Douglas Caddy

Book review from Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/28/from-the-shadows-of-the-cold-war-the-rise-of-the-cia/

Randy Gunter asks on Facebook today: JFK was a very smart man. How could he have not known the firing of Dulles, Bissell, and Cabell would be returned to him in spades? [followed by a photo] "US President John F. Kennedy presents the National Security Medal to Allen W. Dulles, retiring Director of Central Intelligence, at the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, Nov. 28, 1961."

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/charles-burris/coup-detat-1963/

Interesting that you include the moon landings. You believe they were faked? My main question about them being faked is, where did the fakers find rocks that were over four billion years old? They didn't find them on Earth. I don't know what to make of this but it is interesting. http://www.disclose.tv/news/where_on_earth_are_nasas_rovers_sending_pictures_from_devon_island_canada/125944david

Additional comments to John Newman's remarks above; Myra Bronstein on Facebook: I really don't understand why Eisenhower bothered to "warn" the public and incoming President Kennedy about the military-industrial-complex when he worked to further their goals and enable CIA assassinations for 8 years. Was he angry about the U2 spy plane incident? Will Ruha replied: Ike was told in 1953 to fire Allen Dulles as CIA Drector or risk having his presidency undermined by agency field operations that would "force his hand" in foreign affairs. Joe Kennedy told Ike, "Dulles is mad for power," and Ike agreed, relating his consurrence that "Allen Dulles is a bit of a mad man. But I would sign a contract with the Devil himself," Ike said, "If it meant stopping the spread of this world monolithic communist conspiracy." After 8 years of Dulles' field operations, including sabotage of Francis Powers U2 flight that destroyed Ike's cherished dream of a Peace Summit, a test ban treaty, nuclear nonproliferation pact, and the beginning of detente, he recognized how wrong he had been, but still did not have the guts to fully disclose the nature of the damage he had done, instead attributing blame in more limited fashion to a "military-industrial" complex (which meant, of course, Dulles' S&C clients, but steered clear of the “intelligence” aspect. Myra Bronstein responded: Thanks Will. It just galls me how Eisenhower spent 8 years constructing a military industrial hand grenade then tossed it to incoming President Kennedy and went on TV to say the grenade was live. Don't even get me started on Truman.

Russia denies hitting civilian targets. https://www.rt.com/news/327181-russia-denies-hitting-civilian-targets/

Sy Hersh: ISIS Funded by USA

Nathaniel Heidenheimer wrote on Facebook on Dec. 23 in regard to David Talbot’s book: Posting on tons and tons of FB groups about books really works. With three more people posting W I D E angle, this book could be in the top 10 by New Years. I don't THINK this I KNOW it. I am basing my statement on a sample size of posting about a few key books every single day since mid 2008. I check Amazon sales numbers five times a day. I am aware of just how richly pathological this is, but I can't help it: because of my background, I can hear history being suffocated better than others, which is not a very good pick up line, in case you are trying to turn into a lucky citizen this evening. You have the power to stop or prevent circulation. This is not 1966. Nobody who could make a difference will ever be allowed on The Tonight Show. This is when we are alive. David Talbot commented: Well put, Nathaniel. Or as Patti Smith sang, "people have the power...to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from fools." No books (or films or whatever) that radically challenge America Inc. (particularly its armed and dangerous security wing) ever get the media gatekeepers' stamp of approval. It's up to the people to spread the word about "notes from the underground" that can set us free.

