James DiEugenio

Rick: The people who owned the media back then were not left leaning. By this I mean people like the Sarnoffs at NBC, Paley at CBS, and Bradlee/Graham at the Post. If you look at CBS, a number of their moderate to liberal journalists did want to do an expose of the WC back in 1967. But they ended up being subverted by the higher-ups. And this ended with that abominable 1967 four night salute to the WC. Everyone went along with it: Cronkite, Rather, Sevareid, Barker. But Barker ended up being an FBI informant. He told them that McCloy and Dulles would be consultants on the series. In these situations, I always refer to the Upton Sinclair quote: Its difficult to make a reporter understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it. I refer you to my microanalysis of this through the efforts of the late Roger Feinman. He allowed us, by far, the best inside view of how this all works. And he lost his job for it. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-cbs-covered-up-the-jfk-assassination

Steve: Do you really take this CIA world view stuff seriously? Or is that why you led off with Coca Cola drinkers? The JFK murder in and of itself, did not do the whole job. That is why the others followed. And if one cannot see how incredibly successful that was for the fascist right, then you must be blind. The election of the anit-RFK Nixon in 1968 could not have happened without those murders.

RB: Yet shortly before the 1960 election MLK's dad changed his affiliation from Nixon to Kennedy publicly in a sermon. Which some claim influenced the Black vote positively for him and helped sway the election for him, particularly in the South. This is true, but I do not think it happened before the election. I think it was during the election, after the Kennedys got King out of prison in Georgia. Nixon had a lot of prominent African Americans snookered at this time. And this included Jackie Robinson. I have never understood it, since Nixon and Eisenhower did pretty much nothing with the Brown v Board decision. Once JFK became president, Bobby Kennedy went to the University of Georgia and made a speech announcing that the Kennedy administration would enforce the ruling.

Let me get to my real point. The issue is not any kind of hagiography. The real issue is the art and science of the hatchet job. What happened, and what I will examine, is the line going from Whalen's book to absurdities such as Double Cross, Mob Lawyer and The Poison Patriarch. Where you have nutty scenarios that rival that horrendous film Winter Kills. In other words, somehow Joseph Kennedy was responsible for his son's assassination. The evidence used by Shaw to advance that idea is so flawed and dubious, and sometimes just specious, that its a little nutty really. To the point I have a hard time believing he believes it. I will explain in detail this string of improbabilities in my review. I had to read Double Cross again for this review. Reading it and making notes, again, how can anyone believe this book? Why would anyone want to use it in any scholarly effort? Its a fantasy designed to make money. So, yes we should not indulge in hagiography. But we should also be on our guard against the hatchet job.

Bobby Jr does a nice job on this issue. There were many people who thought that the USA could serve as the arsenal for England without actually entering the war. And if you look at it in pure military terms, HItler's two mistakes which turned the war around were his nixing of Operation Sea Lion and instead his massive invasion of Russia. Roosevelt really wanted the USA to get into the war. Merle Miller has been accused by many of either falsifying or altering what Truman actually said. Whalen's book is not bad, especially when compared to Shaw's. But Whalen ended up being a GOP advisor to Nixon and Reagan, and his papers are at the Hoover institute, always a giveaway since that is a home base for the GOP think tanks links. As for the Kennedys spending in the the 1960 primaries, what were they supposed to do? Not spend their money? Back then you did not have the restrictions you did after the Watergate scandal. Does anyone think that Kennedy's competitors would not have spent the money if they had it? But here is my point about that issue: Humphrey later said, in a quote that has been all but lost to history, it would not have made any difference. He said JFK was at his absolute best in West Virginia, and when he was on the beam, he was pretty much unbeatable. He had an extraordinary ability to connect with people either one on one, or in a crowd, that was simply exceptional. BTW one of may favorite lines comes from this election: Coal Miner to JFK: You don't look like you've worked a day in your life. Kennedy: Compared to you I probably haven't. Coal MIner: Well, you didn't miss much. But to me this is really kind of pointless. Neither JFK nor RFK ended up being an isolationist. And it was RFK who really ran the overturning of McCarthy when the Dems took over that committee. As JFK said when advised that King's father was a Republican who was backing Nixon in 1960, "Well, we all have fathers don't we."

