Sirhan Sirhan just prior to the RFK assassination. That internal inquiry within the LAPD was called Special Unit Senator (SUS). The two men running it, Manny Pena, and Hank Hernandez, had no use for Owen even though his story seemed quite interesting and relevant. He said that he had encountered Sirhan the day before the California primary of June 4, 1968. Sirhan had been hitchhiking with a friend when Owen picked him up. The conversation turned to horses, and Owen told Sirhan he actually owned some. Since he was a former jockey, Sirhan told him he would be interested in buying one. A pair of Sirhan's companions--a male and female--arranged with Owen to return the following evening to the back of the Ambassador Hotel. They gave him a hundred dollars down, and promised two hundred more upon delivery. Owen said he could not fulfill the offer since he had a preaching appointment in Oxnard on the night of June 4th. On June 5th, traveling back from Oxnard, Owen stopped at a dinette in a hotel. He looked up at the TV and saw a photo of Sirhan-who he had known as "Joe". He then reported this information to the police. Some of the story seemed to make sense, e.g. Sirhan had four hundred dollar bills on him when apprehended, witness Sandra Serrano later reported that Sirhan had entered the Ambassador that night with a male and female companion. Owen said that after making his police report he began to get threatening calls. Deciding he better get out of LA, he stayed at a friend's house in Napa Valley. That friend knew Davis. Davis heard the story, got it into the local papers, and called a news conference. Turner and Christian, both reporters at the time, arrived at his office to hear it. It never came off. SUS got wind of it and immediately flew up Pena and Hernandez to stop it. Davis complied, but he got Turner a private one-hour interview with Owen. Owen told him what happened, and Turner taped it. And like an old-fashioned adventure story, this is what sets the two protagonists out on "a tale full of sound and fury". But unlike Shakespeare, it signifies a lot. The paradox with the Bobby Kennedy case is this: although on the surface itappears to be a simple open and shut case, once you peel away that surface, it is more clearly a conspiracy than the JFK case. And once you realize that not only did Sirhan not kill RFK, but he could not kill him, then you enter a world of threats, intimidation, shootings, and falsified evidence. One could say that it resembles the JFK case. But there are elements of it that are not like anything in the JFK case. And no matter how cheapjack writers like Dan Moldea and David Heymann try to cover them up, they will not go away. In the JFK case you have what is perhaps one of the worst autopsies ever performed in a high profile case. In the RFK case, Thomas Noguchi's painstaking, thorough work is crucial to unraveling elements of the conspiracy. In the JFK case, the actual assassins were mostly out of sight, hundreds of feet away, and never identified. In the RFK case, they were in direct proximity to Kennedy, in plain sight of witnesses. Further, they were questioned and even apprehended. With Oswald, you have basically a simple frame-up, sometimes called a "throw down"; with Sirhan, the framing circumstances are much more complex and intriguing. This is where one gets into the utterly and endlessly fascinating aspects peculiar to this case: namely the Manchurian Candidate, and the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress. The great achievement of this book is not that it makes all of the above credible. But it makes it convincing. One of the reasons for this is that Turner is a skillful writer. In an inherently dramatic but true story, he takes time to fashion, not just a narrative, but to draw "scenes", which makes the strange tale both realistic and easier to visualize. (A form of art that is sorely lacking in the field. See the recent work of Lamar Waldron and Joan Mellen.) This approach is especially useful in understanding the difficult concept of hypnoprogramming. Which Turner did a lot of homework on. He interviewed two of the eminent experts in the field: Herbert Spiegel and Edward Simson-Kallas. He also read one of the most important texts in the discipline: the chronicle by Paul Rieter of the famous Nielsen/Hardrup case which took place in Denmark in the early fifties. That study shows, beyond any doubt, that you can hypnotize someone into doing something they would never do in a waking state. That you can install post-hypnotic suggestion. And that it is possible to then deprogram the hypnotized victim who has commited the crime-not of his own free will--but for his controller. It was all done in the Danish precedent. And in that case, the court decided that Hardrup was innocent of the crime and convicted his programmer Nielsen. One of the great ironies of the RFK case, is that the Danish case was first mentioned in what--up until that time--was the standard book on the Bobby Kennedy case: Robert Blair Kaiser's RFK Must Die (1970). In his last chapter, Kaiser mentions the hypnosis sessions that Sirhan had with his court appointed psychiatrist Dr. Diamond. Diamond was struck by how quickly and deeply he could induce Sirhan into a trance. He became convinced that Sirhan was in a trance that night in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. But since Sirhan's incompetent, and probably compromised, legal team had agreed to the prosecutor's evidence, their defense had to be tapered in this aspect. They argued that Sirhan did it, but in a trance that was self-induced. In that famous last chapter, Kaiser mentions things like previous sightings of Sirhan with the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, of murder suspect and Sirhan look-alike Michael Wayne, and a man named Van Antwerp who disappeared the day RFK was shot, not to reappear until two weeks later. At that time he told the FBI he never knew Sirhan, even though he had roomed with him for five months. Though he mentions these tantalizing leads and angles, Kaiser's book ends up being a Sirhan-did-it tract. He asks, "Who would have wanted to use Sirhan? I didn't know." (p. 537) A page later he writes that it would have taken him another year to explore all these fascinating trails. That would have been another book and he had to get this one published. What the Turner/Christian book does is go down some of those trails. For instance, it fits into a rough mosaic the role of the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress with the man who probably "used Sirhan" by hypnoprogramming him. That man's name is Dr. William J. Bryan. His name was first mentioned in book form here. And the way it tumbles forward, out of -- of all things -- the Boston Strangler case, is almost worth the price of the book. The book does this repeatedly. The roles and backgrounds of Pena and Hernandez are delineated. And the latter's task of beating down witnesses, especially Sandra Serrano-who first exposed the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress-is clearly defined. The book outlines in character and performance the two ballistics experts who would face off in this case: DeWayne Wolfer and William Harper. (If there is a hero in the RFK case, it is Harper. The authors dedicated the book to him.) Some of the chapter titles describe what are today, hallmarks of the RFK case: "Tinting Sirhan Red", "The Quiet Trial of Sirhan Sirhan", and "Too Many Guns-Too Many Bullets". I should also note that because it describes the last of the four great political assassinations of the decade, the book is elegiac. To slightly alter Clausewitz: assassination is an extension of politics by other means. The assassination of Robert Kennedy, for all intents and purposes, lowered the curtain on one era and raised it on another. By the summer of '68, RFK was the last great hope of the sixties. His assassination brought to power the era's anti-Christ: Richard M. Nixon. In the actual histiography on that case, the Turner/Christian book is a milestone for what came afterwards. For the first time in book form, both the conspiracy and cover up in the Bobby Kennedy case were now out in the open: lying there naked in the glaring sunlight. That exposure inspired the subsequent fine work of people like Phil Melanson, Greg Stone, and Lisa Pease. With that kind of impact and influence, one can see why Loomis panicked. But it was too late. That was bad for him. It was good for us. Buy this book. It's that good. * * * Return to Main Page

