Shanet Clark

Members:

This is the paper I posted when I joined the Forum in 2004.

I was threatened with legal action by a former member and have been away, but now I am back.

If you havent' read my theory, you may be interested in it .........

"History, one thousand years hence, will see a shorthand record of the state-approved coup d’etat.

The future’s historians will see a group of World War II-era presidents, followed by the assassination of President Kennedy and right then, almost simultaneously, the rapid ratification of the twenty-fifth amendment to the United States Constitution. Then follows the futile Southeast Asian land war, the Civil Rights Acts and urban race riots, in the future textbooks.........

Other details about the decades will recede, one thousand years from now, the Beatles, maybe, a walk on the Moon - just shorthand survives - in the future historians’ understanding of our United States history.

I won’t dig out my T.B. MacCaulay, my Thomas Carlyle, my Tott, Elton, or my dusty old Edward Gibbon for you, but suffice it to say, as one who has read political history, that kings and emperors wrote and re-wrote the record of their illegitimate ascensions, at will and after the fact, thoughout all of our recorded history, across the world.

To believe in them makes you a positivist, a sucker, a naïve believer in progress and the State’s eternal accuracy, honesty and diligence.

I will not footnote or add a bibliography to this piece. The information you all are aware of, it is public and the facts are well known. I believe the theme, the thesis, the theory I present here follows from the facts, both inductively and deductively. Inductively, it makes sense of all the specifics, all the questionable government acts - and deductively it follows from this general principle: People in power tend to cover their tracks when they arrive illegitimately.

Historically, however one got into office, if he was finally Emperor or King or President, it was legal.

It had to be “legal.”

Now in the civil republic that we call the United States, in fall of 1963,

certain forms were followed and certain associations were formed.

Acts were committed that were apparently crimes, but they were actually quite “legal,” under the secret regulations and security clearances then in existence, inside the Pentagon and White House, and then made legal again -

The trace of the actions and the identities of the actors are found in a few paragraphs of Constitutional forgiveness, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, written in 1965 and ratified in 1967. A kind of ‘killing under color of law’ theory emerges from the study of the period, from the biographies and history of the U.S. leadership in the 1960s.

Much hinges on the Cabinet. The 25th amendment tells us that all or part of the Cabinet majority, with the Vice President also on board, shall have the power to decide on the incapacity of the sitting president. This means the role of Treasury Secretary C.D. Dillon becomes crucial in the deed and the aftermath. By deed and aftermath I mean principally, the Dealey Plaza ambush and the Warren Commission’s investigation. Read the twenty-fifth amendment, I think you will see that Vice President Lyndon Johnson is in there, and so is Treasury Secretary C. Douglass Dillon.

The Treasury Secretary is the top of the chain of command for the Secret Service. If Occam’s Razor points to too many suspects, then a unity forms from that, a super-ordinate explanation, an over-arching scheme, both simple and comprehensive. All is explained by the scenario described, in 1965, in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

The subsequent rationale, or ex post facto legislation - which ratifies a change in government after the fact, this technique is as old as the written language.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Douglass Dillon, J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful Dulles brothers, these cabinet members and cabinet-level advisors to Kennedy and Johnson. I think they are mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. They could decide upon the President’s incapacity to perform as commander.

The militant reactionary political enemies of John Kennedy formed powerful nodes of power in the web of secret defense interests. It is the unspeakable reality of American political violence which is at historical issue. In 1963 mercenaries and Mafiosos were engaged full-time in the Caribbean and along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., that traditionally unstable US tropical southern border (since Dutch, Spanish and French times, and the war of 1899). Cuba, a right wing mob casino paradise, was lost to the radical, Fidel Castro. John Kennedy failed to initiate the armed air invasion plans the CIA had hoped for and the Bay of Pigs failed miserably.

Now we all know that John Kennedy was a charismatic and intellectually bright man, but he had a strong egocentric aspect, and orgies of all kinds generally followed closely on his person and his staff. After spending a lifetime considering critically the scope and magnitude of what I know and what I know I know, deductive and inductive reasoning, published and private sources:

I find it was an inside job, it was a government job, and it was put up to important people as a fait accompli, “a done deal.”

The assassination was presented to Lyndon Johnson, C.D. Dillon, J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, as a done deal, a fait accompli, before and after the fact.

This was done by the spies, Kennedy’s enemies. The militant force used the security mechanisms in place to declare John Fitzgerald Kennedy unfit for security clearances and sensitive positions of authority.

Someone in defense intelligence or the CIA circa 1963 took this type of intercepted intelligence to a higher level, 'Well, Jack’s now takin’ the Sandoz doses with Cord Meyer’s wife, LSD thing they’re on now, he’s crazy now, totally mentally unfit do to anything as commander in chief, now he’s clinically, criminally, chronically insane, according to Caption b subsection A, paragraph E, and so on …'

I paraphrase, and form a theoretical scenario. My theory doesn’t hinge on Jack Kennedy using LSD, or having syphilis, or even suffering from Addison’s adrenal deficiency. My theory hinges on the willingness of the spies, his enemies, to declare him incompetent, and I think the theory is a reasonable conclusion.

And so that was that, from the Plans Directorate and 111th they scrambled to work, and the angry Cuban Alpha 66 group did the heavy lifting, with their partners, the mob. Douglass Dillon, Kennedy’s inexplicable choice for Treasury secretary, was the ultimate head of the Secret Service in 1963.

The fix was in, and it was “legal,” due to incapacity.

Why Jack Kennedy made Clarence D. Dillon the head of the U.S. Treasury, no one will ever know.

