Robin Ramsay

Do we? I know we have Morales reported as saying - implying - that he was involved; and Martino is said to have known something. But beyond that? Are any of these people reliably reported as being on Dealey Plaza? It may be that as Howard Hunt is reported to have said to his son just before he died that there were several plots, one by CIA people. It still seems more likely to me that the Mac Wallace story is true; that LBJ's little criminal gang did it; that their little gang was seen by Roger Craig in the immediate aftermath. The idea that the Mac Wallace print was planted is implausible to me. If you are going to implicate him, why not do it with something more substantial? In any case the planted idea sounds like the classic move we all make to avoid having our theories falsified. Mac Wallace had already got away with murdering Marshall - why would they not think they could do it again in LBJ's backyard?

Do we? I know we have Morales reported as saying - implying - that he was involved; and Martino is said to have known something. But beyond that? Are any of these people reliably reported as being on Dealey Plaza? It may be that as Howard Hunt is reported to have said to his son just before he died that there were several plots, one by CIA people. It still seems more likely to me that the Mac Wallace story is true; that LBJ's little criminal gang did it; that their little gang was seen by Roger Craig in the immediate aftermath. The idea that the Mac Wallace print was planted is implausible to me. If you are going to implicate him, why not do it with something more substantial? In any case the planted idea sounds like the classic move we all make to avoid having our theories falsified. Mac Wallace had already got away with murdering Marshall - why would they not think they could do it again in LBJ's backyard?

Do we? I know we have Morales reported as saying - implying - that he was involved; and Martino is said to have known something. But beyond that? Are any of these people reliably reported as being on Dealey Plaza? It may be that as Howard Hunt is reported to have said to his son just before he died that there were several plots, one by CIA people. It still seems more likely to me that the Mac Wallace story is true; that LBJ's little criminal gang did it; that their little gang was seen by Roger Craig in the immediate aftermath. The idea that the Mac Wallace print was planted is implausible to me. If you are going to implicate him, why not do it with something more substantial? In any case the planted idea sounds like the classic move we all make to avoid having our theories falsified. Mac Wallace had already got away with murdering Marshall - why would they not think they could do it again in LBJ's backyard?

I mean that having got interested in the assassination literature - in my case circa 1976 - I found myself following other trails which led off from the assassination: the cold war; Cuba; the CIA; Cointelpro etc. Without the interest in Dallas I might never have gone down these roads. Also I mean that stumbling into what became known as parapolitics – exemplified by Peter Dale Scott – influenced the way I then looked at American and British politics and, eventually, history. Whoever one choses as the assassination group on Dealey Plaza, that event was the climax of a great many elements within American cold war history and specifically Democratic Party politics. And the subsequent failure of the political-media system to do a half-decent investigation of the event said a great deal about the nature of political power in America. A lot of research has indeed been carried out since 1994 and in a sense the publication of that talk is embarrassing. On the other hand it is quite a good general intro to the story and that is what I thought then; the fact that we change our minds with experience and further reading should embarrass no-one. My current view is that expressed in my Who Shot JFK? The killing was done on behalf of LBJ to keep Johnson's political career alive. Fascinating though all the research into the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, mafia and the entire Oswald-intelligence milieu is, all the trails peter out as we approach Dealey Plaza. JFK was bushwacked in Johnson's backyard; and Johnson was about to go down the pan through various corruption inquiries. The evidence supporting this is persuasive but not conclusive.

I mean that having got interested in the assassination literature - in my case circa 1976 - I found myself following other trails which led off from the assassination: the cold war; Cuba; the CIA; Cointelpro etc. Without the interest in Dallas I might never have gone down these roads. Also I mean that stumbling into what became known as parapolitics – exemplified by Peter Dale Scott – influenced the way I then looked at American and British politics and, eventually, history. Whoever one choses as the assassination group on Dealey Plaza, that event was the climax of a great many elements within American cold war history and specifically Democratic Party politics. And the subsequent failure of the political-media system to do a half-decent investigation of the event said a great deal about the nature of political power in America. A lot of research has indeed been carried out since 1994 and in a sense the publication of that talk is embarrassing. On the other hand it is quite a good general intro to the story and that is what I thought then; the fact that we change our minds with experience and further reading should embarrass no-one. My current view is that expressed in my Who Shot JFK? The killing was done on behalf of LBJ to keep Johnson's political career alive. Fascinating though all the research into the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, mafia and the entire Oswald-intelligence milieu is, all the trails peter out as we approach Dealey Plaza. JFK was bushwacked in Johnson's backyard; and Johnson was about to go down the pan through various corruption inquiries. The evidence supporting this is persuasive but not conclusive.

