Did the JFK assassination fail?

[Ron Bulman]

Yes and No.  It succeeded in perpetrating the colonial war machine.  But it failed to convince to this day a great majority of US Citizens, a mandate politicians would call it, that a lone nut did it.  Our Government in it's Last Investigation of the matter, the House Sub Committee on Assassinations concluded at least Four shots.  Which Screams Conspiracy.  

[Paul Jolliffe]

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Paul, that order you are talking about was not permanent.

But related to that, currency comptroller James Saxon was appointed by JFK for the express purpose of opening up more state banks with easier credit than the Fed.

Concerning David's point, what these assassinations did was to keep both the Power Elite and the MIC at the top of the pyramid.  And those are the two places where the big money was that time.  Also, the election of Nixon and then the appointment of Ford brought in the Rise of the Vulcans.(See the book of the same title)  By that I mean Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush I and their later followers over at Team B.  (Kirkpatrick, Pipes etc.)  And that was the beginning of the whole Neocon movement which shifted American foreign policy so far to the right that these guys thought that Kissinger was too liberal.  

American foreign policy was then dominated by two main camps, the Neocons (Reagan, Bush I and II) and the Neolibs (Clinton, Obama).  The Kennedys' foreign policy was literally ground into the dust, its something we now talk about online or at seminars up in San Francisco, which David and I go to.  Which means its an artifact in a museum.

So I disagree about the changes brought about by those assassinations not being permanent. The America we live in now is pretty much unrecognizable from the America I grew up in--in every way.

Fair enough, Jim. I never pursued the "Fed did it" angle with any seriousness. 

I do agree that the assassination did keep the Military/Industrial/Intelligence Complex in control, and I am willing to go along with the idea that the "Power Elite" do use the MIIC as the primary vehicle through which they maintain control.  FWIW, Fletcher Prouty cited Robert McNamara's advice to USMC Gen. Victor Krulak's proposed plan to "win" the Vietnam War (McNamara told Krulak to "go see Governor Averill Harriman") as evidence that not only did a "Power Elite" exist, but that they were the true decision makers about such crucial events as the Vietnam War. (Harriman rejected Krulak's plan, not on the grounds that it would not work, but that - according to Prouty and Krulak - it would work, and therefore end the Vietnam War. Which was not what the "Power Elite" wanted, according to Prouty.)

Prouty wrote that Harriman was a uniquely visible member of the "Power Elite", and I tend to agree. 

Ultimately, regardless of whether Prouty was right, I think we can all agree that the planners/coordinators/executors of the assassination had to be assured of success, plus protection from prosecution afterward. That assurance could only come from very powerful people, way above the level of LBJ. 

Also for what it's worth, Harold Weisberg long, long ago pointed the finger of suspicion at Yale Law School Dean Eugene V. Debs Rostow as a conduit/representative/member of the "Power Elite." We all know that the creation of the Warren Commission was not LBJ's idea. Apparently Rostow called Katzenbach on Sunday, 11/24/63, to urge the creation of a presidential commission, a suggestion which Katzenbach then wrote up in a memo to LBJ. Weisberg believed that in this call, Rostow was speaking on behalf of those who planned the cover-up.

Like his brother Walt W. Rostow, Eugene V. Debs Rostow was the insider's insider, one who spoke for and was a charter member of the highest policy-making elites in this country, elites who transcend presidential administrations. Not coincidentally, Rostow was also a hawk on nuclear war, one whose views coincided with Curtis LeMay:

"At his confirmation hearing in 1981, Senator Claiborne Pell asked Rostow if he thought the US could survive a nuclear war. Rostow replied that Japan "not only survived but flourished after the nuclear attack." When questioners pointed out that the Soviet Union would attack with thousands of nuclear warheads rather than two, Rostow replied, "the human race is very resilient. ... Depending upon certain assumptions, some estimates predict that there would be ten million casualties on one side and one hundred million on another. But that is not the whole of the population."^[

[James DiEugenio]

I did not know about Weisberg and Eugene Rostow.  I did know that Don Gibson pointed out his phone call to the White House.  Which I alway thought was so interesting.

Since that was what got the ball rolling on forming the Commission.

Nice one about Rostow's "surviving a nuclear war".  Comparing Japan to atomic war in 1981! Talk about C. Wright Mills' "crackpot realism". These are the kinds of guys who watched Dr. Strangelove and did not even giggle, let alone laugh.

Edited March 19, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Jolliffe]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I did not know about Weisberg and Eugene Rostow.  I did know that Don Gibson pointed out his phone call to the White House.  Which I alway thought was so interesting.

