Tim Gratz

A joke I like: A man's car broke down as he was driving past a beautiful old monastery. He walked up the drive and knocked on the front door. A monk answered, listened to the man's story and graciously invited him to spend the night. The monks fed the man and led him to a tiny chamber in which to sleep. The man thanked the monks and slept serenely until he was awakened by a strange and beautiful sound. The next morning, as the monks were repairing his car, he asked about the sound that had woke him. "We're sorry," the monks said. "We can't tell you about the sound. You're not a monk." The man was disappointed, but eager to be gone, so he thanked the monks for their kindness and went on his way. During quiet moments afterward, the man pondered the source of the alluring sound. Several years later the man happened to be driving in the same area. He stopped at the monastery on a whim and asked admittance. He explained to the monks that he had so enjoyed his previous stay, he wondered if he might be permitted to spend another night under their peaceful roof. The monks agreed, and so the man stayed with them again. Late that night, he heard the strange beautiful sound. The following morning he begged the monks to explain the sound. The monks gave him the same answer as before. "We're sorry. We can't tell you about the sound. You're not a monk." By now the man's curiosity had turned to obsession. He decided to give up everything and become a monk, for that was the only way he could learn about the sound. He informed the monks of his decision and began the long and arduous task of becoming a monk. Seventeen years later, the man was finally established as a true member of the order. When the celebration ended, he humbly went to the leader of the order and asked to be told the source of the sound. Silently, the old monk led the new monk to a huge wooden door. He opened the door with a golden key. That door swung open to reveal a second door of silver, then a third of gold and so on until they had passed through twelve doors, each more magnificent than the last. The new monk's face was awash with tears of joy as he finally beheld the wondrous source of the beautiful mysterious sound he had heard so many years before ........ * * * * * * * * * * * * But, you can't be told what it was. You're not a monk.

I never heard of Kennedy property appropriation before; do tell. I believe my seminar does many the issue of legal, but it is a ridiculous rationale. "When one officer questioned CIA Counsel Larry Houston about the legality of these Miami-based undertakings, noting that the Bay of Pigs force had been assembled outside the United States partly to avoid the Neutrality Acts, he was told that 'if the President says it's okay, and if the Attorney General says it's okay, then it's okay.'"[1] 1. Powers, 136. Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tim, of course the Nixon administration used the same rationale that anything the president said was legal. And the Supreme Court rightly emphasized that no man was above the law. The reference is to assets of the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation which was owned by George Skalel, Sr., Robert Kennedy's father-in-law. In "Sons and Brothers", Richard Mahoney says that the Kennedys were less than pleased when some Castroites tried to seize Skakel's 55 foot yacht which was anchored in Cuba. The incident ocurred in in 1959, and Mahoney states that it steeled the attitude of the Kennedy family toward Castro. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

See Post below.

Yim Gratz: Thanks for the thoughtful readthrough and compliment. No need to address the Eisenhower administration on this thread, as I didn't say anything about it, as I am an equal opportunity historical critic. The Kennedys undeniably went a bit nuts after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I believe in a strict interpretation of the constitution, especially when it comes to declaration of war, which I believe happened the last time on December 8, 1941. Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tim, the compliment was well-deserved. I appreciate your humor "equal opportunity historical critic". Re "the Kennedys went a bit nuts [about Castro] after the Bay of Pigs fiasco" --no one answered my query whether Castro appropriated any property belonging to the Kennedy family. He did (details later); but that probably did not explain the zeal with which the Kennedys went after the bearded one. Query why no one else (of whom I am aware anyway) has questioned the legality of the "secret war". I am also a strict constructionist and I believe our founding fathers were wise men indeed and the reasons for the "checks and balances" they set up still exist. You know why I know the CIA did not set up an elaborate plan to kill Kennedy? They could not even figure out how to disguise the planes to make them look like the Cuban air force. You know that story. How anyone could believe the invasion could be disguised as a spontaneous uprising of Cuban exiles without US assistance seems beyond belief. And most of these guys had Ivy League educations! My point is this nonsense would not have occured had the Constitution been followed. On the subject of founding fathers, have you seen National Treasure? Most critics panned it but everyone I know who saw it loved it. The theory of secret writings in the Declaration of Independence and all that requires a suspension of disbelief, to be sure, but it covers a lot of out history accurately, e.g., the signing of the Declaration of Independence; Independence Hall; the Old North Church; the midnight ride of Paul Revere; the Liberty Bell,. etc. My seven year old daughter first learned of the Liberty Bell from that movie. (She's very bright; at three and a half years old she knew that Kennedy was shot in a car--but she does not know by whom (neither do I!). But see the movie if you get a chance.

