Douglas Caddy

L.B.J.’s Bravado and a Secret Service Under Scrutiny OCT. 2, 2014 By Michael Beschloss The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/upshot/lbjs-bravado-and-a-secret-service-under-scrutiny.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1 Fifty years ago last week, President Lyndon Johnson received the final report of the commission he had appointed, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate President Kennedy’s assassination. One of the document’s main themes, which will be painfully familiar to Americans at this moment, was the performance of the Secret Service. Johnson himself did not blame his predecessor’s murder on the Secret Service’s shortcomings. He venerated his own longtime agent Rufus Youngblood, privately recalling to an aide in 1969 — while drafting his memoirs as an ex-president — how, when the shots in Dallas were fired, the Georgian (“tougher and better and more intelligent than them all”) had bravely “put his body on me” on the floor of the vice-presidential car. L.B.J. had a lower opinion of Roy Kellerman, the agent who rode in the front passenger seat of Kennedy’s car: “about as loyal a man as you could find,” but “dumb as an ox.” Ultimately Johnson built an excellent relationship with the Secret Service. But as early as the week after the Dallas assassination, the F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover, who was an old Johnson friend and Washington neighbor, tried to sow seeds of doubt in the president’s mind about the service. Hoover was eager not only to do some damage to a bureaucratic rival, but also to distract L.B.J. from mistakes made by his own bureau that may have contributed to the assassination. With the new president secretly recording their conversation on a Dictaphone machine, Hoover told Johnson that “much to my surprise, the Secret Service do not have any armored cars.” “The president ought always to be in a bulletproof car,” Hoover said. “You could have a thousand Secret Service men on guard, and still a sniper can snipe you from up in the window, if you are exposed like the president was.” Hoover offered Johnson one of the F.B.I.’s bulletproof vehicles. Always reaching for opportunity, Hoover tried to nudge L.B.J. to take presidential protection away from the Secret Service and give it to the F.B.I. And occasionally Johnson was receptive, especially when the Secret Service did something that displeased him. In January 1964, irate over a memo, written by a Kennedy holdover, that said agents disliked serving under him and wanted to be transferred, L.B.J. barked at Youngblood that he had just told the Secret Service director, James Rowley, “to call all of them in, and to take any of ’em’s resignations that wanted to.” “And if they don’t want to handle it, we’ll get the F.B.I. to do it,” he said. “Hoover thinks I could be handled a lot better anyway. “Now I thought I did pretty well after Dallas and I thought I reflected credit on the Secret Service. I did my damnedest to compliment you and everybody else.” But if there were more complaints by Youngblood’s colleagues, he said, “we’ll just change the damned law in about five minutes.” During another moment of pique at the Secret Service that year, Johnson carped that when he traveled, “they notify everybody in town what time you’re coming, how you’re coming, where you’re coming.” “They do everything except kill you,” he said. “They don’t know how to operate their guns. Hell, I had 10 of ’em out there one day trying to kill a snake, and they couldn’t kill it — they just emptied the gun — at my ranch.” More surprising, even in the knowledge that he was trying to reduce federal spending during his first year as president, Johnson grumbled that his Secret Service coverage was too expensive and overwhelming. This was despite the obvious fact that so recently in Dallas, Secret Service protection had been insufficient. Presuming that the safety of the White House was beyond reproach — perhaps inadvisably, given the disclosures of the threats to President Obama in 2011 and last month — Johnson told Director Rowley in March 1964 that he wanted even fewer agents than Kennedy had “because I’m staying right in this house.” I'm sure LBJ wanted to stand up in that car with RFK just to make RFK feel as uncomfortable as possible. They hated each other and this... “I won’t even go to the bathroom if I have to have more people,” he said. “I promise you I won’t go anywhere. I’ll just stay behind these black gates.” On Oct. 1, 1964, only a week after he received the Warren Report, L.B.J. complained to Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, his running mate in the election that fall, about criticism by the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, and others that he was risking his life by campaigning among crowds (asserting that he was “a man of the people”): With dubious accuracy, Johnson said: “Just tell them that the Secret Service has never had the slightest concern. That’s the way to cut him. “For shaking hands with high school kids that are sure American citizens! What they need to cover is the route that a candidate follows — the buildings and the cowards that lurk in the dark. There is not any problem with getting out and shaking hands. Kennedy shook hands with three or four groups. That wasn’t what killed Kennedy.” Ignoring the circumstances of the assassinations of Presidents Garfield and McKinley, Johnson went on: “No president has ever been assassinated by shaking hands with somebody or being in a crowd. They are assassinated when they go to a theater, or when they drive down the street and somebody can hide.” Two weeks later, Johnson publicly demonstrated his bravado by insisting that he and J.F.K.’s brother Robert (who was campaigning for the United States Senate from New York) stand up together in an open limousine during a motorcade through unruly crowds in Brooklyn. It was only 11 months after Dallas. Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, is the author of nine books and a contributor to NBC News and “PBS NewsHour.”

It was during the shooting. If one goes back to the original posting on this particular topic, there is a reply by Thomas Graves to a comment I made in which he said that the post office building that overlooks both Dealey Plaza and the school book depository building would have been an ideal place for an intelligence agency to have filmed the event because of having prior knowledge of it going down. I believe that Tommy even mentioned that the building's postmaster was a Warren Commission witness. I shall try to find the original posting and post the link here.

