Nathaniel Heidenheimer

Tim Weiner, in his book Legacy of Ashes, credits John McCone with coming up with the idea of the naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Given his background as a master shipbuilder, McCone understood the military, political,a nd economic power of ships at sea. The notes he drew up included the idea of imposing "an all out blockade" on Cuba--"the interrupton of all incoming shipping," backed up with the treat of an attack. In meetings with Bobby Kennedy, McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy that went on until nearly midnight, he elaborated on the blockade strategy. McCones's notes show that the idea received no edident support from the president's top advisors (p. 202) Ted Sorenson however did not associate McCone with the idea of the blockade: Theodore Sorensen: I believe that CIA Director John McCone preferred the air strike/invasion option to the blockade/quarantine option. And it was those two choices that we finally came down to. But he was careful to offer policy recommendations only when requested by the president and to keep the CIA's primary role as one of gathering the facts. (from a CNN interview, 1998?) Weiner gives the Kennedys very, very little credit for the peaceful resolution of the crisis. He also offers no background on McCone's profitable backgound as a "master shipbuilder". Is this an accurate description of the CMC? Regardless, it is one that a lot of people will be left with: Weiner's book is now 19 on Amazon.

I never gave John Jr. death a second thought, until I read that article by Castro July9th, in which he describes a conversation with John Jr. about his relationship with the Kennedys. He made is seem as if John Jr. was growing more curious about the assassination. As for Flocco, I agree that he is a crackpot, but I don't think he is without a purpose. He is probably a funded tangent, connecting with truth on one point, and than fllying off into fiction, in order to poison the well. Still sometimes where there's diversionary smoke there's fire five paces to the right!

Joan-- I share your belief that the Democrats will do very little if anything to fundementally alter the path of Bush. I think Bush has just continued a path of righward movemnt that began in 1968. (True he has radically accelerated along this path). I am, however, concerned that cyniscism about the two parties' good cop bad cop act is sometimes used by writers like Chomsky Cockburn, and Hersh in an anacnronistic way. They apply this cynicism to 1960-68, and perhaps assume that the National Security State was as unified and monolithic then as it is today. They assume there was no room for different factions, or even the illusion of different factions. We might like to convince oursleves we are being gritty realists by aplying today's cynicism to 1963. But isn't this as much an impediment to understanding the Assassinations as the idealization of the Kennedys that these self syled realists seek to correct in the mass media? The National Security State was sixteen years old in 1963.

I expected this book to be one sided. But it is nothing short of a drive by shooting of the dead Kennedys. Everything is JFK's fault. There is no Mad Dog, no Lemnitzer, Helms cannot tell a lie, no accounts whatsoever of the Kennedy's two track policy with Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. The press is objective, and in no ways pressuring Kennedy towards invading Cuba. In short pure fantacy. This book is aimed at people 39 and younger, who were not history majors, and have been steered away from older "muckraking" histories of the CIA by the X-files and 9/11. Unfortunately thats a lot of people. This book makes Seymour Hersh look like Gaeton Fonzi. This post from the Amazon website implies that its publication date was delibertately moved up to go with the release of the costume jewelry. " A reader of Amazon.com would know that the book was originally scheduled for release in August 2007 but was moved up to June to take advantage of the publicity and heightened interest in CIA history caused by the release of the "family jewels." We will ignore this book at our own peril. Its now 45 on Amazon, and will undoubtedly be pushed for months. If we only denounce it on THIS site we our moating ourselves in, rather than inviting others into a truer and richer history of the CIA. Weiner's book is a mind-crime. It makes Rosselli's oil drum seem like seem like death by natural causes. The fact that it pretends to be an attack on the "incompetence" of the CIA is a predictable disguise that any member or this forum will see through very quickly. I only hope their dissent is not confined to this forum, or too few people will hear it.

