James DiEugenio

Ernie: First of all, I don' know what you use as an inflator index, but the one I used came out with a figure of about 15,000, 000 today. Which, when you compare to what the parties spend in a presidential year, is not really a lot of money. I mean today, that would be barely enough to run a contested senatorial campaign in a big state. As far as the luminaries you have listed there who liked or contributed to the JBS, then the obvious question is why did they not have further reach or more power or last longer? I mean after Fred Koch pulled out and after Otis Chandler launched that three day expose of them in the LA Times, they were more or less gone. People like the Hunts organized their own groups, and radio networks. The JBS made a big mistake in staying with the Vietnam War as long as they did. It really spelled their doom.

GN: I'm trying very hard to respect your contributions to this subject as objective and responsible and effortful. your continuing leftist agenda is making it difficult. before you rebut: doesn't matter whether what you're saying is accurate or not. the way you're putting it reeks of agenda, which is not necessary and in fact, not constructive in seeking an otherwise common goal. I cannot think that the Tea Party today can have a remote connection to the assassination of JFK, even IF JBS did it. which they didn't. i know for a fact that my passionate conservative world-views have NOTHING to do with my desire to find and punish someone who may still be held culpable in this thing. I'd like to think political opinions can be left out of this, just because there's a chance to take a shot at some Republicans. do not for a second think that there are not plenty more opportunities to take some shots at some Democrats. I just let em go. if i misunderstood that last comment, then i apologize. but i don't think i misunderstood the spirit with which it was made. I don' know what this means at all. What on earth could the Tea Party have to do with the JFK case? And BTW I don't think the JBS had anything to do with it either. All I was doing was comparing the relative power and potency of the two movements, and also their origins. And I do not consider myself a leftist. I consider myself a Kennedy Democrat-- a species that is just about extinct today. And BTW, bringing in perceived political biases is always a dangerous thing to do, since it can easily be turned around on you e.g. How could a conservative Republican give anything about JFK?

GN: seeing Barr speak on one of those films, i felt that he carries a good degree of plausibility and respectability. Until you read his book. I mean what a pile of trash. ​Ernie: the Tea Party is not just a reincarnation of the JBS. The Birch Society was really a small scale grass roots movement. I mean they actually had local bookstores to raise funds. ​The Tea Party was founded with big money from above. With allies in the media at Fox. The modern GOP knows how to create astroturf movements, that is fake grass roots.

Glenn: What I meant was that Reagan was perceived as being the most conservative president since Hoover. Yet, he was ready to deal with Gorbachev since he thought he was a real reformer, which he was. Nixon did no think so. He and Kissinger were so blinded by their Cold War thinking about the Commie monolith, they were not able to see a once in a century opportunity. Yet Mr. Conservative, Reagan understood that. Which underlines what an overrated foreign policy thinker Nixon really was. He was a myth created by his own PR machine.

GN: If I may, Jim - we HAVE the Mafia killed JFK... and there still IS LBJ killed... and, again with respect, the author of this thread regained some credibility (with me at least), by clarifying that Walker Did It isn't the mainline. I think you misunderstood what I said. After the HSCA, there was a wave of Mob did it books: Blakey, Scheim, and then Davis. Starting with Barr McClellan and his "I know Lyndon Johnson Killed John Kennedy" spiel on TV, there was a wave of LBJ did it books, including his own, Nelson's and Stone's. Now, the title of this book is General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: The Extensive new evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy. Which recalls the title of a book by Livingstone. Now, with that title I don't know how else you can classify this book except by saying that Walker and the rightwing nuts in Texas and their associated groups killed Kennedy. If that is not the case then the title is a misnomer. It is always off-putting when it takes a Waldronesque 900 pages to describe a plot to kill Kennedy.

Schroder Bank would later be revealed as the prime financial supporter of Permindex, a shadowy Swiss corporation with extensive connections to U.S. intelligence services. This was a very telling point when I was first researching Permindex. Dulles used that bank for several CIA purposes.

Well, we had the Mafia killed JFK: John Davis, Blakey and Ragano. Then there was LBJ killed JFK with Nelson, McClellan and Stone. Now there is Walker, Rothermel and the radical right killed JFK: Livingstone, Caufield,O'Neil and Trejo.