As for the story about Blair being recruited to spy on CND - I have never understood what 'spying on CND' would entail. It was a public body, its offices were open to all. You could just walk in. What was there to spy on? Blair joined CND because, as a careerist he did whatever would make him acceptable to the powers-that-be. At the time the anti-nuclear thing in the Labour Party had the support of a majority of the party. Blair, as far as I can tell, never believed anything much and, according to one of his former law colleagues, would have joined the Tory Party had he not perceived that it took a long time to reach the top of that party. He correctly perceived that in Labour a good-looking young barrister would go far and quickly. He just wanted to be a big-I-am, something he has achieved in spades. I seem to recall that the Blair-MI5 story came from David Shayler. It might be true that Blair talked to one of the MI5 officers who sniffed round the Labour Party. I imagine that at the time, with the left-right conflict at full bore, lots of right-wing Labour MPs talked to MI5 officers, or to people who talked to MI5 officers (such as journalists). Blair's foreign policy doesn't need explaining. He did what Uncle Sam wanted (with God's support, apparently) and he persuaded himself that he was doing good. So-called 'liberal interventionism', which Blair tried to practice, is merely the latest in a long line of cover stories, rationalisations for American imperialism (with Uncle Sam's little chum, the UK, tagging along). What else needs explaining?

As for the story about Blair being recruited to spy on CND - I have never understood what 'spying on CND' would entail. It was a public body, its offices were open to all. You could just walk in. What was there to spy on? Blair joined CND because, as a careerist he did whatever would make him acceptable to the powers-that-be. At the time the anti-nuclear thing in the Labour Party had the support of a majority of the party. Blair, as far as I can tell, never believed anything much and, according to one of his former law colleagues, would have joined the Tory Party had he not perceived that it took a long time to reach the top of that party. He correctly perceived that in Labour a good-looking young barrister would go far and quickly. He just wanted to be a big-I-am, something he has achieved in spades. I seem to recall that the Blair-MI5 story came from David Shayler. It might be true that Blair talked to one of the MI5 officers who sniffed round the Labour Party. I imagine that at the time, with the left-right conflict at full bore, lots of right-wing Labour MPs talked to MI5 officers, or to people who talked to MI5 officers (such as journalists). Blair's foreign policy doesn't need explaining. He did what Uncle Sam wanted (with God's support, apparently) and he persuaded himself that he was doing good. So-called 'liberal interventionism', which Blair tried to practice, is merely the latest in a long line of cover stories, rationalisations for American imperialism (with Uncle Sam's little chum, the UK, tagging along). What else needs explaining?

I met Harlan in 1989. He came to visit me after ringing me up. (I describe the encounter in more detail in the book.) His story seemed bizarre but having read about MKUltra et al, not THAT bizarre. I didn't decide then whether or not I believed him or whether or no he was personally paranoid/deluded because he left me enough printed material for me to see that what he was describing was possible. If he wasn't a victim of this technology, given the the American state's track record of doing tests on unwitting suspects, some other people would be victims. In other words, what was important was the subject matter not Harlan's claims and their status. Subsequently I have accumulated a lot of material on this subject but have never managed to synthesise it - partly because of my lack of scientific knowledge. Harlan's claims raise a panoply of intellectual difficulties. Is he (and the other 'wavies') being 'beamed'? If he is being 'beamed', who is doing it? He says it is CIA but he has no way of knowing. Even if he is being 'beamed' and is told by those doing the 'beaming' that they are CIA, he has no means of knowing if they are telling the truth of not; and they would have every reason to lie. That nothing has appeared via FOIA requests to support his story is neither surprising nor significant. Nothing WOULD appear, would it? Almost 20 years after I first met Harlan and began collecting material in this field all I can say for sure is what I have said already many times in different forums: since the technology to do what he claims is being developed (and probably has long been developed) it is impossible to simply dismiss him and others like him as paranoid and deluded.

I met Harlan in 1989. He came to visit me after ringing me up. (I describe the encounter in more detail in the book.) His story seemed bizarre but having read about MKUltra et al, not THAT bizarre. I didn't decide then whether or not I believed him or whether or no he was personally paranoid/deluded because he left me enough printed material for me to see that what he was describing was possible. If he wasn't a victim of this technology, given the the American state's track record of doing tests on unwitting suspects, some other people would be victims. In other words, what was important was the subject matter not Harlan's claims and their status. Subsequently I have accumulated a lot of material on this subject but have never managed to synthesise it - partly because of my lack of scientific knowledge. Harlan's claims raise a panoply of intellectual difficulties. Is he (and the other 'wavies') being 'beamed'? If he is being 'beamed', who is doing it? He says it is CIA but he has no way of knowing. Even if he is being 'beamed' and is told by those doing the 'beaming' that they are CIA, he has no means of knowing if they are telling the truth of not; and they would have every reason to lie. That nothing has appeared via FOIA requests to support his story is neither surprising nor significant. Nothing WOULD appear, would it? Almost 20 years after I first met Harlan and began collecting material in this field all I can say for sure is what I have said already many times in different forums: since the technology to do what he claims is being developed (and probably has long been developed) it is impossible to simply dismiss him and others like him as paranoid and deluded.

