Nathaniel Heidenheimer

One method I have found fun re: ideology in history is to "interogate" the NY State Regents Exam. There are two of these-- Global Studies,covering 9th and 10th grade content, and U.S. History and Government, covering the eleventh grade. The students are socialized to see these tests as "objective knowledge." Their teacher, on the other hand, often resembles of middle aged clump of subjectivity with a bent metro card. It is fun to point out the ideology inherent in these questions, so that the students can understand that these questions are really not objective at all. Hence the test can itself be a tool to get the students to think more critically about what it means to be objective in history Will give examples later on. Today there was one chalky contact lense between me and 'the youngsters themselves'

Ron, I too had thought of the "executive branch's" ability to silence the legislative corpse I mean branch in a kind of electronic Hoovering or the both Houses. (Scary words for scary times) I have seen no mention of this real possibility in any corporate press. It shows just how closely the fake oposition in the Dem. leadership is working with the Corporate media to continue to call this corporate sham "democracy"

It amazes me that there is not more discussion of the Democrats role as Bush's prophelactic. If not for the utter sielence on the Big SIX issues ( 1. Iraq and 9/11,2. 9/11,3. Katrina 4. Patriot Act 5. NSA, 6. Lobbying scandals) the Democrats would be landslide winners in the next election. To speak to these issues is measurably against the will of their corporate sponsors. How anyone thinks anything will change by only talking about Bush right now should take a looke at some more recent incarnations of the Tommy the Cork. You could start with a look into Tony Coelho , and his reorienting of the Dems congressionally in line with what the DLC'snew agenda for the party. Then check out his successor, Terry McAuliffe. Do people really expect the democrats to be in on DLC kind of cash and act like an oposition to clear fascism? If you want to understand where "Bush has taken us", don't look at Bush. Look at the environment that has made it so unprofitable to challenge him in any substantive way.

I study JFK related history, not so much for the "who dun it," but, to put it crudely, as a core sampling of how power really works. For example, once we know of the CIA's track record of infiltrating investigations it can make us more sceptical about how the news presented re: more current events. I was wondering if forum members might have any concisely expressed thoughts on how the JFK assassination might be presented to novices, in order to persuade them that this is "knowledge worth having". We all know that there is much effort to trivialize some of the most contraversial aspects of history, and turn it into a kind of exoticized trivial persuit that is outsed traditional history. What point would you make --assuming you were trying to convince an open minded novice-- in favor of the the following proposal: There is much to be learned about U.S. history in general from studying the JFK assassination. Of course there will be those who argue that all interest is self-generated, so why bother. I don't agree with this, and would prefer responses from those who have also meditated on this question--even though its not encouraged in many bourgois California Zendos.

Boyce and Hart had a storng sense of the eternal. Thier song Wonder What She's Doing Tonight represents the eternal carved in bubble-gum (its only true medium). Sorry. My next post will be a windy curiosity about the JCS.

I think that one can indeed say that the Kerry campaign of 2004 was a "fix". It just depends on how you perceive the fix: as a personal fix, or a more institutional one. Right now the Democrats run what I call a 51% strategy. By this I mean that they have essentially incorporated all of the assumptions of our far right, extremist regime, or at least has chosen to not challenge them head on. The reason the Hillary and the Neveda Sphinx seem to lack ovaries, has nothing to do with personality, or individual character. Its the corporations, silly. It has now been twenty years since Tony Coehlo embarked on a deliberalte campaign to make the Dems more amenable to K street. (Of course it was the Dem Cngress that had undermined Carter's progressive campaign reform proposals of the 76-78 period) Soon the DLC was formed to embody this more purely corporate wing of the party at the executive level. Corporate power is now as strong in the Democratic party as it is in the Republican. Therefor the challenge of the Dem candidate is TO WIN WITHOUT A MANDATE FOR CHANGE--i.e. the 51% campaign: " I would have supported the invasion of Iraq, even had I known that he had no wapons of mass destruction," as Kerry said to a nation trained to think "this guy is the opposite of Bush" If they win without a mandate of change then they can simply pick up the winners share of the corporate slush fund. Lose? No problem, Kerry and the Dems raised 500 million last year to not have the name Bush. This was their only clear platform. The corporate media tell us again and again that the DLC-51% strategy is "pragmatic" and this realism makes them electable. This is an incestuous lie perpetuated by the elite media (see Adam Nagourney) and the Dem leadership. The dems lose because the Republicans lies are clear and easily understandable. The Democrats are paid well not to point out these lies. The public anger with Bush has been ENTIRELY IN SPITE OF THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP. They are, if anything, Bush's prophylactic. The Dems are in on the "fix" in that they help narrow the official debate to a much narrower range of views than are present in the body politic. Then-- by playing the corporate-scripted role as the oposite of Bush when they are really very similar-- they feed their base the illusion of democracy. Once ensconced in congress or-- if 51% of the foggy electorate pulls thier lever-- the White House they proceed to run away from their base to the right as fast as possible. Meanwhile the republican House and Senate (even though they may be the minority as in 1993) gets on TV every night and shrilly denounces the rightward running corporate dems, as lesbian loving leftists. The Democrates choose to play by these rules. Why the heck wouldn't they, when even losing by these rules is so profitable? The fix is on! Let us reject the Coehlo-Terry McAuliffe qualude!

