Sovereignty Commission Files

[John Simkin]

In the final analysis what will matter is the ongoing attention by those who do engage in the debate, not the so called 'noise'. Though I do sometimes find the noise very interesting and often quite amusing. In the long run it builds an interesting 'landscape' of personalities that future sociologists, psychiatrists, historians may find worthy of study. (These pages on the Forum are building into quite a document that will allow a very large number of studies in many fields. Interestingly they exist in parts on many many hard disks throughout the world.)

It is noticeable when the discussion gets very heated the number of page views go up. I had an email once from someone who says they never contribute to our discussions but love reading the spats we have. She said it was a bit like watching a soap opera.

Forums are interesting as they record people’s views at a certain point in time. Some members show they are capable of change once they have access to new information. Others, like Tim Gratz, show they are fossilized in time (usually views they developed while uninformed teenagers).

I will be interested what Tim Gratz will make of Douglas Caddy. As the founder of Young American of Freedom, Caddy was seen by Tim as a kind of hero. However, as Doug has explained on the Forum, he has moved on since 1960 and is now firmly on the left. I thought Doug’s explanation of this journey was fairly poetic.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4727

[Tim Carroll]

Interesting that an extrme leftist and an extreme rightist are in agreement. Of course I do not argue that the assassination had no effect, as Tim C. seems to be implying.

I am implying the precise opposite of what was just represented: that the assassination did have an effect, overwhelmingly for the worse in the long run.

T.C.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Interesting that an extrme leftist and an extreme rightist are in agreement. Of course I do not argue that the assassination had no effect, as Tim C. seems to be implying.

I am implying the precise opposite of what was just represented: that the assassination did have an effect, overwhelmingly for the worse in the long run.

T.C.

I think there is a misunderstanding between the Carrolls on this forum. Tim & I both agree that the assassination of JFK was a profoundly negative event. I understood Tim to be suggesting that I felt otherwise. If I was wrong I beg forgiveness.

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

Forums are interesting as they record people’s views at a certain point in time. Some members show they are capable of change once they have access to new information. Others, like Tim Gratz, show they are fossilized in time (usually views they developed while uninformed teenagers).

A ridiculous post.

First, I was probably one of the more "informed" teen-agers in America. I was a member of the National Honor Society; won a city-wide debate contest; was the State Chairman of the Teen-Age Republicans; organized a Model Legislature weekend with my friend Mark Barbash, the Chairman of the Young Democrats; widely read political media from alternative political viewpoints; engaged in regular discourse with a left-oriented social science teacher; won an award for being the best social studies student in my high school. I do not like "blowing my own horn" so to speak but John forced it with his implication that I was "uninformed". Of course, it is apparent that to John anyone who disagrees with his political viewpoint is "uninformed". Like many leftists, John proclaims tolerance but does not practice it.

It is also wrong for John to assert that my views are "fossilized in time". My views on several matters have undergone change in part because of watching history develop. One example would be the meritorious effects of the civil rights legislation of the mid-sixties.

On the other hand, history has proven correct many of the views I had in high school. For instance, I knew it was wrong for the Kennedy Administration to be responding to the opposition to Diem and I knew that the coup in Vietnam would turn out to be a tragedy for US foreign policy in Vietnam (as indeed it did). Moreover, the administration of Ronald Reagan demonstrated that the opinions articulated in Barry Goldwater's "Why Not Victory" were correct. When Reagan adopted a policy to defeat, not contain, communism, the evil empire fell within ten years. History has demonstrated that the Nixon-Kissinger policy of "detente" only slowed the defeat of communism.

I know this has been discussed on other threads but here is an interesting passage from Michael Beschloss' review in the January 15, 2006 New York Times Book Review of "The Cold War: A New History" by John Lewis Gaddis.

