Robert Howard

At the risk of being redundant, I would like to mention that I know that many of us are waiting for our copies of Joan Mellen's book to come out, I have pre-ordered my copy as well. In the meantime I have been going over some of the teasers for the book and exploring some of them. One of the things that I have discovered is an angle on Kerry Thornley that is attributed to the late Harold Weisberg's research, this may or may not be in Mellen's book; The story is during the Garrison investigation after Weisberg decided that Garrison was going in a direction that he didn't feel was the way to go, Weisberg followed a lead concerning Oswald and the picking up of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets in New Orleans from Jones Printing Co. According to the story, Weisberg showed the owner over 100 photos of individuals other than Lee Harvey Oswald (apparently he had discovered that Oswald wasn't the person who picked them up.) When the owner picked the individual out of the photos, Weisberg contacted him and told him he needed to get an attorney as he was about to be indicted for perjury; at this point in a taped interview Kerry Thornley admitted committing perjury and admitted that he had been the one to pick up the FPCC leaflets. When Weisberg informed Garrison about this he declined to pursue it because it didn't have anything to do with his chief suspect Clay Shaw. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the story but it has appeared on one of the JFK Forum's other than this one. It should also be mentioned that the FBI was aware of this and declined to investigate it, ostensibly per Hoover himself.

Although it does not fall into the usual criteria for conspiracy related topics I am posting the text of the speech JFK was to have given at the Dallas Trade Mart on November 22, 1963. I found some enigmatic passages that I thought were worth perusing. "I am honored to have this invitation to address the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council, joined by the members of the Dallas Assembly--and pleased to have this opportunity to salute the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest. It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting. For they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city--and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial and political support and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities--from MIT to Cal Tech--tend to attract the new and growing industries. I congratulate those of you here in Dallas who have recognized these basic facts through the creation of the unique and forward-looking Graduate Research Center. This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable. But today other voices are heard in the land--voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest single threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies. We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense. I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this Nation's strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion. Displays of material wealth cannot stop the disillusionment of diplomats subjected to discrimination. Above all, words alone are not enough. The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help. I realize that this Nation often tends to identify turning-points in world affairs with the major addresses which preceded them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere--it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall's speech at Harvard which kept communism out of Western Europe--it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance. In this administration also it has been necessary at times to issue specific warnings--warnings that we could not stand by and watch the Communists conquer Laos by force, or intervene in the Congo, or swallow West Berlin, or maintain offensive missiles on Cuba. But while our goals were at least temporarily obtained in these and other instances, our successful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend. This strength is composed of many different elements, ranging from the most massive deterrents to the most subtle influences. And all types of strength are needed--no one kind could do the job alone. Let us take a moment, therefore, to review this Nation's progress in each major area of strength. I. First, as Secretary McNamara made clear in his address last Monday, the strategic nuclear power of the United States has been so greatly modernized and expanded in the last 1,000 days, by the rapid production and deployment of the most modern missile systems, that any and all potential aggressors are clearly confronted now with the impossibility of strategic victory--and the certainty of total destruction--if by reckless attack they should ever force upon us the necessity of a strategic reply. In less than 3 years, we have increased by 50 percent the number of Polaris submarines scheduled to be in force by the next fiscal year, increased by more than 70 percent our total Polaris purchase program, increased by more than 75 percent our Minuteman purchase program, increased by 50 percent the portion of our strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, and increased by too percent the total number of nuclear weapons available in our strategic alert forces. Our security is further enhanced by the steps we have taken regarding these weapons to improve the speed and certainty of their response, their readiness at all times to respond, their ability to survive an attack, and their ability to be carefully controlled and directed through secure command operations. II. But the lessons of the last decade have taught us that freedom cannot be defended by strategic nuclear power alone. We have, therefore, in the last 3 years accelerated the development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, and increased by 60 percent the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe. Nor can Europe or any other continent rely on nuclear forces alone, whether they are strategic or tactical. We have radically improved the readiness of our conventional forces--increased by 45 percent the number of combat ready Army divisions, increased by 100 percent the procurement of modern Army weapons and equipment, increased by 100 percent our ship construction, conversion, and modernization program, increased by too percent our procurement of tactical aircraft, increased by 30 percent the number of tactical air squadrons, and increased the strength of the Marines. As last month's "Operation Big Lift"--which originated here in Texas--showed so clearly, this Nation is prepared as never before to move substantial numbers of men in surprisingly little time to advanced positions anywhere in the world. We have increased by 175 percent the procurement of airlift aircraft, and we have already achieved a 75 percent increase in our existing strategic airlift capability. Finally, moving beyond the traditional roles of our military forces, we have achieved an increase of nearly 600 percent in our special forces--those forces that are prepared to work with our allies and friends against the guerrillas, saboteurs, insurgents and assassins who threaten freedom in a less direct but equally dangerous manner. III. But American military might should not and need not stand alone against the ambitions of international communism. Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others, and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. For our assistance makes possible the stationing of 3-5 million allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining a comparable number of American soldiers. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas, necessitating direct United States intervention, would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program, and might cost us heavily in American lives as well. About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc--nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression--Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result. In short, the $50 billion we spend each year on our own defense could well be ineffective without the $4 billion required for military and economic assistance. Our foreign aid program is not growing in size, it is, on the contrary, smaller now than in previous years. It has had its weaknesses, but we have undertaken to correct them. And the proper way of treating weaknesses is to replace them with strength, not to increase those weaknesses by emasculating essential programs. Dollar for dollar, in or out of government, there is no better form of investment in our national security than our much-abused foreign aid program. We cannot afford to lose it. We can afford to maintain it. We can surely afford, for example, to do as much for our 19 needy neighbors of Latin America as the Communist bloc is sending to the island of Cuba alone. IV. I have spoken of strength largely in terms of the deterrence and resistance of aggression and attack. But, in today's world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles--on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny. That is why our Information Agency has doubled the shortwave broadcasting power of the Voice of America and increased the number of broadcasting hours by 30 percent, increased Spanish language broadcasting to Cuba and Latin America from I to 9 hours a day, increased seven-fold to more than 3-5 million copies the number of American books being translated and published for Latin American readers, and taken a host of other steps to carry our message of truth and freedom to all the far corners of the earth. And that is also why we have regained the initiative in the exploration of outer space, making an annual effort greater than the combined total of all space activities undertaken during the fifties, launching more than 130 vehicles into earth orbit, putting into actual operation valuable weather and communications satellites, and making it clear to all that the United States of America has no intention of finishing second in space. This effort is expensive--but it pays its own way, for freedom and for America. For there is no longer any fear in the free world that a Communist lead in space will become a permanent assertion of supremacy and the basis of military superiority. There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system. In short, our national space effort represents a great gain in, and a great resource of, our national strength--and both Texas and Texans are contributing greatly to this strength. Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society. It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output--by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $ I I billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history. This Nation's total output--which 3 years ago was at the $500 billion mark--will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $too billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes--which have risen 43 percent in less than 3 years--have an annual level f $27.4 billion. My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom. That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions--it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations--it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes. We in this country, in this generation, are--by destiny rather than choice--the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

1. As regards the actual assassination, rely ONLY on the forensic; ballistic; pathological; and physical facts. This alone will set the course for where/whom/what to look for next. So long as one is chasing the "smoke" of multiple assassins; body kidnappers and wound alteration specialists; and giant conspiracies which encompass almost half of the known world, then one is somewhat "lost at sea". Once one recognizes the facts that a lone assassin was responsible, then one can begin to follow the course of the "who" was behind this lone assassin. And the answer is still: NO! For the same reason that persons such as Charles Manson; Jim Jones; Ervil LeBaron; The Wacko from Waco; etc; etc; etc; can still find followers, there will always be those who subscribe to and even pay for the rantings of the misguided. Tom <{POST_SNAPBACK}> To quote someone who being a part of our government once said that the "fingerprints of intelligence were all over Oswald," the fact that in the annals of recorded history no "lone nut assassin" has ever participated in the bowels of intelligence related matters ranging from contacts with a Japanese Communist while stationed at Atsugi, (was) involved in monitoring U-2 flights over Russia, whose financial records (some of which are still classified) don't cover the costs of "going to Russia" ostensibly used the undeniably worst weapon on the face of the earth to "kill the President" and whose sojourn to Mexico City in Sept. 1963 has 42 years later still has not been adequately investigated, whose parafin test indicated that he did not fire a rifle that fateful day, whose dead hands were covered in ink courtesy of the FBI the day before his funeral (Now wev'e found his fingerprint on the rifle) and then pulled off the "crime of the century," to draw the conclusion that "Oswald did it" to be in the realm of Alice in Wonderland. I do not even have a problem with accepting Oswald as a participant on some level (If the facts ever proved conclusively that this was so.) I, and many others I suspect on this forum can actually "handle the truth." I have often heard the naysayers lament "We will never know in our lifetime what really happened." I find that attitude while to a great degree understandable, also VERY defeatist and not conducive to possessing the attitude required to achieve the goal that ostensibly we are all working towards. I even believe that there is a reward, if it can be called that, for those who spend a great deal of time researching the JFK assassination and the reward is that our perception of REALITY is more attuned to fact than fantasy and not the sugar coated perception of America as the "city shining on a hill" that is a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. The greatest injustice in the world is when good men stand idle in the face of evil. I do not idolize JFK but I believe that the legacy he wanted to leave our country would be heaven compared to the "vision" of the future that the neo-con followers of Leo Strauss in Washington have in mind, we have had five years of it so far and it sickens me more than anything I have seen since the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK in the 1960's. And to set the record straight, I love this country dearly, and my most cherished hope is that one day a grass roots effort by true Americans of every race, creed and color will rid this country of this most pernicious practice of corporate democracy and the Bush doctrine and restore "Of the people, By the people and For the people."

