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William F. Buckley and the Assassination of JFK


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John Simkin wrote: "It is indeed a strange event when Tim Gratz and J. Raymond Carroll join forces."

John, Tim Gratz and I are surely in agreement on the subject of William Buckley, but it is a big jump from there to say that Tim and I have "joined forces." I normally disagree with Tim, but there is no escaping the fact that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

B)

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John, it is respectfully submitted that when Mr. Carroll and I agree on something, it is probably true.

There is a web-site out there someplace that argues, with the author's tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, that Elvis killed JFK. But it is more likely that Elvis did it than that Buckley did.

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John Simkin wrote: "It is indeed a strange event when Tim Gratz and J. Raymond Carroll join forces."

John, Tim Gratz and I are surely in agreement on the subject of William Buckley, but it is a big jump from there to say that Tim and I have "joined forces." I normally disagree with Tim, but there is no escaping the fact that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

:huh:

This gives me an opportunity to make a statement.

I like the idea of being able to say I agree with someone and not have that taken as an apology for ALL things that person I agree with has to say. I welcome Tims input, and Johns, and Carrolls. (That such a statement by me is taken as a statement of agreement with all things said persons say in the past, present, or future, is wrong.) I agree with Tim on a few things, often not. I agree with John often, sometimes not. I agree with Carroll most of the time. That does not imply any favouritism or alliance, and I would expect them to treat me the same. I oppose any attempt by anyone to stop Tim expressing his opinions. I don't think this investigation would go very far without diverse points of view to deal with. I welcome rigorous scrutiny. Such scrutiny devoid of factionalism is sometimes missing.

(and, no, Tim it doesn't mean that at all, you may both be uninformed or otherwise deluded)

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Truth is, it's a rare day when Mr. Gratz and I agree...but it certainly does occur, as I mentioned on another thread shortly ago. When it does occur, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the end of the world as we know it; it merely means that we have reached a similar conclusion, often by traveling a different route to that destination. Occasionally, Mr. Dolva and I have a difference of opinion, and probably with similar frequency to my agreements with Mr. Gratz. Again, nothing earth-shaking...just a sign that our processing of the facts as we perceive them has led us to divergent conclusions.

Disagreements between and among reasonable persons doesn't necessarily mean that someone has mental problems, as some imply--or deny implying. If someone disagrees with my conclusion, it merely means that I haven't proven my point well enough. Another person's individual knowledge of firearms or ballistics may be superior to my own [true in most cases], for example...while my knowledge of certain processes may be superior to that other person's knowledge. In neither case does it imply that one person is smarter or more clever than the other; it may simply be a case of one person's experiences being more suited to raising the questions he/she raises, either form a wealth of knowledge or from a lack of knowledge. As someone notes in their signature on this forum, sometimes the most enlightening discoveries aren't the ones where one says "Eureka!", but they are the ones in which one says "Hmmm...that's funny..." [i believe it's an Einstein quote].

Often it's the unconventional idea, the untried approach, that bears fruit, both in scientific inquiry and in mysteries of a factual nature. As with the C. Douglas Dillon discussion of awhile back, while we can assume that there's nothing suspicious in a person's background, assumptions aren't always factual. It never hurts to take another look at the evidence. While I personally don't see Mr. Buckley as being involved, I don't see any harm in researching him.

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And if Mark's research includes reading Buckley's writings, I am confident that Mark's intelligence will convince him that many of Buckley's positions are correct. Not that Buckley is always right. As someone recently posted, even I am wrong twice a day! (Or was it that I am right twice a day?)

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Perhaps I am too conspiracy minded but I suspect John's launching this thread is his way of "celebrating" the fiftieth anniversary of Buckley's "National Review".

Here is Buckley's first column (From NRO):

EDITOR'S NOTE:National Review is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. Throughout the week, NRO will be running pieces from the archives to help take a trip down memory lane. This piece appeared in the November 19, 1955, issue of National Review.

There is, we like to think, solid reason for rejoicing. Prodigious efforts, by many people, are responsible for NATIONAL REVIEW. But since it will be the policy of this magazine to reject the hypodermic approach to world affairs, we may as well start out at once, and admit that the joy is not unconfined.

Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did NATIONAL REVIEW not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if NATIONAL REVIEW is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

NATIONAL REVIEW is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation. Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.

"I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater," said the benign old wrecker of the ordered society, Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does." We have come around to Mr. Holmes' view, so much that we feel gentlemanly doubts when asserting the superiority of capitalism to socialism, of republicanism to centralism, of champagne to ditchwater — of anything to anything. (How curious that one of the doubts one is not permitted is whether, at the margin, Mr. Holmes was a useful citizen!) The inroads that relativism has made on the American soul are not so easily evident. One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things.

Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'. Drop a little itching powder in Jimmy Wechsler's bath and before he has scratched himself for the third time, Arthur Schlesinger will have denounced you in a dozen books and speeches, Archibald MacLeish will have written ten heroic cantos about our age of terror, Harper's will have published them, and everyone in sight will have been nominated for a Freedom Award. Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is a serious question of whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is a dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality of never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

There are, thank Heaven, the exceptions. There are those of generous impulse and a sincere desire to encourage a responsible dissent from the Liberal orthodoxy. And there are those who recognize that when all is said and done, the market place depends for a license to operate freely on the men who issue licenses — on the politicians. They recognize, therefore, that efficient getting and spending is itself impossible except in an atmosphere that encourages efficient getting and spending. And back of all political institutions there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word. A vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion is — dare we say it? — as necessary to better living as Chemistry.

We begin publishing, then, with a considerable stock of experience with the irresponsible Right, and a despair of the intransigence of the Liberals, who run this country; and all this in a world dominated by the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to History. All this would not appear to augur well for NATIONAL REVIEW. Yet we start with a considerable — and considered — optimism.

After all, we crashed through. More than one hundred and twenty investors made this magazine possible, and over fifty men and women of small means invested less than one thousand dollars apiece in it. Two men and one woman, all three with overwhelming personal and public commitments, worked round the clock to make publication possible. A score of professional writers pledged their devoted attention to its needs, and hundreds of thoughtful men and women gave evidence that the appearance of such a journal as we have in mind would profoundly affect their lives.

Our own views, as expressed in a memorandum drafted a year ago, and directed to our investors, are set forth in an adjacent column. We have nothing to offer but the best that is in us. That, a thousand Liberals who read this sentiment will say with relief, is clearly not enough! It isn't enough. But it is at this point that we steal the march. For we offer, besides ourselves, a position that has not grown old under the weight of a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy, a position untempered by the doctoral dissertations of a generation of Ph.D's in social architecture, unattenuated by a thousand vulgar promises to a thousand different pressure groups, uncorroded by a cynical contempt for human freedom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us just about the hottest thing in town. — WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR.

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Let's consider the logic.

WFB wanted Goldwater to win the 1964 election. He thought Goldwater might have a better chance running against LBJ than against JFK. WFB was close to E. Howard Hunt, who has been mentioned as a suspect, even though there is no proof he was a conspirator. Ergo, WFB is at least a "person of interest" with respect to the assassination.

Under John's analysis, any Goldwater supporter who knew Hunt, Phillips, Morales, etc. becomes himself a suspect.

A rather large universe of suspects, I imagine.

To suggest a man as well-respected as WFB ought to be considered a suspect does, I submit, disservice to the assassination research community.

John, have you by any chance joined Operation Mockingbird?

Edited by Tim Gratz
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To suggest a man as well-respected as WFB ought to be considered a suspect does, I submit, disservice to the assassination research community.

John, have you by any chance joined Operation Mockingbird?

Tim, I think John was testing you, and you failed. I suspect when he wrote this he was just trying to get you to respond with something like "it's unthinkable that someone as great as WFB would do such a thing" and reveal your already well-established bias. IMO, Buckley and his true believers had as much to gain from Kennedy's death as Castro. But, don't worry, I don't think he did it, either. To my mind, Buckley is mostly talk. If the world turned conservative enough for his taste, he'd lose his reason to be, and could no longer go around feeling superior to everyone.

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Pat, my bias is not that great men (regardless of political philosophy) cannot do evil things.