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Guest Tom Scully

Everyone MUST read Turner and Christians book on the Assassination of RFK. And check out the publication history of this book....

When a friend of the authors called Epstein about the book's fate, he replied he did not want to speak about it. But what appears to have occurred is that when Random House was sold to Si Newhouse-Roy Cohn's family friend-Bob Loomis's star ascended, and Epstein's began to fade. As readers of Probe know, Loomis was once married to the secretary for James Angleton. He has been a mentor and shepherd for the likes of Sy Hersh, James Phelan, and Gerald Posner. In other words, he is dedicated to upholding the official story no matter how porous it may be. When asked why the Turner/Christian book was burned, Loomis replied, as Daryl Gates did about the disposal of crime scene evidence, "To make space for others. They do that with books."

Not to apologize for Loomis, but if I was him, I would want to make this book disappear too. It is devastating to the official story.

.....................................................................

That was bad for him. It was good for us. Buy this book. It's that good.* * *Return to Main Page

Tom: She is working on two other books too, so I am not sure she will have much time to be on the forum... but you can ask...

Dawn,

I posted this here because I anticipated doing so would be a timely way to get your attention and maybe get a quick answer to this, through you.

Probe V7N6: James Jesus Angleton and the Kennedy Assassination ...

http://the-puzzle-palace.com/files/pr900-ang.html

By Lisa Pease ......" In the previous issue, I had written that Gloria Loomis was Angleton's ... Joan Mellen called us after reading the last issue and said that she knew Gloria ...."

Can you ask Joan to share how she was informed that Robert Loomis's former wife was the Gloria Loomis who worked for Angleton? I have Robert Loomis's 1954 wedding announcement and CIA's Gloria Loomis Smith's 1996 obit.

I think we deserve to know who misled Joan, if she is willing to disclose the details. "The 50th" should be about who is committed to finding, vetting, sharing the most reliable details and transparently revising errors. My recent experience with Peter Janney reinforces this concern.

