Douglas Caddy

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY MONTH OF THE MURDER OF JFK: SOME THOUGHTS

November 2, 2013

By Joseph P. Farrell

I must confess, I enter the blogging phase for the month of November, 2013, with reluctance and trepidation, for as most know, this month, and the 22nd of this month, is the 50th anniversary of the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I did not suspect, that as a boy of six, home sick from school that Friday, that I would literally watch a president be murdered, and later that weekend, his alleged assassin’s murder. I did not suspect that, fifty years later, I would be writing this blog, and series of blogs, on the implications of that event, for the continued deterioration of American society, culture, and what remains of civil political discourse.

There remain those in America that, in all honesty and sincerity, still believe the official story. I have no quarrel with them, nor even with the more sinister shills in public life who still promote the official version in spite of the mountain of evidence that it was, and was intended to be, a tapestry of lies and coverups. To make my own position clear, I am on of the growing majority of Americans who believe there was a conspiracy to murder the president that day, one going very deep, and embracing a multitude of factional interests. I am also one, within that group, of a smaller subset of people who believe essentially that a coup d’etat was staged that day, and that on that day, an oligarchy took open control of the instrumentalities of power, and has not relinquished them since. Or rather, it reasserted its privileged position in the face of an administration that threatened to unseat it.

The implications of the coup hypothesis are, however, deep and profound, for ultimately, one of them is that the unresponsiveness of government institutions to the genuine wishes of the people can be rationalized: that non-responsiveness is the result of an oligarchical system, of a deep state that saw its privileged position threatened by the Kennedy Administration. There were, of course, scandals and deeply divisive issues in prior American history. One need only think of the populist movement, the election of 1896, and its ultimate denouement with the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the IRS in 1913. There was the infamous Teapot Dome scandal.

But the Kennedy assassination is different, for the reasons of what followed, the infamous and egregious examples of the fallout and blowback from that event. It qualitatively changed this country and its political culture profoundly for the worse. The prelude was Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex. The climax was Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963. The aftermath has been Watergate, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Nugan-Hand, the Savings and Loan Scandal, Waco, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, and, of course, 9/11. All are manifestations of a covert culture of power and covert operations, of government by gunshot and and false flag ops. And the first shot, literally, in that transformation of the republic into an oligarchical state run by technocrats, military men, intelligence agency gurus, and financial paper shufflers and secret bookkeeping. When the ugly threat to promoted memes and oligarchical agendas occasionally occurs, that threat is removed. By scandal if possible, by “wet measures” if necessary. One can think of the more-than-suspicious deaths of US Senator Paul Wellstone(D-Minnesota), of Congressmen Begich(D-Alaska), Long(D-Louisiana), not to mention, of course, the murder of Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King. And on and on one could go.

Having been a boy when it happened, the event has stuck with me all my life. I remember Lyndon Johnson being sworn in, I remember Lee Harvey Oswald being murdered on TV while Ike Pappas, the CBS news journalist reported, stunned, on the event. I remember when the Warren Commission Report was excerpted in our local newspaper, with its cute diagram of the “Magic Bullet.” I remember thinking we are being lied to, that something was deeply wrong.

Above all, I remember the comments of my family and its friends: no one… absolutely no one in my family or its circle of friends believed the official story. A kind of sullen gloom descended for days. There were discussions around the kitchen table with friends over games of cards. The concensus? All agreed the truth would never come out completely, and the reason why was that a fundamental change had occurred in the nature of government.

Happily, fifty years has proven at least a part of that prognosis untrue. The truth has come out due to the tireless and dogged research of literally hundreds of people who knew they were being lied to. Most people now believe the assassination was the work of a conspiracy. What most do not yet realize, are the deep connections of that event, via the same factions and interests of the deep state, to the other scandals that have been a feature of American governance and its “scandal per decade” since then. The only thing that has not changed is that the same corruption persist and has only deepened its divisive grip on the country. That grip tightened on Nov 22, 1963, to be sure. It has tightened even more in the decades since. But it is not yet total, nor complete.

That’s why the Kennedy assassination still matters. And that’s why it matters to drill home, over and over again, to all those who will listen, that it was the work of a massive conspiracy. Because once that is understood, people will start to understand why the system is so broken.

See you on the flip side.