I recently came across a discussion of how the Baker scandal was "contained" after LBJ became president. From Ch 14 of Rick Perlstein's "Before the Storm" (2001): "In late January [of 1964] when Republicans tried to get Walter Jenkins, Johnson's most intimate aide, to testify before a Senate subcommittee investigation, Johnson put in the fix. Two psychiatrists appeared to testify that an appearance would – literally - kill him. [Republican] Carl Curtis moved to call Jenkins to the stand anyway. He lost 6-3 in a party line vote. . . . Curtis lost again when he moved to make the record of the session public. The investigation closed without a single Administration witness being called."

There is no doubt Robert Kennedy claimed that there was no attempt to dump Johnson in 1963. He told John Bartlow Martin in 1964: “There was never any intention of dropping him. There was never even any discussion about dropping him.” (1) However, Penn Jones claims that Johnson was to be replaced with George Smathers. (2) I think this is highly unlikely as by 1963 JFK and Smathers were in dispute over Cuba. Smathers had been trying to pressurize JFK into ousting the Castro government. This pressure was relentless and JFK eventually lost his temper and told him that he must never mention this subject again. The two men had been close (both privately and politically). By 1963 JFK’s views had changed dramatically. The two men had in fact fallen out during the 1960 presidential campaign. JFK was furious with Smathers for supporting LBJ during the campaign for the nomination. Smathers even refused to help JFK get the Florida vote. At the time, JFK feared that this would stop him getting the nomination. If JFK had agreed that Smathers would be his running-mate in 1964, it was as a result of extreme pressure (or blackmail) from the Southern Caucus. Evelyn Lincoln claims that JFK told her he intended to replace Johnson. This is reported in her book Kennedy and Johnson. (3) Lincoln says that JFK was thinking of appointing Terry Sanford. If this is not true, what motive would Lincoln have for lying? In fact, we now know she was telling the truth. Lincoln’s papers were donated to the Kennedy Library. These were released to JFK researchers in 1997. It was discovered that there are contemporaneous stenography notes corroborating her 1968 claim that LBJ was going to be dumped. (4) The real question is why did Robert Kennedy lie about this issue? The answer is contained in the RFK interview with Martin. (5) RFK is clearly uneasy when Martin returns to the issue of dumping Johnson. Martin is under the impression that JFK was considering dumping LBJ because of the Bobby Baker case. RFK replies: There were a lot of stories that my brother and I were interested in dumping Lyndon Johnson and that I’d started the Bobby Baker case in order to give us a handle to dump Lyndon Johnson. Well, number one, there was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. That didn’t make any sense. Number two, I hadn’t gotten really involved in the Bobby Baker case until after a good number of newspaper stories had appeared about it. This is again a lie. RFK had been investigating the Baker case for sometime. How do we know? Well the main figure in the Senate trying to raise the links between LBJ and the Baker scandal was John Williams, the Republican senator for Delaware. Burkett Van Kirk, who was chief counsel for the Republican minority on the Senate Rules Committee, admitted in an interview he gave in 1997 that RFK had been leaking information about Baker to Williams. Van Kirk claims that the Kennedy brothers were doing this because they were trying to dump Johnson. (6) Unfortunately this strategy backfired. Johnson found out what the Kennedy’s were up to. He knew how to get the Kennedys to change their mind on this issue. He therefore tipped off Hoover about the brothers involvement with Ellen Rometsch. When Hoover told the Kennedys that Rometsch was a Soviet spy they knew they were in serious trouble. Especially when they heard from Baker that he had “tapes and photographs” of these sexual activities. (7) They did not only involve Rometsch. They also included JFK having sex with Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang. (8) That was a problem because these two women, both initially from communist countries, had been named as part of the spy ring that had trapped John Profumo, the British War Minister, a few months earlier. RFK became convinced that if this story got out, JFK would be forced to resign. It was these attempts by RFK to suppress this story that led to assassination of JFK. I will look at this issue in more depth in a later posting. Notes and References 1. Edwin Guthman & Jeffrry Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988) page 336. 2. W. Penn Jones Jr, Texas Midlothian Mirror (31st July, 1969) 3. Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) 4. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 408 5. 1. Edwin Guthman & Jeffrry Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988) page 389. 6. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 406 7. Telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and George Smathers (10th January, 1964) 8. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 391 <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Incredible post, John! No question JFK would have had to resign if the stories you have refered to were made public. Perhaps your follow-up post will respond to this issue: if anyone such as LBJ or Hoover had wanted to get rid of JFK all they would have had to do was publicize the stories. Accepting your scenario, is it possible someone could have suggested to Bobby, to the effect, if these stories had come out your brother would have had to resign in disgrace and history would record him as the first president ever to resign. Now we have made him a martyr just like Lincoln. Finally, although I have not read the Guthman-Schulman book, I'm quite sure that in that book RFK denied that there had ever been plots to kill Castro, a demonstable falsehood because the CIA had briefed him on the CIA/Mafia polts on May 7, 1962. So many of his "own words" as recorded by those men are subject to question.

