James DiEugenio

Matt, NSAM 263 is not what I or any other commentator chose to "hang their hat on" for a withdrawal thesis. One of the most important, if not the most important, document released by the ARRB was the Sec Def conference meeting of May 1963. In that conference, McNamara had asked for withdrawal schedules. They were handed in to him. He looked at them and then announced, this is too slow. We have the notes to that meeting. Wheeler was there. He wrote that any contra argument to withdrawal would meet with a negative response. We then have the tapes of the October meetings where Kennedy and McNamara are talking about withdrawing and Mac Bundy does not know what they are talking about. McNamara replies that they have to find a way to get out of Vietnam. Many years later, Bundy heard this tape and told his biographer Gordon Goldstein that Kennedy had instructed McNamara to run the withdrawal program. And he deliberately went around him since he thought he was too hawkish. He told Goldstein that was the right decision and he had nothing but admiration for what Kennedy had done. We then have the evidence of the handing in of the Taylor/McNamara report and how Sullivan had tried to pull the withdrawal plan out of it. Kennedy called them into a conference room and made them put it back in. He then rode herd over the dissenters and announced, we now have a plan. He then told McNamara to announce it to the press. But while he was walking out to do so, JFK opened a window and told him, "And tell them that means the helicopter pilots also!" In Stone's film, John Newman talked about the McNamara debriefs. How the Secretary said that he and Kennedy had agreed that America should only have a training and equipment program for Saigon. They could not fight the war for them. Once that training program was complete, America could get out. And it did not matter if Saigon was winning or losing, we were getting out of Vietnam. Now I could go even further in this, because I have not even included Galbraith and his strong influence over JFK on this issue. Or the advice of DeGaulle and MacArthur. Or the 19 witnesses who said that Kennedy told them he was getting out of Vietnam. Are they all lying? I have done a lot of work on this angle in the last several years. One reason being that I did not buy into at first. I can now see I was wrong. Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam, and that decision was knowingly halted by Johnson within days, and it was then reversed by NSAM 288 in March of 1964. These are all facts. And only the Noam Chomskys of the world would beg to differ.

Yes i agree. That is why I think so many people did not want to see it disappear and ponied up some money to see it survive. I don't think any other forum can match the stature of the contributors or the quality of the info that one sees here. And with a bit of digging you can find almost any subject. Concerning Vietnam, I was so glad we got John Newman and Jamie Galbraith to talk about that in JFK Revisited. I thought that was one of the highlights of the film.

William, if you have not read Secret Agenda, all the way through, you really should. Even today, 40 years after it was published, its the best book on Watergate. There is no doubt that Mark Felt was one of the main sources for Woodward. But there appear to be a couple others, Robert Bennnett, as Hougan proves, was one. The other two suspects are Haig and Bobby Inman.

Sandy, there is a way to get around it. There is no doubt the Felt was one of Woodward's sources. But, for example, in the book In Nixon's Web -which I am one of the very few who have read--he proves that Deep Throat was a composite. And he does this from Woodward's own notes at the University of Texas Library. One of the prime suspects for the composite was Robert Bennett. Which is what I believe. Another one was Haig. But I have never seen anyone infer it was Moynihan. In fact, in the two most famous revisionist versions, Secret Agenda and Silent Coup, his name is in neither index. So I await Matt's David Copperfield act on this.

Here is another one, Moynihan vs Reagan. https://blogs.bl.uk/americas/2015/09/reagans-critic-daniel-patrick-moynihan.html I am still waiting for how he figures into Woodstein and Watergate.

Now explain to us how you figure him into Watergate and Woodstein?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moynihan_Commission_on_Government_Secrecy I saw him debate Helms on TV, Moynihan wanted to completely eliminate the CIA. He was also a harsh critic of Reagan's Central America policies. The Neocon crowd you are talking about, like Abrams, came into Washington under Henry Jackson. Al From and Will Marshall created the DLC. Most people called Moynihan a neoliberal.