Robert Lovett had turned it down. Dillon, Reed & Co. was a Wall Street institution and C.D.Dillon was a sort of late model Andrew Mellon for President Kennedy -- an attempt at bipartisan Cabinet leadership, and a sop to the right. Anyway, C.D. Dillon ran the 1963 Secret Service, a branch of Treasury then, and he and the intelligence paramilitary put the thing into place, and then they covered up the assassination with the Warren Commission and the Twenty Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Nothing else explains the route, the failure to prepare, the lack of running boards on Jack’s presidential limousine. Why no running boards, why drive at walking speed, why the slow detour, why the crowded overpass over the limousine? We can’t blame a building or a fence or a knoll, people did this. They think they committed no crime. But they implicated themselves in the apologia, which is the 25th Amendment.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was elevated to the now compromised (or politically constrained) Presidency, was sitting in the Oval Office while the 25th Amendment went through. At that juncture Cabinet members and a V.P. had the power to incapacitate the President.

This organic legislation, a fundamental addendum to the republic’s Constitution, implicates Clarence Douglass Dillon (whose signature was on the currency in the 1960’s), the amendment indicts Vice President Johnson and other cabinet level advisors in the defense and domestic security web, it explains the acts of Johnson’s friend and protector, J. Edgar Hoover, and possibly Maxwell Taylor, the 1964 ambassador to Saigon.

This top-down scheme allows for the coordinated order of events seen in the event and its aftermath. The amount of troubling illogic in the murder and all the bizarre aftermath points to a Program, a Program approved by at least a few heads of Cabinet.

Jack was a playboy, a movie star, a total wild man. The people that lived up his rear-end, taping him, snapping pictures and listening in, they caught him being very naughty, and they took the case upstairs.

Incapacity.

Dulles got on board with all his baggage. The plan came off the books, the plane was off down the runway, and at Dealey Plaza the deal went down...

In the future, this will be the conventional wisdom, and all the rough consensus about a government conspiracy points toward this explanation, the “legal” model.

Sources? The Twenty-fifth amendment, that’s about as primary as you get, and the Warren Commission, and all it suggests, and neglects, that is primary, that is substantive, that is contemporary.

Affidavits of the assassins and the assassin’s helpers, and the investigative reporting of Seymour Hersh, and the late Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Dorothy Kilgallen, and the behavior of the 1963 Secret Service in the primary document, a color film by Abraham Zapruder, and the photos of the railroad overpass crowded with people over Kennedy’s bloody head…is that a primary source, a film of a walking speed open-car ambush?

The top guys did it. Those that control the FBI, the Naval Hospital, military intelligence, and secret service would never have co-operated without orders from higher-ups. I present a coherent, compelling, cohesive hypothesis, a theory to explain the facts.

In Dallas, Mr. Barnes was there, and Mr. McCord, Eugene Brading and Jimmy Files, maybe Niccolletti the hit man, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, lucien Conein, Rip Robertson, Johnny Roselli, and Dave Morales, Lansdale the ugly American, he was there, and all together, so it looks like a government job, with mob contractors participating, similar to what was planned for Castro.

I’m a patriotic American and I wish the current officeholders of the Secret Service, Pentagon and the Treasury well, I really do.

But in 1963 the Republican Treasury Secretary C.Douglass Dillon was a responsible party.

Lyndon Johnson was a responsible party. John Edgar Hoover was in authority.

Allen Dulles and the Cabell brothers were responsible. Ed Clark was implicated.

Tracy Barnes was implicated. William Harvey was implicated. Dave Morales was implicated.

Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson was implicated. H.L. Hunt was implicated. David Attlee Phillips and Desmond Fitzgerald were involved in the murder, and they were gung-ho patriotic Americans.

The team of mercenaries and hitmen that had worked under federal control in the late 50’s were also implicated; Sam Giancanna, Mr. Marcello, Mr. Trafficante, the infamous Johnny Rosselli, Mr. Niccoletti and his driver Jimmy Files, they were all implicated. And the medical crews, and the FBI, and the Dallas police, who failed to protect the suspect. Oswald, who was lost to history, made one substantive statement “I am a patsy.” His career in counter-intelligence is evidence for my theory.

A highly-classified document once existed, and it was the authorization for the executive action.

Incapacity (with the eye dotted and the tee crossed) of the Commander in Chief;

JFK was stripped of his security clearances, and his removal was officially authorized.

But in the Constitution itself is another rapidly written, but after the fact, rationale.

This is an ex-post facto, presidential ascension, legitimacy rationale, a document like the ones we have seen so many times in British and Roman history. It was a national security crisis…and John Kennedy was supposedly clinically insane, from drugs. Kennedy was declared clinically incapacitated and was stripped of his security clearance, because he had indulged in the psychedelic LSD-25, which the CIA had introduced for mind control and human experimentation in the Chemical Warfare Program MK/ULTRA. The same agencies had spied on Kennedy and discovered this mistake, when he spent time with Mary Meyer.

The Twenty-fifth amendment gives cover to the events of November, 1963; especially since the Vice President and some of his Cabinet level advisors were still in power in 1965 when it was composed, and even in 1967, when it became law, ratified in “the summer of love.”

Why this sudden rush to radically re-write the rules for a Presidential succession? Dallas and the unusual ascension of Lyndon Baines Johnson was the motivation.

What laws or rules drive good historical theory? Theories explaining evidence must be concise, compelling, coherent, cohesive. The simplest scheme possible to explain all the known facts and misunderstandings. Occam’s razor, or the law of parsimony should drive theory derived from evidence. Keep it simple stupid. No bells and whistles.

So with the Kennedy assassination, a simple answer, an explanation, at last. But damn it is hard to swallow, despicable murder…like Julius Ceasar, or Alexander II.