John Newman wrote on Facebook today: Eisenhower ordered Dulles to assassinate Lumumba. The jpeg below [omitted here] is from Robert H. Johnson's 6/18/75 testimony to the Church Committee. Johnson further testified that, after checking with a superior as to whether he should include the president’s statement in his debriefing memorandum, he decided not to include it: “I suspect—but no longer have an exact recollection—that I omitted it from the debriefing. It was not unusual to occasionally omit some particularly sensitive subject from the debriefing." Will Ruha commented on John Newman’s posting: Usually, in such cases, "executive" approval came through Nixon, who, as VP, was set up as chairman of the NSC "5412" subcommittee for the precise purpose of providing such approval to "executive actions," and other such sensisitve ops that were not to be traced back to Ike. Dulles had set this altered chain-of-command structure up, back in 1953 when he explained to Eisenhower that the CIA he was to lead, must be able to do "things with which you, as president, cannot afford to be connected." Dulles explained that communism was a "worlwide monolithic conspiracy' that required a wide variety of intelligence operations, some of which would be antithetical to our democratic-Constitutional form of government, but which would nonetheless be absolutely critical to its survival. Ike listened and approved Dulles' suggestion of an NSC subcommittee chaired by Nixon to approve ops too sensitive for his own "official" approval. Years later, when Nixon threatened Helms with disclosure over "the Bay of Pigs thing," (his code-name reference to the CIA's role in JFK's assassination), Hillary Clinton was placed on the Watergate Senate investigative committee, assigned to produce a top secret report on "assassination plots by past presidents," which, of course, would expose Nixon, his ties to E. H. Hunt and his gang of assassins, and the years of plots against not only JFK, but the Castro brothers, Che, Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjold, and a host of others. As this internecine battle intensified, CIA agent George H.W. Bush was dispatched to the White House to explain to Nixon the wisdom and necessity of his stepping down in order to preserve all the dirty secrets - at which point, the "CIA's best friend on Capitol Hill" Gerald Ford, assured Nixon that he, as president, would grant his predecessor "a full, free, and absolute pardon . . . for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974." This of course left open his earliet crimes, but that was the entire point of the agreement. We cover your ass for your presidential misdeeds, and we agree to cover eachother for the earlier crimes. Nixon realized this was the best deal he was going to be offered, and accepted. John Newman then commented: Johnson felt he had a moral obligation to speak the truth that he had had a hand in covering up in 1960. It is clear when you read the whole deposition that he was shocked at the time and traumatized over the years. Dulles dragged his feet for a week and so Gordon Gray pounded on him a week later in a Special Group meeting: Mr. Gray commented, however, that his associates [a euphemism for President Eisenhower in the minutes used by Parrot] had expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action in this situation, and he wondered whether the plans were sufficient to accomplish this.

David Talbott writes on Facebook today: Paul Hofmann, a leading New York Times foreign correspondent throughout the Cold War, was a spook. And during WW II, he served in the German Army as a top deputy to the notorious "butcher of Rome," General Kurt Malzer, who was later convicted of the mass murder of Italian partisans. In his obit, the NY Times portrayed Hofmann as an anti-Nazi hero, secretly passing information to the Allies while he was on Malzer's staff. But no evidence of this so-called heroism was provided, and it's unclear when Malzer jumped ship to the Allies. As I write in my book, the shrewdest Nazis in Italy near the end of the war -- like Karl Wolff, head of SS forces in Italy -- cut deals with Nazi-friendly officials like Allen Dulles, to save their necks. In any case, after Rome was liberated, Hofmann began working for Allied intelligence, and he formed a close connection to James Jesus Angleton, Dulles's man in post-war Rome, and later the infamous chief of CIA counterintelligence. The cozy relationship between Hofmann and Angleton continued as Hofmann was installed in the Rome bureau of the NY Times. Hofmann -- who covered Cold War hot spots from Africa to the Middle East to countries behind the Iron Curtain -- is a prime example of the murky fusion between U.S. intelligence and the American press, particularly correspondents for major media corporations like the Times who shuttled around the globe. One of the more egregious examples of how Hofmann helped serve CIA interests occurred in 1960, when the NY Times sent Hofmann to cover the end game of Congolese leader -- and soon to be martyr -- Patrice Lumumba. Hofmann's over-the-top, vitriolic coverage of Lumumba as a Soviet puppet and buffoon and homicidal threat to whites (all lies) helped pave the way for the CIA-sponsored overthrow and assassination of Lumumba, one of the most tragic events in post-colonial history. After Lumumba was brutally tortured and murdered, the NY Times continued its character assassination, demeaning the brave and charismatic hope of his nation as a political con man who "combined the skills of the late Sen. (Joe) McCarthy with the brashness of a ward heeler and the magic touch of an African witch doctor." The truth is that the New York TImes was deeply entwined with U.S. intelligence throughout the Cold War, particularly when it came to the newspaper's coverage of national security issues. (And during the War on Terror? Well that's a whole other line of inquiry.) Is this the reason that the Times studiously avoids writing about books like mine -- books that unearth these unwelcome phantoms? Btw, [a] photo of JFK (next to Hofmann) was taken just at the moment that Kennedy got the news about Lumumba's death. The CIA had rushed to kill Lumumba before JFK -- a strong supporter of Third World nationalism -- could take office, and the agency kept Kennedy in the dark about Lumumba's fate for weeks.