No, this is not the film. My information was based on disclosure from an intelligence agent who had seen the film. The film was of the assassination of JFK and according to the agent it clearly showed Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis being present at the time of the assassination. The agent said it would be disclosed publicly around the time of the 50th anniversary of the event but for whatever reason it was not. The was a flurry of publicity at the time about a new film of the assassination being offered for sale by a Texas real estate person but the news about that film soon petered out. I wonder how many people alive today were of age when the assassination took place. It could be that disclosure of such a film now would by met by the general public with a big yawn as it along with the Vietnam War and Watergate are subjects about which they have never heard anything because they are ancient history. Bill Hicks had a great line in his routine on the assassination about someone who said to him: what is the big deal, it happened a long time ago? Hicks response to this was: well, don't talk to me about Jesus then.

A Secret Service Agent Leaked President Obama’s Schedule To Mitt Romney In 2012 http://www.politicususa.com/2014/10/02/secret-service-agent-leaked-president-obamas-schedule-mitt-romney-2012.html

Phone-hacking trial: Rebekah Brooks drops costs application Publisher News UK’s decision will save the taxpayer millions of pounds and avoids a protracted legal argument about costs · By Lisa O'Carroll · · The Guardian, Wednesday 1 October 2014 08.21 EDT Rebekah Brooks has dropped her application for the taxpayer to reimburse her legal costs of up to £7m relating to the marathon phone-hacking trial. She dropped the claim after News UK – the News Corp subsidiary that under a previous guise as News International published the now-defunct News of the World – which was indemnifying her costs, said it would not be seeking to be reimbursed following her acquittal on all charges. The publisher’s decision also means other cleared defendants in the trial who were indemnified by News UK have dropped their cost claims. News UK’s decision saves the taxpayer millions of pounds and was made because the company did not wish to become embroiled in a protracted argument about its case. Robert Smith QC, for News UK, said the sheer scale of the exercise of assessing costs had become clear and this had troubled the company. “It is for that reason that News UK have indicated it did not feel willing to engage in an exercise addressing these issues,” said Smith. A spokesperson for News UK said: “Given the certainty that our costs would continue to increase disproportionately, we’ve taken the pragmatic view not to seek repayment from the defendants for legal costs borne by the company.” News UK’s decision not to reclaim costs, although expensive, means it avoids a potentially damaging and protracted scrutiny of its stance during and before the trial. In a hearing in July Mr Justice Saunders warned that when it came to costs applications: “I have to consider whether any defendant brought it on themselves and also whether I would have to consider News International conduct in relation to the matter.” Although News UK was not a party to the trial, it told the defendants it no longer wanted to be the beneficiary of any costs order. Brooks’s counsel said she had never intended to try to recover any personal expenses in relation to the trial, which would have included rent of a Georgian townhouse in Bloomsbury, central London, 15 minutes’ walk from the court. It is believed the costs for the former News International chief executive were between £5m and £7m, with the total for the other defendants running to several million. Two of the six defendants acquitted in the trial are however seeking all, or a portion of their costs. Rebekah Brooks’s husband Charlie is seeking ballpark costs of £600,000 including VAT. Stuart Kuttner, former managing editor of the News of the World, is seeking £135,000 of costs incurred before News UK indemnified him in January last year. Smith told Saunders at the Old Bailey hearing: “News UK would not seek or accept any part of any order by way of costs of central funds, public funds.” It is believed the company’s decision was made in the last 24 hours. It emerged during the hearing that News UK had indemnified Brooks for her legal costs. Brooks’s counsel, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, told Saunders: “Any money that would have been subject to a claims cost order would have gone immediately to News to compensate them for the financial support they were good enough to afford her during her trial.” He said: “As News’s position is that they do not want to receive any costs from this trial ... I formally withdraw the application on her behalf.” News UK had also indemnified the legal costs incurred by the company’s head of security Mark Hanna, Brooks’s former secretary Cheryl Carter, and security guard Paul Edwards. They also will not be making applications for costs, the judge was told.