This was a story of top-down orders, from the VP and a Cabinet bloc.

The Commander-in-chief had suffered “incapacity.”

Murder during the Cold War, under secret color of law,

involving the Cuban mercenaries, secret service failures and a laughable FBI investigation…

Johnson, Hoover, C.D. Dillon, Alan Dulles, the Warren Commission and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, how does all this fit together? A top down, top level security crisis, an executive action, a non-crime, a “legal” event.

May God in Heaven bless our martyred leader, John F. Kennedy, and God protect us all.

(Re-posted for new members/ May 2006)

In Imperial Rome, three or four people at a time wore the Purple Robes of Caesar.

The Imperator with a few family members and maybe a top general.

George Bush Sr. (CIA) was Republican national chairman in 1974 and he and Al Haig

managed the transition of power between Nixon and Ford during the resignation crisis.

Ford (Warren Commission) then put Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in place as top executives.

This group, under "W" still reigns.

Pre-emptive war on false premises, domestic surveillance and exploding military budgets resulted.

These four (Bush Sr., Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush Jr.) wear the purple robes of imperial might today.

Their hatred of democratic government, oversight of intelligence, oversight of anything is an attempt

to turn the clock back to the mid 1970s before Carter, Mondale and Frank Church shined a light

on the domestic surveillance, corruption and foreign adventures like VIetnam.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney's behavior is EASILY explainable if you look at them as

imperialists who crave power, absolute executive power ..........

The Rubicon is behind us, and the loss of our checks and balances is in the air............

"There is no evidence that Caesar’s tie was ever in RFK's hand. Caesar wore a clip on tie and was behind and to the right of RFK during the assassination. The tie could easily have come off when RFK fell backward against Caesar."

"John Hunt"

"PS. My father worked in a hospital for 30 years and was required to wear a clip-on tie and prohibited from wearing a real tie. The reason?? In the event that a patient became unruly and attempted to grab someone by the tie, it would pop right off. Same thing goes for security guards and cops."

This is SOP for the very reason John mentions---an actual tie is a danger to a man when dealing with unruly patients, arrested and convicted offenders etc because it becomes a noose in bad situations. I served as a correctional officer for 7 years in the 90s.

It still looks like Bobby yanked the tie off of Caesar,

doesn't it, while he was being killed by an individual or individuals very near to him ?????

Goss gutted the agency, decimated the top ranks, antagonized the leadership and fired

a top official as a scapegoat in the leak case.

Now he is out.

The former head of NSA is in...

................................................................. why do I hear a clicking on my phone?

links on Hayden issues

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060507/D8HF48L80.html

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060507/D8HF49IO0.html

This looks like the issue where COngressional Republicans will make their break

with the White House. It will also be the official discussion of domestic wiretapping.

Turns out Negroponte can't do all the things he wants to do without his own man at CIA.

As I predicted, the NID is an expensive new layer of bureaucracy, and hinders co-operation.......

Rumsfeld and the Defense Department want to hold onto Intelligence as their baby,

and they think the CIA is a bunch of liberals who don't "get with the program"

The public airing of these issues is a great boon to critical thinkers and the political opposition.

Obviously something is seriously wrong if Bush has to replace two CIA directors in two years,

and during an election year, this discussion will have serious "blowback" potential ---

Thanks John, my mistake.

I enjoy your posts on the Forum........

Goss gutted the agency, decimated the top ranks, antagonized the leadership and fired

a top official as a scapegoat in the leak case.

Now he is out.

The former head of NSA is in...

................................................................. why do I hear a clicking on my phone?

Miller obviously is ignorant of how movies are made!

It is IGNORANT to suggest that the Zfilm alteration was DONE DIRECTLY ON KODACHROME!

Nobody but a dunce would think that!

There are numerous ways of doing film alteration, but none involves making altertions

directly on film. Kodachrome is no different than other films in this respect.

Most processes involve COPYING, MATTING, GLASS PAINTING, SOFT MATTES, TRAVELING

MATTES, LOW CONTRAST FILMS, OPTICAL PRINTERS, RECOPYING...and a host of other

techniques of which Miller has no understanding.

But a simple technique, which could have been used with the Zfilm, because it is so short,

would have been to MAKE A COLOR PRINT OF EACH FRAME, RETOUCH EACH FRAME AS

DESIRED, AND RECOPY EACH ALTERED FRAME ONE AT A TIME WITH A B&H CAMERA,

USING KODACHROME FILM. That is animation at its simplest. All that is required is about

500 color prints (8x10s will do) and a retouch artist.

Any amateur could have done this. It is basic copystand work. Check anyone who

knows anything about movies, and they will verify the above.

Complicating it somewhat were the intrasprocket images...but Costella explains that

nicely.

Jack

Thanks, Jack.

This process is obvious and color/contrast could be retained and even enhanced by doing this.

It is pretty obvious to me this is where the "blob" came from, since

the doctors at Parkland all saw the back of Kennedy's head blown out.

Evidently the Zapruder film and the Bethesda autopsy materials were HEAVILY altered

(in the interest of national security, of course)

Shanet

I am looking for the picture............

Is this the one you are thinking off??

John Hunt

I remember one photo where RFK clutches the tie,

but I may be mistaken

Thanks ......... and lets get back to DAN MOLDEA ............

Gary Mack has advised me that the man is Jim Featherston, who worked for the Dallas Times-Herald.

Thanks to Gary,

I'm going to try to keep my specualtion on photography to a minimum!,

John

Jim Featherston with Mary Moorman.

Uncropped tramp photo:

In a blow up of this photo there appears to be a man in the Carpark area at the end of the wall.

