Nathaniel Heidenheimer

Thanks James and Larry. Will look into that other name. Just to be sure I didn't take Hersh out of context, here is the preceeding paragraph: Trafficante normally spoke wiout a lot of passion, but that didn't mean it was a good idea to discount what he said. His reputaion rested partly on rumors that he had engineered the extermination of the dreaded Albert Anastasia. Aleman passed trafficante's threat (on JFK's life) along to his FBI handlers at the Miami Rield Office. Hoover had fair warning. By November 1963, the structure of the attempt on JFK the Mob had in mind was very clearly prefigured. A scheduled November2 presidential visit to Chicago was abruptly canceled when officals discovered that "there were four men in town who planned an assassination attempt from one of the overpasses from O'Hare into town. They were siezed but apparently not arrested." One of the men, a seeminly hapless "Cuban agent referred to as Miguel Casas Saez," had reportedly gravitated to Tampa ahead of of the next attempt on Kennedy's life (p.420).

Burton Hersh, in his new book, Bobby and J. Edgar, writes of "a seemingly hapless 'Cuban agent referrd to as Miguel Casas Saez" who " had reportedly gravitated to Tampa ahead of the next attempt on Kennedy's life" This was AFTER he and three others had been "siezed but not arrested" as part of the November 2nd plot in Chicago. Hersh does not give a source for this allegation about this figure Saez. In SWHT Larry Hancock also mentions a Miguel Casas Saez: The WH/Cuban and CI (Counter-intelligence) divisions of the CIA also seem to have been greatly interested in pursuing leads to conspiracy if they pointed to Cuba and Castro. Over the next year, first in Mexico City and then elsewhere, various CIA reports would identify possible Castro agents who might have associated with Oswald or in some elements of a conspiracy. They generated reports on Miguel Casas Saes (described as a Cuban "gangster" and an agent of Castro G2)... (p. 294) Does anyone know the precise origin that these alegations re: Saez were made? Were they, in fact, from the Mexico City station of the CIA? Also,Larry,does the designation "WH/Cuban" refer to a part of the CIA that nominally answered to the Bobby Kennedy and not CIA headquarters, nominally? Also does anyone know WHEN this story about Saez was first made known to Hoover? Was it before or after Hoover had directed his agents in Dallas to confine thier efforts to gathering evidence of a single shooter? This reference to an alleged Miguel Casas Saez stands out in Hersh's book, because he is certainly not posing an over all "Castro-connection" to the assassination. Yet he seems to accept the movement of Saez from Chicago to Tampa as at least partly a sign the "Hoover had fair warning" about the structure of the hit that would was planned in Chicago, then Tampa, and then finally executed in Dallas. Is there any evidence that such a Miguel Casas Saez actually existed, or was it simply part of disinformation by one group within the CIA, as part of what Peter Dale Scott calls "phase one" (blame it on Castro) of the conspiracy.

In Burton Hersh's new book Bobby and J. Edgar, Hersh writes of Ellen Rometsch ( he spells it with a t ):"She would be linked in future FBI investigations with the August 1963 suicide of Philip Graham, publisher fo the Washington Post" (p. 364). First I've heard of a possible connection between Philip Graham and the women Hersh describes--emphasizing her international citizenship skills-- as a "wall-banger of a date." Does anyone know any further details of this link?

I thought I read something about a New Yorker Article by either Talbot and Morley or Morely and John Newman to be published in May. So far nothing. Any word?

Myra- good sugestion. I have no problem following Peter Dale's example. But it is worth noting that he is an academic in another field; he is or was in the English Department at UC Berkely. It is definitely noteworthy that he is published by University of California Press, however. Perhaps if Scott tried publishing his books while a history professor he might have more trouble? My scepticism as to the possibilities of being at once a truth-buff and an employed academic, were recently reinforced when I read somewhere that the head of the American Political Science Association was on the CIA asset in 1953. Of course Political Science is the most overtly Ho-like of the academic disciplines, with economics running a close 2nd?

