Tim Gratz

Ditto, John!

Dear Jim, I think yours is a very salient and significant point. Not only did we make it past the cold war without a nuclear exchange, but ultimately communism fell. Our society certainly paid some high costs, and we certainly face other dangers now, but your point is excellent. Thank God, we apparently no longer face the possibility of a nuclear exchange that could annihilate most of the world. On the other hand, the terrorists are far more likely to use a nuclear weapon on one city than the Soviets ever were to lauch a nuclear war. Interesting that you said"give thanks" given that it is now Thanksgiving. I also suggest that, regardless of who shot Kennedy, his death was most likely the result of Cold War politics, and not the meaningless act of a lone nut. That may add just a little comfort to the tragedy.

Thanks, John, I suspected that might be the case.

Is it possible to list, hopefully in chronological order, the numerous assassination attempts that Fidel Castro survived, most (but probably not all) supported or encouraged by the CIA, and who was involved? For instance, in some cases it was Rosselli working with a specific Cuban. I think some of the attempts were as early as 1959. Is there a comprehensive list somewhere? Thanks.

In my opinion, Eisenhower was a great president. Had he remained in office, I don't think we would have ended up involved in the imbroglio over Cuba, or ensnared in Vietnam, for that matter. The U2 incident was probably one of Eisenhower's biggest blunders. You've probably heard the story how Eisenhower came in the office early, read the intelligence reports, made the hard decisions, etc., then went golfing. At the time the public thought all he did was golf but he was really in command of the presidency. Of course, a true expert makes the difficult look easy. And Eisenhoewer would deliberately muddle his syntax when he wanted to evade a question. Soon we'll post the story how the joint chiefs of staff, who so strongly objected to Kennedy's refusal to invade Cuba during the missile crisis, shortly thereafter accompanied JFK on a trip to Key West to inspect the Hawk missiles and thank the soldiers.

Just picked up a magazine, Scientific American, Mind. Cover says it is "Premier Issue" but inside it says it is Volume 14, No. 5. It has an article titled "Secret Powers Everywhere." written by Thomas Gruter, a professor at the University of Munster (Germany). Obviously written for a lay audience, but very poorly written, IMO. Hard to believe it was peer-reviewed. You can infer the theses the author advances. I'll try to figure out how to post it. Listen to this quote: "Accepted: a crazed Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963. Conspiracy: the CIA had Kennedy killed because he was about to expose the agency's secret attempt to control the country." Then the first paragraph links people who posit conspiracies in the deaths of JFK and Princess Diana with people who belive that the contrails of jets contain "experimental infections or poisons, perhaps vaccines". The article has no footnotes or source notes. Here is a quote: Most individuals who revel in tales of conspiracy are sane, even if they border on delusional." But he goes on to state: "Therapists must also be careful to not mislabel facts as delusions, a trap known as the Martha Mitchell effect." He states that when Martha Mitchell was proved right that her husband was being made a scapegoat for Nixon, her "statements were proved true and she was shown to be utterly sane." I am not a psychologist. Does anyone know if there is a theory in psychology known as the "Martha Mitchell effect"? And what does "utterly sane" mean? Saner than sane? Moreover, if I recall Watergate correctly Mitchell did approve some outlandish, criminal operations and it was never proven that RMN had advance knowledge of the Watergate operation itself. Mitchell was crimninally convicted, so he was hardly an innocent man. I believe the article contains poor history, poor science and is badly written. The article deserves several strong replies, I think.

Excellent post. Cogent, to-the-point. Belongs in "Five Most Important Reasons To Believe There Was a Conspiracy"! Thanks.

Excellent article with astute analysis! Have you seen an aticle by Phil Brennan, a GOP House aide? He states that Hill came to him in literal fear for his life becauseof pressure from Bobby Baker. Brennan advised Hill that his only way out was to go public by filing suit against Baker. Later Brennan introduced Hill to Sen. Williams. Brennan: Sometimes I wonder: if I had not met Hill and convinced him to go public with the story, and the Bobby Baker case and Lyndon's part in it had not come out as a result, would Dallas not have happened? I don't like to think about that. Here is the cite to the Brennen article: http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/brennen.htm

Rosselli was a fascinating character. His biography "Johnny Roselli: All American Mafioso" is a great read. In "Sons and Brothers" Mahoney states that Roselli was at the Armory Lounge (Giancana's HQ) in a Chicago suburb on Election Night 1960 and it was Roselli who was orchestrating the Outfit's "get out the vote" effort for JFK. I am not convinced he was a conspirator but it appears he had the intelligence to plan a sophisticated operation and, of course, he did, during the week of the assassination, evade his FBI tails.