Kissinger Drew Up Plans to Attack Cuba, Records Show By FRANCES ROBLESSEPT. 30, 2014 The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/americas/kissinger-drew-up-plans-to-attack-cuba-records-show.html?_r=0 MIAMI — Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show. Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations, according to documents declassified by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the request of the National Security Archive, a research group. The officials outlined plans to strike ports and military installations in Cuba and to send Marine battalions to the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to “clobber” the Cubans, as Mr. Kissinger put it, according to the records. Mr. Kissinger, the documents show, worried that the “I think sooner or later we are going to have to crack the Cubans,” Mr. Kissinger told President Ford at a meeting in the Oval Office in 1976, according to a transcript. The documents are being posted online and published in “Back Channel to Cuba,” a new book written by the longtime Cuba experts William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, and Peter Kornbluh, the director of the archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. The previously undisclosed blueprint to strike Cuba highlights the tumultuous nature of American-Cuban relations, which soured badly after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Mr. Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, had previously planned an underground effort to improve relations with Havana. But in late 1975, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola to help the newly independent nation fend off attacks from South Africa and right-wing guerrillas. That move infuriated Mr. Kissinger, who was incensed that Mr. Castro had passed up a chance to normalize relations with the United States in favor of pursuing his own foreign policy agenda, Mr. Kornbluh said. “Nobody has known that at the very end of a really remarkable effort to normalize relations, Kissinger, the global chessboard player, was insulted that a small country would ruin his plans for Africa and was essentially prepared to bring the imperial force of the United States on Fidel Castro’s head,” Mr. Kornbluh said. “You can see in the conversation with Gerald Ford that he is extremely apoplectic,” Mr. Kornbluh said, adding that Mr. Kissinger used “language about doing harm to Cuba that is pretty quintessentially aggressive.” The plans suggest that Mr. Kissinger was prepared after the 1976 presidential election to recommend an attack on Cuba, but the idea went nowhere because Jimmy Carter won the election, Mr. LeoGrande said. “These were not plans to put up on a shelf,” Mr. LeoGrande said. “Kissinger is so angry at Castro sending troops to Angola at a moment when he was holding out his hand for normalization that he really wants to, as he said, ‘clobber the pipsqueak.' ” The plan suggested that it would take scores of aircraft to mine Cuban ports. It also warned that the United States could seriously risk losing its Navy base in Cuba, which was vulnerable to counterattack, and estimated that it would cost $120 million to reopen the Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico and reposition destroyer squadrons. The plan also drafted proposals for a military blockade of Cuba’s shores. The proposal warned that such moves would most likely lead to a conflict with the Soviet Union, which was a top Cuba ally at the time. “If we decide to use military power, it must succeed,” Mr. Kissinger said in one meeting, in which advisers warned against leaks. “There should be no halfway measures — we would get no award for using military power in moderation. If we decide on a blockade, it must be ruthless and rapid and efficient.” Mr. Kissinger, now 91, declined a request to comment. The memos show that Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Ford, and again under President George W. Bush, was also present at the meeting when Mr. Kissinger ordered up the contingency plan. Mr. Rumsfeld, 82, also declined a request to comment. Some Cuba historians said the revelations were startling, particularly because they took place just as the United States was coming out of the Vietnam War. “The military piece dumbfounds me a little bit,” said Frank O. Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who now directs the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. “For Kissinger to be talking the way they were talking, you would think Cuba had invaded the whole continent.”

Sally Quinn: Ben Bradlee in hospice care http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/09/sally-quinn-ben-bradlee-in-hospice-care-196236.html?hp=f3

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/no_author/presidents-serve-at-the-pleasure-of-the-cia/

Former CIA Assassin Team Leader Claims Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing Saturday, September 27, 2014 Beforeitsnews.com % of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents. http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2014/09/former-cia-assassin-team-leader-claims-meeting-with-oswald-before-jfk-killing-2653284.html?utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesmsharetools-fbshare-small&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fb4in.info%2FffcJ&utm_medium=facebook-post&utm_source=http%3A%2F%2Fl.facebook.com%2Fl.php%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fb4in.info%252FffcJ%26h%3DSAQGtK4ie%26s%3D1 0 A former CIA assassination team leader told a conference audience Sept. 26 in a blockbuster revelation that he saw accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald with their mutual CIA handler six weeks before the killing and there would have been no anti-Castro movement in Cuba without the CIA funding. Antonio Veciana, the acknowledged leader of the Alpha 66 assassination squad of Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, made the statements in a dignified but emotion-laden manner at this year’s major conference analyzing the Warren Commission report on murder of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Separately, the general counsel of the last major government investigation into the killing issued a statement saying the CIA had deceived him and the rest of the public during the late 1970s inquiry into the validity of the Warren report. Former House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) General Counsel G. Robert Blakey issued the statement during the ongoing conference Sept. 26-28 organized at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, MD by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). Veciana said he is convinced the CIA organized the president’s murder and that he saw Oswald meeting with a CIA official in Dallas because Veciana arrived at his meeting fifteen minutes too early. Veciana says he believes Oswald was a CIA operative whom the agency decided to blame for a killing it organized in a complex plot. Veciana said his CIA handler was the late David Atlee Phililips, shown in a file photo at right. Phillips was a high-ranking CIA official who used the cover named “Maurice Bishop” during his many meetings with Veciana. Veciana hgs never previously said “Bishop” was “Phillips.” The CIA placed Phillips in charge of the CIA’s Cuba operations after the newly created agency recruited him from newspaper work in 1950s. According to biographers, Phillips, a former actor born in Texas, used hundreds of aliases in his CIA work. After retirement from the CIA Phillips organized thousands into the politically influential Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Veciana, 85, spoke through a translator and with a son by his side. He said he was trained as a CPA and admired “Bishop” and the CIA deeply for many years. Now, however, he said he wanted to set the record straight because he has come to admire also Kennedy, whom and he and Phillips once regarded as a “traitor” for allowing communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro to remain in power. Blakey, shown in a file photo from his longtime work as a a professor of law at Notre Dame University, appears in person at 1:15 p.m. Sept. 27 at the conference to reiterate his statement and answer questions. His committee issued a report in 1979 scrutinizing the original 1964 Warren report. The two admissions were part of an explosive agenda for the conference, which I helped open with an address on why the 50th anniversary of the Warren report is a unique, historic opportunity to solve the nation’s most important murder, one whose aftereffects continue to the present with the unchecked power of the CIA as a secret government. I amplify on that theme on Sept. 27 by participating in an afternoon panel “Why Won’t the Media Cover the Story?” and separately speaking in greater depth on “The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination.” The latter lecture draws on the research in my recent book Presidential Puppetry: Obama Romney and Their Masters, which documents how all recent presidents, including Barack Obama, were recruited in secret intelligence operations before they entered politics. I argue that these kinds of under-reported relationships foster the ascendancy of the nation’s leaders — including in business, Congress and the media in ways unknown to the public. My talks describe also how the hidden history has fostered loyalties and fears largely unreported by a media heavily influenced by pro-CIA themes, with a JFK murder a decisive turning point. C-SPAN covered the conference’s opening.A team of actors provides a dramatic reading at 5:45 of a long-secret transcript of a Commission meeting in January 1964 in which it addressed the threat of two newspaper reporters poised to report that the supposed “lone nut” Oswald was actually an FBI paid asset. At the conference Friday, Oswald’s friends Buell Wesley Frazier and Dr. Ernst Titovets said they never believed their friend could be guilty of murder, and regarded him as a “patsy” as Oswald claimed before he was murdered by Jack Ruby at a Dallas police station two days after the assassination. Frazier made his first public appearance to describe his experiences on the day of the assassination. He said that he drove his fellow worker Oswald to work at the Texas Book Depository on the fateful day of the assassination. Frazier said a package Oswald carried was too small to contain a rifle, as the Warren Commission claimed. Titovets, a professor of medicine in his native Belarus, has published a new edition of his 2010 memoir: Oswald: Russian Episode. In other conference news, professor author and former intelligence officer Dr. John Newman traced more than a dozen of the Phillips identities to show his work was so secret that even his internal memos at the CIA, ow declassified in part, show that he was trying to fool fellow employees about his activities. Also, AARC President James Lesar called for an end of obstruction by the National Archives in complying with the provisions of a 1992 law passed unanimously by Congress to make all available records public regarding the JFK murder. Lesar, an attorney fighting freedom of information battles, has argued that the CIA exercises too much influence over the Archives and other Washington officials on the issue.