Then there are those Gaddis calls the "saboteurs of the status quo" - John Paul II, Reagan, Thatcher and other leaders who believed the West had paid too high a moral and political price for its long peace with Moscow. They demanded something better. John Paul, for example, gives Gaddis the chance to recall Stalin's contemptuous question about an earlier pope: "How many divisions has he got?" John Paul, Gaddis explains, didn't need divisions. He mobilized spiritual force against Communism when he returned to Poland in 1979 and then embraced Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement.

Reagan was another saboteur. He strove to shatter the East-West stalemate "by exploiting Soviet weaknesses and asserting Western strengths." Few - even among his supporters - glimpsed Reagan's genuine passion to abolish nuclear arsenals, which he considered immoral. Many American academics decried Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative of 1983 as a warmongering effort to extend the cold war into the heavens. But while conceding the risks (the Soviets feared a first-strike attack), Gaddis praises Reagan's strategy of using the threat to build an antimissile shield that the Soviets could not soon match. "If the U.S.S.R. was crumbling," Gaddis asks, "what could justify . . . continuing to hold Americans hostage to the . . . odious concept of mutual assured destruction? Why not hasten the disintegration?"

Gaddis is a professor of history at Yale and the author of six books on the Cold War.

Edited January 19, 2006 by Tim Gratz

[Thomas Graves]

july 22 1963

A five point action program

An address by Louis W. Hollis

Executive Director, Citizens' Councils of America

"..the CCA, the only nation-wide organisation dedicated to the preservation of the integrity of the white race....we will NEVER surrender."

"...no responsible person WANTS violence. It is an unpleasant remedy to which people resort only in a desperate extremity, when all else has failed.

...the position of CCA..: to prevent vilence by preventing integration.

But, there is a point beyond which even the most judicious restraint becomes cowardice. To say there will be no violence under any circumstances whatsoever, is like President Kennedy's assuring Kruschev that the US will not invade Cuba.

These 'moderates', who have never resisted integration in the first place, now merely encourage the NAACP and other 'race mixers' to redouble their efforts....a moderate is for segregation, but he is chicken!"

"Certainly we in our state would never take up arms against our country, be it right or wrong...in this instance we believe it is grievously wrong. Our remedy lie/s in another means. And here I come to the price the Kennedy's will pay for their actions."

"the Kennedy's have inpaled themselves by this invasion of the south... The south will never go for those Kennedy's again becouase everybody knows that a vote for Kennedy is a vote for..integration at the point of a bayonet. We know racial integrity is essential to civilisation and liberty"

"..ask..: What can we do?"

"...tonight, we are coming to you with a plan...for Citicen' Council organisations. Yoy will hear much about this plan in the days and weeks ahead..."

" The good sense of the people in other parts of the country will assert itself and the politicians who are primarily responsible for injecting the element of danger into this will be eliminated from office."

"...This is a fight to maintain Racial Integrity..."

"Tough minded...Arm yourself with truth as a weapon...pride of race...the truth will make you free"

"It is no longer a question of bad government. It is a question of impossible government. Only strong aggressive organisation will deliver us..."

"Hear me, men and women of my race, the hour is struck when we must rise in our might, strike down the traitors and scalawags who would be the ruling power (JFK?) in our country..."

"We have a constitution because our pioneer fathers who cleared the wilderness and dared the might of kings (MLK?) were FREE MEN...if you can make men out of paper, then it is possible with a scratch of a pen in the hands of a tyrannical judge (Warren?) or a vicious attorney general (Bobby?), to transform by its magic 18 million blacks into 18 million kings."

"..self restraint under the terrible provocations of the last nine years (IOW since Warrens brown ruling) But there is a limit..for at this point (july 1963) self restraint is cowardice.."

"(We)..are now engaged in a mortal conflict, and only one can survive."

"..where integration occurs violence becomes inevitable.." ... "Join with those who will stand...fearlessly...detrmined..that segregation will be maintained."