Read more: THE 50th ANNIVERSARY MONTH OF THE MURDER OF JFK: SOME THOUGHTS
- Giza Death Star Community

Who shot JFK? Ask the man who was there

Fifty years on, the one reporter who saw President John F Kennedy assassinated, Lee Harvey Oswald arrested and Jack Ruby open fire talks about what happened

By Nigel Richardson

8:26PM GMT 01 Nov 2013

The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10420732/Who-shot-JFK-Ask-the-man-who-was-there.html

This is how fate works. Hugh Aynesworth was a 32-year-old reporter with the Dallas Morning News when President John F Kennedy came to town on November 22 1963 – 50 years ago this month. That morning, feeling miffed that he wasn’t assigned to cover the story, Aynesworth finished his breakfast in the newspaper canteen – where, incidentally, a fellow diner was a well-known police groupie and Dallas low-life called Jack Ruby – and decided to stroll the four blocks to Dealey Plaza to see the presidential motorcade pass “because you don’t see a president every day, you know”.

When the first shot rang out, he thought it was a motorcycle backfiring – there were plenty of police motorcycles around that day. “But the second and third shots were very clearly the whine of rifle shots,” he remembers. In the few seconds it took to assassinate a president, an era was defined – and Aynesworth’s life became enmeshed in it forever, as he explains to me in an interview at his home in Dallas.

For once, the phrase “eyewitness to history” is not overblown. Aynesworth is the only reporter who was present at all the key moments: the shooting of the president; the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald; and the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in a love-hate relationship with that fact and now, at 82, he is facing his own stock-taking as Dallas prepares to commemorate a painful anniversary.

Back then, Aynesworth recalls, the city was a stronghold of “red-meat and wing-nut conservatism”; Kennedy, the modernising East Coast Democrat, was viscerally loathed and there was “bitter vitriol” in the air in the run-up to his visit. Locals are quick to point out that, half a century on, there are few people living there now who were around then, that the city that killed a president is a changed, cosmopolitan place (with a population that is more than 40 per cent Hispanic).

Dallas prefers to boast of its football team, the world-famous Dallas Cowboys, of its 160 museums and art galleries, and the 18 Fortune 500 companies (America’s richest corporations) that have chosen to call it home – even if there is inescapable irony in its current marketing slogan: “Big things happen here”.

Aynesworth has chosen not to attend the commemoration in Dealey Plaza on November 22 – a ticket-only event for 5,000 people that will take place in a security lock‑down – fearing that “something embarrassing” will happen (by which he means that a conspiracy nut will pull a stunt. “What would be the greatest thing for someone trying to sell a book? To get arrested by the Dallas police.”)

But he has finally made his peace with fate by writing a book of his own for a modest local imprint, entitled November 22, 1963: Witness to History. It concurs with the conclusion of the 1964 Warren Commission report that there was only one shooter, Oswald, and no plot involving the mob, Vice President Johnson, Fidel Castro, J Edgar Hoover or the man in the moon, and that Oswald and Ruby were complete strangers. If that’s an unpromising standpoint from a marketing point of view – a poll earlier this year found that 59 per cent of Americans still believe Oswald didn’t act alone – the book has two rare qualities in JFK assassination literature: authority and integrity.

The taxi driver who drove me out to Aynesworth’s discreetly affluent neighbourhood (George W Bush lives nearby) was from Togo, West Africa. He was 11 at the time of the Kennedy assassination and, like practically everyone in the world then alive and sentient, he remembers it well: the day off school that it procured, the sense of disbelief.

In the intervening years, Aynesworth has struggled not to be defined by this single event. But its enormity has defeated him. “I’ve done so many other things, covered so much,” he says of a distinguished career in investigative reporting across national newspapers, magazines and television (he has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist four times). “But I don’t know. [The Kennedy assassination] changed me because everybody, when they hear my name, they connect me to that story.”

“I think it changed him irrevocably,” says Paula, his wife, as she brings us iced teas in their front room and shoos away the cat. “It’s an odd thing, a very odd thing. Weird, that he was there in so many places.”

Or you could call it reporter’s luck. It took a few seconds, he says, for his instincts to kick in after the echoes of the shots faded and pandemonium broke out around him in Dealey Plaza. Then, realising there had been an assassination attempt, he requisitioned a novelty pencil from a little boy (giving the lad two quarters for it), found two utility bills in his pocket to write on, and he was in business.

Aynesworth was the first reporter to interview the most important witness of all, a pipe-fitter called Howard Brennan who was standing across Houston Street from him, facing the Texas School Book Depository, when the shots were fired at 12.30pm. “He had his hard hat with him. And he was scared to death. He said, 'I saw him up there in the window! He’s right up there!’ ”

Brennan’s description of the suspect he had seen in the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository formed the basis of the APB (all points bulletin) broadcast on police radios 15 minutes later, and picked up by Patrolman JD Tippit in the Oak Cliff area of the city. Tippit approached a man who answered the description and the man – who was indeed Oswald – shot and killed him.