To respond to John: Shaw's first book is worth reading since he concentrates on Kilgallen and does not push his personal agenda all that much. His second book is definitely not worth reading since its mostly a rehash of the first book, and he fills up many pages with his Mob did it ideas, which I will dissect in detail in my review of that volume. In that book, what he has that is new on the Kilgallen case he could have posted on his web site as a long essay of maybe 40 pages. To Ron: What multi millionaire businessman is simon pure? None that I can think of. Carnegie spent the last years of his life expiating his sins by setting up public libraries. But the idea that Joe Kennedy did the things that Chuck Giancana, Frank Ragano and Mark Shaw say he did is nothing but apocryphal, and its from let us say, questionable sources. And it does not jibe with the actual record which I will adduce and do a comparative analysis with. I was really surprised that John Newman fell for the Chuck Giancana crap in his second volume. My God, he even fell for Exner, who I skewered two decades ago. So now I have to do this again. Had to go to three libraries to get the materials. Even got a ticket at UCLA. But its deductible.

This idea, that Joe Kennedy was somehow compromised and/or in bed with the Mob and was a bootlegger is going to be examined by me in my upcoming review of Mark Shaw's very disappointing book, Denial of Justice. Shaw, in that book, refers to another previous work of his, The Poison Patriarch. Since he referred to it so strongly and often I had to read it. Its one of the worst books I have ever read in the field. Which is saying something after Waldron and Hartmann, Kaiser and Caufield. I believe that upon examination, which virtually no one has done, this whole Joe Kennedy burn will turn out to be as mythological as the Kennedys tried to kill Castro BS. Which has now been leveled by the combination left hook and right cross of Lisa Pease and John Newman. Too often, in this put upon and self reinforcing community, we tend to accept things from those who do not deserve to be trusted, without examining the evidence quantitatively and qualitatively. And then looking at the bona fides of those putting forth the false narratives.

Well, according to Olney, Warren got aced by Hoover.

Bob, Congo was a brand new country coming out of brutal colonization. Recall Leopold? You have heard of the book Leopold's Ghost? Lumumba was the first leader chosen by those previously colonized citizens. So right then and there, these are all significant differences with Ukraine. In Congo, Lumumba was the guy who outside forces were determined to get rid of or assassinate. Which they eventually did. In Ukraine, the elected leader was deposed by the neo Nazis who were followers of the Hitler collaborator Bandera. I mean you are aware of him are you not? They were determined to get rid of the elected leader because he opposed memorializing Bandera, as these neo Nazi thugs had done. It was the neo nazis who began the whole rioting thing over who they were going to get aid from, since the previous leader, who the USA liked, had driven the country's economy into the ground. When Yanukovych reversed course and decided to take the EU offer, even thought it was worse for the country, the neo nazis began to upgrade the violence and terror. And threaten his life. Until the point he had to leave the country or be assassinated. They did not remove him legally. There was no judicial process and there were not enough votes to impeach at the time he left. This was all egged on, guided, supervised and essentially managed by Nuland and Pyatt. There is a pile of documentary evidence that proves this. The overthrow was being run by those two. The Russians did not invade Crimea, they already had a detachment of troops there to protect their naval base. The violence by Bandera's followers was now spreading into Crimea. (Unless you think those films are all faked.) So a referendum was arranged. In addition to the terror, Russia was in much better shape economically than Ukraine, which was a basket case. There was no referendum in Katanga. (Unless your Ukraine sources can invent one Bob. I would not put it past them.) Every source said the overwhelming majority of Crimeans preferred being part of Russia. Even bodies like Forbes. Your arguments and your sources are so bizarre, perverse and desperate that I really have a hard time thinking that you believe them. PS What happened in Ukraine is not being recycled in Venezuela. The so called opposition leader is a CIA flunky, and they sent in that neo con thug Abrams to run things.

Bob Van Ness: In exactly the same way Katanga broke away from the Congo and then did in Lumamba you're now saying that's the way to do it in the Ukraine. Did you take Kirk's advice and watch North to Alaska? Congo was a newly independent country. There was an election under a written constitution to choose its first president. The former colonizing mother country, Belgium, then sent paratroopers in and sponsored a breakaway government in Katanga to sap the Congo of its mineral resources, its functional economic strength. (If you can show me where there was a democratic referendum in Katanga before it split off, please do.) This was all done in order to make the fledgling democracy collapse and pave the way for a return of the Belgians to take power under their chosen fascist dictator and imperial front man. How you can compare that situation with what happened in Ukraine is a bit incomprehensible. I don't think any objective person would compare the two. But if you had to, in Ukraine, Nuland and Pyatt, would be like the Belgians.

