Jim DiEugenio spanks The Post

[Steve Thomas]

11 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Let’s not forget what the Washington Post did to help destroy the late Gary Webb, the courageous reporter whose Dark Alliance series first brought to public attention the depth and breadth of the CIA Contra-Cocaine scandal. 

Jim.

 

I used to live relatively close to Mena in those days. It was a scary time in some ways. It was common knowledge that that were places in the Ouachita Mountains that you just didn't go.

 

Steve Thomas

[Kirk Gallaway]

4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Pat - do you think Spielberg knows he’s not being truthful and is making a conscious cinematic decision to tell the story a certain way for effect? 

If it’s in some way about Trump, are we supposed to believe the Times and the Post are telling truth now? 

I listened to an interview today with the author of The Plot to Kill King. Every year when MLK day arrives I wonder whether any media will tell that story. They never do. 

Paul says:

Pat - do you think Spielberg knows he’s not being truthful and is making a conscious cinematic decision to tell the story a certain way for effect? 

I've asked myself that question too Paul. I think what Pat's trying to tell you is that if Spielberg wanted to start the movie with the demise of Phillip Graham, and showed a scene of Graham drunk at a newspaper publishing conference, making a lot of provocative comments, among them the revelation that JFK was sleeping with Mary Pinchot Meyer. The movie would not have been made. 

If it’s in some way about Trump, are we supposed to believe the Times and the Post are telling truth now? 

Paul having some idea of your sensibilities from this forum and through private messaging. I would just say, as to Trump's fitness to be President, believe your eyes.

I do go with Pat's depiction about the final scene with Joe Pesci as Ferrie, it's not accurate, and is the least believable dialog in the whole film and still it's the probably the most quoted, because Stone knew the masses would love it. I would say the masses second most memorable quote was from Kevin Bacon to Kevin Costner. "Dat's cause you never been f-cked up de xxx, counselor. "  I suppose some people would say that Stone is pandering to the gay hysteria during the Aids epidemic, but I wouldn't. I bet if I checked "JFK" again, I know there's a number of other things.   I do think in interviews Stone has , on the whole been pretty discerning, though he does believe that Beverly Oliver's story that  she was the Babushka Lady, which I personally don't.

Pat, It's here in the forum that Richard Helms and Ben Bradlee were childhood friends and that i n 1961 Richard Helms tipped off Bradlee that his grandfather, Gates White McGarrah, a board member of the Vincent Astor Foundation, was willing to sell Newsweek. (31) Bradlee went to Philip Graham with the story. "

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbradleeB.htm

 

[Pat Speer]

Thanks, Ron. It appears that that bit about Bradlee and Helms comes from Deborah Davis's hit job on Katharine Graham. I have that book in storage. If anyone has that book handy, and can tell me where she gets that from, I'd appreciate it.. Until then, I'm gonna suspect she just made it up. I mean, it looks good, at first glance. But they grew up in different cities, went to different schools, and ran in different circles. And Helms was 8 years older than Bradlee and living outside the country by the time Bradlee was 14. There's just no reason to believe they even knew each other, let alone spent their childhood as "buddies".

Edited January 25, 2018 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

Helms and Bradlee grew up together in the town of Beverly, which was a quite upper class suburb of Boston.  Bradlee's father had been an investment banker.

That Beverly neighborhood was in close proximity to the Lodges, the Saltonstalls, and the Taylor family who owned the Boston Globe. Another person who lived in the neighborhood was Gates White McGarrah, president of the Bank for International Settlements, designed to handle German war reparations. McGarrah's grandson was Richard McGarrah Helms, and he and Bradlee became friends at an early age.(Deborah Davis, Katherine the Great, p. 141)

Because Helms was 7-8 years older how does that impact them not knowing each other at that time if they were in the same neighborhood? 

Davis made it up?  And her book is a hit job on Graham and Bradlee? Wow Pat.  In my neighborhood there was a family who, every weekend, came and visited their grandfather, it was like a ritual.

Edited January 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

And now, Stone and Sklar made up the thing that Ferrie/Pesci says in the hotel room?  OMG, we are really into Ed Epstein country now.

And please tell me, Kirk and Pat, how much research you have done on New Orleans and Garrison?  Who have you interviewed?  How many files have you read of his?

That meeting at the hotel is referred to in Garrison's book.  And anyone can read about it on page 139.  As I went over in detail in my critique of Epstein, the use of dramatic license here is this: Garrison was not there.  But its a legitimate use of dramatic license since the film needs him there dramatically since he is the central character.  And anyone can read the things that Ferrie said in that hotel room through either Bill Davy's book, or Joan Mellen's book, since they both interviewed Lou Ivon.  It was after that meeting that Garrison took a vote on whether or not to call Ferrie before the grand jury. ( ibid) 

[Thomas Graves]

20 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Helms and Bradlee grew up together in the town of Beverly, which was a quite upper class suburb of Boston.  Bradlee's father had been an investment banker.