My bias is that one should not go around accusing great men (regardless of political philosophy) of participating in the most heinous of crimes without a single item of exculpatory evidence. Not only is it wrong for the sake of the reputation of the great man (who, if dead, cannot sue to clear his name) but it also brings disservice to the assassination research community. I must always preface any negative remark by noting that John and Andy have done great work in the web-site and in the assassination debate (which I think is the best forum on the subject which is why it is the only one to which belong). That being said, I think it demeans the Forum if its leader proposes, apparently seriously, that William F. Buckley, Jr. may have been involved in the assassination. Since the amount of evidence linking William F. Buckley, Jr. to the assassination is precisely equal to the amount linking Captain Kangaroo, what would you think if John had started a thread seriously proposing that researchers investigate possible links between Captain Kangaroo and suspected conspirators? Proposing nonsense scenarios does nothing to advance a solution to the crime. If anything, it hinders it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
My bias is that one should not go around accusing great men (regardless of political philosophy) of participating in the most heinous of crimes without a single item of exculpatory evidence. Not only is it wrong for the sake of the reputation of the great man (who, if dead, cannot sue to clear his name) but it also brings disservice to the assassination research community. I must always preface any negative remark by noting that John and Andy have done great work in the web-site and in the assassination debate (which I think is the best forum on the subject which is why it is the only one to which belong). That being said, I think it demeans the Forum if its leader proposes, apparently seriously, that William F. Buckley, Jr. may have been involved in the assassination. Since the amount of evidence linking William F. Buckley, Jr. to the assassination is precisely equal to the amount linking Captain Kangaroo, what would you think if John had started a thread seriously proposing that researchers investigate possible links between Captain Kangaroo and suspected conspirators? Proposing nonsense scenarios does nothing to advance a solution to the crime. If anything, it hinders it.

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.

The evidence falls into two categories. (1) His extreme right-wing views concerning the use of violence against people he considered posed a threat to the interests of the United States; (2) His close involvement with the covert activities of the CIA.

It is interesting that Tim Gratz has been very reluctant to explain the policies of the Young Americans for Freedom that was established by Buckley in 1960. This is understandable because they illustrate just how right-wing Tim must have been in his youth. See below:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5186

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4437

William F. Buckley was himself the son of an extreme right-winger, William Buckley Sr., a Texas oil millionaire (according to the New York Times he left $110 million at his death in 1958). Like other Texas oil millionaires, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, Sid Richardson, etc. Buckley was willing to use his considerable resources to help to persuade the public that anyone who suggested that taxes designed to redistribute wealth was a “communist”. These millionaires were especially hostile to anyone who suggested that the oil depletion allowance should be brought to an end.

It is no surprise that Buckley became a right-wing activist (so did all his brothers and sisters). His first book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom (1953) was a call for all socialist and liberal academics at Yale to be sacked. According to Buckley, “the purpose of education was not to acquaint students with the means of discovering the truth, but with received truths and the means of defending them”. Truth to Buckley was his right-wing interpretation of Christianity. Buckley argued that all those academics that took an alternative view to this should be removed from office. In other words, the function of a university was to indoctrinate students in received wisdom.

As Buckley pointed out: “I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”

Of course this bilge could not find a commercial publisher. Therefore Buckley’s rich daddy supplied the necessary funds via one of his company’s, Catawba Corporation. This money went to the Henry Regency Company, a publisher that had created great controversy a couple of years earlier by bringing out two books attacking the Nuremberg Trials. Henry Regency was a wealthy German-Catholic who had funded campaigns to keep the United States out of the war with Germany.

Buckley’s father also spent a fortune promoting this book. This included persuading people like Max Eastman and Selden Rodman to write rave reviews in the American press. Interestingly, the most hostile review came from McGeorge Bundy in the Atlantic Monthly. He called Buckley a “twisted and ignorant young man”.

