Pat Speer

Oh yeah, Bobby Baker. While Williams lost this case, who knows what secret negotiations went on behind the scenes? Willams' most famous legal move was when he arranged for Jimmy Hoffa to get a jury that was mostly black, and then arranged for former heavyweight champion Joe Louis, a tremendous hero to the black community, to come by and shake hands with Hoffa in front of the jury. Hoffa was acquitted.

I just thought I'd throw in my own two cents. While I haven't spent much time thinking about the Skull and Bones I did uncover something one night that I've never seen elsewhere, and it is a little creepy in light of all the suspicion of the S & B. And that's that one of the most prominent families in the history of Yale and the S & B is the Cheney Family of New England. I read up a little about them and found out they made their fortune in the textile industry, and were the dominant silk manufacturers in America for some time. While current VP Dick Cheney is proud of his mid-west background and sells himself as a proud man from Wyoming and Texas, the reality is that his initial attempt at establishing himself was a brief stay at Yale, which he attended for a few semesters before dropping out and crawling back home. This struck me as an odd coincidence, and I wondered to myself if Dick's fling at Yale was not the failed attempt of a middle class mid-western boy to reach the social heights of his high-toned Eastern relatives. And guess what, when I searched Dick's family tree, available on-line, and the names of the silk baron Cheneys, also available on-line, I found that Dick's great grandfather, as I remember it, was from the clan that dominated the Skull and Bones from 1850-1900. Dick is quite likely a S & B wanna-be.

While the JFK case may seem more important, the reality is that if there is a good reason to doubt the official story regarding the attempt on Reagan, then this attempt would be more important, since any conspiracy involving Hinckley would have been by design an attempt to place George HW Bush in the Presidency. Which could very well involve men still active in Washington. I don't believe there was a conspiracy, but it is mighty suspicious that the media immediately seized on the lone-nut angle, even though Hinckley knew Neil Bush and may well have been under the impression that he could help his own father (who was under government investigation) by making Neil's father President. One element of the Hinckley case that was undoubtedly covered-up was his motive. While the media seized upon the idea that Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster, that's only half the story. In Hinckley's letters, re-printed in his parent's account of the shooting, it is clear that he wanted to impress Jodie Foster not so much by killing Reagan, as by bringing about changes in American law, specifically, gun control. (Hinckley was adamantly pro-gun control. Hence, his fixation on Jodie Foster and Taxi Driver.) One can only assume that the White House and members of the media downplayed Hinckley's motives in hopes of avoiding a backlash, whereby the Brady Bill would be rejected despite its merit, in order to send a message to anyone else who would use violence to bring about legislation. By not discussing Hinckley's real motives they avoided the public getting the impression that Hinckley had been successful.

Pamela, it's obvious you've spent more time studying the limousine and the SS men involved than anyone. In light of this, I wonder if you've identified which SS men are cleaning up the car in the Stoughton photo outside Parkland. I'm curious because it seems quite likely to me that one of these men found CE399 and put it on a stretcher he thought to be the President's. I also noticed recently in Doug Horne's notes on the Air Force one audiotapes that there is a statement by Roy Kellerman to Gerald Behn that "I'm sure the Volunteer boys will go over his car and so forth." Is this a reference to the limousine? Is there any reason to believe that SS men loyal to Johnson went through the limousine before the official inspection? (As I remember it, Kinney looked it over on the plane, and Boring and Frazier looked it over later that night. Please refresh me if I'm wrong.) Thanks.

I think Haig and Califano were both telling the truth as they remembered it. Haig probably saw one of the many discredited reports based on Cuban exile and Nicaraguan (and CIA?) disinformation. Califano was probably repeating something LBJ told him after looking at the IG Report on the atttempts on Castro. Of course LBJ was talking for effect and would never have reopened the case due to the political damage it would cause.

Shanet, I basically synthesized information available in Summers' The Arrogance of Power and William Blum's chapter on Greece in Killing Hope. In 63, Karamessines was Helms's top deputy, which made him the ADDP... This was the title Tracy Barnes had when he signed off on the assassination of Trujillo without informing Bissell. The ADDP could also create fake companies for CIA covert activities without higher approval (Source: The Rockefeller Report). This makes him a very dangerous man and exactly the kind of guy who could pull off a CIA-sponsored assassination without McCone's knowledge. Helms was too careful and too political; I've never bought his involvement. But Karamessines? If he was ultra-right and under the sway of Phillips and Joannides (and possibly Hunt), who knows?