Robin, Jim and everyone:

I think I can add some new information about the analysis of this unusual picture.

If you look at the shadow cast onto the gate, you can see that "Lansdale"

is wearing glasses.

The lead officers rifle butt

points toward the evidence that "Lansdale" was wearing glasses that day.......

I am looking for the picture............

Excellent article on Thomas Corcoran.

The whole Brown and Root approach lays the historical background for today's HALLIBURTON scandal.

As the 8F Suite got more powerful, Corcoran's fascist and corrupt approach was

rewarded....

I didn't mean to sidetrack the thread.

More on Dan Moldea???????

What do members think of Dan E. Moldea as an investigative journalist. He has an interesting background.

Moldea, in a book which concluded that Sirhan B. Sirhan acting alone killed RFK, accidentally offered a shooting scenario that demands nine shots, and thus two shooters!

http://www.jfklancer.com/hunt/moldeas.htm

That Moldea has refused to acknowledge his error or attempt to defend his faulty work tells us all we need to know. Instead, we get a hack like Ayton who defends Moldea blindly and badly, gets challenged, then scurries off into the shadows claiming victory as he goes.

John Hunt

Interesting, John.

I have long believed nine shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, but not in Los Angeles in 1968.

Personally the most compelling evidence I have seen in the RFK murder is the tie

Bobby clutched in his hands. A prosecutor until the end, the former Attorney General literally

holds the "smoking gun" to the camera ........ If you are killed by close in pistol fire and have

someone's "still tied" niecktie in your hands ......... that necktie is that of your principal assailant,

right?

Running on memory here but didn't Muldea promise to crack the case in a year? I feel that with his deadline approaching he plumped for the easy option, ie Sirhan did it...

That's consistent with my recollection that Moldea pretty well proved in his book that Sirhan couldn't have done it, then on the last page he concluded that Sirhan did it. What an intellectual feat!

Dan E. Moldea’s, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (1995), is indeed an amazing book. The first 29 chapters provide a comprehensive, logical account of the assassination. However, in the last chapter he completely changes his mind and accepts the official version of events. He even admits that this might surprise his readers as he first entered the case in 1987 with an article arguing that RFK had been the victim of a conspiracy.

Moldea claims that the reason for this change of mind was Gene Cesar’s polygraph test. According to the test, Cesar was telling the truth and therefore Sirhan was the lone gunman. Moldea explains the ballistic evidence by suggesting that the witnesses were mistaken and that Sirhan must have been pushed into RFK allowing his to fire at point-blank range.

If one reads between the lines of the last chapter you can work out why Moldea appears to change his mind about the case. He admits that for many years he believed passionately that there had been a conspiracy. However, he argues he could not afford to spend as much time as he liked researching and writing the book because of financial constraints. He was unable to persuade a publisher to fund this book. It was not until he “received the backing of a major publisher, W. W. Norton & Company” that he could complete the book. In other words, write the last chapter.

Now we know from the testimony of people like Cord Meyer, Tom Braden and William Sullivan that both the CIA and the FBI could arrange with certain companies to get certain books published. They could also make sure other books were not published by major publishers. E. Howard Hunt has also testified that the CIA was able to arrange the “right” reviews for books about certain subjects. (See also Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial for how this system worked).

Another example of this process at work concerns the author Michael Eddowes. He gained a reputation for investigative research in the UK with the publication in 1955 of The Man on Your Conscience, an investigation into the murder trial and execution of Timothy Evans. The book caused renewed interest in the case and eventually Evans received a posthumous pardon by the Queen. This case played an important role in the subsequent abolition of capital punishment in Britain.

In his book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (1975), Eddowes argued that President John F. Kennedy was killed by a Soviet agent impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald. It was later revealed that the book had been financed by the Texas oil billionaire, Haroldson L. Hunt. I wonder why Hunt wanted to blame the Soviets for the assassination?

Put yourself in the position of the agency under attack for covering up a conspiracy. What is your ideal scenario? My one would be for a leading conspiracy theorist, with a reputation for integrity, to publish a book where he admits that after studying all the evidence he comes to the conclusion that the official version of the case was right. That is not difficult to achieve as long as you have the means to pay them a lot of money (a generous publisher's advance) and can guarantee them good reviews from the subservient press. I think this explains the work of both Gus Russo and Dan Moldea.

This doesn't suprise me. Dan Moldea is very conventional American newsman and the status quo is what it is. I got the same sense from Epstein's book on Oswald. You get a critical take on the subject up until the last chapter, where Moldea and Epstein both go the safe route and declare for the MASTER NARRATIVE...........Sad really, but there is much value in the research, even if the conclusions aren't as assertive and cautionary as we would be if we published on the topic

Great Thread...........

Stephen lays out a pretty good list of ANOMOLIES that day...

The number of shots, holes, fragments, misses, etc.

The situation on the overpass, 18 or more observers directly over the limousine

The hairpin turn, missing film frames and sloooow braking performance of the SS driver

The rifle itself.............

Didn't some Mannlicher Carcano il duce palace guard grade rifles get picked up by OSS in Rome in 1943?

Were these used and then linked to the Oswald junk?

I think they were/

>>> >>> >>>

Interesting that the NORTHWOODS March 1962 document approved by

Join Chiefs Chairman Admiral Lemnitzer had so many pretexts for war tactically spelled out.

They included false hijacking, plane switching, arson of US property, a false attack on

Guantanomo and other self destructive and foolish efforts to trigger a response....