I'd say that Hollis would be pleased by the outcome 123 days later on 12.30 11/22/1963

http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents...|2|1|1|1|60336|

________________________________________

John Dolva,

Even if Hollis was very very very very "pleased with the outcome 123 days later on 11/22/63," what does all this have to do specifically with the assassination of JFK?

WADR, Thomas

________________________________________

Edited January 19, 2006 by Thomas Graves

[John Dolva]

Thank you Thomas. I doubt that the coverup, just as the assassination itself was unplanned or ad lib. I suspect it also was compartmentalised, delegated and was in motion already by 11 22.

The only thing it proves if one chooses to read it as I do is that there was a definite agitation going on. If you read the entire document you may agree with me that a plan of sorts is being described or suggested.

I think that there were a number of these things like the 'wanted for treason' poster that serves to create an atmosphere where a person so inclined will feel that assassinating Kennedy will be an acceptable thing. Ruby for example seemed to feel that he was acting for a greater cause than just a hatred for Lee or a payment or whatever. It's that added edge that dramatically increases the likelyhood that a planned assassination will be done in an atmosphere where the subsequent coverup will 'stick'. Lunatics can be seen as acting publicly when they feel that it will be acceptable for them to do so. A good cover for a serious attempt.

Now, where were these agitators? Cuba? Did Castro control Hollis? Russia? Was Hollis Kruschev in disguise? etc... No of course not . It was people who set up organs like the Sovereignty Commission, YAF, The Minutemen, JBS etc etc. The right, and the radical right. And who and what sort of people aprung forth following the assassination to promote the Cuba/Communists did it angle..

One thing that strikes me about many of the declassified Sovereignty Commission files is that they attempt to gather information on people, paint them as subversives and destroy them, or in some way nullify any progress on the integration issue, truth and honor had nothing to do with it, and the funny thing that stands out is that they seem to make very little attempt to JUSTIFY any of it covertly.

Publicly there is a serious campaign to set an atmosphere, I think this is because they recognised that that there is something wrong with what they are up to. Covertly within the organisation it is a different matter.

______________________________

I think the assassination could have been enirely domestic, on domestic isssues. I suggets that 'the Cuba did it'/'anti Cubans did it' is part of a smoke screen. This reading of this particular presentation supports that view. And it is pursuing the guilty there that they will be found.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Thank you Thomas. I doubt that the coverup, just as the assassination itself was unplanned or ad lib. I suspect it also was compartmentalised, delegated and was in motion already by 11 22.

The only thing it proves if one chooses to read it as I do is that there was a definite agitation going on. If you read the entire document you may agree with me that a plan of sorts is being described or suggested.

I think that there were a number of these things like the 'wanted for treason' poster that serves to create an atmosphere where a person so inclined will feel that assassinating Kennedy will be an acceptable thing. Ruby for example seemed to feel that he was acting for a greater cause than just a hatred for Lee or a payment or whatever. It's that added edge that dramatically increases the likelyhood that a planned assassination will be done in an atmosphere where the subsequent coverup will 'stick'. Lunatics can be seen as acting publicly when they feel that it will be acceptable for them to do so. A good cover for a serious attempt.

Now, where were these agitators? Cuba? Did Castro control Hollis? Russia? Was Hollis Kruschev in disguise? etc... No of course not . It was people who set up organs like the Sovereignty Commission, YAF, The Minutemen, JBS etc etc. The right, and the radical right. And who and what sort of people aprung forth following the assassination to promote the Cuba/Communists did it angle..

One thing that strikes me about many of the declassified Sovereignty Commission files is that they attempt to gather information on people, paint them as subversives and destroy them, or in some way nullify any progress on the integration issue, truth and honor had nothing to do with it, and the funny thing that stands out is that they seem to make very little attempt to JUSTIFY any of it covertly.

Publicly there is a serious campaign to set an atmosphere, I think this is because they recognised that that there is something wrong with what they are up to. Covertly within the organisation it is a different matter.

