James DiEugenio

BTW, the November 23rd story that Bart posted, is that the first mention of the phrase, Grassy Knoll?

From scanning a few early pages. First, it literally makes me sick to see how many redactions are in this document. I really do not know how else to say this, but its breaking the law. And Trump has allowed them to do so. I mean, do we even really know who the subject of the report is for sure? Does anyone have any insight into that? Its interesting that it contains information on three people who were involved with Watergate: James McCord, Howard Hunt, and Lee Pennington. Pennington was a former FBI agent who retired and went to work for the American Security Council. He also worked part time for the CIA and his cut out was Vasaly, who's name is on the cover sheet. Pennington was in attendance at an infamous burning party right after the break in at Watergate. McCord's wife, his former secretary and her husband and Pennington were there. Helms wanted the CIA Pennington files separated out from the Watergate files. Pennington picked up McCord when he was bailed out and drove him home. Since the cover date on this is 1974, perhaps it was originally generated for the Watergate scandal.

Except for the Hunt angle, I think this is fairly good. Considering where he was coming from, an environmental lawyer, who spent a long time writing his book on the Skakel case, he got up to speed fairly quickly. And he knew who to talk to, I mean Hardway is a good source.

Joe: From what I have read, that figure of one billion viewers is part of the illusion. Not nearly that many people watch the awards each year. And its not as high rated as the Super Bowl. (See this chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States) This is part of the phony marketing aspect that Hollywood does to promote itself as some kind of real potent force abroad. I really miss the days when American films did not dominate the world market as they do today. Or when you had more exhibitors showing good foreign films in America. Kenneth Turan wrote a book partly about this subject called Never Coming to a Theater Near You. I mean who would have thought, twenty years ago, that DC and Marvel comics would take over Hollywood? The late Laura Ziskin has a lot to answer for in my opinion. I mean today, Black Panther is supposed to be a model for African American women and Wonder Woman (one of the worst movies I have seen in a decade) is supposed to support women's liberation! Maybe that is why you had so much sexual discrimination and abuse cases in the movie business. And no one notes that paradox.

But the problem is that we do not know if those murders were done because of the JFK case. Maybe, maybe not. But I agree that the media would be an obstacle if you reopened the JFK case directly. The other problem with the JFK case is that today all three pathologists are now dead. Finck was the last to pass on. They would have been very important in any grand jury proceeding.

And Trump is now moving against that area also.

Really interesting observations Robert. Spielberg and Hanks are not only big contributors to the Democratic Party and were close to the Clintons and Obama, but they also have a strong influence on the Hollywood establishment. As you noted they are on the board of the Academy Awards. Spielberg is also a prime mover with the AFI. Spielberg and Hanks are also influential through Doug Brinkley to various historical projects Brinkley does. And we know that Brinkley was very close to Steve Ambrose, who Hanks and Spielberg really liked e.g. Band of Brothers. I almost fell off my chair laughing when I saw the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to as many as ten films. I mean oh really? Most years they could not find five worthy pictures to place in that category, let alone ten. I didn't know casting directors and executives were allowed to vote as equals with actors and directors. That is just silly. I gave up believing in the Oscars, back in 1968. Even at that young age, I knew something was awry when In the Heat of the Night won not just Best Picture but got more Oscars than Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate put together! I mean anyone who was interested could see that those two films, especially the former, were doing some aesthetically daring and revolutionary things that had not been done before in American films. That is, they were pushing the envelope and paving the way for others. But because of the racial element in the winning film, that made the academy feel topical and relevant. The capper of course was when Ellen Burstyn got nominated for a best supporting actress Emmy for being in a TV movie for fourteen seconds! If anything showed you that these things were really popularity contests, that did. As did that weird moment when Michelle Obama showed up on a gigantic screen at the Oscars hovering above the crowd like a spiritual entity. Or David Belin being able to buy an ad in Variety against Stone's JFK for Best Picture under a false name. What a disgrace. Anyway, I am glad you read those pages in my book. As I said, it is really an important subject that I think is dangerously ignored. And I guess now there are three people here who have read my stuff.

Robert: Concerning your reference to Doctor Zhivago, in my book, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, I devote the whole last part of the book, about 75 pages, to the MIC and its influence on films and the broadcast media. In The Afterword, which I think is one of the best things I ever wrote, I sum up how this control threatens democracy through invisible censorship. A censorship that almost no one is aware of in the audience that is watching. I especially go after Tom Hanks, and to a lesser degree, Speilberg. To me, those two guys typify what is wrong with the Democratic Party today. I specifically attack three films Hanks was responsible for: Charlie Wilson's War, Parkland, and The Post. How can one guy go zero for three on Afghanistan, the Kennedy assassination, and the Pentagon Papers? But he did, and Spielberg helped him on the last. IMO, it is a really important issue which almost no one is talking about today.