As for the behaviour of the Guardian, I would say: (1) which bit of the various semi-independent fiefdoms are we talking about? and then (2) which particular story? It is, of course, possible that the Guardian has been steered by the CIA for the last 50 years (much of the liberal-left has been). Certainly the recent editors have all been knee-jerk pro NATO, pro American. But that isn't likely. To me the Guardian looks like pretty typical 'right-on' herd behaviour. If the peer group of the various journos decrees that - say - multiculturalism is a Good Thing then other voices don't get in and counter-factual evidence is ignored. Equally, Bad Things - eg nationalism - don't get a look in. But this is where the fiefdom thing arises because the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliot, though he wouldn't use the term, is de facto an economic nationalist. But this is guesswork on my part. I've only been in the Guardian office twice and no current Guardian journalists subscribes to the magazine.

As for the behaviour of the Guardian, I would say: (1) which bit of the various semi-independent fiefdoms are we talking about? and then (2) which particular story? It is, of course, possible that the Guardian has been steered by the CIA for the last 50 years (much of the liberal-left has been). Certainly the recent editors have all been knee-jerk pro NATO, pro American. But that isn't likely. To me the Guardian looks like pretty typical 'right-on' herd behaviour. If the peer group of the various journos decrees that - say - multiculturalism is a Good Thing then other voices don't get in and counter-factual evidence is ignored. Equally, Bad Things - eg nationalism - don't get a look in. But this is where the fiefdom thing arises because the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliot, though he wouldn't use the term, is de facto an economic nationalist. But this is guesswork on my part. I've only been in the Guardian office twice and no current Guardian journalists subscribes to the magazine.

Interesting question, John. The 'language problem' arises because if one talks of conspiracy except in the context of a criminal conspiracy, willy-nilly one evokes conspiracy theories, which, in turn evokes David Icke, lizards, the X-Files et al. (Fifty years ago it evoked the John Birch Society, or the various fringe neo-nazi groups still clinging to the Jewish conspiracy theory.) Anthony Summers made the essential distinction years ago saying that he wasn't interested in conspiracy theories but was interested in theories about conspiracies. A goodly part of my book of public talks, Politics and Paranoia (Picnic Publishing, 2008), is various attempts to make and elaborate this distinction, to try and persuade various audiences that they should resist the automatic association between conspiracy and conspiracy theories. This language problem is particularly acute when one is dealing with academics and the higher media. For virtually all of them the association of conspiracy with all manner of idiocies is automatic and armour-plated. This seems to serve as a defence mechanism for both groups who use it bat away information and views which conflict with what they were taught at university in the academic study of politics and history. Having experienced this reaction many times in the last quarter of a century, I have acquired a profound respect for the human brain's inability to change its belief systems in any major way, even among - perhaps especially among - those who are professionally employed to evaluate political and historical data. If I was in charge of the world pharmacological research effort I would set it to producing something which enables people to overcome that initial defence mechanism which irrationally sorts data into the 'This can't be true/this can be true' categories. As to what we do about this - who knows? To my knowledge no-one has come up with a form or words which conveys conspiracy without evoking the dreaded conspiracy theorist label. I guess we just have to keep grinding away doing what our academic and media betters are supposed to be doing: trying to understand the nature of historical reality. But here is the same problem looked at from another angle. Are the higher media and academics actually engaged in trying to understand reality? All too often they are doing other things. Twenty years ago or so, when I first encountered members of the higher media, having assumed they were engaged, like me, in what we might naively call the pursuit of truth, I discovered that this simply wasn't true. They were engaged in: pursuing careers, getting a story before their rivals, fiddling expenses, paying their mortgages, planning their holidays, paying off scores - and mostly simply doing a job, which was to produce something their editors would approve of for publication or broadcast and which didn't cost too much. The 'pursuit of the truth' had nothing to do with it. As I say on one of the talks in my book, journalists are intensely suspicious of people they perceive as 'having an agenda' - especially when that agenda is 'the pursuit of the truth'. Since they are rarely engaged in this they are suspicious of people of who present themselves as so doing, presuming that, like them, they are engaged in other, secondary activities and are thus hypocrites or self-deluded in talking about 'the truth'. As far as I can tell this situation has only got a lot worse in the last twenty years (not that I have much contact with the higher media any more.)

