Fire Me?

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Gene. One query:

Vince said that RFK appointed Dulles to the WC?

Doesn't sound like him.

[Gene Kelly]

Sorry for the confusion, Jim.  Vincent Salandria made that comment about Ruth and Michael Paine (i.e. "clear beacons"):

The Paines’ actions brand them as clear beacons leading to the killers, but our government did not cause them any trouble. The Paines were criminal co-conspirators and should be prosecuted by a guiltless government (V. Salandria).

I was therefore using the same phrase to describe the disinformation ploy (by LBJ and others) to convince the public that RFK asked for Dulles to be on the WC.   There's absolutely no way Robert Kennedy would have recommended or wanted that ... not after the BOP, and certainly given his animus for the entire Dulles family.  That piece of disinformation smacks of a classic LBJ slight/disrespect for RFK.  Plus, it reminds me of the character assassination of JFK later with Hunt's false memo about the Diem coup.  Revisionist history of the worse kind.

[Ron Bulman]

22 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Listening to RFK, Johnson and Dulles speak eight months after JFK's death so civilly is weird given today's knowledge about the probable prior knowledge and possible involvement of either of the latter two if not both.

Mr. Hardway's analysis of Dulles appointment to the Warren Omission cuts to the bone of the issue, filet's it then chops it up.  The link led me to re read his Declaration on behalf of Jeff Morley's suit.  I really wish he would write a book.

 http://aarclibrary.org/talbot-case-declaration-of-dan-l-hardway/

I posted the wrong declaration link yesterday.  His declaration about the HSCA was the one I'd re read.  It's a bit deeper.

http://aarclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Doc.-156-1.-Dan-L.-Hardway-Declaration.pdf

I came across it in this thread by Jim D from two years ago.

 

[Ron Bulman]

22 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, when you read Hardway, and then listen to him and Eddy talk together, you understand why the CIA brought Johannides back and then lied about him.

There were two stages to the containment of those two guys.

Stage 1: Instead of having them go to Langley and request stuff directly, the CIA decided to build their own room at the HSCA.  In that room they had both a liaison and a secretary.  There was also a huge wall safe.  They had to make out requests, the CIA would bring them in the next day and they would have to sign for them.  At the end of the day, they would have to turn in everything: the memos and the notes.  These would go inside the safe.

This did not seem to slow them down.  So stage 2 was enacted.  This included bringing back Johannides.

Stage 2:  There would now be a delay in getting the stuff they wanted.  But in addition to that, they would bring it in with pages missing.  See, one way to look at this is that Johannides would understand what they were looking for.  And he came in as a Fail Safe measure.  

I think this is why the CIA is fighting Morley tooth and nail.

I think Joannadies was covering his own rear as well.  In re reading Hardway's HSCA declaration courtesy of your thread 2 years ago I came across something I'd read but forgotten that seems important, to me at least.  Jeff Morley's Freedom of Information Request and/or the ARRB did result in finding out about Joannides residence in New Orleans in the summer of 63, the cia funding them (what was it 25K a month ?, back then, now that would be...), and a picture, of Joannadies.  

Mr. Hardway notes the cia told the HSCA they had no dealings with the DRE after the spring of 1963.  Former leaders of the DRE said they did, and, they had a case officer they dealt with named Howard.  When he obtained the picture Jeff showed it to three surviving members of the DRE "individually and separately".  They all said That's Howard.  

Joannides knew that if this was exposed it wouldn't just be Phillips getting grilled by the HSCA lawyers and likely sent to prison for obstruction of justice.  His butt was on the line as well. 

[James DiEugenio]

Good point Ron.  I agree.

It was a high risk measure.  But it worked. And it still is.

Edited April 23, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 4/20/2018 at 8:47 AM, James DiEugenio said:

For those who are not aware of the Hardway essay on the subject.