COULD NOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE! "TRIVIALIZING A TRAGEDY" is an understatement!

Your idea that certain people may have been sent to Dealey Plaza to "muddy the waters" is certainly intriguing. Arguably, if this did indeed happen, one would have to consider the persons directing such individuals to Dealey Plaza as members of the conspiracy. This would certainly also indicate the sophistication of the conspirators. Do you have any evidence that such "false leads" were being planted in Dealey Plaza? If I recall correctly, in The Last Investigation Gaeton Fonzi suspected that on at least one occasion he was fed disinformation perhaps for no other resason to consume his time and direct him away from investigating more fruitful lines of inquiry. Mr. Richards is certainly correct that planting false leads, e.g. sending innocent people to Dealey Plaza "suggests the reality of a plot". Indeed, is it not conclusive evidence of a conspiracy?

Sadly, Hemingway's assertion of FBI persecution was interpreted as evidence of his paranoid derangement. It was many years before the Hemingway's claims were validated. Fortunately, John Lennon, who was beset by much the same treatment as Hemingway, was vindicated during the post-Watergate disclosures in time to prevent his deportation. It was just four days ago that I toured Hemingway's Key West home this past Tuesday. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Do not have the site to it but David Corn wrote an article about a discussion (in 1962 I believe) about using a visit by Fidel to the Hemingway shrine in Cuba to assassinate Castro because it was reported that Castro occsasionally visited there without his normal contingent of guards. Anyone familiar with the article? If not, I'll try to find a reference to it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Here is the story that Mark Howell wrote, published in the supplement to the Key West Citizen (in connection to the Hemingway Festival in Key West (whenever it is out of the winter "tourist season" (winter) in Key West, the KeyWest tourist indiustry starts a festival to bring tourists down even when the weather is insufferable: in the Hemingway Days Festival, a bunch of older guys with white beards compete in a Hemingway lookalike contest): The Old Man and the CIA from Soundings, July 28 by Mark Howell While Sloppy Joe's and Capt. Tony's duke it out over their stake in the Hemingway legend, other parties on the planet are just as intent on grabbing a slice of Papa for themselves. A 42yearold Pentagon memo unearthed by a college professor six years ago has put Ernest Hemingway's Cuban farm squarely in the middle of a government conspiracy to kill Fidel Castro by the Kennedy administration. Assassination nuts have descended upon the memo for the light it sheds on whether President John or Attorney General Robert Kennedy knew about CIA plots to kill Castro, which many believe might have "blown back" as a Cuban/Russian hit on Nov. 22, 1963. Other nuts are gobbling up the memo for the insight it provides on Papa's fourth wife, Mary, and what Jack Kennedy really thought of her. After the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Kennedy brothers began to take a personal interest in deposing Castro. But the CIA had been plotting Castro's murder ever since the Eisenhower era, coming up with killing devices like exploding seashells, a toxincontaminated diving suit and Mafia hit men. In a story called "A Kennedy Plot to Kill Castro?" first published in The Nation, David Corn and Gus Russo dissect the covert CIA assassination job known as Operation Mongoose. It is to Mongoose that the Pentagon memo, originally classified Top Secret, refers. Discovered in 1998 by Larry Haapanen, a professor at Lewis and Clark College, the memo was written by Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, appointed by President Kennedy to run Operation Mongoose. It describes a March 16, 1962 meeting of national security officials, in the Oval Office, with the President and Attorney General. McGeorge Bundy was there, so was Gen. Maxwell Taylor and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Kennedy informed them he would not approve a direct military intervention in Cuba. Memowriter Lansdale reports what happened next: "The Attorney General then mentioned Mary Hemingway" [Papa's widow he shot himself July 2, 1961] "commenting on reports that Castro was drinking heavily in disgruntlement over the way things were going, and the opportunities offered by the 'shrine' to Hemingway. I commented that this was a conversation that Ed Murrow had with Mary Hemingway ... We were in agreement that the matter was so delicate and sensitive that it shouldn't be surfaced to the Special Group until we were ready to go, and then not in detail. I pointed out that this all pertained to fractioning the regime." The Special Group he mentioned was an elite interagency group that reviewed covert acts of sabotage, violence and chaos in Cuba. The words "so delicate and sensitive" and "fractioning of the regime" are opspeak for assassination. The mention of the Hemingway "shrine" refers to Hemingway's farm outside of Havana called the Finca Vigia. The "opportunities offered" by the farm suggest that it could be useful for an assassination attempt on Castro. None of the participants at this secret meeting are still alive. The thenSecretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, was supposed to have attended but did not. In 2001, he said of the Hemingwayshrine plan, "I don't know anything about it. The whole Mongoose thing was insane." The bulk of Lansdale's memo is devoted to Mary Hemingway's meeting with Castro eight months earlier. Shortly after her husband shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho, Mary traveled to Havana to retrieve manuscripts and paintings from the Finca Vigia. She needed Presidential permission to do this, as the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba was strictly enforced. Her friend William Walton, a journalist and artist, was close to President Kennedy and arranged her clearance in hours. Mary traveled with Valerie DanbySmith, Hemingway's former secretary. (Valerie would become one of the multiple wives of Papa's youngest son, Gregory.) The