Most of the rest of the incorrect info could be simple misunderstandings, but this paragraph causes concern. Where did they get this?? While it's probably just a misunderstanding of Oswald's run-in with Baker in the break room, it is intriguing in that it seems to let the Dallas PD off the hook, while simultaneously spreading the lie that the building was closed off almost immediately. The building was wide-open for at least ten minutes, and there's no testimony at all, as far as I've ever seen, that the Western loading dock roll-up door, which was open during the shooting, was ever closed off.

If they really wanted to capture Angleton Johnny Depp would be the man.

The Hoover memo confirms what we already know, that Hoover was out of the loop and had a terrible grasp of the information. His explanations to Bobby, LBJ, and others all reek of someone acting like he knows more than he does, trying to remember what someone told him on the phone an hour before. The two cops is probably a reference to Baker and Tippitt, but he makes it sound like they were together. The reference to Cuba is almost undoubtedly him mixing up Oswald's going to Russia with his trying to go to Cuba. LBJ's own grasp of the information was so clouded at the time that he told a bunch of Governors on the 25th that Connally's LEFT hand was blown OFF. Which brings up another question entirely. Why were Hoover and LBJ so lackadaisical about figuring out what REALLY happened, and yet so anxious to push what MAY HAVE happened (a lone-nut scenario)? Were they afraid to find out? Were they fairly certain that if they dug too deep it would lead back to someone they knew? Or were they merely in over their heads?

At 4 PM on 11/22/63, Hoover advised Bobby Kennedy that Oswald "went to Cuba on several occasions, but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for." This presupposes that LHO did travel to Cuba, on more than one occasion; that FBI knew it; and had had a chance to ask him about his travels, and purpose for same. Of course, all three of those points run entirely counter to what would eventually transpire in the official version of events. End Quote Robert, I've read an awful lot of stuff and don't ever remember seeing that. Can you tell me where you got that from? Pat

Jim, your research into the Greek connection might lead to your uncovering some mighty big nuggets. I assume you know of the rumors that the right wing of Greece was largely funded by CIA, and that Greek dictator Papadopoulos was the CIA's point man in Greece before his push to overthrow Papandreou. I assume you're also aware that he took the money provided by the CIA to stop Greece from going commie and turned around and pumped it into Nixon's 68 campaign for President (which explains why Nixon picked Spiro Agnew as VP), via Greek-American businessman Thomas Pappas. If it can be established that Karamessines, Joannides, and Walker all played footsie with these guys than we have a whole new prism through which to view things.

Ooops... Double Post.

To be fair about Tower, it should be pointed out that he was Vice-Chairman of the so-called Church Committee, and signed his name to "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders," which went further than any other public document in its criticism of the CIA. A similar committee started in the House of Reps, led by Otis Pike, was not allowed to publish its report. (Although Daniel Schorr snuck a copy to the Village Voice.) On the other hand, the Church Committe was in many ways a "limited hang-out," which along with the behavior of CIA Director William Colby, assured the people that the U.S. was cleaning up its act, even while it was sweeping its worst crimes under the rug. It should be noted that Church and Tower both stated that they didn't believe there was sufficient evidence to begin an inquiry into the CIA's role in the Kennedy Assassination, although I believe they did condone an investigation into the CIA's lack of co-operation with the Warren Commission. It was Senator Schweiker who pushed for a new investigation, and I'm pretty sure his interest was piqued in large part by the possibility of Castro's involvement.

While it's good that Reader's Digest would put it on the cover, the story itself may have an unfortunate effect. When the dictabelt is further discredited it will convince the Posnerites and Jennings-faithful that the conspiracy crowd has been further discredited, when only a minority of those who believe there was a conspiracy care about the dictabelt. Now if Morley had been able to get the cover with an article on Joannides, then we'd be getting somewhere.

