Sylvia Meagher and Clay Shaw vs Jim Garrison

[Rob Couteau]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

he actually saw the late Maggie Field's "panapolies"

Jim, Kelin does briefly mention in the book that he saw them; near the end of the book he thanks "Gwen Field for feeding me and letting me see her late mother's panoplies." I liked that you mentioned how some of the key early people were lawyers and brought that special training into their work; to this list we can also add Stanley Marks. I am convinced that Marks had some contact with either Ray Marcus or Maggie Field, esp since the three of them were listed in that group interview. Also, Marks lived in LA and Bobbie Marks said that he gave public lectures about the assassination; and it wasn't till I read John's book that I realized that LA also hosted some of these other key players. Also, in "Murder Most Foul!" Marks notes: "the Commission had the CIA go to the Gestapo files to try and prove that he [Joesten] was a “communist”!  From reading Kelin I learned that this was first revealed by Mark Lane in a debate with Wesley Liebeler on January 21, 1967, held at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since LA was Stanley Marks’ locale, it’s quite likely that Marks learned of this firsthand, by attending the debate, and then incorporated it in his book, published 7 months later. (I hope to contact Kelin to ask if he's ever come across any letters from Marks in the various archives he's searched.) In any case, as you say, this was an amazing group of ordinary citizens who succeeded in making a crack in the case that would not go away. Which makes Meagher's betrayal of her friends that much sadder. When they didn't agree with her about Garrison, she just cut them out of her life. Very brutal. (And instead befriended Clay Shaw!!!) I think she had a very black-and-white way of dealing with the world. One last thought: there were certainly a lot of broken book contracts. And I think the worst culprit was Random House. As Kelin says in his book, Random House broke their contracts with both Leo Sauvage and Maggie Field. And they also contacted Meagher to express interest in her book, but then ended up rejecting it. Harold Weisberg was also the victim of a broken publisher's contract but I don't believe that Kelin notes whom the publisher was. I recall that you have also noted elsewhere how in later years Random House was especially anti-JFK. The effect of all this was to interminably delay the appearance of these texts. And in Maggie's case, to add to her grief.

[James DiEugenio]

You are probably right that Marks knew this group in LA.

And I should correct my article to include that he was an attorney also.

[James DiEugenio]

I am surprised that no one mentioned this part of the Meagher essay yet.  In my view its important.

"At about that time, November of 1966, the Times quietly undertook a new inquiry into the Kennedy case. It was under Salisbury’s direction. He told Newsweek, “We will go over all the areas of doubt and hope to eliminate them” (Newsweek, December 12, 1966) About a month into the inquiry, Salisbury was sent to Hanoi at the invitations of the North Vietnamese. Reporter Gene Roberts told Policoff that there really was no relation between Salisbury’s journey and the end of the quiet inquiry.

But such was likely not the case. In 2017, the JFK Act declassified an informant’s message to them about the Salisbury investigation. The CIA had passed it on to the FBI and this version was released fifty years after the fact. Peter Kihss, who actually knew Meagher, was one of the reporters assigned to the Kennedy investigation. He told an informant that the Times was working on “a full scale expose of the Warren Report, which will find that the Warren Commission’s original findings were not as reliable as first believed.” (CIA to FBI 1/23/67, based on original report of 12/22/66) This tends to undermine both the removal of Salisbury—why not send another editor?—and what Times reporter Roberts said to Policoff."

This would indicate to me that The Times did look into the case, they did not like what they saw and decided to close it down early.  And then not reveal why it was actually stopped. 

It only took fifty years for us to get that informant message.

Edited October 19, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Joe Bauer]

The Walter Cronkite interview of LBJ in September of 1969 seems to me to be a watershed moment of Warren Commission debunking.

Mind boggling in it's content and source.

Here you have LBJ himself telling Walter Cronkite regards the Warren Commission:

"I don't think they, or me or anyone else, is always absolutely sure of everything that might have motivated Oswald or uh ... other's that could have been involved."

If that isn't a full blown debunking of the WC "lone nut" finding...what is?

I have always been perplexed about the down playing of this interview and LBJ's mind blowing conspiracy suggesting comments to Cronkite.

If "LBJ" wasn't 100% sure about the WC final "lone nut" findings regards a JFK conspiracy who else would you have to hear this doubt from to consider it's possibility or even probability?

1:25NOW PLAYING

 

 

LBJ questions JFK Warren Report-CBS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[James DiEugenio]

Its worse than that Joe.  

The ARRB declassified Johnson's assistant, Marvin Watson's, Church Committee testimony on this subject.  He said that by 1967, LBJ thought JFK was killed by a conspiracy, in which the CIA was involved.  This was after reading the CIA's IG report on the Castro plots.

This is what always puzzles me about this subject.  The MSM always tried to marginalize people like us as being tin foil hat types.  OK then:

Was LBJ tin foil hat?  Was Bobby Kennedy also tin foil hat?  Was John Connally also tin foil hat?  Was Jackie Kennedy also tin foil hat?  Was Khrushchev also tin foil hat?  Was DeGaulle also tin foil hat?

