The CIA, the JFK Assassination and the death of David Kelly

[Tim Gratz]

John, I challenge you to set forth a conversation between LBJ and JEH where they discuss blackmailing someone.

[John Simkin]

I have now read the complete transcript of each telephone conversation John listed in Post #3. There is not a hint of blackmail or a discussion of possible blackmail in a single one of them. JS owes me an apology and the readers a correction.

John posted:

Then there is this passage:

Lyndon B. Johnson: Warren told me he wouldn't do it under any circumstances... I called him and ordered him down here and told me no twice and I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I say now, I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow (censored) and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow and that Castro killed him... And he started crying and said, well I won't turn you down... I'll do whatever you say.

Maybe John does not understand the meaning of the term "blackmail". Here are three dictionary definitions of "blackmail":

MERRIAM WEBSTER ON-LINE:

extortion or coercion by threats especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution.

MSN ENCARTA:

Use of secrets to compel: the act of forcing somebody to pay money or do something by threatening to reveal shameful or incriminating facts about him or her.

CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY ONLINE:

When you obtain money from people or force them to do something by threatening to make known a secret of theirs or to harm them.

Hoover gave LBJ information about something that Warren did in Mexico City. This was something that was illegal or immoral. Warren cries when he realises that LBJ knows about this "incident". Warren, who previously refused to serve on the commission, now changes his mind and says: "I'll do whatever you say." In other words, Warren has been blackmailed into serving on the commission. Why was LBJ so keen to get Warren to head his commission? Because LBJ knew he could blackmail him into providing a cover-up report. LBJ is keen to be seen to be ordering this cover-up in order to avoid a nuclear war. However, in reality, he want to convince the world that Oswald was a "lone nut".

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

Hoover gave LBJ information about something that Warren did in Mexico City. This was something that was illegal or immoral

Absolutely incredible! Hoover and LBJ had been discussing Oswald's activities in Mexico City, not Warren's That is why the "incident" in Mexico City was tied to a possible international confrontation.

John, do you seriously suggest that LBJ was talking about telling Khruschev about something Warren had done in Mexico City? Something that might cause a nuclear exchange? You certainly cannot be serious!

Lyndon B. Johnson: Warren told me he wouldn't do it under any circumstances... I called him and ordered him down here and told me no twice and I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I say now, I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow (censored) and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow and that Castro killed him... And he started crying and said, well I won't turn you down... I'll do whatever you say.

Edited November 27, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

John wrote:

Hoover gave LBJ information about something that Warren did in Mexico City. This was something that was illegal or immoral

Absolutely incredible! Hoover and LBJ had been discussing Oswald's activities in Mexico City, not Warren's That is why the "incident" in Mexico City was tied to a possible international confrontation.

John, do you seriously suggest that LBJ was talking about telling Khruschev about something Warren had done in Mexico City? Something that might cause a nuclear exchange? You certainly cannot be serious!

I know that it is generally assumed that LBJ was talking about Oswald when he mentions Mexico City. However, I cannot see how this comment would make Warren cry. In my view, the comment about Mexico City is a reference to something that concerns Warren directly. It has never made sense to me that LBJ persuades all these people to cover-up the truth about the assassination of JFK because he wanted to avoid a nuclear conflict. If the evidence did point to Cuba and the Soviet Union, it would have been a great excuse to take out Castro. The reason he did not order the invasion is that he knew the evidence did not really implicate communists. It led in another direction that was far more closer to home.

[Tim Gratz]

Well, in my opinion, preventing a nuclear holocaust just might be important enough to "cover up". And there certainly was at that date some evidence pointing to an international conspiracy. LBJ certainly proved to be far less adventuresome toward Cuba than JFK & RFK had been.

[John Dolva]

Some weeks before going to Oslo to receive the Peace prize MLK suffered the culmination of a campaign to discredit him with the receipt from the FBI of manufactured 'evidence' gathered to convince him suicide was the only way out.

Warren had born stoically an unremitting campaign to discredit him (Impeach Earl Warren) likely stemming from the Brown descicion that lay the foundation for the Civil Rights campaigns that culminated in JFK's assassination. The notion that LBJ had discreditable evidence that would make Warren cry a few days after his CIC had been killed is somewhat odd.

Did LBJ participate in the assassination or not? (personally I doubt any direct involvement). The dominant theory that Castro did it (apart from the intuitive knowledge shared by millions, including Warren and Jackie and numerous other significant persons) that the far right did, had very serious implications.

