Sylvia Meagher and Clay Shaw vs Jim Garrison

[James DiEugenio]

At the time that JFK came out, I think Salinger was in a debate about the movie and he clearly expressed doubts about the official story. That debate was with Summers--who I think has really regressed on the case--and that carnival barker, the late Chris Hitchens.  I think you can still see this online.

  Not sure about Sorenson.

[James DiEugenio]

I should add though, another person what was in high office and thought it was a plot was Al Gore.

He studied the case for about a year under the tutelage of Bernie Fensterwald and came to the conclusion it was a conspiracy.  And unlike Bill Clinton, he never went back on it.

[S.T. Patrick]

I wonder what Leo Ryan thought... do we have any quotes or papers stating his view?

You know, this would be a good book for someone to do... a Quotes for Conspiracy or something... some kind of large-scale gathering of quotes about the case from other politicians, celebs, etc.

[Cliff Varnell]

John Kerry

Hall of Fame 3rd baseman Chipper Jones 
 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2145929

Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett  
https://www.metro.us/jfk-assasination-was-an-inside-job-9-11-was-a-conspiracy-according-tomichael-bennett-and-pete-carroll/

Bruce Willis    https://www.therichest.com/buzz/celebrity-conspiracy-beliefs/

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[James DiEugenio]

Something like this is coming up at Kennedys and King by David Mantik.

He is doing a review of a book and has a small section at the end which contains some of these personages.

[Joseph McBride]

That's not much of an insight from Kerry, a Bonesman, like Poppy and W. Kerry subscribes

to the Cuba/Russia influence cover story. And to say Oswald was influenced by some

unknown forces isn't saying anything anyway.  Nor does Kerry want to think about a second gunman. Kerry caved on the theft of the 2004 election the next morning even though Edwards wanted to fight it. RFK Jr. wrote a definitive article for Rolling Stone on the theft of that election.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

19 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

That's not much of an insight from Kerry, a Bonesman, like Poppy and W. Kerry subscribes

to the Cuba/Russia influence cover story. And to say Oswald was influenced by some

unknown forces isn't saying anything anyway.  Nor does Kerry want to think about a second gunman. Kerry caved on the theft of the 2004 election the next morning even though Edwards wanted to fight it. RFK Jr. wrote a definitive article for Rolling Stone on the theft of that election.

Thank you for the tip.  I wasn't able to read the article but found this.

I can't resist sharing this quote.  "It reminds us of the one good thing that can be said about George W. Bush is that the American people have never actually elected him president of the United States".  Same can be said about the current occupant.

https://freepress.org/article/rfk-and-rolling-stone-nail-ohios-stolen-2004-election-much-more-must-be-done

Edited October 27, 2020 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

Its really something is it not?

Gore gets more votes than W in 2000.  But then his brother steals the election in broad daylight, thanks to the originalist Justice Scalia.

W steals the election again in Ohio in 2004.

HRC outpolls Trump by nearly 3 M votes but loses.

This is why I say that if Biden is a real Democrat he will do these five things:

1. Make District of Columbia  a state

2. Make Puerto Rico a state

3. Expand the court to 13

4. Do away with the Electoral College

5. Make Sheldon Whitehouse AG

[Joe Bauer]

51 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Its really something is it not?

Gore gets more votes than W in 2000.  But then his brother steals the election in broad daylight, thanks to the originalist Justice Scalia.

W steals the election again in Ohio in 2004.

HRC outpolls Trump by nearly 3 M votes but loses.

This is why I say that if Biden is a real Democrat he will do these five things:

1. Make District of Columbia  a state

2. Make Puerto Rico a state

3. Expand the court to 13

4. Do away with the Electoral College

5. Make Sheldon Whitehouse AG

Agreed.

But doubted.

Biden won the nomination via a plurality.

Not my choice. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Not mine either.

But no Democrat should be able to stomach what McConnell, Trump and Pence have done this year.

I still dismiss RG.  And there are some things that Trump  did in foreign policy that were OK with me.

But then came CV 19. Which he said would go away with the heat of summer.

Then came George Floyd.

Then came Lafayette Square.

I really do not see how any halfway intelligent person of decent human instincts could have done worse in reaction to both.  And the fact that no other Republican criticized him in public at the time shows just how off the cliff that party has gone.  In Woodward's book, he has a talk with Trump about the Floyd case. Woodward tries to say that people like them-upper class whites-- don't have the empathy for the experience that African Americans have had. 