There's some good info on the Internet about it too, Shanet.

Tim: Some years ago this copy of letter was sent to me by an investigator from Austin Texas. It is sealed along with other important documents with my attorney in Colorado. I thought you might find it of interest, in view of your current interest. Bob: June transcribed this for you. I hope all is well. Please write and let us know what is going on. Thanks Don. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CERTIFIED COPY and REGISTERED #7506-9341 April 10,1975 Dear Smithy; It was good to hear from you. It has been awhile. I am glad to hear Susan is doing fine after her surgery. You ask me about the airport in Key West and Jack Ruby. I can’t remember the name of the manager off hand, but I first heard the story from Chubby Weiner of Starlight Cruisers out on Marathon. He knew the pilot who was going to fly Jack and others to Cuba. That was in the early summer of 1963. The pilot was Bill Pearson and he had a room at the old Jack Tarrs ( now the Salty Dog I think) across from the airport at Marathon. Hank Mitchell, I think was his name, had a small fleet of airplanes based there and Bill was one of his part time pilots. It was local knowledge that Pearson was CIA and had worked with the Cubans a few years ago in Miami. He used to fly the Texaco PBY Catalina down here from Miami into Cuba but that was to help Castro before he came into power. Before 1959. I remember when they painted the seaplane plane black. Bill also flew the black P-51 that was such a hit down here around that time. He used to fly it upside down over hiway 1 and Marathon then land. They were a routtie bunch of young men and never paid their bills, but the bills always got paid by someone else, somehow. I am not sure what happen to the Jack Ruby matter, but there were a lot of investigators from Congress down here a few months ago. And they asked a lot of questions about that story and other things about Plum Key and the raid that Puto was in. I can’t recall their names on when the last time they were here. The FBI did talk to Chubby and he was a little shook up about that. He did tell them, or he told me he told them he saw Oswelld in the summer of 1963 at the Key West airport but he did not or could not identifie Ruby with him. After that things got real quite around here and people just left? I’m sorry I can’t be of more help Smithy, but I never thought much about the story. There are so many stories about all that and it twist the mind if you believe all of um. Tell Sue Hi and you guys come down and see us soon. Write or call. Larry. [ This was transcribed from a hand written letter from Larry Green of Key West, Florida to Smithy Parks in Indiana PA., in 1975] The subject was about a question Mr.Green asked Mr. Parks about Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald. The original letter and post mark are sealed and recorded and on file with Attorney, Don Johnston, Pine Junction, Colorado (also recordered in Park County, Colorado, 1999 B-1017) * * * * * * * * Thanks for the information!. Most interesting! As you know if you read Fonzi's book he and Faraldo spent a great deak of time looking for flight manifests and other information to verify a plane trip to Cuba but were unable to find any. (Some had been destroyed, as I recall, in a storm.) Do you have any info re who Mr. Green and Mr. Parks were? If Faraldo's story was correct (and I tend to believe it was) it certainly is strong indication of a conspiracy. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[/color] <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for the tip on the Alterman book. That quote from Reeves is a great contribution to this discussion. I love that book. As I have asserted previously, it has generally been treated as unthinkable that JFK and Bobby diverged. Even in such an inoccuous book as Manchester's The Death of a President, it opens with a reception at which Bobby is despondent and ready to leave the administration. As for Diem and Nhu, those Buddhist monk self-immolation "barbecues," according to Madame Nhu's characterization, were having great effect at the time, although by today's suicide terrorist standards it was pretty tame. Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> As I said, I'd love to get your comments on Alterman's treatment of the Cuban missile crisis. I'm sure his other chapters are equally intriguing. One problem with Key West is its small library. The library had to order books from all over the state so we had adequate information to research our stories. Now that the books are back, it is difficult to recheck them. Too bad there's not a Netflix type of business for books! I think I mentioned this before. I reject the central thesis of the book, but there is a lot of interesting information in "Triangle of Death", and I think all serious students of the assassination should read it. Madame Nhu was quite a character. Have you read a book by one of the members of the last South Vietnamese government bitterly complaining that Nixon lied to them to persuade them to accept the peace accords that settled the War in Vietnam? I forget the name of the book but it was an interesting study of Nixon and Kissinger in action.