That Beverly neighborhood was in close proximity to the Lodges, the Saltonstalls, and the Taylor family who owned the Boston Globe. Another person who lived in the neighborhood was Gates White McGarrah, president of the Bank for International Settlements, designed to handle German war reparations. McGarrah's grandson was Richard McGarrah Helms, and he and Bradlee became friends at an early age.(Deborah Davis, Katherine the Great, p. 141)

Because Helms was 7-8 years older how does that impact them not knowing each other at that time if they were in the same neighborhood? 

Davis made it up?  And her book is a hit job on Graham and Bradlee? Wow Pat.  In my neighborhood there was a family who, every weekend, came and visited their grandfather, it was like a ritual.

James,

With all due respect, even if it's true, as you suggest, that Helms and substantially younger Bradlee probably (or maybe just might have?) known each other in Beverly when they were kids, how does that equate with Don Jeffries' statement that they were "buddies"?

--  Tommy 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, since some people here seem to be Ed Epstein aficionados, and value his word over say Jim Garrison, Lou Ivon and myself, did no one here read this passage from my discussion of the whole issue?

"This reviewer called Ivon back in 1993. When Garrison’s investigator was asked if a man named Ed Epstein ever got in contact with him about the Kennedy case, he replied that, back in 1968, yes. I asked him, what about more recently, since Stone’s movie came out? Ivon replied, no, not recently. Epstein thought it was unimportant to consult the primary source."

I would have thought that this piece of information would put the issue to rest.   Apparently, some people do not care at all about the rules of journalism.

Edited January 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

And really, the idea that somehow the Pentagon Papers case resembles what is going on between Trump and the press today?

To me, that shows just how sophomoric Hanks and Spielberg are.

In 1971, when Ellsberg was trying to get the PP out to the public to expose all the lies that got us into the Vietnam debacle, the Vietnam War was till going on!  Thousands of people were dying each week in a war that had no basis at all.  Since 1.) The Tonkin Gulf incident was a phony event, and 2.) That resolution had been repealed.  But that did not matter to Nixon since he was determined not to be the first president to lose a war.  And by this time, the war had been expanded into Cambodia and Laos.  Ellsberg did what he did after he confronted Kissinger in public with the question, "How many civilians do you think you will kill this year in Indochina?"  Kissinger did not answer the question.  He could not, because as I noted in my review, Nixon had already told him that civilian deaths were irrelevant to him.

Think about that for a moment.  American actions in Inodchina resulted in the deaths of about four million innocent civilians, over a war that was declared over one bullet through one hull, in a patrol that was later deemed a provocation.  And Nixon says, hey that is OK with him.

Now, how do you compare that with say Stormy Daniels?  Or estimates over how many people were at Trump's inauguration?  I mean how does that equate in any arithmetic sense?  If these Trump debates were over something consequential, likes say confronting ISIS, maybe you could draw a parallel.  But not the way they are being largely treated today.

 

[Pat Speer]

FWIW, Jim,  I am for the most part a Garrison (and Stone) defender. My comment about Stone's depiction of Ferrie was not meant as a comment on the accuracy of the dialogue, but on the casting and performance. Pesci makes Ferrie out to be a clown, someone you can't take seriously, when Ferrie was, to my understanding, a very thoughtful and serious fellow. It was kinda like having Ho Chi Minh played by a buck-toothed Mickey Rooney.

As far as Helms/Bradlee... I went to school with three people who went on to become celebrities: Mare Winningham, Valerie Bertinelli, and John Elway,  I passed them in the hall, and may have even talked to them a  time or two. I was friends with Winningham's brother. One of my best friend's was friends with Bertiinelli's brother. And another of my best friends was on the basketball team with Elway. I even graded Elway's papers for his Advanced Comp class.  But we were by no means "buddies" or "school chums". The connection cited for Helms and Bradlee is far more flimsy. Unless Davis offered up a quote by Helms or Bradlee indicating they knew each other, or something more solid than Helms' grandparents living in the same neighborhood as the much-younger Bradlee, then, I think we should stop claiming they knew each other, let alone that they grew up "together."

P.S. I just took a look at Helms' book and it confirms that he grew up in Philadelphia and then New York. Not Boston. It also reveals, however, that he moved to Switzerland while in high school, came back to attend Williams College (which is roughly 160 miles from Boston) from 31 to 35, and then returned to Europe to work as a correspondent for UPI. There is no indication he spent any significant time in Boston. In fact, there are two references to his maternal grandparents, neither of which mention Boston. There is a childhood picture of Helms at his grandparents' house in Goshen, New York, and there is a reference to his getting sick while in Europe and then recuperating at his grandparents' house in Basel, Switzerland.