two women arrived at the farm in late July, 1961. Castro, who had come to power in 1959, sent them a basket of fruit and a request that they contact him. Several nights later, according to Valerie, Castro came calling. In her autobiography, Mary (she died in 1986) describes how Castro arrived in a jeep with a few aides but no bodyguards. She lined up the servants to greet him. She served coffee and they discussed the transfer of Finca Vigia to the Cuban government as a museum. Castro reminisced about fishing with Ernest. He first met Hemingway in 1960, when he awarded him several prizes for biggame fishing. But back in the 1950s, Castro had taken Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" into the Sierra as a guide to guerilla war. (Hemingway, who called Castro's revolution "honest" and donated his Nobel Prize money to the Cuban people, died before Castro declared himself a Communist.) Then he asked where Hemingway had done his writing, so Mary took Fidel to a threestory tower she had built away from the main house. Notes Valerie in her own account: "Ernest hated the tower and always wrote in his bedroom." Castro immediately bounded up the stairs to the top floor, Mary following. Writes Valerie: "Mary was impressed with that. She thought any other leader would have ordered an aide to go up ahead of him. To make sure it was safe. It was an ideal place to do in Castro. She would remark on that many times over the years." At the instigation of her friend Clifton Daniel, husband of Margaret Truman and an editor at The New York Times, Mary would tell the story of "the ideal place to do in Castro" to broadcaster Murrow, who would tell it to Lansdale, head of Operation Mongoose. Back at the farm, Mary and Valerie burned a lot of manuscript pages, as Ernest had apparently wished, then put paintings by Paul Klee, Juan Gris and Andr Masson aboard a shrimp boat headed for Tampa. Mary was still in deep shock over her husband's suicide, which she persisted in calling a gun accident. It is unlikely, however, that she would have consciously recommended a way to kill Castro. Only the men of Operation Mongoose saw her words in that light, which included according to Lansdale's memo Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Did the Kennedys dabble in murder? The Nation's Corn and Russo report that 1,500 linear feet and 50 boxes of Robert F. Kennedy's classified and confidential papers are stored at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Most of it is unavailable to the public. A partial list of the records reveal their fascination: Operation Mongoose; the CIA and Cuba; Edward Lansdale and Edward Murrow. There's also Frank Sinatra in there, plus Sam Giancana and Judith Campbell, mistress of both Sam and JFK. The Robert Kennedy family considers the papers the private property of his heirs (although many of the papers were obtained by the attorney general from the CIA, the FBI and the State Department). The Kennedy family strictly limits access to the records, which are being stored at government expense. Contemporary investigators and historians Richard Reeves, Laurence Leamer and Seymour Hersh have been refused access by the Kennedys. Robert Kennedy's son Max is now the overseer of the records. To date he has not released any files relating to the crucial March 16, 1962 meeting at which the Kennedy brothers apparently discussed the "opportunities offered" by the Hemingway farm outside of Havana thus implicating themselves in a conspiracy to murder ... and inviting murder in return. It was in fact towards Jack Kennedy that Mary Hemingway aimed her distress and anger, not Fidel Castro. And Jack lobbed it right back. In her absolutely fab book called "Grace and Power," Sally Bedell Smith tells of the April 1962 state dinner at the White House, held in honor of the Shah of Iran and his wife, the Empress Farah, and attended by Mary. Called "one of the most stimulating parties ever" by the Washington Post, the dinner's 175 guests included 49 Nobel Prize winners who were "blindingly impressed" by the Farah's jewelry and Jacqueline Kennedy's diamond drop earrings and diamond sunburst pin. Both Jack and Jackie glowed with a nutbrown tan. Lionel Trilling, intellectual dean of academia, was "pleasantly looped" on six martinis and chatted up Jackie with talk about the sex novels of D.H. Lawrence. At the dinner, President Kennedy found himself seated next to Mary Hemingway. She had been invited because actor Frederic March was to read a Hemingway story after dinner that she had contributed for the event. It was from an unpublished novel about a young man fighting Nazi submarines from a fishing boat off the Florida Keys. Hemingway's prose was "so poor that one was pained for the man who had written it," commented Lionel's wife Diana, another pickled academic. "His widow was having a tough time, poor woman." Mary's emotional state apparently prompted the President to "do something nice," goes on Diana. "He squeezed her arm comfortingly." It was the only nice thing to happen between Jack Kennedy and Mary Hemingway that night. During the dinner she had regaled the President with her views on Castro and how to deal with him. In her autobiography, Mary admits she called Kennedy's confrontational position toward Cuba "stupid, unrealistic and, worse, ineffective." This "irked" the President, she said. Sally Bedell Smith says Mary's lecture managed to "irritate Kennedy profoundly." Their mutual friend William Walton later wrote that Kennedy told him Mary was "the biggest bore I've had for a long time." Lazier links between Hemingway and the Kennedy assassination: Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, home of Sam Giancana, whose plot to kill Castro likely led to the killing of Kennedy instead. (Giancana was gunned down in Oak Park 12 years after the assassination.) The psychiatrist who treated Lee Harvey Oswald as a child, Renatus Hartogs, who wrote a report for the Warren Commission about his findings, also treated Ernest Hemingway during his last bout of depression. Quote for the Week: "'Hey, I counted 26 Tshirt shops on Duval Street. No wonder Hemingway blew his brains out.' "'That wasn't here,' Joey informed him. 'That was in Idaho.'" — "Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf 2004)