Mr. Caddy: Thank you for sharing your perspective on these historical events. We know that in the 1950s William F. Buckley was a strong supporter of Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. From your knowledge of him, was Buckley a racist or was he just an opportunist politician?

A couple or three connections here to the Bartholemew articles. 1. The Rambler-- not sure if were talking about the same one 2. the Willoughby connection suggests this guy may have come out of China Lobby (connections to Diem). Lansdale made this transition from Far east to Cuba in 1962, according to Newman. James--have you seen the Bartholomew article yet? They contain everything including the kitchen sink, I am trying to enlist curious sifters who might lend a critical eye.

The Corporate media is always ready to go into their keystone cops mode of intelligence analysis: all I am suggesting is that we should be sceptical of this kind of" bungled intelligence" safety dance especially when its edited and controlled-- in the end-- by Phillip Zellikow. Let's take for example the FBI "bungeling". In the 9/11 report it comes out like a case of missed hand-offs. But this is not what C. Rowley of the Minneapolis FBI testified. She claimed that her FISA requests to investigate the Minneapolis laptop of the KNOWN (via French intel) AL Q. agent were deliberately sabotaged by higher ups in the FBI. She claimed that of the more than 7,300 FISA requests betweeen 1996 and 9-11-01, ONLY ONE HAD BEEN TURNED DOWN-- HERS! Sybel Edmonds also spoke of deliberate blockage, not missed-handoffs, in her job in FBI's lost in translation department. Surgical bungeling? I am basing my doubts on the "bungeling" excuse based on the FBI stuff alone. There is a cumulative lists of circumstantial --because it was deliberately uninvestigated or not investigated objectively-- evidence that might one day rival that of JFK assassination research.

Bortholomew in his part 3 mentions a DOD decentralization plan that involved Red Bird Airport. Do we know who was involved in making decisions re: this plan? ... appreciative friend of Byrd's was Arthur Andrew Collins, the founder of the Collins Radio Company. Byrd, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a financier of his cousin Admiral Richard E. Byrd's polar expeditions by air. A mountain range at the South Pole is named the Harold Byrd Mountains in his honor.335 Some of that money went for the purchase of radio equipment and technical support from Arthur Collins. The 1933 expedition was the first big break for the young Collins Radio Company of Cedar Rapids Iowa.336 In May 1951 Collins began an expansion program to build a one-million dollar plant near the Dallas suburb of Richardson. A hanger was leased at nearby Red Bird Airport to install and repair airborne equipment. The move was due to a decentralization plan urged by the Defense Department for security reasons.337 According to Dick Russell, "At about 1:OO p.m. on the afternoon of November 22, half an hour after the president was shot, neighbors who lived along the road that runs by the little Redbird [sic] private airport began calling police. A twin-engine plane, they reported, was out there behaving very peculiarly. For an hour it had been revving its engines, not on the runway but parked at the end of the airstrip on a grassy area next to the fence. The noise prevented nearby residents from hearing their TVs, as news came over about the terrible events in downtown Dallas. But the police were too busy to check it out, and shortly thereafter the plane took off.... "Louis Gaudin, the government's air traffic control specialist at Redbird [sic] airport...recalled observing three men in business suits board a Comanche-type aircraft at about 2:00 p.m. on November 22, head north, then return with only two occupants, where they were met by a Dallas policeman named Haake."338...