Almost all of my posts have been in the JFK Assasination Debate area of the forum, but I was so taken by this article I wanted to at least provide some food for thought. Escaping the Matrix Copyright © 2000 Richard K. Moore email: richard@cyberjournal.org web: http://cyberjournal.org Spanish version Published in Whole Earth magazine (#101), Summer 2000. http://www.wholeearthmag.com Published in New Dawn magazine (#62), September-October 2000. http://www.newdawnmagazine.com Are you ready for the red pill? The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In Plato's famous parable about the shadows on the walls of the cave, true reality is at least reflected in perceived reality. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes. The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a particular perspective on what's going on in the world--and how things got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion. Like Neo, I didn't know what I was looking for when my investigation began, but I knew that what I was being told didn't make sense. I read scores of histories and biographies, observing connections between them, and began to develop my own theories about roots of various historical events. I found myself largely in agreement with writers like Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti, but I also perceived important patterns that others seem to have missed. When I started tracing historical forces, and began to interpret present-day events from a historical perspective. I could see the same old dynamics at work and found a meaning in unfolding events far different from what official pronouncements proclaimed. Such pronouncements are, after all, public relations fare, given out by politicians who want to look good to the voters. Most of us expect rhetoric from politicians, and take what they say with a grain of salt. But as my own picture of present reality came into focus, "grain of salt" no longer worked as a metaphor. I began to see that consensus reality--as generated by official rhetoric and amplified by mass media--bears very little relationship to actual reality. "The matrix" was a metaphor I was ready for. In consensus reality (the blue-pill perspective) "left" and "right" are the two ends of the political spectrum. Politics is a tug-of-war between competing factions, carried out by political parties and elected representatives. Society gets pulled this way and that within the political spectrum, reflecting the interests of whichever party won the last election. The left and right are therefore political enemies. Each side is convinced that it knows how to make society better; each believes the other enjoys undue influence; and each blames the other for the political stalemate that apparently prevents society from dealing effectively with its problems. This perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left and right, is very far from reality. It is a fabricated collective illusion. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is "the world that was pulled over your eyes to hide you from the truth....As long as the Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free." Consensus political reality is precisely such a matrix. Later we will take a fresh look at the role of left and right, and at national politics. But first we must develop our red-pill historical perspective. I've had to condense the arguments to bare essentials; please see the annotated sources at the end for more thorough treatments of particular topics. Imperialism and the matrix From the time of Columbus to 1945, world affairs were largely dominated by competition among Western nations (1) seeking to stake out spheres of influence, control sea lanes, and exploit colonial empires. Each Western power became the core of an imperialist economy whose periphery was managed for the benefit of the core nation. Military might determined the scope of an empire; wars were initiated when a core nation felt it had sufficient power to expand its periphery at the expense of a competitor. Economies and societies in the periphery were kept backward--to keep their populations under control, to provide cheap labor, and to guarantee markets for goods manufactured in the core. Imperialism robbed the periphery not only of wealth but also of its ability to develop its own societies, cultures, and economies in a natural way for local benefit. The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been the pursuit of economic gain, ever since Isabella commissioned Columbus on his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning wars, however, has typically been about other things--the White Man's Burden, bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny, defeating the Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do, as long as it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time. The propaganda lies of yesterday were recorded and became consensus history--the fabric of the matrix. While the costs of territorial empire (fleets, colonial administrations, etc.) were borne by Western taxpayers generally, the profits of imperialism were enjoyed primarily by private corporations and investors. Government and corporate elites were partners in the business of imperialism: empires gave government leaders power and prestige, and gave corporate leaders power and wealth. Corporations ran the real business of empire while government leaders fabricated noble excuses for the wars that were required to keep that business going. Matrix reality was about patriotism, national honor, and heroic causes; true reality was on another plane altogether: that of economics. Industrialization, beginning in the late 1700s, created a demand for new markets and increased raw materials; both demands spurred accelerated expansion of empire. Wealthy investors amassed fortunes by setting up large-scale industrial and trading operations, leading to the emergence of an influential capitalist elite. Like any other elite, capitalists used their wealth and influence to further their own interests however they could. And the interests of capitalism always come down to economic growth; investors must reap more than they sow or the whole system comes to a grinding halt. Thus capitalism, industrialization, nationalism, warfare, imperialism--and the matrix--coevolved. Industrialized weapon production provided the muscle of modern warfare, and capitalism provided the appetite to use that muscle. Government leaders pursued the policies necessary to expand empire while creating a rhetorical matrix, around nationalism, to justify those policies. Capitalist growth depended on empire, which in turn depended on a strong and stable core nation to defend it. National interests and capitalist interests were inextricably linked--or so it seemed for more than two centuries. World War II and Pax Americana 1945 will be remembered as the year World War II ended and the bond of the atomic nucleus was broken. But 1945 also marked another momentous fission--breaking of the bond between national and capitalist interests. After every previous war, and in many cases after severe devastation, European nations had always picked themselves back up and resumed their competition over empire. But after World War II, a Pax Americana was established. The US began to manage all the Western peripheries on behalf of capitalism generally, while preventing the communist powers from interfering in the game. Capitalist powers no longer needed to fight over investment realms, and competitive imperialism was replaced by collective imperialism (see sidebar). Opportunities for capital growth were no longer linked to the military power of nations, apart from the power of America. In his Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (see access), William Blum chronicles hundreds of significant covert and overt interventions, showing exactly how the US carried out its imperial management role. Sidebar Elite planning for postwar neo-imperialism... Recommendation P-B23 (July, 1941) stated that worldwide financial institutions were necessary for the purpose of "stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions." During the last half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council developed this idea for the integration of the world.... Isaiah Bowman first suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure "security," and at the same time "avoid conventional forms of imperialism." The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body. - Laurence Shoup & William Minter, in Holly Sklar's Trilateralism (see access), writing about strategic recommendations developed during World War II by the Council on Foreign Relations. In the postwar years matrix reality diverged ever further from actual reality. In the postwar matrix world, imperialism had been abandoned and the world was being "democratized"; in the real world, imperialism had become better organized and more efficient. In the matrix world the US "restored order," or "came to the assistance" of nations which were being "undermined by Soviet influence"; in the real world, the periphery was being systematically suppressed and exploited. In the matrix world, the benefit was going to the periphery in the form of countless aid programs; in the real world, immense wealth was being extracted from the periphery. Growing glitches in the matrix weren't noticed by most people in the West, because the postwar years brought unprecedented levels of Western prosperity and social progress. The rhetoric claimed progress would come to all, and Westerners could see it being realized in their own towns and cities. The West became the collective core of a global empire, and exploitative development led to prosperity for Western populations, while generating immense riches for corporations, banks, and wealthy capital investors. Glitches in the matrix, popular rebellion, and neoliberalism The parallel agenda of Third-World exploitation and Western prosperity worked effectively for the first two postwar decades. But in the 1960s large numbers of Westerners, particularly the young and well educated, began to notice glitches in the matrix. In Vietnam imperialism was too naked to be successfully masked as something else. A major split in American public consciousness occurred, as millions of anti-war protestors and civil-rights activists punctured the fabricated consensus of the 1950s and declared the reality of exploitation and suppression both at home and abroad. The environmental movement arose, challenging even the exploitation of the natural world. In Europe, 1968 joined 1848 as a landmark year of popular protest. These developments disturbed elite planners. The postwar regime's stability was being challenged from within the core--and the formula of Western prosperity no longer guaranteed public passivity. A report published in 1975, the Report of the Trilateral Task Force on Governability of Democracies, provides a glimpse into the thinking of elite circles. Alan Wolfe discusses this report in Holly Sklar's eye-opening Trilateralism (see access). Wolfe focuses especially on the analysis Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington presented in a section of the report entitled "The Crisis of Democracy." Huntington is an articulate promoter of elite policy shifts, and contributes pivotal articles to publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations's Foreign Affairs (access). Huntington tells us that democratic societies "cannot work" unless the citizenry is "passive." The "democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess of democracy," which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies. Huntington's notion of "traditional policies" is expressed in a passage from the report: "To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's 'Establishment'." In these few words Huntington spells out the reality that electoral democracy has little to do with how America is run, and summarizes the kind of people who are included within the elite planning community. Who needs conspiracy theories when elite machinations are clearly described in public documents like these? Besides failing to deliver popular passivity, the policy of prosperity for Western populations had another downside, having to do with Japan's economic success. Under the Pax Americana umbrella, Japan had been able to industrialize and become an imperial player--the prohibition on Japanese rearmament had become irrelevant. With Japan's then-lower living standards, Japanese producers could undercut prevailing prices and steal market share from Western producers. Western capital needed to find a way to become more competitive on world markets, and Western prosperity was standing in the way. Elite strategists, as Huntington showed, were fully capable of understanding these considerations, and the requirements of corporate growth created a strong motivation to make the needed adjustments--in both reality and rhetoric. If popular prosperity could be sacrificed, there were many obvious ways Western capital could be made more competitive. Production could be moved overseas to low-wage areas, allowing domestic unemployment to rise. Unions could be attacked and wages forced down, and people could be pushed into temporary and part-time jobs without benefits. Regulations governing corporate behavior could be removed, corporate and capital-gains taxes could be reduced, and the revenue losses could be taken out of public-service budgets. Public infrastructures could be privatized, the services reduced to cut costs, and then they could be milked for easy profits while they deteriorated from neglect. These are the very policies and programs launched during the Reagan-Thatcher years in the US and Britain. They represent a systematic project of increasing corporate growth at the expense of popular prosperity and welfare. Such a real agenda would have been unpopular, and a corresponding matrix reality was fabricated for public consumption. The matrix reality used real terms like "deregulation," "reduced taxes," and "privatization," but around them was woven an economic mythology. The old, failed laissez-faire doctrine of the 1800s was reintroduced with the help of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of economics, and "less government" became the proud "modern" theme in America and Britain. Sensible regulations had restored financial stability after the Great Depression, and had broken up anti-competitive monopolies such as the Rockefeller trust and AT&T. But in the new matrix reality, all regulations were considered bureaucratic interference. Reagan and Thatcher preached the virtues of individualism, and promised to "get government off people's backs." The implication was that everyday individuals were to get more money and freedom, but in reality the primary benefits would go to corporations and wealthy investors. The academic term for laissez-faire economics is "economic liberalism," and hence the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has come to be known as the "neoliberal revolution." It brought a radical change in actual reality by returning to the economic philosophy that led to sweatshops, corruption, and robber-baron monopolies in the nineteenth century. It brought an equally radical change in matrix reality--a complete reversal in the attitude that was projected regarding government. Government policies had always been criticized in the media, but the institution of government had always been respected--reflecting the traditional bond between capitalism and nationalism. With Reagan, we had a sitting president telling us that government itself was a bad thing. Many of us may have agreed with him, but such a sentiment had never before found official favor. Soon, British and American populations were beginning to applaud the destruction of the very democratic institutions that provided their only hope of participation in the political process. Globalization and world government The essential bond between capitalism and nationalism was broken in 1945, but it took some time for elite planners to recognize this new condition and to begin bringing the world system into alignment with it. The strong Western nation state had been the bulwark of capitalism for centuries, and initial postwar policies were based on the assumption that this would continue indefinitely. The Bretton Woods financial system (the IMF, World Bank, and a system of fixed exchange rates among major currencies) was set up to stabilize national economies, and popular prosperity was encouraged to provide political stability. Neoliberalism in the US and Britain represented the first serious break with this policy framework--and brought the first visible signs of the