Aynesworth heard of Tippit’s murder on the radio of a police motorcycle parked outside the Book Depository and immediately suspected a connection with what had just happened in Dealey Plaza (“It was good reasoning for a change,” he says modestly). This hunch took him to the scene of the Tippit shooting, where he learnt from another overheard report, on an FBI man’s radio, that the suspect had entered the Texas Theater cinema a few blocks away.

Here it was, as a film called War is Hell flickered in the background, that Aynesworth came face to face with Lee Harvey Oswald. He saw Oswald pull his .38 on Officer Nick McDonald, who managed to get his hand in the firing mechanism to jam it, then Kennedy’s assassin was jumped on by five or six policemen. “They knocked him down and that’s when he got the cut on his face. But he fought pretty good for a little guy.”

The next time Aynesworth saw Oswald was two days later in the basement of City Hall (the Dallas Police HQ), where he was being moved to the county jail. “I was about as far as from here to the swimming pool” – he points through the window to the garden beyond. “No, not that far, 15 feet maybe. People were in front of me but I saw Ruby lunge forward, I heard the pop – one shot.”

That shot from Ruby’s Colt Cobra is the full stop on an extraordinary 48‑hour narrative with which Aynesworth is uniquely associated. But his story did not end there. Over the 50 years since, he has gone deep into the background to events, getting to know Oswald’s widow, Marina (with whom he is still in touch: the most surreal moment of our interview is when he plays back her Russian-accented voice on his telephone answering machine), the Ruby family and many witnesses, and running down “oh gosh, dozens and dozens of conspiracy theories”.

Watching fruitcakes and frauds get rich peddling hokum to an eager world (he reserves special contempt for the Oliver Stone film JFK) has been tough for him.

“The only lucrative business from a reporting standpoint has been conspiracy,” he said. “For every book that tells the exact truth, or tries to, there are 25 conspiracy books.”

But he has always refused to make a killing from the killing. “Who do you think, given my background, would like to 'solve’ the assassination more than me? God! All I can say is, there’s not one scintilla of evidence to the contrary [that both Oswald and Ruby acted alone].”

“He’s a beautifully humble man,” chips in Paula. “If he was a xxxx, he’d be so rich.”

Aynesworth’s conclusion should be the final word on the events of half a century ago, but he knows it never will be. “We all love a conspiracy. No one wants to believe two nobodies could change the course of world history. But they did."

Tabloid Hacked Prince Harry’s Phone, Jury Is Told

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: November 1, 2013

The New York Times

• LONDON — The tabloid The News of the World, now defunct, hacked into Prince Harry’s cellphone in 2005 to write an article about how he had sought help from his private secretary, a former member of the military, to prepare a term paper for officers’ school at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the jury in Britain’s phone hacking trial heard on Friday.

The young prince was seeking help for a paper on the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London. He asked his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, a former Special Air Service officer who trained at Sandhurst: “Just wondering if you have any info at all on siege on the Iranian Embassy because I need to write an essay quite quickly on that. I need some inf. Have most of the stuff but if you have extra.”

Help in doing academic work is a violation of academy rules, but there were few repercussions for the prince, now 29 and a helicopter gunner with the British Army.

A prosecutor, Andrew Edis, read the transcript of the voice mail message and said the newspaper article was “based entirely” on it, although, he told the jury, the editors were careful that the article not be too specific, in an effort to disguise how the information had been obtained.

The transcript was taken from Clive Goodman, the former royal editor of The News of the World, who was jailed over phone hacking in 2007 and lost his job. He apparently kept the document as part of a suit he filed against the newspaper, in which he claimed that senior editors supported his actions.

The message was taken from Prince Harry’s phone by a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who was also jailed over phone hacking in 2007. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the newspaper and has pleaded guilty to additional charges of phone hacking.

Mr. Edis, who is laying out the prosecution’s case before presenting evidence, said Andy Coulson, one of the tabloid’s senior editors, and Mr. Goodman had discussed how to publish the article about Prince Harry’s seeking help from his secretary without revealing how they learned of it. They decided not to refer to the siege itself, because it would be “too precise to get through unnoticed,” the prosecutor said.

Mr. Edis also said Mr. Coulson had emailed a journalist at the tabloid to order him to “do” a celebrity’s phone, telling the jury that it would have to decide what the verb meant. The celebrity in question was the son of a famous soccer player, George Best.

The prosecution is trying to prove that the eight defendants, among them Mr. Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, another senior editor at The News of The World, are guilty of crimes that include conspiracy to violate privacy and to suborn officials by paying them. In one instance, Mr. Coulson is said to have told Mr. Goodman to pay 1,000 pounds in cash to a policeman for a copy of the royal telephone directory.