The truth is rushing out there: why conspiracy theories spread faster than ever The Guardian December 26, 2015 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/the-truth-is-rushing-out-there-why-conspiracies-spread-faster-than-ever

Behind ‘Making a Murderer,’ a New Documentary Series on Netflix By MEKADO MURPHY DEC. 20, 2015 The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/arts/television/behind-making-a-murderer-a-new-documentary-series-on-netflix.html

Modern art was CIA 'weapon' Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War By Frances Stonor Saunders Saturday 21 October 1995 The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

I found the author's summary of her book offbeat but interesting. Maryann Manley bought the book and sent notice that she had done so to Debra Conway, who in turn posted information about it on Facebook, where I read about it. What does it have to do with the JFK assassination? Well, for me it called attention to the death by possible unnatural means of Carole Tyler, the "doomed lady love" of Bobby Baker. It was Bobby Baker who told another LBJ associate at JFK's presidential inauguration that JFK would not live out his term. So it raises the question what Carole Tyler might have known about the assassination that led to her death and if this is so whether something still exists out there that might shed light on her knowledge. For other assassination researchers there may be a detail in the book that triggers in their minds something also worth pursuing.

Posted today on Facebook by the book's author, Jeanne Rejaunier. The book is titled Hollywood Sauna Confidential. This book is about my own and four of my women friends' adventures taking weekend saunas with a handful of individuals who are frequently cited in Kennedy assassination research, as well as my experiences with two persons who, while they did not take saunas with us, had connections with those who did, and whose activities had significant impact in the lives of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hollywood Producer/ writer Sy Bartlett’s Saturday and Sunday sauna, sun and swim parties were legendary, as were the delicious peanut encrusted hamburgers soaked in soy sauce Sy traditionally served up for lunch from his poolside barbecue pit, around which gathered scintillating guests from the who’s who of Hollywood, big oil, sports, upper echelon military, local law enforcement, organized crime, and Washington politics. For five years, beginning in 1964, I was a guest at Sy’s ongoing get togethers held at his home on Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood hills. Initially, I had no idea that some of my fellow guests were as notorious as they subsequently proved to be. But it didn't take long to start hearing gossip about the infamous group I was socializing with. Regulars at the gatherings included persons whose names will be familiar to followers of Kennedy assassination literature: Washington insider, President Lyndon Johnson’s protégé Bobby Baker and his devoted but doomed lady love, toothsome Tennessean Carole Tyler, who would die under questionable circumstances; cocaine addicted, mafia connected Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison; communications pioneer Gordon McLendon, with ties to the CIA; air conditioning magnate/ sex toy manufacturer Roy B. Lofton; and military cold warrior General Curtis Le May of the Joint Chiefs, who made no attempt to disguise his intense hatred of JFK – all of whom have been cited in countless books, articles and online forums as "close to the source" possible co-conspirators in the assassination, persons of interest, and/or as having had foreknowledge of the events of November 22, 1963. Also aboard as regular attendees at these weekend gatherings were former Chicago organized crime figure turned Las Vegas casino bigwig Charlie “Babe” Baron, who frequently appears in assassination reports; Baron’s tall, curvaceous, dark haired girlfriend Barbara Barrett, an exotic dancer at Hollywood’s burlesque palace the Pink Pussycat; Hollywood leading man Glenn Ford, whom I was dating; Acting Los Angeles Chief of Police Thaddeus (“Thad”) Brown and Chief of Detectives Rudy Diaz; popular broadcasting figure Arthur Godfrey and JFK-LBJ Press Secretary Pierre Salinger; as well as an assortment of recognizable Hollywood entertainment figures. Carl Wallace, business associate of Roy Lofton’s, an occasional visitor to Sy’s, has also been mentioned in assassination lore, via his family’s air conditioning company truck that was parked in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. In regular attendance at the Hollywood sauna get togethers were five bikini clad young ladies, of whom I was one, who interacted with the largely male principals. The two individuals who didn’t frequent the Hollywood Sauna but had ties with others who did, are persons with whom I appeared on television in my acting career: fabled attorney/ lobbyist Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran, intimate of LBJ and Bobby Baker who played an incredible role in our nation's history; and the ill fated back channel to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, TV journalist Lisa Howard, who died mysteriously after her groundbreaking interviews with Castro, whose relationships with Castro and Kennedy surely contributed to her untimely end, and whose key role, when reanalyzed in light of facts that emerged years later, can shed new understanding not only on her own death but, I believe, on Kennedy's as well. Although Howard’s death was ruled probable suicide, I challenge this verdict, as much as I challenge the official ruling that Carole Tyler being killed in a small private plane crash was an "accident." http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Sauna-Confidential-Jeanne-Rejaunier/dp/1522748547/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450480287&sr=8-1&keywords=Hollywood+Sauna+Confidential+by+Jeanne+Rejaunier

