William F. Buckley and the Assassination of JFK

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Thanks for the info on Buckley. He's even more repulsive than I thought.

One odd thing about Buckley, and which you didn't mention, is that he is in favor of decriminalization of drugs. (At least he once wrote in favor of it, and I assume that's still his position, as he is hardly the wishy-washy type.) This is a strange thing for a "former" CIA agent and supporter of the Company to advocate, since it is no secret that drug money is used by CIA or its drug-running assets for covert operations.

The one thing that marks William Buckley out as a political thinker is that he also took decisions for purely selfish motives. That includes religious and moral issues. The drugs issue resulted in a lot of students eaving the Young Americans of Freedom (YAF). He even come under tremendous pressure from his only child, Christopher Buckley, on this issue. Eventually he campaigned in favour of marijuana decriminalization. He also argued against the Roman Catholic Church’s views on divorce and birth-control. This was partly because he rejected the infallibility of the pope when he began to make speeches against racial inequality.

The "Buckley" association to the assassination of JFK is certainly worth review as it contains:

1. Oil

a. Foreign affairs in Mexico (oil)

b. Foreign affairs in Venezuela (oil)

c. Foreign affairs in Cuba (oil)

2. Right-wing philosophy.

3. Political wealth and power.

4. Our friend George DeMohrenschildt.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the Buckley family actually played an integral part in formation of the assassination of JFK.

In this regard, many would think that when they reached the "Far Right", there stood persons such as Buckley; Walker; etc.

However, there were and will always will be those who are "Farther" to the right than those of whom we perceive to be the "Far Right".

This, is commonly referred to as the "Radical Right", and from which is gained those persons who will bomb churches; assassinate black leaders; or for that matter, anyone who opposes their philosophy; bomb abortion clinics; blow up federal buildings; etc; etc; etc.

We can however give the Buckley family credit for having given us certain ideas and concepts which are no doubt ultimately, in some part responsible, for the manipulations and actions of LHO.

In using DeMohrenschildt to further his activities as is known in Venezuela and Cuba, he exposed that DeMohrenschildt was fully capable of accepting the concepts and philosophy of the Buckley empire.

Or else, DeMohrenschildt would not have been employed.

Thus, Mr. Buckley fully demonstrated the philosophy of George DeMohrenschildt to do anything for a "buck", and work for the highest, or only bidder.

And, considering DeMohrenschildt's "ejection" from Mexico, and the Buckley "Oil" presence in Mexico, a relatively safe assumption would be that this too had some bearing on Buckley & DeMohrenschildt.

In using DeMohrenschildt in Venezuela, Mr. Buckley exposed DeMohrenschildt to the activities of Romulo Betancourt who nationalized the oil industry of his country.

In this regard, it is therefore highly unlikely that the correspondences of William D. Pawley, which repeatedly refer to Betancourt as a "Communist" and a threat, are merely coincidence.

Just as it is highly unlikely that LHO, as a mere coincidence, undertook to learn about Betancourt just prior to his release from the USMC and trip to the soviet union.

The "Common Denominator" in this case, being Romulo Betancourt of Venezueala, which now encompasses:

1. The far right

2. Oil

3. William D. Pawley

4. George DeMohrenschildt

5. LHO

6. Cuba

7. Mexico

And, of course, one would be remiss were they to not "throw in" the associations of the direct family members of Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley, (wife of William D. Pawley) in Mexico and South America.

After all, the pilot/flier son of William D. Pawley, reportedly died in Mexico in 1951.

Usage of the "Common Denominator" approach to resolving issues related to the assassination of JFK, frequently assists in weeding through much of the "hype" as to who all had reason to do so, as well as who had access to the knowledge and persons with the means to carry this out.

As examples, the "Sugar" industry and the connections of William D. Pawley to this mega-million dollar industry have been demonstrated.

Not to mention the connection between the Sugar industry and the "Sisal" industry which reportedly was funding DeMohrenschildt in Haiti.

Then of course, the family association of the Pawley family to Haiti has also been demonstrated.

This holds true for items such as the various transportation activities in which William D. Pawley was also engaged.

In searching for the common denominator, it becomes relatively clear how associations to persons such as H. (Jack) Porter of Houston, TX (Republican Party Leader for the State of Texas) come into play, as well as those of convicted gun-runner Robert Ray McKeown also fall into this manipulation of persons for financial gain.

This "tie" of course ultimately drags into the muck & mire, the Anti-Castro elements as well as the Pro-Castro elements.

