Shanet Clark

Art For Art’s Sake Jackson Pollock had a friend, Art, who used to drink with Jackson Pollock. Art would bring over wine and beer, at first, then he started buying ports and sherries. Pollock would get drunk, drizzle some paint and rampage while Art would get drunk and intercept the groupies, answer the phone and buy more exotic booze. Jackson Pollock was forced to watch as Art went from Sherry to Sake and lost his mind on Japanese wine. Art bought ten cases of fine Tokyo Sake and smashed all ten cases by the pool. Jackson Pollock had to pay damages and that’s when he started painting art for Art’s Sake!

The Autopsy Evidence, Ballistics, Oswald Legend, Lookalikes, but especially the Nix and Muchmore Films of the braking limousine.

"Police say although the evidence was recovered a year ago it was only recently released by the courts" Had anyone seen the map before? or the photo of Oswald's belongings? What is this other fingerprint card Tosh can't talk about? Who is in the evidence the FBI supposedly didn't get? Interesting thread...

Jack, I think the photos serve an important public service. Please present as many as possible with your critical analysis. It will generate debate, believe me. In the JFK forum, there is a rough consensus against the lone gunman (or govenment sponsored null hypothesis) but in this new field of NASA cold war photo propaganda there is a rough consensus for the truth of the central proposition (US astronauts traversed actual Moon)...so people are soaking it up, applying critical skills, wary, and less likely to jump in to comment than they might be about the Kennedy evidence. You will definitely be called to defend this theory before too much time passes with this thread, it is very exciting and challenging.

In this composite, the sun is seen behind the LEM...but the light source is from the OPPOSITE direction. Jack <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Jack, great selection of government photos. Always remain skeptical, my friend. As a IATSE pension contributor, Int'l Assoc Theater and Stage Employees, I can see quite a bit of back lighting here. Very strange, this particular photo.

Ron-Another great post, I pasted in the hotlink text. Why do the Investigators lie? That limousine never hit 40 miles an hour, even on Main St. at Dealey Plaza. I noticed that SOLON wrote two postcards about the assassination. In the first one, he asks hard questions about the Parade Route and Oswald's presence at the TBSD. In the second he refers to an international phone call from the US to Caracas about a kidnapping of a colonel. I wouldn't pay too much attention to SOLONs belief about the motivation of the article, but more to the fact he is knowledgeable and interested in the FBI's overseas listening capacity, his suspicion of Dallas-Caracas assassination linked telephonic communications concerning a missing or removed US Colonel, and has interest and knowledge of the parade route and Oswald's presence. He appears to be under stress when he writes the two postcards to the FBI about the newspaper, he possibly felt guilt. This stress could be a result of the coaching evident in the few shots and condensed time frame of the earwitness testimony. SOLON probably knew that the limousine was crawling, volley after volley swept the arcade for almost twenty seconds and that the parade route had been deliberately detoured in front ot the old TBSD, and that a US colonel that flew to Venezuela after being AWOL was somehow associated, and if the FBI didn't act, it was TREASON< etc.... FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION Date January 6, 1964 Mr. JOHN J. SOLON 4153 Beachwood Lane, was interviewed at his residence. Mr. SOLON advised he is no longer in private law practice, but is employed as an attorney by the Texas Highway Department, at Mesquite, Texas. Mr. SOLON advised that on November 22, 1963, he was in the Main Street entrance of the Old courthouse, on the south side of Main Street, looking north towar the Dallas County Jail, when the Presidential motorcade passed by. Mr. SOLON andvised he observed President JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, Mrs. KENNEDY, and other officials in the Presidential car, which was moving at approximately 35-40 miles per hour. The Presidential car slowed down to turn north on Houston Street from Main, and a few moments later, he heard three shots which sounded as follows: First shot, pause, two shots, then echoes of the shots. Mr. SOLON advised he would judge that approximately five and one-half seconds was ake fo all three shots. Mr. SOLON advised he did not have any further specific informsation about the assassination of President JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY. Mr. SOLON advised that on December 10, 1963 he addressed a post card to the FBI. Mr. SOLON said these comments were merely an opinion of his and he had no idea that there was any information available concerning the data the Presidential trip to Dallas was first planned; the Date OSWALD obtained a job at the Texas School Book Depository, nor did he have any information or proof that the "Dallas Morning News" was the connecting link between these two facts. Mr. SOLON advised he also addressed a post card, dated December 17, 1963, to the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. He said his comments on this post card were only his opinion that someone at the "Dallas Morning News" must have called Caracas, Venezuela, so that the kidnapping of the U.S. Army Colonel could have been reported at the same time of the assassination of President KENNEDY to push the news of his death off the front pages. Mr. SOLON said he felt that if such a call was made, the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company should report this to the FBI and that if this was not done, then this was "treason". Mr. SOLON advised he had been a great admirer of President KENNEDY and was deeply shocked by his death. He said he had thought about this very much and just wished that he could help in some way, so he wrote the post cards as a means of suggestion and help. Mr. SOLON advised, however, the only thing he really of positively was having heard the three shots of the assassination. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- on 1/4/64 at Dallas, Texas File # DL 100-10461 By Special Agent WILLIAM G. BROOKHART and GEORGE T. BINNEY Date Dictated 1/7/64

