Alberto Gallego ?

[Stan Wilbourne]

Does it make a difference, at least to assassination research,  if JFK did drugs in the White House?  I mean, we know he was a serial adulterer, why further blacken his reputation on irrelevancies?  Are we serving any purpose here?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're kidding me, right?

A president smoking dope and dropping acid is irrelevant? And this president in question is assassinated with suspicious involvement from the intel community??? It has nothing to do with 'blackening' Kennedy's reputation and everything to do with finding out the truth of what happened to Kennedy in 1963, and why.

Irrevelant? Hardly.

[Tim Gratz]

Do you suggest he was assassinated because he was doing drugs?

His doing drugs might affect my judgment of his presidential character but I again I see no reason to further "blacken" his reputation UNLESS there is real evidence of a nexus between alleged drug use and the assassination. Is there any such evidence?

Dawn, I assume you will support my position here!

[Shanet Clark]

Tim,

you know me much better than that.

Here is the proof you require: Cord Meyer and Mary Meyer's "experiences"

I am not blackening anything: I am talking about the strange historical record.

The only thing I blacken is salmon, steak and chicken.

I believe I am closer to being John Kennedy's greatest living defender,

when I present this material.....

he was elected with a mandate and was

killed on a pretext of some sort.

Quite possibly the incapacity immediately outlined in the 25th amendment.

You think the extended rat pack - which included Humphrey Bogart and JFK --

didn't get high? It wasn't on the news if they could help it.....

Edited January 31, 2005 by Shanet Clark

[Greg Wagner]

Tim: What did Castro have to lose by killing JFK?

One of the very few people in the administration, who just happened to be the president, whose ideas had evolved into a position supporting co-existence. Didn’t JFK shut down the plans for a 2nd invasion? Didn’t he order the FBI to shut down the program and confiscate all their weapons, etc.? That, coupled with his sending of Jean Daniel to explore the idea of peaceful co-existence, suggests that JFK’s position on how he was going to deal with Castro and Cuba had evolved. This obviously put quite a bee in the bonnets of the CIA men who were so heavily invested (ideologically, career-wise, and even emotionally) in invading Cuba and taking out Castro as a prelude to an invasion. I certainly have no evidence of what Castro knew or did not know, but the primary reason JFK and Krushchev engaged in their back channel negotiations was because they didn’t trust the hard-liners in their own governments. They were both very fearful that these groups could push events toward conflict to the degree that they themselves (JFK/NK) would be powerless to stop it. I’ll check on the source, but I think that info comes from either RFK’s Thirteen Days or One Hell of a Gamble. Perhaps both. Based on Castro’s relationship with Krushchev and based on Castro’s own intelligence apparatus, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Castro understood who posed the real danger to him in those final months leading up to Kennedy’s death. And of course based on Kennedy’s own actions- shutting down 2nd invasion plans and sending Daniel. I believe that Castro, like Krushchev, was too savvy not to fully understand that his chances were considerably more favorable dealing with Kennedy than they would be dealing with the hard-liners that he was keeping at bay. That’s what Castro had to lose. Which leads directly to your other valid question.

Tim: If all this is true, then why is Castro still alive?

If the above is true, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Castro is still alive unless you understand that the CIA’s attempt to lay the blame at Castro’s feet backfired. More clearly stated, it worked too well. The sheep dipping of LHO as a communist, the Mexico City story, and of course the framing of LHO as the assassin all pointed the finger at Castro and/or Krushchev. And that is PRECISELY why the cover-up HAD to be executed so swiftly and decisively from the top. Without the official story of "LHO acting alone” and LBJ getting the WC to understand that they must conclude that LHO did it alone and would have been convicted as such had the case gone to trial (was that the Katzenbach memo?), they feared that the people’s next logical assumption would be that LHO was acting on behalf of Castro and/or NK. Exactly as the CIA hoped. But the perpetrators of the cover-up quickly recognized this danger and directed the cover-up accordingly. The CIA and Pentagon hawks had convinced LBJ, Hoover, Dillon, and the other important executive members of JFK’s incapacity and of the need for removal. The deed was done, but LBJ and perhaps others recognized the potential of 40 million people dying (LBJ's reference to this can be found in The Kennedy Assassination Tapes) in a nuclear exchange with the USSR if they didn’t put the brakes on this thing. And so they did. And the CIA, knowing that they had just executed their president, and seeing that the new administration was not on board with risking war with Cuba (the nature of the cover-up illustrates this), had no choice but to cool their heels. After all, they couldn’t then simply execute Johnson. But then maybe they did not need or want to. After all, LBJ gave them Vietnam.

Tim: Why do you think Castro scheduled his interview with Jean Daniel to coincide with the death in Dallas? Just another coincidence, I guess.

I might be missing your point here, but assuming you are correct and Castro is behind the whole thing, what difference does it make what time he met with Daniel? He was about to pull off the most risky, daring feat of his life. Wouldn’t the Daniel meeting be irrelevant since Castro would know that JFK would be dead that day anyway?

Good stuff as always, Tim. Of course the above is just my opinion- at least until Castro grants me a sit-down. And as you say, I could be wrong. I’m going to be tied up for a couple of days. I’ll try and check back later in the week. Take care.

Edited January 31, 2005 by Greg Wagner

[Tim Gratz]

I wrote: Why do you think Castro scheduled his interview with Jean Daniel to coincide with the death in Dallas? Just another coincidence, I guess.

Greg wrote:

"I might be missing your point here, but assuming you are correct and Castro is behind the whole thing, what difference does it make what time he met with Daniel? He was about to pull off the most risky, daring feat of his life. Wouldn’t the Daniel meeting be irrelevant since Castro would know that JFK would be dead that day anyway?"

My point was that by rescheduling the meeting with Daniel to coincide with the assassination, Castro was "sending a message" that he knew that the peace initiatives from JFK through Daniel were nothing but a ruse. (Just as Castro sent a message by timing his Sept 7, 1963 warning of retaliation to coincide with Cubela's first offer to "eliminate" Castro.") The people who do not support my theory keep bringing up the secret peace initiatives but as nthe old adage goes actions speak louder than words. You don't try to kill someone with whom you are seeking peace. The peace initiatives were, IMO, no more sincere than the Japanese peace negotiations that were underway as the Japanese military finalized the plans for Pearl Harbor.

This is not just my opinion. You will remember that the person who really initiated the process was a journalist named Lisa Howard. When she learned what was really going on, she was so upset she refused to support RFK's election to the US Senate in NY in 1968 and instead helped form Democrats for Keating (the Republican incumbent that RFK did defeat. Howard's partner in Democrats for Keating was Gore Vidal, by the way.

Edited February 1, 2005 by Tim Gratz