The Media and the JFK Assassination

[John Simkin]

Robert, I think you're missing part of the picture.  The media botched their initial reporting of the Kennedy assassination so badly that they felt they should play ball with the government  to help restore order and confidence in American institutions.  By 1966, however, after Weisberg, Epstein and Lane's books were released, the media was kinda split, with some publications wanting to give the critics a fair shake and others wanting to shut them down.  The November, 1966 review of the autopsy photos and Boswell's statements were part of the government's response.  When Life came out that Thanksgiving with their article on Connally, this shifted the momentum noticeably towards the critics.  CBS then contacted McCloy and began strategizing on how to reverse this momentum.  This resulted in both the so-called Miliary Review of the autopsy materials, and the CBS 4-part defense of the Warren Commission in June, 67. This defense, by the way, did assert that the WC was wrong about a number of things, including the order of the shots.  In late 67. after Thompson's book came out, raising further questions and even gaining the support of the Saturday Evening Post, the government responded withyet another review of the autopsy materials, by what is known as the Clark Panel review.  Their report tried to answer some of Thompson's questions by changing the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, a movement which I believe (and will eventually prove) was a mistake.

So to say the media has always bought and sold the government line is a gross misrepresentation of history.  The attitudes' of various networks and publications have changed with the weather.  After all, wasn't The Men Who Killed Kennedy shown by a large and wealthy media conglomerate?  Wasn't JFK financed and distributed by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Weren't many of the most influential conspiracy books distributed by mainstream publishers? My take on Life Magazine is that they were all game to push for conspiracy as long as it was a foreign conspiracy, but got gun-shy when Garrison started talking smack about Johnson and the CIA.

The current battle as I see it is not between the research community and the evil government, or the research community and the evil media, but between the research community and itself.  As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet. I was once a record buyer for a large record wholesaler.  I would read 30-100 one-sheets a day on upcoming record releases.  There were certain buzzwords, particularly on rap releases, that I learned meant the record had no story--i.e. that no one outside the artist's friends would buy it.  Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.

[John Simkin]

I think it is now fairly clear that the CIA and FBI have been actively involved in manipulating the reporting of the JFK assassination since 1963.

In his Senate report, “Select Committee to Study Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities” (April, 1976), Frank Church argued that there were several reasons why the CIA should not be involved in media manipulation. This report was signed by all members of the committee including the three Republicans, John Tower, Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater.

(1) That under the terms of the 1947 National Security Act it was illegal for the CIA to be engaged in operations directed at Americans within the United States. The committee pointed out that the reason for this prohibition was to protect the “American people from the possibility that the CIA might act in any way that would have an impact upon their rights” (see pages 135-139 of the report).

(2) Church’s investigation discovered that the CIA paid “journalists to devise and place propaganda” in the media. The CIA also planted smear stories about people they considered to be dangerous. Church believed this CIA activity was wrong for several reasons. For example, it was illegal (see point 1). A second reason was that the “diversity and legitimacy” of the media needs to be “rigorously protected”. The committee felt that the planting of propaganda by the CIA was undermining this process (see pages 179-180).

(3) Church points out that the CIA were unwilling to provide all the documents they sought in order to fully discover the way that the CIA manipulated the media. In fact, it mainly had to rely on information discovered by investigative journalists working for left-wing journals such as Ramparts and the Nation. However, the CIA did provide a list of 50 journalists who were “part of a network of several hundred individuals” who attempted to influence public opinion by placing “covert propaganda” in the media. William Colby, claimed in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HSCI) that the CIA had focused its efforts on those people living abroad and therefore had not acted illegally. That was supported by the restricted list of names provided by the CIA to the HSCI. The suspicion was of course that this was the reason why the CIA was unwilling to name the full list of journalists working on their behalf.

The HSCI discovered that even if these stories were “planted” in foreign newspapers and journals, there was no way that this information could not be stopped coming back into the United States. In fact, several CIA agents testified that this so-called “fall-out” was a fully intended consequence of the operation (pages 199-200).

Over the years released documents show that the CIA was indeed using journalists to plant stories in the American media. This includes several journalists based in the Miami area. See for example the cases of Hal Hendrix and those journalists working for the Miami Herald in the 1960s. William Turner also provides the names of several journalists who he has discovered were working on behalf of the CIA and the FBI (The FBI of course had its own Operation Mockingbird. You can read about that in William Sullivan’s book, The Bureau – see pages 80-100).