I brought that in because that is what Marchetti told me about Phillips and the ARIO. Well, if you read Hougan the same thing applies to Hunt and McCord with Watergate. They weren't really retired form the CIA.

Jim Hougan's book on Watergate, Secret Agenda, was a game changer. I not only would rank it the single most important book on that case, even today, but I would go beyond that and say that its one of the best pieces of investigative journalism in the last forty years. His opening chapter "Of Hunt and McCord" and his chapter on the final break in were redefining. I will be discussing his book in the article.

Bob: In concurring with Jeff, once a legitimate government is overthrown, not by covert but overt means, all bets are off. That is what happened here. The Stepan Bandera neo nazis overthrew an elected government, began to murder people in the streets, set fire to buildings thus incinerating people inside, and threatened to assassinate the president. All of this was done with the backing, encouragement and even the leadership of Victoria Nuland. And since you cannot bring yourself to name her husband, I will. Its neocon fruitcake Robert Kagan. You know, the co founder of PNAC. Kagan backed HRC in 2016. Nuland and Pyatt essentially guided the Bandera followers in their murderous overthrow. In fact, as Parry and the film Ukraine on Fire show, , they helped pick the guys they wanted to run the government. Now, if this was to help the people living there, that would be one thing. But such was not the case. As Parry noted: Some of the reasons for the Crimean attitudes are simply pragmatic. Russian pensions were three times larger than what the Ukrainian government paid and now the Ukrainian pensions are being slashed further in compliance with austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund. This month, Nuland boasted about those pension cuts in praising the Kiev regime’s steps toward becoming a “free-market state.” She also hailed “reforms” that will force Ukrainians to work harder and into old age and that slashed gas subsidies which helped the poor pay their heating bills. In other words, Freidman style Shock Doctrine. I think what Nuland and Pyatt did was a disgrace. And why the State Department let her get away with this escapes me. To let loose the Bandera followers in the Ukraine would be a little like the US government fully backing the Klan in the south in the fifties. For those who do not know who Bandera was, click here https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/stepan-bandera-nationalist-euromaidan-right-sector/ In their headlong madness to restart the Cold War, these are the kinds of people Nuland, Kagan and Pyatt jumped into bed with.

I am not changing the subject at all Bob. If you watch the film, which apparently you have not, the vote taken was illegal. Here is the central issue: But the agreement – though guaranteed by the European nations – was quickly negated by renewed attacks from the Right Sektor and its street fighters who seized government buildings. Russian intelligence services got word that an assassination plot was in the works against Yanukovych, who fled for his life. On Feb. 24, Yanukovych asked permission to enter Russia for his safety and the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada), effectively under the control of the armed extremists, voted to remove Yanukovych from office in an unconstitutional manner because the courts were not involved and the vote to impeach him did not reach the mandatory threshold. Despite these irregularities, the U.S. and its European allies quickly recognized the new government as “legitimate.” Calling a Coup a Coup But the ouster of Yanukovych had all the earmarks of a coup. An intercepted phone call, apparently in early February, between Nuland and Pyatt revealed that they were directly involved in displacing Yanukovych and choosing his successor. The pair reviewed the field of candidates with Nuland favoring Arseniy Yatsenyuk, declaring “Yats is the guy” and discussing with Pyatt how to “glue this thing.” Pyatt wondered about how to “midwife this thing.” They sounded like Gilded Age millionaires in New York deciding who should become the next U.S. president. On Feb. 27, Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister of Ukraine. And in the face of this, you are saying that Crimea should have gone along with the coup as engineered by Victoria Nuland? And you know who she is married to don't you? This is how nutty this Russia Gate stuff has become.

