What is disinformation in the JFK case?

[Robert Harper]

Thank you to the members who posted a link to the online version of the book. Thus one can more easily read and come to their own conclusion.

I don't have the time or  the inclination to cut and paste large segments of the book, but I post the following segments as a sampling and then the reader can decide for him or her self, whether this book is "crappy"  or a "disinfo tome" or whether it gives information at odds with what the CIA was telling people to say or what the Warren Report actually said. Recall that it was written and published less than 5 years after the killing. I remember when the Hoover memo surfaced about someone using Oswald's birth certificate, and thinking to myself 'I thought they said he was a loner and no one ever heard of him'.  Farewell America  was published before the trial of Clay Shaw. The oil industry and Hunt are mentioned in the book, but they are far from the only culprits suggested. Indeed, the author describes a "committee" of people involved and has a diagram showing at least 4 assassins. So, since "disinformation" by definition implies an intentional fabrication to steer one away from the truth, consider the following few samples from the book and see if you find it "disinfo":

 

"In August 1962 Oswald took out a subscription to The Worker and offered his services as a photographer.(21) In October and November, he also contacted the Socialist Labor Party and subscribed to its publication The Militant.Throughout the winter of 1962-63, Oswald corresponded with these leftist groups, helping them out from time to time. In October 1962 the CIA, frightened by the Cuban missile crisis, called back those of its agents who were in training or on vacation. Oswald made several trips to New Orleans, ..It is highly probable that he was working simultaneously for the CIA and the FBI.

 He tried to join subversive groups like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), which was violently critical of American policy towards Castro. Oswald distributed Communist literature in the streets of New Orleans to win the approval of the FPCC and make contact with the pro-Castro groups in Louisiana.

  Actually, he was working for the opposition group, the anti-Castro Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, which was controlled by the CIA. Oswald worked out of an office located at 544 Camp Street ructions, changed his occupational disguise, and rented a post office box (POB 2915). In April 1963, Oswald was told to move to New Orleans, where he continued to infiltrate

 These motives, nevertheless, were strong enough to persuade Chief Justice Earl Warren to place "the good of the country " ahead of justice. "The good of the country" is always invoked with regard to an act contrary to the laws and justice of the nation.

  The report to which Mr. Warren lent his name may represent a political necessity designed to preserve the national unity, but was it the place of the Chief Justice to accept a responsibility so inconsistent with his vocation? Was it his place to disclose the testimony of witnesses before they had even appeared?⁽¹⁾ Was it his place, when Jack Ruby begged to be brought to Washington to testify, to reply, "Many things are at stake in this affair, Mr. Ruby," and let him meet his fate without ever having heard him?

 

The plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silences, that it would be blamed on a "madman" and negligence

History has often made use of a "madman" to shift the blame for a perfectly rational act. A "mad" assassin, captured immediately, would act as a magnet for public resentment. He would absorb the embarrassing questions and serve as a cover for the obvious accomplices. Quickly removed from the scene, he would leave behind him only the hatred inspired by solitary killers and the respect of the public for famous men now dead.

But the madman was only a detail. The Committee knew from its legal counselors that the assassination of a President is not a federal crime, and that the local authorities are legally competent to conduct an investigation. They would make sure it went wide of its mark.

 ... the Committee was dependent, and the cooperation of those who did nothing to stop it, turned the assassination into a national conspiracy in which not only the local police and certain judicial officers, but also the FBI through its negligence and the CIA through its double agents and its operational units, the Army with its dissident generals, Congress and its corruption, and the entire economic system through its ideals and certain members of the Committee were implicated. 

t was time to make plans. It isn't enough to want to kill the President. There is also the Secret Service to think about. ..

Several members of the White House detail were not qualified for their jobs. Their average age was 40, and as in the Senate the highest positions were awarded on the basis of seniority. Bill Greer, the driver of the Presidential Lincoln, was 54 and had 35 years' experience, enough to lull anybody's reflexes. After O'Donnell and perhaps Kellerman (the agent who rode in the front of the President's car in Dallas), Greer bears a heavy responsibility for the success of the assassination. We shall explain why a little later.

A representative of the Committee followed the President's trips at the end of September through Wisconsin, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Utah, Oregon, Nevada and California. Apparently the Committee planned to assassinate Kennedy, first in Chicago and then in Florida the week before his trip to Texas, but both times the Secret Service was alerted. The Chicago trip was canceled, and special precautions were taken in Miami (the President used a helicopter). The Committee would have preferred to act in Florida, but it had its doubts about the reliability of the Florida state police and the Tampa and Miami police departments, and the operation was postponed until Dallas on November 22."

Edited December 22, 2018 by Robert Harper
punctuation

[Robert Harper]

The following was a recent post left by Mr. DiEugenio: (bold is my emphasis)

"Rich, please read those articles.  This is called the Education Forum for a reason. Over at Duncan McRae's all they do is share their own prejudices.  Here, we actually try and surface information and debate it."

This post stuck out for me since it was left a week or so after James decided to cut short any debate by not playing by the rules of debate.

He offered a proposition: Farewell America equals a “tome of disinfo.”

 He did this on another thread and I took it to be a pejorative dismissal of something I recalled being other than a “tome of disinfo” and when I asked him to elaborate, he chose not to respond. Consequently, I started this thread in an attempt to debate the merits of that assertion. I actually was more engaged with reading and composing some thoughts on the continuation of a thread on witches and Salem, but I chose to rebut the assertion by returning to the book Farewell America and offered ten (10) examples of facts that defied the use of the word disinformation when applied to them.(listed in previous post).