An interesting post, but possible explanation IF the assassination was performed by anti-Castro Cubans (with or without assistance of any govt employees) is that even though LBJ suspected Cuban involvement in the assassination, he did mnot want to go to war and cause the death of 40 million Americans to avenge the death of a President of whom he was not particularly fond. Many people suspected Cuban or KGB involvement but our government deliberately called off any investigation that would lead down this path. Apparently there was a near mutiny of CIA officials in Mexico City who were outraged at limitations placed on the operation. So if the assassins' plans were to blame Castro to prompt a US invasion of Cuba, then there plans failed and there was little they could do. For other reasons, though, I do not think it was anti-Castro Cubans. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> OOPS!! substitute "limitations placed on the investigation" (not "limitations placed on the operation"). One addendum: Motive is not a requirement to prove guilt in a criminal trial, but it is certainly relevant in a murder investigation. Unless the murderer is a nut ("a lone nut") presumably he or she has some reason for the crime. Many people agree that one of the reasons the Warren Commission fails is that it could not (or did not) articulate a reason why LHO shot the President. The point I was trying to make is that if the motive of the assassination was to cause some political event (e.g. an invasion of Cuba) the fact that the objective was not accomplished (through no "fault" of the conspirators) does not vitiate the motive.

An interesting post, but possible explanation IF the assassination was performed by anti-Castro Cubans (with or without assistance of any govt employees) is that even though LBJ suspected Cuban involvement in the assassination, he did mnot want to go to war and cause the death of 40 million Americans to avenge the death of a President of whom he was not particularly fond. Many people suspected Cuban or KGB involvement but our government deliberately called off any investigation that would lead down this path. Apparently there was a near mutiny of CIA officials in Mexico City who were outraged at limitations placed on the operation. So if the assassins' plans were to blame Castro to prompt a US invasion of Cuba, then there plans failed and there was little they could do. For other reasons, though, I do not think it was anti-Castro Cubans.

Very interesting post. The dates are significant as well. The U2 was shot down on May 1, 1960 (quite sure the date is right) and the W Va primary was May 10. JFK once stated that Eisenhower should have apologized for the U2 incident. In the campaign, Nixon jumped all over him for that remark as a show of weakness.

