Douglas Caddy

From the article: Mr. Kalmbach was asked during the Senate Watergate hearings if, as a lawyer, he would have advised a client to do what he did. “If the client had come to me in this situation, which is wholly separate from any situation that I could believe anyone would be faced with, I would have asked him to exercise caution and make inquiries,” he replied. “But in my situation, Senator, I was dealing with the counsel to the president of the United States [John Dean]. It was a matter of absolute trust in the man’s integrity and honesty.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/obituaries/herbert-kalmbach-who-figured-in-watergate-payoffs-dies-at-95.html

Joe: Sean Stone, Oliver Stone's son, interviewed Detective Rothstein this week. Although their subject is not on target with what is under discussion here, the interview does provide an insight into the work of a police detective whose assignments were almost exclusively highly significant cases. For Rothstein, the criminal world is the real world whether it be what really happened to Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick or an intelligence agency using children to compromise sexually important persons, such as a Senator who at one time was a serious contender for being elected president or more than one U.S. Secretary of Defense. Unmasking Son of Sam with Jim Rothstein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYBslVTJhbg

Roger, I defer to others in the forum who possess greater knowledge about this than do I. Any comment that I would make would be conjecture.

James Bamford's reply to someone on Facebook: Frankly, Jeanne, having watched all 18 hours of the documentary I saw a great deal of attention to the lives of family members, and as a documentary producer myself, I found it enormously fair and non-judgemental. The facts spoke for themselves. I spent three years in the Navy during the war, most of it in an NSA intelligence unit at Pacific Fleet Headquarters and all I did every day was read top secret reports from the war zone. Which was why I became part of the anti-war movement after I got out and was in law school. Later I wrote the longest chapter in my book, Body of Secrets, on the Vietnam war. So after spending ten years putting the documentary together, and airing 18 hours of film, I can't imagine a more fair and honest portrayal of all side of the war, both at home and in North and South Vietnam.

https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2017/09/letter-tricia-nixon-cox-julie-nixon-eisenhower/

Famed author James Bamford wrote on Facebook today: Fabulous private screening last night with producers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick of the last episode of the PBS documentary The Vietnam War. Should be required viewing by everyone. Demonstrates how truly exceptional we are when it come to unmitigated violence, paranoia, and lying. Three million Vietnamese dead; 58,000 American lives lost; constant lies from the first bomb to the humiliating pullout; and insane paranoia about the threat of Communism. Yet we never learn, just replace Vietnam with Iraq and Communism with terrorism. And now we have Trump, the chickenhawk-in-chief who never stops lying, bullying, and threatening. Exceptional indeed.

Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was traveling in Italy with several of their children when the Watergate burglars were arrested on June 17, 1972. She immediately returned to the U.S. and visited me in the office of the law firm in Washington, D.C. for which I worked. I remember her remarking at the time that Virgilio Gonzalez had as his task picking the lock to the door of the Democratic National Committee when a prior burglary had been attempted. She said Howard had told her that it should have an easy task for Gonzalez, who was a locksmith, but success eluded him in doing so to the frustration of the other burglars.

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKgonzalezV.htm

Tommy Reynolds posted the following on Facebook today: "Shortly before his death in 1975, John Mar­tino con­fessed to a Miami News­day reporter, John Cum­mings, that he had been guilty of spread­ing false sto­ries impli­cat­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald in the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. He claimed that two of the gun­men were Cuban exiles. It is believed the two men were Her­mino Diaz Gar­cia and Vir­gilio Gon­za­lez. Cum­mings added: “He told me he’d been part of the assas­si­na­tion of Kennedy. He wasn’t in Dal­las pulling a... trig­ger, but he was involved. He implied that his role was deliv­er­ing money, facil­i­tat­ing things.… He asked me not to write it while he was alive.” Fred Claasen also told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions what he knew about his busi­ness partner’s involve­ment in the case. He claimed John Mar­tino told him: “The anti-Castro peo­ple put Oswald together. Oswald didn’t know who he was work­ing for – he was just igno­rant of who was really putting him together. Oswald was to meet his con­tact at the Texas The­atre. They were to meet Oswald in the the­atre, and get him out of the coun­try, then elim­i­nate him. Oswald made a mis­take… There was no way we could get to him. They had Ruby kill him.” Flo­rence Mar­tino at first refused to cor­rob­o­rate the story. How­ever, in 1994 she told Anthony Sum­mers that her hus­band said to her on the morn­ing of 22nd Novem­ber, 1963: “Flo, they’re going to kill him (Kennedy). They’re going to kill him when he gets to Texas.”