The three godfathers of the Neocon movement are considered to be, Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter, and Irving Kristol. Please explain what you mean about Moynihan.

MC: P.S. The long-absent motives for both JFKA and Watergate now solved. That is what you think. If anyone buys this, or that Moynihan was the leader of the Neocons, which he was not, I can sell you the proverbial bridge in Arizona.

MC: "But of course the only interpretation of this fact that gets considered here is that that somehow proves the assassination was over Vietnam. It was not. It had little to do with Kennedy personally, but no one can seemingly conceive of this inherent deception. " Matt, the above sounds close to Sean Fetter's Under Cover of NIght. If the assassination of JFK had little to do with Vietnam or with Kennedy's policies, then what was it about?

Well Pat, that is true, the movie business is a craps shoot most of the time. (Unless its a sequel to Indiana Jones or Star Wars.) All I am saying if that Barry did have two hits since 1984 and The Killing Fields, namely Wag the Dog and Rain Man. But yes, its a crap shoot. After all, Lucas had trouble selling the first Star Wars.

And BTW, Joffe had not just been without a hit since The Killing Fields, but his films for theaters have been bomb after bomb. Not only do they not make money, they lose millions. Sometimes tens of millions. For one example, compare his film about the creation of the atomic bomb, Fat Man and LIttle Boy with Chris Nolan's recent film, Oppenheimer.

Crudele is a really good host and his show is a real asset to our cause.

Well if they were promised Mamet and Levinson and now to Joffe? Who has not had a hit movie since The Killing Fields back in the 1980's and has done a lot of TV since? I think Celozzi did not like the idea that the film was getting away from him. And he decided to start over. But its still a BS story anyway.

So now we go from Mamet and Barry Levinson to Roland Joffe? How does a project, with Pacino, Viggo M, and Travolta get ditched for Joffe? Only in TInsel Town. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/november-1963-killing-president-jfk-roland-joffe-mob-1235996417/

This is what I wrote about Sheehan and Halberstam when Sheehan died. What he and Halberstam did in Vietnam was really shameful. Neither man, as far as I can find, ever acknowledged that Kennedy was getting out at the time of his death. Neither man ever acknowledged that this decision had been severely altered, and then changed by Johnson with NSAM 273 and NSAM 288. Neither man acknowledged that the American commitment of combat troops, asked for by Vann, turned out to be an epic debacle. And, as you will see, what Sheehan did to Mark Lane showed that as late as 1971 he was doing his master's bidding. https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/neil-sheehan-in-retrospect

Glad Matt posted that memo. The first paragraph is really interesting. And it explains a lot about later works by Halberstam and Sheehan. See, what those two did later was really kind of a disgrace, and they were never called out on it since they were part of the MSM. But the truth was rather simple: they were hawks on Vietnam who did not think Kennedy was doing enough to win. Halberstam was later so embarrassed by this fact that he went back and cut a very revealing portion out of his first book on Vietnam, The Making of a Quagmire. The truth is they wanted Kennedy to escalate, and that part of Halberstam's book he later cut was explicit about this point. Kennedy actually wanted Halberstam rotated out of Saigon. Well, after Kennedy was murdered, they got their escalation. And it turned out to be a disaster of epic proportions. In other words, Kennedy was right and they were wrong. So what happened? In their books, The Best and the Brightest and A Bright Shining Lie, they tried to downplay their early hawkishness and somehow blame Kennedy for what happened in Vietnam. Halberstam's book is really bad as history today. Both men were greatly influenced by John Paul Vann who thought Saigon needed more American aid and not less. For this deception they became paragons of the Establishment. Sickening.