From Bartholomew part 3: he transfer required a background check by the Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders]329 reported that when the original security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. `Politics,=B4 the man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer was, `the vice president,=B4 who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later, after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes=B4 March 20, 1984 testimony that implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also added that he wasn=B4t the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."330 Wallace was transferred and given clearance in February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, `Then we=B4ll have to get rid of him.=B4"331 According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the terminal....This incident would probably have remained secret except that LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the records were "sealed by government order."332 Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's333 firm of Dorchester Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board. The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as his `business friend and lawyer,=B4 to be one of the two trustees handling the affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."334 Another appreciative friend of Byrd's was Arthur Andrew Collins, the founder of the Collins Radio Company. Byrd, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a financier of his cousin Admiral Richard E. Byrd's polar expeditions by air. A mountain range at the South Pole is named the Harold Byrd Mountains in his honor.335 Some of that money went for the purchase of radio equipment and technical support from Arthur Collins. The 1933 expedition was the first big break for the young Collins Radio Company of Cedar Rapids Iowa.336

In the Bartholomew article Part 3 http://www.talkaboutalternative.com/group/...ges/385811.html there are very interesting connections between Estes, D.H. Byrd's LTV corp. and Naval Intelligence.

So how is the USPO involved?

I second that no-confidence vote stupid like a fox

David ray Griffin, in his 2nd book, a critique of the official 9/11 Commission Report, claims that only one person had control over what witnesses the commission would hear, who would interview them, and what parts of the invterviews would be included in the final report. This person was Bush transition team member Phillip Zelikow. Zelikow also co-authored a book with the HMS Condaleeza, and now works for her again!(It's a good thing conflict of interest was surgically removed from our media vocabulary). Zelikow also had final editorial control of the report. Keane and Hamilton (MR. Democratic CIA coverup, see October Surprise, and Iran Contra) never even quit their day jobs. Hey maybe first choice Henry Kissinger wasn't such a bad choice after all. Along with the WC this was a case of report acompli. By the way I was unaware that the Rostow who urged LBJ to form the WC was the brother of Walt Rostow. This is definitely interesting, given Rostow's connection to Lansdale and the backchannel Vietnam intelligence going to LBJ that was kept from Kennedy. I had read of the Yale Law school Rostow's role in two other books,including Breach of Trust, but this is the first time I remember learning this was Walt's brother.

Are you suggesting the CIA might have gone postal by proxy?

I am curious what others make of the what might be termed "the Gisevius Chain" linking Dulles, and the "oily boys" (faction of the OSS that divereged from the rest of the OSS in emphasizing Hitler's oil interests as bombing targets--see part 1). If this argument is correct and the Hitler assassination attempt was an exclusively right wing attempt to forge an alliance with the U.S and Britain and convert WWII into an instant war against the U.S.S.R. then this could be a possible orgins of a far right, more unilateralist strain, that later worked itself into the CIA as a (dissident?) faction. At least this group might have a vesting interest in misinterpreting Yalta. This is the first I have heard of this connection between mischevious Gisevius-Dulles connection. It would help explain later connections to the flowering of White Russians in the Dallas Magnolia community. I really want someone else to read this part 2, however: it seems so ambitious in "connecting the dots" that I have to remain sceptical. But also intrigued. Help! Whatever the faults of this Bartolomew searies, lack of ambition is not one of them. I could use help in crtitically analyzing these claims. Among other chains of connection in this long article: Lansdale....Burris...."Intellfirst"...Rostow...Gen Charles Cabell W. Dewey Pressley...Magnolia Oil... H.W. Bush Prescott Bush...Dulles...Bancroft...Gisevius Mallon ....DUlles... PRescott Bush... H.W. Bush Tracey BarnesDOD-CIA... J Walton Moore... encouraged De Moren. to persue Oswald C.D. Jackson...Rostow...Bancroft....Dulles Baron Constantine maydell.. de Mohrenschildt...Volkmor...Schmidt...Oswalt...Michael Paine...man who worked for C.D. Jackson ALL AT SAME PARTY?? (except maybe first) that welcomes O. to Dallas. THE ABOVE IS TYPED AS CRUDE INDEX FOR PART 2 WHICH IS LONG AND AMBITIOUS . Reasearchers with interest in these names and/or connections might find this article very interesting.

