Over the years I have argued on the forum that Richard Nixon was removed by the CIA. The strategy used by the CIA was more sophisticated than the one used against JFK. Both men attempted to undermine the power of the CIA. The source of JFK’s demise was Cuba. Nixon’s removal was the result of appointing James Schlesinger as director of the CIA. Nixon’s removal became inevitable after Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees on 9th May, 1973: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.” Meyer, who had been deeply involved in Operation Mockingbird, was one of those who feared the consequences of Schlesinger’s directive.

Nixon backed down after three months Nixon and replaced him with William Colby. Colby did what he could to protect the CIA. However, by this time Congress had become more interested in the CIA’s illegal activities. When in 1975 both houses of Congress set up inquiries into the activities of the intelligence community, Colby handed over to the Senate committee chaired by Frank Church details of the CIA's recent operations against the left-leaning government in Chile. The agency's attempts to sabotage the Chilean economy had contributed to the downfall of South America's oldest democracy and to the installation of a military dictatorship.

His testimony resulted in his predecessor, Richard Helms, being indicted for perjury. Colby was attacked by right-wing figures such as Barry Goldwater for supplying this information to the Frank Church and on 30 January 1976, President Gerald Ford replaced him with George G. W. Bush. The “Secret Team” now led by Ted Shackley, was back in control.

In my view, to really understand what Watergate was all about the timeline needs to start with Nixon’s decision to establish an in-house investigative capability that could be used to obtain sensitive political information. Jack Caulfield was hired to do this by H. R. Haldeman in May 1968. The following year (March, 1969) Caulfield employed Tony Ulasewicz. His first job was to investigate Bobby Baker’s relationship with various Democratic politicians. However, he mainly concentrated on Edward Kennedy, the man who Nixon believed had the potential to defeat him in 1972.

According to the testimony of Tony Ulasewicz, on 19th July, 1969, he received a phone call from Jack Caulfield: "Get out to Martha's Vineyard as fast as you can, Tony. Kennedy's car ran off a bridge last night. There was a girl in it. She's dead." This phone call took place less than two hours after the body of Mary Jo Kopechne, the former secretary of Robert Kennedy, had been found in a car that Caulfield suspected Edward Kennedy had been driving.

In my view Ulasewicz was already at the scene of the crime before it took place. Ulasewicz admits that he was able to interview several key witnesses before the police got to them. This included Sylvia Malm who was staying in Dike House at the time. Dike House was only 150 yards from the scene of the accident. Malm told Ulasewicz that she was reading in bed on the night of the accident. She remained awake until midnight but no one knocked on her door.

Ulasewicz also discovered that the request for an autopsy by Edmund Dinis, the District Attorney of Suffolk County, had been denied. Dinis was told that the body had already been sent to Kopechne's family. This was untrue, the body was still in Edgartown. Ulasewicz also interviewed John Farrar, the scuba diver who pulled Mary Jo Kopechne out of Kennedy's car. Farrar told Ulasewicz that the evidence he saw suggested that she had been trapped alive for several hours inside Kennedy's car.

He also discovered that the "records of Edward Kennedy's telephone calls in the hours after the accident at Chappaquiddict were withheld by the telephone company from an inquest into the death of Mary Jo Kopechne without the knowledge of the Assistant District Attorney who asked for them".

Ulasewicz was also used to meet Timothy Gratz in December, 1972. Gratz, who used to be a member of the forum, has been linked by Richard E. Sprague with Arthur Bremer. This is what Sprague says about this relationship in “The Taking of America”.

“What evidence is there that Bremer's attempt on Wallace was a directed attempt by a conspiratorial group? Bremer himself has told his brother that others were involved and that he was paid by them. Researcher William Turner has turned up evidence in Milwaukee and surrounding towns in Wisconsin that Bremer received money from a group associated with Dennis Cassini, Donald Segretti and J. Timothy Gratz.”

My view is that Nixon was blackmailed by the CIA into taking the rap for Watergate in return for not being exposed for his role in the removal of Edward Kennedy and George Wallace from the 1972 presidential election. It was part of the deal that Nixon did not expose the CIA’s role in the assassination of JFK (Nixon had got this information from William Sullivan who carried out the investigation of the assassination on behalf of the FBI).

I also believe that an investigation of Jack Paisley is essential in understanding both the JFK assassination and Watergate. Ashton, have you done much research into Paisley? I will post what I have on him later today.

I know that John Paisley has been identified in one source as the very secretive CIA liaison to Hunt and Liddy during their stint as the most ineffective "plumbers" in history.

I also know he was an accomplished sailor who sailed out into Chesapeake Bay on his sloop "Brillig" on September 24, 1978, and that a man's body later was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition with a gunshot wound behind his left ear, weighted with two sets of diving belts. The body was four inches shorter than Paisley, and Paisley's wife said it wasn't him, but it was ruled to be Paisley, and a suicide, and the body was summarily cremated.

So I don't disagree with you at all that bringing Paisley out of the crowd of extras and into the spotlight is entirely justified, and anything at all you have on him I'd be very interested in seeing.

I've been aware that there is no mention of Paisley in the timeline that I've referred to and that you post an excerpt from above, and I've wondered about it. All I can deduce is that whoever put it together just didn't have any solid source for putting him in the Watergate picture, or they weren't aware of him at all.

On the many other points you bring up above, some I agree with strongly, some I'm not sure of.

I'm much less sanguine about the celebrated "exposures" by CIA, Schlesinger's apparent clean-up efforts, the infamous "Family Jewels," and the subsequent congressional committees. In broad strokes, I'm inclined to believe that Richard Helms was all set up, with the help of Bush at State, for his sudden departure to his cushy ambassadorship far, far away in Iran, before Watergate even went down. While all attention was on the fall-out from that (and on the White House)—end of 1972-beginning of 1973—he and Gottlieb destroyed everything they could find that they and their own little band of Brooks Brothers-suited thugs could be hung for, and both Helms and Gottlieb pretty quietly slinked off into obscurity.

With all real incriminating evidence destroyed, the big "clean-up" act looks to me exactly like a "one step back, two steps forward" dog-and-pony show, because no matter how much braying is done about it, the fact is that none of it ever exposed the blackest secret that CIA had running the entire time the "investigations" were going on, and CIA budgets ultimately grew exponentially, despite any temporary setbacks.

CIA also never, ever even claimed to have admitted to any and all assassinations they had been party to. In February 1975, Colby would only say to Daniel Schorr, when pressed, that assassinations had been "formally prohibited in 1973." Hmmm. Well, McCord, Hunt, Liddy, and Baldwin were somewhere doing something over Memorial Day weekend 197TWO, and it sure as hell wasn't where they said they were, doing what they claim to have been doing.

You've given me lots more to chew over.

While we're all masticating, though, there's still the thorny problem of how far back CIA, Ellsberg, Fielding, and Hunt had the "Pentagon Papers" operation planned and in the works for the obvious co-purpose (they always have several) of shoe-horning Hunt into the White House, where Hunt not only could do the primary Memorial Day weekend 1972 black bag job and its follow-up, he also could arrange the Hunt/Liddy photo-op trip to Fielding's office that would guarantee Ellsberg a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

No shortage of things to chew on.

Ashton Gray

[quote name='Ashton Gray' date='Jul 1 2006, 11:08 AM' post='66822']
[quote name='John Simkin' post='66806' date='Jul 1 2006, 01:22 AM']

John:
Welcome back. Missed your insightful posts around here. Lots to think about .

Great to see Jack White reading this stuff too. (You can't be 80 Jack, that was a joke,right?).

And to the nay sayers on all of this - at this point- I have no comment. I think that since this forum is open to points of view each participant is entitled to believe what he or she wishes. That said, posts that are
disruptive fall into three catagories: 1. those who have a genuine disagreement with the evidence presented her, 2. those who just don't/ can't /refuse to "get it" and 3. those who are purposefully changing the subject, with an agenda. Said aganda not being truth, but furtherance of confusion and disruption.

Ashton has made clear he will no longer respond to the posts of one such person.

Preferring to see the best in people I hold out hope that these people simply views these matters
differently than we do.

Dawn

[quote name='Dawn Meredith' date='Jul 1 2006, 12:55 PM' post='66833']
[quote name='Ashton Gray' date='Jul 1 2006, 11:08 AM' post='66822']
[quote name='John Simkin' post='66806' date='Jul 1 2006, 01:22 AM']

John:
Welcome back. Missed your insightful posts around here. Lots to think about .

Great to see Jack White reading this stuff too. (You can't be 80 Jack, that was a joke,right?).

And to the nay sayers on all of this - at this point- I have no comment. I think that since this forum is open to points of view each participant is entitled to believe what he or she wishes. That said, posts that are
disruptive fall into three catagories: 1. those who have a genuine disagreement with the evidence presented her, 2. those who just don't/ can't /refuse to "get it" and 3. those who are purposefully changing the subject, with an agenda. Said aganda not being truth, but furtherance of confusion and disruption.