The IG report pulled its punches on this issue. The key point should have been: Why did Comey not start examining the new emails immediately on his own with some trusted tekkies. It appears that he decided to publicly expose the new emails only when he was under pressure that the information would leak out due to FBI and NYPD right-wingers who hated HC. In reality, this could have been done before the election without the letter to congress. The IG report spends more time on the Russia Gate episode and does not pull its punches as badly as on this issue. BTW, I also have a hard time buying that the Director did not know who Abedin's husband was.

This is a book I am actually looking forward to reading. https://www.amazon.com/Burying-Lead-Media-JFK-Assassination/dp/1634241878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529531396&sr=8-1&keywords=Mal+HYman But I am puzzled as to why its coming out two weeks before the elections. The author Mal Hyman is an acquaintance of mine who is running for congress and is now involved in a runoff for the congressional seat from South Carolina. Mal is a professor who has been studying this case for at least a couple of decades. Some of the things he told me awhile back were ver interesting in regards to what he had dug up about media coverage of the JFK case in the early years. This may be a real gem. And we need one in the field.

Larry: Note Andrej's comments on Stanton at the top of the page. Also, did not Arnold tell Golz that her words were mangled as to the time she saw Oswald on the first floor?

Paz, I would not say Gaddafi was a credible source on the JFK case. Robert: I really do not know why Johnson did what he did in the Middle East. I do know that he was close to Nelson Rockefeller. In fact he wanted him to run against Bobby Kennedy in 1968. And we know the Rockefellers wanted to keep Nasser and his pan Arabism contained in order to benefit from their oil deals with the monarchies in the Middle East.

I think I posted this before, but in the context of the above, maybe it will now be recognized for how important it is on its own, and also as a reflection of how astute Kennedy was on the subject. Before he made his speech on the Algerian conflict in 1957, he studied the subject of colonialism in North Africa and the Arab/Moslem nexus for a year. I believe this is one of the reasons he reached out to Nasser who was a secularist who tried to stamp out the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, as we can see below.

Johnson completely broke with JFK's Middle East policy, and then Nixon essentially capitulated to Israel's atomic arsenal. Which, by the way, there is strong evidence they stole from the USA. See my review of this book on the subject, https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/ Morley used this book in his biography of Angleton. But, in my review, I note that he did not make anything out of the switch in policy from Kennedy, to Johnson, and then how this was cemented by Nixon. One can say that Kennedy was so adamant on no atomic weapons in the region, that he forced Ben Gurion out of office. IMO this was an important switch in historical terms. And anyone who says that American resistance to Israel getting atomic weapons was a standard policy of American presidents does not know what they are talking about. In the book referenced above, the author interviewed several retired CIA officers on the subject. They all said that Kennedy was the last president who was really fanatical about 1.) Israel not getting the bomb, and 2.) nuclear non proliferation in general. Kennedy's obstinacy was not due to an anti Israel attitude. It was a simple part of his overall policy in the region. He did not think the area was stable enough to house atomic weapons. And he also thought that his policy of fairness to each side would not proposer if he allowed it. This is why, when Kennedy was killed, the great Egyptian leader Nasser fell into a depression and demanded his funeral be shown on national television four times. Many authorities on the subject of the Middle East believe that this junction, the passing of Kennedy, and Johnson's animosity toward Nasser, and his extreme favoritism toward Israel, was the major turning point that led to what we have today. (See The Devil's Game by Robert Dreyfuss.) Although I have not read the the Cohen book mentioned in this article, it has been reliably praised as one of the best on the subject.

Are we now saying that two witnesses, Stanton and Arnold, saw Oswald on the first floor, close to when the motorcade was approaching with a soda bottle in his hand? And that the FBI obfuscated both of their stories?

Let me add two things, as I said, Sheridan's family refused to turn over the outtakes on his NBC hatchet job to the ARRB. Which makes it odd that Talbot would trust them. Secondly, he was authorized to do what he did--bribe and intimidate witnesses--directly by the Sarnoff family who owned NBC. I spent a lot of time and work on this whole NBC issue for Destiny Betrayed, Second edition,( see pp 237-49) But since no one reads my books I have to keep on recycling this info. Also, according to RFK Jr, his father was very interested in what Garrison was digging up. He remembers him picking up a magazine at a newsstand with Garrison on the cover and asking his aides what they thought about the case he had.