The following "thoughts" occured while I was watching the new documentary Why We Fight last night. The movie makes it seem like Ike was almost helplessly watching while the congress and MICIC was taking the lead on trumping up military orders for the welfare department for billionaires otherwise known as the Pentagon. Some dismiss this as prime example of lame duck effect. But what are the implications of this perception of Eisenhower for the parallel that is often drawn between THE GROWING POWER OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH AND THE GROWTH OF SECRECY AND MILITARY POWER? Given the ability of defense lobbyists to work THROUGH THE LEGISLATURE AS STRONGLY AS THROUGH THE EXECUTIVE at critical times like the 57-60 period (what were the legilative-lobbying-think tank connections that lead to Kennedy's "missile gap" rhetoric for the 1960 campaign), do people think that the whole.... IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY argument which stresses the growing power of the executive branch at the expense of the other two might SERVE AS A KIND OF DECOY from deeper, more structural corruption involving defense contractors and the Federal gov. as a whole? Please note that I am not disputing that the Executive Branch has gotten much stronger since the 1930s and even more so after WWII. My question is more along the lines of "is this branch talk a kind of decoy" ? American liberals love to talk of branches instead of the corporate money that makes all three branches green tributaries of the Wall Street River. Is this liberal "branch talk" doing more harm than good, in distracting the citizenry from more fundamental issues?

I have just read the first two chapters of your new book. It surprised me to learn that Richard Helmes was put in charge of MK-ULTRA in 1952. Though I have seen many a Helms reference, this is the first time I learned of his connection to MK-ULTRA. Do we know of any more specific actions he took re: said program. What about his close associates, Ted Shackley and Felix Rodriguez? Do they have any MK-ULTRA connections that you know of?

As possible meaningless generalizations go, is it the impression of this forum that the ONI was further to the right than perhaps the CIA and other intelligence agencies? I realize that "farther right" can be a vague term when some of the psychological aspects of intel. work are considered so let me clarify two characteristics of "far right" the way I am using the term here. 1. Possibly having more connections to the China Lobby and people of the Willoughby-Frank Capell- Billy James Hargiss- Edwin Walker chain. 2. Unilateralists with strong direct investment ties in Latin America My motivation in posing the question in terms of ONI are the following disparate observations 1. John Newman seems to be arguing that LBJ was receiving back channel intel. on Vietnam that was deliberately kept from JFK 2. P.D. Scott suggests that Willoughby et al. may have had close ties to Diem and his brother's wife. Domestic friends of this far right intel network seem to have been critical of the Diem coup of 63, and according to Newman, LBJ voiced scepticism about the wisdom of the Diem removal on his first cabinet NSC? meeting. Was this a signal to a possible ONI intel chain that also had domsestic connections in Texas? 3. Naval Admiral Burke of the JCS seems to have been the single most bellicose JCS meber on Laos and Vietnam in the April 1961 meetings dealing with the Laos crisis. He clashed openly with Kennedy and seems to have been supported mostly by Johnson. 4. Years later in 1970, the Naval cheif Admiral Thomas H. Moorer seems to have been the leader in a JCS spy ring inside Nixon's NSC. Moorer, according to Silent Coup authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, seems to have been deeply distrustful of Nixon's moves toward detente, and Moorer was more optomistic than most about the chances for military victory in Vietnam. Moorer was a southerner as was most of the domestic links in the Willoughby chain. 5. I am wondering if the independent intelligence network that Johnson was using might also have some connections with Hunt and Buckley in the Mexico City CIA station that might explain why one part of the CIA got info about the Oswald trip and other's did not? Might there be ONI agents with connections to CIA that could sometimes share intelligence, and sometimes choose to "park" it i.e. save it for a later date? 6. What do you make of this except from the Bartolomew article quoting Newman: There is another time period in Newman's book which deals with the back-channel to LBJ. Newman had long discussions with Burris about where he got this. "And the answer was the boys in the woodwork. And the question was: Who are the boys in the woodwork? And the answer was: `Well I'd rather not really say and bring all of that up. You, I know, you're one of them.' Alright, I'm military, I also have an intelligence background. Peter Dale Scott and I have been working very closely on a number of issues. He's writing a book as a matter of fact. He was assuming for a while that it was military. And I said, `Peter, it may not be that. It may be Langley.' He said, `Why do you say that?' Well there's one more piece. Burris told me that later on, `McCone put a stop to what I was getting from him.' This was relating to the combat intelligence. McCone was directing CIA. And all of the clues I got out of this fellow on who his contacts were -- my own interpretation was that they were in fact CIA. I don't know that for sure."101 I now realize that Burris was Air Force and not Naval intel. Nevertheless, what do we make of McCone's aparent ability to turn on and off sources of info for Burris. Remember, according to Newman, LBJ was getting Burris' reports but JFK wasn't.