______________________________

I think the assassination could have been enirely domestic, on domestic isssues. I suggets that 'the Cuba did it'/'anti Cubans did it' is part of a smoke screen. This reading of this particular presentation supports that view. And it is pursuing the guilty there that they will be found.

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

I suggets that 'the Cuba did it'/'anti Cubans did it' is part of a smoke screen.

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

In that regards, you are obviously at least several lengths ahead of others.

Now, when one also excludes:

1. The Clay Shaw Circus

3. Organized Crime

4. The FBI

5. The CIA

6. The ONI

7. The ASA

8. The NSA

and in recognition that it was in fact a "home grown" enterprise.

That pretty well leaves the free market society, with of course a little assistance from those who had knowledge of activities of a few of the above referenced organizations.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

John wrote:

Forums are interesting as they record people’s views at a certain point in time. Some members show they are capable of change once they have access to new information. Others, like Tim Gratz, show they are fossilized in time (usually views they developed while uninformed teenagers).

On the other hand, history has proven correct many of the views I had in high school. For instance, I knew it was wrong for the Kennedy Administration to be responding to the opposition to Diem and I knew that the coup in Vietnam would turn out to be a tragedy for US foreign policy in Vietnam (as indeed it did).

Wow! I wish I was as smart as Tim Gratz. Does Mr. Gratz have contempraneous evidence that he formed this opinion in 1963, or is this hindsight talking?

BTW Mr. Gratz is remarkably silent about what his views were in 1964 when Gratz's hero Lyndon Johnson pushed the Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress and authorized American forces to engage in war. If Mr. Gratz is so smart there should be a record of his vocal opposition to the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Is there?

[John Simkin]

Wow! I wish I was as smart as Tim Gratz. Does Mr. Gratz have contempraneous evidence that he formed this opinion in 1963, or is this hindsight talking?

BTW Mr. Gratz is remarkably silent about what his views were in 1964 when Gratz's hero Lyndon Johnson pushed the Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress and authorized American forces to engage in war. If Mr. Gratz is so smart there should be a record of his vocal opposition to the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Is there?

What we do know is that Tim supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. He of course was totally against civil rights legislation. He also wanted a full-out war in Vietnam including the use of nuclear weapons (as did Tim’s other buddy, William F. Buckley). As JFK predicted in 1963, the Republicans would never win with Goldwater as its candidate. He knew that right-wingers like Tim were in a small minority. What support he did have was from the racists in the Deep South.

[Tim Gratz]

Although Goldwater did oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (I do not recall his position on the Voting Rights Act of 1965) he did so on constitutional grounds. (He was wrong.) But Goldwater was no racist. In fact, he was concerned that his campaign was attracting racist support. I recently read that he was even concerned that some of his supporters may have initiated a minor race riot (in New York as I recall) to promote a backlash of support for his campaign.

J. Raymond Carroll must be a no-nothing if he honestly thinks that LBJ was my hero! I read "A Texan Looks at Lyndon" and indeed helped distribute it in 1964. I worked rather tirelessly (as a high school student) to defeat LBJ.

Goldwater told the truth to the American public: that we were already in war in Vietnam despite LBJ's protestations to the contrary.

J. R. Carroll asks if I was "so smart" why did I not object to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution? How in the world was I in a position to know that the Gulf of Tonkin episode might have been staged? I am still not clear if LBJ was AWARE that it might have been staged.

Goldwater did not win but his campaign set the stage for the Reagan movement (in fact Reagan came to public attention with a famous speech he gave on behalf of Goldwater).

I read an interesting essay on the Goldwater movement (I'll try to find it). It made the point that some of the critiques of American society by the intellectuals in the Goldwater movement paralleled some of the social criticism of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Goldwater, like Reagan, was a visionary. Here is a quote from his acceptance speech:

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world. This is a goal far, far more meaningful than a moon shot.