From my battles on mainstream websites recently I have learned that Yes Ron There Is a Word for People Who Just Use Common Sense. Wingnuts.

This article shows how key publications and democratic-affiliated groups like MoveOn-- whose purpose is to delude the democratic pary's base while the party bends over yet again to the Republicans an Wall Street-- have edited out Cindy Sheehan's comments about the crass opportunism of the Democrats in giving into oily Orwellian War-monger Republicans. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/shee-j02.shtml If we want a real oppostion, we have to first peel away the faux-oppostion. Thier purpose is only to dilute our outrage and prevent it from reaching more eardrums. Most people on this board know this already but please post that article on sites in the "middle" of the spectrum so lots of people can see it, and I will give you a quarter.

Did World Federalism grow out of the 1945, 46 desire to share nuclear technology with the USSR? I know that this was a desire among some who worked on the bomb, and even some pretty high ranking politicians in 1945. To what extent was World Federalism infiltrated by US intelligence? Did it have any association with any liberal protastent groups such as the Quakers and Unitarians that Dulles had been cultivating only because of the discrediting of the right in Europe?

I agree with Anthony Thorne's comments on McKnight's Breach of Trust. I think this is the ideal first book to air strike, I mean introduce the subject with for a new and/or somewhat skeptical reader. The reason is that it confines itselft to UTTERLY DEMOLISHING the Warren Commission. By limiting itself to that goal it is especially effective in convincing novices that the government lied about the assassination of a president. This is the fundemental psychological barrier that has to zeroed in on first. Once the WC has been blown out of the watter as McKnight's book certainly does, other questions will naturally lead the newbie into other texts. Although it is complex because of the way it integrates old and very new material, I would recommend Larry's book, Someone Would Have Talked next because of how clearly its written, and because the bulleted summaries at the end of each chapter help the relative novice in sorting out the Varieties of Right Wing Cuban Experience. ( I know some people for whom this has been confusing at times.)

Burton Hersh, in Bobby and J. Edgar, mentions Fulton Lewis Jr.--along the lines of Greg's comment-- as one of the favorite journalists of the China Lobby via Nichols, and Hoover: Jack Kennedy was sounding off from the sheet music provided by the China Lobby. The cry was abroad to hunt the traitors down responsible for the collapes of Chiang Kai-Shek's government on the mainland, to make somebody pay for the loss of China. A pack of attack columnists, mostly for the Hearst publications and the Chicago Tribune--Westbrook Pegler, George Sokolsky, Walter Winchell, Walter Trohan, Fulton Lewis Jr. -- now thought they knew which names to name, many handed over quietly to friendly press and selcted member of Congress by Louis Nichols, J. Edgar Hoover's publicity bagman. (p. 103)

Mr. Tatro-- Thanks for that great descirption. It was very well written. I could feel the tension and academic conformity in the room!

Myra, i find your suggesting that LBJ was handwringing for history in June of 1965 quite likely. On the other hand he was getting an earfull from George Ball who was clearly saying the whole think would not work. George was countered most heavily by McGeorge (Just who's mother...?) Bundy, and that great leader of muticultural parking lots Walt Rostow. By the summer of 1965 it was even more clear that they were builiding a military apparatus on political quicksand so LBJ had to at leas appear to equivocate over the inevitable (?)

Paul there was a time when I would have looked at this view of McCarthy as paranoid. But after thirty years of highly professional losing--even when they win the country moves rightward-- your description of the McCarthy campaign smacks more of common sense than paranoia. Common sense with a low circulation. You dont have to look further than last week. Actually the Democratic party is probably winning, if we measure it in a financial sense. They get the bovine anybody but Bush money, and at the same time the funders of Bush money, who this time need to elect a wolf in Clinton-cloth. The dems have been dividing the opposition to rightward movement for the last forty years, and your version of the McCarthy campaign fits right into the story. I am sure that tens of millions of people now realize this about the dems but TO TRY TO COMMUNICATE THIS OBVIOUS TRUTH IS LIKE SPEAKING INTO STYROFOME. That is one poll that the Ananberg School of Comminication sure won't fund! Dissent without a mouthpiece. This is a far better strategy than the Soviet Unions's strategy of mental hospitals for their political dissidents. I guess our government is sure getting its money's worth for sixty years of "communications research" in our universities.