David Talbot wrote on Facebook today: The mainstream media blackout of my book about the CIA reminds me why I and a band of journalism renegades started Salon 20 years ago. It makes me appreciate all over again the vital importance of independent media. As Umberto Eco recently wrote, corporate newspapers exist more to cover up the truth than to uncover it. So what independent news sources do YOU rely on for the truth? In addition to Salon, here's my Top Ten list (in random order): 1. The Intercept 2. Truthdig 3. TomDispatch 4. Truthout 5. WhoWhatWhy 6. Democracy Now! 7. Consortium News 8. JFKFacts ...and for San Francisco news: 9. 48Hills 10. VanishingSF What other must-click alternative news sources am I missing?

I have come to believe that the CIA is behind the disinformation being promoted that denies the existence of Majestic12 and its successors. A president of the U.S. who was presented with credible information concerning the threat of extraterrestrial aliens to Planet Earth would undoubtedly move quickly to create an entity such as Majestic12 to monitor and advise. This is what President Truman did. Succeeding U.S. presidents have dealt with the issue also. http://fktv.is/mikhail-gorbachev-confirms-discussing-andquot-alien-threat-scenarioandquot-with-president-reagan-27476

Scott: In first paragraph of your original posting above you mention "senator majority leader Howard S. Liebengood." Correct me if I am mistaken but I think you intended to refer to the person below, who was never a senator but did serve as a Senate aide at one time. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12661-2005Jan15.html

I can understand why these influential newspapers refused to review David's book. This is because history will show conclusively that they were accessories before and after the fact to the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by our government and by specific individuals that David chronicles in his thoroughly researched and well written work.

David Talbot writes on Facebook today: Well, it's official. Pamela Paul, the book editor of the New York Times, has informed my publisher that the Times will not be reviewing "The Devil's Chessboard" -- no explanation apparently given. This follows word from the Washington Post, as told to my book publicist, that the Post "won't touch" my book. So despite glowing coverage in the book industry press (starred review in Kirkus, Amazon book of the month, etc) and in independent (mostly online) publications, the censorship of my book in the mainstream press is virtually complete. What can we surmise from this media blackout of "The Devil's Chessboard"? Clearly there are taboo subjects in the American "free press" -- especially when it comes to the national security arena. Among these verboten topics are some of the darkest secrets of the CIA -- as well as the shameful complicity of these very same newspapers with the CIA. At a critical moment in American history, when the public desperately needs open discussion of U.S. foreign policy and why we are so reviled throughout the Muslim world, the leading press institutions shut off discussion of a book that sheds important historical light on this subject. In this sense, the New York Times and Washington Post -- our much heralded "liberal" beacons of truth -- remain a big part of the problem. Shame on the Times and Post editors for their cowardly coverup.

Listen to David Talbot and Peter Dale Scott converse on 12/11/15 https://kpfa.org/episode/project-censored-december-11-2015/

[Poster's question: Does this mean that credible research and information about the JFK assassination long ignored by the mass media will find the public increasingly interested in knowing more?] Thanks to Trump, fringe news enters the mainstream By Paul Farhl The Washington Post December 11, 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/thanks-to-trump-fringe-news-enters-the-mainstream/2015/12/11/292e518c-a01b-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html

Are there too many JFK books to read? By Joe Green December 13, 2015 http://www.dissentingviews.com/blog/are-there-too-many-jfk-books-to-read

This is wonderful news, Donald. Your example should inspire other members of the forum to consider doing the same in their communities.

Wade: My memory may not be accurate but when I watched Citizen Four over the weekend after it was posted free for viewing on Facebook, I thought that I saw a certain judge in the film ask a question of one of the attorneys in the case. The scene is in the first twenty minutes. https://thoughtmaybe.com/citizenfour/ My first book, The Hundred Million Dollar Payoff, published in 1974 was based on evidence in the union case. Doug