It's a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for themselves during the latter half of the twentieth century. I can also see - and all free men must thrill to - the events of this Atlantic civilization joined by its great ocean highway to the United States. What a destiny, what a destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the Americans and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge - we pledge that human sympathy - what our neighbors to the South call that attitude of "simpatico" - no less than enlightened self'-interest will be our guide.

I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere.

I know this freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts by brave and wise men. I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road. I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental paternalism.

And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way, so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets of collectivism. My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding freedom's light under a bushel of mistaken humility.

. . . .

The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals.

In my opinion, there are great similarities between Goldwater's acceptance speech and JFK's 1960 inauguaral address. Re this statement in Goldwater's speech: And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way, so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets of collectivism. I suggest that is exactly what JFK's Peace Corps was all about.

[John Dolva]

"We commemorate Dr. King’s inspiring words, because his voice and his vision filled a great void in our nation, and answered our collective longing to become a country that truly lived by its noblest principles. Yet, Dr. King knew that it wasn’t enough just to talk the talk, that he had to walk the walk for his words to be credible. And so we commemorate on this holiday the man of action, who put his life on the line for freedom and justice every day, the man who braved threats and jail and beatings and who ultimately paid the highest price to make democracy a reality for all Americans." Coretta.

Martin Luther Kings birtday is a national holiday in the United States of America. It should be so the world over. We remember him.

______________________

This is what he thought of Goldwater, King is here quoted in an attack on King by a rascist newspaper.:

16 December 1964 Arkansas Democrat

Run of the News

"if elected Sen. Goldwater would lead the nation down 'a dangerous, dark, fascistic path'...

'We see dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign. If Goldwater wins I am absolutely convinced we will see the dark night of social disruption and such intensification of discontent and despair by Negroes that there is certain to be an outbreak of violence' "

Edited January 22, 2006 by John Dolva

[Tim Gratz]

King was wrong here. Goldwater was no fascist. In fact, in later days he endorsed libertarian principles which did not please "traditional" conservatives.

King's statement almost seems like a threat.

Edited January 22, 2006 by Tim Gratz

[John Dolva]

Here is a letter to the Sovereignty Commission from the Goldwater Presidential campaign, thanking the Commission for their 'tireless work' and for their help in raising half a million dollars for the campaign.

Also, because the Goldwater campaign regarded the Sovereignty Commission as a 'responsible conservative patriotic group' they offered the SC the entire list of supporters (9000 in all) in order to help the SC to grow.

Edited January 23, 2006 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

All names indexed

I wonder which Sovereignty Commission Agent was assigned to infiltrate the FPCC?

EDIT:: I highlighted with red.

Edited January 23, 2006 by John Dolva

[John Simkin]

Although Goldwater did oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (I do not recall his position on the Voting Rights Act of 1965) he did so on constitutional grounds. (He was wrong.) But Goldwater was no racist.

Goldwater was very keen to get the support of racists. His strategy was to get the vote of the racists in the Deep South who were angry with the actions of Lyndon Johnson.

In John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (1988) he publishes the letters of Goldwater and Buckley. The two men were in constant contact about the necessary strategy to defeat the Democrats. This included picking up the racist vote in the Deep South. The main issue concerned the John Birch Society. Buckley and Goldwater agreed that they shared the views of the JBS. However, Robert Welch, the JBS leader was a problem as it had been disclosed that he had sent out a letter claiming he had evidence that Dwight Eisenhower was a “communist”. Buckley agreed that Eisenhower should be “eliminated” if this was true. However, he agreed with Goldwater that to be associated with Welch’s claims would hurt them in the polls. It was therefore agreed to attack Welch but not his policies. In this way they would retain the votes of the JBS supporters.

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 and Goldwater were 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 and Goldwater believed that Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders were communists (based on information he received from J. Edgar Hoover). As Buckley 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 and Goldwater believed the communists controlled the anti-war movement. Like many right-wingers, they 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.