Buckley’s next book was "McCarthy and Its Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning" (1954). This was a passionate defence of Joseph McCarthy, who like Buckley, was advocating the sacking from office of all those who held left of centre political views. As Buckley wrote: “We cannot avoid the fact that the United States is at war against international Communism and that McCarthyism is a program of action against those in our land who help the enemy.” Buckley admitted that not all the men who McCarthy and himself wanted sacked were traitors: “men whose only fault may be that they are incompetent political analysts, men of bad judgement.” But for the good of the “advancement of American interests, the merely incompetent men must go out along with the traitors.” Before the book was published, McCarthy was able to go through the manuscript and make suggested changes. Buckley then rewrote these passages. Buckley and his co-author, his brother-in-law, Brent Bozell, also wrote speeches for McCarthy during this period.

In 1952 McCarthy had meetings with an old friend, E. Howard Hunt, about establishing a right-wing magazine. At first he tried to buy The American Mercury. He finally decided to establish his own magazine, The National Review. Some of the money came from his father. Buckley also had meeting with other right wing Texas oilmen such as H.L. Hunt. Another oilmen who contributed was Lloyd Smith, Roger and Gerrish Milliken (South Carolina textile magnates) and Jeremiah Milbank (New York financier). These men were associated with funding several right-wing organizations, including the John Birch Society. It was later revealed that there was another secret backer of Buckley’s activities. I will return to this point later.

The National Review’s first target was Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Buckley attacked what he saw was the administration’s concessions to communism and the welfare state. Buckley described Eisenhower program as “essentially one of measured socialism”.

When Eisenhower agreed to meet Khrushchev in 1959 Buckley wrote: “The President will meet with Khrushchev as Chamberlain and Daladier met with Hitler at Munich, as Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin at Yalta.” (National Review, 15th August, 1959). Privately, Buckley was urging a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Earlier he had advocated this policy against North Korea. Later, he urged its use in Vietnam.

The journal also disliked what they saw was Eisenhower’s sympathy towards the civil rights movement. Surprisingly as it may now seem, Buckley saw Eisenhower and Nixon as a “dangerous liberals” as they accepted the New Deal reforms and were willing to seek accord with the Soviet Union. During this period Buckley described himself as a "revolutionary against the present liberal order".

When Joseph McCarthy died in 1957 Buckley devoted two issues of the National Review to him. As the journal pointed out, McCarthy was the symbol of the continuing fight against liberalism.

Buckley was particularly concerned with the sympathy that Eisenhower and Nixon showed towards racial integration and voting rights. In an article entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” (24th August, 1957) the journal argued that the Deep South was “right to disenfranchise blacks from voting in elections”. In an editorial of the same edition, Buckley wrote that the whites were the advanced race and that uneducated blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was particularly concerned that if given the vote, blacks would vote for socialistic measures to solve their economic problems.

Buckley argued that liberals who pursued the “absolute right of universal suffrage for the Negro were endangering existing standards of civilization". According to Buckley, this was not only true of America. He was also concerned about what was taking place in countries that were part of the old empires. He advanced the theory that “acceding to black demands for independence and one man, one vote, whites were inviting a return to barbarism”

Buckley shared the same views of other neo-fascists of the time such as George Lincoln Rockwell (founder of the American Nazi Party), Gerald L. K. Smith (founder of the Christian Nationalist Party), Russell Maguire (publisher of The American Mercury), General Charles Willoughby (a financial supporter of the National Review) and Robert Welch (the founder of the John Birch Society).

All these men believed the theory of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world (Protocols of Zion). Buckley was in constant contact with these men. The surviving correspondence shows that he attempted to improve their public image. Buckley despite being a racist, actually felt uncomfortable with anti-Semitism. Especially as some Jews had provided him funds for the National Review.

In the 1960 presidential election he tried to get Barry Goldwater adopted as the Republican Party candidate (another one urging a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union). Part of this campaign involved establishing Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) with the John Birch Society. The main mission of the YAF was to “prepare young people for the struggle ahead with Liberalism, Socialism and Communism”.

Robert Welch was also a supporter of Goldwater. However, Buckley and Goldwater, were furious when Welch circulated a private letter that Eisenhower had been "knowingly receiving and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all his adult life." Buckley and Goldwater were concerned that this story would get out and destroy Goldwater’s prospects to get the nomination. After all, Eisenhower was a much loved figure in the Republican Party. Buckley wrote to Welch asking him to stop making these extreme comments about Eisenhower. However, he added: “If Eisenhower were what you think he is, then the elimination of Eisenhower would be a critical step in setting things a right.”