(4) The discovery of the CIA’s covert book publishing programme revealed that Colby was lying about only targeting the foreign media. Well over a thousand different books were produced, subsidized or sponsored directly by the CIA between 1947 and 1967 (see pages 192-193). One example of this program was the Penkovskiy Papers published in 1965. The CIA established a trust fund and this was used to submit the manuscript to the publishers. The company published the book in good faith and was completely unaware that they were publishing the book on behalf of the CIA (page 194).

Church published details of a CIA document that was written by the chief of the agency’s propaganda unit in 1961 (see page 193 of report):

“The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage. Our control over the writer will have to be enforced usually be paying him for the time he works on the manuscript, or at least advancing him sums which he might have to repay… the (CIA) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”

Church also discovered the person responsible for publishing this CIA fronted books in the 1960s. It was our old friend, E. Howard Hunt (page 198). Hunt was also in charge of persuading journalists to write good or bad reviews of books that the CIA had an “interest” in. For example, Hunt testified before the (HSCI) where he gave an account of how he arranged for a book by Edgar Snow to be reviewed in the New York Times by a CIA asset. This was done because it was felt that Edgar Snow had provided a “sympathetic view of the emerging China”.

(5) Church and his committee also raised the issue of taxpayers money to fund the publication to pro-CIA material. As this is done covertly, no financial records are kept. They therefore pointed out that this makes it impossible for Congress to evaluate the value of this work (page 250). Church pointed out that the funding of certain book companies enabled them to “compete unfairly” with other companies who were not receiving these subsidies (page 251).

(6) Frank Church’s committee discovered that Desmond FitzGerald had issued an order in 1967 preventing the CIA taking part in covert media operations in America. However, this order was ignored. As a result of the committee’s investigations, the CIA announced new guidelines in 1976: “Effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” (page 195).

However, as Church pointed out, only about half of the original 50 names were actually employed by the CIA. The rest only received “occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” for their help. We now know that other journalists, for example, Hal Hendrix, received information from the CIA in return for their covert activities. These journalists were particularly useful and of course their names were not on the list submitted by the CIA.

George Bush, who was Director of the CIA when the Frank Church report was published, immediately promised that he would follow William Colby’s guidelines issued in 1973 that the agency would not undertake any activities in “which there is a risk of influencing domestic public opinion, either directly or indirectly.” Of course, Bush and those who have followed in his footsteps have not kept this promise.

Frank Chruch did not actually look at the case of the JFK assassination. However, evidence has emerged that the CIA was involved in shaping the way the public viewed this event. For example, by using the Freedom of Information Act, William Turner discovered that the CIA established Operation Nightingale (see pages 299-300 of Rearview Mirror) to smear critics of the Warren Commission report. According to CIA document 1035-960 this includes employing “propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

This can be seen by the way that the first two books published on the JFK assassination that suggested that Oswald had not been a lone gunman were treated. The authors of these books, Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) and Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?) were both falsely accused of being KGB agents by reviewers when their books were published in 1964. Of course, this is a similar tactic used by Tim Gratz on this Forum.

Mark Lane explains in his book Plausible Denial how he had difficult getting Rush to Judgement published (pages 24 and 25) in the United States. Lane eventually got a British company, Bodley Head to publish his manuscript in 1966. This resulted in Holt, Rinehart and Winston agreeing to publish it in the United States. The company’s editor-in-chief, Arthur A. Cohen, later told Lane that the FBI ordered the American publisher to cancel the contract. It refused and it soon became the number-one-selling book in the United States. This was disastrous for Operation Mockingbird/Nightingale. Other publishers now attempted to make money out of other books that attacked the conclusions of the Warren Report.

Mark Lane has also been able to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how the CIA attempted to control the reviews of Rush to Judgement. One document said:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (v) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein’s theory of attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background.”

Lane goes on to point out that the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and all the other major newspapers followed this line in their reviews of Rush to Judgement. It was only Norman Mailer’s review in the Houston Post who did not “march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies’ effort to destroy the First Amendment” (page 72, Plausible Denial).