Tim Weiner seems to journalistically aiding JFK's trigger finger re: Fidel. The Kennedy White House twice had ordered the CIA to create an assassination squad. Under very close questioning by Senate investigators and a presidential commision in 1975, Richard Bissell said those orders had come from national security advisor McGeorge Bundy and Bundy's aide Walt Rostow, and that the president's men 'would not have given such encouragement unless they were confident that it would meet with the presidnt's approval. (p. 186) If Wiener seems a bit too trusting of Bissell and his assumptions about those peacenicks in arms, Bundy and Rostow, wait till you see his sole footnote for this assertion that Kennedy authorized the assassintion of Fidel: "it would meet with the president's approval": The Question of whether president Kennedy authorized the CIA to kill Castro can be answered, at least to my satisfaction. In 1975, Bissell testified to the presidential commision led by Vice- President Nelson Rockefeller on the question of presidential authorization of assassinations by the CIA Rockefeller questioned Bissell: Q: Any assassination or assassination attempt woul have to have the highest approval? A: That's correct. Q: From the President? A: That is correct. Note how the main text starts with the assertion that Kennedy had authorized an assassination squad, then the footnote meant to support that transforms this into "authorized the CIA to kill Castro, " which is in turn propped up by a much more generic "presidential authorization of assassinations by the CIA". And Bissel? Why whouldn't he be an objective source on this (professionally contorted) question? Hmmm.

This new book should prove very intereting. The author was one of the first US historians to fundementally challenge the hegemonic view of the cold that had refrozen during the Reagan years as it was preached by historians like Gaddis-- after the Cold War ended. His earlier book fundementally challenged the absurd view that the USSR was the main aggressor during the Cold War. http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Mankind-United-...t/dp/0809097176 For the first part of an article by Leffler in a recent Foreign Affairs see http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19960701faes...r-reopened.html

Here is the NYT review of this book by Tim Weiner. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/books/12besc.html I found this sentence at the end of Bechloss' review to be interesting, and perhaps, strategically vague: " The most notorious muckraking C.I.A. books of the 1970s aspired to shatter the agency and make sure Americans never tried to create one again." Of course he doesn't say which book was "notorious muckraking". Was it The Last Investigation? Are truth seekers supposed to aviod this decade all together? Was it something in the water during these years. Never mind. for today's NYT all muckraking is inherently notorious.

Yes please. Also Invite Douglas Valentine.

Got to disagree Kathleen. I really don't think Obama threatens the ruling class at all. I see his candidacy as pure ploy.

Bill: I guess its Farfield Foundation http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ield_Foundation turns out my wife's friend didn't know of the F.F. Perhaps I mixed it up with the Catherwood Foundation, when talking about it last summer.

My father-in-law is a NYC cab driver, retired. He drove from 1958 until about 1992. Anyway, I was mentioning Mary Jo Kopechne in a conversation recently, and he goes " I had her in a cab" For a variety of reasons, I am prone to believe him. He's 80, but sharp as a tack. Anyway there's a couple of things I wanted to check out. He said he drove her to the Marine Terminal of Laguardia and she was flying to Chappaquiddick. I am 70 % per cent sure that he said it was on a Thursday. Then he said he immediately recognized her in the Sunday ( I think ) Times, when he saw her picture with an article about the incident. He desicribed her as very attractive, and very friendlly. My father in law is a talker, and didn't let anyone off the hook. He would have certainly interacted with Kopechne, in a way that would have made him remember her. Just wondering if anyone knows whether this checks out with the Kopechne timeline. Was she in NYC before going to Chappaquiddick? Did she leave from the marine terminal? Was her arrival on a Thursday, and the fatefull party on a Saturday?

I found this site today on Campaign Finance of the 08 candidates. I especially like how it breaks down by industry and size of donations as a % of total. Quite revealing, fast. This site seems quite interesting. A good way of getting a quick look at what sectors of the economy are buying what sectors of the politicins-- and how they check the odds with thier second favorite! http://opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?cycle=2008 Wow look at the really huge industry leads held by a) Guiliani from Gambling and Dodd from tabaccy. Not that these are the most significant , but they sure do stand out. Also notworthy is how much $ Dodd is getting, even though he is not considered a real candidate. This is an indirect Senate slush fund from the financial sector in Connecticut. He will, of course be an important faucet in the plumbing as chairman of important Committees. Well, maybe he's still not as bad as pop, but in today's political context he does'nt need to be. http://opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=N07 Now this chart is intersting to me. Look at the miniscule percentage of Hillary's contributions under 200$. She certainly stands out among the democrats in this way. The only thing thats nominating Hillary, if it happens, is Big Money and Corporate Media. The Clinton Astroturf roots melted a long time ago! http://opensecrets.org/pres08/donordems.as...=A&sortby=S