When the attempts to get Goldwater the nomination Buckley refused to endorse Richard Nixon who he considered to be far too liberal. Buckley considered supporting JFK (he liked the speeches he had been making about the need for increasing military spending on nuclear weapons and promising retaliation against Castro’s Cuba). However, Buckley distrusted JFK’s civil rights policy and decided not to endorse either candidate (he told friends that he planned to abstain from voting).

Buckley quickly got disillusioned with JFK. The Bay of Pigs operation showed that JFK had been lying about his planned strong action against Castro. Buckley was also furious with JFK policies concerning universal suffrage in the Third World and his comments about civil rights in the Deep South. However, it was JFK’s reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis that really upset Buckley. If Eisenhower was a dangerous liberal, JFK was indeed a communist. To re-quote Buckley’s earlier letter to Welch: “If Eisenhower were what you think he is, then the elimination of Eisenhower would be a critical step in setting things a right.” If Buckley believed that JFK was a communist, was it right to “eliminate” him?

When JFK was assassinated Buckley was one of the first to suggest that Oswald was part of a KGB/Castro conspiracy. He went onto argue that Earl Warren, a man he considered to be a communist, had covered this up in his report.

Buckley continued to make extreme right-wing statements. For example, when Viola Liuzzo, the civil rights activist from Detroit was murdered in March 1965, Buckley argued that it was her own fault as she “drove down a stretch of lonely road in the dead of night, sharing the front seat with a young Negro identified with the protesting movement”.

He also led the smear campaign against Martin Luther King in the press (based on documents leaked by J. Edgar Hoover). He urged the repression of King and other civil rights and anti-war protestors on “constitutional grounds”. Buckley compared King to Hitler and Lenin. He said that he wished Lenin and Hitler had been repressed in the same way as King should be repressed. (National Review, 19th August, 1967).

In 1968 Buckley supported Nixon because he feared the Democrats might pull out of Vietnam. However, he soon got disillusioned with Nixon as a result of his attempts to negotiate with the Soviet Union and China. Buckley now became a strong supporter of Spiro Agnew and he went into overdrive when it was reported that Nixon might replace Agnew with John Connolly in 1972.

It was the Watergate Scandal that finally exposed Buckley’s long-term relationship with the CIA. As long as Agnew was vice president, Buckley made no real attempt to protect Nixon from this scandal (he did say in the National Review that Nixon was only doing what Democrats had been doing for years).

However, Buckley did help out his long-term friend, E. Howard Hunt. He gave Hunt advice and even paid some of his legal bills. He also became guardian of Hunt’s children and executor of Dorothy Hunt’s estate. After the death of Dorothy while carrying $10,000 in cash, Hunt had a meeting with Buckley. He told him that he believed that Nixon gave the order for the Watergate break-in. Hunt told Buckley that he had a safe-deposit box that contained documents that would protect him when he really got into trouble.

However, the resignation of Agnew complicated matters. So also did the decision by the CIA to fully expose Nixon’s relationship with Hunt and the others involved in Watergate. This dragged Buckley into the scandal and exposed him as a long-time CIA agent. Someone leaked information about Buckley to Sherman Skolnick. In his Hotline News he claimed: “Bill Buckley’s so-called oil fortune is mostly money deposited by the CIA… He has admitted he has been a long-time deep cover operative for the CIA. Over the years he has participated in several operations in Mexico with E. Howard Hunt, including preparations for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

It was revealed that Buckley was recruited into the CIA by James Burnham. A former supporter of Leon Trotsky, Burnham had been “turned” in the 1930s. Burnham introduced Buckley to E. Howard Hunt who arranged for him to join his covert CIA operation in Mexico City. After three months training in Washington, Buckley arrived in Mexico City in September, 1951. His first task was to help Eudocio Ravines write an anti-Communist book The Yenan Way (it was an attack on the Chilean Communist Party).

Buckley’s other major task was working as an undercover agent with university students in Mexico City. He attempted to create a right wing student organization. This is of course what he later did in the United States with the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (1953) and the Young Americans for Freedom (1960).