Interesting question, John. The 'language problem' arises because if one talks of conspiracy except in the context of a criminal conspiracy, willy-nilly one evokes conspiracy theories, which, in turn evokes David Icke, lizards, the X-Files et al. (Fifty years ago it evoked the John Birch Society, or the various fringe neo-nazi groups still clinging to the Jewish conspiracy theory.) Anthony Summers made the essential distinction years ago saying that he wasn't interested in conspiracy theories but was interested in theories about conspiracies. A goodly part of my book of public talks, Politics and Paranoia (Picnic Publishing, 2008), is various attempts to make and elaborate this distinction, to try and persuade various audiences that they should resist the automatic association between conspiracy and conspiracy theories. This language problem is particularly acute when one is dealing with academics and the higher media. For virtually all of them the association of conspiracy with all manner of idiocies is automatic and armour-plated. This seems to serve as a defence mechanism for both groups who use it bat away information and views which conflict with what they were taught at university in the academic study of politics and history. Having experienced this reaction many times in the last quarter of a century, I have acquired a profound respect for the human brain's inability to change its belief systems in any major way, even among - perhaps especially among - those who are professionally employed to evaluate political and historical data. If I was in charge of the world pharmacological research effort I would set it to producing something which enables people to overcome that initial defence mechanism which irrationally sorts data into the 'This can't be true/this can be true' categories. As to what we do about this - who knows? To my knowledge no-one has come up with a form or words which conveys conspiracy without evoking the dreaded conspiracy theorist label. I guess we just have to keep grinding away doing what our academic and media betters are supposed to be doing: trying to understand the nature of historical reality. But here is the same problem looked at from another angle. Are the higher media and academics actually engaged in trying to understand reality? All too often they are doing other things. Twenty years ago or so, when I first encountered members of the higher media, having assumed they were engaged, like me, in what we might naively call the pursuit of truth, I discovered that this simply wasn't true. They were engaged in: pursuing careers, getting a story before their rivals, fiddling expenses, paying their mortgages, planning their holidays, paying off scores - and mostly simply doing a job, which was to produce something their editors would approve of for publication or broadcast and which didn't cost too much. The 'pursuit of the truth' had nothing to do with it. As I say on one of the talks in my book, journalists are intensely suspicious of people they perceive as 'having an agenda' - especially when that agenda is 'the pursuit of the truth'. Since they are rarely engaged in this they are suspicious of people of who present themselves as so doing, presuming that, like them, they are engaged in other, secondary activities and are thus hypocrites or self-deluded in talking about 'the truth'. As far as I can tell this situation has only got a lot worse in the last twenty years (not that I have much contact with the higher media any more.)

It isn't quite true that 'conspiracy theory' was non-existent in 1963. It was, for example, at the heart of the Birchers' view of the world - indeed, of much of the far right on both sides of the Atlantic. What is true is that before the Internet, information was hard to get and mostly was acquired through newspapers and television. Thus the control of what we knew - and could find out - was more complete. The Internet has given us more information than we now what to do with - if we have the knowledge and patience to weed out the xxxx from the shinola. Cronkite was more important then than he would be today because there were fewer TV networks and thus prominent individuals became more significant. But there was considerable opposition to the war in Vietnam with the US political-media system: eg in State, CIA and even bits of the Pentagon, as well as the liberal media. It wasn't just Cronkite. Most people, then and now, are not interested in national or international news but only local news. Today's 'indy media' is in the same position vis-a-vis the mass of the population as someone standing on Times Square trying to sell the Daily Worker in 1963. Mostly no-one gives a f***. In these times etc have been going a long time and have not greatly inctreased their circulation - nor would they ever do so, even if they were given wall-to-wall free publicity on prime time. There is no mass interest in news per se. Only in times of emergency - depression, war - are the masses persuaded to take an interest in matters beyond the edge of their town/county. I don't know anything about the Fairness in Media Act but no such act which tries to make the corporate media report the world in ways not to their commercial advantage will get through Congress now or in the forseeable future.

Most historians - by which I mean academic historians - do not trust subject matter which is recent (some more so than others, of course). I internalised and accepted academic standards of evidence and inference while an undergraduate. Thus I try to write in an academic way: assertions need evidence. Deciding which sources to believe is a mixture of things. (1) Do they themselves have sources? (2) Is what is being claimed consistent with what is already known? If not, how good is the evidence? Peer pressure, mostly. Being labelled a 'conspiracy theorist' is a career-damaging description; and most journalists and academics are interested in their careers first (and last).