Looking forward to hearing Donald tonight on the JFK assassination files.

David Talbot posted this on Facebook today: Last night I watched episode #9 of the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick Vietnam series and it crystallized for me the problems I have with these filmmakers' vision. Yes, they attempt to show the war from different perspectives, but this even-handed approach fails to arrive at the fundamental truth about the war. It was an evil and ruthless enterprise -- not one launched in "good faith by decent people" in the now infamous words of episode #1's narration. There were no good intentions about a war cynically started in the name of freedom that aligned itself with puppet dictators and resulted in the slaughter of millions. The war revealed America's heart of darkness: the domineering, exterminationist impulse that has driven this country from the genocidal Indian Wars of the late 19th century to the torched villages and massacres in the Philippines during the Spanish American war, to the atrocities in Central America and Haiti during the Banana Wars, to the carnage in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and wherever the U.S. invades next. In episode 9, Burns and Novick show some of the horrors inflicted on Vietnam's population, but shy from making a judgment about these war crimes. John Kerry is shown before a Senate committee eloquently condemning the widespread crimes committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, including murder, rape, torture and mutilation. But then the filmmakers offer a rebuttal from another Vietnam veteran who insists these crimes were very limited. What conclusion is the viewer supposed to make? It would've been useful at this point for Burns and Novick to have brought in a historian like Nick Turse, whose book "Kill Anything That Moves" -- based on deep research in the Pentagon's own archives -- proved that the slaughter of civilians was the rule not the exception in Vietnam. Burns and Novick obviously have sympathy for Vietnam veterans like Kerry who turned against the war. But they repeatedly diminish the commitment and courage of young antiwar protesters who didn't serve in Vietnam out of moral conviction -- because these young activists (including me) didn't need to experience combat to know it was an evil war. Burns and Novick dismiss the Mayday demonstrators who tried to shut down Nixon's Washington in 1971 as "crazies." (Maybe my older brother Stephen Talbot, who was arrested there, might have a different perspective.) Jane Fonda, the bete noir of Vietnam hawks, comes off as a silly left-wing tourist and traitor in the Burns segment about her trip to North Vietnam during the war. A bigger truth is that Fonda risked her Hollywood career to speak out against the criminal air war against the Vietnamese civilian population, and later, with Tom Hayden, worked hard to bring Vietnam vets into their Indochina Peace Campaign. While vociferous critics of America's criminal air war like Fonda are demeaned, Burns and Novick devote lots of emotionally fraught space to valorizing U.S. POWs, many of whom were pilots guilty of war crimes -- and who were lucky to survive the war and go home to their families after what their bombs did to men, women, and children on the ground. A returning veteran, with restrained fury, recalls the demonstration that greeted him outside Travis Air Force Base as he returned from war. We're supposed to feel that the protesters were overly zealous and callous toward our returning troops. But Travis, as a symbol of the criminal bombardment of Vietnamese cities and villages, was a thoroughly legitimate target of antiwar protest, whether returning soldiers' feelings were hurt or not. Again and again in episode 9 -- and in other segments of the Burns/Novick series I've watched -- it's U.S. veterans and national security figures who get the final word, as if their suffering and moral wisdom trumps all others. I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: this series desperately needed the deep clarity of a Daniel Ellsberg or a Tom Hayden. Instead we see only their ghosts, in fleeting clips.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/26/plane-crash-which-killed-un-boss-dag-hammarskjold-may-have-been-caused-by-aircraft-attack