Absolutely - done! Stupid mistake. SInce laser surgery, the computer screen is right in between needing glasses and not; thereby usually meaning not. A less substantive correction of the Smith transcript is his middle initial being "E" rather than "T." Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tim: His full name was Earl E. T. Smith. I have not read it yet (just briefly skimmed it) but hope you get the chance to read the chapter on the Cuban missile crisis in Eric Alterman's new book "When Presidents Lie". Based on my very cursory review, I would characterize Altrerman's analysis as "thought provoking". I would very much like to see your comments on it. Fits in with a lot of your writing, I think.

What rekindled my interest in the assassination was reading Gaeton Fonzi's book, "The Last Investigation", and in particular Chapter Seve, Searching for Ghosts in Key West. In that chapter, Fonzi tells the story of his week-long visit to Key West in 1975 when he was on the staff of the Church Committee, to investigate the report of the former manager of the Key West airport that, in the summer of 1963 he had seen LHO and Jack Ruby at the airport, waiting for a plane to Cuba. I think that the airport manager was the most reputable witness to a pre-assassination connection between LHO and Ruby. Curiously, I have not seen this story reported in any of the assassination literature other than Fonzi's book. I would like to solicit comments from Forum members what you think of the story. Mark Howell of the Key West newspaper and I researched the story, including interviewing the manager's widow (who had entertained Fonzi in their home) and a former sports reporter who had accompanied the airport manager on a trip to Cuba for fishing (but the airport manager used it for a little surveillance and was briefly detained by the Cuban police). Here is a link to our story about Oswald and Ruby at the Key West airport: http://cuban-exile.com/photo/jfk/KW-JFK2003nov23.pdf WARNING: BECAUSE IT IS A PDF FILE, WITH PHOTOS, IT TAKES A FEW MINUTES TO OPEN. Permit me to comment why I want to solicit your assessment of Faraldo's story. In Fonzi's book he indicates a certain wariness of Faraldo's story. I think he puts it that he was "not sure what to make of it". Part of his ambiguity is that he believed Faraldo had ties to the CIA (and Mrs. Faraldo seemed to verify that when we met with her). Is there any reason the CIA would want to promote such a story in the mid-seventies? Moreover, Faraldo had told the story to others much earlier. Quite sure Mrs. Faraldo said he discussed it with her shortly after the assassination. And he had told the story to a Miami tv reporter while the Garrison investigation was in the news. So Faraldo's connections, if any, to the CIA seem irrelevant to an assessment of the veracity of his story. And there is no indication he ever used the story in an attempt to gain personal attention or financial advantage. In any event, does any Forum member see any reason to disbelieve his story? I suppose one reason would be if LHO's known whereabouts in the time period involved would prohibit him spending a day at the Key West airport, followed by a day in Cuba. Again, I would appreciate your comments not only because the story is of personal interest to me (turns out I had lived within four houses of the Faraldos' house) but also because, if true, it is, I think, a very strong indication of a conspiracy.