Since that was what got the ball rolling on forming the Commission.

Nice one about Rostow's "surviving a nuclear war".  Comparing Japan to atomic war in 1981! Talk about C. Wright Mills' "crackpot realism". These are the kinds of guys who watched Dr. Strangelove and did not even giggle, let alone laugh.

When I listen again to Eugene Rostow's Sunday 11/24/63 phone call to Bill Moyers at the White House, Rostow implied that he'd already talked to Katzenbach, but "that the poor fellow sounded so groggy, I just thought I'd pass this thought along to you": form a bi-partisan, above-politics presidential commission of "very distinguished citizens"  because "world opinion and American opinion are just so shaken by the behavior of the Dallas Police that they are not believing anything." Then Rostow said that he's "got a party here, that's pursuing this, that people need to come together at this time."

Immediately after "Oswald" was shot, Rostow called Moyers on that Sunday, before any real investigation had been done, before the Z-film had been edited, before the DPD and FBI had "cinched" the case, to say that he, Rostow, was speaking on behalf of some other "party" in urging the creation of the commission.

Remember, "Oswald" was not pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital until 1:07 Central Standard Time. That was 2:07 in Washington, D.C. When Rostow made his first call to Katzenbach (for which no tape exists, apparently), "Oswald's" body was not even cold. This is the tape of the Rostow's follow-up call later on Sunday afternoon to presidential aide Bill Moyers, to make sure the commission idea got through to LBJ!

Why the rush, Eugene?

Getting that commission formed was mighty damn important to Eugene V. Debs Rostow and for that other, unnamed "party"! 

https://www.maryferrell.org/audio/LbjLib/Audio_lbjlib_WCC1A_Moyers-Rostow_24-Nov-1963_2_1.mp3

Edited March 19, 2019 by Paul Jolliffe

[Paul Jolliffe]

Jim,

I did not know of Donald Gibson's article in Probe until you alluded to it. I just read it. He was much more articulate than I was earlier, and he had information that I did not know. I urge everyone to read Donald Gibson's article on the creation of the Warren Commission, originally published in Jim's Probe magazine.

Here it is:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-creation-of-the-warren-commission

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

I have always wondered about who that other party was that Rostow was referring to.  Acheson?  Allen Dulles?  Alsop?

Because its Alsop and the call to LBJ that then clinches the WC.

I guess you would have to figure out where everyone was that day to decipher it.

The HSCA should have done this but they didn't.  It gets really frustrating when you see how many investigatory leads were passed up not just by the WC, but by the HSCA also.  Because if the other party was Alsop or Dulles, then a whole new horizon of questioning opens up.

[Pat Speer]

The Warren Commission was created to provide Johnson with cover regarding his own involvement. The whole 39 million dead if people thought it was Russia was just a smoke screen. This does raise the possibility, however, that someone in the know about who really did it made Johnson think it was gonna come back on him, and that this then led to his ordering the cover-up. 

If i recall, the only Johnson tapes that were destroyed without being transcribed were with Fortas. Someone operating under the assumption the cover-up was initiated by the perpetrators, then, might start with a closer inspection of Fortas and his "clients" circa 1963. 

[Paul Jolliffe]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Paul:

I have always wondered about who that other party was that Rostow was referring to.  Acheson?  Allen Dulles?  Alsop?

Because its Alsop and the call to LBJ that then clinches the WC.

I guess you would have to figure out where everyone was that day to decipher it.

The HSCA should have done this but they didn't.  It gets really frustrating when you see how many investigatory leads were passed up not just by the WC, but by the HSCA also.  Because if the other party was Alsop or Dulles, then a whole new horizon of questioning opens up.

Jim,

As you know, Joseph Alsop in his 11/25/63 call to LBJ makes no fewer than four references to Dean Acheson. Acheson, of course, had resigned from JFK's EXCOMM during the Cuban Missile Crisis because he considered the blockade of Cuba to be too weak. So, Acheson is an obvious starting point. Interestingly, Acheson's daughter, Mary, was married to Wiliiam Bundy, long-time CIA analyst and Ass't. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under LBJ. William Bundy was McGeorge Bundy's brother, who, of course, was JFK's National Security Advisor, and seemingly JFK's foil on Vietnam policy. 

McGeorge Bundy has long been regarded with suspicion by JFK researchers, and perhaps rightly so. 

However, Alsop's invocation of Acheson's name did not seem to produce an immediate acquiescence from LBJ. Johnson didn't change his mind about a commission until a bit later. So, perhaps there was a follow-up call, one about which we don't yet have the details? 