To me, this is the best analysis of it I have seen:

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2015/10/dan-hardway-rebuts-shenons-assertion.html

 

Half of this is about this very phone call. And most of that is pure conjecture. And anybody whose heard it knows there can be nothing said about it that isn't conjecture.

 

Hardaway said;

Dulles opening his conversation with RFK by expressing his condolences about, apparently, Ted Kennedy's illness, is downright strange.

 

An inaccuracy: Ted Kennedy wasn't ill, he survived a plane crash. Downright strange? If you accept Dulles as a spy, why would it seem strange that he expressed condolences about  his brother's injuries in a plane crash? That would be the normal thing to do, and a spy tries to do normal things.

 

Hardaway said;

The most remarkable thing about the conversation is that nothing is said about RFK involvement in selecting Dulles for the Warren Commission. When talking to RFK, Dulles did not say anything about serving on the Commission at his request or nomination.

 

There's nothing remarkable about that at all. Why would anything be said about that?

As it was mentioned, The idea that Bobby handpicked Dulles for the Warren Commission is suspect at best. So I hardly needed convincing, but they pummeled this home not once, not twice but about 8 times! This is over analysis, or more accurately over conjecture.

 

 

Talbot said:At this point in his life, Bobby is still in major turmoil and uncertain of how to proceed in his political career. He suspects the assassination came from within the CIA's plot against Castro, but he probably hasn't focused on Dulles yet, who after all was supposedly out of the CIA by the time of the assassination.

 

Probably the most accurate thing about the phone call said IMO, but of course, all conjecture.

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Kirk:

C'mon.  Let up just a bit and breathe.

 If RFK picked Dulles for this civil rights mission, and he also did the same for the WC, then would not Dulles, LBJ or RFK had noted the parallel?

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Kirk:

C'mon.  Let up just a bit and breathe.

 If RFK picked Dulles for this civil rights mission, and he also did the same for the WC, then would not Dulles, LBJ or RFK had noted the parallel?

 

If that was the case, Why would they mention something all 3 know is in evidence? Read it again, how many times was this worth mentioning?

I don't think you or I need that much convincing on this point. Do we?

 

 

[Gene Kelly]

My instincts tell me that Dulles comment about Teddy was a threat (and a taunt).  I think they had their sights set on Teddy, just like they had their sights on Bobby.   I could never prove it, but Ted's plane crash and Chappaquiddick affair were a setup (i.e. a political assassination, of sorts).  It was all-out war on the Kennedy's.

[Ron Bulman]

"When it came to undertaking secret missions, Allen Dulles was a bold and decisive actor. 

But he acted only after he felt a consensus had been reached within his influential network.*

One of the principal arenas where this consensus took shape was the Council on Foreign Relations .  

The Dulles brothers and their Wall Street circle had dominated this private bastion for shaping public policy since the 1920's.

The Devil's Chessboard, David Talbot, page 549, chapter 20, "For the Good of the Country" 

    

[Ron Bulman]

On ‎4‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 9:48 PM, Ron Bulman said:

In an earlier post on this thread I mentioned Wall Street Bankers/JFK's Secretary of the Treasury C Douglas Dillon and former Wall Street lawyer Dulles possibly acting on behalf of "the bankers".  "The Bankers" own/are the Federal Reserve, as most know.  Money's not made by the Government but by Them, so they can charge the government interest on the money they make and loan to it.  JFK figured it out and tried to stop it by restoring the right of the government to issue money backed by silver.  He started printing government money.

As a former bankers/ fed reserve lawyer protecting their interests in the 20's - 30's world wide as such, then with the OSS/CIA in the 40's - 50's and as director of the CIA he became the perfect conduit for their actions on 11/22/63.  They stopped printing government backed money when JFK died and haven't since.

Here' something old I stumbled across today.   I've not read it all yet, it's long, but scroll down about an inch to the Louis T. McFadden part.  "one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known".  From 1932.