 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

How close Dick and Ben were in their youth seems to me to be rather a minor point.

Because the key issue is how in bed with the CIA was Bradlee.  Consider the following, and recall, this is Wikipedia speaking, which is pretty mainstream:

This memorandum was cited as evidence of Bradlee’s CIA connections by author Deborah Davis in her 1979 biography of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire. Graham and Bradlee, in a controversial action that drew widespread accusations of censorship, demanded and obtained the recall of the book by Davis’s publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which first disavowed the book, and then recalled and shredded 20,000 copies.^[19] Davis subsequently won a judgment against her publisher, however,^[20] and the Justice Department memorandum that formed the primary basis for her claims regarding Bradlee’s CIA affiliation was never disavowed, even by Bradlee himself.^[21] It appeared in two subsequent editions of Davis’s book without challenge and was cited by author Carol Felsenthal, in her 1999 book Power, Privilege, and The Post: The Katharine Graham Story. Reporter Christopher Reed, in his obituary on Bradlee in The Guardian, states that Bradlee "spent many years undercover as a counter-espionage informant, a government propagandist and an unofficial asset of the Central Intelligence Agency,” initially by promulgating "CIA-directed European propaganda urging the controversial execution of the convicted American spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg."^[22]

 

There is no way around this, Bradlee misrepresented this in his autobiography.

Davis' book, which Pat tries to say was a hit piece, was really the first look inside one of the three major newspapers in America.  Bradlee and Graham did not like it since at that time, these people liked to think of themselves as some sort of select aristocracy that was guiding the minions down the path they chose. When Davis, and later authors, began to reveal who they really were they struck back at them.

The crowning achievement of  that book is that it revealed  the origins of Mockingbird and the Post's role in it.. In combination with Bernstein's Rolling Stone article from 1977, the public finally understood how controlled the major media was in the USA.

Edited January 25, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Thomas Graves]

33 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

How close Dick and Ben were in their youth seems to me to be rather a minor point.

Because the key issue is how in bed with the CIA was Bradlee.  Consider the following, and recall, this is Wikipedia speaking, which is pretty mainstream:

This memorandum was cited as evidence of Bradlee’s CIA connections by author Deborah Davis in her 1979 biography of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire. Graham and Bradlee, in a controversial action that drew widespread accusations of censorship, demanded and obtained the recall of the book by Davis’s publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which first disavowed the book, and then recalled and shredded 20,000 copies.^[19] Davis subsequently won a judgment against her publisher, however,^[20] and the Justice Department memorandum that formed the primary basis for her claims regarding Bradlee’s CIA affiliation was never disavowed, even by Bradlee himself.^[21] It appeared in two subsequent editions of Davis’s book without challenge and was cited by author Carol Felsenthal, in her 1999 book Power, Privilege, and The Post: The Katharine Graham Story. Reporter Christopher Reed, in his obituary on Bradlee in The Guardian, states that Bradlee "spent many years undercover as a counter-espionage informant, a government propagandist and an unofficial asset of the Central Intelligence Agency,” initially by promulgating "CIA-directed European propaganda urging the controversial execution of the convicted American spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg."^[22]

 

There is no way around this, Bradlee misrepresented this in his autobiography.

Davis' book, which Pat tries to say was a hit piece, was really the first look inside one of the three major newspapers in America.  Bradlee and Graham did not like it since at that time, these people liked to think of themselves as some sort of select aristocracy that was guiding the minions down the path they chose. When Davis, and later authors, began to reveal who they really were they struck back at them.

The crowning achievement of  that book is that it revealed  the origins of Mockingbird and the Post's role in it.. In combination with Bernstein's Rolling Stone article from 1977, the public finally understood how controlled the major media was in the USA.

James,

With all due respect, I sounds to me as though you're pivoting a bit on the friendship issue ...

-- Tommy 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[James DiEugenio]

Like most of us here TG, I don't know what you are talking about most of the time, and I don't really care.

I pivoted on nothing.

This was my opening sentence: "How close Dick and Ben were in their youth seems to me to be rather a minor point."

The real point was how close was Bradlee to the CIA once he got in a position of power.  I think he was pretty close. Although that should not be the main point of this thread.

It, I think, does help explain how hostile he was to resistance to the war and also critics of the Warren Commission.

[Thomas Graves]

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Like most of us here TG, I don't know what you are talking about most of the time, and I don't really care.

I pivoted on nothing.

This was my opening sentence: "How close Dick and Ben were in their youth seems to me to be rather a minor point."

The real point was how close was Bradlee to the CIA once he got in a position of power.  I think he was pretty close. Although that should not be the main point of this thread.

It, I think, does help explain how hostile he was to resistance to the war and also critics of the Warren Commission.

James,

Nice insult!

