James DiEugenio

Kennedy's approach was a break with the past. Foster Dulles did not like Nasser's independent and pan Arab streak. Especially when Nasser recognized Red China. That is one of the reasons America pulled out of the Aswan Dam deal. Kennedy thought this was misguided since it forced Nasser to go to Moscow. Unlike Dulles, Kennedy did not hold the fact that Nasser was a member of the Non Aligned Movement against him. Kennedy, as far back as his 1957 Algeria speech, understood the latent power of Islamic fundamentalism in the area (which exploded in 1979 in Iran). And he knew that Nasser provided a counter weight to it. Because Nasser was a secularist and socialist, who fought the Moslem Brotherhood and who maintained that the oil there belonged to all the Arabs, for all of their benefit. This is why the Saudis hated him. The Israelis feared him because they knew that he was the one guy who could unite the whole Middle East against them. (Click here for proof of that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair, also see the Suez Crisis) But Nasser liked JFK since he was the only American politician who 1.) Understood him, and 2.) Was still trying for a settlement for the Palestinian refugees, namely the Joseph Johnson Plan. For these reasons, author Robert Dreyfuss, no fan of Kennedy, wrote in his fine book that this was probably the last time there could have been an overall peace settlement in the Middle East. After Kennedy's murder, Johnson went back to the Dulles view of Nasser, except even worse in some respects. Because unlike Kennedy, LBJ greatly favored Israel in that area. Nasser ended up breaking relations with Washington, and there were anti American riots in Cairo. Then you had the 1967 war in which the dam broke. My argument in Pittsburgh was the 1967 war would not have happened if Kennedy had lived. And in fact, when Kennedy was killed over a thousand Egyptians arrived at the embassy to pen notices of condolences. Some of them remarked to the effect that , Kennedy was the first American president who really understood the Afro Asian world.

Oh no, not again. Thanks Ron for bringing this up. I wish you would have been happy with my reply. It was short and to the point.

"I believe that international terrorism is a modern form of warfare against liberal democracies. I believe that the ultimate but seldom stated goal of these terrorists is to destroy the very fabric of democracy. I believe that it is both wrong and foolhardy for any democratic state to consider international terrorism to be 'someone else's' problem.... Liberal democracies must acknowledge that international terrorism is a 'collective problem.'" Classic quote Miles. See with Jackson, there was no such thing as detente with the USSR. And there was no such thing as negotiating with opponents of Israel. Kennedy was trying to do both. And that is what I talked about in Pittsburgh. Kennedy was trying to find a resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem. And he never let up on that, contrary to popular belief. Secondly, unlike Jackson, he was looking at Nasser as a way to solve the big picture problem in the Middle East. Because Nasser was a socialist and a secularist, who went to war with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islam terror group. And Nasser loved Kennedy and was willing to work with him. Today, as I tried to explain in Pittsburgh, the neocons go to war with a Middle East secularist like Assad, and they use and hire a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists to do so, members of ISIS. It gets so bad, the Russians have to come to his aid because they do not want those guys on their doorstep if Assad is toppled. But the worst part is, Biden and Kerry know that and talk about it. You can find those on You Tube. This is how far the Neocons have taken this, and what a mockery they have made of Kennedy's policies. And how far down the memory hole the things he was doing have gone.

Paul: It does not matter which one she says it was. According to the declassified record, which the CIA never wanted to reveal, it was neither. Could she really not know that? Also, according to Leslie, the book says that ZR Rifle was designed to do away with Kennedy and that Cobb was also the Babushka lady? And was somehow caught up in the assassination?

It does Miles. And the more I read about Jackson, the more I was convinced that his office was where the neocon movement really spiraled into a true force on the scene. That is why I made him the focus of a whole section of my talk in Pittsburgh.

David, that is something that I did not know Henry K said for public consumption. A war in Indochina bought us ten years in Asia? Ten year of what? The Phoenix Program, the useless reign of Thieu, the drug running of Ky, B-52's over Cambodia? And just recall, Kissinger was around for the entire gradual collapse of Sihanouk through the overthrow of Lon Nol by the Khmer Rouge. Reminds me of Nixon's utterly silly, "Helpless giant speech". Hundreds of thousands killed over that one. And just recall, the agreement they got in 1973, was not at all that different from the one they could have had in 1969.