fission of the nation-capital bond. The neoliberal project was economically profitable in the US and Britain, and the public accepted the matrix economic mythology. Meanwhile, the integrated global economy gave rise to a new generation of transnational corporations, and corporate leaders began to realize that corporate growth was not dependent on strong core nation-states. Indeed, Western nations--with their environmental laws, consumer-protection measures, and other forms of regulatory "interference"--were a burden on corporate growth. Having been successfully field tested in the two oldest "democracies," the neoliberal project moved onto the global stage. The Bretton Woods system of fixed rates of currency exchange was weakened, and the international financial system became destabilizing, instead of stabilizing, for national economies. The radical free-trade project was launched, leading eventually to the World Trade Organization. The fission that had begun in 1945 was finally manifesting as an explosive change in the world system. The objective of neoliberal free-trade treaties is to remove all political controls over domestic and international trade and commerce. Corporations have free rein to maximize profits, heedless of environmental consequences and safety risks. Instead of governments regulating corporations, the WTO now sets rules for governments, telling them what kind of beef they must import, whether or not they can ban asbestos, and what additives they must permit in petroleum products. So far, in every case where the WTO has been asked to review a health, safety, or environmental regulation, the regulation has been overturned. Most of the world has been turned into a periphery; the imperial core has been boiled down to the capitalist elite themselves, represented by their bureaucratic, unrepresentative, WTO world government. The burden of accelerated imperialism falls hardest outside the West, where loans are used as a lever by the IMF to compel debtor nations such as Rwanda and South Korea to accept suicidal "reform" packages. In the 1800s, genocide was employed to clear North America and Australia of their native populations, creating room for growth. Today, a similar program of genocide has apparently been unleashed against sub-Saharan Africa. The IMF destroys the economies, the CIA trains militias and stirs up tribal conflicts, and the West sells weapons to all sides. Famine and genocidal civil wars are the predictable and inevitable result. Meanwhile, AIDS runs rampant while the WTO and the US government use trade laws to prevent medicines from reaching the victims. As in the past, Western military force will be required to control the non-Western periphery and make adjustments to local political arrangements when considered necessary by elite planners. The Pentagon continues to provide the primary policing power, with NATO playing an ever-increasing role. Resentment against the West and against neoliberalism is growing in the Third World, and the frequency of military interventions is bound to increase. All of this needs to be made acceptable to Western minds, adding a new dimension to the matrix. In the latest matrix reality, the West is called the "international community," whose goal is to serve "humanitarian" causes. Bill Clinton made it explicit with his "Clinton Doctrine," in which (as quoted in the Washington Post) he solemnly promised, "If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion and it is within our power stop it, we will stop it." This matrix fabrication is very effective indeed; who opposes prevention of genocide? Only outside the matrix does one see that genocide is caused by the West in the first place, that the worst cases of genocide are continuing, that "assistance" usually makes things worse (as in the Balkans), and that Clinton's handy doctrine enables him to intervene when and where he chooses. Since dictators and the stirring of ethnic rivalries are standard tools used in managing the periphery, a US president can always find "innocent civilians" wherever elite plans call for an intervention. In matrix reality, globalization is not a project but rather the inevitable result of beneficial market forces. Genocide in Africa is no fault of the West, but is due to ancient tribal rivalries. Every measure demanded by globalization is referred to as "reform," (the word is never used with irony). "Democracy" and "reform" are frequently used together, always leaving the subtle impression that one has something to do with the other. The illusion is presented that all economic boats are rising, and if yours isn't, it must be your own fault: you aren't "competitive" enough. Economic failures are explained away as "temporary adjustments," or else the victim (as in South Korea or Russia) is blamed for not being sufficiently neoliberal. "Investor confidence" is referred to with the same awe and reverence that earlier societies might have expressed toward the "will of the gods." Western quality of life continues to decline, while the WTO establishes legal precedents ensuring that its authority will not be challenged when its decisions become more draconian. Things will get much worse in the West; this was anticipated in elite circles when the neoliberal project was still on the drawing board, as is illustrated in Samuel Huntington's "The Crisis of Democracy" report discussed earlier. The management of discontented societies The postwar years, especially in the United States, were characterized by consensus politics. Most people shared a common understanding of how society worked, and generally approved of how things were going. Prosperity was real and the matrix version of reality was reassuring. Most people believed in it. Those beliefs became a shared consensus, and the government could then carry out its plans as it intended, "responding" to the programmed public will. The "excess democracy" of the 1960s and 1970s attacked this shared consensus from below, and neoliberal planners decided from above that ongoing consensus wasn't worth paying for. They accepted that segments of society would persist in disbelieving various parts of the matrix. Activism and protest were to be expected. New means of social control would be needed to deal with activist movements and with growing discontent, as neoliberalism gradually tightened the economic screws. Such means of control were identified and have since been largely implemented, particularly in the United States. In many ways America sets the pace of globalization; innovations can often be observed there before they occur elsewhere. This is particularly true in the case of social-control techniques. The most obvious means of social control, in a discontented society, is a strong, semi-militarized police force. Most of the periphery has been managed by such means for centuries. This was obvious to elite planners in the West, was adopted as policy, and has now been largely implemented. Urban and suburban ghettos--where the adverse consequences of neoliberalism are currently most concentrated--have literally become occupied territories, where police beatings and unjustified shootings are commonplace. So that the beefed-up police force could maintain control in conditions of mass unrest, elite planners also realized that much of the Bill of Rights would need to be neutralized. (This is not surprising, given that the Bill's authors had just lived through a revolution and were seeking to ensure that future generations would have the means to organize and overthrow any oppressive future government.) The rights-neutralization project has been largely implemented, as exemplified by armed midnight raids, outrageous search-and-seizure practices, overly broad conspiracy laws, wholesale invasion of privacy, massive incarceration, and the rise of prison slave labor (2) . The Rubicon has been crossed--the techniques of oppression long common in the empire's periphery are being imported to the core. In the matrix, the genre of the TV or movie police drama has served to create a reality in which "rights" are a joke, the accused are despicable sociopaths, and no criminal is ever brought to justice until some noble cop or prosecutor bends the rules a bit. Government officials bolster the construct by declaring "wars" on crime and drugs; the noble cops are fighting a war out there in the streets--and you can't win a war without using your enemy's dirty tricks. The CIA plays its role by managing the international drug trade and making sure that ghetto drug dealers are well supplied. In this way, the American public has been led to accept the means of its own suppression. The mechanisms of the police state are in place. They will be used when necessary--as we see in ghettos and skyrocketing prison populations, as we saw on the streets of Seattle and Washington D.C. during recent anti-WTO demonstrations, and as is suggested by executive orders that enable the president to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law whenever he deems it necessary. But raw force is only the last line of defense for the elite regime. Neoliberal planners introduced more subtle defenses into the matrix; looking at these will bring us back to our discussion of the left and right. Divide and rule is one of the oldest means of mass control--standard practice since at least the Roman Empire. This is applied at the level of modern imperialism, where each small nation competes with others for capital investments. Within societies it works this way: If each social group can be convinced that some other group is the source of its discontent, then the population's energy will be spent in inter-group struggles. The regime can sit on the sidelines, intervening covertly to stir things up or to guide them in desired directions. In this way most discontent can be neutralized, and force can be reserved for exceptional cases. In the prosperous postwar years, consensus politics served to manage the population. Under neoliberalism, programmed factionalism has become the front-line defense--the matrix version of divide and rule. The covert guiding of various social movements has proven to be one of the most effective means of programming factions and stirring them against one another. Fundamentalist religious movements have been particularly useful. They have been used not only within the US, but also to maximize divisiveness in the Middle East and for other purposes throughout the empire. The collective energy and dedication of "true believers" makes them a potent political weapon that movement leaders can readily aim where needed. In the US that weapon has been used to promote censorship on the Internet, to attack the women's movement, to support repressive legislation, and generally to bolster the ranks of what is called in the matrix the "right wing." In the matrix, the various factions believe that their competition with each other is the process that determines society's political agenda. Politicians want votes, and hence the biggest and best-organized factions should have the most influence, and their agendas should get the most political attention. In reality there is only one significant political agenda these days: the maximization of capital growth through the dismantling of society, the continuing implementation of neoliberalism, and the management of empire. Clinton's liberal rhetoric and his playing around with health care and gay rights are not the result of liberal pressure. They are rather the means by which Clinton is sold to liberal voters, so that he can proceed with real business: getting NAFTA through Congress, promoting the WTO, giving away the public airwaves, justifying military interventions, and so forth. Issues of genuine importance are never raised in campaign politics--this is a major glitch in the matrix for those who have eyes to see it. Escaping the matrix The matrix cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Under the onslaught of globalization, the glitches are becoming ever more difficult to conceal--as earlier, with the Vietnam War. November's anti-establishment demonstrations in Seattle, the largest in decades, were aimed directly at globalization and the WTO. Even more important, Seattle saw the coming together of factions that the matrix had programmed to fight one another, such as left-leaning environmentalists and socially conservative union members. Seattle represented the tip of an iceberg. A mass movement against globalization and elite rule is ready to ignite, like a brush fire on a dry, scorching day. The establishment has been expecting such a movement and has a variety of defenses at its command, including those used effectively against the movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In order to prevail against what seem like overwhelming odds, the movement must escape entirely from the matrix, and it must bring the rest of society with it. As long as the matrix exists, humanity cannot be free. The whole truth must be faced: Globalization is centralized tyranny; capitalism has outlasted its sell-by date; matrix "democracy" is elite rule; and "market forces" are imperialism. Left and right are enemies only in the matrix. In reality we are all in this together, and each of us has a contribution to make toward a better world. Marx may have failed as a social visionary, but he had capitalism figured out. It is based not on productivity or social benefit, but on the pursuit of capital growth through exploiting everything in its path. The job of elite planners is to create new spaces for capital to grow in. Competitive imperialism provided growth for centuries; collective imperialism was invented when still more growth was needed; and then neoliberalism took over. Like a cancer, capitalism consumes its host and is never satisfied. The capital pool must always grow, more and more, forever--until the host dies or capitalism is replaced. The matrix equates capitalism with free enterprise, and defines centralized-state-planning socialism as the only alternative to capitalism. In reality, capitalism didn't amount to much of a force until the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s-- and we certainly cannot characterize all prior societies as socialist. Free enterprise, private property, commerce, banking, international trade, economic specialization--all of these had existed for millennia before capitalism. Capitalism claims credit for modern prosperity, but credit would be better given to developments in science and technology. Before capitalism, Western nations were generally run by aristocratic classes. The aristocratic attitude toward wealth focused on management and maintenance. With capitalism, the focus is always on growth and development; whatever one has is but the seeds to build a still greater fortune. In fact, there are infinite alternatives to capitalism, and different societies can choose different systems, once they are free to do so. As Morpheus put it: "Outside the matrix everything is possible, and there are no limits." The matrix defines "democracy" as competitive party politics, because that is a game wealthy elites have long since learned to corrupt and manipulate. Even in the days of the Roman Republic the techniques were well understood. Real-world democracy is possible only if the people themselves participate in setting society's direction. An elected official can only truly represent a constituency after that constituency has worked out its positions--from the local to the global--on the issues of the day. For that to happen, the interests of different societal factions must be harmonized through interaction and discussion. Collaboration, not competition, is what leads to effective harmonization. In order for the movement to end elite rule and establish livable societies to succeed, it will need to evolve a democratic process, and to use that process to develop a program of consensus reform that harmonizes the interests of its constituencies. In order to be politically victorious, it will need to reach out to all segments of society and become a majority movement. By such means, the democratic process of the movement can become the democratic process of a newly empowered civil society. There is no adequate theory of democracy at present, although there is much to be learned from history and from theory. The movement will need to develop a democratic process as it goes along, and that objective must be pursued as diligently as victory itself. Otherwise some new tyranny will eventually replace the old. It ain't left or right. It's up and down. Here we all are down here struggling while the Corporate Elite are all up there having a nice day!.. --Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt Maine and anti-corporate activist