Mr. Edis claims that the acts of News of the World journalists could not have been unknown or unapproved by their senior editors. Journalists at the newspaper, he said, used phone hacking as a “perfectly rational but entirely illegal” way of finding and substantiating stories about the rich and famous.

Daily Mail

November 1, 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2480374/The-secret-life-JFK-assassin-Lee-Harvey-Oswalds-widow-Marina.html

Andy Coulson told news editor of Calum Best story: 'do his phone'

Jury in phone-hacking trial told of methods News of the World journalists allegedy used to substantiate celebrity stories

• Lisa O'Carroll and Caroline Davies
• theguardian.com, Friday 1 November 2013 08.28 EDT

Andy Coulson instructed a senior executive on his newspaper to try to substantiate a tip-off about George Best's son by telling him to "do his phone", the jury in the phone-hacking trial was told by the prosecution as the case entered its third day.

The then editor of the News of the World wrote the three words in an email dated 20 May 2006, according to the crown, as the newspaper sought to establish whether it was true that Calum Best was about to become a father. The email was a reference to a discussion Coulson was having with Ian Edmondson, the tabloid's then news editor, over the possibility that Best had become suspicious that the paper was on to him.

"They were concerned about leaks, Calum might leak their story to the competition," said Andrew Edis QC, for the prosecution, on Friday. No evidence has been put before the jury that his phone was hacked at that time.

Both Coulson and Edmondson have been charged with a conspiracy to intercept mobile phone messages while they were at the News of the World. Both deny the charges.

Calum Best: the News of the World was attempting to stand up a story that he had become a father, the jury heard. Photograph: Piers Allardyce/Rex Features

Journalists at the News of the World also hacked the phone of a special adviser to Charles Clarke to try to stand up an untrue story she was having an affair with the then education secretary, the jury was told.

Hannah Pawlby was put under surveillance by the newspaper, and her voicemail messages listened to by the newspaper's £92,000-a-year hacker Glenn Mulcaire, the prosecution said.

Coulson, the then editor of the Sunday tabloid, sought to speak to Clarke. The minister denied the story, said Edis.

"They were chasing a shadow. But they were chasing it keenly and it was Mr Coulson who was chasing it," the QC added.

The prosecutor said the tip to the newspaper had originally come from a Westminster source. In an attempt to stand it up, the journalists at the paper used "three ways to investigate: phone hacking, surveillance and confrontation," the QC said.

"The editor is personally involved in the third. It's obvious he knew about the second, he must do. What about the first? Does he know about phone hacking? He says not. We say 'oh yes he does'. They are working as a team and he's the boss of the team," Edis told the jury.

The story was not true and never appeared.

Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills: had their phones hacked for years, the jury was told. Photograph: Todd Williamson/FilmMagic

Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills had their phones hacked by News of the World journalists for years, the jury also heard.

Edis said the crown had evidence that the hacking had started when the newspaper published a "wedding ring" story in 2002 and carried on until at least 2004 when Edmondson, the then head of news, joined the paper.

"Paul McCartney and Heather Mills were the subject of phone hacking for years. I refer you back to the wedding ring story in 2002," said Edis pointing the jury to a timeline in his opening statement. "[They were] still hacking when Edmonson joined the paper," he added.

Edis said Edmondson "tasked Mr Mulcaire in relation to Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills".

The Old Bailey jury heard earlier in the trial that Brooks, who was succeeded as News of the World editor by Coulson in January 2003, once told the former wife of golfer Colin Montgomerie how easy it was to hack mobile phone voicemail. The jury was told that Brooks gave the example of a story involving McCartney and Mills rowing over an engagement ring.

On Friday the jury was told that Edmondson, who has been charged with a conspiracy to hack mobile phones, tasked Mulcaire on many occasions to eavesdrop on messages of celebrities including Jude Law, his partner Sadie Frost and Sienna Miller. Edmondson was not in court on Friday after being given leave by Mr Justice Saunders not to attend every day.

Also allegedly hacked on the instructions of Edmondson was Mark Oaten, a prominent Liberal Democrat MP in 2006.

Jude Law and his former girlfriend Sienna Miller: also allegedly targeted by News of the World journalists. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

The names of several other alleged victims of phone hacking were read to the jury. They included Best, Law, Frost, Miller, Oaten, Sven Goran Eriksson, Sir Paul McCartney and his then wife Heather Mills, singer Kerry Katona, the Duchess of Cornwall's son Tom Parker Bowles, and some members of the royal household staff.

Edis told the jury journalists at the News of the World used phone hacking as a "perfectly rational but entirely illegal" way of checking the truth of potential news stories.