Thanks. Any comments on Martin Shackelford's views quoted by Wim: Texan George Brown of Brown and Root was LBJ's chief financial sponsor. He also employed, 1958-1963, George DeMohrenschildt, Oswald's "closest friend" for the CIA in Dallas. Previously, DeMohrenschildt had worked for LBJ backer John Mecom. Oil barons Mecom, Murchison, Sid Richardson and H.L. Hunt were all described as his close friends, as well as then-oilman George Bush. These men met at the Dallas Petroleum Club and other private gathering spots. Among their associates were Harold Byrd (owner of the Texas School Book Depository), Dallas Mayor Cabell, Ted Dealey (publisher of the Dallas Morning News), and Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> DEAR JOHN That Indeed appears to be the team in place the second the shot is fired, the Brown Texas team, who are in place and go to work at 12:30 11/22/63... We are looking for links between this group and David Attlee Philips, who with his partner in WH domestic (US) CIA operations in 1963 Howard Hunt, put together the team exterior to the Texas Building (TBSD). I think this coordination is very highly placed and while illegal and treasonous, was partially exonerated and qualified by the twenty-fifth amendment. In light of that I look at the Vice President and Cabinet level advisors. SInce the behavior of the Secret Service included dramatic brakings and halts, I look at the role of people around Clarence Douglas Dillon. The Bundys, Robert Lowell, Maxwell Taylor, Marshall Carter, John McCone, John McCloy were evidently satisfied that an effort would not be prevented in the event the incapacity of the commander in chief could be established by secret eavesdopping material. This goes to a tradition in Cold War Counter-Intelligence of doing the damage your enemy seeks to do to yourself, as a pre-emptive mode of power. By developing material on Kennedy's extra marital affairs and illegal 1960s drug use, for example, a security classification could be lost, even by an elected President, in the Brinksmanship era of the first Pentagon generation. DeMorenschildt was also a compromising force, a conduit back to the KGB, but he could deliver the Dallas character, while Mr. Giancana, Mr. Trafficante and Mr. Roselli could provide the actual technicians Mr. Phillips and Mr. Hunt (WH DomOps) needed. For this reason, advance knowledge but not full knowledge of the executive rationale (incapacity) Harvey and Barnes sent an 'abort team' to cover their backs, so JM/WAVE would look alert, knowledgeable and less than treasonous (except for ROSELLI)

Lets look at the facts. Oswald made the call, it was substantive, it went through and lasted about half an hour. If it was tapped (which it probably was) there is no record of what he was saying. Although a major move on Oswald the prisoners part, it is partially covered up in the record. The call wasn't cut off and doesn't appear to be to the press. I agree with Wim, on a strong speculative scenario. Phillips, or the Baron, or Mr. Hunt recieved a call, threatening to blow. Since Oswald was intended to be (and soon would be) a "lost" alleged assassin, some soothing commitments were made, probably a promise to switch him out and fly him south of the border. "We've got it under control, we'll get you out of there. Hang tight, little buddy."

Lou Russell, he was McCord's buddy, sort of the sixth man at Watergate the one that got away, Right? Also, I haven't read Yankee Cowboy War in many years, I need to go over Oglesby's case for the Dorothy Hunt crash being set. I realize that many pwople think it is suspicious, need to look at.....

Dorothy Hunt's tragic death is an anomaly and leads to some very interesting angles on the Watergate era, but there is not much evidence of murder. However, the just imagine the moment Howard Hunt collected the $10,000 cash satchel from the Chicago authorities, that had been with his late wife when the plane went down, the satchel of Nixon White House hush money, that Nixon comments about on tape. That money of Dorothy Hunt's played a major role in Nixon's impeachment. Any other watergate murders?