By the way, I did not go into the whole moronic and evil phony charges the local US attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, the DA Anthony Zappala, and the FBI agent Brad Orsini cooked up against him because he was challenging how they abused African American and Latino suspects. That was a sickening spectacle that cost Cyril millions and dragged on for years. I did not include since it was not directly related to the JFK case, but Dave Perry actually put the whole indictment on his web site. How low can one go. I mean using a fax machine in the coroner's office for a private expense. Whew. The most one could ask for is a reimbursal, but criminal charges? Wecht could argue back that he never asked to be reimbursed by the city for working overtime, which he did all the time. When he took over the office, they did not even have a microscope or an autopsy table. He made that office into one of the best in the state.

Here it is for Ron and maybe others JAMES’S SUBSTACK Remembering Cyril Wecht Pt. 2 The Great Dissenter JAMES ANTHONY DIEUGENIO MAY 24, 2024 ∙ PAID Once Cyril Wecht read the 888 page Warren Report, the accompanying 26 volumes of testimony and evidence and, with the aid of Josiah Thompson, viewed the Zapruder film, he was convinced that something was rotten in Denmark. Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission were not involved in explicating a crime. They were covering up what really happened to President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza. Therefore he wanted to inspect the autopsy materials firsthand. But here he confronted a serious problem. It was called the Kennedy deed of gift. For whatever reason, in 1965, after the Commission disbanded, Jackie Kennedy was given all of the autopsy materials. Then, in another odd occurrence, she turned these back to the National Archives in the autumn of 1966. But no one was allowed to see them until after her children passed away. There was one exception. A recognized expert in pathology could see the materials if he had a genuine historical goal. In Wecht’s experience this procedure was simply not the case in a homicide. Why would a close family member want these items in the first place? Secondly, if any DA wanted to reopen the case, why should he have to apply for permission to a member of the Kennedy entourage? Because that is what this amounted to in practice. Something even odder now happened. Since books by Mark Lane, Sylvia Meagher, and Edward Epstein were now being widely read and causing controversy, Ramsey Clark, who was the current Attorney General, set up a panel to inspect the autopsy materials. In others words, in 1968, this select few—four doctors to be exact-- would be able to do what Wecht was not. To no one’s surprise, this panel endorsed the findings of the Commission: two shots hit Kennedy from behind. But yet, this verdict was different in the sense that they changed the entering locations of the two shots. The Commission had placed the head shot low in the back of the skull, and the other shot in the neck. The Ramsey Clark panel lowered the latter into the back, and raised the former to the top of the skull. This made Wecht even more eager to inspect Kennedy’s brain, which the panel had apparently not examined. It finally looked like Wecht was going to be able to examine the autopsy materials. How did this happen? Through the DA in New Orleans, a man named Jim Garrison. Garrison called Wecht one day, since he had read about his doubts concerning the medical evidence in the JFK case. Garrison had indicted Clay Shaw as part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. And the judge had allowed him to address the question of conspiracy as a threshold matter to the jury. Garrison wanted Wecht to testify about the autopsy in court. Wecht insisted that he could not do so without seeing the autopsy materials first. So Garrison sued in federal court for Wecht, his expert witness, to go into the Archives and inspect the materials. In January of 1969, Garrison met Wecht in Washington and the doctor appeared before Judge Charles Halleck Jr. He took the stand and told the court that the autopsy evidence was crucial in a homicide case. And in most cases was part of the public record anyway. Garrison was relying on this evidence in part to prove his overall case for conspiracy. The judge went along with Wecht’s plea. But, as Wecht told this author, the government lawyers insisted they would appeal until hell froze over. When this happened, Wecht told the DA he could not testify, so Garrison got Professor John Nichols, a pathologist, to present that part of the case. Finally, Fred Graham of the New York Times heard about Wecht’s problems with the Archives. Graham called the good doctor and then got into contact with Burke Marshall, the lawyer for the Kennedys who was in charge of the deed