Talbot is simply wrong on this issue and I criticized his book for this: From my review: By page 325, we see why Talbot has set things up this way. And this directly relates to Talbot's portrait of Walter Sheridan. I was going to write that it is so warm and fuzzy that it could have been written by Sheridan's family. But I can't write that because, in large part, it was written by Sheridan's family. Namely his widow and son. Talbot interviewed the woman five times and uses her profusely and without question. Now if you are going to use people like Guthman, and Sheridan's family to profess to his good character, it leaves you with a serious problem. You now have to explain all the ugly and unethical things Sheridan did to destroy Garrison. Talbot achieves this in two ways: 1.) By recycling debunked mainstream media deceptions, and 2.) By leaving out integral parts of the story. Concerning the former, Talbot tries to excuse Sheridan by saying that Sheridan thought Garrison was ignoring mobster Carlos Marcello. He even goes as far as saying that Garrison gave Marcello a "free pass" and referred to him as a "respectable businessman" (p. 327) This canard has been exposed for years, in fact for over a decade. Garrison busted at least three bars in New Orleans which were run either by Marcello or his associates. (Davy, pgs 154-155) Talbot does not source his "businessman" quote, but it appears he has confused Garrison with one or more local FBI agents. And it is not true that Garrison never investigated the Mafia aspect, he did. (He actually wrote a memo on it.) But he came to the conclusion, as many others have, that the Mob was a junior partner in the crime, not the engine running the machine. Talbot then writes something even more unsubstantiated. He says that what really got Sheridan upset with Garrison is that Garrison had somehow discovered the CIA Castro assassination plots, and how they might have backfired against JFK. For one, in the book's own terms, this is illogical. For this chapter, Talbot now writes that the plots had been "supervised by Bobby". Yet, he has clearly established previously, and convincingly, that this was not the case. The CIA had done them on their own. Secondly, I have been through a large part of the extant Garrison files. His son Lyon Garrison allowed me to copy them in New Orleans. I then had them shipped to Los Angeles and filed them in chronological and subject order. I found no evidence that Garrison himself had discovered these CIA managed plots in early 1967, which would have to be true if Talbot's thesis is to hold water. Interestingly, Talbot gives no source for Sheridan's knowledge of what Garrison was on to or how he discovered it. Even more interesting, he avoids mentioning the famous Jack Anderson/Drew Pearson story, which aired at the time. This story actually did mention the CIA plots, and did say that RFK was involved with them. And considering Anderson's role as an FBI informant on Garrison, it was probably done to confuse the DA. But there is no evidence Garrison ever took the (false) insinuation of RFK's involvement seriously. Having no factual basis for this concept, Talbot then uses the bare assumption as the excuse for why Sheridan went to the CIA to get their input on Garrison. By this time, I had become quite curious as to why Talbot was cutting Sheridan so much slack. So I flipped a few pages forward and discovered the reason. The book maintains that Sheridan in New Orleans was not acting as any kind of intelligence operative, but rather on RFK's behalf. He goes on like this for a couple of paragraphs -- quoting Sheridan's reliable wife again--and then comes this stunning statement: "And there is no evidence Sheridan and agency officials did in fact end up joining forces against the DA." (p. 331) When I read that my eyes popped. Consider: in a legal deposition, among other places, Gordon Novel admitted that he was being paid by Sheridan on a retainer basis for spying on Garrison. Since Novel was writing letters to people like Richard Helms at the time, it's fair to say he was working with the Agency. Further, Garrison discovered that Sheridan was getting the expense money for people like Novel through a local law firm, which was laundering it for the CIA. And a declassified FBI memo reveals that NBC had given instructions that the special was meant to "shoot him [Garrison] down". Further in Robert Kennedy and his Times, Arthur Schlesinger quotes Kennedy as saying that it was NBC who sent Sheridan to New Orleans, and further that he felt Garrison might be on to something. (p. 616) As many commentators have noted, including Carl Bernstein -- who Talbot uses (p. 390) -- the major networks worked with the CIA on issues like defending the Warren Report. And the chairman of NBC at the time, General David Sarnoff, had worked in intelligence during World War II. In a further imbalance, Talbot barely discusses Sheridan's intelligence background, devoting all of two sentences to it. (p. 330) I could go into much more length about Sheridan's activities in New Orleans, and how they continued even after RFK was dead. And I could point out even more errors Talbot makes on this issue. For instance, he writes that Garrison "turned the tables" on Sheridan and arrested "him for bribing witnesses. (The charges were later dropped.)" (p. 329) Thus he insinuates that it was Garrison who was bribing witnesses and not Sheridan. Which is exactly wrong. (Davy on pgs 135-137 chronicles some of Sheridan's efforts in this aspect.) Further, the charges were not dropped. Sheridan got an entourage of proven CIA affiliated lawyers for his defense. (Ibid, p. 143) And in a recurrent tactic, they got the charges switched to federal court where they were eventually thrown out. Finally, let me make one more cogent observation about Sheridan. He clearly did not like Garrison's focus on the CIA in the JFK case. He then worked a lot with the HSCA, Dan Moldea, and Robert Blakey pushing the Mafia/Hoffa angle, which was certainly prominent in the HSCA Report and volumes. Yet on the day the report was issued Marcello's lifelong friend, lobbyist Irving Davidson, told an acquaintance that he had talked to Sheridan and that he agreed that the HSCA report was a piece of crap too. (Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 1175) So if Sheridan did not believe the CIA was involved, and he thought Blakey's focus on the Mafia was B.S., what did he believe then? The Warren Report maybe? The mystery of Walter Sheridan -- who he was, and why he did what he did -- is a long, serious, and complex one. Talbot does not even begin to plumb its depths. For that reason, among others, I believe -- and I can demonstrate -- that every tenet of this chapter is just plain wrong.

