Mark Lane: Did the Secret Service help kill JFK?

[Robert Mady]

BREHM is alone in not pointing to the monument area, all the people around BREHM, HUDSON, SUMMERS, HILL, MOORMAN, ALTGENS, W NEWMAN, J NEWMAN, CHISM, MRS CHISM, FRANZEN, MRS FRANZEN, ZAPRUDER and GAYLE NEWMAN all claimed the monument area was where the shots came from. Why didn't LANE interview any of these witnesses?

A very good question, when we consider how content not merely Lane, but so many other of the first generation researchers were to ignore so many of the closest witnesses, not least the motorcycle outriders immediately behind and to the side of the presidential limousine.

This "oversight" reinforced the omissions of the Warren Report's compilers, and was only corrected thanks to the work, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of Fred Newcomb and those interviewers working with and for him.

One point of fact on Brehm, though, his first quoted testimony to reach print pointed somewhere very different than the grassy knoll:

Charles Brehm (carpet salesman, south curb of Elm St.): The shot(s) came from “in front of or beside” the President. Source: Dallas Times Herald, first post-assassination edition, November 22, 1963, cited by Joachim Joesten. Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? (London: Merlin Press, 1964), p.176.

Paul, thank you for posting the information on BREHM, I suspected this was true based on photographic evidence, it is reassuring to see that this is what BREHM also may have claimed to a newspaper reporter.

It would have been more interesting and pertinent if LANE had grilled BREHM on whether or not the FBI had pressured him into altering his story to reflect shots coming from the rear and not the monument area.

Similar to ALTGENS, he initially claimed the monument area then in WC trickery and word play was allowed to seem like he meant an area near the intersection of Elm and Houston.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Robert Mady

[Robert Mady]

Geez, Robert. Mark Lane is the godfather of the CIA-did-it faction of the research community.

Pat, it is ironic that you use the term 'godfather' in that the Mafia seemed to play such a significant roll in the assassiantion and the cover-up.

I would have to agree with you, yes, LANE may have been the 'godfather' leading the unsuspecting away from truth.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Robert Mady

[Robert Mady]

Paul, interesting what you say about the early analysis's published concerning the assassination.

Again in retrospect, the researchers that were able to get material published early most likely were supported by the government to maintian the confusion or were honestly confused about the assassiantion and their works were promoted by the system to create more confusion.

As researchers we know the government spun and obscured the truth, it seems logical that the government would have controlled both sides of the argument to best maintain the lies, I have no doubt that this is in deed what happened and is still being promoted today to maintain the lie.

I too for a long time thought of LANE as an American hero, it was crushing to come to comprehend he was really a hero for the government, not for us.

[Robert Mady]

Paul, didn't even need to interview HARGIS, JACKSON, MARTIN or CHENEY, they all stopped their motorcycles when the first rifle shot occured and then looked toward the monument area. Their actions are depicted in the Nix film, actions speak louder than their words.

But interviews by LANE would have been noteworthy and revealing if they were questioned about their actions as seen in the Nix frame.

[Paul Rigby]

Paul, interesting what you say about the early analysis's published concerning the assassination.

Again in retrospect, the researchers that were able to get material published early most likely were supported by the government to maintian the confusion or were honestly confused about the assassiantion and their works were promoted by the system to create more confusion.

As researchers we know the government spun and obscured the truth, it seems logical that the government would have controlled both sides of the argument to best maintain the lies, I have no doubt that this is in deed what happened and is still being promoted today to maintain the lie.

I too for a long time thought of LANE as an American hero, it was crushing to come to comprehend he was really a hero for the government, not for us.

You make very sound points, Robert, with which I agree. Lane, for example, got a bundle of stuff off, well, let him tell you:

1) I traveled to Dallas at the beginning of 1964 and there met Hugh Aynesworth, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who gave me photostated copies of a number of original affadavits. These documents, prepared by the Dallas police, included one signed by Deputy Constable Weitzman…it reveals that Weitzman described the rifle which he and Boone had discovered as ‘a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it…

2) The paraffin test report in the Oswald case was among the Photostats given to me in January 1964 by Hugh Aynesworth…

Mark Lane. Rush To Judgment (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1966):

Extract 1): pp.114-115; and 2) p.149

So let me see if I have this sequence, in all its innocence, aright:

On November 26, Lane commences work on his first literary defence of Oswald. In mid-December, said defence is published by that legendary right-wing organ, The National Guardian. Yet in January 1964, author of said defence travels to Dallas to be greeted by a journalist, professionally active in the cover-up from the outset, and – get this - a recent applicant for employment with the CIA, who just happens to hand him (Lane) a stack of photostats exonerating Oswald, and calling into doubt a number of key official claims.