Operation Northwoods resembles the 9/11 Saddam Hussein Iraq War series of events///////

I think there is strong reason to believe that the all the watergate burglary operational figures had some role in Dallas. Howard Hunt could never shake these links, and neither could Frank Fiorini Sturgis, Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez are also circumstantially linked, there names come up in association with both Dallas and the Watergate.

Barker admitted to loudly hammering the hinges off the DNC offices while MCCord had signed in under a phony name in the Watergate...Barker Sturgis and Hunt, along with Liddy are so bizarre..............the Miami counter counter revolutionaries

Robin

Are you aware of the theory that mr larry florer bears a strong resemblance to

and may in fact have been ted shackley of CIA operations?

John Brown’s Trial

In October of 1859, John Brown, the notoriously violent abolitionist, led eighteen armed men, both black and white, on a raid of the little railroad town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

His goal was to seize the Federal arsenal there and then lead a slave insurrection across the south.

After a two-day standoff with local militia and Federal troops, in which ten of his men were shot or killed, John Brown was captured and put on trial in Virginia state court.

He was found guilty and hanged.

John Brown’s activities in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October of 1859 caused an unprecedented uproar in the United States and generated an immense volume of editorial analysis, comment and interpretation. The original Court Records of the case have been lost or scattered. They were partially restored in the 1930’s. The most complete records can be found in the Jefferson County (W.Va.) County Records Manuscripts Common Law Order Books #6 and #12 and Will Book #16. My analysis of the trial is based on a contemporary work that reports the entire trial in objective terms, and I will refer to this source as the “consensus” account. This corresponds to the Senate Report and Testimony in many particulars and presents no particular agenda.

The insurrection and trial of John Brown spawned a complex historiography. Many of the works are strongly Pro-Brown, bordering on hagiography. Two examples show the extent of the apologia commonly expressed by militant abolitionists concerning John Brown. James Redpath entitled his chapters on the trial and execution “Among the Philistines” and “Victory over Death.” In addition, F.B. Sanborn dedicated his book to John Brown’s family. It is useful in understanding the period to compare these militant abolitionists’ editorial content to the public record of the Senate and the “consensus” account.

John Brown’s trial is filled with unusual circumstances. After seizing hostages and a Federal Armory on October the 16th and 17th John Brown was tried in Virginia State Circuit Court for treason, multiple first-degree murders and inciting an insurrection among Virginia slaves. The defense counsels were appointed by the court and expressed strong misgivings. The trial was definitely rushed, due to the recent insurrection and hysteria in the community. Brown attended the trial prone upon a cot, since he had suffered multiple saber wounds when captured. The appointed defense counsel admitted the fact of the crimes, shared in the outrage of the community, and apologized for defending Brown. The pace, presentation and mood of the court was unusual. Many legitimate objections were over-ruled in haste. The judgment would almost certainly be thrown out on appeal in today’s judicial system.

The trial took place in Charlestown, the county seat of Jefferson County, Virginia, the county where Harpers Ferry was located. Charlestown is located in the extreme eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and is not to be confused with Charleston, W.Va., the State Capitol in central Kanawha County.

Charlestown was named after Charles Washington, a relative of the President, and the trial courthouse is still standing.

James Redpath’s pro-Brown account includes an inflammatory charge to the jurors by the judge, and this is not included in the “consensus” account. Since the direct quotes in Redpath usually correspond with quotations in the “consensus” and Senate accounts, we can reasonably credit Judge Richard Parker with these words:

""I will not permit myself to give expression to any of those feelings which at once spring up in every breast when reflecting on the enormity of the guilt in which those are involved who invade by force a peaceful, unsuspecting portion of our common country, raise the standard of insurrection amongst us, and shoot down without mercy Virginia citizens defending Virginia soil against their invasion.""

The trial took just over a week, starting on Tuesday, the 25th of October, 1859 and concluding on Wednesday, the 2nd of November, 1859.

The jury took only forty-five minutes in finding John Brown guilty.

Brown was executed within a month of conviction.

The central witness in the trial was Colonel Lewis Washington, of the President George Washington family, who had been kidnapped out of his home and held hostage near the Federal Armory. His slaves were militarily “impressed” by Brown, but they took no active part in the insurrection. Other local witnesses testified to the seizure of the Federal Armory, the appearance of Virginia militia groups, and shootings on the railroad bridge. Other evidence described the U.S. Marines’ raid on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad engine house occupied by Brown and his men. U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee and cavalry officer J.E.B Stuart led the Marine raid, and it freed the hostages and ended the standoff.

Lee filed an affadavit to the court with his account of the Marine’s raid.

The manuscript evidence was of particular interest to the judge and jury.

Voluminous documents were found on the Maryland farm rented by John Brown under the alias Isaac Smith. These documents included a provisional constitution, which Brown and his officers had signed.

These documents clinched the treason and pre-meditation charges against John Brown.

Lawson Botts, a prominent Virginia attorney, was appointed to be the lead defense counsel, and George H. Hoyt, who arrived a few days later from Massachusetts, took a hesitant role in the closing days of the trial. Hoyt was hired to defend Brown by John W. Le Barnes, one of the so-called “Secret Six”--abolitionists who had given money to Brown in the past.

Charles J. Faulkner and Charlestown mayor Thomas C. Green were also appointed to be defense counsels by Judge Parker, but they stepped down after John Brown expressed “no confidence” in them in open court.

The defense had a difficult task, since Brown and his men had planned and carried out an insurrection, signed the provisional government charters, fired upon local, state and federal forces and caused five deaths. The defense’s stronger points are quite amplified in the apologia of Redpath, but are clear enough even in the “consensus” account. The defense first attacked the multiple count indictment and called for severance of the separate counts within this ‘all or nothing’ indictment.