In his book Rearview Mirror, Bill Turner explains how the CIA used Jim Phelan and Edward Jay Epstein to publish articles attacking the work of Jim Garrison (pages 299-300). Turner also reveals how Life Magazine journalists, Dick Billings, Miguel Acoca and Sandy Smith were used to smear Jim Garrison with stories about him being linked to mobsters like Carlos Marcello. CIA assets were also out in force to write critical reviews of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Turner also argues that books like Gerald Posner’s Case Closed relied heavily on help provided by the CIA. According to Turner, Posner told Jim Marrs that the book was commissioned by Robert Loomis after he was contacted by the CIA offering “full cooperation” in helping with the writing of the book. This included access to Yuri Nosenko, the KGB defector, who was arguing at that time that Oswald was a “lone-nut” and was not part of any conspiracy (page 300, Rearview Mirror).

Randon House editor, Robert Loomis, has been associated with the publication of several anti-conspiracy books. Loomis admitted to Publishers Weekly that he had a political agenda in publishing these books: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in government. They (the public) believe that everybody’s in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That’s what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime.”

The CIA also had a program where right-wing, wealthy sympathizers, provided money for the publication of books. This group of supporters included Haroldson L. Hunt who paid for Michael Eddowes’s book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, to be published in 1975. As they title suggests, Eddowes argues that JFK was killed by the KGB. I wonder why the CIA and the right-wing extremists were pushing this theory?

[John Dolva]

I don't know how co-ordinated COINTELPRO (FBI) and MOCKINGBIRD (CIA) were but here is a sample of what the FBI did/(does?) with media and manufactured 'evidence'. In this case they created a file of false data in the form of documents and audio. They wire tapped Dr. Martin Luther Kings phone and spliced innocent conversations together to create a story that they then anonymously used to threaten King in the hope that he would committ suicide wfore going to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace price. The FBI had opened a COMINFIL file on Dr. King based on a couple of coincidences where a SWP member at one point and a CPUSA member at another had had a public chat with Dr. King. Based on this they decided King was a communist.

As they were unable to find any real evidence of any dubious activities by Dr. King they decided to manufacture some. To the editor of Newsweeks credit, he refused to have anything to do with it (however I'm not aware of any story in Newsweek att thre time mentioning any such thing. Dr, King also refused to be intimidated but unfortunately he then became a target for termination.

(from the 'some more coincidences' topic)

"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."""

____________________________________

Further::: the US ARMY in dealing with domestic issues at the time had its own covert operations. They relied heavily on informants and media reports. Therefore there is a tie in here with MOCKINGBIRD and COINTELPRO.

Excerpt from "IMPROPER SURVEILLANCE OF PRIVATE CITIZENS BY THE MILITARY"

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/c...lreportIIIk.htm

"For the first time in its history, 48 the Army authorized a massive covert intelligence operation to be undertaken in connection with a civilian demonstration. In all, 130 Army intelligence agents were used in connection with the demonstration. 49 Some were used to penetrate protest groups coming to Washington: some were used to penetrate the groups in Washington who were planning the March, and still others were used to penetrate and report on the line of march. 50 Army agents, moreover, took still and motion pictures of the crowds, and secretly monitored amateur radio bands to learn of the demonstrators' plans. 51

Even after this large covert operation, the Army apparently was still relying primarily on civilian authorities and the media for information on civilian "dissenters." 52 In a memorandum to the Undersecretary of the Army from the Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence in late 1967, the Under Secretary was told:

Army intelligence is not engaged in any concerted investigative effort to determine the routes of domestic discontent or the channels it will follow. The quantity and quality of third agency reports is sufficient to allow proper and timely analysis of the domestic situation so that commanders in the field will be properly informed at all times. 53

But if the Army had refrained from widespread use of its own operatives, it was nonetheless increasingly relied on by the White House and the Justice Department to provide information on civil unrest. In a meeting at the White House on January 10, 1968, for example, Attorney General Ramsey Clark told those present 54 that "every resource" must be used in the domestic intelligence effort and he criticized the Army for not being more selective in the reports that it was sending to the Justice Department. 55 According to former Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson, this was but one of several meetings at the White House where the Army was urged to take a greater role in the civil disturbance collection effort. 56 "

[John Simkin]

Despite the media campaign to persuade the American public that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, the vast majority have refused to believe it. Here are the polls over the years:

Date (Blue)

% Suspected a Conspiracy (Red)

% Think it Was One Man (Green)

Sep. 1966 (46) (34)

Feb. 1967 (44) (35)

Sep. 1967 (60) (24)

Nov. 1983 (80) (13)

Dec. 1991 (73) (11)

Nov. 2003 (70) (22)

[David G. Healy]

John Simkin quoted Pat Speer

[...]

Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.