We are subjected to posted assertions of how reliable Marina's statements were up to and including the statements made to the HSCA by Marina Oswald and Priscilla McMillan and of McMillan's sincerity and transparency. Instead of arguing about how a "community joint statement" should read, it seems more important to challenge and expose the inaccurate and identify where it originated and who clings to it despite exposure to "hard proof" of inaccuracies.

The competition should be accuracy vs. inaccuracy. You are what you embrace. Posting 24/7, here, there, and everywhere until half of all the posts and comments on the internet are posted by one individual will still not confirm that LBJ masterminded assassination.

If Priscilla Johnson's first cousin David Davenport was involved with Priscilla and Marina on behalf of the CIA and William L. Mitchell is an associate professor emeritus in the California State Univ. system, the names and actual backgrounds of Davenport and Mitchell influence changes that cannot be rivaled by the influence of thousands of repetitive opinion posts in the comments section of every book review and every blog or forum. It would be more useful to pick one major point in one of the looming deluge of anniversary books or media presentations and challenge it if it is flawed or sponsor it if it is the real deal.

My research indicates Look Magazine publisher, Gardner "Mike" Cowles, Jr., formerly of the Office of War Information run by Tom Guinzberg's father, probably leaked the book manuscript McCone was trying to censor and that the source of the leak to the CIA was not Random House.

Book Stirs Teapot Tempest .

Evening Independent - Jun 23, 1964

"The book, The Invisible Govern ment, by David Wise and Thom as Ross, Washington reporters, hit the bookstores yester day- Look magazine, which print ed..."

For the sake of clarity, this must have been a misunderstanding. I strongly suspect Joan was relating that she was acquainted with "a" Gloria Loomis who had been married to Bob Loomis.:

http://the-puzzle-palace.com/files/pr900-ang.html

From the September-October 2000 issue (Vol. 7 No. 6)

By Lisa Pease

......Who did Phelan credit with "shepherding" his book "through a preposterously long writer’s block"? Bob Loomis, the Random House executive editor who would later bring us that ridiculous book Case Closed, by Gerald Posner. In the previous issue, I had written that Gloria Loomis was Angleton’s secretary for many years. Joan Mellen called us after reading the last issue and said that she knew Gloria Loomis, and that Gloria used to be married to Bob Loomis. If that is true, then perhaps Bob Loomis’ lone-nut focus is not simply a product of ignorance.....

25 April, 1954 NY Times

LoomisGloriaWed25Apr1954_NYT.jpg

Cold warrior: James Jesus Angleton : the CIA's master spy hunter - Page 337
books.google.com/books?id=WIAnAQAAMAAJ
Tom Mangold - 1991 - Snippet view - More editions

Gloria Loomis Smith, interview with JG, 30 January 1989. This very personal document was generously given to the author by Cicely Angleton. She had never read it until a search through her late husband's papers brought it to light. In his will .....

Hazel Goldstein, Lawyer, Wife of Comptroller, Dies

Washington Post - Apr 21, 1996

Gloria Loomis Smith, 75, who retired in 1980 after 30 years as a researcher at the Central Intelligence Agency, died of lung cancer April 18

GloriaLoomisAngletonSecretartyObit21Apr1

David Ritchie 3d Marries Gloria Smith

New York Times - Jun 29, 1975

Gloria Loomis Smith, daughter of Comdr. Walter Bradlee Smith, USN, retired, of Annisquam, Mass., and Mrs. Smith of Washington, was married in Washington ...
Edited by Tom Scully
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  • 2 months later...

I'm interested in the Loomis angle too because the Loomis at Random House was the main financial backer of Gerald Posner's "Case Closed."

In the meantime, Bill Turner told me that he has a new book coming out this fall on the CIA and Cuba, which includes many assassination connections.

Does anyone know who the publisher of Turner's new book is?

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I'm interested in the Loomis angle too because the Loomis at Random House was the main financial backer of Gerald Posner's "Case Closed."

In the meantime, Bill Turner told me that he has a new book coming out this fall on the CIA and Cuba, which includes many assassination connections.

Does anyone know who the publisher of Turner's new book is?

I may be behind the curve on this. Joan Mellen has a harsh and negative view of Turner vis a vis his performance for Garrison. I am quite sceptical of her views since 1) I read the Turner/Christian RFK book years ago and it is an exceptionally fine piece of work, and 2) she ascribes motives and possible culpability to RFK for Dealey Plaza which I believe are not credible. Has Mr. Turner ever discussed or replied to her criticism - attack really - of him?

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