Remember this was a few days after the assassination. No one really knew anything. Kruschev had a few years previously declared his intention to support any revolution around the world. IE the dominant danger was from the nuculear anniihilation of a superpower confrontation should the USofA attack Cuba.. The fact that LBJ used the figures worked out by MacNamara in case of a first strike by the USofA indicates the thinking at the time. ie. should the American public become fully cognisant at that time of the real assassins source (domestic militant right wing)) Civil War would likely have been on the agenda and a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union a likelyhood. This is what the honourable Mr Warren had to compromise on. Enough to bring anyone with honor to tears.

As it was, he signed off on a report that was riddled with clues. What else could he and Kennedy's men do? A decade of near civil war DID ensue. JFK's Civil Rights bills were significantly compromised and the rollback has been occurring ever since.

[Tim Gratz]

John, unfortunately, the "evidence" against Martin Luther King, Jr. was not manufactured, but the effort to use it to persuade him to commit suicide was of course beneath contempt.

And that action probably does come close to blackmail!

Regarding Warren's "crying", how do we know that was not just LBJ's efforts to belittle Warren before Russell? Maybe Warren only became "teary-eyed" and LBJ exaggerated it. (In the tapes LBJ refered to Warren's weight problem as a "put down" so LBJ was not above belittling Warren.) Another possible explanation if Warren did indeed cry is if Warren realized he was being ordered by LBJ to let the killers of JFK go free, which would of course rightfully violate his sense of justice.

Why do you say that JFK's civil rights bills were compromised? I am curious about this.

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote (in Post 12):

The tapes show that LBJ was constantly working with Hoover in order to blackmail politicians from disclosing important information. Members of the Warren Commission was only a small part of this activity.

My challenge of course remains for John to come up with ANY tape demonstrating any such discussion between LBJ and Hoover.

[John Dolva]

Hi Tim, had a nice break?

_________________

Tim: "...unfortunately, the "evidence" against Martin Luther King, Jr. was not manufactured..."

Unfortunately it was, and King was not the only recipient of this special treatment.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...e&pid=41957

""In an internal FBI monograph dated September 1963 found that, given the scope of support it had attracted over the preceding five years, civil rights agitation represented a clear threat to "the established order" of the U.S., and that Martin Luther "King is growing in stature daily as the leader among leaders of the Negro movement ... so goes Martin Luther King, and also so goes the Negro movement in the United States." This accorded well with COINTELPRO specialist William C. Sullivan's view, committed to writing shortly after King's landmark "I Have a Dream" speech during the massive civil rights demonstration in Washington, D.C., on August 28 of the same year:

We must mark [King] now, if we have not before, as the most dangerous Negro in the future of this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security ... it may be unrealistic to limit [our actions against King] to legalistic proofs that would stand up in court or before Congressional Committees.

The stated objective of the SCLC, and the nature of its practical activities, was to organize for the securing of black voting rights across the rural South, with an eye toward the ultimate dismantlement of at least the most blatant aspects of the southern U.S. system of segregation. Even this seemingly innocuous agenda was, however, seen as a threat by the FBI. In mid-September of 1957, FBI supervisor J.G. Kelly forwarded a newspaper clipping describing the formation of the SCLC to the Bureau's Atlanta field office - that city being the location of SCLC headquarters - informing local agents, for reasons which were never specified, the civil rights group was "a likely target for communist infiltration," and that "in view of the stated purpose of the organization you should remain alert for public source information concerning it in connection with the racial situation."

The Atlanta field office "looked into" the matter and ultimately opened a COMINFIL (communist-inflitrated group) investigation of the SCLC, apparently based on the fact that a single SWP member, Lonnie Cross, had offered his services as a clerk in the organization's main office. 14 By the end of the first year of FBI scrutiny, in September of 1958, a personal file had been opened on King himself, ostensibly because he had been approached on the steps of a Harlem church in which he'd delivered a guest sermon by black CP member Benjamin J. Davis. 15 By October 1960, as the SCLC call for desegregation and black voting rights in the south gained increasing attention and support across the nation, the Bureau began actively infiltrating organizational meetings and conferences.

By July of 1961, FBI intelligence on the group was detailed enough to recount that, while an undergraduate at Atlanta's Morehouse College in 1948, King had been affiliated with the Progressive Party, and that executive director Wyatt Tee Walker had once subscribed to a CP newspaper, The Worker.

Actual counterintelligence operations against King and the SCLC seem to have begun with a January 8, 1962 letter from Hoover to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, contending that the civil rights leader enjoyed a "close relationship" with Stanley D. Levison, "a member of the Communist Party, USA," and that Isadore Wofsy, "a high ranking communist leader," had written a speech for King. 18

On the night of March 15-16,1962, FBI agents secretly broke into Levison's New York office and planted a bug; a wiretap of his office phone followed on March 20.