Coulson, former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, ex-News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner and former news editor Ian Edmondson all deny conspiring with others to hack phones between 3 October 2000 and 9 August 2006.

Brooks, whom the jury has been told had a six-year affair with Coulson between 1998 and 2004, also denies two counts of conspiring with others to commit misconduct in public office.

Coulson is also facing two allegations he conspired with former royal editor Clive Goodman and others to commit misconduct in public office.

Brooks also faces two allegations of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, one with her former personal assistant Cheryl Carter, and the second with her husband Charles and the head of security at News International, Mark Hanna.

All deny the charges.

The case continues.

Phone hacking jury told Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson had six-year affair

Relationship covers much of period editors are said to have been involved in criminal conspiracy to hack phones

Rebekah Brooks had a secret affair for at least six years with Andy Coulson, her successor as editor of the News of the World, it emerged at the Old Bailey on Thursday.

The jury in the phone-hacking trial was told that the clandestine relationship took place between 1998 and 2004, covering much of the period when Brooks and Coulson are said to have been involved in a criminal conspiracy to hack phones.

Andrew Edis QC, for the crown, said the revelation was not designed to invade their privacy but to help the prosecution demonstrate that they had a deeply trusting relationship during their period working together at the News of the World.

The existence of the relationship was discovered after police found a letter from Brooks to Coulson dated February 2004.

"What Mr Coulson knew, Mrs Brooks knew too and what Mrs Brooks knew, Mr Coulson knew too, that is the point. Because it's clear from that letter as at February 2004 they had been having an affair which had lasted at least six years. So that takes us right back to 1998 which is the whole conspiracy period," Edis told the jury.

Brooks edited the News of the World between 2000 and 2003, before moving on to edit the Sun. Coulson was her deputy at the Sunday newspaper, stepping up to become editor on her departure to the daily title.

Brooks married actor Ross Kemp in 2002, having been in a long term relationship with him for several years previously. They separated in 2006 and were divorced in 2009. She went on to marry Charlie Brooks, who is also on trial with Rebekah for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Coulson married his wife Eloise in 2000.

Edis explained that the letter had been found on a computer when the Met police investigating the phone-hacking scandal in 2011 searched her home. "A computer was found in a cupboard in Mrs Brooks's London address and it was examined. On it was found a Word document written by her to Mr Coulson.

"It seems to be in February 2004 and it was written undoubtedly to Mr Coulson. Whether it was ever sent or received by him we do not know, because the evidence is the document on the computer," Edis told the jury.

The court heard that the letter – apparently written by Brooks in response to Coulson trying to end the affair – included a declaration of her love for her colleague.

Edis said the letter was "intelligent" and "well written" and appeared to have been written after Coulson "was seeking to break off the affair".

It was "perfectly obvious from the letter that this cause her a great deal of grief", Edis said.

The prosecutor added that he would only read out the last part of the letter and there was no way of knowing if it had been sent or received.

Brooks wrote: "Finally, the least of my worries, but how do we then work this new relationship? There are hundreds of things which have happened since Saturday that I would normally share with you."

She continued: "Most important, the fact is you are my best my friend. I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you. We laugh and cry together. In fact, without our relationship in my life I'm really not sure I will cope."

Brooks went onto say: "The thought of finding out anything about you from someone else fills me with absolute dread."

The jury heard that Brooks talked about how their new future relationship would work, asking if she should email "if anything important happens".

She added: "I don't understand this, we are either there for each other or we are not.

"How will this work for you? Do we limit contact until we absolutely have to?"

Edis told jurors he was not revealing the affair to deliberately intrude into their privacy or to make a "moral judgment," before giving his reasons for its disclosure.

"But Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson are charged with conspiracy and, when people are charged with conspiracy, the first question a jury has to answer is how well did they know each other? How much did they trust each other?

"And the fact that they were in this relationship which was a secret means that they trusted each other quite a lot with at least that secret and that's why we are telling you about it."

He said the revelation was likely to attract a "great deal of publicity" and may draw some "unfair, unkind and unnecessary" comment.

Mr Edis had told the jury that the letter contained a "revelation" that needed to be put to the jury as an important part of the prosecution's evidence. He introduced the sensitive matter by saying: "I want to tell you about something that I want to handle as carefully as I can."

Poster's note: A real "conspiracy?" Is the New York Times actually using that word? Ah, but only with the British hacking trial, not with the assassination of JFK.

By STEVEN ERLANGER and ALAN COWELL

Vince:

Is this film, which is being touted a lot on Facebook, the real thing or a hoax?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XY02Qkuc_f8

Doug

Phone-hacking trial: three ex-News of the World staff plead guilty

Prosecution reveals news editors admitted charges as it outlines case against Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and others

Three former News of the World employees have pleaded guilty to phone hacking charges, an Old Bailey jury was told this afternoon, as part of the opening of the trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, Brooks's husband and four other former employees of the now closed Sunday newspaper.