When I approached Woodward and Bernstein last night at their lecture event in Houston, I said “I’m not here.” Woodward immediately had a puzzled look on his face. So I added, “that’s what you have me saying your book.” I then introduced myself. Woodward looked shocked and Bernstein said in a real loud voice that startled some people, "Oh, xxxx!. Is it really you?" Bernstein autographed my gratis copy of "All The President’s Men" by writing "Holy xxxx!" and signed his name and Woodward wrote "Many thanks" and signed his name. There were about 30 people waiting in line at the reception to greet the two and have their photo taken. But W&B wanted to talk to me and started asking basic questions about Watergate. I gather they still view me as a person of interest or a man of mystery. I did not want to hold up the line of people, so I excused myself. I feel certain that they wanted to talk to me more but I passed up the opportunity because I have written an article about Watergate that is pending before a prestigious publication. Hopefully it will be published. A photographer took photos of the three of us but she has not yet posted these online. They gave a great talk at the lecture afterwards and I found myself agreeing with their current views of the world situation with the exception of their take on Putin who in my opinion in the only mature international leader in the world with a realistic grasp of geopolitics. Woodward told a story about a senator who told him that Obama had telephoned him only twice in five years. The senator then asked Woodward not to publish this. When Woodward asked why, the senator said that most senators had never received one phone call and a few had received one call and disclosure that he had received two calls from Obama might cause jealousy or resentment among his colleagues.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are the featured speakers tonight at The Wortham Center in Houston. The event is sponsored by Brilliant Lectures. I have not seen these two reporters in over 40 years when I was the subject of their initial articles about Watergate. A kind friend has arranged for me to be a guest at the VIP reception before the talks, where I shall have my picture taken with them. I shall give a report here tomorrow on what the two reporters said.

A Life in Intelligence - The Richard Helms Collection http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/life-intelligence-richard-helms-collection

Phoebe's mother was Jewish and on a few topics she and Kent disagreed. I should state that I have no precise information as to why they divorced. Their divorce came years after I left New Orleans in 1956 to go to Georgetown University and I never returned to live although I did visit my parents on holidays who still resided there. After the divorce, Phoebe moved to Colorado and continued to publish conservative literature from there.

Yes, I was pretty conservative in those high school days. I favored the impeachment of Earl Warren and favored getting out of the United Nations. I had no opinion on MLK or the Supreme Court's Brown decision. I later came to believe Earl Warren was a good chief justice with the exception of his falling for LBJ's tearful plea that he head up the Commission to investigate JFK's assassination The value of higher education is that it broadens one's perspectives. By my senior year at Georgetown, which was 1959-60, I was still conservative but willing and eager to hear all sides to a public issue. The last time I voted for a Republican for President was in 1984 for Reagan and I regret now that I did that. As David Stockman has pointed out, Reagan started the U.S. on its casino economy path in which the expenditures of the federal government are manipulated so that the elite is favored at the expense of the average working man. Kent and Phoebe Courtney divorced later after I had moved from New Orleans. I think Kent's activity in the Citizens Councils was too much for Phoebe.