Some points on this: 1. The document produced in the interview is the wrong one about Shaw. The one in her book about the George DeM is the right one, which reveals many years later that Shaw was highly paid contract agent of the CIA. Therefore, the stuff the CIA wrote about him before, including to the HSCA, was at least a partial cover story. 2. Shaw did go Rome to help start up Permindex there. This was in an internal Time Magazine report that never saw the light of day. That is why he was on the Board of Directors and listed himself as such in his Who's Who entry. 3. Man, I would like to see those letters from Oswald to Thornley after they left New Orleans. Thornley also wrote some letters to a guy named Phil Boatwright, which Weisberg confronted him with. Harold said Kerry really got angry with him about that. But I think she is wrong about the chemical training meaning Kerry worked for the CIA. 4. I have never seen any evidence that RFK sent Sheridan to New Orleans to wreck Garrison. Everything I have seen says Sheridan was in cahoots with NBC and the CIA at the time. The Sarnoffs sanctioned what he did and the CIA secretly funded him money through a law firm representing their local outlet. 5. I look forward to her upcoming book on the whole Wallace fingerprint imbroglio. Should be good. God, do I hate what Nigel Turner did to this case.

Ditto with Bob and Ray. On both issues, the angle of refraction and the technique of the camera use. As anyone familiar with the whole Imperial Reflex Camera controversy-as so well investigated by Jeff Carter in his series--one of the many problems with Marina's story is that when she was asked how she took the photos, she was given two options as to how she proceeded. She picked the wrong one. Namely that she raised the camera to her eye and clicked the shutter. That is not how you use that camera. I also agree with this by Bob: I do know there is a tendency on this forum to want something to be true so badly, some are willing to ignore the basic laws of science to make it so. BTW, is this the longest thread ever here now? I think its surpassed Fetzer and his defense of Baker. I sure wish Sean would come back. He started the landslide and then got out of the way.

Part 2 will be posted at Bob Parry's illustrious site, Consortium News. That part includes much more declassified stuff about Nixon and Vietnam. The moral of this story is this: the more that gets declassified about his administration, the worse Nixon looks: the more scholars dig into Kennedy's files, the better he looks.

This is the new article I have been talking about. Part 1 is finally posted at CTKA http://www.ctka.net/2015/NixonPt1.html NIxon was a pretty bad guy, who did a lot of PR to cover the evil he did up. No comparison to JFK. When you are to the right of Reagan on the USSR in 1987, how smart can you be?

THanks Ken, it worked.

btw, the first part of my Nixon vs JFK essay is done and will be going up soon at CTKA. I think a lot of people here who was interested in the Big Picture will find this interesting.

BTW, when you read the above, ask yourself: What was Nixon doing at this conference? (Or did I read too much into the quote?) He was a private citizen at this time. After you chew on that a bit, read this about Nixon and Vietnam in 1964: http://jimhougan.com/wordpress/?p=98 They didn't call him Dirty Dick for nothing now did they? But secondly, recall, in 1961, Sukarno declared that 80% of all profits of those doing business in Indonesia should go to the Indonesia treasury. If not, they would face the prospect of nationalization. Kennedy actually backed this and tried to make it easier for Sukarno to come to economic terms with the companies who decided to leave. One more point about the Rockefeller family involvement in the plunder of Indonesia under Suharto. LBJ and Nelson Rockefeller were close friends. In fact, he wanted Nelson to run in 1968 since he did not think Nixon could beat RFK. One last point about LBJ and the Rockefellers and Indonesia. In the fall of 1963, David Rockefeller wanted a meeting with JFK about Brazil. Kennedy would not take the meeting wince he knew that Rockefeller wanted him to OK a coup in Brazil. Well, after Kennedy's assassination, in December, LBJ did take that meeting. The coup was enacted shortly thereafter. Who was the point man in the coup? The Rockefeller family lawyer, John McCloy, as he sat on the WC. Conflict of interest maybe? As he corrected the drafts of the Warren Report, McCloy did them from an office at Rockefeller Plaza in NYC.

Dave: That first link you have above in number 34 did not work for me. I hope everyone here reads Lisa's milestone essay on Indonesia. To me it did for Indonesia what Prouty and Scott did for Vietnam. IT is amazing how many sites have linked to her essay all over the world. I counted at least 12. BTW, here is what John Pilger said about Suharto's sell out o this country after Sukarno was neutralized. The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia.” In November 1967, the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens and US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suharto’s US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia’s bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on “a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened.” Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a “model pupil.”

Good. Thanks.

Glenn: I thought you were on second base. Bob is the coach, I am playing shortstop. Ken is at first.