The crown prosecutor revealed that the individuals had already pleaded guilty at an earlier stage in proceedings, as he outlined to the court that News of the World was at the centre of three criminal conspiracies dating back to the year 2000, involving the two former editors.

Andrew Edis QC said that those pleading guilty were former News of the World news editors Neville Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw and James Weatherup. The court also heard that the private investigator contracted by the newspaper to undertake the alleged hacking, Glenn Mulcaire, had pleaded guilty.

But the prosecuting counsel told the jury that journalism was not on trial. "There is no justification of any kind for journalists for getting involved in phone hacking. That is an intrusion into people's privacy which is against the law," Edis said. "The prosecution says that journalists are no more entitled to break the law than anyone else," he added.

Edis told the court that the criminal activity was discovered as a result of a police investigation into the paper in 2011 following the revelation that the telephone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler "had been hacked by somebody acting on behalf of the News of the World".

The prosecuting counsel told the jury that "the events were very big at the time" but that they must put what they remember about them "out of their mind" and try the case on the evidence that they heard.

Edis also told them they did not have to remember everything they heard during his opening. "This is not a memory test, it's a long trial," he said referring to the estimated five to six months allotted for the case. "There are three types of criminal behaviour alleged here," Edis told the jury.

The jury heard that the first centred on alleged phone hacking conducted by a private investigator hired by the paper, Glenn Mulcaire, "who was very good finding out personal codes" which were used to access other people's voicemails remotely.

"Mr Mulcaire was very good indeed at getting the codes for people's phones and therefore able to get into other people's messages. It was very useful," Edis said.

He added that Mulcaire's activities helped the tabloid prove the truth of news under investigation such as affairs of people they were interesting in writing about.

The second conspiracy centred on paying "public officials, civil servants, police officers, soldiers" for confidential information, Edis said.

The third type of criminal behaviour related to an alleged conspiracy to pervert the course of justice when the investigation into the paper was ongoing in July 2011. Some of the people on trial, Edis said, were "secretly trying to prevent information coming to the attention of the police".

The crown opened its case to the jury of nine women and three men by identifying the location of the eight defendants in the dock at the back of court 12 starting with Ian Edmondson, the former head of news at the Sunday newspaper, who sat closest to the door.

Next to him was Brooks, the former chief executive of News International and a former editor of the News of the World and the Sun who is facing five charges spanning a decade linked to all three conspiracies – the conspiracy to intercept mobile telephone voice messages, a conspiracy to corrupt public officials by paying them for information and a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. On her left sat Coulson, another former News of the World editor, who took on the job after Brooks.

Next to him was a seat for a fourth defendant Stuart Kuttner, the paper's former managing editor. Both Coulson and Kuttner are facing charges linked to a phone-hacking conspiracy.

The Sunday paper's former royal editor, Clive Goodman, was next in the row of eight, and faces a charge of conspiring to cause misconduct in public office by offering money to public officials for information.

Next to him in the dock was Rebekah Brooks's former personal assistant Cheryl Carter and her husband Charlie Brooks, who are facing charges linked to perverting the course of justice.

The final defendant is the then News International head of security, Mark Hanna, who also faces charges linked to perverting the course of justice.

Notebooks belonging to Rebekah Brooks, and computers and other material which could have been relevant to the phone hacking inquiry were hidden from police investigating it, the jury was told.

Material was removed from Brooks's London and Gloucestershire homes immediately before the News of the World was shut down in 2011 in the wake of allegations that Dowler's phone had been hacked, Edis said.

"It wasn't a secret that there was an investigation going on and by July of 2011 when the Milly Dowler allegation was being made, there was a great storm of publicity," Edis added.

The prosecution said there was "quite a complicated little operation" to hide material from the police who were investigating.

Edis said it was also alleged that Brooks asked Carter to remove her "journalistic notebooks" from the News International archive, where they were being stored.

"They were got out of the archive on the Friday before the last edition of the News of the World was published," he said, adding that the notebooks had "disappeared ... The police would have wanted to know what was in those notebooks."

Edis added that Brooks, her husband Charlie, and security official Hanna had "ensured that material the police would have wanted – computers, documents, things like that – were carried out of the Brooks's country home in Gloucestershire and taken to News International offices in Wapping".

"On their way or as part of the same operation, material was collected from their London flat and taken to the same place."

He said one might imagine that material would be "directly relevant to the police inquiry".