The defense repeatedly asked for more time to prepare a defense. Brown himself asked for a few days to recover from his wounds. Time was requested again when George Hoyt arrived. All these motions were denied. Unable to slow the trial on (appropriate) procedural grounds, and unable to get the unusual indictment thrown out, the defense stressed jurisdictional ambiguities and extenuating circumstances.

The defense claimed that the Harpers Ferry Federal Armory was not on Virginia property, but since the murdered townspeople had died in the streets outside the perimeter of the Federal facility, this carried little weight with the jury. John Brown’s lack of official citizenship in Virginia was presented as a defense against treason against the State of Virginia. The judge dispatched this claim by reference to “rights and responsibilities” and the overlapping citizenship requirements between the Federal union and the various States. John Brown, as a U.S. citizen, could be found guilty of treason against Virginia on the basis of his temporary residence there during the days of the insurrection.

Three other substantive defense tactics failed. One claimed that since the insurrection was aimed at the U.S. government it could not be proved treason against Virginia. Since Brown and his men had fired upon Virginia troops, this point was mooted. Another defense claim must have pained John Brown upon his cot. His lawyers explained that since no slaves had joined the insurrection, the charge of leading a slave insurrection should be thrown out. The jury apparently did not favor this claim, either.

Extenuating circumstances were claimed by the defense when they stressed that Colonel Washington and the other hostages were not harmed and were in fact protected by Brown during the siege. This claim was not persuasive as Colonel Washington had seen men die of gunshot wounds and had been confined for days. The final plea by the defense team for mercy concerned the circumstances surrounding the death of two of John Brown’s men, who were apparently fired upon and killed by the Virginia militia while under a flag of truce. The armed community surrounding the Arsenal did not hold their fire when Brown’s men emerged to parley. This incident is given great weight in Redpath, the militant abolitionist hagiography. It is not highlighted in the “consensus” account, but the incident is noticeable upon a close reading of the published testimony. If rebels under a flag of truce were fired upon, it was not a major issue to the judge and jury.

Redpath, in his pro-abolitionist account of the trial, emphasizes one other event, which sheds light on the insurrection and the mob mentality of the beleaguered Harpers Ferry citizens’ militia. It seems that the Mayor of Harpers Ferry, Mr. Fontaine Beckham, had stood unarmed within sight of both the Arsenal’s rebels and the local militia. Brown or Brown’s men shot the Mayor in cold blood, and the crowd responded in a singular way. The citizen militia had captured William Thompson, one of Brown’s “privates,” earlier in the day, and upon Mayor Beckham’s murder this William Thompson was in turn murdered by Henry Hunter and thrown off of the Potomac River railroad bridge. Hunter admits this in the “consensus” account, and it is conveyed in considerably more detail in the Redpath account.

The raid on Harpers Ferry and the subsequent trial of John Brown was a watershed event in American history. Brown was unrepentant, he gloried in his martyrdom and he was supported in his zeal by many abolitionists. The record shows a hurried, somewhat callous approach to the niceties and technicalities of jurisprudence. The judge repeatedly excuses the speed and severity of the trial, on the grounds that the Circuit session would soon end. No real attempt was made to put forth an insanity plea, although a letter to that effect was read in open court on the second day, and many people believed that congenital insanity was claimed as a defense.

John Brown did not co-operate in this effort to claim an insanity defense, he said,

“I look upon it as a miserable artifice and pretext . . . I view it with contempt . . . I reject, so far as possible, any attempt to interfere in my behalf on that score.”

John Brown was hanged on the 2nd of December, 1859, at high noon. In his desire to be both a martyr and a prophet he predicted civil war in this final hand-written note that he passed to a supporter on his way out to the heavily protected field gallows:

""Charlestown, Va. 2nd December, 1859. I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.""

The raid on Harpers Ferry foreshadows the Civil War in some counter-intuitive ways, and there is grim irony in the subsequent events that took place in the region.

In 1861, the South would present the provisional constitution, not the abolitionists of the North. The patriarchal, feudal militarism of Brown’s family and his “Army” was illustrative of the Southern slaveholders’ attitudes. The North was afraid of people like Brown, men of zeal who would entertain secession and rebellion for a political cause.

Harpers Ferry and the larger nearby towns of Martinsburg and Winchester would change hands many, many times between the Confederacy and the Union. West Virginia would secede from the Confederacy, and take Jefferson County out of Virginia’s jurisdiction forever. Battles at Harpers Ferry would seriously obstruct R.E. Lee’s attempts to invade the North in both the Antietam and the Gettysburg campaigns. The area along the Shenandoah Valley would become the staging grounds for another religious and steely-eyed commander, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Spies and treachery would rock the area throughout the war -- and Belle Boyd would become famous as a provocative double agent in the region, as the Civil War Matahari. Both Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart would resign their commissions in the U.S. Army in order to fight for a secessionist government of Virginia.

Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise embodies these ironies and strange reversals. One of Brown’s most vocal and visible accusers during the trial and immediate aftermath, Wise had described Brown’s provisional force as “murderers, traitors, robbers, insurrectionists . . . wandering, malicious, unprovoked, felons,” and he pushed for the rapid trial and sentencing of Brown and his accomplices.

Eighteen months later, on the 17th of April, 1861, Henry Wise reported to the Virginia Secession Convention, “(Virginian) armed forces are now moving upon Harpers Ferry to capture the arms there in the Arsenal for the public defense, and there will be a fight or a foot-race between volunteers of Virginia and Federal troops before the sun sets.” On 1 June 1861 Wise would tell people in Richmond “Get a spear, a lance. Take a lesson from John Brown, manufacture your blades from old iron,” as he led Virginia to accept secession.