Kent and Phoebe Courtney published the Free Men Speak newspaper starting around 1954 and then they changed the name to the Independent American. I worked on Free Men Speak after high school each day. I may have worked on The Independent American, which succeeded the first paper, but do not remember. I left New Orleans in 1956 to attend the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. I was graduated in 1960. In 1962 I was working in the NYC of Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the daytime and going to New York University Law School at night. So I had nothing to do with Edwin Walker's political activity at any time.

This is worth reading as this ex-bureau chief for Reuters makes perceptive comments about mainstream reporting these days. http://rt.com/op-edge/185360-reuters-chief-iraq-useless/

From the article - AM: I don’t think it’s so much an obvious conspiracy. It’s just the debate is framed in a way that it delegitimizes opposing viewpoints. I have been a member of the mainstream media for 17 years of my career, and I believed I was doing good, nobody ever told me I should follow a certain political line and certainly nobody ever told me that I should lie, and if they ever had I would refuse. I think most of my colleagues in the mainstream media are similar. But what was interesting is that it’s more insidious than that. There is a certain discourse that becomes normalized, in which certain views are acceptable and others not. And if you make obvious statements, you know, like about the role of banks or global superpowers, and about the disaster that’s befallen the world in many areas in recent years, you are often marginalized as some sort of loony figure. And there is a “cult of moderation,” of being “neutral”’ in the media. Being neutral is normally held to be that if there is a crazy right-winger or left-winger, you are somewhere in the middle. But obviously, truth is not always in the middle. We may not always know the truth, but there is objective truth. And it does not always lie in the middle between the two extremes. I think it is through this process that the mainstream media basically becomes a tool of misinforming people, rather than informing people. It’s not so much deliberate lies, although some clearly do engage in deliberate lies, but it’s just the sense that there are some things that are safe to say that we become conditioned that they are safe to say, and there are other things that we probably know them to be true, but if we say them we are mocked or delegitimized. So the conversation is channeled quite subtly, in a way that deviates from the truth. http://rt.com/op-edge/185360-reuters-chief-iraq-useless/

George Clooney to Direct Movie About U.K. Phone Hacking Scandal September 3, 2014 By Justin Kroll Film Reporter Variety http://variety.com/2014/film/news/george-clooney-8-1201296932/

From Bill Myers: Having monetization turned on means even if your YouTube [JFK Assassination] videos don't go viral they can still earn you a few cents each time they're viewed. And over time, those few cents per view can add up. So don't miss out. Turn on YouTube monetization. http://www.bmyers.com/public/monetize_YouTube_videos.cfm

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/a-scandal-at-the-c-i-a-maybe/

http://watergate.brightpixelstudio.com/Content/Colodny%20Collection%20tape%20Interview%20list.pdf Here is a list of the Watergate files compiled by Len Colodny that are being transferred to the archives of Texas A&M University under an agreement between the two parties. These files will be open to the public.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Nixon Defense’ By Tom Huston - Special to The Washington Times - - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 THE NIXON DEFENSE: WHAT HE KNEW AND WHEN HE KNEW IT By John W. Dean Viking, $35, 746 pages According to John Dean's new book, "The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It," President Nixon knew a lot more about Watergate a lot sooner than he ever admitted. However, the question one should ask before plowing through Mr. Dean's 746-page "definitive" history is, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Nixon admitted he engaged in activities that amounted to obstruction of justice. His guilt was fixed within a few days of the break-in. The rest of the story, as Mr. Dean tells it, answers no important questions and solves no lingering mysteries. Mr. Dean has transcribed 1,000 Watergate-related taped conversations, many of them previously ignored. These he has digested and condensed to tell the story of the president's involvement in the evolving scandal from June 17, 1972 (the day G. Gordon Liddy's crew was arrested at the Watergate) to July 16, 1973 (when the taping systems were shut down). It is a story from which Mr. Dean purports to absent himself, which is quite a trick for the guy who recruited Mr. Liddy to run the campaign committee's intelligence operation and who orchestrated the cover-up. That Mr. Dean is the central figure in the Watergate narrative is grounds for caution when weighing his evidence of presidential perfidy. Sensitive to the inverse relationship between his reputation and that of his former boss, the author has reason to supplement his original false-flag narrative. Shading here, omitting there, falsifying as necessary, Mr. Dean from the beginning has relied on his superior command of the facts to spin a tale that is completely plausible but fundamentally dishonest. Mr. Dean expects his readers to take his word for the accuracy of his transcriptions and the fairness of his editing. If you're unwilling to do so, his solution is simple: listen to the tapes yourself. In refusing to share his transcriptions, he wagers that few are going to undertake the effort necessary to determine how closely he has hewed to the record. A similar wager carried him scot-free through his Ervin committee testimony. As Frank Gannon has noted, Mr. Dean omits a number of mitigating statements made by the president during their "cancer on the presidency" conversation of March 21, 1973. This should not be a surprise. Mr. Dean's purpose here is to discredit the president and to deflect attention from his own role. In realizing this purpose, omission is a necessary tool. A number of assertions by Mr. Dean are demonstrably false. For example, he claims that he knew "almost nothing" about the Kissinger wiretaps prior to the president instructing him on April 16 that they were a national security matter not to be discussed. To the contrary, Mr. Dean was briefed on the details of the operation at a Feb. 29 meeting in his office with former FBI Associate Director William Sullivan. Mr. Dean says he was only "vaguely aware" of the June 23 meeting of H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman with CIA Director Richard Helms and Deputy Director Vernon Walters. This is strange since Mr. Dean proposed the meeting, and the effort to use the CIA to limit the FBI investigation was integral to Mr. Dean's containment strategy. Of marginal historic interest, Mr. Dean disavows any knowledge of the 1970 Huston Plan until after Huston left the White House staff in June 1971 and insists he did nothing to implement it although instructed by Haldeman to do so. Neither of these assertions is true. While Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr.'s reduction of the purpose of the Ervin Committee investigation to two questions may have appeared incisive at the time, three other questions have subsequently become critical to understanding the president's role in Watergate: From whom did he learn what he knew, how truthful was what he was told, and did he understand the significance of the information he was given? These questions can't be answered based solely on the transcripts. Much of the information the president received was hearsay: Mr. Dean told Mitchell who told Haldeman who told Nixon. Moreover, much of the information was vague, conflicting and filtered through the president's eagerness to hear what he wanted to hear. More critically, much of the information he was given was untruthful, deliberately shaded to mislead or maliciously designed to shift blame. Two things, however, are clear from these tapes: The president sought from the beginning to contain the political damage, and the president was badly served by his staff. Mr. Dean's book is agitprop, not history. Self-righteous and self-serving, this latest contribution to a 40-year misinformation campaign will gather dust on the shelves of Nixon-hating masochists. It is, as the title confirms, a work of deception: He affords Nixon no defense. His is a prosecutor's brief. There is, however, a credible defense of the president to be made — a defense which, while conceding the failures, is nuanced, fair and places Watergate in the larger context of the Nixon presidency. Such a defense will put Mr. Dean back where he belongs: at the center of scandals he orchestrated and in the pantheon of world-class snitches. Tom Huston served on the White House staff from Jan. 20, 1969, until June 18, 1971. From September 1970 until his departure, he was associate counsel to the president and a member of John Dean's staff. He is mentioned in the book.