Tim Gratz: As with our previous discussion about Trento, this partisan perspective of these matters is overly simplistic and generally irrelevant. Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed. As you know, I think one of the biggest mistakes our country made in the 1960s was the removal of Diem. I remember the controversy over Diem in the fall of 1963. National Review, which greatly influenced my political thinking in those years, was strongly outspoken in defense of Diem. In one sense, the issue could be summed up in the old adage: "You don't change horses in mid-stream." Plus, of course, the Diem overthrow involved our country's encouragement of a violent overthrow of a long-standing government of an independent third party. Although the ultimate responsibility rests with JFK, he was largely influenced by Rep Henry Cabot Lodge. (It would probably going too far to suggest that Lodge's attitude toward the Diem regime may have been influenced by religious differences.) By the way, our previous discussions (on a different thread) about the Ciem coup were overly simplistic, on both our parts. There was a tremenduous amount of manuevering going on in both Washington and Saigon between late August of 1963 and the Diem coup of Nov 1st. JFK was clearly vacillating because his administration was engaged in a bitter internal debate. It was probably because of the internal dispute that JFK listened to the advise of Henry Cabot Lodge, who was "on the ground" in Saigon. The best summary I recently encountered (since our earlier interchanges) is in Richard Reeves "President Kennedy: Profile in Power. You have mentioned possible differences of opinion between JFK and RFK. We know RFK opoposed overthrowing Diem. Here is an interesting passage from Reeves' book. Context: JFK had cabled Lodge that the White House intended to control the action in Saigon. Both Kennedy's thought that Lodge's cable acknowleding that was perhaps sarcastic. RFK told JFK: "I told you he [Lodge] was going to be trouble." According to Reeves, JFK snapped back at his brother: "You know what's terrific about you? You always remember when you're right." Reeves, Chapter 53.

Tim Gratz: As with our previous discussion about Trento, this partisan perspective of these matters is overly simplistic and generally irrelevant. Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed!

John, your post notes the conflict in recollection (or accuracy) over whether JFK was going to dump LBJ in 1964. I think the statement by RFK was probably correct. It would no political sense for JFK to dump Lyndon before the 1964 election. After the election would be a different story. I recently came across this passage from Ch 56 of Richard Reeves "President Kennedy: Profile of Power." It refers to JFK's political discussions with Sen George Smathers in Miami on Monday, November 18, 1963: [smathers] brought up newspaper stories that Kennedy was considering dropping Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. "George, you have some intelligence, I presume," Kennedy said sarcastically. "Can you see me now in a terrible fight with Lyndon Johnson, which means I'll blow the South? You know, I love this job, I love every second of it.. . Smathers, you just haven't got any sense, and if Lyndon thinks that, he ought to think about it. I don't want to get licked. I really don't care whether Lyndon gets licked, but I don't want to get licked and he's going to be my vice-president because he helps me!"

Interesting quote. Check my memory, I think the Vienna summit was in 1961. I am sure you caught, in the colloquy between Dodd and Smith, that Dodd ( a Democrat) was expressing a more reactionary attitude than Smith whose carefully stated opinions were (searching for the right word) nuanced. (If you agree the summit was in 1961, edit your post and I will edit this one to delete the reference.)