Ashton has made clear he will no longer respond to the posts of one such person.

Preferring to see the best in people I hold out hope that these people simply views these matters
differently than we do.

Dawn
[/quote]

Whathe heck are you talking about, Dawn? How is it that Ashton is a hero for driving Caddy and Baldwin from the Forum through his incessant and rude questions, but I'm a disrupter or CIA lackey, simply because I ask Ashton to make sense of his theory? He throws out ideas like "there was no first break-in" and "there were no Diem cables" and fails to back them up beyond his demonstration that different people told different stories over the years, which you, as a lawyer MUST know is to be expected, and then refuses to acknowledge my questions once I start pinning him down on the FACTS. If he offered you Kool-aid, would you drink it? I wouldn't.

Whathe heck are you talking about, Dawn? How is it that Ashton is a hero for driving Caddy and Baldwin from the Forum through his incessant and rude questions, but I'm a disrupter or CIA lackey, simply because I ask Ashton to make sense of his theory? He throws out ideas like "there was no first break-in" and "there were no Diem cables" and fails to back them up beyond his demonstration that different people told different stories over the years, which you, as a lawyer MUST know is to be expected, and then refuses to acknowledge my questions once I start pinning him down on the FACTS. If he offered you Kool-aid, would you drink it? I wouldn't.
[/quote]

Pat,
No one called you a "CIA lackey." And Ashton did not "drive Caddy and Baldwin from the forum." They came here to answer questions about their respective roles in the event known as Watergate. They have [/i]chosen to stop answering questions. In fact, Caddy has gone so far as to request that Ashton be banned from the forum.

Ashton answered many of your questions ad nauseum until you began to twist both your questions and his answers. It is not Ashton Gray's "theory" that there was "no first break-in." He has provided evidence for this farce and has asked, " then what was really going on that Memorial Day weekend?"

You have "pinned him down" not with "facts" my friend, but your own "pet theories," which happen to be different from the very ones you addmittedly once held yourself, until you were "corrected" by Watergate burglar James McCord's book. (I love the title [i]A Piece of Tape. It should be titled: [/i]Two pieces of tape.

It was you Patrick who said you could provide the "proof" of the Diem cables. WHERE IS IT???

As to people "changing stories over the years," Pat, I have learned a few things in this relatively long life of mine and one of them is that if people are telling the [i]truth their story remains consistent. And "as a lawyer" I utilize this particular "thing" all the time, to decide if my client is lying to me. In cross-examination this is called "impeachment by prior inconsistent statements." Truth does not "change over time."

Ashton has not stopped answering your questions because you have presented him with"facts." This is a misstatement of what has occurred at this forum.

Yes, if Ashton offered me kool aid I would drink it. Or are you insinuating here he would poison me?

Dawn

The John Paisley case is covered in some detail in Widows (William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph Trento). It is extremely well researched but I totally reject their analysis. In their opinion, Paisley was a KGB spy who escaped back to the Soviet Union. I will later explain why I think Paisley was murdered. However, first an account of Paisley's life.

John Arthur Paisley, the son of Joseph and Clara Paisley, was born in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on 25th August, 1923. His father, was a follower of Tom Mooney, the trade union leader in San Francisco, who in the 1920s led a campaign for a six-day, ten-hour-a-day work week. Joseph was arrested several times during this campaign and Clara, a deeply religious woman, eventualy left her husband and moved to Bellefonte, Arkansas. Later the family settled in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 1941 John Paisley enrolled at the Maritime Service Training and the following year he graduated as a radio officer. During the Second World War Paisley served as a radio operator in the Merchant Marine. Paisley spent time in Cuba and the Soviet Union where he learnt Spanish and Russian.

After the war Paisley returned to Arizona where he worked as a radio operator for the highway patrol in Phoenix. In September 1946, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. Six months later he was expelled after the authorities caught him in his dormitory room with a young woman.

In 1948 Paisley went to work as a radio operator for the United Nations. Employed as a radio operator with the Bunche-Bernadotte Peace Mission in Palestine. This included visiting Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordon.

On his return to the United States Paisley married Maryann McLeavy and enrolled in the University of Chicago and studied international relations. A fellow student, Leonard Masters described Paisley as "left idealistic" who was devoted to civil rights.

Paisley officially joined the Central Intelligence Agency in December, 1953. However, his friend, Leonard Masters, believes that Paisley was in fact recruited several years earlier at university by Richard Innes. Paisley joined the CIA's new Electronics Branch as an Economics Intelligence Officer. While based in Washington, Paisley became friends with Bernard Fensterwald.

In 1953 Paisley went to Washington where he was given the job of monitoring the development of electronics in the Soviet Union. Two years later the CIA loaned him out to the National Security Agency (NSA) where he analyzed the electronic data coming back from the Berlin Tunnel, an electronic listening post that William Harvey and his staff managed to establish in Germany.

Paisley returned to the United States in 1957 and was placed in charge of the CIA's Electronic Equipment Branch, Industrial Division. In 1959 Paisley spent a great deal of time in Eastern Europe where he analyzed developments being made in Soviet technology. According to Joseph Trento, Paisley joined the CIA's inner circle: "Using the new technology of spy satellites, evesdropping satellites and listening posts, Paisley combined that electronic data with information from agents in place to give startling new pictures of Soviet society."

Trento adds "like most of the early CIA recruits, Paisley shared the passionate liberalism that dominated the men recruited in the late forties and early fifties." Trento claims that Paisley's friends claim that he was a "liberal who was outraged by injustice." Another friend, Gladys Fishel, claims that Paisley did more than just talk about political philosophy and in his spare time taught "disadvantaged children in the District of Columbia".

Paisley was eventually appointed as deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. According to Dick Russell, Paisley may have been linked to the decision of Lee Harvey Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union. One of Paisley's jobs was to interview Soviet defectors such as Anatolyi Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Paisley also worked with Oleg Penkovsky, who was executed by the Soviets in 1963.

Edward Proctor, director of the Office of Strategic Research (OSR), and Paisley believed in supplying the president with accurate information about the estimates of Soviet military strength. For example, in the early 1960s the OSR rejected the idea that the Soviet Union had dramatically closed the "missle gap" and posed a serious nuclear threat to the United States.

However, in 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger began putting the OSR under pressure to publish exaggerated estimates in order to justify increased military spending in the United States. It was also hoped that these high estimates would convince the Senate to give its support to the SALT 1 negotiations.

Paisley found these political pressures and began talking about leaving the CIA. It was agreed that Paisley should take a sabbatical studying at the Imperial Defence College in London. Paisley returned from England in January, 1971. One of his first tasks was to put together negotiating teams for the SALT 1 talks. An OSR colleague, Clarence Baier, claimed that Paisley came back a different person. "He just didn't speak out, he seldom stuck his neck out." Instead, he accepted the demands made by Nixon and Kissenger.

In 1971 Egil Krogh, gave a White House assignment to David R. Young, a member of the National Security Council Staff. His official job concerned the classification and declassification of documents. However, his real task was to discover the people "leaking" classified documents and secret information. G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were appointed as Young's assistants.

The White House then asked the CIA for help with this investigation. James Angleton suggested that the man they should approach was John Paisley. Joseph Trento suggests that Angleton was growing increasingly suspicious of Henry Kissenger and that he "wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along." Trento adds that Kissenger was very interested in "how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program". Angleton had been the man responsible for this and feared that if this story was discovered, he would be sacked from the CIA.

Paisley agreed to help the White House to search for the source of these leaks. His first task was to investigate the activities of Daniel Ellsberg. By August 1971, the project to descredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers became known as Operation Odessa. It is not known what role Paisley played in Watergate. He kept details of these activities from friends and family, including colleagues in the CIA. However, Joseph Trento has speculated that Paisley might have been Deep Throat.

In 1971 Paisley began organizing sex parties in Washington. Along with CIA colleague, Donald Burton, Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation. According to Trento, "Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge." Those who attended these parties included politicians and journalists. Burton admitted that a "high-level Nixon appointeee enjoyed tying up women and beating them" at these parties. Another person who attended was the beautiful Hana Koecher, an agent with the Czech intelligence service.

Trento argues that another regular at these parties was Carl Bernstein. "In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, 'I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley'. Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971."

Bernstein also denied that Paisley was Deep Throat. Trento does not believe him and claims that the sex parties was the reason why their main source on Watergate was given the name Deep Throat (a popular pornographic movie at the time these events took place). Trento poses the question: "Was the fact that Bernstein was attending sex parties with the CIA's liaison with the White House Plumbers just a coincidence, or was that how the source really obtained his name?"

In March 1973, James Schlesinger became director of the CIA. According to Donald Burton, Paisley "despised Schlesinger". Burton adds that "Schlesinger told Paisley that he did not like OSR's estimates and wanted them changed". Paisley ignored Schlesinger's orders and in less than six months he had been replaced by William Colby. According to Sam Wilson, Colby's Deputy Director, Paisley became very close to the new head of the CIA. It is therefore surprising that Paisley officially retired from the CIA in 1974. In reality Paisley continued to work for the CIA. He carried out several highly secret assignments where he reported directly to Colby.