___________

What makes anyone (in this day and age) think and/or believe getting the story to a "credible enough" Mike Wallace type is THE answer? Does that kind of placement and perspective give a story needed legs? Does that make the story more truthful than a lowly 'blog' version originating from Tanzania?

Reality check: the media (music industry and its social commentary included) is in the business of selling 'media' and/or advertising in the same, PERIOD! ALL media manufacuturers have their individual brand of 'truth'. Then, there's the intelligence community!

Reputation (Mike Wallace/60 Minutes included) does NOT necessarily equate = the truth. Best any of these outlets can do is 'vet' their sources.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

For those interested in the media aspects of the coverup, I strongly recommend Joan Mellen's new book. Rarely have i seen so many journalists named as expllicit cia assets.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Despite the media campaign to persuade the American public that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, the vast majority have refused to believe it. Here are the polls over the years:

Date (Blue)

% Suspected a Conspiracy (Red)

% Think it Was One Man (Green)

Sep. 1966 (46) (34)

Feb. 1967 (44) (35)

Sep. 1967 (60) (24)

Nov. 1983 (80) (13)

Dec. 1991 (73) (11)

Nov. 2003 (70) (22)

________________________________________________________________________________

_________

Which, not unlike "overacting" in the play, should serve as an indicator to someone.

Tom

P.S. Exactly how is it that this obviously "highly informed" and "highly educated" electorate is so accurate in interpretation of the facts related to the assassination of JFK, yet so confused in regards to the election of "Politicians" who make up Congress and the Presidential Office which has supported the military necessity of Iraq?

[Lynne Foster]

Funny you recommend Joan Mellen's book, haven't heard anything about it in the media. Guess it's only a matter of time before she appears on CNN, isn't it?

I recommend this because it is relevant to the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, and that is why I read and post on this message board --to share information about that.

Frankly, I genuinely believe that Nixonian, media tactics are conspiring to cover up the truth, and recommending a foolish book that I will never read because it is about a foolish man, is frankly so silly, that I cannot possibly contain the opportunity to declare it. It is easy to hide admiration for Richard Nixon but it is not possible to hide Nixonian tactics.

From Patrick J. Buchanan to Richard Nixon, November 10, 1972:

"A small, ideological clique has managed to acquire monopoly control of the most powerful medium of communication known to man; and they regularly use threat unrivaled power to politically assault the President and his Administration. This is not a question of free speech, or free press -it is a basic question of power.... What I would like to do in this area is work with those of a similar cast of mind to develop, quietly, a media strategy for dealing with the Left combination of the networks - and other powerful organs of opinion. It would include our defences against the network, a strategy against their monopoly control, and a thought-out program for cleaning out public television of that clique of Nixon-haters who have managed to nest there at taxpayer expense."

Frankly, I am a little surprised by the fact that the board has failed to clean me out, in true, Buchanan style. I don't know why free speech is still tolerated, given the obsession to disseminate the pre-packaged message -"oh, I know Nixon was involved in the Kennedy assassination, but the tape was erased LOL, so get over it Lynne, Nixon may be guilty, but you can't prove it." Needless to say, there are two, divergent opinions here. You can either believe that the dots are impossible to connect because the tape has been erased or you can think that there are more than enough dots to complete the picture as clearly as one can expect, given the obsession to cover up the truth.

Now those who think that the dots are impossible to connect do not in fact belong here because they have nothing to contribute.

In my opinion, those who value power and personal assault more than truth and principle are trying to control every medium, even this thread on this message board.

If I hear one more word about the effort to rehabilitate a loser/xxxx like Jim Garrison, [he said he believed in the Warrent Report until 1966, helloooo] I will not be able to contain myself.

Edited November 16, 2005 by Lynne Foster

[Owen Parsons]

Funny you recommend Joan Mellen's book, haven't heard anything about it in the media. Guess it's only a matter of time before she appears on CNN, isn't it?

I recommend this because it is relevant to the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, and that is why I read and post on this message board --to share information about that.

Frankly, I genuinely believe that Nixonian, media tactics are conspiring to cover up the truth, and recommending a foolish book that I will never read because it is about a foolish man, is frankly so silly, that I cannot possibly contain the opportunity to declare it. It is easy to hide admiration for Richard Nixon but it is not possible to hide Nixonian tactics.