In my talk in Pittsburgh, titled "The Death of Kennedy and the Rise of the Neocons", I made a point of sharing a discovery about the neocons that I never thought I would stumble upon. Richard Perle Eliot Abrams Paul Wolfowitz Jeanne Kirkpatrick Frank Gaffney All came from Senator Henry Jackson's staff or volunteers. In other words, the guts of the Neocon revolution came from a Democrat. But prior to that, the first Neocon victory was the Halloween Massacre under Jerry Ford.

Micah: Jeanne Kirkpatrick was Ambassador to the UN under Reagan. She made her name in the conservative community by publishing an essay called Dictatorships and Double Standards. Her argument was just what I said it was. It echoed what Kissinger said about the issue. That leftwing dictatorships allow no human rights, but right wing ones do. No joke. ✌️

I thought we already knew who QJ WIN was, the CIA declassified his name.

Remember though what Jeanne Kirkpatrick said about rightwing vs leftwing dictatorships. Which I think she got from Kissinger. The former can evolve into democracies. Geez, historically speaking, they are usually overthrown as in Italy, Germany and Nicaragua. Henry Kissinger talking about human rights is a walking oxymoron.

With the above quote in mind, recall that Allende was not a communist in the way Mao was a communist. He allowed for free elections, in fact probably to his detriment. So in other words, we could not allow a socialist president who was freely elected. But we could allow a fascist leader in South Vietnam, actually two in a row. And we rigged the vote to get them in and keep them in power. TIger cages and all.

This is one of my all time favorites lines by any high official. Does democracy really matter? In 1970, Kissinger uttered the classic reactionary phrase: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”(The CIA: A Forgotten History, by William Blum, p. 235)

Michael: I could not put every debacle the guy was involved in into a rather brief column. What I should have mentioned though was that William Bundy wrote the first book length demolition of the Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy, called A Tangled Web. And yes he did go through the Kurds subject. Bundy ended his book by quoting Kissinger's eulogy at Nixon's funeral and showing how it was 90 per cent hot air. Dave: All i can say about that is I hope so. To think, how many times Ted Koppel had this guy on Nightline. And how the media treated him with such kid gloves. The guy was a dyed in the wool Cold Warrior, and when you read the declassified conversations he had with Nixon--in Jeff Kimball's books--it all comes through. You cannot get away from the fact that he was the heavyweight champ of genocides: East Pakistan, East TImor and the big one, in Cambodia. I have always argued that Johnson and Nixon seriously altered the outlines of Kennedy's foreign policy. And then came the Neocons, and Kennedy's foreign policy was utterly shattered and now is all but forgotten. In reality, the Neocon philosophy took over both parties. Henry was a step toward that.

Kissinger was rightfully thrown off the 9/11 Commission with deserved alacrity. And W showed his true colors by appointing him. In going through that column I wrote, here was a man who presented himself, and was presented, as a foreign policy impressario. But what was he right about? I mean even when he was out of office he had Gorbachev all wrong. Kennedy was working with Nikita K and Henry tells Reagan not to work with Gorby? BTW, on the night the last helicopter flew out of Saigon, Kissinger told his old college buddy the truth: we should have never been there. Kennedy knew that more than a decade earlier.

I am kind of surprised that there has been no discussion of this topic, or maybe I missed it. The reason I bring it up is because the differences between what Nixon and Kissinger did and what Kennedy was doing could hardly have been more dramatic. Elections have consequences. Its a cliche but its true I think, Kissinger was a war criminal, enabled by Tricky DIck. And as I said in Pittsbrugh, Kissinger was a link to the Neocon revolution. Anyway here is my free substack column on Doctor Death. https://jamesanthonydieugenio.substack.com/p/henry-kissinger-the-passing-of-doctor

Ron: The original title of What the Doctors Saw, which is being shown on Paramount Plus currently, was The Parkland Doctors. That film had been around for a long time. It was shown at the Houston mock trial for example. I saw it about three years ago when we were preparing JFK Revisited. Tanenbaum, who is a talking head in the program, showed it to me. The producer of the show told me that it had been sold to CBS, but when Leslie Moonves got fired, the option ran out. So what they did is added Doug Horne and Matt Crumpton to the show, and repackaged it, calling it What the Doctors Saw. They mention Landis and Reiner in order to show what the Big Three were at the 60th on the critical side. I think Dylan Howard, an editor there, probably prepared that story as he is a big conspiracy guy on the JFK case.

James, how does the show put Oswald into a false flag operation via Blakey? I always thought Blakey theorized that Oswald was a real communist?

i agree Tony, want to hear more.