In August 1975, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford proposing that an outside group of experts be given access to the same intelligence as the CIA analysts and be allowed to prepare a competing National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and then make an evaluation. The outside group would be called the B Team. The CIA and the intelligence community estimates would be the A Team.

William Colby, the director of the CIA, rejected the idea. On 30 January 1976, Ford sacked Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Soon afterwards Bush agreed to the setting up a B Team. As a result of this move, outsiders would now have access to all of America's classified knowledge about the Soviet Military. Hank Knoche, Bush's deputy, was ordered to organize this new system. Interestingly, Paisley was brought out of retirement to become the CIA 'coordinator' for the B Team. It was Paisley who would control the documents that they saw and the information they received.

Members of the B Team included Clare Boothe Luce, John Connally, Daniel Graham, Edward Teller, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard E. Pipes. One member of the A team, David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, came to the conclusion that Paisley had been put into place to prevent the B Team from seeing important classified material. As a result, Sullivan began leaking classified documents concerning the SALT 1 negotiations to Pipes and Graham. He also passed these documents to Richard Perle, who at that time was working for Senator Henry Jackson.

On 26th December, 1976, David Binder reported in the New York Times that the B Team had changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees. The CIA was furious claiming that right-wing members of the B Team had leaked classified documents to the New York Times and in doing so had compromised national security. Daniel Graham reacted to these charges by claiming that the leaks had come from John Paisley, who he described as a "weepy liberal who was too soft on the Soviets".

David S. Sullivan began telling friends that John Paisley and Henry Kissenger were working as Soviet agents. Sullivan told CIA security chief Robert Gambino that there were ten moles in the CIA. On 25th August, 1978, Sullivan informed Gambino that "John Arthur Paisley, the former Deputy Director of Strategic Research, was working for the KGB." Sullivan does not appear to have any evidence that Paisley was a spy: "I guess, in the end, I never trusted him... I never liked him. There was something that wasn't right. He seemed like some kind of burned-out old fart who had a beard and looked like a queer. I am convinced he was the mole."

When President Jimmy Carter took office he sacked George H. W. Bush and replaced him with his old friend, Stansfield Turner. Paisley continued to do work for the CIA and records show that Paisley briefed Turner in 1977 and 1978. Paisley's address book included both Turner's home and White House telephone numbers.

In May 1978 Paisley began working for the Washington accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. The job had been obtained for Paisley by Dr. K. Wayne Smith, who was a fellow member of the CIA's Military and Economic Advisory Panel. However, Joseph Trento discovered that the CIA was actually paying his $36,000 salary. As Trento points out: "It is clear that the Coopers position was needed as some sort of cover job for Paisley during the spring, quite possibly without the knowledge of Dr. Smith."

Dr. K. Wayne Smith's secretary, Kay Fulford, claims that Paisley rarely visited the Coopers & Lybrand office and most of the time she contacted him via his telephone number at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Trento points out: "four years after his retirement, Paisley still had an office at the CIA."

On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. He anchored his boat at Hooper's Light and in a radio conversation with his friend, Mike Yohn, Paisley explained that he had an important report to write. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED. If all these men remembered everything exactly the same, THEN it might be logical to conclude they'd studied a script, and were part of an ongoing conspiracy.

Ashton's theory makes no sense, and you're completely misguided in stating that he has tried to answer my questions. He has never answered any of the relevant questions. And when I got a little too close to exposing him for the total fraud he undoubtedly is, he started suggesting I was working with the CIA. The relevant questions? When he DROVE Baldwin to the Forum by telling him he was done with him and his evil lying soul-less conspirators, he said that Baldwin and his co-conspirators had destroyed the lives of numerous people. (If anything is GUARANTEED to drive an INVITED GUEST to a Forum away, it is for them to be insulted in such a manner and have the moderator do nothing.) I have REPEATEDLY asked Gray of whom was he speaking, as, by his account, just about everyone to serve time and have their lives destoyed was a KNOWING CONSPIRATOR out to destroy Richard Nixon. (Yes, Virginia, there were dozens of men willing to go to prison in order to destroy Nixon, the man they'd been working for for years, in order to help the CIA, for which none of them was currently employed, and only a handful had had any contact, and Gerry Ford, who failed to reward ANY of the Watergate conspirators, outside Nixon, in any way. Included in Mr. Gray's list of conspirators, by the way is the head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, whose career was ruined by Watergate. Mr. Ashton Gray would have us believe L. Pat sacrificed his career to help the CIA. Anyone who knows anything about the FBI and CIA knows that the director of one would NEVER sacrifice his career to help the other.)

Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray. Still another is is he really stands by his assertion there were no Diem cables. I won't waste my time posting the information indicating they existed if he is just going to say "never mind, they're not all that important."

Please try to keep this on topic. There are already enough threads on the forum discussing the behaviour of Ashton Gray.

[quote name='Pat Speer' date='Jul 2 2006, 12:09 PM' post='66913']
I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED

Pat:
I will respond to this one last question then I am done with this. Yes I am familiar with research regarding memory and particularily so with eyewitness testimony. They are really two different issues. As to issue 1, I repeat that I said: If someone is telling the truth the story will remain consistent. If one lies and has to remember his or her lie, then different stories will emerge. Especially over time when said person does not quite remember their first lie. Like the old saying "oh what a tangled web we weave". Deception does leave a bunch of tangles.

Now we can agree that there are great problems with eyewitness testimony. This has been consistently shown to be most unreliable, both in studies and in real cases. Sadly I know of several instances where a defendant has been convicted based upon faulty eyewitness testimony.
But Pat we are not talking about eyewitness testimony here are we?

I am here for the purpose of education, sharing new information and discussion of Watergate, political conspiracies, and on the other part of the forum, the assassination of Jack Kennedy.

I formed my own views early on in these matters. John calls people like us "critical thinkers". Ashton did not "change" my thinking in ANY manner. But I did learn some new information on the case. And it is consistent with what I already believed.

I concur with John- no more discussion of Ashton Gray-who I can assure you is NO RELATION to Pat Gray-

Time to move on to the topic at hand.

Dawn
.

QUOTE (Robert Charles-Dunne @ Jul 2 2006, 05:00 PM)

QUOTE (Pat Speer @ Jul 2 2006, 11:09 AM)

.

To argue that all those who got themselves jammed up in Watergate made a voluntary sacrifice to destroy Nixon ignores two critical facts: power in Washington isn't achieved through purity and virtue; and, the demonstrable lack of purity and virtue is a powerful tool to compel compliance from those who must, to prevent a greater calamity befalling them, make a sacrifice that seems voluntary only because we do not know what instrument was used to achieve that compliance. We are not supposed to know; that's the whole point of the exercise when dealing in extortion and blackmail, Washington's favourite game.

For my own part, I'd be far more sanguine about accepting the received version of Watergate history but for a few key details:

* the sum of the parts doesn't add up to a tenable whole;

* the machinations behind the curtain have never been fully plumbed [you should pardon the expression], and full disclosure was precluded by Nixon's resignation and the Ford pardon;

* that received version of Watergate history was provided by former CIA asset Ben Bradlee, former ONI man Bob Woodward, and the so-called "source" known as Deep Throat, whose own intelligence background and personal agenda remain undetermined;

* the recurring use by Nixon of "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" as a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon CIA into doing his bidding;

* the fact that a crew of nothing but seasoned CIA operatives screwed the pooch so badly while achieving no demonstrable gain for Nixon.


Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray.

Fair dues. What about it, Ashton?

Hi Robert:
FINALLY, a voice of reason emerges. Good to see you back, RCD. I was getting worried that we'd have to recall Gratz to get you heard round here.

Am I the only one who notes the similarity between Hunt's mission there and the recurring rear-guard actions by CIA apparatchiks to shift blame for CIA's attempts to assassinate Castro from Langley back into the Kennedy White House? So, in seeking to falsify the Diem-related cable traffic, whose agenda was Hunt serving: Nixon's, or CIA's? Or in this instance, did their interests converge?

[/color]


No RC, their MO is always the same, that's why it's always been so damn obvious, to me ast least.

Dawn

ps Happy Canada day (yesterday )

John, saying "thanks" for this is the biggest understatement I've ever been guilty of in my life. (I think. Maybe it was: "What cookie jar?")

I've got a lot to process fully from this, and will try to get hold of the source book.

I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but the description of the "sex parties" seemed such a parallel to the CIA "national security brothels" in Greenwich Village and San Francisco earlier run by George Hunter White, with two-way mirrors and cameras, where CIA used addict prostitutes to lure people in for criminal LSD experiments and film them. (There's no antiseptic that quite gets you clean enough after coming into even distant contact with CIA, is there?)