14 boxes of Jack Ruby records become public next week http://www.wfaa.com/features/14-boxes-of-jack-ruby-records-become-public-next-week/477719764

CIA archive reveals existence of secret network of ex-spies https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/sep/21/cia-cin/

Wecht, CAPA Challenge Warren Report Defenders Sabato, Shenon http://capa-us.org/wecht-capa-challenge-warren-report-defenders-sabato-shenon/

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pilger_John/Vietnam_Heroes.html

From the article: “The first thing I’m going to tell my successor,” Kennedy told guests at the White House, “is to watch the generals, and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/?utm_source=fbb

5th annual JFK Luncheon / symposium. Location: Dirty Job Brewing 117 Mansfield Texas 76063 Time: 11am-5pm Date: Monday November 20, 2017 Speakers Include: Randy Benson, Writer, Producer, and Director of The Searchers *Mary Ann Moorman Krahmer: Eye Witness to JFK’s Assassination, took the famous Moorman Polaroid photo Hubert Clark: USN Retired, Part of JFK’s Honor Guard Dr. Michael Marcades: Son of Rose Cheramie & Author More speakers TBA Mary Ann Moorman Krahmer will be doing a Q&A only Tickets: $65.00 per person available at www.jfk-thecontinuinginquiry.com Raffle tickets will be available for purchase. Each person with a paid admission gets 1 free raffle ticket. Seating is limited and will fill up fast. All authors, will have their books available for purchase For more information please contact Chris Gallop @ cjgallop@yahoo.com

http://www.alternet.org/two-top-republicans-call-full-jfk-disclosure-charles-grassley-walter-jones#overlay-context=two-top-republicans-call-full-jfk-disclosure-charles-grassley-walter-jones

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/22/can-america-learn-vietnam-war/

From the article: The “meaning” of the Vietnam war is no different from the meaning of the genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, the colonial massacres in the Philippines, the atomic bombings of Japan, the levelling of every city in North Korea. The aim was described by Colonel Edward Lansdale, the famous CIA man on whom Graham Greene based his central character in The Quiet American. Quoting Robert Taber’s The War of the Flea, Lansdale said, “There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/22/the-killing-of-history/ From the article: You don’t get privileged broadcast space there, or big filmmaking grants from Bank of America and the Koch brothers – two leading funders of Burns and Novick’s Vietnam series – by exposing the immoral, imperial, and unlawful essence of U.S. foreign policy. Sinclair’s Dictum Burns and Novick know this very well and will play along accordingly. There’s no censorship required. Smart historical documentarians know in advance what they can include and what they must delete if they want the good stuff – money, status, a sense of importance and relevance – coming their way. It’s one small but significant part of how the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire rule. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” the American socialist Upton Sinclair once wrote, “when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Sinclair’s dictum applies with a vengeance to Burns and Novick. I never got a chance to confront him about the curious role he was slated to play in defense of U.S-imperial arrogance and criminality. “Who controls the past” Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/22/ken-burns-and-lynn-novicks-vietnam-war-some-predictions/

https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2017/09/29

http://people.com/politics/who-is-jfk-mistress-judith-exner/

John Newman posted this announcement on Facebook yesterday: I have a presentation coming up soon at James Madison University on “Espionage and Counterintelligence Conflict during the Cold War.” The event will take place on 2 November 2017, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Highlands Room of the Festival Building. This event is free. Seating will be open to JMU students, faculty and staff and to the public as well. Alan Dale will be on hand to emcee the event. My presentation will run for approximately ninety minutes, and will include mater...ial from my recently published books on this genre and my forthcoming publication, “Into the Storm.” Thirty minutes will be available for questions and discussion. As seating is limited, my friends in the larger Harrisonburg area who would like to attend should contact me privately by the middle of October (or earlier to get on my list) to confirm seating reservations. The same is true for interested parties who are considering driving to the event from out of state. A map of JMU facilities and parking is at https://www.jmu.edu/parking/_files/parkingmap.pdf