I just sort of drifted into it. I read an article in a now defunct underground paper, International Times, in 1976, about an American conspiracy theory. I found this fascinating and went into the library to try and see if it was true; and while so doing discovered post-war American history, and began reading. The differences that I am aware of are mostly to do with what is regarded as legitimate sources and subjects. Most historians - by which I mean academic historians - do not trust subject matter which is recent (some more so than others, of course). It is rarely a matter of decision; usually a question of what I am already interested in. Rarely. I am too marginal a figure for the powers-that-be to be greatly interested in. To my knowledge I have only been of interest to the state while I was helping Colin Wallace. I have never had a career so this does not arise. Peer pressure, mostly. Being labelled a 'conspiracy theorist' is a career-damaging description; and most journalists and academics are interested in their careers first (and last). I internalised and accepted academic standards of evidence and inference while an undergraduate. Thus I try to write in an academic way: assertions need evidence. Deciding which sources to believe is a mixture of things. (1) Do they themselves have sources? (2) Is what is being claimed consistent with what is already known? If not, how good is the evidence? I have rarely got hold of documents proving illegal behaviour. Such documents tend to go to journalists higher up the food-chain. Occasionally they drop down to me.

1. Did Estes provide any documentary evidence in support of the allegations contained in the affidavit? 2. Did the Justice Department do any investigative work in response to the allegations? 3. Were you his lawyer after these events, and if so for how long? 4. What, if any, feedback have you had from the revelation of your role in the Estes story?

Robin Ramsay is the editor of Lobster Magazine. Since 1983 the magazine has featured articles on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Edward Jay Epstein, anti Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament groups, the Vietnam War, Lord Mountbatten and the Central Intelligence Agency, Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico, KGB, Airey Neave, the plot to smear Harold Wilson, Winston Churchill and Pearl Harbor, MI5 and the rise of Margaret Thatcher, Peter Wright, Watergate, Peter Dale Scott, Archibald Ramsay and the Right Club, Clay Shaw and Appeasement. He is also the co-author of Smear! Wilson and the Secret State! (1991). Other books by Robin Ramsay include Conspiracy Theories: Almost Everything You Need to Know in One Essential Guide (2000), Who Shot JFK? (2002) and The Rise of New Labour (2002).

While reporting on CIA assassination plots abroad, both the Church Committee and the separate inquiry chaired by Nelson Rockefeller, had declined to look at the King and Kennedy assassinations of the previous decade. But two members of the Church committee. Republican Richard Schweiker and Democrat Gary Hart were allowed to create a subcommittee to investigate not Who killed Kennedy? but the performance of the intelligence agencies in relation to the Kennedy assassination. They hired one researcher, Gaeton Fonzi, a journalist who had been interested in the case since the 1960s. Fonzi became the first person employed by the US federal government to investigate the Kennedy assassination under the assumption there was a conspiracy. But the subcommittee had limited time and limited budget and just when Fonzi found an apparently important lead, the sub-committee was wound up. The chair of the main committee, Frank Church, 'was chomping at the bit, anxious to get into the Presidential sweepstakes,' and wanted his committee's report published. The Hart/Schweiker subcommittee was forced to issue a report with what it had. Extract from Who Shot JFK (2002)

Shaw was a director of the World Trade Centre in New Orleans and was brought into a similar project in Italy involving a company called Permindex (Permanent Industrial Exhibitions), which proposed to create a network of World Trade Centres: propagandising for American business. Around these bare facts was created a story in which all these companies were CIA fronts for covert operations and assassinations. Permindex had been involved in trying to assassinate General de Gaulle and then had killed JFK. This story was planted on a Soviet-sympathising Italian newspaper; was then picked up by a left-wing magazine in New York and a magazine in Canada; and thence made its way to the Garrison investigation. And Garrison believed it without checking it. His 1988 book. On The Trail Of The Assassins, carries a couple of pages on Permindex in which he quotes only the Canadian and Italian versions of the story. Parts of this Permindex story - itself disinformation - were then picked up and used to form the centrepiece of the most famous and most durable piece of disinformation generated by the case, the Nomenclature Of An Assassination Cabal by 'William Torbitt,' better known as the Torbitt Memorandum. 'Torbitt' took Garrison's inquiry into the ClA's links to the assassination and converted them into a story about the FBI's responsibility for the assassination. (This, in my view, tells us that the author/s of Torbitt were working for the CIA, trying to diminish the 'Garrison effect.') At the beginning of the first chapter 'Torbitt' tells us that the assassination was the work of the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency, who jointly ran 'the Control Group.' These two agencies ran another really secret agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC). Clay Shaw, David Ferrie et al., previously identified as CIA, were in fact DISC. Because it was 'underground' and - because it was full of interesting and authentic-sounding bits and pieces, Torbitt was 'sexy.' However, as soon as I began trying to check the few citations in it, they proved to be useless: either they didn't exist, were impossible to get or, when tracked down, didn't say what Torbitt said they did. But Torbitt lives on. Like all good conspiracy theories, it is immune to refutation. Extract from Who Shot JFK (2002)