And its pretty indicative from above that the Ny Times was also about to become tin foil hat until  they called it off.

This is how schizoid our culture has become on this issue.

Edited October 19, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Rob Couteau]

Well said.

[Rob Couteau]

This is an interesting idea, to compile a list of very well known and reputable people who could never be accused of being tin hats but who believed in the evidence of a conspiracy. I wonder if we could add Dave Powers to this list. In discussing the possibility of Secret Service involvement in the conspiracy, in "Survivor's Guilt," Vince Palamara writes that ARRB "Director Tom Samoluk told the author in 1996 that JFK's longtime friend and Presidential Aide Dave Powers 'agreed with your take on the Secret Service...'" This caught my eye because in 1973, while Powers was still in charge of assembling the documents and memorabilia for the JFK Library, someone on his staff contacted Stanley Marks with a letter (written on official stationary) requesting to purchase a copy of "Murder Most Foul" for their collection. If Powers had this belief, authorizing such a purchase might make a lot of sense.

[James DiEugenio]

Yes you could.  And O'Donnell also as he famously told TIp O'Neill.

Castro gave two speeches on this within a week.  The second one is really brilliant.  But in the first one, he says words to the effect that the reactionaries wanted to get rid of Kennedy and he suspects Oswald was an agent.

 

[Rob Couteau]

Not many people nailed it as quickly as Castro did - and he was another lawyer, to boot.

[James DiEugenio]

That secret CIA memo that was sent to the FBI really gets me about the NY Times.

I could see why they ended up not doing the full scale expose they were set on doing.  The Times did not just endorse the Warren Report.  They actively promoted it and protected it. They helped bring it out in three different editions, hardcover, softcover, and their highlights version, called The Witnesses.  

Then when the volumes came out, they did not do any cross checking between the WR and the testimony and exhibits.  Which is, of course, the real test of the case.  They then panned the critical books on the case including Meagher's and Thompson's.  And then when John Leonard was going to give a fair review to Garrison's first book, they censored it.

This was after they began their own inquiry, and from that informant's message, they were going to reconsider what they did. Talk about dishonesty.  The MSM simply cannot face the fact that this was an instance where they simply fell down.  And in some cases, as with CBS, they were snookered into thinking that the WC was a real fact finding body.  When, in fact, it was a dog and pony show.  When they then realized what had happened, they did not have the guts to admit they had been suckered.

Edited October 20, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Anthony Thorne]

I found it interesting to read William Davey’s article on Walter Sheridan, NBC, and the Garrison case. That article at Kennedys and King is here:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/shoot-him-down-nbc-the-cia-and-jim-garrison

Davey concludes his article by noting that NBC was, by all accounts, working with the CIA from 1967 onwards to discredit Garrison’s case.

In the four months prior to the Garrison trial, another person was stationed at NBC. Edward Jay Epstein. As part of his doctoral dissertation for Harvard, Epstein did a tour of the major networks, some of whom were more receptive than others. From September to December 1968, Reuven Frank, the President of the NBC news division, pretty much allowed Epstein to live there full time.

From page XV of the preface to Epstein’s News from Nowhere: Television and the News:

Quote

My field study began at NBC in September 1968. Reuven Frank, the president of the news division, allowed me more or less free reign of the news organization : I was able to attend, on a regular basis, the news manager meetings in the morning, which he chaired; observe the proceedings in the newsroom throughout the day; interview personnel; travel with camera crews; and examine memoranda and budget statements pertinent to the news operation. Robert J. Northshield, the executive producer of the NBC Evening News, further permitted me to observe closely the decision making involved in that program on a daily basis for a four-month period, including staff meetings, critiques, film-editing sessions, writing conferences, and the continuous discussions that went on between producers, news editors and correspondents.

I have no idea what coverage NBC did or didn’t give the Garrison case during this period (I’m assuming if they did any, it wasn’t great), but Epstein was in discussions with NBC producers about Garrison during his time there.

From page 71 of Epstein’s book:

Quote

“…after NBC did a scorching expose of the unorthodox investigation of the Kennedy assassination by Jim Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans, Garrison immediately appealed to the the FCC for equal time, and NBC found it necessary to turn over a half-hour of prime time to him, in which he presented his own theories as established facts. “To say this didn’t please the powers that be at NBC is to put it mildly,” the producer commented. (A CBS documentary unit that reached similar conclusions about Garrison was more restrained in what they presented on the air, according to the producer, because of the intervention of CBS attorneys.)

 

Edited October 23, 2020 by Anthony Thorne

[James DiEugenio]

A Ph. D candidate gets the run of NBC NEWS for four months, including internal memos and budget statements?

Good job Anthony.  Maybe Vince was right about this guy. Sure looks like that.

[Anthony Thorne]

I'll have more to say on this topic within the next week or two. 

Vince was right about a number of things from this period. 

[James DiEugenio]

Good, keep it coming.  Epstein looks like he was handpicked early.

[S.T. Patrick]

Didn't Sorenson and Salinger also highly suggest conspiracy? They're certainly not tin foil hat types.