"Quite a complicated operation was set up to prevent that happening, which was discovered as a result of an accident which was rather bad luck for those conspirators involved." Edis said he would give more details later, but said that the circumstances were "quite memorable".

Earlier Edis said the prosecution case was that "people in charge of the purse strings" at the News of the World knew about phone hacking. "We say we will be able to show that there was phone hacking at the News of the World. That Glenn Mulcaire did it. That Clive Goodman did it, and that Ian Edmondson did it."

The case continues.

Phone-hacking jury warned of prejudice risk in trial of Brooks and Coulson

British justice also on trial, says judge as he tells jurors to ignore comments they may come across in all media

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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/29/rebekah-brooks-phone-hacking-uk-justice-trial-andy-coulson

The jury in the News of the World phone-hacking trial has been told that British justice is on trial in addition to Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and their co-defendants.

Mr Justice Saunders told the jury of nine women and three men at the Old Bailey in London that the case had attracted "perhaps an unprecedented amount of publicity" across all media, and that some content, particularly on the internet, was inaccurate, offensive, demeaning and ill-informed.

Saunders said some of the eight defendants were well known public figures and some had been written about on social media, but he directed the jurors to ignore comments they may come across during the trial, which is expected to last up to six months. The prosecution is expected to open its case at 2pm on Wednesday.

He drew particular attention to the latest issue of Private Eye published on Tuesday. Shortly after being sworn in, the jury was shown the magazine. "It bears a picture of Rebekah Brooks on the cover. It's meant to be satire. You ignore it," Saunders said. "It has no serious input and it's not relevant to your consideration. It's one of those things which you will have to ignore – a joke, that in the circumstances of today is a joke in especially bad taste."

The cover was referred to the attorney general Dominic Grieve. His spokesman said: "The front cover of the current edition of Private Eye has been brought to the attention of the attorney general, but it has been decided that proceedings for a potential contempt of court are not required in this case."

Saunders stressed that his directions to the jury were extremely important because they raised a concern about what jurors would read on the internet, which was outside the British judicial system. "In a way, it is not only the defendants who are on trial but British justice is on trial," he said.

He directed the jury not to discuss the case with others, not to look up back editions of newspapers, not to look up anything on the internet and not to look up anything at all to do with the case, those involved and the witnesses. "It is absolutely vital that you try this case solely on the evidence and arguments that you hear in court. There has been a great deal of publicity, perhaps an unprecedented amount which amongst other things concerns phone hacking at the News of the World," Saunders said.

"A significant amount of speculation has been inaccurate and misleading," he told the jury. "As you will appreciate, the role of juror is vital, it is essential – essential – that you put all that material that you may have become aware of before the trial out of your mind."

He warned jurors about blogs by "well known actors, musicians, politicians and others", saying they were "on topics about which they know very little". Saunders said: "It is very much hoped that they will not do so [blog] the trial and they may well be breaking the law if they do so and I hope appropriate [action] will be taken against them if they do [blog]."

He said jurors who breached his directions could face a contempt of court action and be punished by a fine or imprisonment. Trials in the past have sometimes have had to be abandoned because jurors disobeyed the judge's directions, he added.

Saunders said he was not going to order the jurors "not to go on to Facebook or any social media for the duration of the trial" but "I urge you to consider whether you ought to" and said they should avoid reading comment on the trial.

Brooks, the former News International chief executive, and Coulson, the former Downing Street communications director, are former News of the World editors and the most well known figures in the trial.

They are facing a variety of charges including conspiracy to listen to mobile phone voicemails of politicians, celebrities and others, conspiring to commit misconduct in public office and authorising payments to public officials, a charge also faced by the paper's former royal correspondent Clive Goodman.

Brooks faces a charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice with her husband, Charlie, an allegation also faced by her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, and News International's head of security, Mark Hanna.

Stuart Kuttner, former managing editor of the News of the World, and Ian Edmondson, the paper's former head of news, are accused of being involved in the alleged phone hacking conspiracy.

All eight have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The jury heard that Kuttner would not be required to attend the trial every day because he had "a history of heart attacks" and "a brain stem stroke".

“Nov. 22, 1963: Fifty years later, and still no conspiracy”

Los Angeles Times

October 27, 2013

By Richard M. Mosk

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mosk-warren-commission-kennedy-assassination-20131027,0,4165051.story#axzz2j8HEyKdC

Note: This is an important article by a former staff member of the Warren Commission. Because I had exhausted my monthly allotted free reading of articles on the LA Times, I went to Google and found the article there and copied the link. Hopefully the link is working here for forum members.