The idea that Kennedy was too radical for the military-industrial complex is the thesis behind the two motion pictures about the case: the dull 1973 version. Executive Action, which starred Burt Lancaster, and Oliver Stone's JFK. Stone emphasised Vietnam: Kennedy was shot to stop withdrawal from Vietnam. This is the thesis of the late L. Fletcher Prouty, former US Air Force Colonel, who had a remarkable book. The Secret Team, published in America in 1973. Prouty was a really important insider, not only the US Air Force's liaison officer with the ClA's covert operations in the 1950s, but someone who had also been in charge of presidential security. As former liaison with the CIA, Prouty had watched the growth of the agency covert operations. As a security officer, Prouty looked at the events that day in Dallas and saw the absence of presidential security. As Prouty pointed out, the absence of security is all you need to arrange. Prouty implied, but never quite stated, that the US Secret Service had to be part of the plot. Unfortunately for Prouty his book got buried under the Watergate scandal. Extract from Who Shot JFK (2002)

This is a major publishing event in the JFK assassination world. Parts of Armstrong's work has been on the Net and he's spoken at some of the big JFK conferences. His work-in-progress became spoken of as 'the John Armstrong research'; and finally we have the book, a self-published 1000 pages; plus a CD-Rom containing documents he cites. (I haven't even looked at the CD-Rom yet.) Since one reading of this (and some sections I merely skimmed), is all I have managed so far, and that is barely scratching the surface of 1000 pages, this is a provisional report; first reactions. This is a staggering piece of research, twelve years of it, and a lot of money spent in the process. Armstrong has interviewed people who haven't been interviewed since the Warren Commission - and many who have never been interviewed before. He has read official files no non-official had seen before him. Lots of new ground is broken here in all kinds of little subsections of the story. But it is far too long. If the text was copy-edited, he or she deserves a slap: the text is full of stupid little errors. The typesetting is eccentric: the text is covered in italicisation, bold and underlining. A potentially great 400 or 500 page book is buried in this behemoth. Or perhaps it shouldn't be thought of as a book, but more as research assembled in book form. Armstrong does three things. First, he is offering a theory of the assassination. His minute - microscopic - analysis of key episodes in the case is punctuated by chunks of the ClA's coven activities in the 1950s and 60s: Armstrong wants us to see what the Agency is known to have been doing while the Oswald story unfolded. But his thesis that the CIA killed JFK and framed Oswald fails for the same reason that previous versions of this have failed: no matter how plausible the idea, no matter how much detail we are given of other, analogous things the CIA was doing in the post-war years, Armstrong cannot show who was doing the shooting; and he cannot identify the CIA conspirators. The only plausible conspirators he offers are Jack Ruby and Lee, one of the two 'Oswalds' in the story. Both have connections to the ClA-funded anti-Castro operations; but that is all. The second thing Armstrong does is show in great detail how the FBI 'edited' the evidence about the shooting. The FBI had all the evidence collected by the Dallas police sent to Washington and a lot of it didn't return. Armstrong thinks the editing was done to conceal evidence of the two 'Oswalds'; and while this looks very plausible, it is not conclusively demonstrated. Thirdly, and centrally, Armstrong takes on the 'two Oswalds' question, which has been around since 1967. It arose first because there seemed to be someone pretending to be Oswald, apparently framing the other, genuine 'Oswald'. Professor Richard Popkin detailed this first in his The Second Oswald (London: Andre Deutscn/ Sphere, 1967). Then 'Oswalds' with different heights and slightly different faces were noticed. A decade after Popkin, Michael Eddowes published The Oswald File (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1977), which concluded that one 'Oswald', the American Marine 'Oswald', went to the Soviet Union but another 'Oswald' came back in his place, a ringer being run by the Soviets, who shot the President. In Alias Oswald (Manchester, Maine; GKG partners, 1985) Robert Cutler and W. R. Morris argued that the second 'Oswald', was not a Soviet spy but a US spy. In their analysis the switch from one 'Oswald' to the other took place in 1958 while Oswald was serving in the Marine Corps in Japan. By dint of minute examination of the paper record and a lot of phone-bashing and travelling, Armstrong validates the Cutler-Morris thesis - there was a switch - and has tried to trace the life of the 'hidden' Oswald. He appears to have established the existence of an intelligence operation which began with two boys, of different heights, but who looked similar and who lived parallel lives. One, Harvey, was Russian-speaking, probably a refugee from Eastern Europe; the other, Lee, was an American. It begins in the early WOs, some of the cooler years of the Cold War. US intelligence had no reliable information on the Soviet Union. (This was before U-2 over-flights and satellites.) Soviet nuclear arms, even the Soviet economy, were a mystery. All the agents sent in by CIA and MI6 had been turned or captured. How could they get agents in? One way was to send them in as defectors. There seems to have been a CIA programme of defectors - Armstrong discusses some of the others - in which, he hypothesises, there was an attempt at a better class of defection. Armstrong believes the CIA ran two real identities in parallel, merged them - Lee and Harvey became Lee Harvey - and switched them just before the apparent defection of the American 'Oswald', Lee. Thus the CIA would insert into the Soviet Union a defector, Harvey, with two outstanding characteristics: one, unknown to the Soviet authorities, he could speak Russian; two, if Soviet intelligence checked his biography, they would find the American 'Lee Oswald', not a 'legend' but a real life. If this seems elaborate, Armstrong reminds the reader of the Soviet use of 'illegals', and quotes the example of Molody, 'Gordon Lonsdale', who operated in the UK. This hypothesised CIA plan entailed both boys being in the Marines at the same time. Armstrong shows reports and presents recollections of 'Oswald' in two places at the same time through secondary school and in the Marines. The two 'Oswalds' explains the mass of contradictory material about Oswald in the Marines: one who couldn't shoot; one who could: one who was an apparent Marxist and read Russian, the other who didn't: one who was outgoing and a brawler; the other a bookworm. The plan also meant two 'mothers of Oswald', two 'Marguerite Oswalds'. Here the programme didn't extend to two women who looked similar: one was tall and elegant and the other short and plain. If Armstrong is correct, and the evidence looks convincing on one reading, a woman spent nearly ten years, pretending to be 'Marguerite Oswald', following the real Marguerite round the country, taking a series' of xxxx-jobs to do so. It should be noted that there is no evidence, either paper record or firsthand, that this scheme took place. Armstrong infers it from the evidence of the two 'Oswalds'. If this is true, Armstrong has uncovered the most elaborate intelligence operation (and done the greatest piece of espionage detective work) I have ever read about. Passage from Lobster Magazine (Summer, 2004)

