David McLean

Ron, my thinking as well, with a couple anecdotes… 1 .a friend/customer at the bookshop we run had been at DARPA/JPL on high security clearances and later worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and claimed knowledge of the family. When asked about David R in regard to the JFKA, he pointedly said he David R was too prissy, precise or bankerly to be involved in assassination. When I replied, well who then, he simply said”The Republicans”, and that is as far as he would go. Robert, the photo of David R and Ed Clark is in the Australian American association periodical from the early 1960s which I once owned. Not sure if its is still in my possession but would be in an archival library. 2.Fast forward to 2005, while in Washington DC a friend and I spent time with a senior partner at Akin Gump Strauss et al. Talking politics and the Kennedy assassination, he posed a koan for me: Who was Thomas Dewey’s running mate in 1948? I did not know but thought of the only West Coast Republican I could think of was California governor Earl Warren. A lucky guess and to my mind a telling Q and A, given Dulles’s involvement with both the Dewey campaign and the Warren Commission. The lawyer’s next remark still in context had to do with Nelson Rockefeller dying “on the job” with a secretary after hours. He was also scathing about unstated business involving the firms Texas office. End of Story

It would fundamental to this hypothesis to know when and if in 1963 Kennedy actually set a date for his Indonesian visit the following year. Also note that formulating this into a plan of action would be tantamount to planning the crime of a war of aggression, hence I suspect there to be little documentation apart from the fragments of OpPlan34A.

Thanks to All for engaging on this without the rancour so common today. First as to proof of what might be called the Far East Hypothesis, some data points- 1.aJohn Foster Dulles at Geneva in 1953/54 refused to even shake hands with Chou EnLai, though Chou had enabled cease fire and treaty agreements in Korea and Vietnam, saving face for the US, postponing denouement for later, still pending in Korea; 2.In response, Allen Dulles in 1955 blew up the plane Chou En Lai was to fly to the Bandung Non-Aligned conference and then funded the 1957-58 Permesta or Outer Islands rebellion against Sukarno, an utter failure but which left the Indonesian army waiting for the kill; 3.In 1960, student protests in Japan prevented Eisenhower from visiting to renew the 10year US bases agreement with an unarmed Japan; soon after, the leader of a resurgent pro China Socialist Partywas assassinated on a live TV election Speech; 4.In 1961South Korea student unrest forced the US to encourage the overthrow of Syngman Rhee by Chung Hee Park, who was told by General Magruder he would be killed if he approached North Korea; 5.In Laos, factional civil war erupted, and JFK with Harriman backed a tri-partite arrangement with Russian backing, but sabotaged from the start by the CIA and its Lao allies; meanwhile Vietnam was unravelling and Diem had to go; 6.In Indonesia, Russia backed the Navy, China was radicalising the PKI…Kennedy had it in mind to offer massive aid and political support to wean Indonesia away from the Communists,including a visit in 1964…a gamble no doubt, with severe consequences; In short, American power in the East was weak and fast diminishing, with no prospect of reversal. Even Kennedys inner circle (Harriman, the Bundys, etc) were at odds with Kennedy. And the CIA and Joint Chiefs were apoplectic. It is my firm belief, strategic military authorities warned the Joint Chiefs and NSC that US power in Asia was untenable and nuclear confrontation inevitable in the foreseeable future. If massive force were to be applied in Vietnam, the tide would turn. And that is exactly what transpired. With JFK out of the way, LBJ gave them”their God Damned war”, with Kennedys men leading the charge; Look it is not proof, but to my mind is the only rational explanation of why the US officials embarked on a war they knew the could not win, but would forestall imminent loss of Indonesia and Japan. Footnote: The Rockefellers were always in favour of rapprochement with the USSR and PRC but only on US terms from a”position of strength”, basically achieved through Nixon and Kissinger. Thats it, thanks for listening…