Continuing my brief tangent: one thing that I was aware of in some of the CIA "confessions" to the Watergate committee (as in all such CIA "confessions") is their constant slicing-and-dicing of the language of those "confessions." One of these sliced-and-diced statements was related to Mullen, and was actually a question for my next round with Mr. Caddy to try to pull apart, which was the phrase "witting and cleared." Those are two separate things.

There's ample but circumstantial indication to me, from years of wading through the fetid swamp of CIA BS, that clearances aren't the only leashes they have in the mud room to keep their dogs on. And blackmail makes a very short, tight choke-collar leash. So who was "witting" and not cleared is its own question.

As for any bearing on the "who was Deep Throat" question, I still believe that's just another bottomless pit trap they dug in the path for people to fall into and keep on falling. Just like "who ordered the first break-in" when there was no "first break-in." Once you step in, you just keep on falling endlessly.

I'll study all this carefully. Thank you very much.

Ashton

You made that one ring like a ten-penney finishing nail hit with a greasy ballpeen hammer.

That's exactly why I haven't even bothered responding to the ridiculous cat-calls before. The testimony I've compared and shown to be completely beyond any possible reconciliation is the testimony of perpetrators all supposedly giving the same confessions. It's not the "eyewitness" syndrome, and I consider the tireless attempt by a few here to spin it that way to be tranparently willful. I simply don't think anybody can actually be that obtuse, and also be able to type.

These are the only "confessions" in the history of the world where you have to have six or seven different parallel universes, each with its own time continuum, running simultaneously to accomodate all of them!

The "confessions" about the so-called "first break-in" and those ensuing first two weeks of June are all snakefeathers. If you simply made an unnarrated catalog of all the contradictions it would run for pages and pages. They can't even get their stories straight about how many "units" their were, or how many "bugs" were where, or whether Hunt was in a liquor closet or at McGovern headquarters, or whether anybody was ever in O'Brien's office at all, or even whether there was a "second attempt" on May 27 or not.

They also can't even get their stories straight about how many "cables" Hunt purportedly forged, which the cat-caller is going to learn as a very hard lesson if he ever tries to make good his hollow threat to "slap me down big time" on that issue. (Which he won't. He's still got an empty topic sitting there, with nothing but school-yard taunts at me.)

I'm beginning to suspect that the only possible reason the Watergate committee didn't get to the truth is that people can get elected to Congress who can't count the fingers of one hand.

It's all such bilge that it would insult the intelligence of a tapeworm once it's actually held up to scrutiny, as has been done—the exact kind of scrutiny it should have been held up to over thirty years ago.

So one vital mission of the Committee to Re-Open Watergate, in my opinion, must also be to find out what faction of the "investigators" played an active role in the cover-up.

Ashton

I first came across the theory that Hunt was working to undermine Nixon in Jim Hougan's book Secret Agenda. I have seldom been more impressed by a work of investigative journalism. The basic theory is that Hunt and McCord deliberately and covertly laid a trail of evidentiary gunpowder that led directly into the White House, and blew up Nixon, according to plan.

Hougan may be arguing that Nixon was an innocent dupe in regard to the Watergate break-in(s), but he certainly does not try to absolve Nixon of his real crimes. Nixon's real crime was the continued prosecution of the illegal war against Vietnam (and later Cambodia), with the consequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the wounding and maiming of God knows how many more, and the misery of millions. Nixon goes down in history, like Adolph Eichman, as another example of the banality of evil.

Compared to all that horror, Watergate truly was "a third-rate burglary."

As a back-handed defense of Nixon, if Congress had had the courage to impeach Lyndon Johnson as the Constitution required, Nixon would never have found himself in a situation like Vietnam, which he was morally and intellectually unqualified to handle.

Hi, Robert. I appreciate your voice of reason, but I'm afraid that Mr. Speer's shouting that I'm a "total fraud" and other seditious efforts at discrediting me, personally, is the only arrow left in his quiver. He can't and won't address even a single conflict in the testimony and evidence that I've raised, and they run into the hundreds.

It's the oldest, dirtiest, filthiest, cheapest trick in the book: "When you can address the issues, attack the man. When you can't address what he actually has said, make up a fictional account of what he said (never quote him!), attribute your own outlandish fiction to him, and discredit the fiction you created."

It's the stuff of pity, not reason. It never responds to reason, because there is not an ounce of reason or integrity in it. The purpose is not to come together and reason on the issues: the purpose is to smear an individual by any means possible in order to discredit his information. That is the sole purpose.



And David Young came from NSA, slid over at just the right moment. His light was shadowed by the homonymic "Egil Krogh," but Young's hands are all over the Fielding operation, while running "plumbers" who never plugged a single leak.



It's clear from the 17 March 1973 Oval Office tape—where Dean springs the Fielding op bear trap on Nixon, calling Hunt and Liddy "some idiots" for having posed in front of Fielding's door (yeah, sure, John)–that Nixon had been kept completely the dark. Dean just jerks the rug out from under him. A month later Dean goes into Congress and testifies to it, and the next day Hunt is trotted out in Congress to back Dean up.

It's a thing of beauty, a well-oiled machine.

See if you can get Mr. Speer to address the fact that the CIA hand-couriered the photos of Hunt and Liddy to Watergate prosecutors on the exact day that Ellsberg's trial started. (That was a joke, Robert. He won't go near it.)



Works for me.



That ain't the half of it. "GEMSTONE" never accomplished a single one of its purported objectives. E. Howard Hunt never accomplished a single thing the entire time he was at the White House—at least to hear him tell it. Not a single one of his "secret agent man" operations that he says happened accomplished a single result. Not one. He takes hundreds of pages of his book telling about nothing but completely dead-end operations and trips to Miami and Los Angeles and Denver and all over hell and back, and never accomplished a goddamned thing. So either 1) he's the most incompetent moron who every sucked at the public teat, or 2) he was doing something else entirely the whole time, and all his and Liddy's D.C cowboy stories are a complete fiction to cover up what they actually were doing. (I'll take a No. 2, to go, please.)



Robert, the facts you cited certainly have their own validity, but I need to point out for the record that Speer's completely specious claim that I ever said it was some evil CIA plot "to destroy Nixon" is his own fiction that he's trying to wrap me in and discredit so he can discredit me. That's all it is: another maliciously false fiction, a complete straw man of his own creation that he's running around beating to death.



You can play his ad hominem smear games with him Robert. I won't. Not only is this not the "Ashton Gray" forum, the question is too ludicrous to countenance.

RE: DIEM CABLES:



I've reissued my call of Mr. Speer's bluff. Apparently he's attempting to make his case now, and so far doing a very bad job of it indeed. I'll wait until he says he's done.

Thanks for your insights and thoughts. I find them of great interest.

Ashton Gray

There seems to be something extraordinarily squirrely going on in this thread that I can't figure out. Are things being quoted from another thread? I can't find the original message from Robert Charles-Dunne in this thread that is being quoted regarding Caddy. I find his comments very insightful and would like to discuss them more, but the 4-level-nested quotes of something apparently not even in this thread, combined with color codes instead of quote codes is making it functionally impossible.

Can anybody tell me where the original of his post is? Thanks.

Ashton Gray

Ashton, J. Raymond Carroll has understandably reposted this on this thread. The original can be found on the thread about getting you removed from the forum.

I have also reposted another contribution of Robert Charles-Dunne below.

Thanks John. I'm grateful that Mr. Carroll did post the first one here (despite my initial confusion).

I've read the originals in the JFK forum now (including Raymond Carroll's note there that he was going to post Robert's message in here), and I realized upon reading it all that anything I would add to Robert's brilliant analysis would be extraneous baggage indeed.

Ashton

When I reposted the Speer/Charles-Dunne exchange above, I did a brief introduction (or thought I did) explaining where the exchange came from. Somehow it got lost in translation, hence Mr. Gray's understandable confusion. My apologies. Obviously I am not cut out to be a moderator.

I realize there are much bigger issues for this thread, but the subject of Douglas Caddy's involvement with Mullen is raised here again. I just now read Mr. Caddy's earliest posts, and he makes it clear that at no time was he actually a Mullen employee. He was at all times on the General Foods payroll. So any background checks on him were probably done before he joined General Foods. I don't see any basis on which to dispute Mr. Caddy when he says he never was an agent of the CIA.

The real questions for this thread include: On whose behalf were Hunt and McCord really operating, and what were their real purposes at any given time (their purposes may have changed as opportunities arose). If they had a Secret Agenda, as Jim Hougan argues very persuasively, there is no way in hell they would reveal it to their attorneys, one of whom was Douglas Caddy.