Sadly, Hemingway's assertion of FBI persecution was interpreted as evidence of his paranoid derangement. It was many years before the Hemingway's claims were validated. Fortunately, John Lennon, who was beset by much the same treatment as Hemingway, was vindicated during the post-Watergate disclosures in time to prevent his deportation. It was just four days ago that I toured Hemingway's Key West home this past Tuesday. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Do not have the site to it but David Corn wrote an article about a discussion (in 1962 I believe) about using a visit by Fidel to the Hemingway shrine in Cuba to assassinate Castro because it was reported that Castro occsasionally visited there without his normal contingent of guards. Anyone familiar with the article? If not, I'll try to find a reference to it.

Off topic: On the day the above was posted, November 16th, I was celebrating my 50th birthday on my Duval Street balcony: Earlier that day I toured the Truman Annex with the Little White House: Tim P.S. Another personally synchronistic tie-in to the above post is that I had dinner at the Adolphus Hotel just last night with Bob Groden. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> TIM! Happy birthday! Wish we would have known you were in Key West. Would have been great to meet you. If any Forum members ever are planning a trip to Key West, give me an E-mail.

I have on several occasions raised questions about the value of so-called “confessions”. As I have pointed out, such confessions are common in famous murder cases. This is one of the reasons why detectives are careful about holding back information about the crime scene. This enables them to dismiss most of these crank claims. The problem with confessions about being involved in the assassination of JFK is that there is so much information that has been published that they can include in their confession. I am especially sceptical about confessions that have been made by people serving a term of “life imprisonment”. Clearly, their confession means they will not have to suffer punishment for their crime. It is clearly very appealing for someone who knows they will never be released from prison to make a confession that they were involved in the killing of Kennedy. Not only do they create publicity, they also provide an opportunity to make money from their story (either for themselves or their family). Tony Cuesta’s confession (and that of John Martino) does not fall into that category. In both cases they insisted that their stories were not published until after their deaths. No attempt was made to make money out of their confessions. Of course, one has to ask what was there motivation? In Cuesta’s case it was for revenge. He rightly believed he had been betrayed by those who organized the assassination. John Martino’s reasons are more difficult to make out. However, I suspect it had something to do with guilt. Like many on the fringes of the assassination, they regretted what they had done after the event. Even more importantly, it is about what they had to say about the case. The stories of Tony Cuesto and John Martino make sense when you look at it in the context of what else we know of the assassination. The James Files case is very different. His story has been dismissed by all serious researchers. I would also argue that your own credibility has been seriously undermined by your insistence on believing this story. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree with most of John's post except with respect to the alleged Cuesta confession. The only witness to the alleged confession was Fabian Escalante, a member of Castro's intelligence services. If Cuesta thought the CIA had betrayed him, why did he not wait until his return to the US and tell someone he trusted, eg a lawyer or relative, about the assassination, with their pledge to keep it quiet until his death. Remember, Trafficante confessed to his attorney and Martino discussed it with his wife and son. Why would Cuesta confess to a member of Castro's forces who had kept him locked up for years? On its face, it makes no sense. Gordon Winslow heard Escalante report the alleged confession and he does not believe it. Remember there are some people who do believe Castro did it (and he certainly had a motive: simple self-defense). Since Castro is a suspect, any report of an alleged confession by an agent of Castro's enemy ought to be suspect. I mean even if Castro was innocent, he may still have wanted to throw in a little disinformation. Assume for instance the Mob alone did it, with no other co-conspirators. But Castro hates the CIA. He may have wanted to blame the CIA even if he was innocent. Since Cuesta apparently never told anyone within the US (eg a relative) the story as reported by Escalante, I would not credit the Escalante report for the reasons set forth above. Martino's "confession" is different; so is Trafficante's.

It is my premise that when Joe Kennedy made his deal with the Mafia, he never intended to keep it. Reportedly some of the Mafia leaders were reluctant to back Jack because of RFK (his activities as counsel for the Racket Committee and his book The Enemy Within). Supposedly Joe replied it was a business deal, he was asking their support for Jack, and "he would take care of Bobby". Yet, after the election it was Joe who almost forced Jack to select RFK as AG, against the counsel of some of his colleagues, including Sen Smathers and Clark Clifford. However, there are reports that Joe helped transfer the ownership of the Cal-Nev Lodge to Giancana and his buddies. This may have been the real pay-off to the Mob. But with respect to the W Va primary one must not discount the well-organized campaign that the Kennedy campaign mounted. I ran across reference to what looks like a fascinating book on the W Va primary. I'll try to post reference to it. Arguably, our discussion here is relevant only if we assume the Mob "hit" Kennedy as a result of Joe's doublecross. Of course, this theory has many adherents. I think I read it here: when an assassination researcher died and got to Heaven, his first question to the Deity was: "Who really killed Kennedy?" and God's reply was: "I've got a theory about that. . ."