Odd, no?

Edited January 1, 2015 by Paul Rigby

[Robert Mady]

Paul, odd, but fits the profile of 'godfather' LANE intentionally leading us away from truth.

The devil is in the details.

[Pat Speer]

You guys need to go back to square one and start over. The very idea that Lane, Weisberg, Epstein, etc were pro-government and part of a plot to protect Kennedy's assassins is ridiculous on its face.

P.S. The National Guardian was a LEFTIST paper.

[Paul Brancato]

I have to agree with Pat on this, even though Lane made mistakes. I think he had a senior moment claiming exit wound in the throat. Lane was a proponent of a frontal throat wound from the beginning. As a NYC youth of 16 I went to hear Mark Lane present his case, and later saw him debate Melvin Belli. He was very impressive. Many have tried to smear him over the years with his association with Jim Jones, his work for the Liberty Lobby etc., but looking over his life work I see a man concerned with truth telling, and not a CIA asset.

[Paul Rigby]

In so far as Lane lit after any of the intelligence-cum-law-enforcement bureaucracies in the period in question, it was the FBI.

He was even more of a late-comer when it comes to the question of Secret Service centrality to the plot. William Loeb, the right-wing editor of the Manchester Union-Leader, for example, beat Lane to the punch by a mere 40+ years, printing an editorial, on 26 November 1963, entitled "Investigate The Secret Service."

Medford Evans, another rightist, by contrast, took until 1967 to point the finger at the Secret Service:

http://fpparchive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Coup-dEtat_Medford-Evans_Apr-6-1992_The-New-American.pdf

Coup d’Etat

November 22, 1963

by Medford Evans

AMERICAN OPINION, September 1967, pp. 73–100

This article is taken from the introductory chapter to Dr. Evans’ forthcoming book on the Johnson administration. [The Usurpers, Western Islands Press, Boston, 1968, 249 pp.—KAR]

Medford, Evans, a former college professor and once Administrative officer on the U.S. atomic energy project (1944–1952), holds his Doctoral degree from Yale University. Dr. Evans’ work has appeared in Harper’s, Sewanee Review, Human Events, National Review, and elsewhere. He has long been an AMERICAN OPINION Contributing Editor and regular correspondent.

In reviewing facts and commonplace conjectures, I take it that additional speculation may be free, provided it is identified as speculation. For example, no one having the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Praetorian Guard in the latter days of the Roman Empire could fail to speculate inwardly on the possibility that the agency most directly responsible for the safety of the first man should be itself the one to do him in. Looking at contemporary history, students at Yale not too many years ago heard a professor intimate in a classroom lecture—possibly for mental stimulation—that the late Huey P. Long was not only gunned down September 8, 1935 by his own bodyguard (which also killed the ostensible assassin and fall guy, Dr. Carl Weiss) but the gunmen were suborned to the act because the Louisiana Kingfish had become the one and only possible rival of Franklin D. Roosevelt in demagogic appeal. So long as we make clear their conjectural character, such speculations would seem to be of the essence of academic freedom. Besides, they may serve for psychological catharsis. Since so many people can hardly avoid vagrant thoughts in this area, is it not better for all concerned to come right out with them and reveal the absurdity of anything, like, say, charging the murder of the President to the Secret Service itself? By the worst possible interpretation, Kennedy’s bodyguard, unlike Huey Long’s, could not have accounted for most of the gunfire. Even a coup de grâce shot in the back of the head—à la Darkness at Noon—could hardly have come from the immediate entourage of the young prince. Really

.

[Paul Rigby]

You guys need to go back to square one and start over. The very idea that Lane, Weisberg, Epstein, etc were pro-government and part of a plot to protect Kennedy's assassins is ridiculous on its face.

P.S. The National Guardian was a LEFTIST paper.

Who said sarcasm travels? Not me.

By the way, Epstein? You mean Angleton's amanuensis?

[Stephen Roy]

Forgive me for straying slightly off-topic: After decades of assassination research, I am starting to feel out-of-step with the current generation of assassination commentators. Ideas that were once considered possibilities have hardened into absolutes.

I think the practice of detecting and denouncing other researchers as "agents" is anti-intellectual claptrap, and it tells us more about the accuser than the accused.

[Pat Speer]

You guys need to go back to square one and start over. The very idea that Lane, Weisberg, Epstein, etc were pro-government and part of a plot to protect Kennedy's assassins is ridiculous on its face.