There have been episodes during LBJ and Nixon's administrations of the skeleton in the closet (the JFK assasination) when viewing the voluminous amount of "material" that exists from 1963 and before to 2005 it is easy to lose ones focus at times, but this info. that Pat has discovered could be the closest the govt. has come to letting the cat out of the bag, especially when you consider the fact that Hunt was more or less blackmailing Nixon and the plane crash in Chicago of the plane carrying Dorothy Hunt and other Watergate related figures as Dawn pointed out. I have often wondered if the oft chronicled mental deterioration of both Nixon and LBJ might have alot to do with the Kennedy assassination.

from http://www.historynewsnetwork.com/readcomment.php?id=34060Mr. Gvosdek makes some excellent points. And who will ultimately be held accountable for the actions of the "contractors" that are providing security in Iraq if they violate international laws? Laws the Bush administration has already made clear to the international community the U.S. will only obey if he wants to. And he will only call in the United Nations when it suits his needs. The U.S. taxpayer will probably be left with the bill. As if the current bill in Iraq is not big enough. How ironic because the main reason to use "contractors" in government service, as hired guns or to provide the maintenance for the buildings in Washington D.C. was to save money. The fact that many of these "expert" soldiers in Iraq are making $500.00 a day while many military families pinch pennies to make ends meet must be very hard on military morale. Here at home private security firms provide the security for nuclear power plants and government weapons facilities, in violation of a law (THE PINKERTON LAW) created to stop the formation of private police and military agencies. Supposedly these private firms have been "vetted", the new term for a background check. But what criteria is used? Ambassador Paul Bremer's security is provided by private contractors. Is a group of his body guards doing the "vetting" for the others? It looks like the fox guarding the henhouse. And will private firms be employed by the Homeland Security Departmentand to enforce the Patriot Act, rounding up violators? It looks like we are going down a slippery slope that will be hard to reverse, especially with a demoralized Armed Forces that is the size of most third world armies. Do we need these outside "experts"? Did the United States ever have an efficient security apparatus? Yes we did. What happened to it? One of the main architects of our nation's security system and died mysteriously and his former employer, the U.S. Department of State, where he was the CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF PHYSICAL SECURITY is covering up the details of his death. A death that was called murder on national television. This man's name was William Lewis Uanna and you can read about his amazing life and mysterious death on the web site http://www.securitysuperchief.com With the dedication of the WW II Memorial just around the corner it is fitting that we examine his life, he was a true hero of WW II. In fact his service in the U.S. Army was critical to bringing about the surrender of Japan and the end of WW II. Yet most Americans have never heard about him, even though he has been portrayed in three movies: "ABOVE AND BEYOND" - "ENOLA GAY" - "HIROSHIMA". He has been hiding in plain sight. The problem is that he has been written out of the so called "OFFICIAL" history of WW II and the Cold War. General Leslie Groves, who is considered the driving force behind the Manhattan Project does not mention him in his book NOW IT CAN BE TOLD. A brief summary of Mr. Uanna's background is: Just prior to WW II he revamped the Army's Corps of Intelligence Police and got it ready for a WW II under it's new name, the COUNTER INTELLIGENCE CORPS, the CIC. He was the main security officer on the Manhattan Project. At the time of the attack on Hiroshima he was the "Intelligence Officer to the Secretary of War" (Henry Stimson). He led the scientific and intelligence mission to Japan after the war to study their Atomic project which a book called JAPAN'S SECRET WAR by Robert Wilcox says was within days of using an atomic bomb on U.S. forces when we struck Hiroshima. This is one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War. The plant making this bomb was in Korea and fell into the hands of the Russians. At the direction of the Secretary of War he went to the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission and oversaw the transfer of the Manhattan Project into the AEC. It was here that he named and wrote the criteria for the "Q CLEARANCE". Next at the Armed forces Special Weapons Project he oversaw the construction of the storage bases for our nuclear arsenal. Next at the newly established CIA he wrote the briefing manual for the OFFICE OF POLICY COORDINATION. This was the covert action section of our government. It was located at this time (1949-50) in the National Security Council but was run jointly by the Departments of State and Defense. Soon it would be taken over by the CIA. A secret branch of the OPC was sneaking Nazi's into the U.S. behind the back of President Truman and the Congress at this time and the Joint Chiefs actually had a plan for using a 30,000 man secret army of former Nazi SS troops as mercenaries. A lesson can be learned from these dark deeds. At the Department of Commerce as the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce Mr. Uanna Chaired the FACILITIES PROTECTION BOARD and wrote "one of the primary manuals on industrial security". This was during the Korean War. Throughout his career Mr. Uanna would write statutes, manuals, give lecture courses and establish intelligence and security schools. He had degrees in Engineering, Education and Law. His responsibilities involved CIVIL DEFENSE, a word seldom heard now amid colored warning levers and duct tape. And finally his last employer, the U.S. Department of State. He was brought on board temporarily for 90 days and wrote the EVALUATORS HANDBOOK to be used with Executive Order 10450 to screen State Department emplopyees in answer to Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges of Communist subversion in the Army and the State Department. Retained full time to run the newly formed Division of Physical Security he revamped the whole structure. He established the MARINE GUARD TRAINING SCHOOL, wrote aMARINE GUARD MANUAL and a PROTECTION OF DIGNITARIES MANUAL- (Mr. Bremer, what manual do your guards use?) He had responsibility for all State Department personnel and buildings worldwide, he personally guarded all visiting heads of state and in http://www.securitysuperchief.com you will see a picture of him "bodyguarding" Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He ran the security liaison between the Departments of State and Defense. He was a State Department representative on a little known group called the INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL SECURITY (ISIS). He was a member of the SPECIAL GROUP which was also called the SPECIAL COMMITTEE in the NSC where covert action is planned and carried out. Mr. Uanna, or "Bud" as he was known was a Stevenson Democrat. The movie ENOLA GAY describes him "...as good as they come". And this is reflected in all the background investigations done on him for employment in the sensitive positions he had. Mr. Uanna was my father. He was exiled away from Washington in November of 1958 to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Here on December 22, 1961 he died of a "heart attack" on the grounds of the American Embassy there. My mother and I were with my father in Addis when he died and we never believed it was a heart attack. Our suspicions were made public when the movie ENOLA GAY said that my father was a member of the CIA, was murdered in Africa and all records relating to his death have disappeared. The source of this information to VIACOM was the pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets. Paul Tibbets confirmed this to me. But Paul Tibbets has been strangely silent over the years. My father was directly responsible for Paul Tibbets safety on Tinian Island, the forward base of the 509th Composite Group which was our atomic strike force. In fact my father bore the responsiblility for the security of the whole 509th. Shortly before he left Washington in 1958 Sheffield Edwards the Security Director of the CIA wrote the State Department praising my father and wishing him a good tour in Addis. Shortly after this Mr. Edwards would enlist the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro. Along with Mr. Edwards letter came one from General Edward Lansdale of the Office of Special Operations in the Department of Defense, surprised at my father's sudden departure he also wished him well. Mr. Lansdale's career in counter intelligence and insurgency is too long to detail here (I detail it in the web site) but Mr. Lansdale is a key suspect of many private researchers who believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. In my site you will see two handwritten letters that I contend Lansdale wrote that could be the key to solving the Kennedy assassination. But it will take the cooperation of a man who claims he wrote one of the letters. This letter involes Robert Kenndey, anti Castro Cubans, David Ferrie, Aracha Smith and a convoluted scenario that has kept investigators going in circles for decades. At http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsam-jfk/index you can view the National Security Action Memorandums (NSAM's) that President Kennedy issued to bring the National Security structure into line with his wishes. Keep in mind most of these were issued after the failed BAY OF PIGS invasion and JFK had decided to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles and his two Deputies Cabell and Bissell and take covert action away from them. NSAM 55, 56 and 57 lets the Joint Chiefs know they are expected to speak up and be pro active. NSAM 72 shows how serious JFK was about CIVIL DEFENSE (all those yellow and black Civil Defense signs on your buildings were put there by JFK) And if you venture into the basement, check out the dates on the supplies, 1962 I'll bet. NSAM 233? is about his wishes to start the removal of troops from Southvietnam. NSAM 136 states that two committee's were established under the NSC in 1949- the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conferenc(IIC) it was chaired by J. Edgar Hoover. And the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ISIS). These groups will be studied it said. NSAM 161 stated that these two groups would now be under the authority of Robert Kennedy. The IIC handled intelligence, the ISIS handled everything else, which was probably counter intelligence and military and paramilitary actions to be used in conjunction with Civil Defense if we were invaded or subversives were operating within our borders. What happened to the IIC and ISIS? President Kennedy tried to take control of the rogue elements in our intelligence community. He was determined not to have an unnecessary war but he was committed to the security of the United States. Allen Dulles, Cabell, and Bissell would leave their posts, forced out by JFK right around the time my father died. But Allen Dulles would later turn up on the Warren Commission which claimed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and close all other avenues, locking away some information so long that if you are 50 years old now you probably will not live long enough to see it. I believe it was FBI Director Muller, in his testimony at the 9/11 Hearings who said he thought it would take five years to get the intelligence community squared away. I contend much of the work has already been done but is being suppressed. Executive Order 10450 is probably still in effect, but to enforce it and look into the backgrounds of government officials, like Henry Kissinger and his Associates in Kissinger and Associates, or Dick Cheney and his Enron buddies would be too much to ask. Let the Supreme Court say they are A-OK. Like Chief Justice Warren did on the Warren Report. THEN: At the time of my father's death in 1961 MERCENARIES were operating in the Belgian Congo. U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was arriving in the Congo to mediate the crisis and in an event that is still shrouded in mystery his plane crashed killing him. NOW: A few weeks ago a group of mercenaries were arrested in Africa charged with a plot to overthrow a government there. A company some of these mercenaries work for has contracts providing security in Iraq. Late last year the U.N. left Iraq after their compound was bombed and a large number of their personnel were killed, a man who was slated to be the next Secretary General was among the dead. This can go on and on. When the WW II Memorial is dedicated, look over toward Arlingtron National Cemetery, my father's grave is over there. But from the information I have I doubt that his body is in the grave. Just like the location of JFK's brain (lost from the National Archives) or the truth about what happened on 9/11 or where Bin Laden is or WMD's... That's why I think this will take a Truth Commission like they had in South Africa, with amnesty, to get to the bottom of this. Or we can wait five years and keep trusting. Thank you, Steven Uanna