Among the other things picked up by the surveillance was information that Jack ODell, who also had an alleged "record of ties to the Communist party," had been recommended by both King and Levison to serve as an assistant to Wyatt Tee Walker. Although none of these supposed communist affiliations were ever substantiated, it was on this basis that SCLC was targeted within the Bureau's ongoing COINTELPRO-CP,USA, beginning with the planting of five disinformational "news stories" concerning the organization's "communist connections" on October 24, 1962. 21 By this point, Martin Luther King's name had been placed in Section A of the FBI Reserve Index, one step below those individuals registered in the Security Index and scheduled to be rounded up and "preventively detained" in the event of a declared national emergency; Attorney General Kennedy had also authorized round-the-clock surveillance of all SCLC offices, as well as King's home. 22 Hence, by November 8,1963, comprehensive telephone taps had been installed at all organizational offices, and King's residence.

By 1964, King was not only firmly established as a preeminent civil rights leader, but was beginning to show signs of pursuing a more fundamental structural agenda of social change. Meanwhile, the Bureau continued its efforts to discredit King, maintaining a drumbeat of mass media-distributed propaganda concerning his supposed "communist influences" and sexual proclivities, as well as triggering a spate of harassment by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). 24 When it was announced on October 14 of that year that King would receive a Nobel Peace Prize as a reward for his work in behalf of the rights of American blacks, the Bureau - exhibiting a certain sense of desperation - dramatically escalated its efforts to neutralize him.

Two days after announcement of the impending award, COINTELPRO specialist William Sullivan caused a composite audio tape to be produced, supposedly consisting of "highlights" taken from the taps of King's phones and bugs placed in his various hotel rooms over the preceding two years.

The result, prepared by FBI audio technician John Matter, purported to demonstrate the civil rights leader had engaged in a series of "orgiastic" trysts with prostitutes and, thus, "the depths of his sexual perversion and depravity." The finished tape was packaged, along with an accompanying anonymous letter (prepared by Bureau Internal Security Supervisor Seymore F. Phillips on Sullivan's instruction), informing King that the audio material would be released to the media unless he committed suicide prior to bestowal of the Nobel Prize.

"King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure that they don't have one at this time that is any where near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. ...

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Sullivan then instructed veteran COINTELPRO operative Lish Whitson to fly to Miami with the package; once there, Whitson was instructed to address the parcel and mail it to the intended victim. 26 When King failed to comply with Sullivan's anonymous directive that he kill himself, FBI Associate Director Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach attempted to follow through with the threat to make the contents of the doctored tape public:

The Bureau Crime Records Division, headed by DeLoach, initiated a major campaign to let newsmen know just what the Bureau [claimed to have] on King. DeLoach personally offered a copy of the King surveillance transcript to Newsweek Washington bureau chief Benjamin Bradlee. Bradlee refused it, and mentioned the approach to a Newsday colleague, Jay Iselin."

Fighting the enemies of 'The Dream' By Tim Wheeler

...

"The FBI leaked to the media fabricated stories implicating King in sexual improprietes, again, echoes of the Monica Lewinsky affair. It included a report, leaked days after King's assassination, that King had fathered a child in an illicit affair with a married woman.

Newspaper columnist Jack Anderson reported, "Hoover sent word to me that the motive behind the murder was cuckoldry, that the assassin apparently had been hired by a jealous husband ... who had become enraged by the discovery that his wife had borne King's child."

Anderson flew to Los Angeles and met with the couple.

"I could find absolutely no evidence that contradicted the couple's own explanation that Dr. King was an honored friend of the family, a frequent guest and nothing more," Anderson wrote."

In 1964, an FBI agent was sent to Tampa to mail a poison pen message to King telling him he should commit suicide.

"King, look into your heart," it began. "You know you are a complete fraud and a greater liability to all of us Negroes ... I repeat, you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that ... a dis solute, abnormal, moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like [Roy] Wilkins a man of character ... But you are done. Your 'honorary' degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you ... King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is ... There is but one way out for you. You had better take it ..."

Roy Wilkins was then NAACP executive secretary. It was later revealed he had collaborated with the FBI.

Former FBI agent Arthur Murtagh, who had resigned in disgust over the dirty tricks operation, testified during the HBO trial that while serving in the FBI's Atlanta field office, he had handled FBI informers planted in the SCLC.

One of them embezzled SCLC funds with FBI knowledge to supplement his SCLC salary and FBI payoffs, Murtagh said.