As I recall the two big steps in intervention occured in March 1965 and early July 65. The second is the one usually despicted (with hindsight) as the Rubicon decision. I think this second deployment took the number up around 250,000 troops. A great book on this is Intervention by George Mct. Kahin. Kahin is rightly rebuked by Peter Dale Scott for shying away from Kennedys NSAM 263. But its still a good read, as I recall, although I might have different reactions to it now that I know much more about the Kennedy disinformation industries. Kahin does his best to reconstrcuct, work for word, cabinet meeting of Johnson in June of 1965. He does this by piecing together clippings form a lot of different journal entries. He emphasises a wavering Johnson who really anguished over the decision. I do not think that this depiction of a somewhat undecided Johnson, in any way diminishes from the significance of the Kennedy assassination in terms of the impact on Vietnam war. Even if you agree that Johnson was wavering in June of 65-- which probably many will not-- he was wavering from a much more entrenched committed postion than Kennedy would have been. With the commitments and instituional ties he had to the military -industrial bureacracies, I think it was much more of a given than Kahin depicts.

Wow. This is my review of this movie which I am currently in the middle of. How have I never heard of this one before? It is interesting on about 97 different levels. It is political with a big and small p at the same time. It directly references both assassinations, and in some ways the movie, though not ABOUT the assassinations, is an exploration of their impact. It is experimental but while still being in some way Hollywood picture, which makes it so interesting as a historic specimen. It is set in Chicago in 1968. It was filmed in Chicago in 1969. This short time span makes it so interesting, because it seems at some moments like a week and at other moments like a hundred years. One has the sense one is watching American History turn a corner. There is a chopped off piece of the Ambassador scene acted out probably only nine months after the shooting. The movie mixes commentary on the media the assassination, and class warfare in a way that makes them seem inseparable. It is directed by Haskell Wexler, who went on to become the cinematographer, who according to filmy people, is responsible for the Hollywood Renaissance of the 1970s. Watching this picture, you can see why Wexler is so respected. In short, please rent this movie from Netflix immediately, or I shall have to resort to violence.

_______ I dont' think the problem is accessing them. Im sure tens of thousands do. But they access different ones at different times so that no one is ever sure what is the most important real problem-- as opposed to scandal-- of the moment. The big left gatekeeping sites, however go with the Alberto Gonzalez psuedo scandal of the moment. They are the sites that maybe reach a couple hundred thousand a day. The role of these sites is, to paraphrase Mark E. Smith, to pay perfect Journalistic attention,... to the wrong detail. Bush and the corporate dems win for losing. I noticed that David Talbot had read Saunders book-- which deals extensively with the CIA Encounter Magazine as a left-gatekeeping stategy to make sure that democratic-socialist types did not drift into the dangerous archipelago of neutralism. I am wondering if David thinks this historical example of a CIA created and funded "left" magazine for control purposes, speaks at all to today's media environment. I don't want to get vulgar and voice suspicions, but after all we are dealing-- in the Encounter example-- with a solid historical example not the swamp of speculation about intelligence operations. On second thought, I'm not ideologically opposed to a bit of vulgarity now and again.

_______ I dont' think the problem is accessing them. Im sure tens of thousands do. But they access different ones at different times so that no one is ever sure what is the most important real problem-- as opposed to scandal-- of the moment. The big left gatekeeping sites, however go with the Alberto Gonzalez psuedo scandal of the moment. They are the sites that maybe reach a couple hundred thousand a day. The role of these sites is, to paraphrase Mark E. Smith, to pay perfect Journalistic attention,... to the wrong detail. Bush and the corporate dems win for losing. I noticed that David Talbot had read Saunders book-- which deals extensively with the CIA Encounter Magazine as a left-gatekeeping stategy to make sure that democratic-socialist types did not drift into the dangerous archipelago of neutralism. I am wondering if David thinks this historical example of a CIA created and funded "left" magazine for control purposes, speaks at all to today's media environment. I don't want to get vulgar and voice suspicions, but after all we are dealing-- in the Encounter example-- with a solid historical example not the swamp of speculation about intelligence operations.

"I ascribe this to the Left's insistence that JFK was a Cold War hawk (a strange misperception they share with the Right, who yearn to embrace Kennedy as one of their own). If Kennedy was a hawk, these leftists reason, how could he have been the victim of a right-wing plot? I suspect it also has something to do with the limitations of Marxist theory -- which doesn't allow for complex analyses of the "ruling class" and how violent splits can occur within it." "Left's insistence that JFK was a Cold War hawk"??? Perhaps there is a US left and another left? I'm a lefty and see Kennedy as a dove. Admittedly, other lefty friends think he didn't go far enough. I can understand them, as the inherent problem of a competitive capitalist private property accumulation system, while at times adjustable, carries the seeds of it's ultimate self destruction. Marxist theory and "doesn't allow for complex analyses of the "ruling class" and how violent splits can occur within it." In the 20'th century, Trotsky, after Stalins betrayal of Marxism, was the repository of progressive Marxist thinking. Because Stalin acquiesced to a 'communism in one country' coexisting with Capitalism, or what became a state capitalism as survives in China today, contrary to Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, as Cubas Internationalism may be an example of, a debate of what Marx said or did not say or understand is generally limited to the outlook derived from the Cold War. Marx's earliest writings are about the competition of Capitalists and the temporary necessity of its form of Democracy. In the final analysis, this democracy is 'waived' and replaced with Fascism. When there is a basically monopolistic Capitalism with limits of growth the system consumes itself. If it can't create new markets peacefully it does so militarily. Alliances are formed and position is jostled for. IOW The progression towards a concentration of wealth and it's ultimate self destruction through splits and dominance of a splintered uneducated working class that fights and dies in the resolution of the contradictions or 'splits' within the ruling classes, and the wide spread destruction of infrastructure to artificially recreate an apparent scope for expansion is basic in a Marxist analysis of Capitalism. ____________ Perhaps there is a US left and another left? Touche! The US left is has been contorted beyond recognition by thousands of gatekeeping strategies since the beginning of the cold war. The Olbermanns are simply not allowed on, unless they can be pressed like a button to send a targetted and signifficant audience down the wrong avenue when the apropriate moment arrives. Certainly this sounds paranoind as hell. But the example of Encounter magazine -- as I never tire of repeating is MUST READING IN FRANCES SAUNDERS THE CULTURAL COLD WAR--makes it quite believable for me. If one goes onto so called "left" sites like Huffington Post or even Counterpunch, one ALMOST NEVER READS ANY REFERENECES TO THE SORDID MASS-MURDER RELATED history of the CIA. In fact, on many of these "in house left" sites, one hears the same stupid propagandistic dichotomy of Bush Vs. the CIA with the CIA being portrayed as angelic blond hottie-maddona wife of Wilson, who tried to warn us about Iraq. Unless you lived here you simply would not believe the degree to which the left is not allwed anywhere near an audience larger than 13. The last time a "left" voice reached more than a million at a time, it was shot to death. Twice.

Just checked latest Amazon ratings number. Brothers is up to #50 overall, this includes all books new old, paperback and hardback, fiction and non. This means there is going to be a critical mass out there--for a book that challenges lone nutism. This certainly represents some kind of opportunity. I thought there would never be a pro-conspiracy viewpoint that was allowed to reach this many readers. Clearly the first readers are creating a stir and letting people know.