The raid on Harpers Ferry and the trial of John Brown is a fascinating series of events. The high emotions, the gore, the righteousness claimed by both sides, all these are highly compelling. By sacrificing his own (and other innocent people’s) lives to the cause of slave emancipation in the pivotal year of 1859, John Brown would align himself in segments of the public mind with Presidents Lincoln and Grant.

By leading an irregular rebellion and forming a provisional government he foreshadows the Confederate American experience as well. The trial of John Brown in Virginia’s state court system in 1859 shows us a man who perceived himself to be above the law being hastily prosecuted by a community inflamed by ideological, racial and territorial conflicts.

David Shanet Clark

Woodruff Fellow GSU Atlanta 2005

I still think it is pretty obviously Lee Harvey Oswald standing out front watching the

parade with his co-workers.

The shirt and the missing button confirm it...........

Seems the HSCA had an interest in not only McLarry, but also (at least) one other in the photo... FNU Seely.

See Seely photo here

Is the HSCA the sourse of the names of those in the photo? In both cases, Seely's first name is listed as unknown, which made me think it might be...

Unidentified #87 looks like Watergate figure Jeb Stuart Magruder//////

So I take it that if Mantik was busy - you'd seek Groden out for medical advice .... that's par for the course!

I don't have any idea what that means.

Ron

I am totally with you on this.

I think the "blob" was superimposed on the Zapruder film to hide a front to back rear exit wound, the wound that was seen by the Parkland doctors. Lifton makes it pretty clear that the casket that Jackie Kennedy accompainied was empty and that a black hearse brought JFK's body to Bethesda via the back door.

John Liggett was probably with the body during its secret flight from Dallas, and recreated the

damage. He was removing explosive mercury and lead, removing evidence of forward shots and getting the body ready for the navy doctors at Bethesda......................

20th Century International Relations

1. A pair of major United Nations program offices:

a. UNICEF and WAID

b. IMF and the ASCO

c. UNCTAD and UNESCO

d. WWF and UNITAS

2. Czechoslovakia

a. Like Switzerland, avoided WWII

b. Left the Soviet satellite system

c. Desired Marshall Plan assistance

d. Was nationally homogenous

3.This was the German chemical cartel that used slave labor:

a. Thyssen

b. Krupps

c. I.G. Farben

d. Siemens

4. A major component in current international diplomacy

a. ICI

b. NGO

c. BFI

d. CIO

5. If the Bretton Woods agreement had NOT been signed, there

would never have been the:

a. Korean War

b. Berlin Airlift

c. World Bank

d. Central Intelligence Agency

6. As part of the Marshall Plan, Britain

a. contributed about one billion dollars

b. gained nuclear weapons

c. demolished Coventry Cathedral

d. was forgiven liability from Lend Lease

7. The country most eager to free colonial territories after WWII

a. France

b. Britain

c. USSR

d. Portugal

8. Hitler's top Nazi Party official, may have escaped from 1945 Berlin.

a) Rudolph Hess

Joseph Goebbels

c) Martin Boorman

d) Albert Speer

9. The failures of International Organizations have often been traced to

multi-state disagreement about

a) budget

sovereignty

c) balance of trade

d) equity

10. The Long Telegram from Moscow was published in an edited form as:

a. NSA 68

b. The Long Telegram

c. Mr. X Article

d. The Marshall Plan

11. The Long Telegram from Moscow urged

a. development

b. retrenchment

c. demobilisation

d. vigilance

12. Died in 1953

a) Mao Tse Tung

Harry S. Truman

c) Josef Stalin

d) Charles De Gaulle

13. One of these was not an important new technology in WWI:

a) Submarines

Airplanes

c) Radar

d) Machine Guns

e) Tanks

14. The trench warfare along WWI's Western front in europe was

marked by

a) repeated offensives

great fluidity

c) strategic hamlets

d) the Bismarck Plan

15. German and Austrian dynasties:

a) Bismarck and Ludendorff

Lowenthal and Alpine

c) Hohenzollen and Hapsburg

d) Romanov and Bourbon

16. Large United Nations peace keeping forces were in all these, except:

a) Haiti

Korea

c) Somalia

d) Vietnam

17. Two main colonial powers (by total area) in early 20th Century Africa

a) Germany and Italy

Belgium and Portugal

c) France and Britain

d) Spain and Holland

18. Former French African Colonies are found in:

a) NE Africa

SW Africa

c) NW Africa

d) SE Africa

19. Former Portuguese COlonies are found

a) inland

on the coasts

c) in Northern Africa

d) at the Horn of Africa

20. Former British colonies are arrayed

a) in a checkerboard

on an E-W axis

c) on a N-S axis

d) along the west coast

21. Both the League of Nations and the UN:

a) had international consensus

formed armed forces

c) supported territorial integrity

d) had strong executives

22. The United States's ally in Vietnam

a) Cambodia

ANZUS

c) NATO

d) Japan

23. This treaty renounced the Monroe Doctrine and was a model

for NATO

a) Rio

Paris

c) Brest-Litovsk

d) Versailles

24. Woodrow Wilson's leadership in ending WWI was

a) bitterly realistic

cynical and poorly informed

c) idealistic

d) unimportant

25. The period between the 20th century wars in Germany

a) Tyrolean

Hamburg

c) Weimar

d) Bismarck

26. Fought Egypt for the Suez Canal

a) Israel, Britain and France

Greece, Turkey and Britain

c) Israel, Italy and Greece

d) Britain, Syria and France

27. The Berlin Airlift conducted

a) about 20,000 flights

about 50,000 flights

c) about 100,000 flights

d) about 200,000 flights

28. The main author of NSC-68

a) Allen Dulles

John Foster Dulles

c) Paul Nitze

d) Pamela Harriman

29. NATO in the COld War Era was:

a) a unified allied military command

a trade and development alliance

c) a weak and loose confederation

d) a powerful Communist alliance

30. The US Agency for International Development, the Trade Development

Program and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation are part of