My response to the comments of the illustrious Mr. Brown would be "if you admit on national television that you don't have a clue about what's going on then you deserve whatever happens to you." OR to use a Cajun colloquialism by the legendary Dean Andrews "You got the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho." Goodbye Mr Brown and may the force be with you.

I guess the part of the story I doubt most is that this so-called trap would silence Bobby. How did he even know it was Murgado in Dallas with Oswald? Since Bobby never read the Warren Report, what reason do we have to believe he even knew about the Odio incident? Does Murgado say he told Bobby about this? If so, then why didn't Bobby go after de Torres? After all this is the big murderous brat Bobby Kennedy, who was supposedly foaming at the mouth to kill Castro simply because the BOP embarrassed his brother... The other part that smells is that Murgado would go to the Odio's apartment seeking assistance. Nonsense. They told the Odio sisters they were friends of her father's and members of JURE. That was a lie. That's called disinfo. Going to someone's house and telling them lies and then insinuating that a man affiliated with her father's political group wants to kill Kennedy is not seeking assistance. While Murgado was supposedly betrayed by Leopoldo, I see NO reason to believe him. The whole thing reeks of a man with his back against the wall clutching at straws. If Murgado was in Dallas, he was there as part of the plot. This cover story stinks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The other part that smells is that Murgado would go to the Odio's apartment seeking assistance. Nonsense. They told the Odio sisters they were friends of her father's and members of JURE. That was a lie. That's called disinfo. Going to someone's house and telling them lies and then insinuating that a man affiliated with her father's political group wants to kill Kennedy is not seeking assistance. I couldn't have said it better, whatever is coming out needs to be analyzed objectively and critically and not swallowed hook, line and sinker. Just ask the HSCA's chief researcher Gaeton Fonzi. "According to Colby's notes she (Clair Booth Luce) admitted...she had concocted the name (Julio Fernandez).... I only knew one thing for sure: An awful amount of time had been spent checking out Luce's story and, in the end, it led nowhere....." Sometimes with intelligence and counter-intelligence operations as we all know, when information is revealed "it is a mixture of truth with a lie." While I believe that there is a lot of significant information contained in Mellen's book and her bona fides are impeccable, I wouldn't accept every bit of info. in it without a grain of salt. Corroboration is the best way to go. But I basically can accept the premise that Angel and Leopoldo were Murgado and De Torres.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Everything that has been written up to the present about Angel and Leopoldo which is obviously quite a bit, implies that they were the ones who were steering Oswald into the assassination of JFK. Tim's point that perhaps we should wait until Joan Mellen's book comes out to weigh all the facts is one that I think belies the point that until then we are just splitting hairs about all of this.

Here in Dallas there are plans for 25,000 Louisiana refugees to stay here until things become more organized. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments being expresed on this thread. The mayor of New Orleans who has IMO understandably been in a practical rage over the (PAINFULLY) slow help coming was quoted as saying that maybe the CIA would be coming after him because of his comments so if anything happened to him American's would know what happened. What is most interesting is that the recently announced plan to send 20,000 troops to Iraq to help when the new constitution goes into effect, has been scrapped, because of hurricane Katrina and its tragic aftermath. If there can be a silver lining in this (besides getting these unfortunate people back on their feet and repairing the damage A.S.A.P) it is the possibility that this terrible tragedy may prevent us from invading Iran. I know it sounds ludicrous but I monitor an intelligence website here that talks about it all the time, and I believe that the Neo-Cons are chomping at the bit to "go in."

Pat, I couldn't agree more and Tim regarding your question about why I am not scandalized is for the same reason that I am not scandalized by the fact that the CIA was certainly involved in trying to take out Patrice Lamumba in 1961 or the day the second Iraq war started when we dropped a bomb south of Baghdad thinking Saddam was there or when we bombed Libya in 1986 and killed Quaddafi's daughter.

Stu, I think you touched on a valid point about political affiliation (of a researcher) affecting objectivity about evaluating moral decisions of a president of a complex nature. Politically I am an independent but I think, and have always thought very highly of not only JFK but his brother Robert as well; It is a challenge for me to be objective due to the fact that I feel that the media and politicians have consciously attempted to denigrate his legacy and memory. I certainly didn't mean to imply any judgment about either one of the Kennedy's regarding personal knowledge of Castro assassination plots, and I am just as aware of the history of JFK's administration as well as the history of assassination related developments. What I am trying to say is that I personally would not be scandalized IF either Jack or Bobby knew or approved of an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro, after the Missile Crisis ended, although I don't think they did. The only point I was trying to make was that "getting rid of" the leader of a country which was considered adversarial would seem to endorse the idea of an assassination, Pat Speer's comments regarding other leaders who were "taken out" without recourse to assassination is a very valid one.

I would like to interject a thought here. How would one "get rid of Castro" without assassinating him? My perception of RFK in this regard is that his objection was the use of Mafia figures by the CIA to accomplish the deed, not the deed itself. I mean was Castro going to cease being in power because his beard fell out.

Next to Kross the above should read - Spies, Traitors and Moles by Peter Kross AN Espionage Intelligence Quiz Book it is very good and covers many fascinating topics related to CIA, OSS and the Cold War and even Iran-Contra

I am posting this because I haven't seen any other references to this topic anywhere else, and I have no knowledge of the writer other than the fact that he has written another couple of books on intelligence matters. This post is about Kross' assertion that Robert Kennedy went to Mexico in reference to the JFK Assassination investigation "almost one year after his brother's murder," in September or October of 1964. This information was revealed by a CIA asset named June Cobb who worked at the Cuban Ministry Office, and was one of Castro's closest aides who was "turned by the CIA into an informant," after she visited New York via Washington in June 1960 with Fidel due to the efforts of a CIA officer named Henry Hermsdorf who worked in "WH-4." Hermsdorf was initially ordered to conduct surveillance of her hotel suite by William P. Curtin also in WH-4, who was responsible to Joseph P. Langan. There is a 201 file on Cobb with a document that has R.E. Cushman's name written on it. (Nixon's later Nat'l Security Ass't.) (Note the other material about Cobb is from Oswald and The CIA by John Newman.