Tim Gratz: I meant no argument with Mr. Weyl having been a communist; I simply had never heard that and didn't have that take from his seminar. In the case of a self-proclaimed communist there is little room for interpretation or debate. But in terms of declaring who was a communist and at what point in time, as I have said, in those days, Earl Warren was considered a communist by many, as was JFK. It's a matter of interpretation. I wonder if you have ever heard of the Bay of Pigs planning by the right wing elements at the CIA to go ahead with a moderate provisional government, with a plan ready to subsequently replace it with a more Batistiano one? The Bay of Pigs planning also included manipulating the politics of the Cuban exiles in the aftermath of what was hoped to be a successful takeover. Even many of the Cuban exiles would have been shocked at how far some in the United States were willing to go in this regard. The President’s directive that the exile leadership include more people from the left-of-center orientation to counter charges that the exiles were nothing more than Batisteros in disguise caused some dissension in the CIA’s ranks. E. Howard Hunt’s resentment of the change led him to “resign”[1] or be “fired”[2] from his job as Political Action Officer for the invasion, depending on whose version one believes. He thought these changes amounted to a policy of Fidelismo sin Fidel, Fidelism without Fidel. Hunt’s political orientation, which was distinctly right wing, was far more amenable to Batistism sin Batista. One of the moderate Cuban leaders, stung by Hunt’s charge, stated: “I don’t know what it means to be a leftist. If it means to be in favor of all the people and for the welfare of the masses, then I am.” Hunt retorted: “Fidel Castro could not have phrased it better.”[3] His ideology was reflected in a quote he was fond of citing: “The liberal’s arm cannot strike with firmness against communism ... because the liberal dimly feels that in doing so he would be somehow wounding himself.”[4] The right wing Cubans and those in the CIA like Hunt who were most sympathetic to counter-revolutionary politics did make contingency plans for the exiles’ leadership after the landing. “Operation 40 [a high level, government-connected Cuban exile group] called for assassinating the moderates after their return to the island following an invasion.”[5] The U.S. supported the creation of a moderate provisional government during the planning, while its own agents were plotting to install a more right-wing one later. The moderates were intended to legitimize the efforts of the exile force while at the same time becoming targets themselves for some later murderous manipulation. 1. E. Howard Hunt, Give Us This Day, (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973), 83. 2. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms & the CIA, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 252. 3. E. Howard Hunt, 94. 4. Ibid., 218. 5. Maria de los Angeles Torres, "Autumn of the Cuban Patriarchs," The Nation, (December 1, 1997, v265, n180, 24(3). Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tim, interesting post. Weyl by the way was a card-carrying communist, as I understand it. I'll e-mail him and tell him it would be interesting for him to summarize his political history. I'm sure it would be most interesting! There certainly were a multiplicity of anti-Castro exile organizations of various political philosophies. I am sure you will find interesting the post I will do tomorrow re William Pawley's efforts to find a moderate to replace Batista, efforts which probably came too late and were not supported by the State Department. Re the political persuasion of the CIA, I am quite certain that Bissell, who really originated the CIA/mafia plots, was a Kennedy supporter in the 1960 election. I am sure Hunt was quite right wing. I have no idea of Helms' political philosophy (other than that he was no fan of Richard Nixon). I presume (could be wrong) that Angleton's politics were right of center.

Dawn: I personally appreciate the suggestion "to look up #107 or whatever" on an organized seminar, as that is how this process will actually move forward, rather than just remaining a jumbled set of disconnected comments. How better to improve upon what you complain to be, "All the F###### trivial debates, on and on...."? Tim Carroll <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tim, I of course did this to direct Forum members to your seminar where the issues of the Hunt crash and the suspicious deaths (timing wise, anyway) of Russell and Leon properly belong.

Tim, a really excellent article!! Sometime I'll make a few comments but I really enjoyed it and want to take the time to study it. One immediate thought: Clearly the US was running a secret war against Castro and it certainly had its origins while Eisenhower was in office. It raises the question whether these actions, many of which, I am sure we agree, were ill-advised, were unconstitutional since the Constitution reserves to Congress the right to initiate a war. I do not recall seeing this issue being discussed in the literature.