These ties ultimately demonstrate how the "unwitting" support of persons such as Senator John Tower (Republican Party) are drawn into this grouping of suspected co-conspirators as well.

In the end, one merely has to follow the "money" trail if it is desired to located who was actually behind the assassination of JFK, and, although this trail often meanders and has many branches which lead nowhere, it certainly has a definitive path and direction if studied.

Tom

P.S. It also helps if one ceases to attempt to interject the WC motivation into this already confused subject.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

In following the "trail" of the common denominator system, it should come as little suprise that the "Magnolia" oil company for whom George DeMohrenschildt was once employed, also happened to be fully owned by Standard Oil Company of New York.

(Lookup: "Magnolia Oil Company" or "Magnolia Petroleum Company" for the history.

Just as it is of little suprise that the "National City Lines" who also owned "National City Management", which assumed control of the Miami, FL transit system after sale of the system to Miami by William D. Pawley, was also a derivitive of the investment of Standard Oil Company (be it of California or New York, it is still Standard oil).

And of course, Standard Oil Company also happened to claim a loss of property in the amount of 71.6 million dollars (8th highest loss) in Cuba due to nationalization of the oil industry by Castro.

This does not represent any monies which it may have lost as a result of having assisted William Pawley in acquisition of the Cuban bus system as was obviously the case in the Miami Transit system.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

William F. Buckley, of course having transferred in the 1930's, most of his holdings in Pantepec Oil Company of Venezuela, to Standard Oil, which renamed it the "Creole Petroleum Company".

Standard Oil of New Jersey of course owning "Humble Oil" for whom DeMohrenschildt worked.

Magnolia Petroleum (oil) Company (also owned by Standard/Socony/Vaccum) having filed as a Non-Louisiana Business Corporation in Louisiana in January of 1926, and also having the distinction of drilling the first well on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

Which was ultimately also reportedly the first dry hole on the OCS.

And of course, all of George DeMohrenschildt's associates in Dallas who had positions with Magnolia Petroleum/aka Standare Oil/Petroleum Company.

Lastly, the "John Mecom" for whom DeMohrenschildt worked overseas, was the father of John Mecom, Jr., first owner of he New Orleans Saints Football team.

John Mecom, Sr. made his monies in the oil business and was ofter paired with either "Pure" Oil Company, or "Conoco" Oil Company, which was also at one time a Standard Oil Company affiliate.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Lastly as regards the William F. Buckley, Jr. saga!

It would be remiss to not point out the fact that his mother was the former Aloise Josephine Antonio Steiner.

Born to Aloysius Steiner and Marie Louise Warren, March 11, 1895, New Orleans, Louisiana.

[John Simkin]

Before answering these questions, John, you might prefer to declare that you withdraw any and all inference , innuendo or allegation that might tend to implicate - or cause other persons to implicate - William Buckley in any crime of murder.

All the information I have presented is in the public record. No doubt Buckley has said a lot of things in the past that he is now embarrased about. As far as I can see there is no evidence available that he has ever advocated the murder of JFK or any other Americans. He has always preferred the "suppression" or "blacklisting" American left-wingers. Of course he has been pretty keen on killing left-wing foreigners but I don't suppose that matters to right-wing Americans.

[John Simkin]

Daniel Brandt has also alerted me to a series of articles written by John M. Crewdson for the New York Times in December 1977 (25th, 26th, 27th). Crewdson goes into great detail and is largely based on interviews with journalists who did or did not, accept the bribes offered by the CIA.

One of those named is William Buckley. Crewdson claims that Buckley was a CIA agent for several years (Buckley claims he worked for them for less than a year). Crewdson also looks at Buckley’s relationship with the publisher Charles Scribner. Does anyone know any more about this?

Crewdson points out that John McCone, Cord Meyer, Richard Helms and William Colby all refused to discuss the CIA’s relationship with the media. Tom Braden was the only CIA officer willing to be named in these articles as a source. Crewdson’s article on the 26th December includes an interesting interview with an unnamed member of the CIA. He points out that the CIA tended to target disillusioned journalists who had a record of being “anti-establishment”.

The CIA mainly worked through well-respected newspapers and journals. In some cases these journals were not financially viable. Therefore, they arranged for these journals to receive funding via a CIA-front (the CIA officer called it a “bogus corporation”). On other occasions this money was given to a wealthy individual who passed it onto the journal. According to the books, the money appeared to be coming from an individual but was in fact coming from the CIA. This is what I think happened to the National Review.