I have my own ideas about "who killed JFK" just like everybody else. While I do have definitive ideas, in this type of format, I would use the term "structural hypothesis" for elaborating viewpoints. The reason being is that I believe the main error people make in researching the JFK assassination is having a concrete idea or belief about the who, what, how and why and "tailoring their exposition of facts to 'fit' that scenario." My main structural hypothesis is that there was a one-time "overlapping" of different groups that all wanted Kennedy dead, not in the manner presented by Oliver Stone's JFK but something similar. Three Dimensional Chess is a pursuit of very cerebral individuals, and I like that analogy for analyzing the assassination. On one level is organized crime; I think the books Contract on America by David Scheim and The Kennedy Contract: The Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President by John Davis prove conclusively that there is extensive evidence that points to involvement to by organized crime, the former even providing records of telephone calls of same centered around Jack Ruby, Carlos Marcello, Gill Wray, David Ferrie, Joseph Campisi, Santos Trafficante and Jimmy Hoffa. On the second level are the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, Secret Service and individual members such as then Vice-President LBJ and even John Connally. Note I am not implying a massive interlocking assassination conspiracy by all of the above just the general massive amount of general and de-classified information related to the assassination that involves the same. Too many names to mention. On the third level are those pesky anti-Castro Cubans, they hang out at Hickory Hill with RFK, they are cavorting with Oswald and preparing for a post Bay of Pig's invasion that never took place. (I do believe that Angel and Leopoldo were an integral part of the process of setting up Oswald and that they were "posing" as Cuban intelligence agents when in reality they were bona-fide anti-Castro Cuban's probably affiliated with either the DRE and/or Alpha 66 whether the "Leon Oswald" at Sylvia Odio's was the REAL LHO or not.) If I were to name names on strictly a conjectural basis as being 'part of the plot to assassinate JFK' the names would be Rolando Masferrer, Angel and Leopodo, Jack Ruby, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Allen Dulles and some other individuals. I do not feel comfortable mentioning outright. I also believe that research has proven that the CIA was penetrated big-time by Soviet intelligence and that the government "cover-up" may have as much to do with 'embarrassing facts about intelligence-related ineptness as hiding the truth about who killed JFK. Just some food for thought.

I would suggest this administration has no interest in accountabilty, and that many Americans prefer the daily dribble from the major media, which for years has conspicuously avoided controversial subjects like this one (The 2000 election farce being another), controversy is percieved as bad unless it has something to do with advancing the agenda of the Republican Party or attacking John Kerry.

I think all of the opinions expressed are articulate and well thought out. I happen to agree mostly with Stephen Turner view. I would also point out that I believe 50 years from now the world will look back and see that the doctrine of pre-emption while sounding noble, will be viewed as the trap-gate of history which resulted in a milieu of war of which Afghanistan and Iraq were only the beginning. Some time in the next few years I think it is very realistic to see China invade Taiwan using the issue of pre-emption ala the Bush administration. I also believe if the United States is stupid enough to invade Iran the administration will discover that China and Russia will not be sitting idly by watching. Obviously none of us has a crystal ball but I feel that the current state of affairs is just the beginning of sorrows.

I think all of the opinions expressed are articulate and well thought out. I happen to agree mostly with Stephen Turner view. I would also point out that I believe 50 years from now the world will look back and see that the doctrine of pre-emption while sounding noble, will be viewed as the trap-gate of history which resulted in a milieu of war of which Afghanistan and Iraq were only the beginning. Some time in the next few years I think it is very realistic to see China invade Taiwan using the issue of pre-emption ala the Bush administration. I also believe if the United States is stupid enough to invade Iran the administration will discover that China and Russia will not be sitting idly by watching. Obviously none of us has a crystal ball but I feel that the current state of affairs is just the beginning of sorrows.

The reference to the "Hotel Luna" I am quite sure is actually the "Hotel Luma." Of the myriad of books that I have read about the Kennedy assassination the only other book that I know of that references said hotel is Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much, which has this to say: "The Luma, which closed down in 1980 was a medium size inexpensive abode in a fashionable nightclub area known as the "Pink Zone" in Mexico City, it had a bar that stayed open until the wee hours, and a decent musical trio....It was really a spy hotel---spies coming to town to congregate there. There was a mysterious woman who .....claimed to be a writer recieving all kinds of people coming to visit her...a Benzedrine addict named Benny...A French-Canadian cobbler named Marcel...and a hard-drinking self-proclaimed cardiologist from St. Louis named Worth Walrod, Jr., who seduced any available female." Other residents were Richard Case Nagell, Arthur Greenstein and Robert Clayton Buick a bullfighter. The hotel manager was Warren Broglie. Rounding out the cast was Franz Waehauf the bartender, who served in Germany's merchant marine in WW2, afterwards ending up in Mexico. Nagell alluded to Greenstein that Waehauf was with "Czech intelligence" which at that time (1962-1963) was an intermediary between the US government and Castro. Philip Agee mentions that Czech intel was thought at the time to be an auxillary of Soviet intelligence and targeted the US Embasy as well as objectives in the US proper. Nagell identified Waehauf as being "among the subjects of his investigation after signing a contract with the CIA in the fall of 1962." In Russell's book the climax of Nagell's activities while at the Hotel Luma was a meeting that he attended there alongside Alex Hydell aka the REAL Lee Harvey Oswald, Franz Wiehauf and a female atty. who (at the time) was a well-known Communist [perhaps Harriet Buhai] Robert Clayton Buick told Dick Russell that two American intelligence agents approached him and asked him to report on what he saw at the Hotel Luma. One of the things he mentioned was that he heard conversations regarding the assassination of Kennedy.