I'm not sure what the point is. Under no circumstances was RFK a victim of Islam. Sirhan Sirhan, first of all, was, and remains, a Christian. Second of all, he was not heavily involved in Palestinian activist organizations. The presumption that he killed Kennedy because of Kennedy's defense of Israel in no way implies that his act was on behalf of Islam, after all, Israel discriminates against all Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, alike. Finally, Sirhan Sirhan's real motivation and/or involvement is still unknown. He claims not to know himself. Based on Noguchi's autopsy report, there would seem to have been more than one shooter. If there was a conspiracy, I believe, the selection of Sirhan as fall guy was deliberate. It could very well be that the real killers knew that the selection of a Palestinian would throw those who questioned the JFK assassination, many of them Jewish intellectuals, off the track. That this cynical ploy worked is sad indeed

It's probably just a coincidence but it should be pointed out that the two men in government Oswald wrote to in order to help him with his dishonorable discharge were John Connally and John Tower. Both of them would presumably have been aware of Oswald's history and could therefore have been involved in fingering him as a patsy. I don't necessarily believe this, but it should be acknowledged.

I've read some of Salandria's articles, and find his ideas intriguing, but ultimately flawed. He believes that there was an organized assassination followed by a DELIBERATELY sloppy cover-up. He believes that this was designed to send a message to liberals and concerned Americans that there was a new power block to be reckoned with, and that they were omnipotent, controlling the whole of the Government and the media. I think Salandria kind of punked out, rather than weaving through all the conflicting information to find a truth, he decided that there was a force MAKING all the information conflict. This allowed him to quit his investigation and throw his hands up while retaining his belief that something really bad had occurred. I just don't believe such a unified evil exists. Look at the current administration and how many holes have appeared in their facade since the sham war in Iraq began. People like O'Neil, Clarke, and Powell have all defected, with more to come. Look at Watergate--the President's men scrambled like rats from a sinking ship to save their own tails. Look at Iran-Contra, even Ollie North fingered the President, and George HW Bush was forced to publicly pardon Caspar Weinberger in an attempt to hide his own involvement Still, even after the pardon, Secretary of State George Shultz outed Bush in his memoirs. (He may have even done it before the pardon.) Either way, truth slipped out. While we've all seen evidence that the men in power are sufficiently evil to attempt such a conspiracy, I see no evidence that the men in power are COMPETENT enough to pull it off.

From Judge Motz's decision in the Wells suit against Liddy (When I Was a Kid, pp. 202-213): "According to the Fourth Circuit, the portion of Liddy's remarks on which the case turns is his statement that there were pictures of prostitutes in Wells's desk that were shown to visitors to the DNC headquarters in call girl services. The sole source of this information was Phillip Bailey. The question thus becomes whether Liddy reasonably assessed the veracity of what Bailey told him about the pictures allegedly in Wells's desk. "Bailey has a history of mental illness. . . . Liddy was required to examine Bailey's statements with caution and weigh them with great care. . . . I find that Wells failed to produce sufficient evidence at trial from which a jury could reasonably find that he acted negligently in giving credit to them. . . . “A call girl theory of Watergate had emerged in the literature in 1984 when James Hougan had authored a book entitled Secret Agenda. . . . The record also establishes that Liddy tested what Bailey told him by independent investigation. . . . "Wells presented no evidence at trial concerning anything else she kept in her desk in which the Watergate burglars might have been interested, and she suggested no alternative explanation as to why Martinez possessed the key. . . . "In sum, the record is replete with facts that Liddy could reasonably believe support Bailey’s statements about the contents of Wells’s desk. . . . Wells had the burden of proving that Liddy lacked a reasonable basis for expressing the allegedly defamatory remarks about her. . . . (W)hatever the truth (of Watergate) may be, one thing should be certain: free debate about important public issues must be tolerated.” Liddy’s version of Dean’s suit (pp. 172-174, 222): “Dean’s process server came to the studio from which I was broadcasting and served me live, on the air. I asked him how much he thought the papers weighed and he answered, ‘About two pounds.’ I said, ‘Good, because I’m going to shove them up Dean’s ass.’ Figuratively, that’s just what I did. . . . I tried for eight years to get Dean to trial. . . . Following Dean’s instructions, his lawyers withdrew most of his charges against me, and the judge dismissed the rest. . . . Dean was noticed as a witness for Miss Wells at the trial of her lawsuit against me. To the surprise of no one who knows him, once again he didn’t show up. . . . It has taken ten years and the expenditure of great energy and treasure to crush the Watergate rat, John Dean. It is personally gratifying, of course.” Ron <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for posting Ron. So the Wells case was thrown out not because the judge believed Liddy's story but because Wells failed to show that Liddy lacked a reason to believe it. Liddy's comments on Dean are indicative of his real motivation. The fact that Hunt, Magruder and Colson, who would be in a position to know, fail to share his suspicions of Dean, is revealing.