"The informant informed on the SCLC and Dr. King, sometimes daily, right up to the day of the assassination," Pepper writes.

"Among other information, details of Dr. King's itinerary and travel plans were provided ... Murtagh said that in Atlanta, 90 percent of their time was spent on investigating and attempting to denigrate Dr. King. This focus reflected a hatred that seemed to permeate the Bureau from top to bottom.."

...and not just King:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sco.../03/306991.html

Edited November 27, 2007 by John Dolva

[Guest Gary Loughran]

There are carrot and stick approaches in all these things. Career 'politicians' such as Specter recognised, opportunity for career furtherance by becoming a Warrenati. His career, like that of Hutton, Stevens, Saville, Widgery (all UK) - certainly didn't suffer by accepting to deliver the official Government response, guised as a commission or enquiry. For make no mistake that is what all the aforementioned gentlemen did and with total and blatant disregard for the truth or the citizen.

The stick too is a good motivator. I am amazed by Tim's non recognition of coerscion in some Warren appointments. Semantics are all well and good - but Warren was in all essence made 'an offer he couldn't refuse' - making someone an offer they couldn't refuse, as Tim might well say, is not necessarily blackmail - but any reasonable reading (and understanding) of the transcripts John has provided can lead to no other conclusion.

For example, Hutton, Stevens and Saville, benefitted greatly and not leastly for the work they did in reporting Government lines in official enquiries. They are all now Lords I believe, (I will undoubtedly regret not researching this: but John S will know for sure) and became Lords in relatively short order for Northern Ireland related services. Excepting Widgery, perhaps. Widgery, rushed out a nonesense report blaming the IRA for the massacre of nationalists on Bloody Sunday and refused appeals for the Birmingham 6 in the mid 70's. Saville got a peerage for agreeing to head the enquiry which would reverse Widegery's Bloody Sunday tripe and in doing so expedite moves to peace in NI.

[Tim Gratz]

Gary, with all due respect, JS has offered not a SINGLE example of blackmail--not ONE!

Helping assist the "party line" for purposes of career advancement (Spector, perhaps) is a far cry from blackmail.

Similarly, LBJ's making an appeal to Warren to head the Commission to stave off a possible nuclear war might be considered coercive in nature, but it sure ain't blackmail by anyone's definition.

Look at how LBJ persuaded Russell to join the Commission even though Russell despised Warrren. Why, Russsell even told LBJ he'd serve even if there was a Negro on the commission! OIf course LBJ did not go that far.

LBJ used all his persuasive and sometimes coercive abilities to round up his commissioners but there is no indication whatsoever that he ever used blackmail. JS was simply wrong when he so asserted.

P.S. Spector may have had political ambitions but when he was made a WC assistant counsel he was not at that time a "career politician".

Edited November 27, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

John, I hate to put it this bluntly, but do you actually DENY that MLK, despite his greatness, was a serial adulterer (I guess a "womanizer" might be a euphemism)?

By the way it is of course historical fact that RFK approved the wiretaps on King.

Edited November 27, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Charles Drago]

John, I hate to put it this bluntly, but do you actually DENY that MLK, despite his greatness, was a serial adulterer (I guess a "womanizer" might be a euphemism)?

Do you actuallly DENY that your former boss Richard Milhous Nixon and your current hero Ronald Wilson Reagan were mass murderers and war criminals (I guess "presidents" might be a euphemism)?

[John Dolva]

John, I hate to put it this bluntly, but do you actually DENY that MLK, despite his greatness, was a serial adulterer (I guess a "womanizer" might be a euphemism)?

By the way it is of course historical fact that RFK approved the wiretaps on King.

Tim, I'm not great, but I am a womaniser. JFK appears to have been one. He was a great man. No doubt others enjoy women as well. You can say or not say what you wish about yourself. So what?

Hoover by some accounts had some odd sexual proclivities. Perhaps that's why he focussed so much on others inclinations.

MLK? Ask someone else.

The point here is that the FBI manufactured and distorted evidence through their COMINFIL and COILTELPROgrams , they presented some to RFK and he appears to have believed them. For a while.

"By the way it is of course historical fact that" by the year MLK and RFK were assassinated, they were part of a solid coalition of progressives mounting a challenge to Johnson. Make of it what you will.

You will anyhow.

[Dawn Meredith]

Gary, with all due respect, JS has offered not a SINGLE example of blackmail--not ONE!

Tim, Why can't you just MOVE ON? Everyone here sees this the way John does, all but you. We get it that you don't . You invariably disagree with the rest of the forum members, but what is most annoying is your constant need to just beat the dog to death.

Dawn