John, previous posts were right. It is Ellen Rometsch. She was linked to Baker's notorious Quorum Club and many think she had a relationship with with JFK. She had also apparently had a relationship with a member of the Soviet Embassy and some claimed she was a spy. Are you going to discuss how she was spirited out of the country in the summer of 1963 and how, in October of 1963, J. Edgar Hoover, at the personal request of RFK, had a secret meeting with Sen leaders Mike Mansfield and Ev Dirksen to persuade the Senate to back off its investigation of the sex angle of the Bobby Baker affair? I have said this before. If J. Edgar Hoover had wanted to get rid of JFK, all he would have had to do was go public with JFK's affair with Judith Campbell (a woman he shared with one of America's most brutal gangsters) and Ellen Rometsch (a woman whose favors he shared with a member of the Soviet embassy). He probably would have wanted to wait until after the 1964 election. All these details of the "dark side of Camelot" (as Seymour Hersh called it) came out as a result of the investigation of the assassination. (As you know, when the Church Committee talked about Campbell's mutual friendship with JFK and Giancana, they refered to her only as Kennedy's friend, without disclosing her sex.) It is no wonder RFK was more concerned with preserving his brother's reputation rather than solving his murder.

Probably not, but see my Post 116 under the "Whole Bay of Pigs" seminar regarding the deaths of Lou Russell and John Leon.

_________________________-- ---Can't someone just write a simple sentence without the reader having to go look at "post 107" or whatever number you are referring to? Yes there were deaths. Do you say there were not??? What and who are you referring to? thanks, Dawn <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Possibly (underscore "possibly") Lou Russell and John Leon. See my post 116 on the "Whole Bay of Pigs" scenario.

Some people state that the G-Man had also voluntereed to kill Jack Anderson. But see my Post 116 under the "Whole Bay of Pigs" seminar.

NEW AS OF DECEBER 18, 2004 The more cynical among us believe that even a heart attack could be in fact a murder perpetrated by a clever conspirator. (Or that death certificates may not always be accurate.) If you are among such people, you may find the curious the timing and circumstances of the deaths of Lou Russell and John Leon. The following information comes from Ch 14 of Peter Dale Scott's book "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK" and Jim Hougan's "Secret Agenda". Lou Russell was a former FBI agent who had helped Nixon with the Alger Hiss case. In 1963 he was an employee of James McCord. He was also, per Scott, close to the Heidi Rikan call girl ring. Quoting Hougan: "Russell had been involved in the June [1972 Watergate] break-in; he had almost certainly planted false evidence at the DNC; and throughout the fall he had been instrumental in McCord's defense, helping him to secure bail and to switch attorneys." Scott states that Russell was present at the scene of the break-in on June 16, 1972, and may have warned the Democrats about it the previous April. In early May, he Russell "declined a [senate Watergate] Committee subpoena foor his records. [Tim Gratz: I don't know how one "declines" a subpoena.] On May 18, Russell suffered but survived a massive heart attack. On July 2, 1973, after he was again approached about his knowledge, Russell had a second, fatal heart attack. THe person who approached Russell in July was a Republican investigator named John Leon. Leon was convinced that Watergate "was a set-uo, that prostitution was at the heart of the affair, and that the . . . burglary had been sabotaged from within." Leon had scheduled a press conference for July 13, 1972, but he was unable to have it. On the day of his scheduled press conference he too died of a heart attack. Mysterious deaths? Probably not. But then again . . .

After the failure to kill Oswald soon after the assassination, it was necessary for him to be eliminated. As I explained, the Mafia plot was Plan B. Therefore someone with Mafia links had to persuaded to kill Oswald. However, Johnson insisted on the lone gunman theory. Therefore, the Warren Commission had to cover up Ruby’s links with organized crime. In the long run this helped Plan B as it reinforced the idea was to cover up the Mafia’s role in the assassination of JFK. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Obviously I realize much of this must remain speculative absent a confession. But if the Mafia was not involved in the JFK assassination, how was Ruby "persuaded" to kill LHO? Have you heard the story (not sure what to call it) that on either the day of or the day after the murder of LHO, someone from a crime-controlled casino in Las Vegas made the call to Melvin Belli's office to line him up to defend Ruby? I suspect Ruby was promised the best lawyer to get him off. Perhaps they should have gotten Johnny Cochran. (Now I know he was not practicing in 1963!)