I have always felt that Ruby was the perfect guy to rub out Oswald. Here was a wannabe who had connections to the CIA, the Mafia, the military, and was an FBI informant. But most of all, he was such a good pal of the Dallas Police. What the WC wrote about Ruby, and especially his relationship with the DPD was, even for them, an utter disgrace. It was so obvious that even Burt Griffin suspected something was up and the police were lying. The cover up afterwards about that subject was pointed and deliberate. Patrick Dean failed his polygraph, even though he was allowed to write his own questions. Blackie Harrison was drugged up to disguise his reactions. (You can see Ruby hiding behind Harrison before he shoots Oswald in the series Evidence of Revision.) Whether or not Fritz was in on it or not does not really matter. As Greg Parker wrote, there was a planned diamond formation around Oswald when he was escorted out. When Fritz broke that formation, this allowed Ruby to directly confront Oswald. The idea that Arlen Specter, and the likes of Duncan McRae propagate--that Fritz had to open the car door--is so ridiculous that its risible. It was more important to open the door than protect Oswald? This was then topped off by the FBI rigging Ruby's polygraph test. That was revealed in one of the HSCA's more honest and probing reports. To say the least, Ruby made some very interesting comments while incarcerated. And, in fact, his guilty verdict was overturned on appeal. But a second trial was not going to happen due to the visits to Jack by Dr. West, the CIA's man on MK Ultra.

It appears that Roger Stone was wrong about Wallace. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-faustian-bargains But there is actually a pretty good book on this subject that, of course, no one in the vaunted research community has ever read. Its called All the Way with LBJ. It's an in depth examination of the 1964 election. And it deals pretty thoroughly with the Baker, Reynolds, and Estes cases. Contrary to the CW, these did not go away after Kennedy's death. They actually went on for a few months after. The Republicans were trying to do something with them in congress. Johnson was still addressing them in public as late as May of 1964.

That is not the end of story Bob, and I have a hard time thinking you do not know it. What happened in Ukraine was illegal. All you have to do is watch the film. It was achieved through terrorism and threats. Crimea did not want to be a part of it. Again, the late great Bob Parry: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/22/crimeans-keep-saying-no-to-ukraine/

Oh please Bob. My aching back. Just what when we are trying to get away from the NY Times version of all this. Did you see Ukraine on Fire? The reason that Crimea wanted the referendum was to get away from the neo-Nazi, Stephen Bandera followers from Ukraine. I mean you know who Bandera was right? You know how in bed his followers were with the CIA right? You don't? If you will not see it, then read my review which the late great Bob Parry let me pen for his site: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/13/a-documentary-youll-likely-never-see/

Just remember one important point, which was first revealed by Jim Hougan is his excellent book on Watergate. When McCord went to work for CREEP, he did not have Nixon's picture on the wall of his office. He had Richard Helms'. It was inscribed, "with deep affection". (Emphasis in original.) So not only was Helms personally close to Hunt, he was the same with McCord.

Steve Cohen started getting blackballed when Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev. Cohen essentially said that this was a turn for the worse. All the other paid hacks from, for example Heritage, disagreed with him and favored Yeltsin. As far as the health and wealth of Russia was concerned, Cohen was correct. And that is why he was blackballed from the media. But he was and is a very fine scholar, rocket miles ahead of Richard Pipes who was the Reagan stooge on this subject. Pipes was so wrong about everything that today he looks like a failing graduate student. If Dowd is telling the truth, that is a real eye opener of an interview. He seems to agree with Mr. Wheeler, that it was a cabal in the FBI who favored the Clintons who wanted to get Trump.

I think this was successful for the reason that very few people knew he had moved and where he had moved to. Plus, Annville is really a small town. That is our MSM. Jim DiEugenio is going to write the first obituary for James McCord, who died almost two years ago.

Robert, Is then Ohr's wife the source for Buzzfeed? Andrew, There was a referendum in Crimea. They did not want to happen there what happened in Ukraine: A Neo Nazi takeover. You need to watch the documentary Ukraine on Fire.

Well, I looked it up at the site Stephanie recommended. It looks like its him since that description matches also, including his WW 2 career.

Well, I think the Watergate imbroglio is more interesting than that. When I get done with my piece you will see what I mean. As per JFK, i think it was more than just canning Dulles. But I do think he was part of the plot.

The alway interesting Milicent Cranor on JFK's throat wound. IMO, she is one of the best in this field. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/suppressed-evidence-of-jfk-throat-entry