I agree with the general sentiment of Mark's comment. I am living in abject ignorance re: the essence of the Z-film dispute. This is not because I havn't tried to learn more, or because I dismiss it as misspelled minutiae: for all I know it is the Key to All Mythologies. The problem is the threads I click seem inaccessible for a Z-novice like myself. If the posters could make every fifth post or so... connected to some OVERVIEW-LIKE COMMENT it could allow more people greater understanding. I realize that some might consider such a democratic approach contrary to the image of "serious research," but why is this? Shouldn't we--at least once in a while-- consider how information is (or isn't) disseminated? Martin Luther may have taken some notes on his living room walls, but he posted elsewhere. Less invective, more summation and overview: then there can be a jury of at least peasants for these esoteric --and quite possibley essential-- disputes.

Here is part 2 in case anyone has had trouble finding it. DEEP PAINE. http://www.talkaboutalternative.com/group/...ges/385814.html

Have continued to read this article and have continued to say Wow. I am concerned that some may be put off by the beginning of the article, which struck me as wacky. This is just to say please keep reading. Among connections I hadn't heard of before: Lansdale-Rostow-Dulles-Helms-Burris. The "oily boys" section of the OSS is fascinating. Keep reading into the rest of the article (after what Robert printed) It's well worth it. Newman's corroberation really lends it credibility for me.

WOW! I agree with Robert: this is an amazing article. Anyone who hasn't seen it yet please do so! I just started Newman's book JFK and Vietnam. What surprised me about Lansdale and JFK is that I had thought of them as both favoring civic action/political aproaches in contrast the the JCS desire for a more traditional landwar approach. Joan Mellen even states that Lansdale was a kind of Hero to Bobby Kennedy, because of this more political- tread lightly approach. This seemed strange once Newman had made it clear how close to the politically cromagnon Diem Lansdale was. But Newman portrays Lansdale as opportunistically using Diem as his only path to Vietnam. Then, when it became clear by April of 1961, that Diem wasn't going to be able to resist many more coup attempts, Newman's Lansdale jumps ship for entirely oportunistic reasons: For Lansdale, being removed from influence by Kennedy was a heartbreaking experience. Under the circumstances, then, it is perhaps not surprising that Lansdale wrote the first document urging a large U.S. troop commitement to Vietnam. He was embracing more powerful patrons, those who would have their way in the end. Lansdale, the civic action advocate, had changed horses, and when the troops finally arrived in early 1965, he would be there with them (p41, Newman, JFK and Vietnam) This makes me wonder if Lansdale's reputation for civic action as opposed to more conventional land war may have served the coup plotters well. If we are to believe Mellon it certainly won over Bobby Kennedy and the Special Group. Were Lansdale and Rostow involved in turning Bobby's Castro operation against his brother, making Bobby his brother's killer's keeper? If so, what level of the CIA knew about the Lansdale fuse? Also who on the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Might Landsdale have served as the perfect smokescreen for the more conventional millitary oriented JCS?

John: Joan Mellon claims that Hugh Aynesworth had ties to both the CIA and the FBI. Do you agree? If so might that have any berring on his role in relation to this photo, and the poop of blood story? She also claims that he was in a position to be blackmailed: an FBI report says that "Aynesworth was caught in bed with he wife of an ex-convict, the irate husband then stabbing him in the neck. The FBI placed this document in a Lee Harvery Oswald file" (AFTJ p.151)