Trump tells Woodward, "Bob, you drank the Kool Aid!"

And now it turns out the burning of the police station in Minny was done by Boogaloo.  

All of this, and more, will give Biden a lot of capital to work with.  

 

 

 

[Anthony Thorne]

On page 440 of Praise for a Future Generation, John Kelin records letters exchanged between Vincent Salandria and Sylvia Meagher. Salandria makes an observation to Meagher about what he believes is government interest in the case.

 

Quote

 

This note went unanswered, but Salandria soon followed it up. "May I have a final, final word?" he wrote. A man that both he and Sylvia had been in contact with nearly two years before had, in fact, been a government agent, he informed her. "This species apparently abounded in our work. If we ever talk again, and let me make it clear that I am always willing to talk to you, I will tell you what I learned and show you some supporting documents on this ugly subject."

This time Sylvia responded, and within just a few days. Salandria's declaration about a presumed agent among them was not surprising, she said. Salandria had accused so many: "Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvich ... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop."

 

 

So Meagher is basically dismissive of Salandria's suspicions, and feels that Salandria has been crying wolf and accusing people with no justification.

One of the people Salandria had accused - Jacob Cohen - pops up periodically in Kelin's book, and is also noted in Jim's article at K&K. Here's Jim's reference to Cohen.

 

Quote

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1966, there was a debate arranged in Boston about the Warren Report. Epstein was invited to be a participant, but he declined the invitation. Vince Salandria did participate and his main opponent was a young scholar named Jacob Cohen. Cohen had presented an article defending the Commission in the July 11, 1966 issue of The Nation. To say this was an interesting event does not begin to describe its importance.

 

John Kelin describes Cohen in some more detail.

 

Quote

Cohen was the Yale professor who had published “The Vital Documents” in The Nation the previous summer. He had written a second article, “The Warren Commission Report And Its Critics,” which was in the then-current issue of Frontier magazine. He had also just appeared in a television discussion with Jones, Mark Lane, Leo Sauvage, and Harold Weisberg called “A Reexamination of the Warren Report.” His book, Honest Verdict, had not yet been published but was still being mentioned as a work-in-progress. Cohen was emerging as one of the most prominent defenders of the Warren Commission.

 

So I have two things to say about this, both of which are a prelude to info I'll be posting later about things that were evidently going on behind the scenes.

The first is, Cohen's career in defending the official story ran much longer than the period outlined in Kelin's book, and might be one of the longest in the entire field. Cohen dedicated the rest of his working life to defending the official story, and attacking critics of the Warren Commission. He taught a class on the JFK assassination - debunking 'conspiracies' - for more than 30 years, and appeared continually in articles on the case for nearly a half century. 

In November 1966, Cohen did the above noted article for Frontier magazine, The Warren Commission and its Critics.

https://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/History/WC_Period/Reactions_to_Warren_Report/Reactions_of_left/WCR_and_critics--Cohen/WCR_and_critics.html

 

In October 1975, Cohen wrote Conspiracy Fever for Commentary magazine.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/conspiracy-fever/

 

In November 1975, Cohen was cited as an expert in a NYT hit piece on Jim Garrison, written by James Phelan.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/23/archives/the-assassination-assassination.html

 

In June 1992, Cohen attacked Oliver Stone's JFK.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/yes-oswald-alone-killed-kennedy/

 

In November 1993, Cohen was cited as an expert in articles discussing the release of Posner's CASE CLOSED.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1993-11-22-0000001655-story.html

 

And in December 2013, again for Commentary magazine, Cohen attacked books on the assassination that had come out for the 50th anniversary. The article is paywalled, but according to a Google link, Jim's Reclaiming Parkland is one of the volumes.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/will-we-never-be-free-of-the-kennedy-assassination/

 

Cohen, more than almost any other academic, had devoted his life to defending the Warren Commission, to protecting the official story, and to attacking researchers of the subject. He began doing this in 1966, and by all accounts was doing this when he retired from academic life a half century later in 2017.