Rostow and Alsop lived in rarified air, but the nexus of the sponsors was not far removed from these men. Contrary to James Douglas's assertion that the sponsors of the assassination are no longer knowable, it may yet be possible to discern more. 

[James DiEugenio]

Bill Bundy was married to Acheson's daughter?

I did not know that.

Talk about the higher circles.

As per destroyed tapes,  I think the tape where Hoover and LBJ talk about Mexico City is also gone and we only have a transcript.

https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FourteenMinuteGap/FourteenMinuteGap.htm

It has always puzzled me as to:

1.) Did LBJ really believe Oswald was at both consulates in MC as the CIA said he was? Because the FBI had different evidence which LBJ should have known about.

2.) Did he really then think this could lead to atomic warfare?  I mean he had McNamara do a study for him to scare Warren and Russell.

Its something I do not think we can ever be certain about.  But these are important questions.

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

You know better than I Jim but I've thought for years LBJ had at a minimum foreknowledge.  Whether he deduced, was told or possibly played some minor role (introductions to people in Texas/Dallas).  To me, If he did, the atomic warfare is a sham.  Everything after would have been a coverup. Right down to making Warren cry over the possibilities of mass destruction.

[Rob Couteau]

At the beginning of his book, "The Kennedy Assassination Cover-up," Donald Gibson devotes about ten pages to the Alsop-LBJ call and quotes from it at length. And he concludes, "within three days" after the call, LBJ "reversed himself" and became a "supporter of a commission and ... its creator." At the end of the book he says that "McCloy, Acheson, Dulles, Rostow, Alsop, and [James] Reston all spoke and acted for a different concept of government": one that represented the "Anglo-American Establishment's neo-Colonialism" and that stood in opposition to JFK's anti-colonialist approach. I thought his work represented a pretty good attempt to dig deeper into the actual figures in the power elite that were staunchly opposed to JFK. It reads like a virtual Who's Who of the key figures of the time ... although no doubt it's incomplete.

[James DiEugenio]

Rob:

Don actually let Probe Magazine print that article before it was published in his second book.

And man Battling Wall Street is, I think, one of the most important and ignored  books there is in the literature.  The opening essay, on the steel crisis, is worth the price of the book.  But when he gets into his analysis of Kennedy's tax and credits program in order to stimulate investment in the domestic economy, plus the exchange of letters with David Rockefeller?  That was unchartered territory.  Don Gibson brought a whole new level of understanding about the Power Elite into the JFK case.

 

Ron:

Actually I don't know.   There are so many unknown factors to measure.  And, of course, LBJ was never questioned by any official body on this case.  The closest thing I ever saw was the Cronkite interview which I understand was edited for TV.

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

This thread seems a rich gold vein strike in the genesis area of who may very well have been in control of the whole affair.

In reading Rostow's answer to Senator Claiborne Pell's question of the world surviving a nuclear war my thoughts went back to that scene and dialogue exchange between the Robert Ryan character ( Robert Foster ) and Burt Lancaster's ( James Farrington ) in the film "Executive Action" where Robert Foster tells Farrington of a plan to reduce the world's population from many billions to just 500 million.

And in so doing, inferring the existence reality of a secret highest authority group  ( beyond any elective U.S. constitutional abiding one ) who had come up with such a plan and that, one assumes, would actually include initiating a nuclear war to do the reducing.

The plot and story line of the film "Executive Action" seems less fictional after reading the Rostow, Acheson, Alsop, Reston, Harriman, Katzenbach, Dulles,etc. influence and involvement with LBJ and the W.C. creation immediately ( just 2 days!) following 11, 22, 1963 as revealed in this incredibly interesting and revelatory thread.

This is the kind of research input that keeps me addicted to this forum.

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Bulman]

Rereading some of the above posts I had a kind of hmm thought.  Something I'd never considered or read about.  The people who planned the assassination did so in great detail, both in terms of the act and the continuing coverup.  Might they have expected public backlash and considered a way to corral it before it even happened?  A way to cut off Texas/Congressional/Senatorial investigations?  An Official Presidentially appointed "investigation"?

 

[James DiEugenio]

Rostow first surfaced the idea of a blue ribbon panel on the 24th.  But LBJ was resistant to it, both that day and early the next morning.

It was the  about 10:40 AM on the 25th with Alsop, in a real stunner of a conversation,  that the resistance began to be chipped away.

And yes Ron, this does give at least a suggestion that the cover up was planned with the conspiracy.  This is why I really wanted to know who was in the room with Rostow.

Also, did LBJ know the whole MC thing was a mirage?