The Larry and Phil Show: i.e. Sabato and Shenon

[James DiEugenio]

The two MSM dilettantes who arrived in 2013, the latter at the request of Arlen Specter, before he passed on, are at it again.

Their two books were bad enough.  Now they are holding themselves out as paragons of truth and disclosure.  Which is really funny considering their previous  books. 

These last two columns, taken in tandem review, shows the game they are playing and how they plan on continuing the cover up 54 years on.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-larry-and-phil-show

[David Andrews]

Why isn't David Talbot out there like these guys?  His book is more recent.

[James DiEugenio]

That's a good question.

But see, the NY Times refused to review his book on Dulles.

Which proposed a conspiracy.  So that is probably the reason.

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, in addition to me going after these BS artists, we also have CAPA and Andrew Krieg, Jacob Hornberger and Jeff Morley chiming in on them.

 

Hopefully they will get the message.  But I doubt it.

[Roger DeLaria]

Earlier today on my local public radio station, I heard a short promo about the JFK assassination, and the radio person said the person they would be talking to tomorrow is Shenon. 

Oh dear, I can already see what that's going to be like. Life is like a box of chocolates.......

Jim, that would be good if you and Talbot could get on NPR for some balance.

[James DiEugenio]

Shenon has become their guy on the case now.

First at the fiftieth, and now at the ARRB final release.

Would love to go at it with him.

 

[James DiEugenio]

By the way, according to Pat Speer, the man won put Shenon up to this was a dying Arlen Specter.

[Chris Newton]

I'm just assuming the MSM will stick to whatever their modern mockingbird sources tell them to, (as far as JFK goes), so that they can continue to receive deep state leaks on our current POTUS and his administration. Wouldn't going after the CIA hard right now (on JFK) be seen as "burning bridges"?

[Robin Finn]

Shenon was a guest on the Fresh Air radio program today. From listening, I learned that:

• LHO was a prolific newspaper reader and had to have seen Castro's comments in the New Orleans newspaper
• LHO was in contact with pro-Castro Cubans in Mexico City who discussed killing JFK and he even talked about it in the Cuban consulate!
• Jack Ruby killed LHO to spare Jackie from having to come back to Dallas for a trial
• Earl Warren didn't bring Sylvia Duran to the U.S. for an interview because she was a communist??????? 
• Some of the released documents are illegible and in foreign languages!!!
• Shenon communicates with other "serious researchers" but has troubled relationships with them because he doesn't agree with their theories

Funny how he didn't mention anything about the extensive CIA surveillance operations in Mexico City. For someone who is sure the pro-Castro Cubans were encouraging LHO, the production from the  bugs and photo ops should be critical, right?  The CIA's Cuban double agents' reports should be important corroboration ,right?

Edited August 11, 2017 by Robin Finn

[Roger DeLaria]

1 hour ago, Robin Finn said:

Shenon was a guest on the Fresh Air radio program today. From listening, I learned that:

• LHO was a prolific newspaper reader and had to have seen Castro's comments in the New Orleans newspaper
• LHO was in contact with pro-Castro Cubans in Mexico City who discussed killing JFK and he even talked about in the Cuban consulate!
• Jack Ruby killed LHO to spare Jackie from having to come back to Dallas for a trial
• Earl Warren didn't bring Sylvia Duran to the U.S. for an interview because she was a communist??????? 
• Some of the released documents are illegible and in foreign languages!!!
• Shenon communicates with other "serious researchers" but has troubled relationships with them because he doesn't agree with their theories

Funny how he didn't mention anything about the extensive CIA surveillance operations in Mexico City. For someone who is sure the pro-Castro Cubans were encouraging LHO, the production from the  bugs and photo ops should be critical, right?  The CIA's Cuban double agents' reports should be important corroboration ,right?

Yeah, Fresh Air was the program I was thinking of. Looks like they had all of the typical msm boxes checked off. 

Sigh.

[Brian Schmidt]

WhoWhatWhy recently had a good piece on this as well, which you may be aware of.  It links an article on Kennedys and King in it.

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/08/08/politicos-challenge-jfk-orthodoxy-isnt/

Edited August 10, 2017 by Brian Schmidt

[James DiEugenio]

That is funny about him disagreeing with the critics' theories.

The absurdity of this is that Shenon does not believe in theories, be buys into fantasies.

The Magic Bullet is a fantasy today.  It always was baloney but today we have official sources who say its so and I name them in my article.  SHenon deliberately avoids these in his book and in his talks, which are tightly controlled. He was even trying to sell that baloney about Bobby Kennedy suggesting Allen Dulles for the WC until Dan Hardway showed it was an after the fact plant by LBJ.

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, let me add one more point about this:

If anything tells us that the JFK case is the prime obsession of the Establishment and the MSM and has been for the last half century it is this.