Sorry Robert Morrow, but your monomania with LBJ, verges on a Lone Nut scenario, with no co-conspirators, only flunkies under LBJs control in a system LBJ with Hoovers help, learned how to manipulate. Assertions and the beliefs of the LBJ cohort have become facts, non sequitars, not amenable to nuance or adumbration.Don’t get me wrong…I admire your tenacity and care in substantiating sources. And the focus on LBJ as a factor in the assassintion of John, but relevantly, not Robert Kennedy. So if LBJ was a killer of political enemies, he was not alone. In October 1966, I was at the Manila Summit of Asian allies, a 21 year old with a Press pass. It was a hollow stage managed affair , a kind of photo opportunity, for the 1966 midterms that engaged but fooled no one.A year earlier about December 1965, I had doorstopped Ed Clark at Adelaide Airport on his Ambassadorial fact-finding mission around the Outback. By then, Degolyer and McNaughten, and Murchison’s Delhi already had control of Australia’s nascent natural gas resources, and Pine Gap was being negotiated and lied about.Texas and Texans truly had their tentacles Downunder. King Ranch was the country’s largest private landowner with 9 million acres. Connally personally had points in our first oil pipeline in Queensland. But before them, Standard Oil of California and the Texas Company and Esso BHP had had for decades the bigger share of petrol exploration, refining and distribution. Though I had long known of the Texans and their power to control and shape events, the JFKA was not on my radar until I read Peter Dale Scott’s essay in the Senator Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers and received the Ellsberg defence team’s work up on Ambassador Marshall Green in about May 1973, via Lenny Siegel at the Pacific Report and World Empire Telegram, for whom I had written about how Australia was a proxy for the US in Indonesia. Too cut this long and indulgent story short, it is my long considered belief that the assassination of the beloved President had more to do with JFKs approach to widespread crises in US power prognosis in the Far East over 1958-64 than the fortunes of a Texas Hill country opportunist who would and did do the bidding of the others with a world to lose.

What I wrote was that LBJ was beholden to the Klegbergs and Browns particularly, and to Murchison and the Sid Richardson connection(Connolly, Bass) not that they were instrumental. Who knows, though. By 1961, King Ranch was in receipt of $120m pa royalties from Humble/Esso, and had the ear of Dulles. David Rockefeller was personally known to Ed Clark, at least through the Australia America friendship association (pictured together). Barr McClellan writes that a payoff of sorts to Clark came through Humble. Benno Schmidt, a brilliant UT law graduate was Jock Whitney’s right hand man, and partner with David Rockefeller in a largeEsperance Western Australian pastoral property(and bolthole after a nuclear holocaust).Schmidt’s son died in a car accident there when Clark was ambassador and was well known to them.Need I mention Freeport’s New Guinea prospect. Esso, King Ranch, US intellligence interests, and John Connally personally WERE instrumental in the destruction of the Whitlam Labor Party, beginning with the coup in 1975, culminating in the 1983 anointing of Bob Hawke. Note that Nixon is quoted as saying Connally was the only politico he was afraaid of, and Connally took the Treasury job on condition George H W Bush got a high position. The moral of this story is even given Robert Morrows telling the movers and shakers were not Texas Hill country politicians.Lest we forget that California Governor Earl Warren was Thomas Dewey’s running mate in 1948. Etc, etc.

In general terms, I have come to accept M.Scott Peck’s definition (in People of the Lie) evil in human relationships, that is, in my clumsy paraphrase, the drive to dominate and destroy the will of others. And the cunning to cover their actions and motivation. LBJ certainly demonstrated such psychopathology. But he also kowtowed to people with money power, eg the Klebergs, the George and Herman Brown, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison, Rockefellers, Jock Whitney come to mind. That made him like your common garden variety of bully, and easy to manipulate for others’ wider aims. The question then becomes, as it always has, who manipulated whom and who really benefitted from the violent end of the Kennedy Project. And the answer has always been the Republican Establishment, of whom Robert Morrow’s fulminations leave unscathed.

At a Lancer conference about 15 years ago , I bought a book purporting to explain the crash to Bowers having a severe allergic reaction, plus some testimony from the nearby farmer raising no suspicious of a second vehicle (by memory). Having never heard of an allergy-induced single car crash, and against circumstantial evidence re the JFKA, I tentatively concluded that his murder was unproven but possible given what we strongly believe he witnessed.