P.S. The National Guardian was a LEFTIST paper.

Who said sarcasm travels? Not me.

By the way, Epstein? You mean Angleton's amanuensis?

That was in the 70's. If you go back and read articles from 66 and 67, you'll find that Epstein had much of the Inside-the-beltway crowd on his side, and calling for a new investigation. I know you've read the so-called smoking gun document. That was the LAST thing the Johnson Administration--not to mention the CIA--wanted.

in 1964, Mark Lane got the left questioning the official story. In 1966, Edward Epstein got the Washington establishment and mainstream media questioning the official story. They were all primed to demand a new investigation.

But then what happened? MLK got killed. RFK got killed. Garrison's quirks were exposed and used to discredit the merits of his investigation. The public's anger was funneled into the anti-war movement. Interest in the Kennedy assassination waned.

IF you're going to look for CIA involvement in the aftermath of the assassination, it seems to me that it makes a heckuva lot more sense to look at those trying to make it fade away, than those raising questions and making the Johnson administration nervous.

[Robert Mady]

Forgive me for straying slightly off-topic: After decades of assassination research, I am starting to feel out-of-step with the current generation of assassination commentators. Ideas that were once considered possibilities have hardened into absolutes.

I think the practice of detecting and denouncing other researchers as "agents" is anti-intellectual claptrap, and it tells us more about the accuser than the accused.

I am a little bewildered by the simplicity of your thinking, it would seem to be reasonable and logical that the people that killed KENNEDY would do everything possible to keep the lies and deceptions from being revealed, to start with they must defend the lies but it can't end there because there are those that will untangle the lies, this opposition must ultimately also be controlled, to do so pundits must be promoted to positions to mislead the unsuspecting.

What does it tell Stephen that you take the time to cast aspersions on those pointing to serious flaws in LANES works, yet have no comment addressing the evidence presented detailing the flaws? Or are you satisfied with the truthfulness of LANEs works and find no conflict in his association with Jonestown and the CIA?

Edited January 3, 2015 by Robert Mady

[Stephen Roy]

It is a HUGE leap, to go from "this person sees things differently than me" or "this person made a mistake here" to: "It's a massive conspiracy, they have to control the debate, so some major researchers must be agents." That's classic conspiracy thinking and I won't go along with it. It's not "presenting evidence" and seeing which hypotheses naturally flow from it; It's "arguing the evidence" to fit the conclusion.

No, the evidence does not add up to Lane being a plant, no.

I presume you've read Wilderness of Mirrors and other books on the Angleton spy wars. Mr. A used flimsy evidence to suspect one of his colleagues after another; Eventually, investigators thought: 'Who has been more disruptive, more likely to be dispatched? The colleagues, or Mr. A himself?" That way of thinking is very disruptive and divisive.

[Don Jeffries]

The notion that some critics of the Warren Commission were intelligence assets is not a new one. Mark Lane was even listed as one of the Illuminati's supreme rulers in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's classic sci-fil trilogy Illuminatus. Some of you may recall that the authors of that work sprinkled Kerry Thornley's principles of Discordianism liberally throughout it.

Knowing that American intelligence agencies co-opted Leftists like Timothy Leary and Gloria Steinem back in the 1960s, it is certainly plausible that some critics of the official JFK assassination narrative would have been co-opted as well. However, this is really a pointless line of inquiry. If someone is a "shill," or a "disinfo" agent, they are certainly not going to admit it. You're not going to be able to point to a memo somewhere that proves it.

On this forum alone, numerous posters- from Jim Fetzer to Josiah Thompson to David Lifton to many lesser known names- have been accused of being purposefully disruptive, of being insincere in their stated beliefs, allegedly at the behest of shadowy forces that may be paying them for their efforts. I have my own suspicions about others, but I think it's best to treat everyone as if they legitimately believe what they say they do. In the past, I've challenged those who have inexplicably converted from conspiracy to lone nutter, but I realize that was a fruitless effort. I still don't understand them, or lone nutters in general, but I'm not going to accuse any of them of being an intelligence asset. They're incomprehensible to me, but none of us can prove that they're paid disinfo agents.

If Mark Lane has abruptly decided, at almost ninety years of age, to repudiate much of his lifelong work by claiming the wound in the throat was an exit wound, and that this is what the Parkland doctors said, then it is just as unfathomable to me as what the lone nutters postulate. I think it's more logical to believe that he really did have a "senior moment," as Pat indicated.