The fact that Sabato and Shenon, especially  Mr. NY Times Shenon, at the fiftieth, literally  came out of nowhere.  And then here they are again, for the final disclosures of the ARRB, four years later. Spewing the same old same old, as shown by Robin Finn's list from Shenon's NPR appearance. Shenon isn't interested in what is in those documents.  As Robin shows, he is interested in reviving mythology of the Warren Report.  Anyone today who can say that Ruby shot Oswald to spare Jackie an appearance at Oswald's trial, when in fact, Ruby himself admitted this was a fabrication by his attorney, I mean that is about as low as you can go.  Even the limited hangout HSCA concluded that Ruby entered the City Hall police HQ with help from inside.  And Blakey admits that Ruby was stalking Oswald from that Friday.  And what about his presence at Parkland Hospital?

Warren did not bring Duran to Washington because she was a commie?  OMG. As the Slawson/Coleman report reveals, the whole WC inquiry into Mexico City was manipulated for those two lawyers by the FBI and CIA. To the point that they did nothing that was not presented to them by the Bureau and the Agency.  They accepted everything on bended knee. And then, the final irony was that when our intrepid investigator Slawson attended the so called experts conference arranged by then ARRB chief Counsel David Marwell, he was asked to discuss his MC inquiry. This was in 1994.  Thirty one years after the WCR was issued. .  After the ARRB act had officially sanctioned Marwell to explore the original investigation and declassify all information.  When asked about this matter, Slawson refused to discuss that MC trip on grounds of national security. His actual words were, "I'm sorry but I'm not at liberty to discuss that."  (Reclaiming Parkland, p. 306)  When informed that such was not the case and the president had authorized this new inquiry, he repeated those same words.  In other words, Slawson chose to defy the law which was attempting to clarify the record of what happened to President Kennedy.

Did Shenon mention that on NPR?

Edited August 11, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Pat Speer]

FWIW, Shenon in his book claims Slawson wanted to bring Duran back to the states to be interviewed in Washington, but that Warren personally prevented this by claiming it would be a waste of time because we couldn't trust communists. As I recall, Slawson wanted to quit over this but was talked out of it.

From patspeer.com, chapter 3c:

One needn't be a believer in conspiracies to see that the Warren Commission's investigation was not all that it was cracked up to be--a tireless investigation performed by dedicated men whose only client was the truth, blah blah blah. 

The year 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Two books on the Warren Commission--one by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon and one by Warren Commission attorney Howard Willens--were pushed upon the public. Although Shenon's book held out that Oswald may have been put in motion by some Cubans he met in Mexico, both were essentially Oswald-did-it books.

Still, included within these books were some startling facts...that only added to what we'd already come to know...

Here, then, is a partial list of Warren "no-no"s, as we now know them.

1. Chief Justice Warren was determined from the outset that the commission investigating President Kennedy's death limit its scope to the investigations already performed by the Dallas Police, Secret Service and FBI. Yes, unbelievably, the transcript of the commission's first conference reflects that Warren wanted the commission to have no investigators of its own, no subpoena power, and no public hearings.

2. When the Attorney General of Texas, Waggoner Carr, persisted in his plan to convene a Texas Court of Inquiry, a public hearing at which much of the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald would be presented, Warren convinced him to cancel his plan by assuring him the commission would be "fair to Texas." No record was made of this meeting.

3. Not long thereafter, the commission became privy to the rumor Oswald had been an intelligence asset. Although commissioner and former CIA chief Allen Dulles assured Warren and his fellow commissioners the FBI and CIA would lie about this, he also told them the only way to get to the bottom of it was to ask President Johnson to personally tell them not to lie. Warren did not do this. And the transcript of the hearing in which this rumor was first discussed was destroyed.

4. The commission's staff had questions about the medical evidence. They were particularly concerned about the location of Kennedy's back wound, which may have been too low to support the single-bullet theory deemed necessary to the commission's conclusion Oswald acted alone. Even so, Warren personally prevented Dr. James J. Humes from reviewing the autopsy photos he'd had taken, and wished to review. 

5. The commission's staff had questions about Oswald's trip to Mexico. What did he say to those he spoke to? What did he do at night? Did he actually go to the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy on the days the CIA said he'd visited the consulate and embassy? And yet, despite the commission's staff's fervid desire they be allowed to interview Sylvia Duran, a Mexican woman employed by the Cuban consulate, who'd handled Oswald's request he be allowed to visit Cuba, (and who, it turns out, was rumored to have entertained Oswald at night), Chief Justice Warren personally prevented them from doing so, telling commission counsel David Slawson that "You just can't believe a Communist...We don't talk to Communists. You cannot trust a dedicated Communist to tell us the truth, so what's the point?"

6. The commission's staff had questions about Russia's involvement in the assassination. Oswald, of course, had lived in Russia. His wife was Russian. While in Mexico, he'd met with a KGB agent named Kostikov, who was believed to have been the KGB's point man on assassinations for the western hemisphere. Shortly after the assassination, a KGB officer named Yuri Nosenko defected to the west. Nosenko told his handlers he'd reviewed Oswald's file, and that Oswald was not a Russian agent. The timing of Nosenko's defection, however, convinced some within the CIA that Nosenko's defection was a set-up. The commission's staff hoped to talk to Nosenko, and judge for themselves if his word meant anything. The CIA, on the other hand, asked the commission to not only not talk to Nosenko, but to avoid any mention of him within their report. Chief Justice Earl Warren, acting alone, agreed to this request. He later admitted "I was adamant that we should not in any way base our findings on the testimony of a Russian defector."