Interesting perspective on Allen Dulles. On Oct 21, 1060 the NY Times printed a JFK press release criticizing Eisenhower-Nixon for not providing sufficient support to anti-Castro rebels. Apparently the press release was prepared by Salinger and Goodwin and not cleared by JFK (iu was very late.) Nixon was in NY preparing for their final debate. When he saw the article, he was livid because he believed JFK had been briegfed by the CIA about the BOP invasion. He had Cabinet Secretary Fred Seaton call Gen Andrew Goodpasture (the White House liason with CIA). Goodpasture apparently checked, called Seaton back and Nixon was told CIA had been briefed. But in the foreign policy debate that night, JFK accused the Eisenhower-Nixon administration of losing Cuba to the Communists (could be some truth here) etc. Nixon was livid. Source: Breuer: Vendetta: Fidel Castro and the Kennedy Brothers. In his 1962 book Six Crises charged that Kennedy had knowledge of the planning for planned invasion. On March 20, 1962 the White House issued a press release denying that JFK was informed of the invasion plans before the election. Dulles, who had by then been fired by JFK over the BOP, backed Kennedy up and stated tgat JFK had not been briefed of the invasion plans. Nixon had it wrong, possibly due to communications misunderstandings. One reason we know this is that the plans for a conventional assault on Cuba had not coalesced at the time of the debates, and had not been part of the approval of anti-Cuba oprerations given by Ike on March 17, 1960. This meeting included Dulles and Bissell and a number of Eisenhower aides including General Goodpasture. My colleague Mark Howell and I had an interesting phone chat with General Goodpasture a few months ago. He related to us an informal warning he had made to Eisenhower after the March 17, 1960 meeting. He warned Eisenhower that plans such as the one he had approved often acquired "a life of their own" : i.e. would develop into something far more than originally approved. Ike, Goodpasture said, responded angrily, "Not while I am in charge!" To which Goodpasture responded to Eisehower with a reminder that he would not always be in charge. The CIA expanded the plans to include an invasion. Presumably, one of the reasaons JFK went along with the CIA planned invasion was because of his harsh anti-Castro rhetoric in the campaign. We do not know, of course, whether Nixon would have supported the invasion. My guess is he probably would have. But I doubt whether an experienced military man such as Eidsehower would have. Goodpasture also told us that Nixon was not a participant in the March 17, 1960 CIA meeting with Eisenhower. We thought we detected a derisive tone when he said it.

It is true that the crucial West Virginia primary ocurred shortly after the U2 election but I am not sure why the incident, which was an embarrassment to the Eisenhower administration, influenced the primary vote between Humphrey and JFK. The story of the 1960 West virginia primary is fascinating but I do not recall reading anything re how U2 incident influenced it. JFK won W Va primary for several reasons (not necessarilyn this order) 1. well-organized campaign and effective campaigning by JFK and his surrogates; 2. huge amounts of money (reportedly some from Mob) spent by JFK friends. See for instance the story of Eddie Ford as told by Tipp O'Neill in his memoirs. The W Va primary knocked HHH out of the presidential race. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> OOPS!! U2 incident, not U2 election. Anyone read the book Libra (fiction of course) that shows LHO observing the Soviet interrogation of Powers?

It is true that the crucial West Virginia primary ocurred shortly after the U2 election but I am not sure why the incident, which was an embarrassment to the Eisenhower administration, influenced the primary vote between Humphrey and JFK. The story of the 1960 West virginia primary is fascinating but I do not recall reading anything re how U2 incident influenced it. JFK won W Va primary for several reasons (not necessarilyn this order) 1. well-organized campaign and effective campaigning by JFK and his surrogates; 2. huge amounts of money (reportedly some from Mob) spent by JFK friends. See for instance the story of Eddie Ford as told by Tipp O'Neill in his memoirs. The W Va primary knocked HHH out of the presidential race.

Very interesting post. I'd never considered that LBJ wanted a limited investigation to prevent exposure of his shady deals. With respect to a subsequent post, I do not believe that LBJ was always an opponent of civil rights. For instance, it was LBJ who successfully manuevered the passage of the 1957 civil rights legislation. See the masterful book by Robert Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson.