Nathaniel Heidenheimer

Dr. Scott: Thanks for making time on this forum. I wish more people knew about what John Simkin has put together here. I am wondering about your extrapolation in Deep Politics that Oswald may have been working for a number of different intelligence agencies on jobs that were contracted out separately through Banister's Camp Street Office. I was wondering if anything new has come up re: this hypothesis. You also use a verb "park" in an interesting way, as in someone "parking" information with a contact so that it might not go to the central office of that contact's intelligence agency. Would the use of the Camp Street office to do segmented tasks for many different agencies in any way facilitate this "parking" practice?

Pat, as I interpret it, your argument above is that the CIA and agenda setting corporate media have a symbiotic relationship. You suggest that sometimes the media cause reactions from the CIA rather than simply appearing as passive conduits of agency information. I dont disagree with this. I also don't think that it detracts diminishes the truth of the following simple statement: the corporate media is controlled by the intelligence agencies. If they are in a symbiotic relationship with the CIA, are they in other symbiotic relationships with other sources of information that might counterbalance this potential source of bias? Clearly not. There are no other sources of information that are quoted as frequently or whose general narrative of world events is reified as prominantly as the U.S. governemtnt's and its intelligence agencies. This thread has emphasized the VARIETIES OF DIFFERENT AVENUES OF MEDIA CONTROL by the CIA. Sometimes even a maverick reporter can be reigned in subtly, but with effects more far more profound than a Pravda type, monistic propaganda system. The Jefferson Morley article "What Jane Roman Saw" depicts how power works in a million subtle ways. Sideways glances of editors, chuckles around the wattercooler. God knows NO REPORTER WANTS TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS CENSORED. Note how Morley suggests that a reporter might not want to raise the assassination because of personal relationships in the office. Or at least the reporter can tell himself that as he moves on to a more professionally agreeable story. Is the diffusion of State pressure into a thousand sideways glances by ones colleagues perhaps a way in which reporters can still maintain the illusion that they are really not under such pressure? I fear that this is what is called professionalism these days. The CIA and U.S. government controlls the press. In my opinion this is a simple and accurate statement.

Pat I lived in Washington during the 1980s, and you and I have very different recolections of the Post. I was a religious devotee of all articles on Central America. The reporting on the Contras--given thier record of deliberately targetting civilians-- was very biased towards the Reagan Administration. For example they labled the situation a "civil war": this belied the minimal support that the Contras had in Nicargua itself: recall that their bases were in neighboring Honduras under the suppervision of Necroponte. Their cross border attacks on civilians were thus under the purview of our current leader of the war on terror. The Post was On Bended Knee" when it came to echoing Reagans platitudes about the "freedom fighters" The coverage of El Salvador was worse. I wrote a study in which I found that over a two year period 93% of all sources in Post articles about the only country named after Jesus Christ came from U.S. Military, U.S. State Department, Salvadoran Gov. or Salvarodan military personnel. It was so bad that one morning me and several other premature soldiers in the War on Terror got up at 5am to cover the Post with a mock front page we had written called the Washington Parrot. The Post echoed the government line that the death squads (b. 1964 with Green Beret midwives) were somehow independent of the U.S. supported gov. In one instance they could not manage to find a single body from the now infamous (if rarely referred to) El Mozoete masacre of 1982. The El Mozote massacre came one week before the U.S. Legislature was going to vote on continued aid to the gov of El Salvador. (El Salvador was noteworthy during the 1980s as being the only country to have recieved a greater percentage of its budget from the U.S. than had our regime in "South Vietnam".) Six hundred people were killed by a U.S. trained battalion while crossing a river. Reagan said it dident happen. Reporters --perhaps remembering the recent removal of NYT reporter Raymond Bonner-- parroted the Great Communicator. In 1992 more than six hundred bodies were disovered. How might REAL JOURNALISM have effected the 1982 vote? This was just one of hundreds of massacres. Regarding the Post and the 1970s I read an interesting book by the UC Davis historian Kathy Olmstead: Selected Publications * "Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley" (North Carolina, 2002) * "Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI" (North Carolina, 1996) * "Reclaiming Executive Power: The Ford Administration's Response to the Intelligence Investigations." Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1996, 26:3, 725-37. * "'An American Conspiracy': The Post-Watergate Press and the CIA." Journalism History, Summer 1993, 19:2, 51-58. She points out the familiar "rare open window" (to what end? how open?) on the CIA in the Times and Post in 1975. She strongly argues, however that IT WAS THE TIMES AND POST NEWS ANALYSIS ARTICLES AND EDITORIALS THEMSELVES THAT HELPED TO TURN PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST THIS OPEN WINDOW DURING THE YEAR OF 1976. By the end of that year, public opinion had shifted from wanting "mores sunshine" toward a the view that the press was damaging "National Security" by telling too much about the CIA. I strongly recommend her book "Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI" They focus on the agenda setting role of the NYT and the Washington Post.

I found this paragraph (and a couple of others) from the article by Jefferson Morley called "What Jane ? Knew" relevent to Operation Mockingbird discussions. It suggests how a strong anti-conspiracy theory had become institutionalized within Washington Post, and had nominally coalesced around a negative reaction to the Oliver Stone movie. This straw dog was seen as disturbing to the editors of the paper. This shows how a previous history of more direct CIA control might still linger as a miasma of prejudice years later: I was beginning to get realistic. Lardner’s fine reporting notwithstanding, my employer, for better or worse, had become institutionally tilted to the anti-conspiratorial perspective in a way that gave CIA personnel the benefit of the doubt on the events of 1963. This wasn’t surprising given the commonality of interests between Post people and agency people. I had seen Jane Roman’s good friend and former boss Dick Helms, still hale in his late 70’s, at more than one Post social event. Whatever remarks I had elicited from Jane Roman were not going to drag the Washington Post back into the JFK conspiracy tar pit. It was naïve to think they might. Sorry if I may have misspelled miasma. re:above Here is a fuller quote from the Jefferson Morley article" What Jane Roman Knew" by Jeffereson Morley. Thanks to Jim Root for posting it on another thread. Must reading! These were provocative formulations for the newsroom of the Washington Post. Nobody could deny that Jane Roman had been in an interesting spot in 1963 or that she had talked to me or that she had said the things she said. But my scoop—the first on-the-record interview with a CIA counterintelligence official who knew about accused assassin Lee Oswald before the Kennedy assassination--did not impress my superiors. One senior editor whom I respected a great deal told me he knew Roman but he was not curious about her perspective on events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. In certain respects, I could understand why. I was putting forward Roman’s comments as news less than three years after the huge controversy raised by the popularity of Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” Unfortunately, the Post had become identified with debunking and discrediting Stone. The Post’s George Lardner, one of the few newspaper reporters on record as believing that there had been conspiracy, became a polemical target for Stone. When Stone recklessly described Lardner as a CIA agent the possibilities of genuine debate narrowed. Stone apologized but it was too late. The notion that Jane Roman was newsworthy could be seen as implicit statement that maybe the Kennedy assassination was still an open question. That could be taken as a concession to Stone---not something editors loyal to Lardner were in any mood to do. The polemics around Stone’s movie made it harder to talk about facts. I had the sense that Lardner, a great reporter, winner of a Pulitzer and a thoroughly decent man, regretted this turn of events. Others felt the whole subject was a waste of time, and who could blame them with a newspaper to put out tomorrow? But not everyone was so jaded. The younger generation of working reporters around the Post newsroom, people who came of age in the 1970s, was much more relaxed and open-minded about poking at the Kennedy assassination. One ace Metro reporter recalled her own investigations of the Dealey Plaza tragedy for a high school debate team and urged me on. At least two senior editors, a well-traveled foreign correspondent and an accomplished staff writer, gave me advice about how to distill the complex essence of what Roman said into a news story. My story went through an extensive editing process. The newsroom of a big newspaper like the Post is, perhaps by necessity, democratic. Decision-making is often collegial and the handling of my story was a group process. My colleagues seemed to respect my reporting, recognized that Roman was an interesting person and had said I reported. But since they couldn’t agree on the significance of what she said, the paper’s editors would not publish my story in the news section. It was an opinion piece, they said. It was decided the story would be published in the Sunday Outlook section where I worked an editor. I didn’t like this implicit downgrading of the story. My story was newsworthy. It seemed to me a political decision driven more by antipathy to Stone than by the objective evidence of what Jane Roman had said. I kept my prejudices to myself and acquiesced for the sake of getting Roman’s comments in the paper and on the record. There were many drafts. News editors edited my opinion story, which was unusual. I didn’t care. I wanted the story to be transparent. I was open to all suggestions. On Sunday, April 24, 1995, the story finally appeared under the headline “The Oswald File: Tales of the Routing Slips.” Through all the editing battles I had managed to keep the point of the story front and center. The gist of the story was in the third paragraph: “The routing slips on newly released files show that some senior CIA officials who knew about the FBI reports [on accused assassin Oswald] failed to share the information with agency colleagues in Mexico City who were trying to learn more about Oswald six weeks before the assassination.” I was happy but not for long. In the days that followed, more than one Post editor took me aside to say, with genuine concern, that my interest in the Kennedy assassination wasn’t going to “look good on my resume” and “wasn’t the way to build my career.” Jane Roman made it known she was very unhappy. She believed that I had made a “monstrous mountain out of a molehill.” I offered her a chance to respond in print in the Outlook section. She attempted to write something but put it aside and never sent it to us. My superiors evinced no interest in pursuing the implications of what Jane Roman said. I was beginning to get realistic. Lardner’s fine reporting notwithstanding, my employer, for better or worse, had become institutionally tilted to the anti-conspiratorial perspective in a way that gave CIA personnel the benefit of the doubt on the events of 1963. This wasn’t surprising given the commonality of interests between Post people and agency people. I had seen Jane Roman’s good friend and former boss Dick Helms, still hale in his late 70’s, at more than one Post social event. Whatever remarks I had elicited from Jane Roman were not going to drag the Washington Post back into the JFK conspiracy tar pit. It was naïve to think they might. Since Jane Roman wasn’t talking to me and my bosses weren’t curious about what she said, there clearly wasn’t going to be a follow-up story seeking to clarify the pre-assassination Oswald paper trail. Without the ability to advance the story, my scoop in Outlook appeared to be no scoop at all, merely a difference of opinion that was not worth pursuing. All I had done, it seemed, was get the Washington Post caught up in one of those JFK conspiracy debates that go nowhere and bore everyone. I decided to forget about Jane Roman. I no longer cared to risk my left one, thank you Ben Bradlee.

This article claims that Negroponte (Honduras, during the drugs for Contras scandal) has now been given unprecedented capacity to exempt military contractors from SEC investigations: Please read this. Thoughts? http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflas...ign_id=rss_dail

I found this article usefull in suplementing what the corporate articles said about the spy program. Very intereting. Im sure no Democrat will try to play the prosecutor, against Bush, so we will be left with two parties playing defense lawyer. The last time a democrat said anything critical about the our new monarchy he was savagely attacked-- by members of his own party rampagining in an effort to show how "moderate" they were. http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/2276...ies_Who_Shag_Us

John mentions Singlaub's involvement with the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). I recall reading in Whiteout, a book by Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, that this organisation played a kind of advance guard role for the Reagan Revolution, before they actually arrived in power in 1981. Among these activites was the WACL's involvement in the Bolivian' Cocaine Coup' of 1980. The authors claim that Claus Barbie was among those working with the good people at WACL in this coup. The fruits of the coup helped lower the price of cocaine from $1500 an ounce in 1975 to $ 200 an ounce by 1983 (which is about the only thing that could explain the Cardinals' trading Keith Hernandez to the Mets for Neil Allen). Hence, the 1980s was born. Does anyone know if Singlaub was involved in the Bolivian Cocaine Coup? Was the WACL basically an updated version of the old OSS China Lobby?

As you read of the latest developments I am wondering if anyone sees parallels with 1) the way leaks were used in Watergate and 2) the role that intelligence rivalries may have played in Watergate. Also do you see this as part of the same phenomenon that ousted Goss and might be orchestraed by the same group that has been pushing the same Plame blame gang within the CIA?

Perhaps a sufficiently tweedy enclave could be formed within the forum in which only the credentialed would be allowed. I will rush to get a more advanced degree from Southeast Texas Teachers College so that I might join--at least in my own estimate-- the ranks of Alfred McCoy and Gerald McNight, in debating Sir Kenneth A. Rahn in this moated thread. We all recognize the bravery and selfless devotion to the public good shown by American Academia throughout the Cold War, and especially in more recent years!

James Carroll in the new book House of War adds to this picture of the highly contentious relationship between Kennedy and LeMay. He notes that McNamara did not attend the retirement party for LeMay in Feb. 1965. This bash was held in the hanger reserved for Air Force 1 and the plane had to be relocated for the occasion. Carroll argues that McNamara had to struggle with LeMay and SAC for control of the actual mechanics of nuclear first strike capacity. Apparenly, McNamara became convinced that LeMay and SAC had withheld the more detailed nuclear plans from the White House, and in these details lay the devil of real control over first strike options: 'I learned very, very early, in January of '61 he (Robert McNamara) me, "that Eisenhower had implanted what I think was called the Joint Evaluation Subcommittee, which consisted of four-star officers, examining the use of nuclear weapons. They prepared a report, and I saqid, 'I want a copy of that, and they said, 'No, there's only one copy of that...' I said, 'Well, get it. I'm going to read it' ..... The bomber generals shared with their superiors only what they chose to, and by 1961, no one was in position to know which of several planning documents was in fact operative. The White House was given the Single Intergrated Operational Plan, or the SIOP, which purported to coordinate Air Force and Navy strategic targeting. But the J-SCAP was something separate, a more detailed and complete plan, which, no civilian ahd ever read. (p.266). Combined with McNamara's organization of the DIA against the will of the Joint Chiefs, this disagreement adds to my picture of LeMay as someone who may well have wanted Kennedy gone, and who also more than enough intelligence connctions to make this wish come true. For quotes from Carroll's (thus far excellent) book on the thinking behind the creation of the DIA, see Robert Strange McNamara thread.

Interesting thread. For me it reinforces an important point about the CIA and the media: the VARIETY of forms that this control may take. No doubt there have been some reporters who simply planted stories verbatim from both the FBI and the CIA. But I recall reading on this forum of a Miami Herald reporter who was considered a maverick by the agency (name escapes me). Nevertheless it was decided that by feeding information to said Maverick they could nonetheless influence his Cuba reporting in a way that suited CIA objectives. Perhaps his very reputation as a maverick-- and his divergence from the CIA line in other respects-- could lower the defenses of select, and otherwise sceptical audiences. In other words, when we speak of CIA "control" over the media, we need to be aware that this control is often nuanced and strategic rather than simply verbatim. The other thought that occurs here comes from Douglass Valentine, and may or may not relate directly to Hersh. He speculates that the Pentagone Papers leaker Daniel Ellsburg may have been part of a bureacratic war between the CIA and the Pentagon over who would take the blame for losing the Vietnam war. Could such rivalries within the bureacracies also be a motive for leaks?

I found these paragraphs from the new book House of War by James Carroll interesting. McNamara on his second day in the Penatgon goes to look at Air Force Intelligence's "evidence of the "Missile Gap": McNamara compared the U-2 photgraphs with those from the new reconnaissance satellite Discoverer, and what he found wa not only that the missile gap charge was false-- Arthur Schlessinger, not an uninterested observer later wrote that it was "in good faith overstated"-- but that the intelligence system on which he and the the president had to depend on was a shambles. Each of the five services had its own intel. operation. When McNamara asked the Army for its estimate of deployed and ready Soviet missiles as of jan.61, he was told ten; the navy put the number at less than half that. the Air Force set the figure at more than fifty. and perhaps as high as 200. Within the Air Force, the SAC had yet another independent intelligence operation, and it insisted on higher numbers yet, and there were equivalent disparities on projections of the gap in the future. The Air Force had been the main source of all Missile gap alerts, beginning in 1957 with the Gaither Committee's and including Stuart Symington's warning that by the early 1960's the Soviet Union would have three thousand ICBMs. When Mc. demanded that AF intell. officers justify their estimates in light of the Discoverer photographs, they could not. "Even Air Force analysts were embarassed by the pictures," the historian Fred kaplan wrote. ...... Soon it would be "discovered" that the actual number of deployed Soviet ICBMs was four........ As we have seen again and again, each service branch assessed enemy capacities based less on objective readings of the Soviet arsenals than on the branch's own procurement wishes......What Mc. was seeing was the third-generation effect of intel. entities whose missions were defined so emphatically by the individual services that thier ability to serve a broader national interest was almost entirely destoryed. "I concluded that we just had to get rid of five independent intel. services" Mcnamara said to me...... So I concieved of forming the Defense Intelligence Agency, with a commitment to gathering and evaluating info. based on a higher loyalty than to any service".... Still-- and knowing that if he could not rely on the basic data about and interpretation of enemy capacity and intention, all else was meaningless-- he remained determined to take control of such information...... but intelligence gathering was the most jealously guarded activity in the military. Everything from mission to budget to battle order began and ended with the assessments of J-2, A-2, and ONI, and no service chief was going to willingly surrender an inch of that turf. Mcnamara was a shrewd enough manager to see a fight coming, but it soon became a test for him-- not so much of his own authority but of the constitutional principle of civilian control. By taking control of information and its interpretation, he would bring the Pentagon behemoth to heel" Did this intelligence struggle within the Pentagon play a role in the assassination? How? Do we know of intelligence matters that were delibereately withheld from the DIA by the other agencies that might relate to the assasinations? Does Joan Mellon's argument about a New Orleans "end run" around the CIA in forming an alternative Castro assasination team involve the DIA?

yikes

-------------------------------------- "Although the historians plight is undersatandable..." In not sure what this means. Does it mean they should be left off the hook for failing to investigate the death of a president at a critical moment of US foreign and domestic policy? Does it mean they shouldn't dabble in the assassination for fear that David Corn will call them conspiracy buffs and they will be scorned over sherry at the faculty club? Not trying to be glib here, I think its a crucial question: just how and why are most pro hisotrians (again thank you very much Mr. Mcnight for daring to differ) so scared of the assassination. This question could lead to more interesting ones about the function of our instirutions of moated ... I mean higher learning. Also re the Watergate commments on this thread, what is new and different about the Luckas book? I have heard intriguing things about his other books. Also I have picked up a copy of Silent Coup, but then got discouraged when I read Johns comment that they got something major wrong--can't remember what exactly. John do you think this book is still worth reading in its focus on the JCS and CIA attempt to "get Nixon?" Are there any similarites between this book and Luckas'?

Im not sure I agree with this last post by Robert. I sometimes speak out at Union Square at the Free Speach Speak Out, which has unfortunately been nearly destroyed by the police, although musicians can blather quite democratically while not being bothered at all by the police. If anything anti-semitism is "the acceptable racism" out there on the streets. The number of blatantly anti-semetic things people will say before hundreds of people is growing more an more pronounced daily. Much of this stuff derives from simplistic federal reservist pap doled out by Republicans in the Midwest during the Great Depression to take the heat of Wall Street. Whenever one of these anti-semitic speakers gets up, the crowds immediately quadruple. In the world of publishing, on the other hand I would probably agree with Robert. The fear of being labelled anti-semitic is definitely used to cow critics of the fascist Israeli regime. What accounts for this huge difference between the street and the academy? Sure its always been there, but never to this extent, in my opinion. One thing that has been pointed out is the lack of middle-brow leftists who can have an impact outside of the academy. In the void of street-level left analysis, anti-semititic websites offer a quick fix of understanding, metabolizing fast like sugar into blood. Regarding Sid, I dont think Len read his posts very carefully. Nothing wrong with being the devil's advocate, but let's read from the same eyechart. I agree that it doesnt make sense to view Chomsky as a closet zionist. If he is, its the deepest closet since Plato's. I think Chomsky is just a structuralist who, in this particular case, has made a mistake in deemphasizing the degree of difference that a specific individual in a particular context could make. I was myself caught up in this falacy for a long time. I think it came from periodicals of the left, like The Nation, etc. The logic went something like this: 1. Vietnam, the 80s and 90s have shown that there is no real fundemental differences between the dems and repubs anyway...therefore Kennedy Assassination people are being naive about Kennedy representing a thread to the Military Industrial Complex (as it was known in those dark ages) 2. Kennedy had basically ran his 1960 campaign with a fake missile gap "I am more of a Cold Warrier than thou" message, so what makes anyone think he would have been more inclined toward detente? 3. There are no shortage of Kennedy statements that--taken out of context with his ongoing struggle with the JCS -- can be read as encouraging a continued US presence in Vietnam. Cockburn quoted these without thinking about the years historically, or frankly doing his homework and reading seerious critiques of the WC. (If Chomsky and Cockburn have read these critiques, they certainly give no sign of it, never directly addressing any of the points made therein.) "WITHOUT THINKING OF THE YEARS HISTORICALLY"... BY THIS I MEAN.... 1. Not realizing that 1960 was not 1990. The CIA was only thirteen years old. Precosious yes, but might Cockburn and other syndicated leftists (you can count them on one hand) have meen imposting their sense of an ossified National Security State Establishment on an earlier time when it was a) not yet as ossified as it would later become or perhaps as ossified but this state was not yet realized by all players (not just JFK but Ike too.) 2. The degree to which the Cold War media climate virtually necessitated that a president mouth hard right anti-soviet rhetoric to get elected. This would suggest the possibility of a president being more open-minded than his public pronouncemnts might suggest. 3. Kennedy's repeated clashes with the JCS and CIA over Laos and Cuba. This culminated with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't think Cockburn or Chomsky have given any thought whatsoever to how the most perilous two weeks in world history might produce cracks in the National Security State, in the structural (i.e institutional and not individual) way that they view it. We on this forum know that there were very serious divisions 1962. But I think these left appologists for the WC have almost entirely ignored hugely important signs of disagreement between JFK and the CIA-JCS, when they fail to closely examine the combined impact of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. 4. The need to placate the JCS, the CIA and other intelligence outlets with important media ties, helps us read Kennedy's public pronouncements on Vietnam and Cuba at a deeper level. Chomsky and Cockburn have not made the time for this. In many ways I am a "strucutralist" myself. I believe, for example that media policy and media coverage of foreign policy have a far greater impact than anything a politician like Hilary Rhodam Bush might do. But in the case of Chomsky and Cockburn on JFK I think "structuralism" has become an excuse for laziness and "talking out their arsseses" I might know. At one point I was convinced by their arguments. As for Sid's point about "left gatekeeping", the book The CIA and Culture by Francis Saunders shows that this CIA use of left media to push the public as a whole further right is not mere conjecture, but is in fact part of our history.

I know the JCS is connected to the Department of Defense. and that they also have to work with the Sec. of Defense appointed by the president. The reason I ask this question is I am unclear about the degree of autonomy of the JCS. Can it maintain elements of continuity independent of what president is in charge? If so what elements of continuity? My motive in formulating my queston this way stems from my reading of a recent book by the historian of the Vietnam war Gareth Porter called Perils of Dominance. Porter's arguments are 1. There was no real balance of power between the U.S. and USSR; rather there was a strategic imbalance, and all they key players, including China by1960, knew it. 2. What Porter sometimes calls the "military intelligence bureacracy" became aware of this imbalance and was hell bent on pushing the envelope. 3. Porter definitely agreew with John Newman in concluding that JFK was being pressured by the JCS into a deeper commitments than he wanted to make, and even states that JFK was trying to bget out of Vietnam. The best part of this book is how Porter deftly puts JFK's public comments in the context of his inside power struggle with the NSC. especially with how Laos and Cuba effected JFK's public Vietnam pronouncements and private struggle to keep a reign on the bellicose JCS. 4. However,Porter sees THE SAME STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE JCS AND THE PRESIDENT UNDER JOHNSON TOO. I am much more sceptical of his argument here, given what I have learned on this forum, and elsewhere. In short, Porter's narative goes president vs "Military Buraucracy' as opposed to contrasts between JFK 's Administration vs. Johnson's In fact he sees all there presidents--Ike, JFK and LBJ-- as basically resisting bellicose bureacractic pressures. Has anyone else read Porter's book? Did the JCS have the degree of instituional independence to push presidents where they didn't want to go? I know that there were changes in personnel in the JCS, but could there be institutional continuity anyway?

I agree that a traditionally concieved coup d'etat is unlikely, but definitely not impossible. The reason is that I think power is now used in a much more sophisitcated way to muddle and divide opposition movements, so that a threat to the Military Industrial COngressional Intelligence Complex can never grow to the extent THAT A TRADITIONAL COUP IS EVEN NECESSARY! Can't what happened on and after 9/11 be considered a new kind of coup: one based on limiting legislative and media dissention to such an extreme extent that serious dissent is not disseminated to more than a thousand people at a time, thus making it very difficult for a unified opposition to gell in spite of their common beliefs? The key phrase from Federalist 10 comes to mind: "making it impossible for them (a "majority faction") to realize their own stregnth." In the 1700s they made a distinction between the gov. and the "body politic". Although I have been no less amazed than Robert at the sheep like nature of our shopulace, I dont think this is the same as indifference. What is going on here is that the"body politic" --through an incredible number of "advancements" in propaganda research, and their institutional manifestations-- have gotten beheaded. (The body politics means the people and their political organizations Independent of the GOV.) The gov used to sort of have to reflect some of the basic wishes of the majority of the population. True this was often "filtered" through legislators who would blunt the message of the majority in favor of the rich. But think how different things are today in the US 1. The anti-war movement HAS TO EXIST VIRTUALLY NO REPRESENTATION IN THE GOV, EVEN THOUGH ANTI- WAR SENTIMENT WAS PASSING 50 PERCENT. What are the implications of this. Anti-war citizens almost never get to see a clear anti-war position on national TV or radio or newspapers. The strategically ambigous pronouncemnts of our Blair-like DLC DNC leadership are almost....... 2. WORSE THAN SILENCE! Why? Because the comments of The Nevada Sphinx (that heaping clump of Charisma, Harry Reid) Clinton, Kerry and the well- heeled democrats only serve to DIVIDE THAT PART OF THE BODY POLITIC which might otherwise emerge to become a clear challenge to the Bush priorities. It is true that there have been some dem. dissiedents, but these have largely served a strategic "broad--and powerless--tent" function for the DLC DNC moneybags. 3.. The importance of a national talking head or heads that can say the same thing coast to coast is of tremendous importance in forms of getting oppositon movements to become unified. Recall, that J. Edgar Hoover himself typed in 1964 that the "black nationalist" ( a misnomer) movements were not so dangerous provided that they remain local and unconnected, but that THE MAIN GOAL OF COINTELPRO WAS TO PREVENT THE EMERGENCE OF A NATIONAL LEADER WHO could patch up this quilt coast to coast. 4. This disconnect between the gov and the body politic is by no means only reflected in foreign policy. Right now the support for national health care is somewhere between 70 and 80%. Yet you cant hear the words from a single politician. 5. Of course the media is doing its job of not mediating any criticism of Bush. The latest strategy seems to be having fifteen different Bush scandals going on at once, WHILE ONLY RETURNING TO ANY ONE OF THEM TO CONNECT THE DOTS EVERY FIFTEENTH DAY! Note how this serves two functions for Bush 1) it upholds they myth of an "agressive critical media" that is "liberal?--what does this word mean right now?" 2) it is in reality Bush's life vest, because any one story that might otherwise lead to impeachement is only on the front page once every two weeks. Recall that Watergate was on the front page virtually every day for three years. With this and much more untyped ( mainly advances in Communications Reserch) it is no wonder the opposition to the war and the growth of theMilitary Industrial Regime seems to wonder around like a headless horseman. Should the general people be able to figure out whats going on anyway? Yes, Robert, Im not letting them of the hook. All I'm saying is that this CORPORATION OGOVERNMENT OF 2006 EXISTS ENTIRELY INDEPENDENTLY FROM POPULAR SENTIMENT TOWARDS REAL ISSUES. ALMOST EVERY ISSUE THE POPULACE IS ASKED TO CHAT ABOUT IS FAKE, AND MANUFACTURED by consultants e.g. gay marriage, Terry Schiavo, the ports, et al. To conclude, that the public is indifferent is, is therefor a mistake. The Estates General was an ossified political institution that reflected nothing of France's popular sentiment in 1789. Our Congress is giving the EG some pretty stiff competiion right now. But lets not use either as an indice or popular opinion.

I Recall an excellent song by a band called Tim Buc 3 from Austin Texas around 1990. It was called Waves of Grain, and it was very well written.

I agree with Bill Kelly. I could never boycott a mazine edited by a hot babe with a Mona Lisa smile. http://www.nationinstitute.org/images/vanden-heuvel-cp.jpg I think a boycott of this magazine is real because it will point out how the media effectively silences critics of the government story. Think of how many readers, ready to be critics of the Governments lies about JFK and 9/11 are being dissuaded from critical reading by writers they trust. We know from the CIA's creation of Encounter Magazine that they are more likely to be in left-liberal magazines than in right wing magazines. This much is history, not speculation. Bill suppose you write a book like Joan Mellen's, which, in spite of flaws, makes major breakthroughs as far as CIA direct influence in the Corporate media and direct efforts to sabotage an investigation. Then a mag, like the Nation dismisses it as conspiracy theory in a hatchet job maner, without even mentioning its arguments. Immediately 10,000 first month readers will be dissuaded from reading it. Moreover these are teachers and professors who influence millions of others? Don't you think this needs to be contested? Would researchers on this site be content with "discovering the truth" if only a hundred other people read their work? A boycott might not "solve" this, but it at least can challenge in a more open way the CIA's chistening some peoples's work as "history" and other's much more solid research as "conspiracy theory". Just what do we who are devoted to discovering the "truth" about the JFK assassination to light mean by the "truth"? Doesn't this necessarily mean challenging the narrative authority of "the official truth tellers," by letting people know of thier deeply compromising relationship with the political class?

Today on part 2 of their series on The CIA and the Nation Magazine Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone called for a boycott of The Nation Magazine. This is a left-liberal magazine that has been accused by some of being a playing a "left-gatekeeping" role for the CIA regarding the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11. The program was specifically devoted to the role of Max Holland, a Nation editorial board member, who has also been published by journals run by the CIA and on the CIA's website. What do members think of this strategy? Do you think it is possible--given Operation Mockingbird and the history of the CIA and "left" publications-- that the CIA is embedded in The Nation? The program, which is very easily downloadable by googling Taking Aim, makes much of The Book The Sword and the Shield, which it claims is work of CIA disinformation, designed to show that the Italian Communist Newspaper quoted by some JFK researchers in reference to CLay Shaw, was a tool of the U.S.S.R. Schoenman makes a strong case that this was not the case, and suggests that The Nation is aware the Max Holland is deliberately practicing disinformation in using this book as a source. I have been thinking of The Nation in this light for some time, not just with reference to Max Holland. Someone who has always made me suspicious is David Corn, whose appologetics for the zombie like DLC-DNC has always seemed incongrous with the magazine's "left image" Has anyone here read Corn's bio of Ted Shackley called Blond Ghost? What do you think of it? Someone recently told me they thought it was an extended puff piece. I think a boycott of this magazine could have an impact for the same reason that it might prove attractive to the CIA: it is in a niche market, and its significance is more in its strategic postion on the media-political-spectrum, than in its circulation.

Great great movie. I think it holds its own against any U.S. movie made in the 1970's, which was a strong decade. I am curious about the book. Are there direct allusions to MK-ULTRA program?

Dawn: I have posted the Sheen story on a variety of web bulletin boards that get a lot of traffic ( I think the forums of major U.S. dailys are a good spot) This Sheen interview is potentially an important break in the corporate media coverup of 9/11 Here is the link. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/23/sbt.01.html please post it in visible areas. As pathetic as it seems, some people will only trust a big name media source. We should make the most of this opportunity.

I am curious about how forum viewers rate this TV series. I saw it a while back, and remember seeing Thom Hartman in one of the episodes. Recently I have become very suspicious of Mr. Harttman. But it seemed there were other very interesting segments, particularly the one involving the 1965 assassination of a Bethesda Naval emplyee who seemed on the verge of going public. What do members think of this series as a whole? The reason I ask is I am thinking of buying a copy as a kind of into to the subject for students. Perhaps you can think of a better DVD to serve a similar introductory purpose?

There is a good two part searies on the Taking Aim Radio show that airs on WBAI about The Nation magazine and its relationship with the CIA. Max and his recent disinformation regarding the Kennedy Assassination is at the center of this, but it also mentions goes into that mag's ties to Phillip Zelikow, the man who personally selected all of the witnesses who appeared before the 9/11 commission, and edited the final report. Zelikow, of course, was on the Bush transition team, wrote a book with Condy, and now WORKS WITH HER AGAIN! (Is shame a vestigial emotion in today's corporate media?) I Strongly urge everyone to listen to this two part searies BY GOOGLING TAKING AIM. Part two will be downloadable by next Tuesday. Please post this info on other sites. Its a good way of instructing novices into the ways of CIA disinformation, and overcoming the naivity of some left-liberals re: the disinformation tactics of the CIA.

I am reading an interesting new book called Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam by Gareth Porter. He suggests that North Vietnam perceived a clear difference between Kennedy and JBJ: VPA staff officer Colonel Bui Tin recalled in a later interview that the assassinations of Diem and of Kennedy had considerable impacts on Hanoi's thinking about the likelihood of the United States sending its own forces. North Vietnamese leaders viewed Johnson as more likely to change the character of the war from "special war" to "limited war, " he recalled, and Hanoi perceived in late 1963 and early 1964 that thte United States was actively debating whether to send its won troops. Another knowledgeable military source also recalled that party leaders were becomin increasingly concerned that the United States would send its own troops and that "there would be a big war in the south" p. 127 The main thesis of this book is that the Cold War was not as balanced as we were told. The U.S enjoyed a strategic superiority that China, the Soviets, and North Vietnam all were aware of. This superiority effected how the Vietnam war played out. In particular it led to strong tensions between the JCS on the one hand, and Presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on the other. The fact that Johnson is included in this group on the OTHER SIDE OF JCS and military bureaucracy, is problematic for me, but I have not yet reached this part of the argument. This book is interesting to read in conjuncotion with John Newman's account of back channel ties between Johnson and the JCS that seemed to have been designed to keep Kennedy in the dark about militray plans for Vietnam in 1961 (and maybe later?)