Consortium News: The RFK case by Jim DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

The new editor there is going to allow me to keep on writing on these cases.

He did unfortunately include a piece by Moldea, but my two essays outflanked him.  Will post the other one, where I zing Chris Matthews in a few.

The Tate/Johnson book is pretty good.  

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/05/rfk-and-the-end-of-an-era/ 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Here is my takedown of Chris Matthews' disappointing  book on RFK.

This one is better than his JFK book, but its still not up to snuff.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/04/distorting-the-life-of-bobby-kennedy/

[Rob Couteau]

Nice work, Jim. And what a pithy quote from RFK Jr: "Robert Kennedy’s death, like the President’s was mourned as an extension of the evils of senseless violence….What is odd is not that some people thought it was all random, but that so many intelligent people refused to believe that it might be anything else. Nothing can measure more graphically how limited was the general understanding of what is possible in America.” As if the U.S. govt was only capable of exporting terror abroad and not at home!

Edited June 6, 2018 by Rob Couteau

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Rob.  But that was not by RFK Jr, it was by the late congressman Allard Lowenstein.

He did a lot of really good work on the RFK case.

 

[James DiEugenio]

And there is this by Don Jeffries, which everyone should read, his personal memories of RFK and his assassination:

 

https://donaldjeffries.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/rfk-fifty-years-later/

[James DiEugenio]

Here is article by David Margolick.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/robert-f-kennedys-final-flight-the-storied-journey-of-the-ride-from-california-to-new-york/2018/06/03/b312c440-66a3-11e8-a768-ed043e33f1dc_story.html?utm_term=.db7f256211c7

 

I did not know that Coretta King and Jackie Kennedy flew from, respectively, Washington and London to be on the plane carrying Bobby Kennedy's body from Los Angeles to New York.  If anything shows you who MLK believed in as the next president, that should.

[Steve Jaffe]

Jim:  Lowenstein's words about RFK's murder are particularly affecting. I'll never forget where I was on that day/morning because I was in Geneva on assignment for Garrison with an agent of French intelligence. I had no way of reaching Garrison for fear of being monitored. It was obvious that our fear that RFK might be assassinated by the same forces of the US power structure who killed JFK had come true. What was real to me was that what we expected might happen did happen. Clearly, had RFK been elected president, he would have used his power to prosecute those who murdered his brother. He had communicated that to Garrison privately.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Steve Jaffe
typo

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Steve Jaffe said:

Jim:  Lowenstein's words about RFK's murder are particularly affecting. I'll never forget where I was on that day/morning because I was in Geneva on assignment for Garrison with an agent of French intelligence. I had no way of reaching Garrison for fear of being monitored. It was obvious that our fear that RFK might be assassinated by the same forces of the US power structure who killed JFK had come true. What was real to me was that what we expected might happen did happen. Clearly, had RFK been elected president, he would have used his power to prosecute those who murdered his brother. He had communicated that to Garrison privately.

Steve - please tell me about the French intel agent. If necessary send me a private message. 

[Steve Jaffe]

Paul: I'm writing most of what my assignment was first to Paris and then Geneva because of a French labor strike. That will be in my book rather than here where I'm beginning to feel things get lost. Not that it's a big secret but I want that episode to be fully heard before it's judged. I can just tell you that because of Gen. De Gaulle, we got a bit of help from his government and from Interpole. Some say we were given bad information -- and to some degree there was some of that -- but what we really wanted we received. A very good copy of the Zapruder film which was hand carried to me after I returned to LA and which I delivered to Garrison. Sadly, RFK was murdered during that trip to keep him out of power and to prevent him from tracking down and prosecuting his brother's assassins. Though at one point we seemed to be getting interference from RFK, it turned out to be NBC more than the Kennedys which I later learned was true.

[James DiEugenio]

Lowenstein's quote is one of the most memorable, most valuable, and most insightful in all of the literature on these cases.

I mean how many times did it have to happen for the public and the media to get the message?  How long does this have to go on until someone sees a pattern? 

And man, twice in two months?

Truman Capote was on the Tonight Show back in 1968 and he talked about this.  He said, you know John, I am a  writer and I have been one all my life.  I don't keep a diary.  But yet, these guys who are not writers, and not even well educated, they keep diaries.  Isn't that odd?

Let me add this also, Lowenstein did not consider the RFK case a conspiracy when it happened.  He got into it like Bobby Kennedy did.  When a group of researchers invited him to attend a meeting, he granted it out of courtesy  since he knew some of them.  After listening to them for about an hour, he said:  Wait a minute.  Something is rotten in Denmark.  (Or in this case LA)

FYI, Lowenstein was a Yale educated lawyer.  He helped write Bobby's great Ripple of Hope speech delivered in South Africa.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Steve Jaffe]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Truman Capote was on the Tonight Show back in 1968 and he talked about this.  He said, you know John, I am a  writer and I have been one all my life.  I don't keep a diary.  But yet, these guys who are not writers, and not even well educated, they keep diaries.  Isn't that odd?

Jim: Can you explain what Capote meant and in what context he said this on the Tonight Show?

[Paul Brancato]

14 hours ago, Steve Jaffe said:

Paul: I'm writing most of what my assignment was first to Paris and then Geneva because of a French labor strike. That will be in my book rather than here where I'm beginning to feel things get lost. Not that it's a big secret but I want that episode to be fully heard before it's judged. I can just tell you that because of Gen. De Gaulle, we got a bit of help from his government and from Interpole. Some say we were given bad information -- and to some degree there was some of that -- but what we really wanted we received. A very good copy of the Zapruder film which was hand carried to me after I returned to LA and which I delivered to Garrison. Sadly, RFK was murdered during that trip to keep him out of power and to prevent him from tracking down and prosecuting his brother's assassins. Though at one point we seemed to be getting interference from RFK, it turned out to be NBC more than the Kennedys which I later learned was true.

Thanks Steve. When is your book going to be available?

[James DiEugenio]

Melanson wrote about it in one of his books, I think his RFK book.

I think Capote was trying to insinuate that this oddity was something that was being ignored by everyone, including the press.  Why?

He did not go further than that. 

Edited June 7, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Clark]

 

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/docid-32262642.pdf

P.27

meetings with OC in San Francisco

 p.3 informant advised in November 1963 that in September 1963 there was a meeting at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco and present was David Yaras, his son Ronald, Leonard Patrick, Louis Tom Dragna, and Nicolo Licata. Dragna is a La Cosa Nostra member and Licata is an underboss of the Cosa Nostra in the LA area. Several weeks later the same group met again and present was Ernest Debs , an LA county supervisor who is a close friend of California Governor Pat Brown and allegedly a pay off man for big people in LA.

 

 

Ernest  Debs^[1] (February 7, 1904 – March 7, 2002).........

"........a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from 1958 to 1974."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_E._Debs

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Michael Clark

[James DiEugenio]

That is interesting Mike.  Nice one.

 

When was the date of the meetings?

Edited June 9, 2018 by James DiEugenio