I have never read any of Gary Mack's work, or seen him speak. So the following is not a comment about his views. Rather, it is a general comment about the quotes of his that I have read, and, generally, how he comes accross in the press. Kathy seems to imply that Gary Mack believes that there was a conspiracy. Also I have seen Gary in an old video with Mr. White, doing some photo analysis of badgeman, so this--by itself-- would lead one to think the Gary Mack is not a follower of LoneNutism. On the other hand, it seems like a clear majority of references to Gary that I have seen--either direct quotes, or comments about his position on one aspect or another of the assassination-- place him in the LoneNut choir. If he really believes that there was a conspiracy, why does he SEEM to come accross so often as Nuter? This might seem just a subjective thing, dealing solely with my impressions of Mr. Mack. But for the director of such an important venu of assassination discourse as The Sixth Floor Museum, these media impressions might play a more significant role than Mr. Mack's personal beliefs about the assassination. (sorry for typing the word "discourse" as if I were trying to get a job in a university in 1988. In this context, I think it is warrented, since what I am trying to say relates to how the conversation between LNers and CTers is-- or is not-- mediated)

One fault I found with the book was its treatment of the Garrison investigation. It was unconvincing, and it seemed like Talbot was trying to avoid the amount of time and detail that the question of the validity of Garrison's investigation demands. I can understand this, given Talbot's overall focus on the big picture, instituional (as opposed to personal or merely mafia) motive for the assassination. Still he is too quick to tar garrison with Marcello brush that is so conveniently there for anyone to use. He makes an attempt to be fair later, but, in my view, the book is unconvincingly superficial and judgemental when it comes to the Garrison investigation. This is the one weak spot I found in this excellent and polished read.

I also think that Brinkley oversimplifies Talbot's argument, when he says that most historians do not see in Kennedy a major radical break with previous foreign policy. That might be so, but Talbot's main accomplishment is to highlight just how strong the hard right was alligned against Kennedy, and in how Kennedy consistently rejected THEIR efforts for a radical break-- a rightward break of the" roleback" ilk. Talbot makes Seven Days In May seem like a non-fiction bureacratic reality that Kennedy dealt with by using a consistent two-track policy designed to keep the bellicose National Security State off guard, while occasionally tossing them a bone. By not discussing this very real right wing threat in his book review, Brinkley unfairly diminishes the creativity of JFK's foreign policy.

Here is this Sunday's NYT book review of David Talbot's Brothers. Coming from NYT its about as good as one might expect. Alan Brinkley is a pretty good historian. I think he mischaracterizes Talbot's argument as one sided. Talbot makes it pretty clear that he is trying to correct a one sided labeling of JFK as "just another Cold Warrior" ; he is trying to balance a view that has already been distorted by Hersh et. al. Hopefully we can post more positive reviews aound the net. I noticed it was rated 122 on Amazon, but Sunday's NYT has it 17th in Nonfiction. In my view the book's strongest selling point is its analysis of the motive for the assassination. It is not overly reductive, but seems to grow from many different conflicts that JFK had with the National Security State. The National Security State comes off as an overnourished child who had gotten its way with the only parent it had ever known: the eight years it grew up with very free reign under Eisenhower. This was more than half of its 13 years. Kennedy, must have seemed like an interloper when he took the CIA's charter-- the part about it existing under the control of the President, and that it could not get involved in domestic politics. Talbot's analysis of motive is refreshingly "big picture". It insists that the assassination is connected to the rest of our history, not a sideshow to be labeled and sent to the Siberia of the small presses. Note especially Brinkley's remarks about the Warren Commission. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/books/re...html?ref=review

Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic of the Strategy of Tension. It is an aspect of history that I sure wish more knew about in the US. If only there was some way of spreading this knowledge around, it might represent hope. Unfortunately US left-gatekeeping is so effective that almost nobody know about it. I did a bit of reading around Gladio a few years back. I think I remember that the stay-behind networks were closely associated with the Christian Democratic governments in both Germany and Italy, and that this common denominator facilitated some sort of cooperation. Trouble is I can't remember what this cooperation was. Ring a bell? Also in Italy I think there were important connections to NATO as well as the CIA. Probably true for Germany as well. There are two very good articles in the Book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak out Volume 1, dealing with the Strategy of Tension. On is by a Norwegian, the other is by some Swiss guy.

And also how did he finance his humble penis collection? I guess everyone needs a hobby!