Read this, it's worth your time

[Robert E. Cox]

Highly recommended reading for all:

David Talbot, Salon’s editor-in-chief, finally lays out a major (internet) media piece on the case for a conspiracy, as seen through the eyes of governmental insiders. You’ll find it here: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/15/warren/

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Warren Report, Talbot has not only turned attention on the major media’s failure to cover this story responsibly, but also on the deep distrust and criticism of the Warren Report by many of America’s best-informed governmental leaders.

Any of us who are unshakable in our conviction that conspirators killed John Kennedy need to read this to revitalize our dedication to pushing for the truth and demanding justice. Those who continue to keep their heads in the sand – Peter Jennings and his ilk chief among them – need to read this to understand the magnitude of their recent self-inflicted embarrassments.

Regards,

Bob

[John Simkin]

Thank you very much fot that link. The material on Robert Kennedy and the assassination was especially interesting.

Gary Hart's comments are also worth considering. Maybe it was the reason why his campaign to become president was undermined.

For those without the time to read the complete article (you can get a free pass by clicking the ad) might be interested in this passage:

Hart too concluded Kennedy was likely killed by a conspiracy, involving some feverish cabal from the swamps of anti-Castro zealotry. And when he ran for president in 1984, Hart says, whenever he was asked about the assassination, "My consistent response was, based on my Church Committee experience, there are sufficient doubts about the case to justify reopening the files of the CIA, particularly in its relationship to the Mafia." This was enough to blow other people's minds, says Hart, including remnants of the Mafia family of Florida godfather Santo Trafficante, who plays a key role in many JFK conspiracy theories. "[Journalist] Sy Hersh told me that he interviewed buddies of Trafficante, including his right-hand man who was still alive when Hersh wrote his book ('The Dark Side of Camelot'). He didn't put this in his book, but when my name came up, the guy laughed, he snorted and said, 'We don't think he's any better than the Kennedys." Meaning they were keeping an eye on Hart? "At the very least. This was in the 1980s when I was running for president, saying I would reopen the (Kennedy) investigation. Anybody can draw their own conclusions."

Hart, of course, never made it to the White House. But another politician who had been deeply inspired by JFK did -- William Jefferson Clinton. And like perhaps every other man who moved into the White House following the Kennedy assassination, he too was curious about finding out the real story. "Where are the Kennedy files?" the young president reportedly asked soon after he went to work in the Oval Office.

And what about the other JFK from Massachusetts, who also met President Kennedy as a young man -- John F. Kerry? If he's elected in November, will he be tempted to launch an inquiry and try to find out what really happened to his hero in Dallas? Hart says he doubts it. "You almost had to go through it like I did with the Church Committee and get all the context. Otherwise, you have to be very careful about falling into the conspiracy category. I at least had some credentials to talk about it. But if Kerry were to bring it up, people would just say he's wacky, he's obsessive." As Hart observes, there are other ways to kill a leader these days -- you can assassinate his character.

And so 40 years after the Warren Report, with the country's political elite still wracked with suspicions about the Kennedy assassination, yet immobilized from doing anything about it by fears of being politically marginalized, and with the media elite continuing to disdain even the most serious journalistic inquiry, the crime seems frozen in place. It is now up to historians and scholars and authors to keep the spirit of inquiry alive.

For decades the only public critics of the Warren Report were a heroic and indomitable band of citizen-investigators -- including a crusading New York attorney, a small-town Texas newspaperman, a retired Washington civil servant, a Berkeley literature professor, a Los Angeles sign salesman, a Pittsburgh coroner -- all of whom refused to accept the fraud that was perpetrated on the American people. Undaunted by the media scorn that was heaped upon them, they devoted their lives to what powerful government officials and high-paid media mandarins should have been doing -- solving the most shocking crime against American democracy in the 20th century. Their names -- Mark Lane, Ray Marcus, Harold Weisberg, Sylvia Meagher, Vincent Salandria, Mary Ferrell, Penn Jones Jr., Cyril Wecht, Peter Dale Scott, Jim Lesar and Gaeton Fonzi, among others -- will find their honored place in American history. It is these everyday heroes, and their successors, whose best work will some day come to replace the heavy, counterfeit tomes of the Warren Report.

[Pat Speer]

The only error I noticed in the article was the contention that LBJ leaked the story of the Cuban backlash to Drew Pearson. The record indicates that Rosselli created the story for his own purposes and that his lawyer Edward Morgan told Pearson, etc, and that it made its way to LBJ through both Pearson and Secret Service chief James Rowley. It does seem quite clear based upon the timing of the actual printing of the story, however, that LBJ asked Pearson to hold off printing it until he could use it against Bobby.

Edited September 17, 2004 by Pat Speer

[John Simkin]

The only error I noticed in the article was the contention that LBJ leaked the story of the Cuban backlash to Drew Pearson.  The record indicates that Rosselli created the story for his own purposes and that his lawyer Edward Morgan told Pearson, etc, and that it made its way to LBJ through both Pearson and Secret Service chief James Rowley.  It does seem quite clear based upon the timing of the actual printing of the story, however, that LBJ asked Pearson to hold off printing it until he could use it against Bobby.

I am sure you are right Pat. The question is who asked Rossini to leak the story? Drew Pearson was a journalist who never trusted LBJ. However, throughout his career he found LBJ a useful source of information. LBJ kept files on politicians in the same way as Hoover did (they shared this information as well). Hoover, for example, got information on Dan Reynolds for LBJ (Reynolds, a close friend of Bobby Baker, testified against LBJ in a secret session of the House Rules Committee on the day that JFK was killed). In both cases Pearson refused to publish the stories. Instead, they were taken up by Jack Anderson, who at the time worked under Drew Pearson. Anderson enjoyed a very good relationship with LBJ and published several of his “leaks”. Investigative journalists are always vulnerable to being exploited by devious politicians. Except for the case of Howard Hughes, Pearson was pretty good at publishing the right stories. He played a vital role in bringing down Joe McCarthy. Anderson, who for a while was a close friend of McCarthy, had no real political commitment and tended to publish any scoop he could get hold of. That is why he was used by the CIA to plant disinformation about the JFK case.