From the article: Recently, I interviewed former CIA operative, Dr. Jim Garrow, on The Common Sense Show, and he stated that he had intelligence information that several malls were going to be attacked at the same time. Garrow’s warning predated the inundation of the fact that ISIS “is everywhere”. ISIS, a CIA creation, is being championed as both the planner and executioner of a series of false flag operations designed to enflame the American public to accept going into Syria. Doesn’t this just smell like post 9/11 America when we used the emotion of the event to sell the American people on the need to invade Iraq who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks? But the upcoming football season is looking mighty good and the average American can’t be bothered with events so far away. It won’t be until the country has their football game pre-empted by news that 1,000 malls have been attacked as per Jim Garrow. I have no doubt this is how WW III will commence. For 18 months, I have discussed all the ancillary variables which will comprise the coming war. In my next article, I will lay out the unfolding chronology of events in both the path to WW III and the course of the war itself. I would caution America to be mindful of the fact that ISIS is indeed everywhere, just like al-Qaeda was once everywhere, and that is because the CIA is everywhere! http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/08/21/the-goal-of-the-isis-psyops-is-world-war-iii/

I posted the above insightful article to pose the following query: Does the assassination of JFK in 1963 that was truly a seminal event fit into Anthony Sutton's Theory of Elite Action and if so, how?