From Patrick J. Buchanan to Richard Nixon, November 10, 1972:

"A small, ideological clique has managed to acquire monopoly control of the most powerful medium of communication known to man; and they regularly use threat unrivaled power to politically assault the President and his Administration. This is not a question of free speech, or free press -it is a basic question of power.... What I would like to do in this area is work with those of a similar cast of mind to develop, quietly, a media strategy for dealing with the Left combination of the networks - and other powerful organs of opinion. It would include our defences against the network, a strategy against their monopoly control, and a thought-out program for cleaning out public television of that clique of Nixon-haters who have managed to nest there at taxpayer expense."

Frankly, I am a little surprised by the fact that the board has failed to clean me out, in true, Buchanan style. I don't know why free speech is still tolerated, given the obsession to disseminate the pre-packaged message -"oh, I know Nixon was involved in the Kennedy assassination, but the tape was erased LOL, so get over it Lynne, Nixon may be guilty, but you can't prove it." Needless to say, there are two, divergent opinions here. You can either believe that the dots are impossible to connect because the tape has been erased or you can think that there are more than enough dots to complete the picture as clearly as one can expect, given the obsession to cover up the truth.

Now those who think that the dots are impossible to connect do not in fact belong here because they have nothing to contribute.

In my opinion, those who value power and personal assault more than truth and principle are trying to control every medium, even this thread on this message board.

If I hear one more word about the effort to rehabilitate a loser/xxxx like Jim Garrison, [he said he believed in the Warrent Report until 1966, helloooo] I will not be able to contain myself.

Jim Garrison believed in the Warren Report for as long as he did because he hadn't bothered to actually read it before then, helloooo. You still have not engaged with the rebuttal to your Mat Wilson Jim Garrison article that I posted weeks ago.

If you expect any conspiracy oriented book on the JFK assassination to end up on CNN, you haven't seriously followed this case. Only Posner and McAdams end up on the major news networks.

Stop spamming the Mat Wilson link, everyone has seen it by now.

Edited November 16, 2005 by Owen Parsons

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Mellens Book is the most thoroughly documented examples of disinformation about any single figure that I have ever read.

It includes direct quotes from the disinformers themselves, and documents the connections between intelligence agencies and journalists within Newsweek, NBC, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

As such is should be read as much as a study of disinformation as of Garrison himself.

[Lynne Foster]

Mellens Book is the most thoroughly documented examples of disinformation about any single figure that I have ever read.

It includes direct quotes from the disinformers themselves, and documents the connections between intelligence agencies and journalists within Newsweek, NBC, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

As such is should be read as much as a study of disinformation as of Garrison himself.

There is so much disinformation today, it is not possible to keep up. If what you say is correct, and I trust that it is, then Mellens book is indeed useful in that regard, but if it rehabilitates Jim Garrison, it is counterproductive, in terms of exposing the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

That is why I harped on you and I apologize for that.

The CIA is far more powerful today than it was when John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States. Indeed, I do not think that it is possible for the CIA to get any more powerful than it is today.

There is every reason to believe, given what I am reading on this thread, that the CIA has inherited the responsibility to cover up the assasssination of John F. Kennedy, and if you simultaneously distort Garrison's role in the effort to distort the truth, then you inadvertently create the impression that Garrison was right all along.

Blaming the CIA for EVERYTHING is counterproductive, because that would effectively be a license to manufacture history, and if I recall correctly, Hunt had planted some false memos to distort Kennedy's Vietnam record.

What I am suggesting is that it is possible to blame the CIA for people like John McAdams without blaming the very same people for conspiring to murder the President.

I think this is an important distinction that should not be blurred, to maintain the integrity of what we are supposed to be discussing here.

If the CIA wanted to expose the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, supposing that their hands are not tied by Nixonian legislation, they could do it in a heartbeat.

Joan Mellen's book sounds interesting, but it doesn't sound relevant, regarding the effort to expose the truth about the assassination.

I haven't read it, and I am certainly open to changing my mind if relevant connections are made, but today's CIA cannot change Harold Weisberg's view regarding Jim Garrison.

Edited November 16, 2005 by Lynne Foster

[Terry Mauro]

Funny you recommend Joan Mellen's book, haven't heard anything about it in the media. Guess it's only a matter of time before she appears on CNN, isn't it?

I recommend this because it is relevant to the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, and that is why I read and post on this message board --to share information about that.

Frankly, I genuinely believe that Nixonian, media tactics are conspiring to cover up the truth, and recommending a foolish book that I will never read because it is about a foolish man, is frankly so silly, that I cannot possibly contain the opportunity to declare it. It is easy to hide admiration for Richard Nixon but it is not possible to hide Nixonian tactics.