In their book, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, argue that John Paisley was a Soviet spy. They also argue that he was never murdered and that he was probably in hiding in the Soviet Union. (1)

Joseph Trento repeats the charge in his book, Prelude to Terror. He argues that “there was a suspicion that he had been recruited by the Russians during World War II, having been a radio operator on merchant vessels that visited Russia during the war.” He also confidently asserts that “a subsequent investigation revealed that a body later recovered and initially identified as Paisley’s was in fact not his.” (2) It turns out from the footnote to this sentence that this investigation was the one carried out by Trento for his earlier book, Widows. The authors argue that Dr. Stephen Adams “had no conclusive evidence that the body he examined was John Arthur Paisley.” (3) In doing so, they reject the claim made by Dr. Russell Fisher, that the identification of the corpse of Paisley’s came from the fingerprints the FBI had on file for the dead man. They also dismiss the claim that Paisley was identified by his dental records. (4)

Trento, and all other authors who have looked into this case, have all argued that Paisley did not commit suicide. As Jim Hougan pointed out in Secret Agenda, “according to the coroner who conducted the autopsy, death was caused by a gunshot wound behind the victim’s left ear.” Hougan add: “The site of the wound, behind the victim’s left ear, also militated against the suicide theory, since Paisley himself had been right-handed, and would presumably have fired the gun with his right into the right side of his head. Adding to the suspicion that murder had been committed was the fact that no blood, brain tissue, weapon or expended cartridge was found aboard the Brillig, which suggested that the victim had been killed in the water or perhaps murdered elsewhere and his body dumped at sea.” (5)

As the authors of Widows point out: “Although the physical evidence defies that conclusion, the police determined that Paisley had wrapped two nineteen-pound weight belts around himself, jumped from Brillig, and shot himself in the head in midair.” (6)

Clearly, the people who killed the man identified as Paisley did not want his body to be found. Once it had, a great deal of effort was needed to convince the world it was suicide. Who, therefore, wanted Paisley to die in 1978? Also, who had the power to cover-up the crime? Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Trento blames the KGB. He argues that Paisley was about to be exposed as a KGB agent and that they wanted him killed before he could reveal any information about the Soviet network of spies.

Richard Case Nagell told Dick Russell that he believed Paisley was a KGB agent. However, he was unwilling to explain how he knew this. Nagell also believed that Paisley was killed by the CIA rather than the KGB. (7)

There is no doubt that as soon as Paisley was killed some CIA officials began a campaign to discredit him as a Soviet spy. The main figure in this was David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research. On 25th August, 1978, Sullivan informed CIA security chief, Robert Gambino that "John Arthur Paisley, the former Deputy Director of Strategic Research, was working for the KGB." Sullivan does not appear to have any evidence that Paisley was a spy. As he told Trento in an interview in 1988: "I guess, in the end, I never trusted him... I never liked him. There was something that wasn't right. He seemed like some kind of burned-out old fart who had a beard and looked like a queer. I am convinced he was the mole." (8)

This is not convincing evidence and appears to be nothing more than prejudice against someone who refused to give into pressure from right-wingers like George Bush to exaggerate the military threat being posed by the Soviet Union. This helps to explain why others, such as General Daniel O. Graham, attempted to portray Paisley as a Soviet agent. Graham described Paisley as a "weepy liberal who was too soft on the Soviets". (9)

To anyone who held such right-wing views as Graham, liberals like John Paisley were always strong candidates to be Soviet spies. In the world inhabited by Graham, liberals in the 1970s were the same as communists.

It is worth considering why people in America became Soviet spies. The main reason seemed to be money. I suppose that in itself says a lot about capitalism. However, all Paisley’s friends admit that he never showed any interest in accumulating wealth. If he was well-paid as a Soviet spy, there is no indication from a study of his life to show what he did with the money.

In some cases members of the intelligence agencies were blackmailed into becoming Soviet spies. James Speyer Kronthal, is an example of someone who was blackmailed into providing classified material to the Soviets. Kronthal, head of the CIA station in Switzerland, unfortunately liked to have sex with young boys. The Soviets used this information to force Kronthal to become an informer. This came to an end when Kronthal committed suicide on 1st April, 1953. There is no evidence that Paisley was a homosexual. In fact, the opposite is true. All the available information suggests a very keen interest in women.

Sullivan and Graham believed that Paisley was a spy for political reasons. It is true that some Marxists did infiltrate the intelligence services as sleepers in the 1930s. This was the time of the Great Depression and many university educated people thought that communism was the future. Kim Philby, is probably the best example of this and he did considerable damage to the intelligence services in both Britain and the United States in the 1940s and early 1950s.

This phenomenon came to an end as a result of the policies of Stalin in both the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the invasion of Hungary in 1956 finally destroyed all belief amongst western intellectuals in the merits of Soviet communism. Liberals like Paisley were never attracted to communism. The same is true of other liberals in the CIA. They had a deep hatred of military dictatorships. This is why they objected to the policy of supporting such regimes in Africa, Asia and the Americas. As Paisley’s family and friends pointed out, he had a passion for civil rights. This is not the philosophy of someone who would work for the Soviet regime.

If we accept that Paisley remained a liberal throughout his time in the CIA, his behaviour makes more sense.

In 1957 Paisley was placed in charge of the CIA's Electronic Equipment Branch, Industrial Division. According to Joseph Trento, Paisley joined the CIA's inner circle: "Using the new technology of spy satellites, evesdropping satellites and listening posts, Paisley combined that electronic data with information from agents in place to give startling new pictures of Soviet society."

Paisley still held this position in 1963. It would have given him insights into the way the Soviet government interpreted the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He would definitely have seen the same information that was distributed to the very highest echelons of the FBI leadership on December 1, 1966. As Doug Horne pointed out on this forum: “The document is a history of the innermost private thinking of the KGB-not ' propaganda-both immediately after the assassination, and later in September of 1965. It was explained to me by Phil Golrick that the language used in the memo indicates the information was obtained by electronic surveillance, not human intelligence, and therefore should be considered a very reliable record of what the KGB was saying behind its own closed doors in New York City. Right after the assassination, per page one, the KGB blamed the assassination on an "ultraright conspiracy," but by September of 1965, per page 3, the KGB privately told its staff in NYC that President Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” (10)

It is therefore possible that Paisley obtained important insights into the assassination of Kennedy. As he himself held left-wing political opinions, he would have been appalled by the idea that Kennedy had been removed by some right-wing cabal. He would also have known that certain people in the CIA would have been involved in this conspiracy. The problem for Paisley was how would he get this information out in the public domain?

Paisley was eventually moved to the Office of Strategic Research (OSR). Edward Proctor, director of the OSR, and his deputy Paisley, believed in supplying the president with accurate information about the estimates of Soviet military strength. In 1969 this brought Proctor and Paisley into conflict with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger when they began putting the OSR under pressure to publish exaggerated estimates in order to justify increased military spending in the United States. It was also hoped that these high estimates would convince the Senate to give its support to the SALT 1 negotiations. There is no evidence that Proctor or Paisley gave into this pressure.

However, according to OSR colleague, Clarence Baier, claimed that Paisley, after his year off in London, he was not so vocal in his opposition to the demands made by Nixon and Kissinger. (11) I suspect this was a strategy that had been agreed with those in the CIA trying to protect the intelligence services from Nixon. If the CIA could convince Nixon that he could trust Paisley, they could get him into his inner-circle.

Paisley was not the only CIA officer who was trying to get into a position to spy on Nixon. As Deborah Davis pointed out in her book, Katharine the Great: “The president also began to rely heavily upon the counsel of Richard Ober, Angleton’s deputy, the man in the CIA most concerned with domestic counterintelligence, and one of the few whom Nixon trusted. Ober was given a small office inside the White House, where he was known only to Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and possibly Kissinger. He had unlimited access to the president, could pass Haldeman at any time without permission and without going on the record (his name was never recorded in White House logs), and was present at many of the meetings that took place after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, when Nixon’s obsession with his enemies pushed him to the limits to rational thought.” (12)

Davis goes on to argue that Richard Ober was Deep Throat (she got this information from a high-ranking CIA official). On the other hand, the authors of Widows argue that John Paisley might well have been Deep Throat. (13) It is almost certain that Deep Throat was several different sources and it is possible that both Ober and Paisley provided information to Bob Woodward.

If this is the case, it was part of the CIA strategy to portray Paisley as sympathetic to Richard Nixon. This helps to explain why in 1971 Paisley was chosen to work with Egil Krogh, David R. Young, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, to investigate the people "leaking" classified documents and secret information.

The authors of Widows suggest that the initial idea came from James Jesus Angleton. It is also argued that Angleton was growing increasingly suspicious of Henry Kissenger and that he "wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along." Trento adds that Kissenger was very interested in "how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program". Angleton had been the man responsible for this and feared that if this story was discovered, he would be sacked from the CIA. (14)

Paisley agreed to help the White House to search for the source of these leaks. His first task was to investigate the activities of Daniel Ellsberg. By August 1971, the project to discredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers became known as Operation Odessa. It is not known what role Paisley played in Watergate. He kept details of these activities from friends and family, including colleagues in the CIA. However, I believe that Paisley job for the CIA was to spy on Nixon’s illegal activities. If that is the case, like Richard Ober, he would have been in a good position to undermine Nixon by leaking information to journalists.

It also has to be remembered that during the Watergate scandal, Nixon tried to blackmail Richard Helms into helping cover-up these illegal activities. This included references to the CIA involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (15). Is it possible that this information came from John Paisley? Was Paisley playing a double game? Was he interested in exposing the illegal activities of both Nixon and the CIA?