Kenneth: If JFK was anti Saudi Arabia and anti Shah, and he was backing guys that were trying to spread progressive, even socialist policies in a pan Arab sweep, I mean you don't think someone noticed that? Like maybe David Rockefeller for instance? Further, as I noted in my power point presentation, just one mine in Indonesia, the famous Grasburg mine yielded 2.6 billion worth of gold, silver and copper in just one year in this millennium, when it was over 30 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine That mine is on the island that JFK deliberately made the Dutch give back to Sukarno in 1962. In 1965 when--in one of the most ingenious operations the Agency ever executed--Suharto and the CIA overthrew Sukarno, it was one of the very first properties that Suharto laid open for international investment. Freeport Sulphur, was very interested. As Lisa Pease proved while she was co editing Probe with me. Below is a link to a landmark article she wrote. As you can see from where it is linked, people all over the world found out about this piece. It actually inspired a book called Freeport in Indonesia. https://newhistorian.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/jfk-indonesia/ Hate to tell you Ken, but that is big money, even today. JFK's foreign policy was reshaping places all over the globe. In the direction of nationalism, not imperialism. We in the JFK community speak only of Cuba and Vietnam, 98% of the time. Mainly because those were the most obvious ones. And everyone then made like lemmings, as they usually do in this community. But Kennedy was breaking with the past in many places. And that meant a lot of money was on the table.

First there was Lattimer. Then there was Dale Myers. There is a new man auditioning for MSM cover up spokesman. Lucien Haag is now trying to make a reputation by misrepresenting the facts of the JFK case. Martin Hay, who previously chewed up Howard Willens, and Mel Ayton, now slices and dices Haag. http://www.ctka.net/2015/HaagCritique.pdf

I have always wondered about that incident myself. Because the whole thing was so blown out of proportion it was ridiculous. And although Hart was not as vocal as Schweiker, he did say some interesting things.

Palestine was determined that Israel was not going to survive. There was no Palestine in 1963. After the war, that country was eliminated. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homeland. The ones who stayed behind had no influence in Israel. ​The only way Palestine could hurt Israel at that time was with help from the other Arab countries. As I said, I do no think this would have happened if Kenendy had lived.

KD : "Mossadegh" was not a factor under JFK. Yes he was. Unlike Lumumba, Mossadegh was not killed after the coup. ​The Kennedys ordered up a position paper from the State Department on the costs an liabilities of returning Mossadegh to power. ​The reason I equate Lumumba with Mossadegh is this: Mossadegh's was the first democratically elected government to arise from the post WW I mandate system. Lumumba represented the first democratically elected government to arise out of post colonail Africa. ​The USA, over threw the first, and assassinated the second. They did not want either man to set a good example for others to follow.

KD: True, but the alternative, which we have today, is much worse and that came under JImmy Carter. I guess there might have been a 'different alternative', a kinder, gentler Shah. (I do believe that if the shah had survived that the country would have substantial freedom today and not be fundamental Islamists.) Ken, I think you are missing the historical causation effect. ​I don't know how you can type a paragraph like the above and not be able to click in the word "Mossadegh". ​That was the alternative, not a kinder gentler Shah. The Iranaian people voted him in. Foster Dulles and his brother Allen and Nixon and Ike voted him out. That is not democracy. ​What was his crime? He wanted more of the money from oil licenses to go to the people of Iran, and not Standard Oil company. Because of that, he was overthrown. (BTW, same thing happened to Lumumba in Congo, about 8 years later. Except they murdered him.) ​If that is the kind of America you like, I guess we have a disagreement. As you would with JFK, since he backed both Lumumba and Mossadegh.

KD: Why should they? Shouldn't that be a subject for the UN? I don't know what JFK's position was, but I hope he wasn't for setting up a new Palestine next to Israel. They couldn't build a fence high enough and Israel would not exist today. Ken, where have you been? It was very clear by 1967, and definite by 1973 that the USA was not going to allow a successful invasion of Israel. Heck, they were not even going to make Israel give back the occupied territories. Today the American presidents don't even call them occupied territories, In fact, the USA has tilted so far toward Israel that they have made it clear they will veto any attempt to recognize Palestine in the UN. Even though that resolution would pass. As per a two state solution, you may not realize this, but that is what Truman wanted before the war broke out. I mean what other fair solution is there? Palestine was a country in 1945. It is not a country today. Israel is. The idea that Israel is in some kind of danger zone is ridiculous. Just took at their military operations in the last 8 years in the occupied territories. Count up the Israeli casualties, then the Palestinian casualties. Add up the casualties for either side in the Lebnanon war of 1982. Don't even include the massacres after. ​Israel is Goliath today.

KD: Most of your statements fairly well fit my assessment based on your earlier comments yesterday. I would expect Nasser to not like losing the support of the US. As you well know, Nasser's intent was to take over Israel. He tried numerous times. ​Nasser lost US support for two reasons. He wanted to recognize Red China, and he would not sign on to Dulles' Bagdad Pact. He told Dulles, "If I do that, my people will see me as a dupe of the US. And I will lose their faith." Nasser wanted to eliminate and take over Israel? I don't think so. Nasser backed the 1967 invasion for one reason: Johnson had titled way too far from JFK's policies and was now clearly backing Israel all the way. This is what I mean about JFK being far sighted. He never would have done that and therefore his policy would have prevented the 1967 invasion.