In Maheu's testimony, he may have said something like that. But he was lying. Here's what he says in his autobio: "When I presented Rosselli with the proposition, I made it clear that anything we talked about was strictly confidential. Nobody could know the details--not even the rest of the U.S. Government (Ironic in that it was Maheu who told the FBI)...If anyone connects you with the U.S. government, I will deny it" I told him. (Also ironic due to his immediately confirming Giancana's role to Edward Bennett Williams.) This was before Rosselli ever met O'Connell. O'Connell testified that Rosselli guessed he was CIA from the beginning but that Rosselli said O'Connell shouldn't confirm it, for both of their sake. This would seem to be a game Maheu and Rosselli worked out beforehand since Maheu has now admitted he told Rosselli who O'Connell was BEFORE they ever met. Maheu was just bad news. He was an undercover agent in WW2 and he never came all the way back--it's impossible to see where the man starts and where the lies end. After RFK met with the CIA and decided to drop the wiretapping charges against Maheu, he briefed Hoover on the CIA's use of Maheu and the mob. On May 10, 1961, Hoover wrote "I expressed great amazement at this in view of the BAD REPUTATION of MAHEU and the horrible judgment in using a man of Giancana's background in the project. The Attorney General SHARED THE SAME VIEWS." Thus, in their eyes, Maheu and Giancana were both rotten. One wonders from whence Maheu received his wretched reputation--I would guess it came from his role in the Galindez disappearance. I suspect that Maheu and Associates were in the assassination business, and not merely wire-tapping , and that both men knew this.

Fascinating information about Robert Anderson. Is the article online? I am interested in discovering the names of the oil and armaments companies that Tower was working with. I have ordered a copy of Tower’s autobiography, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir. I have also ordered a copy of Rodney Stich’s Defrauding America, that apparently looks at Tower relationship with the CIA and the armaments industry. Does anybody else have copies of these books or any other information that links Tower to the Suite 8F Group? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKtowerJ.htm <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I found the article in a 1972 book called The Borzoi Reader in Latin American History which I picked up for a quarter at a bookstore. Not everything in my post came from the article, e.g. Bonsal never states that the Venezuelan oil was over-priced, and he doesn't trash Anderson by name. He does make it clear the Secretary of the Treasury met with the oil executives in Washington and urged them not to co-operate with Castro, without informing the State Department of this meeting. Bonsal, by the way, is listed as having been the Ambassador to Cuba from 59 to 61, the time in question, so he should have been informed. The Borzoi reader sums up the article by stating that Bonsal maintains the United States did not force Castro and Che Guevara into the Soviet camp but was "unwisely cooperative in removing obstacles to their chosen path." Which I believe is a diplomatic way of saying the Eisenhower Administration, and Anderson in particular, screwed up bigtime. I have a 1962 book by Tower with a forward by Barry Goldwater, in which Tower vomits forth Goldwater's anti-communist and states rights gospel. No mention of his cronies. I do find it hard to believe a Goldwater Republican would play ball with LBJ, but politics (and greed) make strange bedfellows.