Since issue 45, last June, there has been so much information produced on the events preceding the assault on Iraq it is impossible to keep track of it all. Here is my selection. For the powers-that-be, the war has been traumatic, not least because their various cover stories and deceptions have been exposed so rapidly, thanks, mostly, to the the Internet. A story I missed at the time was the replacement of Admiral Sir Michael Boyce as Chief of the Defence Staff. In July 2002 his departure was announced. In 'Defence chief replaced for being "off message" over Iraq invasion' in The Independent 24 July 2002, Kirn Sengupta wrote: The move follows reports of disagreements between Sir Michael and the Government on a number of issues, especially proposals for a war in Iraq. Sir Michael is among a number of senior British commanders who are said to question Britain's backing for a US invasion of Iraq, and are sceptical of Pentagon claims about Saddam Hussein's links with the al-Qa'ida terror organisation and his stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. On 25 January 2004 The Glasgow Herald reported what were claimed to be the views of senior British intelligence figures in a 'pre-emptive strike against Tony Blair ahead of the publiccation of the Hutton report'. The Herald said this of MI6: The key points it wants on the record are: Many had been openly sceptical about the presence of WMD in Iraq for years. The intelligence community was under pressure to provide the government with what it wanted, namely that Iraq possessed WMD and was a danger. Intelligence was "cherry-picked", with damning intelligence against Iraq being selectively chosen, while intelligence assessments, which might have worked against the build-up to war, were sidelined. Intelligence work had become politicised under Labour, and spies were taking orders from politicians. They provided worst-case scenarios which were use by politicians to make factual claims. There were no names and no hints of names in the story and no surprises in it. We have to take this on trust. But the author was Neil Mackay, who now has a long and distinguished track record as an investigative journalist. The best single piece to appear in response to the report by Lord Hutton, was by Lieutenant Colonel Crispin Black in The Guardian 12 February 2004. It contained these devastating lines. I left the [intelligence] assessment staff just six months before the dreaded dossier was published. From what came out at the Hutton inquiry I could hardly recognise the organisation I had so recently worked for. Meetings with no minutes, an intelligence analytical group on a highly specialised subject which included unqualified officials in Downing Street but excluded the DIS's lifetime experts (like Dr Brian Jones), vague and unexplained bits of intelligence appearing in the dossier as gospel (notably the 45-minute claim), sloppy use of language, that weird "last call" for intelligence like Henry II raving about Thomas a Becket - with "who will furnish me with the intelligence I need" substituted for "who will rid me of that turbulent priest"... When the report came I was puzzled at first - serious people seemed to be taking it so seriously. And then everyone started to laugh. Some of the passages - particularly "the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that the desire of the prime minister.... may have subconsciously influenced.... members of the JIC... consistent with the intelligence available to the JIC" are masterpieces of comic writing' (emphasis added). What do the foreign policy experts think? Take Timothy Garton-Ash, for example, who writes a regular column in The Guardian. Garton-Ash is one of those figures who bridge the gap between academia and the Foreign Office/MI6. A governor of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Britain's mini version of America's National Endowment for Democracy, his main role is as director of the European Studies Centre at St. Antony's College, Oxford, MI6's academic annex. In 'We were duped', in The Guardian, 4 March 2004, he offered as reasons: 'unfinished business from the first Gulf War, concern for Middle East oil supplies, a desire to go on "rolling up" the possible threats after 9/11'. Passage from Lobster Magazine (Summer, 2004)