Have people seen this new one. It seems well timed to place the Family Jewels in "historical Context" for a whole new "generation". Its really being pushed in big windows and I have seen it as high as 23 on Amazon. Hopefully some members will write a review with links to the forum in case the author makes any debateable assertions. Since this is selling so well, it would be good if members got some reviews up pronto! http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History...r/dp/038551445X On a related note I asked a very Computer Savy friend of mine which would get more people to a given site on the internet: a) being rated high up on the search engine lists on a name by name basis (eg Mary Pinchot Meyer) or making links between sites with a lot of hits directly to this site, by emphasizing historical parallels with stuff about CIA opertions from history, as described on Spartacus and Education Forum. At first he said, it could work both ways, but then asked for more details on the nature of the site. Then he answered that the direct link on other sites would probably get the word out better. One opinion. Speaking of which, are people familiar with this aspect of Amazon? http://www.amazon.com/Politics-forum/forum...=Tx7GDQL7FXJE9J Sorry for that link, but it could be an efficient way of building bridges to the forum. This is in addition to the reviews and comments on the reviews on the pages of each book. http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History...r/dp/038551445X

This might prove interesting. Its from Cockburn's Counterpunch, 7-9-07 http://www.counterpunch.org/castro07092007.html

Here is a good article by James Carrol of Times owned Boston Globe. He wrote a very good book called House of War. It uses the construction of the Pentagon as a metaphor for the creation of the Military-Industrial-Complex. He is the son of the first head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/30/2242/

First I saw of this article on Gates by Roger Morris. He is usually worth reading. Its a long three part article. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062007D.shtml

I enjoyed this post sent in by a reader of the NYT's blog about the CIA "Jewels" The writer is alluding to Hayden's efforts to block the release of documents that stongly support the view that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a manufactured incident. I think that the efforts to block the documents occured in 2004. There were two unusually good articles in the Times about this, I believe in 2005. Teachers of history should try to get ahold of these articles, as they offer the most prescient example of history as an indispensible tool for understanding current events. --------------------- I found it. It MUST have been Halloween on 42nd street! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/politics...ssnyt&emc=r 16. June 26th, 2007 2:52 pm CIA director Michael Hayden’s newfound enthusiasm for historical glasnost is, of course, laughable. At NSA it was “history buff” Hayden who kept historian Robert Hanyok’s Vietnam revelations classified TOP SECRET while George Bush was running for reelection, evidently in the belief that - forty years after the fact - the voters didn’t have a timely need to know Iraq wouldn’t be the first war a president launched on false pretenses. It’s entirely possible that had we known in November 2004 the profoundly relevant history Hayden and his NSA successor saw fit to withhold from us for another year, namely, that the Vietnam War had been unwittingly authorized by a deliberately misled congress, George Bush might very well have failed to win a second term. What could be more political than classifying purely historical knowledge - thereby transforming it into a form of de facto intelligence - for the sole purpose of protecting an incumbent’s re-electability? This isn’t about the CIA and its dirty laundry. It’s about Michael Hayden. The man has repeatedly proven himself incapable of distinguishing between political intelligence and any other kind. If, as TIME’s Robert Baer says, Hayden’s publication of the CIA’s “family jewels” is intended to signal that anyone who politicizes intelligence will find their face on the front page, Hayden’s own image ought to be the first to appear, above the fold, front and center. — Posted by Robert ("Bob") Smith

Myra -- I also recomend Douglass Valentine's Book The Stregnth of The Wolf. It shows how the Federal Bureau of narcotics could be told to lay off by the CIA, in terms of allowing drugs into the US. He is coming out with a new book covering roughly 1971-to the present later this year.

John-- you mentioned the La Prensa story re: RFK and Cuba. A fried told me he saw something similar on CNN yesterday morning, something linking RFK to Cuba asssassination attempts. It is beginning to sound like this might be the lead of the big release next week. It is interestiing that they are going for a big splash with this release. You can tell by the way they made the announcement on Thursday to build interest, and then said the details will come out next week. As a result, at least twice the number of people will see this stuff. It sure would be great if we could get information out about Operation Mockingbird in conjunction with this big splash next week. Also some comparisons of the "strategic leaks" ( ie that point in the wrong direction away from key people in Operation 40), that occured as part of the Church Committe partial-revelations of the 1970s. This represents a chance to show the excellence and deep relevence of your Operation Mockingbird research to current events. Remember, not a lot of people in their twenties and thirties (and forties?) even know what the heck the Church Committee was. I hope thier will be a whole lot of cut and pastin' by members on different sites to put this weeks disinformation in context. This could also get a lot of people looking at Spatacus/ Education Forum for the first time.