In 1971 Paisley began organizing sex parties in Washington. Along with CIA colleague, Donald Burton, Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation. According to Trento, "Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge." Those who attended these parties included politicians and journalists. Burton admitted that a "high-level Nixon appointee enjoyed tying up women and beating them" at these parties. Another person who attended was the beautiful Hana Koecher, an agent with the Czech intelligence service.

Trento argues that another regular at these parties was Carl Bernstein. "In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, 'I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley'. Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971." (16)

Were these sex parties another example of the CIA obtaining blackmail information to use against the Nixon administration? Why did Paisley and Burton invite Washington journalists like Carl Bernstein to these parties? Was this all part of Operation Mockingbird? In his book, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Adrian Havill, points out that Woodward assigned another Washington Post reporter, Tim Robinson, to investigate Bernstein’s relationship with John Paisley (17).

In March 1973, James Schlesinger became director of the CIA. According to Donald Burton, Paisley "despised Schlesinger". Burton adds that "Schlesinger told Paisley that he did not like OSR's estimates and wanted them changed". Paisley ignored Schlesinger's orders and in less than six months he had been replaced by William Colby. According to Sam Wilson, Colby's Deputy Director, Paisley became very close to the new head of the CIA. It is therefore surprising that Paisley officially retired from the CIA in 1974. In reality Paisley continued to work for the CIA. He carried out several highly secret assignments where he reported directly to Colby.

In August 1975, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford proposing that an outside group of experts be given access to the same intelligence as the CIA analysts and be allowed to prepare a competing National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and then make an evaluation. The outside group would be called the B Team. The CIA and the intelligence community estimates would be the A Team.

William Colby, the director of the CIA, rejected the idea. On 30 January 1976, Ford sacked Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Soon afterwards Bush agreed to the setting up a B Team. As a result of this move, outsiders would now have access to all of America's classified knowledge about the Soviet Military.

Paisley was brought out of retirement to become the CIA 'coordinator' for the B Team. It was Paisley who would control the documents that they saw and the information they received. In their book, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin argue that Bush handpicked Paisley for the post. In their view, Paisley was under the control of Bush and his team of right-wing extremists on the B Team. (18)

This is not true. It was Hank Knoche, Bush's deputy, was ordered to organize this new system. Knoche was opposed to the idea of outsiders looking at classified documents. The appointment of Paisley was an attempt to frustrate the work of the B Team.

Members of the B Team included Richard E. Pipes, Lt. General John Vogt, Brigadier General Jasper Welch, Clare Boothe Luce, Paul Nitze, General Daniel O. Graham, William van Cleeve (University of Southern California), Foy Kohler (U.S. Ambassador to Moscow), Seymour Weiss (State Department), Thomas Wolfe (Rand Corporation), Edward Teller and Paul Wolfowitz (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency).

One member of the A team, David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, came to the conclusion that Paisley had been put into place to prevent the B Team from seeing important classified material. As a result, Sullivan began leaking classified documents concerning the SALT 1 negotiations to Pipes and Graham. He also passed documents to Richard Perle, who at that time was working for Senator Henry Jackson. Sullivan was later dismissed from the CIA for leaking classified documents to Perle. (19)

On 26th December, 1976, David Binder reported in the New York Times that the B Team had changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees. The CIA was furious claiming that right-wing members of the B Team had leaked classified documents to the New York Times and in doing so had compromised national security.

After Paisley’s death, Binder claimed that it was Paisley who leaked this information to him (20). Paisley’s boss, Hank Knoche, dismissed this story. He remains convinced that it was members of the B Team who leaked this information: “The leaks were from the right-wingers. The hard right. The Danny Graham types… the ones that later became part of the Reagan administration.” Knoche explains it was not in Paisley’s interests to undermine the work of the CIA. “The integrity of the process and the objectivity of those estimates is something that John was very, very fond of and that resonated deep within his soul. So the idea of leaking something that would reflect adversely on CIA doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me.” (21)

When President Jimmy Carter took office he sacked George H. W. Bush and replaced him with his old friend, Stansfield Turner. Paisley continued to do work for the CIA and records show that Paisley briefed Turner in 1977 and 1978. Paisley's address book included both Turner's home and White House telephone numbers.

In May 1978 Paisley began working for the Washington accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. The job had been obtained for Paisley by Dr. K. Wayne Smith, who was a fellow member of the CIA's Military and Economic Advisory Panel. However, Joseph Trento discovered that the CIA was actually paying his $36,000 salary. As Trento points out: "It is clear that the Coopers position was needed as some sort of cover job for Paisley during the spring, quite possibly without the knowledge of Dr. Smith."

Dr. K. Wayne Smith's secretary, Kay Fulford, claims that Paisley rarely visited the Coopers & Lybrand office and most of the time she contacted him via his telephone number at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Trento points out: "four years after his retirement, Paisley still had an office at the CIA." (22)

What kind of work was Paisley doing for the CIA when he died? Whatever it was he seems to have been doing it for Stansfield Turner. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. He anchored his boat at Hooper's Light and in a radio conversation with his friend, Mike Yohn, Paisley explained that he had an important report to write.

According to the Baltimore Sun, top secret documents concerning “Soviet nuclear capabilities conducted in late 1977 by a CIA group” were found on his boat. The newspaper goes onto argue that “government sources said it is not possible to rule out the theory that the Paisley affair touches on the existence of a Soviet “mole” – a deep-cover Soviet agent planted inside the Agency – and the dead officer’s knowledge thereof.” (23)

This is probably CIA disinformation. A very different story is told by Gerald Sword, the first man to board Paisley’s boat. He looked through the papers and later told the CIA what he found. As Dick Russell points out, he found a CIA memo that stated: “Coast Guard personnel found some papers dealing with the Cuban crisis.” (24) It is not known what was meant by the term “Cuban crisis” but it is possible that Paisley was writing a report about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

One has to remember that Paisley died during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation. Was Paisley involved in writing a report for Stansfield Turner on the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
It is probably no coincidence that another person close to Nixon, and another Deep Throat candidate, William Sullivan, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. An inquest decided that he had been shot accidentally by Robert Daniels, the son of a police officer, who was fined $500 and lost his hunting license for 10 years.
Sullivan, who carried out the original FBI investigation into the Kennedy assassination, had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Had Sullivan, like Paisley, leaked information on the assassination to Nixon?
Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period leading up to the death of Paisley. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.


Notes

1. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 31 -190)

2. Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror, 2005 (page 96-97)

3. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 173)

4. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 123)

5. Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, 1984 (page 316)

6. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 184)

7. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 127)

8. Joseph Trento, interview with David S. Sullivan, 1st July, 1988

9. Comments made by Daniel O. Graham in the Wilmington News-Journal (27th June, 1979)

10. Doug Horne, JFK Forum posting (6th June, 2006)

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=6849&st=15

11. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 60)

12. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great, 1979 (page 271)

13. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 62)

14. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 71-73)

15. H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 1978 (pages 48-50)

16. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 71-72)

17. Adrian Havill, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 1993 (page 105)

18. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 1992 (page 323)

19. Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror, 2005 (page 97)

20. Joseph Trento, interview with David Binder, 24th June, 1979

21. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 119)

22. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 131)

23. Baltimore Sun (26th January, 1979)

24. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 128)

Even after resorting to posing like Rodin's "The Thinker" for far too many hours, I have yet to produce a single sensible thought to explain why anybody not working in some capacity for CIA would be inserted into a CIA front company's headquarters in the capitol of the United States, spittin' distance from Langley. Perhaps you could help me on this point so I, too, can become sensible.



Another view (arising, perhaps, from the discomfort of the Rodin pose) is there is not the remotest chance in hell that anybody but a CIA-controlled attorney would be allowed anywhere near any of them. YMMV. And apparently does.

Ashton Gray

Thanks again for this rich storehouse of information, John. With the little time I've had I've begun to work some of this into my own timeline that I'm cobbling together from all the ones I have, and it's already very illuminating.

Although what I'm about to bring up isn't directly related to Paisley, and so far is unevaluated against all this, it's sure seeming to mesh with the information in this thread. It's an event that I think has a great deal of significance, but it often seems to get lost in the shuffle surrounding Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.

It's Nixon's discovery in late December 1971 that Navy Yeoman Charles E. Radford had systematically stolen and copied documents of the President's National Security Council (NSC) for Admiral Thomas Moorer over a period of about thirteen months, giving Naval Intelligence a spyglass into the Oval Office throughout.

Attention tends to fix on when Nixon discovered this, in December 1971 (and foolishly kept the lid on it), but more significant is when it had started, and the time period it covered.

Working back over the period during which it was going on, it puts the start of this Intelligence Cult spying at around November 1970.

In one of those head-torquing coincidences we've all come to know and love, here's what else happened that month:

• Douglas Caddy leaves the Mullen firm to work for Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen.
• E. Howard Hunt becomes a "client" of Caddy and of Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen.
• G. Gordon Liddy (who already has "special CIA clearances") is approached by Robert Mardian, asking Liddy to take a position that Mardian describes as "super-confidential."