Is this, the Ron Unz who ran for governor.? Interesting the contacts he had in media who told him the same thing he thought about the JFK case later.

Me too, boy was she good. She simply did not buy any excuse for why the 201 file was delayed over a year. She actually collected all the replies she got on this and collated them into one document to show how differing they were to each other. The thing was, these guys were all in the CIA, the same organization.

After Harvey got kicked out of the USA due to his hijinks over the Missile Crisis, Helms then appointed Fitzgerald to run the whole Cuba thing, including cover ops. I have never seen any evidence that: 1.) Fitzgerald had any personal animus toward JFK or RFK, as opposed to the plenty of evidence in that regard with Dulles, Harvey and Phillips. 2.) Neither have I noted any evidence for his involvement in the JFK assassination. But I think Bill Kelly would disagree with me on that due to his work on the Valkyrie Plot. 3.) Reportedly, Fitzgerald wept when Oswald was shot by Ruby. But there is a dispute about this, since Fitzgerald was involved with the AM/LASH plot and there was evidence that Cubela had been in contact with the Soviets in Mexico City. (This story I think is traced to Evan Thomas, who--after watching him on that horrendous documentary American Dynasties: The Kennedys--I have come to believe is not that credible on the subject.) 4.) When LBJ took office, Fitzgerald and Helms wrote a report to him saying that in the second half of 1963, there had only been a half dozen raids into Cuba, and the entire force they could call upon for such things was about fifty commandos. They concluded that this was so weak that it served no real strategic purpose, and they recommend abandoning it.

OK, I remember now. Tom did some really good work on that. I mean, really good. I had never heard of this Davenport guy before. But yes, what a triangle: Davenport, PJM, and Hastings. Marina did not want to talk about PJM at all when I met her. But that picture says a lot, I mean a lot. What would they be interested in Marina about, except keeping her silent because of her dead husband? A lot of people ridiculed Tom's work, but overall, I thought it was fairly interesting. And everyone in awhile, he hit a triple, like this.

Rich: I think what Paul is getting at is why has it not been declassified by the ARRB.

Paul is correct about this. That was not RFK onto Garrison via Sheridan, and Garrison--if he ever really thought that-- was wrong about this. I have been through as many of Sheridan's communications as I can find in the ARRB releases, including those with CIA. There is never any mention of RFK in them. Also, the CIA was covertly funding his inquiry--through the New Orleans law firm of Monroe and Lemann, the WDSU legal representative-- in addition to funds by NBC. What many people do not know is that the NBC hatchet job was originally planned as a two part, two hour program. So I would love to find the outtakes from it. But according to the ARRB, Sheridan's family would not cooperate. And there was some communication between RFK and Garrison, but these were indirect. This was through people like Weisberg and Lubic. And later, RFK himself tried to get some info on Garrison through Mort Sahl's wife at the time. He had all kinds of questions about it. RFK took New Orleans seriously, that is why he called the coroner about Ferrie's autopsy.

Do you have a link to this study?

LOL ROTF Great one Michael.