The CIA officer claims that this money “bought a measure of editorial control, often complete control”. Some of these stories were “purposely misleading or downright false”. Although these stories originally appeared in low circulation newspapers and journals, they eventually got picked up by the main news organizations.

I suspect these articles in the New York Times and the ones by Trento (Penthouse) and Bernstein (Rolling Stone) were based on leaks from the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations. I have a copy of this report but it avoids naming names of journalists and media organizations. Three members of the committee, Walter Mondale (Minnesota), Philip Hart (Michigan) and Gary Hart (Colorado), provided an appendix (563-566) where they were highly critical of the activities of the CIA. Frank Church (Idaho), the chairman of the committee, also wrote an appendix (561-62) that also condemned CIA covert activities. This suggests that three Republican members (John Tower, Barry Goldwater and Howard Baker) were unwilling to sign this part of the report (they also wrote an appendix in defence of the CIA). I would not be surprised if it wasn’t Gary Hart who leaked this information.

[Tim Gratz]

From a recent Buckley column:

An autobiographical illustration. When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive. It was three months before I was formally permitted to inform my wife what the real reason was for going to Mexico City to live. If, a year later, I had been apprehended, dosed with sodium pentothal, and forced to give out the names of everyone I knew in the CIA, I could have come up with exactly one name, that of my immediate boss (E. Howard Hunt, as it happened). In the passage of time one can indulge in idle talk on spook life. In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President." He thought this amusing, and that is all that it was, under the aspect of the heavens.

[Tim Gratz]

In an early post on this thread John wrote:

Over the last few weeks I have been carrying out research into the possibility that William F. Buckley might have been somehow involved in the assassination of JFK. I think the evidence suggests that he was at least as likely as other right-wing leaders such as H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison and William Pawley

But John later wrote:

All the information I have presented is in the public record. No doubt Buckley has said a lot of things in the past that he is now embarrased about. As far as I can see there is no evidence available that he has ever advocated the murder of JFK or any other Americans.

Once again the Forum has besmirched the name of an innocent American.

For what purpose?

All this accomplishes, I suggest, is make a laughing-stock of the assassination research community.

Is JOHN the disinformation agent?

The other inference, of course, is that John has now conclusively "cleared" Messrs. Hunt, Murchison and Pawley.

Edited November 2, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

In John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (1988) he takes a look at the racism of Buckley. On page 133 Judis writing about the National Review’s constant attack on Eisenhower claims that Buckley and the other editors constantly “condemned the administration’s concessions to communism and the welfare state, and they defended the South’s resistance to racial integration.”

On page 139 Judis explains why Buckley argued against blacks having the vote. He writes: “Buckley would claim that he was asserting the de facto rather than genetic inferiority of blacks. But the inescapable point was that he was willing to cite an individual’s membership in a “race” – regardless of that person’s educational background or intelligence – to disqualify him from voting.”

Judis then goes on to look at why Buckley was so against blacks having the vote. Buckley explained in the National Review many times that if blacks got the vote they would support politicians who wanted to increase welfare spending. As quoted earlier, Buckley equated the welfare state with communism.

Buckley believed that Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders were communists (based on information he received from J. Edgar Hoover). As he wrote in National Review on 19th August, 1967, as far as he was concerned, King was comparable to Hitler and Lenin. Therefore, King needed to be repressed: “the non-violent avenger Dr. King, that in the unlikely event that he succeeds in mobilizing his legions, they will be most efficiently, indeed most zestfully, repressed.”

Buckley, again relying on information given to him by Hoover, also believed the communists controlled the anti-war movement. Like many right-wingers, Buckley watched in horror as in the 1960s as the anti-war, civil rights, trade unions and anti-poverty groups began to merge (pages 308-309). It is of course no coincidence that Martin Luther King was assassinated at a time when he was widening his attacks to the Vietnam War and to the way that the poor were being treated in America. This grand coalition was indeed posing a serious threat to the power structure of the United States.

[John Simkin]

John wrote:

Tim, as I have already pointed out, William Buckley is a long-time CIA operative .

John, you are now being investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald for "outing" William F. Buckley, Jr., who had always claimed he only worked for the CIA for a brief time.

Fitzgerald will ask you to identify your source that Buckley remained a CIA operative (as I do now).

Is that another one of your threats? Do you really think Patrick Fitzgerald is going to come after me?