So the Intelligence Cult spy operation on the White House was going on through the entire Pentagon Papers op, the hiring of Liddy, the hiring of Hunt, NSA's David Young's move over to create the totally incompetent "plumbers," the Fielding office photo-op by Hunt and Liddy (which would take Ellsberg off the hook), and the purported "Diem cables" op. Minimally.

Of course apologists for the interagency Intelligence Cult will swear on a stack of Bibles that the Boy Scouts at CIA would never, ever stoop so low as to receive every syllable produced by this illegal domestic spy operation on the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces during wartime. These apologists have superhuman X-ray vision that can penetrate the sealed envelopes whizzing endlessly amongst these intel cruds, which is why the apologists can swear this on a stack of Bibles.

We should be grateful for such Karnaks in our midst.

Thank you again for the information.

Ashton Gray

Perhaps someone in this Forum who actually worked for the Agency or such similar entities can say more to this, but it has been my understanding from my reading and from interviews with several ex-agents and Agency types that they are trained and expected to only use CIA approved psychiatrists and/or attorneys who at least have the clearances to hear what they might have to say.

I am glad to see that John Simkin is prescribing a course of reading for you. Maybe when you finish the course you will realize that, in a situation like the Watergate, the CIA would be smart enough not to engage lawyers who could be traced back to them, for the same reason that a professional killer, while he may have a personal weapon that he prefers to all others, will choose as murder weapon a gun he does not like so well just because it is untraceable.

And it won't do to respond that Douglas Caddy CAN be traced to the CIA, because you certainly have not done so.

However, go ahead and file a FOIA request for CIA documents on Douglas Caddy, and see what you come up with.

As the Sufi said to the pilgrim: O traveller! I fear you will never reach Mecca, for you are on the road to Turkestan.

[color=#009900][quote name='J. Raymond Carroll' date='Jul 3 2006, 09:21 PM' post='67047']
I am glad to see that John Simkin is prescribing a course of reading for you

Oh here we go again. Seems to me you'd do well to read Simkin's "course" yourself.
From where I sit he's in agreement with Mr. Gray.

Perhaps, counselor, you've just not had time to read his recent posts.

Dawn


.

[quote name='Dawn Meredith' date='Jul 3 2006, 11:50 PM' post='67060']
[quote name='J. Raymond Carroll' date='Jul 3 2006, 09:21 PM' post='67047']
I am glad to see that John Simkin is prescribing a course of reading for you[/color]
From where I sit he's in agreement with Mr. Gray.
Dawn
[/quote]

So according to the Dawn Meredith School of Logic (of which more anon on the Diem thread) if John Simkin agrees with someone, then that someone must be right.

This is fallacious reasoning. John Simkin agreed with me that England would win the World Cup and he was wrong.

P.S. I hope Ashton Gray doesn't mind you responding on his behalf, because I am quite sure he is capable of responding for himself, if he thought a response was called for.

She didn't. Have you heard about the "Reading Is Fun" program?



I am.



I didn't.

Ashton Gray

I had a feeling you wouldn't. No answer to the "killer analogy," what?

Two photographs of John Paisley. One alive, one dead. Is it the same man?

[quote name='John Simkin' date='Jul 4 2006, 03:34 PM' post='67115']
Two photographs of John Paisley. One alive, one dead. Is it the same man?
[/quote]

Does not appear to be, but I shall defer to the many photo experts on this forum.

Dawn

Gary Buell has posted this story from the San Francisco Chronicle on 5th May, 1977 on another thread.

Watergater Blames CIA
(Dallas)

Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis said yesterday the CIA planned the break-in because high officials felt the then-President Nixon was becoming too powerful and was overly interested in the assassination of President Kennedy.

Sturgis also said he believes "Deep Throat" - a major source for Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward - was Robert Bennett, a partner in a CIA-front public relations firm in Washington. Bennett, a son of former Senator Wallace Bennett (Rep-Utah), is employed by the Summa Corp., part of the empire of the late Howard Hughes. Hughes was a major client of Mullen Corp., Bennett's old firm.

Sturgis was convicted in the break-in at Democratic headquarters. He said Bennett - on orders from then-CIA Director Richard Helms - was fed information by Alexander Haig, Nixon's chief of staff; Alexander Butterfield, who disclosed the existence of Nixon's taping system; and Watergate burglar Howard Hunt.

That's not inconsistent with anything I've found, but I think is a limited view—which would make sense entirely given Sturgis's place in the pecking order. The evidence suggests there also were much deeper currents—other CIA agendas—that Sturgis would have been cut off from.



I'm still confident that "Deep Throat" was nothing but a nonexistent fiction, a literary device to account for information Woodward and Bradlee were getting from multiple Intelligence Cult sources—which Woodward had to account for somehow. Funneling them all into one completely impossible fiction—impossible to have that much information, and impossible ever to track down or trace—is pure CIA think-tank work product.

That said, Bennett unquestionably was key to the con. In the article I've promised several times and still haven't delivered on (it's likely now going to be several separate articles, such is its scope) documents a completely stunning, astounding number of lies from Bennett in testimony covering just the morning and afternoon of Monday, June 19, 1972. In fact, it's part of what has made the article(s) so extraordinarily difficult to finish (in addition to real life interfering). Those key days of June 19, June 23, and June 28 are so jammed-packed with completely impossible time warps and contradictions in testimony that trying to lay it out so it can make any sense at all is one of the hardest jobs I've ever taken on.



All of that, too, is entirely consistent with everything I've seen. I feel about 90% certain that Bennett also had been being fed information from CIA, going to Hunt, of what was being stolen through all of 1971 from Nixon's National Security Council by Admiral Moorer, using Charles E. Radford. I wrote about this somewhere else in this forum, just can't remember where right now.

Thanks for this. All the ducks do line up completely.

Ashton

"I'm still confident that "Deep Throat" was nothing but a nonexistent fiction, a literary device to account for information Woodward and Bradlee were getting from multiple Intelligence Cult sources—which Woodward had to account for somehow. Funneling them all into one completely impossible fiction—impossible to have that much information, and impossible ever to track down or trace—is pure CIA think-tank work product."

_____________________

Right, a composite; in fact, to reiterate something I've put on this Forum a couple of times, I heard a Watergate anniversary broadcast, in the early or mid 80's, on the old Larry King radio show of the Mutual Broadcasting Network. Sam Dash and Fred Thompson were the guests (I recall Thompson's curt "hmmph, big deal" after one of Dash's professorial soliloquies on some point of constitutional nicety).

Dash, unforgettably, responded to a caller's inquiry as to the identity of Deep Throat by saying he thought DT was a...composite! King, who really was great on radio (good face for it), quickly responded that Janet Cook, a Pulitzer Prize winner at the Post who recently had been exposed as a fraud, was nearly indicted for her deceits and that Woodstein, especially the Woodman, should be taken to similar task if the composite theory were true. Unfortunately, Dash never elaborated and King never asked him why he thought that. So, we had Dash saying essentially what many of us here believe.

Hougan made a case for Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who shot up the Military and political ranks quickly after Watergate, who was a Navy and NSA guy, and who was in position to fit most of the identifiable characteristics of DT. Still, no one person could have been throat. No way.

JG

Sturgis was probably just talking out of his rump, as usual. Did everyone forget that he himself was a disinformationist telling newspapers in the days after the assassination that Oswald was working for Castro?
Anyone convinced that Sturgis is a reliable source should re-read Fonzi's "The Last Investgation." IMO.

By the time Haig was Nixon's Chief of Staff, Helms was already in Iran. Most conspiracy theories hold that Haig was reporting to the Pentagon, if anything. Is there any evidence he was close to Bennett or Helms? Is there any evidence Butterfield was close to Bennett or Helms? If so, please post...

[quote name='Ashton Gray' date='Jul 11 2006, 09:19 AM' post='67972']
[quote name='John Simkin' post='67961' date='Jul 11 2006, 12:52 AM']
I'm still confident that "Deep Throat" was nothing but a nonexistent fiction, a literary device to account for information Woodward and Bradlee were getting from multiple Intelligence Cult sources—which Woodward had to account for somehow. Funneling them all into one completely impossible fiction—impossible to have that much information, and impossible ever to track down or trace—is pure CIA think-tank work product.

I think you have pretty much proved that here on these pages. But some of us had this figured out too. I mean the whole marking- the- info -on- the- Washington Post innane scenario. Geez, Do Woodstein think we were all born last year??
Not to mention that there is NO MENTION of DT in the book. Gee, you'd think that would be a very important detail.

Your upcoming article on Bennet is why many of us also suspected him so long. But it's fiction. DT, I mean
I see Woodward on Larry King and I want to ......change the channel, but I listen, just in case he unwittingly drops a nugget, in a moment of forgetting his well-rehersed script.