a) UNCTAD

IDCA

c) Peace Corps

d) The National Security Council

31. Designed to aid international development and grow employment:

a) IWC

IMF

c) NSC-68

d) MNC

32. High Commissioners of Occupied Germany and Japan

a) Harry Truman and Admiral Rickover

John J. McCloy and Douglas MacArthur

c) General Wainwright and Werner Von Braun

d) John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles

33. Had in 1965 Member Republics, Overseas Departments and Territories

a) League of Nations

United Nations

c) French Community

d) Warsaw Pact

34. Three members of the 1965 British Commonwealth

a) Kenya, Jamaica and India

Zaire, Lesotho and Liberia

c) Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria

d) Egypt, Lebanon and Burma

35. Bretton Woods brought the World Bank, IMF and

a) currency controls

non proliferation agreements

c) ICBM summits

d) The World Court

36. The USSR took these countries into the Soviet Union

a) Lithuania and Latvia

Serbia and Croatia

c) Romania and Bulgaria

d) Poland and Czechoslovakia

37. One Russian concession in the Cold War

a) Hungary

Czechoslovakia

c) Austria

d) Poland

e) East Germany

38. A monopoly

a) Proprietary

Offshore

c) Zaibatsu

d) NGO

39. The CIA and NSA agencies owe their legal beginnings to

a) The Long Telegram

NSC 68

c) National Security Act

d) No legal charter

40. The political and judicial goals of US post WWII Germany

a) agrarianize

reparations

c) de-Nazify

d) assimilate

41. A conglomerate is almost always

a) a MFN

a NGO

c) an MNC

d) an Offshore

42. The Bandung Conference was for

a) NATO

ANZUS

c) Warsaw Pact

d) Non Aligned

d) OAS

43. The bipolar image of the Cold War is weakened by

a) Communist Western Europe

c) the Sino Soviet split

d) British Labor government

d) the ease which rubles were traded in world markets

44. Yugoslavia was held together as a Communist country by

a) Kruschev

Lech Walesa

c) Conrad Adenaur

d) Marshal Tito

e) Serbian Royalists

45. In the 1940s and 1950s, after World War II, gender roles

a) became more "traditional"

became more "european"

c) became more "equal"

d) became more "bohemian"

46. Not a part of the UN

a) Secretariat

Assembly

c) Security Council

d) The WWF

47. Early cases for the Marshall Plan

a) Greece and Turkey

Vichy Paris

c) Spain

d) Pilsen

48. US Secretary of State

a) John Foster Dulles

Joseph McCarthy

c) Allen Dulles

d) RIchard Nixon

49 Soviets

a) Malenkov and Molotov

Bukharin and Solzhnitsen

c) Stalin and Walesa

d) Molotov and Brezhinski

50. The mouth of the Suez Canal

a) Port Au Prince

Port Karachi

c) Port Said

d) Tel Aviv

Stockdale was also responsible for getting women on juries. That may have been a factor. Just kidding...

I suspect it was George Smathers who moved Stockdale to the right with his dodgy business deals.

Thank You for Identifying KOKAL, who fell from Foggy Bottom

This is just part of a much longer manuscript. Richard is a dear friend of mine so I am thrilled to see his work being recognized here on the forum. Anyone desiring to read the entire manuscript can find it by googling his name and "Rambler", click on the http link. Must warn you tho, it's very name intensive. But yes it does connect the dots.

I agree that this article provides a lot to think about. Would Richard be willing to join the Forum (by the way Barr has agreed to join).

I will be arguing in the next section of Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-1990 that characters like Douglas Dillon, Walt Rostow and Edward Lansdale do need to be looked at closely in relation to the Kennedy assassination. The reason for this is that they were all key figures in the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

Rostow was also a member of the Georgetown Set, a group that met on a regular basis in Washington after the war. This group was led by Frank Wisner and members included Richard Bissell, Desmond FitzGerald, Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop, Tracy Barnes, Thomas Braden, Philip Graham, David Bruce, Clark Clifford, Eugene Rostow, Chip Bohlen, Cord Meyer, James Angleton, William Averill Harriman, John McCloy, John Sherman Cooper, James Reston, Allen W. Dulles and Paul Nitze.

It was this group that first came up with the idea of the CIA (many of them had served together in the OSS in Europe). Wisner and Graham also established Operation Mockingbird in the late 1940s. Other interesting points is that two members, Phil Graham and Joseph Alsop, persuaded JFK to accept LBJ as his running-mate in 1960. They also pushed very hard for Douglas Dillon to become Secretary of the Treasury. The person who would be responsible for looking at the oil depletion allowance. Something that Dillon had helped maintain when he served under Dwight Eisenhower (Dillon was a passionate Republican who had been Nixon’s main fundraiser in 1960).

According to Donald Gibson (The Kennedy Assassination Cover Up) it was Rostow who established the Warren Commission. In fact, he argues it should have been called the Rostow Commission (page 13). Rostow of course selected three members of the Warren Commission from the Georgetown Set (Dulles, McCoy and Cooper). Rostow also selected Richard Russell (chairman of the Senate Committees on Armed Forces and Appropriations, and therefore the most important figure in the MICIC in the Senate).

These executives contrived the sanction, with pretexts based on Kennedy's medical surveillance.