For some reason I have a feeling he will have the flu very soon The can of worms he can open is way to dangerous to just send him on his way to Venezuela or Cuba to stand trial. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Although it is a little old, I thought forum members would perhaps like to see this. A bomber's tale: Taking aim at Castro By Ann Louis Bardach and Larry Rohter, New York Times, July 1998 MIAMI -- A Cuban exile who has waged a campaign of bombings and assassination attempts aimed at toppling Fidel Castro says that his efforts were supported financially for more than a decade by the Cuban-American leaders of one of America's most influential lobbying groups. The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, said he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba last year at hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing an Italian tourist and alarming the Cuban Government. Posada was schooled in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's. In a series of tape-recorded interviews at a walled Caribbean compound, Posada said the hotel bombings and other operations had been supported by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Its founder and head, Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last year, was embraced at the White House by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton. A powerful force in both Florida and national elections, and a prodigious campaign donor, Mas played a decisive role in persuading Clinton to change his mind and follow a course of sanctions and isolation against Castro's Cuba. Although the tax-exempt foundation has declared that it seeks to bring down Cuba's Communist Government solely through peaceful means, Posada said leaders of the foundation discreetly financed his operations. Mas personally supervised the flow of money and logistical support, he said. "Jorge controlled everything," Posada said. "Whenever I needed money, he said to give me $5,000, give me $10,000, give me $15,000, and they sent it to me." Over the years, Posada estimated, Mas sent him more than $200,000. "He never said, 'This is from the foundation,' " Posada recalled. Rather, he said with a chuckle, the money arrived with the message, "This is for the church." Foundation leaders did not respond to repeated telephone calls and letters requesting an interview to discuss their relationship with Posada. But in a brief statement faxed to The New York Times, the group denied a role in his operations, saying "any allegation, implication, or suggestion that members of the Cuban American National Foundation have financed any alleged 'acts of violence' against the Castro regime are totally and patently false." THE RECLUSE Talking on His Terms, After Years of Silence Posada, 70, has long refused to talk to journalists; his autobiography, published in 1994, provided only a sketchy account of his dealings with the foundation's leaders. But in two days of interviews, he talked openly for the first time about those relationships and how they figured in a fight to which he has devoted his life, a fight that has left him far from his declared goal of toppling the hemisphere's last Communist state. His motives for agreeing to the interviews are not easy to pin down. Posada, who has survived several attempts on his life, told a friend recently that he was afraid he would not live long enough to tell his story. For the first time, Posada also described his role in some of the great cold war events in which Cuban exiles were key players. He was trained for the Bay of Pigs at a camp in Guatemala, but did not participate in the landing on Cuban beaches after the Kennedy Administration withheld air support from the first wave of rebels, whose attack quickly foundered. It was Cuban exiles like Posada who were recruited by the C.I.A. for the subsequent attempts on Castro's life. Jailed for one of the most infamous anti-Cuban attacks, the 1976 bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner, he eventually escaped from a Venezuelan prison to join the centerpiece of the Reagan White House's anti-Communist crusade in the Western Hemisphere: Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North's clandestine effort to supply arms to Nicaraguan contras. Posada denied any role in the Cubana bombing, which killed 73 people, many of them teen-age members of Cuba's national fencing team. He agreed through an intermediary to meet with The New York Times, provided his current residence and alias, and the location of the interviews, were not divulged. Some of what he said about his past can be verified through recently declassified Government documents, as well as interviews with former foundation members and American officials. But he made several claims that rest solely on his word, including an assertion that he has agents inside the Cuban military and that American law enforcement authorities maintained an attitude of benign neglect toward him for most of his career, allowing him to remain free and active. Posada said all payments from the exile leaders to him were made in cash, and he said he did not know whether the money came from personal, business or foundation accounts. He said that the money was used for his living expenses and for operations and that Mas told him he did not want to know the details of his activities. In the interviews he was generally expansive on broad questions of philosophy but evasive on specifics. He spoke in Spanish and English, with difficulty, his speech distorted by the severe damage done to the nerves of his tongue in a 1990 attempt on his life. y Posada said he was angered by recent newspaper accounts of his activities and eager near the end of his life to put his version of events on record, perhaps reinvigorating a movement he sees as lacking energy and direction since Mas's death. The exiles' foundation, created in 1981, has sought to portray itself as the responsible voice of the Cuban exile community, dedicated to weakening the Castro regime through politics rather than force. Thanks to that approach and millions in campaign donations, the foundation became one of Washington's most effective lobbying organizations and a principal architect of American policy toward Cuba. Any evidence that the foundation or its leaders were dispensing money to Republicans and Democrats while underwriting bombings could weaken the group's claim to legitimacy. That kind of activity could also violate the Logan Act, which makes illegal any "conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country." Posada's remarks hinted that the foundation's public advocacy of purely nonviolent opposition to Castro was a carefully crafted fiction. Asked if he functioned as the military wing to the foundation's political wing, much as the Irish Republican Army does for Sinn Fein, he replied, "It looks like that," and laughed. The Money: Assertions and Denials on Sources of Support In the interviews and in his autobiography, "The Roads of the Warrior," Posada said he had received financial support from Mas and Feliciano Foyo, treasurer of the group, as well as Alberto Hernndez, who succeeded Mas as chairman. Dr. Hernandez and Foyo did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and it was unclear whether they were aware of how Posada might have used any money they provided. In his autobiography, Posada said foundation leaders helped pay his medical and living expenses and paid for his transportation from Venezuela to Central America after his 1985 jailbreak. At times, Posada said, cash was delivered from Miami by fellow exiles, including Gaspar Jim nez, who was jailed in Mexico in the 1976 killing of a Cuban diplomat there. Jim nez is now an employee of the medical clinic that Dr. Hern ndez operates in Miami, according to employees at the office. Jimenez did not respond to requests for comment. When the bombs began exploding last year at Cuban hotels, the Government there asserted that the attacks had been organized and paid for by exiles operating out of Miami, a claim it bolstered with the videotape of an operative confessing to carrying out some of the bombings. More recently, reports in The Miami Herald and the state-controlled Cuban press tied the operation to Posada. However, he told The New York Times that American authorities had made no effort to question him about the case. He attributed that lack of action in part to his longstanding relationship with American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. "As you can see," he said, "the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. don't bother me, and I am neutral with them. Whenever I can help them, I do." Posada gave conflicting accounts of his contacts with American authorities. Initially he spoke of enduring ties with United States intelligence agencies and of close friendship with at least two current F.B.I. officials, including, he said, an important official in the Washington office. "I know a very high-up person there," he said. Later he asked that those comments be omitted from any article and said it had been years since he had had these close dealings. An American Government official said the C.I.A. has not had a relationship with Posada "in decades," and the F.B.I. also denied his assertions. "The F.B.I. does not now have nor have we ever had a longstanding relationship with Posada," said John F. Lewis, Jr. who as assistant director in charge of the national security division supervises all counterintelligence and counterterrorism work for the agency. Declassified documents unearthed in Washington by the National Security Archives support Posada's suggestion that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had detailed knowledge of his operations against Cuba from the early 1960's to the mid-1970's. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel to the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations, said he had reviewed many of the F.B.I.'s classified files about anti-Castro Cubans from 1978 and had noted many instances in which the bureau turned a blind eye to possible violations of the law. As he put it, "When I read some of those things, and I'm an old Federal prosecutor, I thought, 'Why isn't someone being indicted for this?' " On one point Posada was direct and unrepentant: he still intends to try to kill Castro, and he believes violence is the best method for ending Communism in Cuba. "It is the only way to create an uprising there," Posada said. "Castro will never change, never. There are several ways to make a revolution, and I have been working on some." Within militant Cuban exile circles, Posada is a legendary figure, celebrated for his tenacity and dedication to the anti-Castro cause. He has at various times also worked for Venezuelan, Salvadoran and Guatemalan intelligence or security agencies because, he explained, he wanted "to fight against the Communists, the people who helped Cuba." But the Cuban Government regards him as a terrorist and a "monstrous criminal" responsible for numerous acts of violence against official installations and personnel, on the island and off, and has called on the United States to curb his activities. Posada proudly admitted authorship of the hotel bomb attacks last year. He described them as acts of war intended to cripple a totalitarian regime by depriving it of foreign tourism and investment. "We didn't want to hurt anybody," he said. "We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come anymore. We don't want any more foreign investment." The bombs were also intended, Posada said, to sow doubts abroad about the stability of the regime, to make Cuba think he had operatives in the military and to encourage internal opposition. "People are not afraid anymore," he said. "They talk openly in the street. But they need something to start the fire, and that's my goal." The Bombings: A Mastermind Reveals Some Key Secrets For several months the attacks did indeed discourage tourism. With a rueful chuckle, Posada described the Italian tourist's death as a freak accident, but he declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, "I sleep like a baby." "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop," he added. "That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time." In Havana last September, authorities arrested a 25-year-old Salvadoran, Ra l Ernesto Cruz Le n, and accused him of carrying out a half-dozen of the hotel attacks. Posada said Cruz Le n, whom he described as a mercenary, had been working for him, but said "maybe a dozen" others reporting to him remained at large. The hotel bombings were organized from El Salvador and Guatemala, Posada said. Explosives were obtained through his contacts there, and subordinates in turn recruited couriers like Cruz Le n to take the explosives into Cuba and detonate them in carefully selected targets. "Everything is compartmentalized," Posada said. "I know everybody, but they don't know me." "This was an inside operation in Cuba," he added, explaining that he was now trying to think of another way to disrupt the Cuban economy and demonstrate to the Cuban people that Castro's security apparatus is not all-powerful and all-knowing. "Very soon there will be exciting news," he predicted. Posada said he had several ongoing operations, including one that resulted in Cuba's capture of three of his colleagues in early June. "Castro is keeping this a secret," he said. "I don't understand why." In response to several questions about operational details that he clearly did not want to answer, he jokingly said, "I take the Fifth Amendment." While agreeing to allow the interviews to be taped, he declined to be photographed, saying he did not want to provide Cuban agents with any information that would help them hunt him down. "The reason that I last so long is that nobody knows how I am," he explained. "Not having pictures of my pretty face has kept me alive a long time." In Guatemala in 1990, he was attacked and gravely wounded in what he describes as an assassination attempt mounted by his enemies at Cuban intelligence. He was hit with a dozen bullets, one of which shattered his jaw and nearly severed his tongue, requiring several rounds of reconstructive surgery. He said that during his long recuperation in El Salvador, some of his expenses were paid by Dr. Hern ndez, the current chairman of the Cuban-American foundation, whom he described as "a great Cuban patriot and a dear friend." Just last year, he said, a Houston surgeon whom he also described as a friend flew to El Salvador and performed further surgery on him. Posada detailed instances of support from foundation leaders throughout his career. Mas, he said, helped organize his escape from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, and then helped settle him in El Salvador, where he joined the White House-directed operation that led to the Iran-contra scandal. "All the money that I received when I escaped from the jail," he said, "it was not that much, but it was through Jorge." Posada said Mas was also very much aware that he was behind the hotel bombing campaign last year. But the two men had a longstanding agreement, he said, never to discuss the details of any operation that Posada was involved in. "He never met operators, never," Posada said. "You ask for money from him, and he said, 'I don't want to know anything.' " Any discussion was "not specific, because he was intelligent enough to know who knows how to do the things and who doesn't know." Mas, he added, "was afraid of the telephone." "You don't talk like that on the telephone." Asked when he had last visited the United States, he answered with a laugh and a question of his own: "Officially or unofficially?" A State Department official said Posada was reported to have visited Miami in the summer of 1996. Posada acknowledged that he has at least four passports, all in different names. He regards himself as a Venezuelan citizen, but he has a Salvadoran passport bearing the name Ram n Medina Rodr guez, the nom de guerre he assumed during the Iran-contra affair, and a Guatemalan passport issued in the name of Juan Jos Rivas Lopez. He also reluctantly admitted to having an American passport. But he would not discuss how he had obtained it or disclose the name in it, saying only that he occasionally uses it to visit the United States "unofficially," and had once used it to gain refuge in the American Embassy when he was caught in the middle of a revolution in the West African country of Sierra Leone. "I have a lot of passports," he said with a laugh. "No problem." He added, "If I want to go to Miami, I have different ways to go. But I don't go. You can't control Customs people. They can do anything." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am 46 years old and like a million other people throughout history, I cannot believe what we all are living through. I believe one of the problems we have in America is one of education and the negative effect the media has on our culture. I live in Texas, Dallas as a matter of fact, so I get to see first hand the bulwark of Republican sentiment in daily life. It make mw want to get sick. We have a President who continue's to stumble through Iraq, a "phony war" if I ever saw one. He and his minions uses the terrorism issue to basically keep everybody afraid while the raping of civil liberties continues at breakneck speed. I personally do not feel we "really live in a democracy," when the Commander-In-Chief can simply issue a Presidential Executive Order to do basically whatever "he" wants to (including going to war) and everyone yawns asw if watching re-runs of American Idol. I hate to say it but I feel like the London papers had it right after the last election i.e. the headline (How can 280 million people be so stupid?). George H.W. Bush has the distinction of being the only President (as of now, anyway) that has the records of his administration hidden away where they are not perusable even through the F.O.I.A. which I hear some Bush administration officials would like to roll that back as well. You might be surprised to know that I am a traditional conservative, at least, in theory. Nowadays nothing ever surprises me about the depths of lunacy our country has plunged to. I am sorry but after reading John's thoughts on this post I couldn't agree more. I also feel there is a "area" somewhere in our government that has been in the process of destroying the Democratic Party ever since 1963. Oligarchy seems to be the wave of the future in the "land of the free."

I am 46 years old and like a million other people throughout history, I cannot believe what we all are living through. I believe one of the problems we have in America is one of education and the negative effect the media has on our culture. I live in Texas, Dallas as a matter of fact, so I get to see first hand the bulwark of Republican sentiment in daily life. It make mw want to get sick. We have a President who continue's to stumble through Iraq, a "phony war" if I ever saw one. He and his minions uses the terrorism issue to basically keep everybody afraid while the raping of civil liberties continues at breakneck speed. I personally do not feel we "really live in a democracy," when the Commander-In-Chief can simply issue a Presidential Executive Order to do basically whatever "he" wants to (including going to war) and everyone yawns asw if watching re-runs of American Idol. I hate to say it but I feel like the London papers had it right after the last election i.e. the headline (How can 280 million people be so stupid?). George H.W. Bush has the distinction of being the only President (as of now, anyway) that has the records of his administration hidden away where they are not perusable even through the F.O.I.A. which I hear some Bush administration officials would like to roll that back as well. You might be surprised to know that I am a traditional conservative, at least, in theory. Nowadays nothing ever surprises me about the depths of lunacy our country has plunged to. I am sorry but after reading John's thoughts on this post I couldn't agree more. I also feel there is a "area" somewhere in our government that has been in the process of destroying the Democratic Party ever since 1963. Oligarchy seems to be the wave of the future in the "land of the free."