(Regardless, in this instance what do you not understand?)

With all due respect, do you really think that you speak for those members who hesitate to speak up out of fear that you and/or some of the other "The Evil Evil CIA Killed Kennedy And The Cold War Ended in 1991!" true believers will ridicule them?

If it's true that only half of the people here can understand me, why doesn't the other half ask me for clarification?

Is it because my English syntax, grammar, and vocabulary aren't good enough?

(LOL)

Or is it that they know I'll suggest that they read Spy Wars, Ghosts of the Spy Wars, Legend, AND State Secret, The Man Who Knew Too Much, etc (for a little background), and they simply don't want to experience the CD (cognitive dissonance) the first three of those might cause them?

"The real point was ..."

LOL

Are you suggesting that the "buddy" thing was a fake point?

 

--  Tommy 

Edited January 26, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[James DiEugenio]

One of the problems with the famous Bernstein article in Rolling Stone, is that, as many have pointed out, it sort of slighted the CIA influence at the Post.

And if I recall correctly, Bradlee was not even mentioned in it.  But as some have noted, it is hard to reconcile Bradlee's alleged friendship with JFK to his behavior afterwards.  If, as some have said, he wanted to sit it out for either personal health reasons, or as he told Talbot later, for career advancement motive, then that is understandable--if not admirable.  Then, sit it out.

But that is not what Bradlee did.  Bradlee's editorial leadership at the Post, was among the harshest there was in the major media concerning the critics.  As I noted earlier, he cooperated with his pal David Phillips on squelching the Veciana story, even when he knew it looked credible after investigation. If I recall correctly, was it not The Post that, after the acoustics came in for the HSCA, said well, there may have been two assassins, but they didn't know each other.  I mentioned the Lardner article that attacked Stone's film six months in advance, and how Bradlee did not want to let Stone reply.  Even though that attack was actually dead wrong on more than one matter, including NSAM 263.

But then there is the almost unknown debate that Bradlee took part in with Harvey Yazijian of the AIB in the seventies up in Boston.  Let me quote first what Bradlee let Walter Pincus, Mr CIA pal, write about the HSCA, and then Harvey can describe that debate:

One of the Post’s writers assigned to report on the House Select Committee was the CIA’s good friend Walter Pincus, who disparaged the committee as “perhaps the worst example of Congressional inquiry run amok.”

But there was one other incident that crystallized Bradlee’s disturbing lack of concern about the mystery surrounding JFK’s murder. In the mid-1970s, the interest in the Kennedy case ratcheted up to an almost fever pitch because of the revelations of the Church Committee about the crimes of the CIA and the FBI and the first televised screening of the Zapruder film showing Kennedy’s head being knocked backwards by the fatal shot, suggesting a shooter in front. Those two events stirred public suspicions and led to the formation of the HSCA.

Many young people were attracted to the case. Two of them, Carl Oglesby and Harvey Yazijian, set up the Assassination Information Bureau to inform the public about new developments in the congressional inquiry. In Boston — where Yazijian lived and where Bradlee was born — the two men faced off in a debate about the case being reopened.

I interviewed Yazijian about this debate for this article. He said, “Jim, to label my encounter with Bradlee a debate is to mischaracterize it.” Yazijian had come prepared to review the evidence in the case and explain why knowledgeable people held the Warren Commission in such low esteem. Instantly, he realized that Bradlee had a different agenda.

“He was vitriolic. He went ballistic right out of the gate. He dismissed all the critics as being irresponsible nutcases. It was nonstop pure vitriol.”

Yazijian tried to present himself as cool and composed, but he was taken aback at how hostile Bradlee was. Yazijian said Bradlee was trying to dismiss all the critics as being an “irresponsible ilk who should not be listened to. He was right; we were wrong.”

It was clear to Yazijian that Bradlee and the Post were invested in the official story and Bradlee did not want to hear any rational argument showing that he might be wrong. He wanted to dismiss all the contrary evidence out of hand via character assassination, thereby eliminating any argument attached to it. Looking back, Yazijian wishes he had been more prepared for this line of attack and had called Bradlee out on it.

And let us also not forget, at this time there could be no career excuses.  Bradlee was basking in the success of his Watergate role, the Bernstien-Woodward book was a huge bestseller, the Redford film came out in 1976,    and he had millions in stock options.  The MSM is so insular that Bradlee used to be criticized for his friendship with JFK, but no one ever asked him in public about his behavior after.  Which to me, is simply inexcusable and not readily explainable.

Edited January 27, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

For people who want the whole wide view on Bradlee and the contradictions and paradoxes his career presents, I wrote this two part essay a few months after his death.  

I tried to play speciai attention to his relationship with JFK.  Which I believe is not easy to understand.  (At the end of part one you can click forward to part 2)

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/10/ben-bradlees-not-such-a-good-life/