of gift. Marshall told Wecht he would get back to him after Christmas of 1971. But he did not, and Graham had to call him again. This time Marshall told Wecht he should visit him at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Wecht did so and he finally got permission to view the materials on August 24-25th in 1972. Wecht measured where the holes were in Kennedy’s clothing as being 5 ¾ inches down from this collar. Which, to him, made the single bullet theory even more ridiculous. He held CE 399 in his hand and was shocked at how intact it was after shattering two heavy bones in Governor John Connally. He also saw pictures of similar bullets that were fired into cotton wadding, the rib of a goat corpse, and a human cadaver. Even the bullet fired into wadding showed more deformity than CE 399. Wecht asked to see Kennedy’s brain. The archivist, Marion Johnson, said it was not there. Wecht asked him where it was and when the last inventory was taken. Johnson said he did not know where it was and the date of the last inventory was in 1966. The only thing more stunning to Wecht than the brain being missing was the fact that no one had reported its disappearance before him. This included Dr. John Lattimer and the Ramsey Clark Panel. Wecht told Graham about his visit and the brain being gone. That Sunday, August 27, Wecht picked up the New York Times. On the front page was the headline, “Mystery Cloaks Fate of Brain of Kennedy.” Graham quoted Wecht as saying, “Who would have taken the responsibility to destroy the brain?” This puzzle haunted Wecht the rest of his life. He later concluded that the reason the brain was gone was due to the fact that it would reveal two shots to Kennedy’s head. When the Watergate scandal forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency, former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford became America’s first unelected president. While in office, a flurry of controversy began to flow over what the CIA’s true role in Watergate had really been, plus a late 1974 New York Times story about the CIA’s surveillance activities in the USA. Thus, in January of 1975, Ford appointed his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, to command the Rockefeller Commission in order to investigate certain domestic crimes of the Agency. Ford, who had an active role in covering up Kennedy’s murder, appointed people like Governor Ronald Reagan and former chair of the Joint Chiefs, Lyman Lemnitzer, to the commission. To cap it off, Ford named former Warren Commission lawyer David Belin as the chief counsel. Ford likely did this since a small part of the work of the commission would deal with the possible role of the CIA in the Kennedy assassination. Wecht testified in private for five hours. He asked to appear before the whole Commission, but Belin denied that request. Wecht and other doctors wrote a petition calling for the Commission to fully disclose all of its scientific and medical evidence. Again, this was denied. Their conclusion was that the Warren Commission was correct and they pointedly edited Wecht’s testimony to support that verdict.. Wecht was enraged. He called a press conference to voice his utter disagreement. He also demanded that the entire transcript of his testimony be declassified. Again, this was turned down. And the missing autopsy materials issue was avoided. But something happened in the interim between the Rockefeller Commission being formed and its final report being released in the summer of 1975. On March 6, 1975 Geraldo Rivera made television history. ABC did not want him to show the Zapruder film on Good Night America. Rivera said that if they refused and fired him he would call a press conference, explain his termination, and then show the film. ABC relented and Rivera showed the Zapruder film with guests Robert Groden and Dick Gregory. The next week, Rivera had Wecht on his show and he showed the film again, again to smash ratings. Pandora’s box was now open. In October of 1976, Wecht appeared on the news program 20/20 to criticize Specter and his Single Bullet Theory. About this time, Representative Tom Downing of Virginia was forming the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Wecht was jubilant that the first chief counsel was going to be Richard A. Sprague, a famous Philadelphia prosecuting attorney. Unlike most of the Warren Commission lawyers, his specialty was criminal law, and he was very experienced in homicide cases. Sprague chose Robert Tanenbaum, chief of homicide in Manhattan, as his chief counsel for the Kennedy case. But Downing chose not to run for office again, and the new chairman, Henry Gonzalez, got into argument after argument with Sprague. Both men left and Tanenbaum stayed behind as a caretaker. Robert Blakey, a professor at Notre Dame and Cornell, now took over the committee. I cannot do better than