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htm

In relation to this post I've finally bought and begun reading a book I've been going to for years many others probably already have, "Battling Wall Street"  by Professor Donald Gibson.  I've read a little about the subject which is why I wanted to read it but just the first 20 pages are eye opening.  The actions of US Steel appear to have been a shot fired across the bow of JFK's presidency not by just steel magnates, many of whose corporate board members were on the boards of other corporations, as well as the bankers.   When he fought them and won he pissed the whole bunch off and strengthened their resolve against further involvement in restricting their profits.  Ultimately they won.  And still do today.  The importance of the role of this aspect of the assassination seems to have been ignored or suppressed since this book came out.  I'm not familiar with much discussion of the subject since the internet developed into a useful tool or any books furthering it since.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

Very good and valuable book.  The best one out there in the field of Kennedy's economic policy.

That opening chapter you mention is so important.  

 That duel between JFK and the steel companies was the most dramatic confrontation between a president and the corporate world in the last 75 years.

 

[Ron Bulman]

Page 72.  Battling Wall Street. 

" By the early 1960's the Council on Foreign Relations, Morgan and Rockefeller interests , and the intelligence community were so extensively inbred as to be virtually a single entity".

"The global interests of the Morgan and Rockefeller groups led to a natural involvement in the development of the Central Intelligence Agency."

"William Donovan who is usually credited with organizing the OSS during World War II began his intelligence career working as a private operator for J. P. Morgan, JR.  Allen Dulles, who was in 1963 the most senior member (since 1927) of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations..."   

[James DiEugenio]

Gibson is really good at that kind of thing.

We published him in the nineties in our paper magazine, Probe, which Ward would call cheesy.  But most everyone else called probably the best JFK, RFK, MLK journal of its time.

Don Gibson brought a really unique perspective and background to the journey.  Because he had done something almost no one else had done before him.  He had studied the unique workings of the power elite in America for decades on end.  See, up to that time, the furthest inquiry into the stratosphere of power that rules America had been performed by people like Evica and Scott.  And the furthest they had gone was the usual Texas millionaires and the Mob.  

Gibson went way beyond that.  And he explored who really controlled America at the time of the JFK murder.  But he then went beyond that to show how Kennedy was in direct conflict with them.  Two examples from his work would be billionaire David Rockefeller and Jock Whitney, who was only worth 700 million. 

When I read his book Battling Wall Street, it was a real eye opener.  Not just for what he wrote, but also in looking at his sources. Which were really kind of unusual for the time.  My entire relationship with Don, both personal and professional, would have been justified just by him introducing me to John Blair's magnificent book, The Control of Oil. That book is one of the truly great non fiction books on the power structure I have read.  Unfortunately for us all, Blair died just after its publication. Blair was a government investigator for about 19 years before he became an academic. This allowed him access to documents and records that the ordinary person could not get.  And you understand that from the first chapter of The Control of Oil. I had never seen this material before, how the giant oil companies had plotted together in the twenties to divide up the world oil markets to lessen competition and increase profits.  Not only did Blair know about it, he knew where the plotters had met!  When I read and understood that I realized how relatively small on the scale the Hunt brothers were in 1963.

This is the kind of stuff Gibson brought to the table.  And when you realize that John McCloy was the lawyer for the seven big oil companies in America at around that time, then you get a more accurate picture of what was going on with the WC.  And then when you learn that McCloy was in on three different reversals of JFK's foreign policy after his death, and secretly participated in the CBS cover up of the facts in their four night 1967 special, well to me, that was kind of important.

I am really proud to have published Don in my  "cheesy"  journal.

[Ron Bulman]

The Dillon thing disturbs me.  JFK appointed him the Secretary of the Treasury and Dean Rusk as Secretary of State, two of the most Important positions in his cabinet, as a conciliatory measure towards the East Coast Establishment, I. E the bankers/wall street.  He then ignored their advice.  And suffered the price?