With all due deference to Atty. Caddy I believe that his opinion- (press controlled by small no. of corporations)- and mine and John's (etc) beliefs are both true. Op Mockingbird is as much alive and fully functioning as it ever was. In fact even worse with the likes of "fair and balanced " Fox.
Oh for the likes of a real Edward Morrow!!

But I don't expect to see it....unless we FORCE some damn change. We the people. The 1st Amendment died long ago and we need a very concerted effort at its resotoration.

Dawn

Is this scenario even remotely feasible?


In November 1972, Nixon and Agnew win re-election. Within months, an investigation commences against Spiro Agnew, a sitting Vice-President of the United States.

Nelson Rockefeller expects Nixon to appoint him as VP after Agnew is dumped.

Nixon doesn't want to because of Nelson's image as having too much wealth and ambition, and because he doesn't trust Rockefeller not to kill him to become president.

So Nixon appoints loyal lapdog Ford.

Rockefeller is pissed and stops protecting Nixon from the burglery backlash. Rockefeller unleashes his media and they tear Nixon apart.

The Rockefellers tell Nixon to resign (in disgrace) so Ford moves to President and appoints Nelson Rockefeller Vice-President. Ford pardons Nixon within thirty days; which the Rockefellers think would preclude Ford from the Presidential nomination in 1976, since the country would refuse to vote for him. That paves the way for Nelson.


Taken from:
http://www.senderberl.com/recapturing/america/chapter4.htm
(A novel/fiction/fictional dialogue.)

Myra, the evil Nelson theory makes sense on paper, but not when you look at Nelson as a man. The grandsons of billionaire entrepreneurs tend to be less ambitious than their predecessors. It's important to remember that, believe it or not, Rockefeller was looked at as a dangerous liberal by much of the Republican party. No liberal would vote for Nixon anyhow. Therefore, Rockefeller would not have helped Nixon get elected in 68 or 72. No, the real threat to Nixon came from Wallace, which helps explain why Agnew was selected. The other explanation is $$$. Much of the US money spent fostering the military coup in Greece was filtered back into the Nixon campaign, presumably on the condition Nixon pick Agnew, the most prominent right-wing Greek in the US, for VP.

I suspect that the choice of Ford was forced onto Nixon. The plan was to remove Nixon from the beginning, but Agnew had to go first. Some suspect that Nixon chose Agnew for just this reason. Agnew was so repugnant that Nixon would be isolated and protected. Nothing at all like the current POTUS and VP.

Well I don't think the theory every indicated that Rockefeller ever helped Nixon get elected Pat, just that he wanted the vacated VP slot and clearly the presidency from there.

And sure, Wallace was a threat to Nixon's chances of election; he broke up the right wing loony vote. And he was dealt with just as Bobby Kennedy was. I don't understand what that has to do with the premise I posted either.



Why would the power elite want to kill RFK and Wallace (tho' that only crippled him) to get Nixon in office while setting him up for removal? Huh?

I have often wondered how that came about, as the seeds of Nixon's removal (the Watergate break in) occurred just weeks prior to his re-election. Perhaps it was due to Nixon's embracing of Red China and rejection of Taiwan? This deeply upset a lot of the far right wing folks.

Hm, this is a viable theory. On one hand I'd think his reaching out to China (as President Kennedy reached out to Russia?) would rub the cold war profiteers the wrong way. On the other hand China is such a big market for predatory capitalists.... Hm, interesting.

_____________________________________

Paisley IS someone who ought to be looked at as much as possible because he was in charge of a CIA unit overseeing Soviet electronics at the time Oswald was employed in a radio-electronics factory in Minsk. In fact, he may be - in death - the most accessible link to both Watergate and the JFK assassination despite E. Howard Hunt's acknowledged tenure as link extant. He also belonged to the same "social club" in D.C. as Carl Bernstein. Of course, Paisley's past and connections aren't very easily disinterred, though Woodward may yet claim to have interviewed him while he was drowning.

Then there is, once again, the mysterious Bernard Fensterwald on stage in yet another scene, representing the Paisley family this time. Perhaps James Richards has a photo of him and Mr. Paisley, post mortem. I wouldn't be surprised at anything in that extraordinary collection of his.

Later,
JG

_______________________________________________

Not at all a fanciful scenario, that. And let us keep in mind what transpired after the pardon: there were TWO assassination attempts on Ford -with Nelson waiting in the wings.

Interesting, for want of a better word, how the media handled those unsuccessful assassination attempts...there were a couple on Clinton, also, but they seemed more like warnings and were carried out from somewhat of a distance.

JG

Omygod I forgot all about the attempts on Ford. Hm. Thanks John.

Geez, they tried twice within seventeen days?!

"...Those were the words composed by Sara Jane Moore just before her failed assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford on September 22, 1975. Ford had survived another failed assassination attempt by one Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme a mere seventeen days earlier."
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Sara%20Jane%20Moore

But Fromm's gun wasn't loaded--weird:
"Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
...Witness testimony of the incident varies. Lyn was very calm, "Easy boys, I'm still." One witness said Lyn had said, "It wasn't loaded anyway." That testimony was withheld from the trial."

However...

"Sara Jane Moore

...At the tender age of 42, she embraced the so-called "counter-culture" way of life and went underground. Apparently she didn't go too deeply underground. The FBI managed to dig her up and in their infinite wisdom, decided she would be a prime candidate to gather information about the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Poor Sara. I guess she wasn't that good of an undercover agent. She was quickly found out by her friends in the underground circles and ostracized.

What's a poor girl gotta do to win her friends back and get a little self-esteem? How `bout shooting the President?
As President Ford was leaving the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore was about forty feet away. She pulled out her .38 caliber Smith & Wesson and took aim.

Fortunately for President Ford, a bystander in the crowd by the name of Oliver Sipple saw what was about to happen and grabbed Moore's arm just as she fired. Instead of hitting its intended target, the bullet ricocheted off a wall and slightly wounded a nearby cab driver.

She was quickly apprehended and brought to trial. At the proceedings, she never once tried to claim her innocence. As a matter of fact, she had this to say.

"There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun."

Sara Jane Moore received a life sentence. In 1979, she managed to escape prison but it was short lived. She was apprehended the next day and returned to prison."

Myra, when your "evil Nelson" theory starts taking wings, whereby Manson follower Sqeaky Fromme and wacko Sara Jane Moore are part of the plot, it's time to let it rest. Rocky was never gonna get elected in 76. He didn't even run. Ford dumped him from the VP slot, in fact, because he considered Rocky a political liability, WITHIN HIS OWN PARTY. It was feared that Reagan would get the nomination, with Kennedy assassination conspiracy-promoter Richard Schweicker as his VP, unless Ford made an overture to the right-wing by bringing Dole aboard. Now if you really want to confuse the plot, you can have Reagan--a member of the Rocky commission--picking Schweicker on purpose--to ruin Schweicker's career, and Rocky and Ford, Warren Commission defenders, giving him the "wink-wink-you'll get it next time, Ron." But how reasonable is this? Do you see Reagan, who was already a geezer, putting his presidential hopes aside and taking a fall for Ford? I don't.

It's important to understand that the Democrats had total control of congress in the seventies and that much of what Nixon and Ford did, including the selection of their veeps, was done to appease the Dems. As far as Agnew, he was not forced out by a Rockefeller-led cabal, but was sacrificed by Nixon himself, in order to slow down the Watergate investigation. Agnew himself knew this to be true and makes a case for this in his little-read book. (As opposed to Mao's Little Red Book.)


Ford was picked as Nixon's VP because he was one of the few Republican loyalists popular enough with the Dems to get confirmed. Ford picked Rocky as his VP for the exact same reasons.

[quote name='Pat Speer' post='84562' date='Dec 9 2006, 11:41 PM'][quote name='Myra Bronstein' post='84400' date='Dec 9 2006, 02:57 AM'][quote name='John Gillespie' post='84378' date='Dec 8 2006, 11:48 PM'][quote name='Myra Bronstein' post='83571' date='Dec 3 2006, 10:04 AM']Is this scenario even remotely feasible?

Ford was picked as Nixon's VP because he was one of the few Republican loyalists popular enough with the Dems to get confirmed. Ford picked Rocky as his VP for the exact same reasons.[/quote]

Nonsense. Pat you drinking Ashton's Kool-Aid now? Ford was picked because he could be counted on for several things, pardoning Criminal Nixon, putting Poppa Bush at the helm of the CIA, being two vital tasks.

I do not know if the coup occurred prior to 11/22/63 and JFk was an aberation, but I sure as hell know that on 11/22/63 a total MIC coup occurred and that things have only gotten worse. Ford was a good soldier as Warren Commissioner and is, in my opinion, an accessory to the crime itself, rather the cover-up. He and anyone else involved still alive should be indicted.

I believe that is the purpose of the Grand Jury effort.

Dawn

I attempted to post here, but it disappeared. Don't have time to re-type it.

Dawn

For a look at another "Nelson did it" POV, see this web site:

http://www.reformation.org/kennedy.html