7. The commission's staff had questions about Jack Ruby's motive in killing Oswald. Strangely, however, the commission's staff charged with investigating Ruby and his background were not allowed to interview him. Instead, the interview of Ruby was performed by, you guessed it, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Despite Ruby's telling Warren such things as "unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me...I want to tell the truth, and I can’t tell it here. I can’t tell it here…this isn’t the place for me to tell what I want to tell…” Warren refused to bring Ruby to Washington so he could provide the details he so clearly wanted to provide.

8. The commission's staff had even more questions about how Ruby came to kill Oswald. It was hard to believe he'd just walked down a ramp and shot Oswald, as claimed. As Ruby had many buddies within the Dallas Police, for that matter, it was reasonable to investigate the possibility one or more of the officers responsible for Oswald's protection had provided Ruby access to the basement. Commission counsel Burt Griffin even found a suspect: Sgt Patrick Dean. In the middle of Dean's testimony in Dallas, in which Dean said Ruby had told him he'd gained access to the garage by walking down the ramp, Griffin let Dean know he didn't believe him, and gave him a chance to change his testimony. Dean was outraged and called Dallas DA Henry Wade, who in turn called Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin. Dean then asked that he be allowed to testify against Griffin in Washington. Not only was he allowed to do so, he received what amounted to an apology from, you guessed it, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Warren told Dean "No member of our staff has a right to tell any witness that he is lying or that he is testifying falsely. That is not his business. It is the business of this Commission to appraise the testimony of all the witnesses, and, at the time you are talking about, and up to the present time, this Commission has never appraised your testimony or fully appraised the testimony of any other witness, and furthermore, I want to say to you that no member of our staff has any power to help or injure any witness." It was later revealed that Dean had failed a lie detector test designed to test his truthfulness regarding Ruby, and that the Dallas Police had kept the results of this test from the Warren Commission. If Griffin had been allowed to pursue Dean, this could have all come out in 1964. But no, Warren made Griffin back down, and the probability Dean lied was swept under the rug. (None of this is mentioned in Willens' book, of course.) 

9. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and wanted all the evidence viewed by the commission to be made available to the public, he (along with commissioners McCloy and Dulles) came to a decision on April 30, 1964, that the testimony before the commission would not be published along with the commission's report. (This decision was over-turned after the other commissioners objected.)

10. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and wanted the public to trust the commission's decisions, he wanted to shred or incinerate all the commission's internal files, so no one would know how the commission came to its decisions. (This decision was over-turned after commission historian Alfred Goldberg sent word of Warren's intentions to Senator Richard Russell, and Russell intervened.)

11. Although Warren was purported to have worked himself day and night in order to give the President the most thorough report possible, he actually flew off on a fishing trip that lasted from July 6 to August 1, 1964, while testimony was still being taken, and the commission's report still being polished. 

12. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and felt the commission's work should speak for itself, he (according to Howard Willens' diary) asked the National Archives to hold up the release of assassination-related documents that were not used in the commission's hearings, so that said documents could not be used by critics to undermine the commission's findings. 

So let's review. The Chief Justice, who was, by his own admission, roped into serving as chairman of the commission by President Johnson through the prospect of nuclear war, refused to allow important evidence to be viewed, refused to allow important witnesses to be called, cut off investigations into controversial areas, demanded that testimony before the commission be done in secret, agreed to keep the testimony before the commission from the public, tried to keep the commission's internal files from the public, and ultimately asked the national archives to help hide some of the evidence available to the commission from the public until a decent interval had passed in which the commission and its friends in the media could sell the commission's conclusions.
 

Now if that ain't a whitewash, then what the heck is?

[James DiEugenio]

And Shenon says, all that does not matter.  They still got it right.

BTW, I am glad you added, the FWIW phrase in front of Slawson's excuse for not bringing Duran to Washington.  Because I do not think its worth very much.

Why did Coleman and Slawson not do an interview transcript in MC? Many of the WC interviews were not done in Washington anyway e.g. Odio.

And let us not forget, Slawson was the guy who, along with Liebeler, pushed for the creation of the Clark Panel.

For an up close and personal take on what a BSer Slawson is, please read this interview. It say reams about David Slawson and the WC.

http://www.covertbookreport.com/my-interviews-with-david-slawson-of-the-warren-commission/

Take special note how he now says he never heard the so called MC tape from Win Scott.  His excuse: he was talking to the FBI about Oswald eating bananas.  LOL.

Secondly, note who his minder was from the CIA, Ray Rocca.  Angleton's chief assistant and his man on the JFK case. The guy who also worked with Epstein, and was Angleton's rep at the CIA's internal meetings of the Garrison Group.

Edited August 11, 2017 by James DiEugenio