Sutton’s Theory of Elite Action Posted on August 21, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog Preface by Washington’s Blog: While we frequently write about the deeper currents underlying world events - we know nothing about Anthony Sutton. But reader and guest poster D. Senti has a sent us a well-written piece summarizing Sutton’s theories … and their possible application to the ISIS jihad in the Middle East. Given that the first time we’ve heard Sutton’s theories is right now – when we read Mr. Senti’s post – count us as agnostic about the whole thing. However, this has enough of the “ring of truth” about it that we are amenable to considering the possibility. Guest post by D. Senti. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/suttons-theory-elite-action.html Background Antony Sutton is likely a familiar figure to those who peruse this site. For those who haven’t had the privilege to hear of him, Sutton was a well-respected establishment scholar for a time. He was a research Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford as well as a professor of economics. His career would have been unexceptional, were it not for two particular quirks: he chose to research the elite, and he was honest. Beginning with his analysis of Western involvement in the creation and support of the Soviet Union, he minced no words in accusing the most powerful families, bankers, and corporations of assisting Communism, Nazism, Socialism, and their own power over that of America’s self-interest. And more than that, he was exceedingly careful. He did not make accusations lightly, did not let his ideological views cloud his careful research methods, and was never afraid to say he didn’t know the answers when he lacked the resources to support a claim. In some ways, he is a “founding father” of the modern anti-statist movement. All of this, of course, made him persona non grata to the establishment, who admonished him frequently to back off lest his career suffer. He chose to leave the Hoover Institution in 1973, to continue his work unmolested, and published a number of books on the actions of elite families that sold quite well. His book on the Skull and Bones, which he considered his most important work, was a scathing indictment of the families at the heart and height of power; Sutton openly accused them of conspiracy, of playing the right and left against each other for their own gain, and of instigating war for the benefit of both their ambitions and the military-industrial complex. Ideology And what was the drive behind this? Was it blind power for power’s sake? If Sutton and others can say definitively that these families and organizations do not act based upon a left or right-wing ideology, then how could it be anything beyond self-interest? Yet Sutton had an answer to this: “Left” and “right” are artificial devices to bring about change, and the extremes of political left and political right are vital elements in a process of controlled change. The answer to this seeming political puzzle lies in Hegelian logic. Remember that both Marx and Hitler, the extremes of “left” and “right” presented as textbook enemies, evolved out of the same philosophical system: Hegelianism. The dialectical process did not originate with Marx as Marxists claim, but with Fichte and Hegel in late 18th and early 19th century Germany… This conflict of opposites is essential to bring about change. Today this process can be identified in the literature of the Trilateral Commission where “change” is promoted and “conflict management” is termed the means to bring about this change. The elite ascribe to a brand of Hegelianism, where the dialectical process brings about an ideal synthesis out of conflict. Hegel himself had strong statist streaks to his philosophy and approach, and his philosophy could be considered as actualization through contradiction. It bears a striking similarity to the gnostic traditions of chaos bringing about perfection by manifesting opposing forces. As the Enlightenment cults borrowed heavily from Gnosticism, both in their belief in an “enlightened few” and in the universe as self-ascending toward some quasi-divine perfection, it’s fitting that this dialectical process be the mentality of the elite. Indeed, one could argue that this whole approach is a product of their occult views, instead of merely being adapted to it. Those who aid this process – who move society toward its final actualization and unity – have a sort of “divine right” to rule by law of nature. This very line of thinking is the inspiration for the Communist Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and their “ends-justify-the-means” thinking for their cause. Sutton again: “Furthermore, the Illuminati principle that the end justifies the means, a principle that Quigley scores as immoral and used by both The Group and The Order, is rooted in Hegel.” Moral absolutes, to them, do not exist, except insofar as an action aids the inevitable course of history. To the elites, the inevitable course of history is a final synthesis of all contradicting political ideas: freedom and tyranny, individualism and collectivism, agency and slavery, and so on. It is in their view neither of these things. The final society transcends these things. What that means in short is simple. If you like any of the things on this list, the elites want them to go away and become merged with their contraries. And this process cannot be theoretical or abstract, no – all of these dialectical philosophers that Sutton mentions, from Hegel to Fichte to Marx to Engels – held that the abstract was meaningless of itself and only the first step in the process. It is the thesis or the abstract, which must be followed by the antithesis or negation, and then from conflict be synthesized or concretized into something greater. A Model So each idea, and its contrary, must be manifested really and separately from its contrary, and then forced into conflict. There is no way to “transcend” the Western model without creating a nation that is the antithesis of the Western model. For representation its enemy must substitute dictatorship; for freedom the enemy must enslave; for a theistic system of rights the enemy must have an atheist principle of amoral action. This was the USSR. And it too needed to be opposed in other ways, which necessitated Nazism. The conflict between these two would create a form of purer collectivism and Statism. After this, the Western liberal democracy must confront the collectivist system, and the victor in that conflict subsume the elements of the loser into itself. One could perhaps convincingly argue that China is a manifestation of the synthesis. This is not completed in any few number of steps, mind you. Anywhere that the elites can create antithesis and conflict, it believes it can “actualize” some element of human society, allowing it to manifest as the synthesis by which the problem is eventually solved. We see this very same approach being taken with Islam today. Everywhere that two groups of people can be brought to struggle against one another, the elites would argue for its merits. And by an astounding coincidence, these same people are positioned to profit immensely from it, both through financial and military systems. No doubt the Statist elements are incorporated into their final ideal vision will put them in positions of great power (especially since Statism is the only real consistent element of their proposed systems, both on the “left” and on the “right”). They work both sides. They foment the conflict. But they are not seeking a total conflagration, which would undermine their work; only war and conflict on a manageable scale. The development of nuclear weapons makes World War-style conflict very dangerous, so their approach has become regionalized. Until nuclear disarmament can be accomplished, that is. Sutton proposed this way of thinking as an explanation for the developments of modern history. The elites are not necessarily well-understood, according to him. There are people and groups and organizations whose motives and methods are not