From Patrick J. Buchanan to Richard Nixon, November 10, 1972:

"A small, ideological clique has managed to acquire monopoly control of the most powerful medium of communication known to man; and they regularly use threat unrivaled power to politically assault the President and his Administration. This is not a question of free speech, or free press -it is a basic question of power.... What I would like to do in this area is work with those of a similar cast of mind to develop, quietly, a media strategy for dealing with the Left combination of the networks - and other powerful organs of opinion. It would include our defences against the network, a strategy against their monopoly control, and a thought-out program for cleaning out public television of that clique of Nixon-haters who have managed to nest there at taxpayer expense."

Frankly, I am a little surprised by the fact that the board has failed to clean me out, in true, Buchanan style. I don't know why free speech is still tolerated, given the obsession to disseminate the pre-packaged message -"oh, I know Nixon was involved in the Kennedy assassination, but the tape was erased LOL, so get over it Lynne, Nixon may be guilty, but you can't prove it." Needless to say, there are two, divergent opinions here. You can either believe that the dots are impossible to connect because the tape has been erased or you can think that there are more than enough dots to complete the picture as clearly as one can expect, given the obsession to cover up the truth.

Now those who think that the dots are impossible to connect do not in fact belong here because they have nothing to contribute.

In my opinion, those who value power and personal assault more than truth and principle are trying to control every medium, even this thread on this message board.

If I hear one more word about the effort to rehabilitate a loser/xxxx like Jim Garrison, [he said he believed in the Warrent Report until 1966, helloooo] I will not be able to contain myself.

*******************************************************************

"I recommend this because it is relevant to the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, and that is why I read and post on this message board --to share information about that."

Gee, that's mighty white of you.

From Patrick J. Buchanan to Richard Nixon, November 10, 1972:

"A small, ideological clique has managed to acquire monopoly control of the most powerful medium of communication known to man; and they regularly use threat unrivaled power to politically assault the President and his Administration. This is not a question of free speech, or free press -it is a basic question of power.... What I would like to do in this area is work with those of a similar cast of mind to develop, quietly, a media strategy for dealing with the Left combination of the networks - and other powerful organs of opinion. It would include our defences against the network, a strategy against their monopoly control, and a thought-out program for cleaning out public television of that clique of Nixon-haters who have managed to nest there at taxpayer expense."

"Frankly, I am a little surprised by the fact that the board has failed to clean me out, in true, Buchanan style. I don't know why free speech is still tolerated, given the obsession to disseminate the pre-packaged message -"oh, I know Nixon was involved in the Kennedy assassination, but the tape was erased LOL, so get over it Lynne, Nixon may be guilty, but you can't prove it.""

And, that's most likely because it's already been re-hashed ad nauseum in another thread, eons ago, on this forum, and nobody gives a rat's ass about your regurgitation of it, skewed a la Dulles style. FWIW

[Dawn Meredith]

Funny you recommend Joan Mellen's book, haven't heard anything about it in the media. Guess it's only a matter of time before she appears on CNN, isn't it?

Here she goes again demonstrating her utter lack of knwledge of how the US media works. (Canadian too, I grew up there). Authors of books about the assassination of JFK are NOT EVER featured on CNN. The Corporate media hosts Posner on this issue. Surely you are aware of THIS??

Your condescending attitude toward the posters here, indeed outright hatred, makes me wonder if your weren't abused as a child.

If you're so unhappy here why don't you find a forum to your liking.

Dawn

[Lynne Foster]

Here she goes again demonstrating her utter lack of knwledge of how the US media works. (Canadian too, I grew up there). Authors of books about the assassination of JFK are NOT EVER featured on CNN. The Corporate media hosts Posner on this issue. Surely you are aware of THIS??

Your condescending attitude toward the posters here, indeed outright hatred, makes me wonder if your weren't abused as a child.

If you're so unhappy here why don't you find a forum to your liking.

Dawn

Maybe you are right, I am not as wonderful as you are,

so maybe you can help out your student here because he appears to be stumped.

Edited November 17, 2005 by Lynne Foster

[Guest Stephen Turner]

The title of this thread is Media and JFK assassination, the first two posts by John Simpkin, and John Dolva were very productive, and informative. I cant help but notice we are now back to idol speculation about Nixon and Garrison, anyone want to guess exactly where the moment if dislocation occurs? Lynne, please stop spamming this thread, who knows, you might even learn something. Come back Tim, all is forgiven. Steve.