The official, government version of the assassination was that lone assassin, oddball, ex-Marine, self-proclaimed Marxist and defector to the Soviet Union - and how weird was that in 1963? - Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from his place of employment, the Texas Book Depository, which overlooked the route of the parade Kennedy took through Dallas that day. He did it for reasons unknown, but probably down to personal inadequacies and jealously of the charismatic young president. According to the official version, having shot Kennedy, he left his clapped-out, dirt-cheap, bargain-bin, piece-of-xxxx, surplus rifle with inaccurate sights, ran down to the canteen in the warehouse and got a Coke from the machine in time to be sitting there to be confronted by a Dallas policeman investigating the shooting. Identified as an employee of the building, Oswald wandered out and caught a bus, went home, shot a Dallas policeman and sneaked into the movies without paying. Oswald was then arrested by the Dallas police and shot the next day, in the police station, by Jack Ruby, the owner of a strip club in Dallas. Incoming President Johnson set up a commission of inquiry, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and stuffed with the great and the good - including Alien Dulles, erstwhile Director of the CIA. The Warren Commission, as it became known, published a report after its inquiry stating that Oswald had done it alone. The Commission's verdict was a lie, a deception, baloney - and insulting baloney at that. They didn't even do a good job on the deception. The politicians, the military and the intelligence services had been getting away with so much since 1945, had the major media so totally co-opted into the Cold War crusade against the Soviet Union, they didn't think it would matter that the Commission's report was nonsense: they thought the schmucks would buy whatever was served up to them. Extract from Who Shot JFK (2002) http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/who-shot-jfk.htm

Kennedy, who talked the conventional Cold War-Soviet menace talk when he had to before the election, but who, after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, went off the rails as far as the military-industrial complex was concerned. He did a deal with Kruschev and promised to leave Cuba alone; he began trying to wind down the ClA's army of anti-Castro Cubans; he signed the Test Ban Treaty; he was preparing to allow the Italian Communist Party into a coalition government; he was planning to cut US defence spending abroad to reduce the US balance of payments deficit; and wanted to begin pulling the US out of Vietnam. These are not the actions of a Cold Warrior. The Cuban Missile Crisis had scared the politicians involved in it. In a sense the debate about who Kennedy was is easily solved: there were two Kennedys. The Cold Warrior Kennedy who got elected changed - or dropped his conservative cover - after the Cuban missile crisis and became a liberal Democrat. Perhaps most significant of all, Kennedy wanted out of the then rapidly expanding war in Vietnam. The military-industrial-intelligence complex and the political right saw retreat in the Caribbean followed by the prospect of retreat in the Far East. The military-industrial complex wanted the Vietnam war as part of what they saw as the ongoing Cold War struggle with communism: it was just a bonus that, in pursuing the war, they stood to make a lot of money and have good careers. Whether or not we try to locate the assassination conspiracy in this milieu, and many of the researchers do, Kennedy was going up against the military-industrial complex on almost all fronts - the forces his predecessor had warned against. When the scale of what Kennedy was thinking of doing is understood it is very tempting to see it as Kennedy stepping too far out of line and the system getting rid of him. Extract from Who Shot JFK (2002) http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/who-shot-jfk.htm