to quote Wecht himself on this relationship: I had never met Blakey before, but it became abundantly clear that he manifested palpable hostility toward me and was unwavering in his support of the Warren Commission’s view of the medical evidence. (Wecht and Kaufmann, p. 232) When this alteration of power took place, the approach of the committee changed. Tanenbaum was going to have only two medical consultants: Wecht and the lawyer’s colleague from New York City, Dr. Michael Baden. They were going to run a wide open inquiry. Under Blakey, and his deputy Gary Cornwell, panels of several experts were chosen. It became obvious to everyone, including Blakey’s Cornell law student Eddie Lopez, that they were going to abide by the Magic Bullet concept. So Wecht was marginalized on the nine member pathology panel. He was allowed to question Pierre Finck. But on the days that Jim Humes and Thornton Boswell testified, he was somehow not invited. But on September 7, 1978 Wecht was allowed to testify for 30 minutes in front of the Committee and in public. He had a memorable, pungent presentation pointing out the silliness of the Magic Bullet and how important the missing brain was to the case. (If the reader has not seen this, I strongly suggest you watch it on YouTube) Wecht later worked for director Oliver Stone as a consultant for his 1991 hit film, JFK. It was Cyril who suggested to Stone that Kevin Costner do the demonstration of the trajectory of the magic bullet with a pointer in court. Costner was so surprised at this that he asked who dreamed it up. When Stone said Arlen Specter, the actor said, “Let’s put his name in the script.” And that is how the senator’s name was uttered by Costner, playing Jim Garrison. Wecht also made an effective appearance for Stone in his more recent documentary JFK Revisited. Because he has a college named after him at Duquesne, Wecht was allowed to sponsor JFK conferences there beginning in 2003 going up to 2023. These were splendid well attended events with many high profile speakers: Mark Lane, Arlen Specter, Josiah Thompson, Alec Baldwin, Rob Reiner. At the last one last year, Cyril was in a wheelchair. There was a dinner dedicated to him on the next to last night featuring speeches by Gary Aguilar and David Mantik, as he was their mentor. As he once said, because of his incontinence in speaking up on the JFK murder, he was banned from lecturing at the FBI Academy and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He had lectured there regularly before he became so outspoken on the case. But no matter what he did, it could not diminish his stature in his field. As attorney Alan Dershowitz once said, Wecht pretty much made forensic pathology into a front row science in America. He professionalized the field and made it central to the administration of justice. In his next to last book The Life and Deaths of Cyril Wecht, he wrote that the reason why the book was penned was to show things like police violence, prosecutorial bias, what the FBI is really about, and how court cases can be manipulated “and how judicial misconduct can overrule facts and reason.” He also wanted to show how appointed judges can be worse than elected ones due to a personal ideology, for which he or she is given lifetime tenure. And is therefore free to do what he or she wants. Our Supreme Court today is a very good example of this ideology run wild. (pp. 195-97 of ebook version, with co -writer Jeff Sewald.) A giant is now gone. But in the hearts of many in the JFK field Cyril Wecht will be more than not forgotten. His fighting spirit will live on as an example of a refusal to give in to power and bias. A spirit that will not rest until the truth about the Kennedy murder, and what happened as a result of it, are finally and totally exposed.

Ron, when I clicked it went through to the whole post. Let me know if there is still a problem, I can post the whole thing here.

Here is Part 2 of Remembering Cyril Wecht. Again, my substack is free until November. This is a written complement to Len's show on the man. He should not be forgotten, he was alone in the woods a long time. https://jamesanthonydieugenio.substack.com/p/remembering-cyril-wecht-pt-2

This is part one of my two part substack tribute to the late warrior on the JFK case. Who will be really missed. My substack is still free. https://jamesanthonydieugenio.substack.com/p/rememebring-cyril-wecht

Thomas Mallon is one of the biggest shills there is for the Warren Report. And he has made it his preoccupation to go to bat for the Paines. I am glad Max Good and Johnny Cairns put him in his place.

Lansdale was Diem's benefactor and advisor. The two guys running the overthrow were Lodge and Conein.

Thanks Ron and Johnny. I figured he would want to talk about JFK's foreign policy. Like I said, its really something how big Galloway has become in the UK.