Here's my old outdated "theory" on the motive - Disclaimer: This is just a half-formed kinda fuzzy “maybe” based upon what I read. I reserve the right to change my mind when I get more “data.” The only way to get Cuba back from Castro was to do two things: remove him by any means, and somehow invade and get a “government in exile” to get a toehold in Cuba and hold it for at least 24 hours. Doesn’t have to be a big force just well armed. But who should be the “government in exile?” Trying to understand Cuban exile politics can get very confusing. Who’s Left who’s Right who was a Castro supporter…If Cuba was freed, who would make up the government? Who would the exile community get behind? Artime? Carlos Prio? Mateo? Kohly? Forget anybody closely tied to Batista. How about Manolo Ray? Too far left. The US government may have gotten behind Artime. Hence the Second Naval Guerrilla. The problem with Artime is that if he became the new Presidente of Cuba, certain people’s interests would not be represented. This includes organized crime and big business. They needed to put their own person in there that they could control. The problem is most of the well known leaders were too independent and had too much political baggage. So, the person selected had to be bright, Cuban, no excess political baggage but controllable. Enter Paulino Sierra Martinez. To bring him on board, Burt Mold and John Lechner were sent to Chicago to make their pitch. Sierra accepted the conditions and the JGCE was formed. The money had to be tightly controlled by a subsidiary – Union Tank Car. The money controlled by someone high up the company chain – William Browder. Who were Mold and Lechner representing? (Lechner’s name and affiliation were found in Nagell’s notebook) The FBI and CIA were certainly curious. One theory was that he was being backed by “gamblers from out West.” (Jake Lansky) Another CIA/FBI theory was “oil men.” Most of these theories came from Sierra himself. A clue may be William Trull. Trull was Sierra’s temporary babysitter who disappeared after introducing Sierra around the Miami exile community. (Felipe Vidal among others) Trull was from Dallas, Texas and mentioned the King Ranch. Also, while Burt Mold may have had organized crime connections - he later worked in a Vegas Casino - I don’t see John Lechner in that role. Lechner was an old time anti-communist. He was Executive Director of the Americanism Educational League, which was an arm of the California American Legion. He was also very active in the American Committee to Free Cuba. He and Mold formed their own organization called Americans for Cuban Freedom. The American Committee to Free Cuba is a very interesting org that has a very interesting membership. The ACFC had many right wing extremists – California Rangers, Christian Defense League, etc. Some names of note: Robert A. Surrey, Gen. Walker’s right hand man, Kent Courtney, Hon. John Rousselot, Steve Foote, Harry Von Zell, and Jose Norman. Norman gave Loran Hall the money to get Hemming’s rifle out of hock. The check was from the ACFC. Hall knew many of these people and would give inspirational fund raising talks before many of these people. The HSCA was very interested in this group. (I’m getting too long winded here.) It was John Rousselot that gave Gerry Hemming, and because he tagged along, Loran Hall a lot of good contacts and sources of funds in Dallas. (Harry Dean mentions John Rousselot as one of the planners/money men behind the actual assassination plot.) Hall dogged Hemming and eventually started meeting with most of Hemming’s contacts behind his back. Hall made his pitch for what eventually evolved into the Bayo-Pawley raid. He claimed that it was his and John Martino’s idea. Hall, Martino and Rip Robertson met in Robertson’s room and formulated a plan. This was an assassination attempt on the Castro brothers (scheduled for July 26) disguised as a planned raid to capture Russians that would come back and tell the world that the missiles were still in Cuba. Some of the funds came from Hall’s friend Santo Trafficante. The mission left without Hall. Eddie “Bayo” Perez was allegedly captured in Cuba but as late as Sept 1963, Perez’s brother-in-law Luis Angel Castillo AKA ANTONIO ELORIAGA-REYES was trying to get into Cuba to get him out.. So Part One was a no go. Later, Hall went back to visit Robert Morris, Dan Smoot, Lester Logue, H.L. Hunt, Nelson Hunt, Gen Walker and later hooked up with Wiley Yates, Wally Welsh and Nico Crespi. It was in Lester Logue’s office that Hall met most of the moneymen. Hall mentioned that a “Jack” who owned a trucking firm (possibly J.E. Rose from Rose Truck Line) offered him $50,000 to shoot Castro’s boss, the guy in Washington. Hall “declined” at the time. Hall continued his fund raising by flashing his letter from Manolo Ray around and writing letters back to Ray but never mailing them. Back to Sierra. Sierra was throwing money around and starting to make some headway in meeting with all the various anti-Castro factions and came to the notice of people in Washington. (Possibly through his fellow Chicagoan, Morris Leibman?) Sierra and Reinaldo Pico (Later involved in Watergate) visit Artime’s Latin American camps. Pico reporting to Bernard Barker at his time in August 1963. Aug 17, 1963 he goes to Washington to visit a member of the State Dept. John Crimmins(?). Not sure of the content of the meeting though. By September 1963 things start to fall apart for Sierra. People are complaining that he is spending too much money on himself. He is called back to Chicago and warned by William Browder. He is still left in charge of the Junta but his “coalition” failed to materialize. Part Two failed. All these weapons and people are in Guatemala and Nicaragua just waiting to invade. Hmm…. maybe if a communist killed JFK, the invasion would still go on. Around this same time, Homer Echevarria was heard to say that they’d get plenty of money after they took care of JFK. This was the Chicago plot. This was foiled so then it was on to Dallas. Dave <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wanted to comment on this post. I think it is a very "on-target" topic and ties in to some thoughts I have regarding the assassination of JFK and trying to "make all the pieces fit." In the 1960's and going on in a linear fashion, there was the Warren Comm., then Sylvia Meagher, Mark Lane, Thos. Buchanan and William Turner - Ramparts magazine. The Jim Garrison and the Clay Shaw indictment in this period there were "mysterious deaths" first in the immediate period after the assassination, and then again during the period leading up to the Shaw trial. Then other books.... William Torbitt's Nomenclature of .... and the "Gemstone Files," the latter seems to be so far-fetched it could have been called "How Onassis Took Over the World." Edward Epstein's Oswald bio. Now we have over 600 books on the assassination and (a dozen or so?) people who "say they participated in the assasination itself! Things certainly have become more complicated to say the least. Anyway, my point is that Garrison's investigation is to me the first real concrete expounding of a "plot." Morrow's book and Torbitt's Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal are unique in identifying specific people that were/(may have been?) involved in the assassination. Nowaday's it appears like the task of putting all the pieces together ultimately boils down to two possibilities. One is sifting thru all the ARRB documents that have been de-classified to find a significant "smoking gun" and/or developing or discovering a "crucial piece of evidence" ala the Paschall film (which ostensibly shows gunfire from the grassy knoll visible to the naked eye) or something even more compelling. What I'm trying to point out is that I think the success of solving the case, depends on an objective analysis which allows for the possibility that Morrow or Richard Case Nagell for that matter may be essentially right and that we HAVE to use that objectivity in looking at all the possibilities. I have come to believe that we may be at the end of a window of opportunity regarding potential "credible individuals" who ARE STILL ALIVE as of this writing, and that ultimately WE are apparently the only people that can pull the rabbit out of the hat, as far as getting to the truth if that is even still possible. I hope my post doesent appear to be self-indulgent, I just felt that the Morrow book has been an example of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." I mean Sprague was the head of the HSCA at one time for goodness sakes. Maybe he wasn't as dumb as some think he was. Even though I thought the Taking of the America seemed a little short on facts compared to the picture he was painting.

I struggle to consider options for the future. The weight of the task of promoting change - especially in fostering the creation of a new political vehicle to more properly represent the people here in the US - some form of multi-Party system, as opposed to voting on black and white issues [no pun intended], or based upon which candidate is the lesser of 2 evils - absolute rubbish. How can one party realistically represent the needs of 300 million US Citizens? And how would one combat the issues surrounding the new voting system which has been implemented here? And although he has formally announced his intention NOT to run in 2004, there's quite a bit already in the works for Jeb Bush in 2008. http://www.cafepress.com/progopgear/470123 This would be the most logical selection, given the present environment. BTW - you should probably consider upgrading your security someday to an IPS system - one that makes use of both static detail as well as algorithms to prevent hacking, DOS attacks, IP spoofing, viruses, etc. Your troubles will most likely only become worse as time goes on. Tipping point has a best-in-class product. http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/1...1091012,00.html - lee <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I would like to add some thoughts given the direction this post has taken. I am 46 years old and like a million other people throughout history, I cannot believe what we all are living through. I believe one of the problems we have in America is one of education and the negative effect the media has on our culture. I live in Texas, Dallas as a matter of fact, so I get to see first hand the bulwark of Republican sentiment in daily life. It make mw want to get sick. We have a President who continue's to stumble through Iraq, a "phony war" if I ever saw one. He and his minions uses the terrorism issue to basically keep everybody afraid while the raping of civil liberties continues at breakneck speed. I personally do not feel we "really live in a democracy," when the Commander-In-Chief can simply issue a Presidential Executive Order to do basically whatever "he" wants to (including going to war) and everyone yawns asw if watching re-runs of American Idol. I hate to say it but I feel like the London papers had it right after the last election i.e. the headline (How can 280 million people be so stupid?). George H.W. Bush has the distinction of being the only President (as of now, anyway) that has the records of his administration hidden away where they are not perusable even through the F.O.I.A. which I hear some Bush administration officials would like to roll that back as well. You might be surprised to know that I am a traditional conservative, at least, in theory. Nowadays nothing ever surprises me about the depths of lunacy our country has plunged to. I am sorry but after reading John's thoughts on this post I couldn't agree more. I also feel there is a "area" somewhere in our government that has been in the process of destroying the Democratic Party ever since 1963. Oligarchy seems to be the wave of the future in the "land of the free."