THATS ABOUT ENOUGH OF THAT! Wim Dankbaar said Other CIA people who show up often in this story include David Atlee Phillips of the Western Hemisphere division, who worked with Bill Harvey and later Des Fitzgerald on Cuban operations; Win Scott and his "right-hand man" Anne Goodpasture from the Mexico City station; John Whitten ("Scelso") of the Western Hemisphere, Division 3; Charlotte Bustos of the Mexico City desk at Headquarters; and Richard Helms and his deputy Thomas Karamessines, who play large roles in the pre- and post-assassination paper trail. We should also note that the entire Western Hemisphere was run by J. C. King, a man closely linked to Nelson Rockefeller. King himself had been involved in the CIA’s assassination plots involving Castro and Trujillo.3 -------------------- Phillips is the CIA man who most closely ties Angleton in the frequency of his appearance in the assassination story. Phillips appears to have been seen in the presence of Oswald by Antonio Veciana.21 And a "Mr. Phillips" who was running CIA operations against Cuba at a time when that was David Phillips’ job was seen by Gordon Novel in the presence of Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, who were themselves in turn seen with Oswald. Oswald even rented an office in Banister’s building that had previously been rented by Sergio Arcacha Smith.22 When the HSCA investigators tracked down the many false "Castro did it" leads, they kept tracing back to assets run by Phillips.23 Dan Hardway, who had much documentation to support that allegation...[end WIM] Great material here, the intertwining of the various stooges and programs. It was fundamentally a "WH FLAP" and the Western Hemisphere Station Plans and Operations were in a huge mess, Pro-Castro, Anti-Castro, United Fruit, Offshore interests (not just Havana casinos) Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo were involved in this world of Caribbean and Mexico City Cold War Intrigue and North American rapacious capitalism. Nelson Rockefeller and the Central and South American US Foreign Policy at this time 1954-1974, Nelson Rockefeller held and developed the Portfolio for the South American and Central American United States Co-Ordinated policy, using the various agencies and boards he sat on or had developed. These investment, propaganda and policy co-ordinations by the Rockefeller interests and United Fruit lay the foundation for a theory of Kennedy's assassination that involves the Mexico City station and Offshore Caribbean interests...

Watergate was not particularly murderous. CIA OS John Paisley died mysteiously, a sort of conduit for all sorts of domestic ops, he knew about the burglars, the Sheraton prostitution extortion effort, and had many irons in the fire. The major players all lived normal lives, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Liddy, Hunt, Dean, Nixon and Agnew, no mystrious deaths at that level, Woodward and Bernstein, Sam Dash, Richard Ben Veniste, Fred LaRue died recently (great obittuary) but I don't see a lot of murders tied to Watergate, unless you mean William Colby... Tony Ulasciewitz, Egil Krogh, David Young, the Cubans, who got murdered? I don't see it

WILLIAM 'TOSH' PLUMLEE on JOHNNY ROSELLI & CHARLES NICOLETTI concerning the events of 11/22/63 DALLAS Joe West: Was Charles Nicoletti on the flight? TOSH PLUMLEE: Charles Nicoletti was not on that flight but Charles Nicoletti was in Dallas. JW: Did you see Charles Nicoletti in Dallas or how do you know that he was in Dallas? TOSH: From back from the Church committee years ago. The picture of Nicoletti was shown to me by a member, by investigators of Senator Church, and prior to that I had already pulled Nicoletti's picture out of a lineup of 10 pictures. I did not know his name at that point. On another occasion I saw him at Sloppy Joe's with John Roselli, in Biscayne Park, when they were going over some maps. JW: How do you know that Charles Nicoletti was in Dallas? TOSH: Well it's been....well, O.K.. It's been told to me, by Federal Investigators and private investigators, pictures and everything else, that he was there. In fact, it's been alleged that I actually flew him in with John Roselli. Roselli was on board the aircraft Nicoletti was not on board that aircraft. I'd already known pictures of Nicoletti, but I did not know him personally. JW: After Nicoletti got off the aircraft do you know where he went? TOSH: I have no....he was not on the aircraft. After John Roselli got off the aircraft, I have no idea where John Roselli went. JW: Did you see Nicoletti pick up Roselli? TOSH: No, I didn't see Nicoletti pick up Roselli, but because of the liaison that we had had and the discussion that was on board the aircraft, there was no doubt in my mind that Nicoletti was the person that John Roselli was referring to to meet in Dallas on that particular morning. It was the things that John Roselli had said about people that he was going to be meeting in this town which immediately made me think of the individual that I had in mind which later turned out to be identified as Nicoletti. The pickup, the transportation mode, the fact that I knew of the liaison contact between John Roselli and Nicoletti because of the previous flights that we had made back in April with John Martino and it was my opinion that the party that John Roselli would be meeting in Dallas that day was Charles Nicoletti. JW: Was there a code that you had heard in the past that you heard that day? TOSH: There was a code name by the name of "Raven" which other investigators later tried to tell me was Lee Harvey Oswald, but I don't buy that. I'd buy that the code name given out as "Raven" was Nicoletti. JW: You knew in the past that Roselli had referred to Nicoletti as "Raven"? TOSH: Yes, in the past John Roselli had referred to Nicoletti as "Raven". One specific incident was a gun running operation out of Cat Cay, at Biscayne Bay, at Sloppy Joe's when maps were exchanged and Nicoletti was responsible for getting.....I'm sorry.....John Roselli was responsible for getting the maps to the place in Bimini which was a "safe haven" to Nicoletti. At that point in time, I was under the impression that there was a hit coming up someplace but I did not know, I was not at the level, to know that intimate planning. The meetings and the fact that Johnny Roselli had tremendous liaison with Charles Nicoletti dating all the way back to Arizona at the Caravan Inn, the Thunderbird Inn in Nevada, at Burbank, California and Santa Barbara. These were people I had flown earlier. Roselli was one of them. Like I said, Nicoletti's picture was shown to me but I did not identify him as Nicoletti. I identified him under an operative name with the code name "Raven" at that point. It was only some years later that one of the investigators on the Senate staff come back and said "Nicoletti was on board your aircraft" and I made the statement to him at that point and time that "No, Nicoletti was in Dallas and picked Roselli up. I think you have your names transposed of Roselli and Nicoletti on who was on that flight." JW: So the modus operandi on the flight into Dallas matched the same m.o. every time that Roselli was to meet Nicoletti? TOSH: The M.O., the method of operation, was the same each time that John Roselli and Nicoletti met whether it be at Biscayne Bay, or whether Marathon Key, or whether it be at LeBarr Ranch in New Orleans or whether it be with the old gun running operation out of Midland...Menilothan, Texas, I think it was. So these were the areas where John Roselli and Charles Nicoletti had previous contact. At that time, my point of view, there was no doubt in my mind that Nicoletti was here to pick up Roselli and the others with the cartons that came on board the aircraft to go out to wherever they were going to go and then we came over to Redbird. JW: So you would have no reason in the world to suspect that there would be a new "Raven" or that Roselli was not meeting Nicoletti based on the five or six separate times. TOSH: No, I would have no reason. In fact, with Charles...Roselli, the liaison that Roselli had with Nicoletti and other...like Charlie "The Blade" or Farentino, which was maybe Frank Sturgis or whoever, I would have no reason to doubt that Nicoletti was the pickup man. Now maybe, I'm getting into opinions now, I think that Roselli was carrying the instructions for Nicoletti. Now, whether Nicoletti was the shooter or a member of the abort team, I don't know. Over the years, it's hard for me to accept the fact that I was told "abort" and might have played a major, major role in actually bringing the team into Dallas on that day. I believe that our information had been intercepted and as a result of that it was definitely used a cover because of the contacts that these Mafioso's had with military intelligence and the CIA. JW: Do you think Sam Giancana enters into this? TOSH: I think Sam Giancana is a major, major player in this and in fact a bigger player than John Roselli. I think, In fact, I know Sam Giancana knew Charlie Nicoletti extremely well and I think Nicoletti was a hitman for Sam Giancana and others in the Mafia and others in the Mafia at that time, mainly located out of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the old gun running operations that dated back to the '50's. JW: So you think it's quite possible that Roselli and Nicoletti could have been shooters? TOSH: Not Roselli. Roselli would not have been a shooter. Roselli would not even have been a spotter. But, Roselli, I believe, was the coordinator and I think his liaison was directly with Nicoletti and I think Nicoletti was probably your "finger man". Now whether Nicoletti was the shooter or was associating with the three shooters that was in this Plaza, one here, one over there, and one up there, which turned out to be the School Book Depository, which we did not even take into consideration because the most logical place to shot would be up on the City Record's Building, or up on this building, and right over there or right here. JW: Did Giancana always give the orders to Roselli and Nicoletti? Was that the M.O.? TOSH: That was the M.O. and that came from New Orleans, not from Chicago. I've heard a lot of researchers say that his liaison contact was Chicago, that's crap. That is New Orleans and Jacksonville, Florida. I also flew Sam Giancana's girlfriends from New Jersey to Miami two or three different times so I mean my liaison with Roselli and Sam Giancana, and I understand exactly what this could cause, going on open camera, but it's time to clear the air and it's time to get the truth out. [Re-Posted with credits, a very important statement, in my opinion.]

EX-MILITARY LAWYERS OBJECT TO BUSH CABINET NOMINEE By NEIL A. LEWIS New York Times WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — Several former high-ranking military lawyers say they are discussing ways to oppose President Bush’s nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general, asserting that Mr. Gonzales’s supervision of legal memorandums that appeared to sanction harsh treatment of detainees, even torture, showed unsound legal judgment. Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination are expected to begin next month. While Mr. Gonzales is expected to be confirmed, objections from former generals and admirals would be a setback and an embarrassment for him and the White House. Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy’s judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000 before he retired, said that while Mr. Gonzales might be a lawyer of some stature, “I think the role that he played in the one thing that I am familiar with is tremendously shortsighted.” Mr. Gonzales, as White House counsel, oversaw the drafting of several confidential legal memorandums that critics said sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and opened the door to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A memorandum prepared under Mr. Gonzales’s supervision by a legal task force concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound either by an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation. The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors “except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.” Another memorandum said the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan. Mr. Hutson, who is dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., said that Mr. Gonzales “was not thinking about the impact of his behavior on U.S. troops in this war and others to come.” “He was not thinking about the United States’ history in abiding by international law, especially in the wartime context,” he said. “For that reason, some of us think he is a poor choice to be attorney general.” Mr. Hutson said talks with other retired senior military officials had not yet produced a decision on how to oppose the selection, though testifying at the hearings was a possibility. He said that while several opposed “He went forum-shopping,” General Cullen said, saying Mr. Gonzales had ignored the advice of military lawyers adamantly opposed to some of the legal strategies adopted, including narrowly defining torture so as to make it difficult to prove it occurred. “When you create these kinds of policies that can eventually be used against your own soldiers, when we say ‘only follow the Geneva Conventions as much as it suits us,’ when we take steps that the common man would understand is torture, this undermines what we are supposed to be, and many of us find it appalling,” he said. General Cullen, a lawyer in New York City, said the group of former military lawyers who oppose the nomination hoped to decide soon what specific action to take. The memorandums produced largely by lawyers in the Justice Department and other government agencies created great bitterness at the time among military lawyers, who said they were not consulted. Mr. Gonzales and the White House have already been put on notice by Senate Democrats that he should expect to be questioned vigorously about his role in the memorandums. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, The Judiciary Committee’s ranking Dem., sent several letters to Mr. Gonza1es, the most recent of which said that “you will be asked to describe your role in both the interpretation of the law and the development of policies that led to what and many others consider to have \ been a disregard for the rule of law,” (the practices at Abu Ghraib.) “You will be called upon to explain in detail your role in developing policy related to the interrogation treatment of foreign prisoners.” When the memorandums began appearing this year in news accounts… [by Neil Lewis]

Don Roberdeau (!) Jack Ruby material interesting. The Autopsy stuff is best approached by the Seminar Thread AUTOPSY EVIDENCE by Dr. Minkel, composed upon his visits to the National Archives. The low rear entry wound of the 1977 House findings is very suspect, "a more magicker bullet" Between Pat Spears paper, Dr. Minkels' Paper and Wim's Website, I have been able to puzzle over the photos and XRays, and "THEY DON"T MAKE NO SENSE" Glad you are active in the FORUM

No matter who I may theorize was ultimately responsible, these characters, from the Mafia and CIA intertwinement, fill in a center position. There are two planes of interest, and they intersect. One plane of interest runs from Giancana through Jack Ruby, Licavoli, Harrelson and Files, possibly. Another plane of interests includes Alpha 66 & Interpen, the angry Bay of Pigs commandos who came back together at the Watergate burglary, Gerry Hemmings, Morales, Rip Robertson and David Attlee Bishop Phillips. Santo Trafficante was intertwined with both groups. The real focus, the intersection of the CIA subset and the Mafia group who wanted Kennedy dead was JOHNNY ROSELLI....now if that is disinfo, and a limited hang out of information as desired by someone above them in establishment credibility (Like GHW Bush, Maxwell Taylor or C.D.Dillon, Dulles, Murchison, McCone and McCloy) THEN WE HAVE NO FIRM EVIDENCE OF THIS, so we cannot discard the facts of the two planes being central to the plot as we know it ... The possibility of JFK's "Incapacity" and the lack of protection on 11/22/63 from Army Intelligence and the 1963 Secret Service raises the stakes, but we have little evidence of their complicity before the fact. Some, but not as much as we have on Chicago and the WH station MC.

Wim Who is asking the questions and answering in the above post? Also They beat the living hell out of Jimmy Files looking for that 1963 Secret Service map of the parade route, didn't they? I found that supportive, if true.

1971 - The Key to India-U.S. Relations and India-Pakistan Relations {Ethnicity and regional autonomy has emerged as a conceptual counterweight to oppose the growth of large state spatial authority in South Asia and the developing world. This theory, where ethnicity and central government form a dynamic and oscillating tension, informs Sankaran Krishna’s interpretation of India’s recent history as a period of true post-colonialism. Partition of India and Pakistan occured in 1947, and a further partition of greater Pakistan turned a province of old East Bengal into Bangladesh in 1971.} More than simply following Independence from Britain chronologically, Krishna sees the last fifty years of post-colonial South Asian history as a period strongly influenced by the pre-1947 British authority mode. Inheritors of state sovereignty, the Indian government, and other ranking elites in Pakistan and Dacca engage in a directly mimetic aping of authoritarian forms. They indulge in the same simplistic communal distinctions that spawned Partition -- and are thus victims of their post-colonial insecurity. This post-colonial, mimetic, central-state authoritarian approach exacerbates existing ethnic minority tensions. The central state (whether it be India, Sri Lanka or Pakistan) feeds on this ethnic strife as it alternately crushes or protects the less assimilated language groups by turns . Two very different views of India are put forward by Krishna and Sisson-Rose. Richard Sisson and Leo Rose represent the elite Cold War U.S. foreign policy outlook, while Krishna looks to re-imagine “South Asia as a space marked by decentralized nation states with high degrees of provincial autonomy.” Krishna’s ideal seems to harken back to (or hope for) a counterfactual world of a large un-partitioned independent India--if India had not been partitioned, then “high degrees of provincial autonomy” would have been needed. Krishna’s book falls short due to an airy idealism, while Rose falls short from a less than critical realpolitick approach. Post-colonial independence, autonomy, ethnicity and the policies of the new South Asian governments inform the discussion of the period. India in 1971 responded militarily to Pakistan and East Bengal’s rupture over provisional authority, and used force to conclusively endow an ethnic group with state autonomy. Was the six-point plan of Mujib and the Awami League ever a real possibility? Was a constitutional confederation enough to secure East Bengal within a greater Pakistan? In reality it was not, with the PPP leader Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto intimidating the junta leader Agha Mohammed Yahya Kahn. Without much stronger international support early on, the compromise measures (actual electoral mandates) of Mujib were doomed. The world was loking the other way. Ali Bhutto here resembles the Nationalists in the 1920’s Weimar Reichstag, willing to use the constitutional offices to bring about tyranny, and like Gustav Stresemann’s right-wing opponents in the 1920’s Bhutto had no real respect for the republican electoral mandate. His illegitimate grasping degraded Mujib’s mandate and derailed the six-point federal plan, until India was forced to intervene. Rose stresses the impact of U.S. non-intervention in the Pakistan crisis: “In the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, Pakistan complained bitterly that Washington had not fulfilled its obligation to an ‘ally.’” Rose explains this within an elite middle level NSC/State Department foreign policy paradigm. In 1971 President Richard Nixon, Dr. Henry Kissinger and the NSC/State Department system was focused on the Sino-Soviet split and were busy conducting the new ‘secret’ Laos Cambodia Vietnam war. Their alliance with Pakistan was convenient, shallow and non-binding. With appropriate triumphalism, the U.S. actors advocating the regional hegemon theory calmly allowed India to move into the power vacuum in East Bengal, and defeat the U.S. “ally,” Pakistan. In his East Bengal general strike narrative, Rose shows the communication and logistics nightmare faced by a Pakistani military forces trapped “behind the lines” in the Deccan peninsula. Pakistan, i.e. General Yahya Kahn’s government, is certainly mimetic at this juncture – Pakistani forces in Chittagong and Dacca in 1970 were in the same position as the British had been in after the Rowlett Acts were imposed. Pakistan and then India mimicked roles learned from their former masters, the Great Britain Raj, and both used force to quell the ethnic secessionist revolt. Indo-Pakistani relations underwent a sea change in 1971. The dynamic went from a rough parity, a standoff reflecting the 1966 Tashkent settlement, to India’s emerging with an absolute military domination of South Asia. Triumphalists in the NSC/ State Department apparatus saw this as vindication of the local hegemon approach to solving non-superpower conflicts. Indira Gandhi’s non-aligned policy (India’s official policy since the Bandung conference of 1950) and the 7 August 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace and Friendship were certainly not Richard Nixon’s ideal for a proper Cold War position for India, but he met with Indira, he recognized the democratic federal republic as a functional democracy and let India go its own way. Problems like the non-aligned status of India and the 1971 Soviet treaty—if not unambiguously hostile to U.S. interests--were tolerated. 1971 was the great transitional moment in Indo-Pakistani and Indo-U.S. relations. The dynamic of ethnicity and state power must be the critical agent of interpretation of these events—both in understanding India’s rise to dominance over Pakistan and in its elevation to respected status vis-à-vis the U.S. India became the arbiter of ethnic legitimacy, which built up its own legitimacy. India had learned to play both sides of the ethnicity/central power game. British attitudes had left a mimetic legacy to post-colonial South Asia. India and Pakistan were partitioned along sectarian lines. In the Nehru/Gandhi era the Congress party learns, slowly, to delegate rights. Language based rights were extended to the southern Indian state provinces, and Krishna shows that this forbearance was the key to preventing full blown secession and a civil war in the Dravidian region. The literate and radical East Bengal intellectuals were an ethnic group divergent in locale and culture from the West Pakistani Muslims. They sought autonomy and less authoritarian central government through the Awami League actions and the Six Points. Pakistan was unable to compromise with the elected majority, and India’s intervention in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kashmir then form a pattern of India seeking legitimacy through a defense of the ethnic national aspirations of its neighbors. The U.S., which was modulating its perception (at the elite State/NSC level which Rose interacts with and reflects) of India through its simplistic Cold War bi-polar filter, and the U.S. didn’t have as sensitive a view of ethnic issues as the leaders of India at New Delhi did. Certainly Dr. Kissinger and his assistant Alexander Haig had no sensitive affinity for the offended language groups in the Dravidian or along the coasts of the Deccan peninsula and Sri Lanka, or knew how to deal with these issues. The U.S. understanding of India’s ethnicity interests was inadequate, at best, during the Vietnam War era. Put simply, Nixon and Kissinger didn’t know what was going on in the East Bengali sphere and they didn’t really care. They were not going to support either side and they didn’t want the trouble to spread. Kissinger didn’t want to lose his window on China, but Pakistan was in no position to question U.S. policies of non-intervention. India ‘settled’ the dispute in 1971 and the U.S. was impressed with Gandhi’s masterstroke of foreign policy. As Krishna states, foreign policy is part of nation building. With the collapse of the Egypt-Syrian confederation the Indian domination of South Asia became the best (only) example of a regional hegemon. The U.S., during the height of the Laos Cambodia Vietnam secret war, did not understand or care about the ethnic sub-state secessionist violence in South Asia. The U.S./Indian relationship, never good but never truly hostile, reached a low point when the USS Enterprise sailed into the Indian Ocean in 1971. “New Delhi recognized the dispatch of the (7th) Fleet was a symbolic gesture intended to impress China and the Islamic states in southwest Asia as well as to counter the reinforced Soviet fleet in the Indian Ocean.” Rose makes it clear that the USS Enterprise incident was not aimed solely or even mainly at India, but it served as a ‘keep out of it’ signal to the Soviets and the Iran/Iraq leaderships. So the USS Enterprise incident does not fundamentally weaken the case that India was allowed to act as unilateral hegemon in South Asia. Only an all out military destabilization of the minor U.S. ally, Pakistan, would have brought a true U.S.- Indian confrontation. 1971 was a turning point in Indian relations with Pakistan, with India emerging as the dominant heir to the British subcontinent governing power. Pakistan was split into two, which remedied the most striking oddity of the 1947 Partition program, the unprecedented 1200 mile gap between East and West Pakistan. Parity and the Tashkent stalemate were over when India militarily helped to build a new nation out of the old East Bengal/East Pakistan region, essentially disciplining and partitioning its neighbor, greater Pakistan. 1971 was also the turning point in India-U.S. relations as Indira Gandhi and the Indian military earned the hearty respect of realpolitick NSC/State Department elites, who felt that India as a local enforcement power could contain regional strife in South Asia, an area of less than compelling global importance to the U.S. India in it pacification of the East Pakistan civil war and refugee crisis foreshadows clearly the 1983 Sri Lankan intervention by the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which the U.S., significantly, did not oppose. The excesses of emergency rule in 1977 and the 1983 Sri Lanka intervention would tarnish the U.S. image of an ascendant India. Indian-U.S. and Indo-Pakistani relations hinge on these events in 1971, when East Bengal broke away from West Pakistan and India fought West Pakistan on behalf of the Bangladeshi insurgents. Ethnic struggle and mimetic state powers form a useful point of departure in understanding the realpolitick masterstroke of India in 1971.

Ian Kerr I will do those searches. My information comes from the book by John Marks on the MK/ULTRA program. Richard Helms destroyed the operational files, but Colby released many of the FInancial files, and Marks reconstructed the reports. The Frank Olson Project is a good source on the MK/Ultra and there was a good Korean War Era book I read called Brainwashed. There certainly is more going on than we are being told, both in terms of present and historical programs.

Attempted suicides who injure themselves or miss with the first shot very rarely then return to take a second, life-taking, shot. If there were two shots it was never a suicide in the first place. It could have been any of the organized drug gangs that did it, but they wouldn't have made it look like a phony suicide, so.... you know who....

Good point. I have told Wim privately and I will say it here, I think he has lost his objectivity by championing Files so strongly. I think Chauncey Holt has a stronger case than Files, but Holt was apparently not a shooter. But neither was Files. Files probably just interjected himself into a known situation, its a classic jailhouse confession. He knew there was a grassy knoll shooter, he knew maybe that Licavoli and WerBell were around, but the whole thing is not strong enough to put forward as FACT, because it hinges on one CRIMINAL's claims...so WIm is just embarrassing himself by pushing up so hard...If he just presented Files as a "what if" then people would take all his other analysis MORE seriously. I may be wrong, he might have fired the Fireball .222 but there is a better and more objective way to handle the evidence.

Which many people do, so don't discount the theory...Oswald is a puzzle, maybe two. Tosh is certainly right, though, people weren't landing planes on the banks of the Trinity River in the 1960's. Sounds like a guy wrote a bad novel based on TOSH PLUMLEE. Tosh, I read all the sanitized DEA and FBI Phoenix Correspondence. Very interesting the way the FBI sanitized the JOHNNY ROSELLI material. The JPEGs were a great look at Censored and ponderous government records. The experiences you had, (and they are not all there by a long shot), are definitely worth reading...Shanet in Atlanta

When Howard Hunt went to civil trial against Victor Marchetti -- and lost -- the whole sworn testimony of Hunt and his CIA cronies and family, that material is not a confession, but it is a courtroom loss of alibi.

John, you went out on a limb with that one, so congratulations for some courage, anyway. I see what Wim is stressing, the theme of intertwining elements of organized crime and politically powerful individuals. Was the Organized Crime theme as delivered in the 1970's a limited hang out for a deeper governmental conspiracy? Many believe so, on the basis of the Cover-up. Because of the FBI errors and impossibly reversed investigatory methods, the CIA's tight lips, the Bethesda Naval and military autopsy cover-up, the Elements of the governing clique come under scrutiny. If these murky organized crime/mecenaries with legitimate Cold War credentials like JOHNNY ROSELLI, then the point of origin may never be found, but the cover-up, the Warren COmmission, the mysterious deaths, the 25th Amendment and the HSAC all these point to ongoing government action at the highest level to cover-up and deny the truth about the murders of 11/22/63...so we will draw conclusions that bring all these elements into some sense...hence, evidence based theories of conspiracy between military, governmental, hired and enrolled parties........

The historians Gilbert Burnet and Thomas Macaulay, with Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson and Rene Descartes, as well as Bob Dylan and Mark Twain, all of US seated opposite from George W. Bush and Imelda Marcos (as the source of OUR fine amusement).