 In the rules of debate, the affirmative makes a proposition and defines the terms of the debate. The negative rebuts, and defines the terms if not presented by the affirmative. The affirmative then rebuts the negative and the next rebuttal is from the negative. This is as far as the debate progressed on this thread. Since the affirmative – like the prosecutor – opens and closes the debate – the affirmative must rebut the last negative, while closing out the proposition. Mr. DiEugenio decided to pass on that final chore. Thus, the debate was unfinished and/or it was a victory for the negative as a sort of TKO.

Mr DiEugenio’s original rebuttal struck me as strange to say the least. Declaiming that he has asked “for about the 9th time” whether anyone read his books doesn’t really answer any question, and mentioning an index in Joan Mellen’s book or the shoe leather worn down by Harold Weisberg’s search for the author, also skirts the issue at hand. The issue was, was this book a “tome of disinfo” or not? The issue isn’t who wrote it, but what it says. Frankly, it wouldn’t matter if Mickey Mouse and Allen Dulles wrote it. What matters for arguments sake is whether or not the book is intentionally deceptive. Saying that he puts “a lot of work into them and you will find information there you will not find anywhere else” seems out of place as well. Who is the “you” addressed here? And, how does his efforts – laborious or not – illuminate a defense of the proposition that A=B?

In my first post on this Forum I quoted Aquinas’s formulation of a definition: " that by which, or in virtue of which, a thing is what it is" ( id quo aliquid est). Any research I’ve done on the word “disinformation” includes a deliberate attempt to deceive, to point one away from the truth.

Begging the question is a logical fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.  Begs the question is actually a term that comes from logic, and it's used to indicate that someone has made a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support. If one says A=B then one also asserts that the consequences of A will equal the consequences of B. Definitions are important.

 Recently I suffered through listening to a podcast from UVA about "microaggression" which managed to mangle any concept of free speech by suggesting that even joking about "ethnicity, gender etc" would be a form of aggression which should be halted.

 A student aptly asked if one had to be a member of a "marginalized group" to be a victim of "microaggression" since the slide presentation stated such. Amazingly, the speaker replied that such was just a "generalized definition" and that she extended it to "any" marginalized group (based on height, weight, regional birth) and that indeed one needn't be a member of a marginalized group to be microaggressed upon.

As a response to this obvious contradiction, the student asked how do you define marginalized group, since it seemed "non-specific" and the answer offered was that it was "intentionally" non-specific" as if that was a value worth prioritizing when trying to define a term.

A colleague of the lecturer then offered the anecdote that people would say "you don't sound like you're from West Virginia" or "oh you wear shoes" and she found that people looked down on those from a rural state, and that such was "hurtful" even if its intent was not. 

The student wondered how such was determined. If "hurt" isn't intended, how can one be "hurt?"  The answer was a broad-based conglomeration of sensitivities that would be out of place even in a Freudian session on being sensitive to the unconscious. 

It went on like this for an hour. My guess is that Thomas Jefferson was turning rapidly in his grave a few yards from where this "class" was taking place.

Perhaps the most aggressive act of all - and in my book a macro-aggressive act at that - was done by the University itself, whose leaders suspended the student asking the questions for being "aggressive" and for taping the discussion. One can't make this stuff up.

Like the UVA student, I would like to have a definition of "disinformation" that is more than anecdotal and is specific. I offered such in my first rebuttal to the proposition that Farewell America = "a tome of disinfo."  I suggested an intent to deceive was paramount in the definition. I specifically distinguished it from the limited hang-out form or the gray propaganda form.

I agree with those who replied that the Warren Commission was a work of disinformation and I don’t disagree with Mr. Andrews’ assertion that the book had some purple writing in it. In a recent conversation with a JFK author, we both recalled reading years ago that Edward Kennedy and Danial Patrick Moynihan had assisted putting together a group to investigate the killing and their conclusion—a deep state killing using a CIA patsy with multiple shooters - couldn’t find a publisher in the USA and thus was printed first in Belgium. He agreed with me that “disinformation” was not an applicable term to describe Farewell America.

 “I understand there are so many crappy books out there that the market is glutted with baloney.  But still, if you know me, I am not that kind of writer.”

When I read this part of Mr DiEugenio’s rebuttal, I recalled Augustine’s phrase that “What we know, therefore, we owe to reason, what we believe, to authority.” It seems to me that Mr. DiEugenio is relying on his self proclaimed “authority,” rather than on reason, to defend his proposition that Farewell America = a “tome of disinfo.”

 

 

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

It is very interesting that Jim names de Vosjoli as the presumed author of Farewell America. I’ve read way too much about that dude to let this slide. Before I respond to that, I’d like to mention that I think Destiny Betrayed is a great book. However, having read many great books on JFK, and parts of some not so great ones, it’s hard for me to remember where I read this or that. Larry Hopkins often references his own books here and I think may also feel most of us haven’t read them. For authors who have spent so much time researching and writing on the subject it’s understandable that they remember well what they have written. Likewise since we didn’t write those books it’s easy to see we don’t have the same ready grasp of them. 

I have a copy of Farewell America. I never found it useful. Its hard for me to imagine de Vosjoli writing it. He had a very anti-Soviet viewpoint and was at odds with French Intelligence. And if it is disinformation it’s hard to imagine for what purpose. I’d sure like to read what Garrison had on de Vosjoli. 

Werent we waiting for release of supposed Garrison files? Anyone know what’s going on with that?