I have lots of problems with Maheu's book. He says nice things about Giancana but makes it sound like Rosselli talked too much when he opened up to Jack Anderson about the CIA/mafia hits. Maheu leaves out that he himself blabbed about the CIA/mafia hits to Howard Hughes/the FBI/ Edward Bennett Williams and Edward Morgan--who told Drew Pearson, LBJ, and Earl Warren--and had asked the CIA to confirm his role with the FBI so that the wiretapping charges brought against him could be dropped--before Rosselli talked to anyone. Maheu makes it sound like Giancana thanked him for his silence on the CIA/mafia hits, when Giancana blabbed about his own involvement to a number of people, including Williams. I suspect Giancana thanked Maheu for his silence on another hit entirely.

As I recall, she did not lose her suit based on anyone believing Liddy's theory. The case was determined, as I remember, based upon whether or not she was a public figure, and whether she was in any way damaged by his conjecure over whether or not she ran a call-girl ring. I think the Deans had a separate suit which stretched on for years.

60 Minutes ran the Hughes connection story to tie in with The Aviator's nomination for Best Picture, and the resulting interest in Hughes. The call-girl ring as primary motivation for the break-in is absolute nonsense, designed to cast Dean as the disloyal bad guy bringing about the fall of the saintly Richard Nixon. Read the transcripts to the tapes and look at Haldeman's diary--Nixon was paranoid about O'Brien. Look at the record--it is undisputed that Hunt and Liddy had previously discussed breaking into Maheu crony Hank Greenspun's safe, supposedly to find dirt on Muskie, with the help of Hughes security people, who just so happened to have an interest in the other contents of the safe. Furthermore, Hunt , Dean, and Magruder, to this day, insist that the call-girl ring never came up and that they were pressured from above to find out what Larry O'Brien had over at the DNC. Magruder said that Colson told him to go after O'Brien for the "information on the Florida dealings," an obvious reference to Danner and Maheu's pay-offs to Mitchell and Rebozo in Florida. (A separate Watergate investigation found that Danner gave Nixon's 1972 campaign an additional 150k in March 1970 after Mitchell over-rode the anti-trust division of the Justice Department and gave Hughes the okay to buy the Dunes Hotel. Maheu, Danner, and Mitchell all flew to Key Biscayne the next morning.) Liddy doesn't trust anyone less macho than himself, and the Silent Coup theory appeals to his sense of martyrdom, but he's way off. While the question about the key to Ida Wells' desk has never been answered, as far as I know, it should be pointed out that Gonzalez was a locksmith and could have broken into any desk. Since part of the Silent Coup/'Liddy theory rests on the belief that McCord never actually bugged the DNC, it should be pointed out that in McCord's book, printed years before the development of this theory, he mocks the FBI for failing to find the bugs after the break-in and points out that one was found months later and the other one was not found for almost a year, still operational. It should also be pointed out that a number of people acknowledged the existence of transcripts made from the bugs. If so many people knew about the transcripts and the break-in was not authorized, wouldn't SOMEONE in the loop have asked who authorized the break-in? If the second break-in was the only one not authorized, wouldn't NIXON himself have pointed this out many moons ago? After all, he was ready to believe the CIA was behind it. Why not Dean, and his "pretty wife?" As for Maheu's faking that Hughes was alive, it should be remembered that Hughes called a press conference via phone to denounce Clifford Irving's fraudulent autobio of himself, and that the members of the press agreed to a man that it was the real Hughes on the phone. In this press conference Hughes called Maheu a thief, and Maheu sued him for libel. Somehow I don't think Maheu would have let himself get tied up in court with the Mormon mafia if he knew that Hughes was really dead. He simply would have black-mailed them. 60 Minutes had it right, fellas.

There is one VERY FAMOUS case where the hired assassin testified that his intent was to kill a foreign head of state with some pills, pills which were untraceable and would simulate a heart attack... Give up??? The assassin's name was Johnny Rosselli. The proposed victim's name was Fidel Castro. It seems our friends at Technical Services Division developed these abilities a long time ago, bringing up the question of just how many "heart attacks" in the years since were really "hits." It kinda makes one wonder about Adlai Stevenson dropping dead on the street after criticizing Johnson and the Viet Nam War while in Paris. As I remember, Howard Hunt was in Paris at that time.

I believe he explained that somewhere as being a sexist reference to Marina; evidently he felt her bitching about sex had somehow contributed to Oswald's flipping out and killing the president. De Mohrenschildt felt she was abusive as well.