The second point is, a clue as to why Cohen did what he did can be found by looking more carefully at his background. John Kelin describes Cohen as a 'Yale professor', but Cohen had left Yale in 1960, six years prior to the debate. From 1964, to 1968, Cohen was on leave of absence from teaching, and was serving on the staff of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). But prior to 1964, Cohen was at another academic institution. It was a place he'd spent the four years prior to his work with CORE, and it was a place he'd spend the next five decades at, after he finished his work with CORE.

When Cohen arrived at the institution I'm referring to in 1960, one person was the Dean of the Arts and Sciences Faculty there. This person had been running the Faculty since 1958, and continued to be the Dean of the Faculty for another year until 1961. He was the Dean when Cohen was hired, and continued to serve on the Faculty in various capacities until 1970.

So with that noted, I just want to detail what Cohen's onetime boss and later work associate was doing through the period that Cohen was first appearing in public as a critic of the Warren Commission. All the following are things that Cohen's Dean of the Arts and Science Faculty was doing through the years covered in John Kelin's book.

This person was also a fierce defender of the official story. He defended the Warren Commission in public, and attacked its critics. 

He was a member of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, alongside Virginia Prewitt and Hal Hendrix, both of whom had worked with David Atlee Phillips.

He served as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, and worked alongside Walt Rostow, acting as a consultant on Vietnam policy. He also personally drafted letters of advice to the President on the running of the war, and wrote speeches for President Johnson.

He maintained high level communications with the CIA. He asked for and received memorandums from George A. Carver, the CIA official who worked as head of the CIA's National Planning Task Force on Vietnam. When he visited Carver in person, memorandums about the visit were sent directly to Richard Helms.

He warned Lyndon Johnson that something should be done about critics of the Warren Commission, and sent a detailed memo to Johnson to that effect.

He sent a letter to the Times Literary Supplement attacking Warren Commission critics. His letter closely matched CIA Dispatch 1035-960, and what he wrote was later used as the basis for an early Time magazine article that defended the official story.

He returned to the subject of the assassination in articles throughout the 70's, and continued to attack researchers of the subject. In one instance, an article of his appeared carefully timed to match similar efforts from another figure from the Johnson administration.

All those things were done by the Dean of the Arts and Sciences Faculty from the institute where Cohen had moved to work after Yale, and where Cohen would ultimately spend the next half century working.

The institute where Cohen took up residence was Brandeis University, and the Dean of the Faculty at the time Cohen arrived was John P. Roche. Roche owed his career in the Johnson administration to Bill Moyers, who he'd known for some years prior, and who had recommended Roche for his position as an advisor to government. When Cohen appeared as a prominent critic, and ultimately debated Vincent Salandria, he likely had an important supporter in government - Roche. I'll have more to say about this, and about Brandeis University, in my next post.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2020 by Anthony Thorne

[James DiEugenio]

Nice work Anthony.  Roche was also LBJ's point man on attacking Bobby Kennedy.

Really makes Cohen look suspicious.

[Anthony Thorne]

In an interview, Roche emphasised how much he detested Bobby Kennedy, and noted how he’d been in near fistfights with RFK twice at opposite ends of the decade. In 1968, there’s a quote from him telling someone (I think Johnson) that MLK should be ‘destroyed’. The book with the quote continues, ‘of course, John Roche hated Robert Kennedy even more’.

[Andrew Prutsok]

On 10/26/2020 at 11:16 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Its really something is it not?

Gore gets more votes than W in 2000.  But then his brother steals the election in broad daylight, thanks to the originalist Justice Scalia.

W steals the election again in Ohio in 2004.

HRC outpolls Trump by nearly 3 M votes but loses.

This is why I say that if Biden is a real Democrat he will do these five things:

1. Make District of Columbia  a state

2. Make Puerto Rico a state

3. Expand the court to 13

4. Do away with the Electoral College

5. Make Sheldon Whitehouse AG

I wouldn't doubt that Biden's people, DNC, are pulling for a GOP senate majority so they have a built-in excuse -- Republican obstruction -- not to do any of that, or much of anything else.

[Allen Lowe]

8 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

I wouldn't doubt that Biden's people, DNC, are pulling for a GOP senate majority so they have a built-in excuse -- Republican obstruction -- not to do any of that, or much of anything else.

that is absolute nonsense. You think they don't want to do anything? You are just regurgitating what is basically a Fox news line.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Allen Lowe