For evidence that William Buckley was a long-time member of the CIA and that the National Review was/is a CIA front see the article by George Will's article in the Washington Post on 29th January, 1975. Will was actually the National Review’s Washington columnist. He explained that most senior members of staff knew that the National Review was a CIA operation. He revealed that the journal had four CIA agents on its staff. He claimed that he had evidence that the National Review had been receiving funds from the CIA. He also revealed that Buckley was very close to E. Howard Hunt and had been raising funds for him. (The article was published during the Watergate Scandal). Will lost his job in the National Review but was never prosecuted for outing Buckley. In fact, the article received very little attention at the time and Buckley was pleased to let the subject drop. As this thread is linked to my very popular page on William Buckley, I don't think you will have pleased your idol by raising this issue.

[Tim Gratz]

John, can't you take a joke? I wasn't outing you because I obviously do not think Buckley is an undercover CIA agent regardless of what Will wrote. Therefore, the humorous intent should have been obvious.

Since the CIA asked for a law enforcement complaint about the "outing" of Plame but never made such a complaint against Will I suspect that may prove that Buckley was not on the CIA payroll. (Why would he need to m oonlight anyway?).

Edited November 6, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

According to Donald Freed (Death in Washington), William F. Buckley and the Young Americans for Freedom (in th form of Marvin Liebman) played a major role in the cover-up of the assassination of Orlando Letelier (152-1961). It is on public record how Buckley and his CIA cronies attempted to blame the assassination on Fidel Castro. However, it is less well known that the CIA agent, Michael Townley, and Guillermo Novo, two men who were later to be convicted of the Letelier/Moffatt murder, visited Senator James Buckley, William´s brother, on 14th September, 1976, one week before the assassination (page 168).

[John Simkin]

William Buckley´s sister, Priscilla Buckley, also worked for the CIA. According to the historian, Gary Wills, Priscilla attempted to access her brother´s file when she was working for the CIA´s European desk. She discovered that his file did not exist. It had been destroyed. Why had the CIA done that? After all, he only held a fairly minor role in Mexico City under E. Howard Hunt.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

John, can't you take a joke? I wasn't outing you because I obviously do not think Buckley is an undercover CIA agent regardless of what Will wrote. Therefore, the humorous intent should have been obvious.

Since the CIA asked for a law enforcement complaint about the "outing" of Plame but never made such a complaint against Will I suspect that may prove that Buckley was not on the CIA payroll. (Why would he need to m oonlight anyway?).

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I suspect that may prove that Buckley was not on the CIA payroll.

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Down here in the "deep south", many can not afford the pastime of expensive hobbies and entertainment.

Therefore, they watch TV, fish, and/or roam the woods shooting squirrels, rabbits, turkey, deer, etc.

Few of the "ultra-rich" engage in such activities on a regular and full time basis for their "entertainment", however, there wealth offers them the opportunity to play other "games" of which most of us would never have the opportunity.

Ms. Luce is another example that comes to mind, and in the event these persons who had more money than God were willing to fund and assist programs which the CIA felt needed to be fostered, then certainly, they were utilized.*

*See WC Fields: "There is a moral obligation to take advantage of all suckers"

Not only did they pay their own way and foot the entire bill, they required no salaries.

Sounds like the original "Win-Win" concept to me.

[David G. Healy]

John, can't you take a joke? I wasn't outing you because I obviously do not think Buckley is an undercover CIA agent regardless of what Will wrote. Therefore, the humorous intent should have been obvious.

Since the CIA asked for a law enforcement complaint about the "outing" of Plame but never made such a complaint against Will I suspect that may prove that Buckley was not on the CIA payroll. (Why would he need to m oonlight anyway?).

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I suspect that may prove that Buckley was not on the CIA payroll.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Down here in the "deep south", many can not afford the pastime of expensive hobbies and entertainment.

Therefore, they watch TV, fish, and/or roam the woods shooting squirrels, rabbits, turkey, deer, etc.

Few of the "ultra-rich" engage in such activities on a regular and full time basis for their "entertainment", however, there wealth offers them the opportunity to play other "games" of which most of us would never have the opportunity.

Ms. Luce is another example that comes to mind, and in the event these persons who had more money than God were willing to fund and assist programs which the CIA felt needed to be fostered, then certainly, they were utilized.*

*See WC Fields: "There is a moral obligation to take advantage of all suckers"

Not only did they pay their own way and foot the entire bill, they required no salaries.

Sounds like the original "Win-Win" concept to me.

Hey Tom,

Nice to see you back posting....

and great post -- I agree, might be the 'original' win-win concept!

David Healy