Maybe the Proviso ought to be the nomination of the right candidate for the Democrats. .

Who now remembers the pivotal 1948 election…Truman upset Dewey (AND VP nominee Earl Warren) despite 2.37% going to Wallace’s Progressive Party, and a handful of southern states giving their electoral votes to Storm Thurman’s States Rights Party. AND despite the turnout being historically quite low at 51% of Voting Age persons. Compare that to historically high VAP turnouts in 1960 - 62.8% and 2020 62%. Seems to me the DP brand remains fairly strong, even resilliant, but, but..

Good topic, Ben, enlightening essay David, thanks. My interest is piqued when DB and Tosh raise points of intersection with known suspects (Martino,Santo T, Loran Hall misleadingly?) or state actors Gale, del Valle…several directions for research? Specifically YAF is mentioned raising the presence of the notorious Buckley Family , a quintessential group that straddled the Right and the CIA, or politics and violent covert action. Relevant here is an alleged visit of a Letelier assassin to a Buckley office in NYC days before(Donald Freed). If proven does this indicate Guilt or Guilt by Association? Here in Australia, the Buckley Familyoil company Magellan linked up with Esso in a play that led directly to the dismise of Gough Whitlam in 1974-75, through the oil company Exoil linked to crypto-fascist Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen(Esso paid Exoil $400,000+ to change its name to Oilmin when Esso became Exxon. Oilmin and Magellan had Palm Valley gas now feeding Alice Springs. And Bjelkeupset the balance in our Senate upon the death of Labor senator). Thanks for the opportunity to put some of this on the record.

Matt, Matt,in the 1930s Tracy Barnes married the step sister of Richard Aldrich boss of the First National and Abby wife of John D Rockefeller Jr, both of whom were raking in vast profits from German reparations / rearmament currency swap and cartel scams. Read your history more broadly — Of course that cohort opposed American taking sides.

Ben, W., Agree re Hughes-Maheu and Nixon. Maheu and Nixon were Hoover’s 1940’s protoges; Nixon, Maheu and CIA go back to 1954; Nixon was Hughes’ Boy all along; Linking JFKA, JP Lafitte intersects with CIA and Maheu thru Office of Security. Finally, who really benefited from both assassinations? Not LBJ so much as Tricky Dick.

Having - finally, belatedly - read Jeff Morley’s CIA and Zionism, it seems clear that US foreign policy is and has been since JFK hostage to whoever is on power in Israel. Even NATO’s nuclear capability is under firm US control. Not so, apparently, with Israel’s nuclear arms, as Netanyahu seemed to signal in his latest Halocaust address. And as the world is discovering to its horror, the claims of Zionism seem to have grown beyond comprehension, unconditional surrender of any and all defenders of Palestinian rights, dignity, and very existence.

One factoid I have been mulling over, since his official obituary twenty odd years ago, which may lend some small credence to an Israeli angle to the JFKA is the following—-in 1967, the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv was one John Denley Walker, an otherwise unremarkable Angleton acolyte, with postings in Paris, Malta and Canberra. What intrigues and puzzles me is that in 1976-77 he was another liaison figure between CIA and the House Select Committee. On the Joannides analogy, what sensitive info might Walker have been stonewalling? FYI, other aspects of his career were membership of the Society of the Cincinnati, an late 1940s visit to Civil War Greece, where his father was stationed as a AID type bureaucrat, close contact with Bernie Houghton in 1970s Sydney, and his marriage breakdown when his wife left him for the 2ic in our domestic security outfit ASIO.

Bill and All, Clarify please, were the 10/10/63 memos part of an ongoing hunt for a Soviet bloc mole and/or a ploy to smoke out the Oswald imposters of Sept 28 and October 1,2? Or both. And Nagell via Russell hinted at a Bloc mole around CIA ops in MC, and a feedback loop at HotelLuma, did they not? I seem to recall there is absolutely no record of Nagells late September letter to Hoover/FBI.