Buckley officially left the CIA in April 1952. He returned to the United States where he concentrated on producing right-wing political propaganda. In 1953 he established the ISS, an organization that free copies of right-wing books such as Road to Serfdom (Friedrich A. Hayek) and The Income Tax: Root of all Evil (Frank Chodorov). This was probably done with CIA money.

Some investigative reporters began to look at the accounts of the National Review. It had been losing a great deal of money over the years. It was not clear from published accounts who had been funding this operation. Some speculated that it was the CIA. In other words, Buckley was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird.

Evidence for this view came from a very strange source. On 29th January, 1975, the Washington Post published an article by George Will, the National Review’s Washington columnist. He posed the question: “Was National Review, with four ex-agents of the CIA on its staff, a CIA operation?” He claimed that several members of the National Review’s had believed that it was receiving funds from the CIA. Will also pointed out that Buckley was very close to E. Howard Hunt and had been raising funds for him.

Up until this time George Will had appeared to be a devoted follower of Buckley. What made him turn against Buckley? Was the National Review’s Washington columnist working for Richard Helms?

It was also revealed that Buckley was a long-time friend of two former directors of the CIA, William Casey and George Bush.

However, Nixon thought Buckley was working for him. When the Watergate tapes were released, Nixon is heard to say that Buckley would write an article in the National Review calling for Hunt to be given clemency (8th January, 1973).

It was also revealed that the National Review had obtained funds from the American-Chilean Council (ACC). This helps to partly explain the support that Buckley had given to General Pinchet’s coup (this included a defence of the execution of 500 Chilean opponents of the regime). Buckley wrote that this action was popular in Chile because “people prefer an authoritarian government to chaos.”

Buckley also published the claim (based on information from the ACC) that Orlando Letelier had been assassinated in Washington because he had been “entangled in international terrorism and was receiving funds through Havana”.

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John,

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.

Perhaps Buckley was just playing some kind of game (as CIA types are prone to do), since the idea that Congress would actually pass any laws decriminalizing drugs is ridiculous.

Another strange thing, which you mentioned, is the desire that extreme right-wingers had in the 50s and 60s for a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. It has been alleged that the military, run at the time by such extreme right-wingers as Curtis LeMay, wanted this as well. Presumably this was desired in order to cripple the Soviet Union to such an extent, if it did not utterly destroy it, that the Communist Menace would be nipped in the bud. But that doesn't really make sense, given that the "international Communist conspiracy" was a gold mine for the MIC for decades, the evil enemy that kept the money pouring in, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, by which time another evil enemy, Al Qaeda, was already lined up to take the Soviet Union's place as the MIC's new meal ticket. So why did they want to nuke Russia? That would have been akin to capturing Bin Laden right away after 9/11 (or even now), which would hinder the ability of Bush and his PNAC handlers to make endless war as the result of the "new Pearl Harbor" that Bin Laden had brought them and that the PNAC had "coincidentally" hoped for.

Ron

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Good work on Buckley, John. Two more tidbits I remember that might add to the picture. One is that Buckley's father was thrown out of Mexico in the thirties or forties for sponsoring an attempted coup. Two is that the National Review published a number of articles by David Belin, arguing against the Warren Commission critics, but never published one article presenting a fair portrait of conspiracy. While I don't believe in Op Mock as an ongoing project, Buckley undoubtedly drank some CIA kool-aid back in the day. He is, literally, the ugly American.

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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.

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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.

"He rejected the infallibility of the pope

he began to make speeches against racial inequality.

The most intelligent Christians (going back to C.S. Peirce) have always known that the doctrine of papal infallibility is an error of thinking, a grave mistake by the Church.

So are you saying that Buckley is more like a bad Protestant than a good Catholic? and this makes him a suspect?

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.

PHOTOS OF WILLIAM BUCKLEY (Thanks to the Photographer-contributors)

"There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face"

(Shakespeare & I'm nearly sure it is MacBeth)

I respectfully submit that the man depicted in these photos in an open, intelligent and honest-looking man. I am especially impressed by the later photo that sows how gracefully he has adopted to the aging process. More power to his elbow, I say, and may he continue to enjoy his golden years.

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