known, and perhaps there is even internal dissension between them. But their driving philosophy is clear: perfect the world through opposition and conflict. Promote their goals by a chain of influence, united by a small cadre with a core philosophy. They need not be presidents, premiers and prime ministers. They need only be considered their trusted advisors. I too am very much inclined to this way of thinking. The operations of the elite are self-interested, but only in the greater sense. They have worked toward consistent goals over timescales that surpass many lifetimes, which is the one thing pure narcissism is incapable of doing. They are selfless in the cause of their own collective selfishness, in a word, which requires some deep belief in the rightness of their cause. Whether the philosophy merely justifies the actions or the actions are driven by the philosophy, I can’t say. Sutton’s schema also allows for alternative views to be encompassed into our efforts. Any hope of opposing their efforts requires the broadest possible umbrella to envelope as many people who would be willing to join us. The best example that comes to my mind is, of course, 9/11. Under what I’ve labeled here “Sutton’s Theory of Elite Action,” (or STEA) 9/11 would like Pearl Harbor before it most certainly be attributed to the actions of the elite. But it can be understood in two senses. The traditional (anti-establishment) view is that people within our government actively assisted or outright ordered and carried out the attack, to excuse actions in the Middle East (for fun and profit, no doubt). This view is tenable under STEA, but the consequences are the same if you think their actions were more subtle. There is no doubt that we funded and supported terrorists in the Middle East. It was just as certain that these jihadists hated us, and that they would try to act against us if possible, and that we did virtually nothing to prevent terrorist action against the US. Any idiot with his eyes open could tell you that would end in tears. And those tears are exactly what the elite wanted. And if word reached US intelligence agencies that terrorists were about to attack, the message would simply have to be lost in transmission, or downplayed, or ignored. It is the very same tactic used by FDR to get the US into WW2: the Japanese needed American oil no matter the cost; FDR cut off supply to Japan at any price; the Japanese were forced to attack to hopefully gain leverage; FDR ignored reports of an incoming attack. Why send fake Japanese planes to attack Pearl Harbor when a few low-visibility actions can make them do it for you? It’s genius, albeit diabolical. So it’s enough for people to understand that the elite wanted a 9/11 and acted in such a way to make it happen. How they went about it is just squabbling over details. Past and Future The same picture is appearing today with ISIS. Those in power fomented conflict, created the conditions to strengthen jihadists, funded and armed these same people, and then departed for greener pastures. There are only two explanations here that make sense: either our leadership is so mind-numbingly incompetent that they need someone to dress them every morning, or they want this conflict. Sutton’s Theory of Elite Action could have tentative predictive power in this case. Sutton himself made some missteps, particularly regarding China (though he may just have been a few decades early in his predictions), so it’s by no means certain that their intentions can be understood beforehand. But STEA would predict that this is an effort to create a synthesis out of the divisions in Islamic society. By maximizing the strength of the jihadist element in Islam and forcing them into direct conflict with the Muslims of a more moderate bent (in spite of the Koran’s calls to violence, I might add), they believe they are providing the only true path for synthetic unity in the Middle East. No doubt this synthetic solution would then be positioned as an enemy against some other regional bloc. The EU is a perfect example. Europe was sorely divided along political and ideological lines. Sutton’s research shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the three competing ideologies of the 1940s (American-style socialism under FDR, Nazism under Hitler, and Communism under Stalin) were all established and supported by the core banking families, as well as other American and British corporations. Sutton: World War II was the culmination of the dialectic process created in the 1920s and 1930s. The clash between “left” and “right,” i.e., the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, led to creation of a synthesis – notably the United Nations, and a start towards regional groupings in the Common Market, COMECON, NATO, UNESCO, Warsaw Pact, SEATO, CENTO, and then the Trilateral Commission. A start towards New World Order. They built the Soviet factories for armament production, funded and stabilized the Reich, and propped up a fragile, newly-developing US political system. Only two theories here can fit the facts: pure sociopathic self-interest and the dialectical STEA. I believe the first is ruled out by multi-generational action along the same lines. It is, of course, possible that this situation or others have simply grown beyond their control. That risk is the nature of the beast. But the funny thing about true believers in a cause is that they’re predictable. ISIS is an organization run by men bent on restoring the Caliphate that crucifies their own jihadists for being too moderate and blows up Islamic holy sites. If ever there were a group fit for their dialectical purpose, it’s ISIS. They are absolutely guaranteed to antagonize every Muslim who is not a part of their particular brand of belief, which is exactly what the elite would need to create an Islamic synthesis. They only lacked money and armaments, yet lo and behold! The US government armed them and then abandoned oil-rich Iraq, leaving a vacuum of power. Again, is this unparalleled incompetence or design? There are no other viable options. (And all this is without mentioning how Fed action, among others, created the Arab Spring which plays perfectly into the pre-end times Islamic traditions, which is too much to explain here.) So STEA could perhaps make the following prediction: the Middle East is about to see the regional equivalent of World War II. And the timing could not be more fortuitous. The (alleged) actions of Iran have spooked enough countries into pursuing their own nuclear ambitions, which would render the Middle East too volatile for dialectical synthesis. If they were going to act, it had to be now. If I had to summarize Sutton’s Theory of Elite Action in a paragraph, I would explain it just so: The powerful elite families, consisting of bankers, a few powerful businessmen, and second-level politicians, have an end goal of a unified Statist society. They operate through a chain of influence and a number of closed-door organizations to impose their ideas on society by controlling key positions of power. Using the dialectic method of Hegel, Marx, Fichte and Engels, they foment conflict by funding and arming antithetical organizations to create a synthetic unity, as seen in the EU. This process will continue – thesis, antithesis, synthesis – on greater scales until a one world Statist system is established, or they are stopped. To many this may seem simple and even obvious. But the ideological framework provided by Sutton allows us to understand the actions of the elite with greater precision. I’ve posted this, above all, in hopes of facilitating discussion and opening up a wider, more welcoming umbrella for anti-Statists to gather under. The above has been proposed and extensively researched by Sutton (and others) to the degree that most honest parties should see its truth. If they don’t, I think they must be either ill-informed (and likely new to the cause) or believe our leaders to be spectacularly incompetent. (All quotes are taken from Antony Sutton’s “America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones“) [And see this interview.]