Hi I am reposting this General Buliosi question after misposting it in a firefight. General Bugliosi question: hope this is the right place. I am currently reading the fascinating and very hard to put down Turner and Christian book on the Assassination of RFK. It sure does make you wonder why there is not more research into the RFK assassination. And why there have not been more books written recently. Larry Hancocks next book could really do well if it follows up on the unbelievably loose ends left hanging all these years. Of all the loose ends, this character Jerry Owen is almost cartoon like. He and the wacky CIA hypnotist William J. Bryan are characters that seem like they have been boiling in a pot at the end of Gravity's Rainbow. The way they combine comical quirkyness with deep structural intrigue makes it stunning that so little has been written. Larry Hancock would seem to have open field running here, and I think for a surprisinglly large market, given that the last serious book was published in 1991. Meanwhile, I cannot recommend the Turner and Christian book highly enough. How does this relate to Bugliosi? Well, to my surprise I learned that Bugliosi was a leading lawyer in the effort to show that there was a conspiracy in the RFK murder. Or at least it seems that way so far in the book. Did Buliosi change his mind on the RFK assassination? If so when, and what were his reasons? Does he mention anything about his RFK work in his new book? Might his role as a "former believer" at least as far as the RFK assassination, have played a role in his publishing arrangement and publicity for his new book. I realize that Bugiosi was already famous for his Helter Skelter prosecutions. Just wondering if anyone knows anything about the history of his views on both the JFK and RFK assassinations. --------------------

General Bugliosi question: hope this is the right place. I am currently reading the fascinating and very hard to put down Turner and Christian book on the Assassination of RFK. It sure does make you wonder why there is not more research into the RFK assassination. And why there have not been more books written recently. Larry Hancocks next book could really do well if it follows up on the unbelievably loose ends left hanging all these years. Of all the loose ends, this character Jerry Owen is almost cartoon like. He and the wacky CIA hypnotist William J. Bryan are characters that seem like they have been boiling in a pot at the end of Gravity's Rainbow. The way they combine comical quirkyness with deep structural intrigue makes it stunning that so little has been written. Larry Hancock would seem to have open field running here, and I think for a surprisinglly large market, given that the last serious book was published in 1991. Meanwhile, I cannot recommend the Turner and Christian book highly enough. How does this relate to Bugliosi? Well, to my surprise I learned that Bugliosi was a leading lawyer in the effort to show that there was a conspiracy in the RFK murder. Or at least it seems that way so far in the book. Did Buliosi change his mind on the RFK assassination? If so when, and what were his reasons? Does he mention anything about his RFK work in his new book? Might his role as a "former believer" at least as far as the RFK assassination, have played a role in his publishing arrangement and publicity for his new book. I realize that Bugiosi was already famous for his Helter Skelter prosecutions. Just wondering if anyone knows anything about the history of his views on both the JFK and RFK assassinations.

This sounds interesting. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...rfk&search=

This article is a Mockingbird Must! Contains great stuff on Fairfield Foundation and varied and sundry Foundations of Left-Gatekeeping! Its not realy about Cindy Sheehan, but about the fuction of The Nation. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/nati-j19.shtml

Currently I am reading William Turner and John Christian's "The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspriracy and Coverup" In the introduction they describe a new police intelligence group that formed in 1956 that coordinated some police departments across the country. This is described as a rival to the FBI's work with police departments, that was formed because of Hoover's infamous lethargy when it came to going after organized crime. The two main departments involved seem to have been the LAPD and the police department in Chigago. Two of the leading investigators in the LAPD's Special Unit Senator, were trained by the CIA as part of this program. I thought it might be useful to start a thread on the history of the LEIU. Perhaps it would be useful to include information from work with other departments as well as in Los Angeles; that way we can see if there are any parallels that might help in understanding the RFK assassintion. The main force behind the LAPD's decision to join the LEIU, according to the authors, was the very influencial William H. Parker, who served as Chief of Police from 1950-1966. This is the longest reign of any LAPD Chief of Police. Parker was succeded by Thad Brown as acting chief in 1966 and then by Thomas Reddin from 1967-69 As someone who is very interested in connections between media and intelligence operations, I found it intriguing that, as reported by Turner and Christian, Police Chief Reddin resigned from the LAPD in 1969 to become a news anchorman at KTLA-TV with a salary of 125,000. That was a wholesome sum back then. I am curious as to how the Chief changed careers so quickly. Did the LEIU play a catlytic role in this career move?

Larry, He only cites Ultimate Sacrifice p, 226.