I saw this by Dan Hanke on Twitter, I mean whew. On the latest episode of Rob Reiner’s “Who Killed JFK?” G. Robert Blakey says “I believe Oswald was developed as a false flag assassin.” My god. Took him 44 years post-HSCA to realize this?

Paul: This is from Vasilio Vazakis' six part study of Oswald, Chapter four on Angleton. Let us close out this section with other compelling discoveries made by Wolf. She discovered that, in preparation for the Warren Commission looking at CIA documents on Oswald, there were 37 of them missing. A key attachment to this document was gone and there was no index as to which documents were missing. Neither was there any indication as to where they were or when they would be replaced. (Wolf notes of 4/5/78) From November of 1959 to February of 1964, Oswald’s file contained a grand total of 771 documents, 167 originated with CIA. (ibid) By 1978, the Oswald file contained 150 folders and envelopes. The first fact exposes the lie David Belin of the Warren Commission once said on Nightline, namely that he had seen every CIA file on Oswald. The second one belies the claim that CIA Director Robert Gates once said, namely that there was little interest in Oswald by the CIA. Somehow, some way, Wolf had access to a chronology set up by Ray Rocca. Rocca was Angleton’s right hand man at CI. In that chronology are two fascinating insights into Angleton and Mexico City. The first is that Rocca had cabled Luis Echeverria on November 23rd concerning the relationship between Oswald and Sylvia Duran, the receptionist at the Cuban consulate. This is important because, as David Josephs has revealed, Secretary of Interior Echeverria would eventually take over the investigation of Oswald in Mexico City; leaving the FBI and Warren Commission out in the cold. What makes this important is that this was before Helms had assigned Angleton his liaison duties with the Commission. Secondly, the day after the assassination, a CIA agent escorted Elena Garro de Paz to the Vermont Hotel. In other words, within 24 hours, Angleton and Rocca are controlling Duran, a prime witness to Oswald not being in Mexico City, and Elena Garro, a witness who would eventually say that Oswald was having an affair with Duran.

Ben: The wholeHotel Del Comercio is a house of cards, they first could not find anything at all to place him there. They had to go back and convince a maid he was there. And the whole sign in register is a mess. Greg Parker and David Josephs and Jerry Kroth have all undermined the two Australiam girls from just about every angle inlcuding having the wrong passport and being on the wrong bus. If you find the cable, I would like to see it. But its not that a guy named Oswald was not there, it is just that it is not the Oswald. This is how PBS tricked everyone on Duran.

I agree wit that analysis. And his family would not turn over his files on what he did in New Orleans to the ARRB.

Bill Kelly discredited Elena Garo. Betsy Wolf found out that Angleton had Elena and Duran pirated off the day of the assassination to two different locales. I agree why three different threads on this?

Look, we have been through all this when David Josephs was here. If Oswald was there then why did these guys not mention it on the next day reports? Why is there no picture of Oswald going in or going out? Why does their Oswald speak lousy Russian. And who can believe that story, as one commentator said, right out of Anton Chekhov about carrying a gun because the FBI was after him. I mean please. As everyone and their mother knows, see Amy Knight, once the Berlin Wall fell, and Gorby was removed, the writing was on the wall. People like Mitrokhin decided to hightail it out and give MI 6 and the CIA what they wanted. That is what I think happened here. PBS had an agenda, and these guys filled it in.

The PBS show was rigged from the start. The producer, the late Mike Sullivan, hired Gus Russo and Dale Myers and Scott Malone and Summers as his investigators. (Summers later had his name taken off the production.) And it was later revealed by Myers that Sullivan had an agenda from the start. The key to the show was that they relied on the alleged "second set" of photos of an Oswald print on the rifle. That was exposed by Pat Speer as being in actuality a blow up picture taken from another already adduced set. To show just how bad this show was, they later got an aged Sebastian La Tona to say that he had not seen this photo. When, in fact, he had seen it. They even tried to say that the HSCA had not seen it, but again, as Speer showed, they had seen it. But these strophes were necessary for the magic act they were trying to pull, which was that La Tona and the HSCA were wrong in their original verdicts. Because they were relying on the HSCA guy again, since their first two experts on prints would not go along with it. Well, this guy found a revolutionary way of looking at prints and so Russo now proclaimed that they had found a good Oswald print on the rifle. BTW, even with this exposed by people like Speer and Johnny Cairns, Russo still says today it was valid. Now, if one was willing to go to these kinds of lengths to create this David Copperfield magic act, how could anyone trust them on Oswald in Mexico City?