The assassination of J.F.K., fifty years later

by Adam Gopnik November 4, 2013

The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/11/04/131104crbo_books_gopnik?currentPage=all

Olney Conference of Experts on JFK assassination

Olney, Illinois

October 25-26, 2013

http://www.olneydailymail.com/article/20131025/NEWS/131029499?tag=1

Alex Jones interviews Jim Marrs today on the JFK assassination

http://alexjones.co/essence-of-the-jfk-assassination-the-coup-against-america/

This is a wide-ranging interview that covers a number of topics, including the assassination, and is worth the time invested in viewing it.

Chris,

I've read that some clandestine photos of Oswald (not those taken of the infamous Mexico City Mystery Man or Mystery Men) were taken outside of one of the embassies.

I'm going from memory here, but I think I read that one of the photos showed Oswald's face in profile.

The photos I'm talking about never made it into the public domain, and they are obviously not the same ones that the article is referring to.

--Tommy

Tommy,

I've heard the same thing somewhere but usually brought up within within some LN counterargument with a <shrug> as to why such a piece of evidence (that is a LN'er wet dream) wouldn't be made public.

If it were real, the only logic I can come up for it's disappearance is that it was destroyed in the same manner as Hosty's note in a panic soon after the assassination. Speaking of Hosty's note...

Tom Johnson, a former LBJ press secretary, related the story of how the FBI had destroyed after the assassination a letter delivered to its Dallas office from Oswald and covered this for years thereafter.

Douglas,

Isn't this really old news? One panelist suggested that the note contained a threat to "blow up" the FBI office if they didn't stop harassing Marina. This is completely disingenuous because it's not what Hosty testified to in his statement. The fact is that we don't know what was on the note but we can speculate and whatever it said, it was not something the FBI wanted to come out.

Their excuse that it was an embarrassment, that it revealed contact between the FBI and Oswald before the assassination is ridiculous because their visits to Oswald's home were going to be revealed anyway.

I suspect it has to do with Oswald's role as an informant and that is the really explosive information that had to be suppressed.

All this is old news to us. But 75 percent of Americans alive today were not alive when JFK was killed. It is new news to them. I hope the mass media in the coming weeks brings forth information of the assassination that may be old news to us but a revelation to others.

The average listener to Face The Nation took away three things that are important in my opinion:

Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal said, paraphrasing, that it is amazing that 50 years later we are still learning new information about the Kennedy assassination.

Tom Johnson, a former LBJ press secretary, related the story of how the FBI had destroyed after the assassination a letter delivered to its Dallas office from Oswald and covered this for years thereafter.

Finally, author Philip Shenon and Bob Schieffer discussed how dysfunctional the Warren Commission was with only three members actively participating and with a staff comprised of young personnel who had no idea what they were up against in dealing with the cover-ups being perpetrated by the CIA and FBI.

How often does one hear fascinating stuff like this on one of the three major networks?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57609489/new-book-reveals-how-much-fbi-cia-knew-about-oswald-before-kennedy-assassination/

Here is the interview on today's Face the Nation. Fascinating stuff.

Douglas,

Do you think Oswald killed Kennedy?

--Tommy

I have never held myself out to be an expert on the Kennedy assassination. My depth of knowledge is not great in contrast to many of the true experts in the forum who have a detailed grasp of the topic, such as William Kelly, James Richards, Pat Speer and Robert Morrow, to single out only four among many forum members whose credibility is recognized.

Based on what I have learned and do know, my answer to your question is no. I think it was a well thought out conspiracy to kill the President and Oswald was groomed to be the patsy, the fall guy.

As I wrote in a prior forum topic some time ago, at the time of the assassination I was working in the New York City office of Governor Nelson Rockefeller on the staff of Lt.-Gov. Malcolm Wilson. I received a phone call from a close friend who was a fellow night school student at NYU Law School and who worked on Wall Street. He told me breathlessly that his teletype machine had just reported the assassination. After conferring with Lt.-Gov. Wilson I walked through the five story townhouse at 22 West 55^th Street that was the Governor’s private office and alerted the staff to what had happened in Dallas. Most I talked to uttered no word. They just looked shocked and for a moment or so may have thought I had lost my mind. At a political dinner the next night I sat next to a mutual friend of the Lt.-Gov. who was about to ascend to the bench as a judge. He predicted to me that Oswald would be killed soon because whatever he knew or did not know would be explosive and would open the door to the actual conspirators. He said it was obvious Oswald was a patsy. Two days later Oswald was killed.

Those who were politically sophisticated realized immediately that there was much more behind the assassination of JFK, just as those who were politically sophisticated believed there was much more behind the arrests of five burglars at Watergate nine years later.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57609489/new-book-reveals-how-much-fbi-cia-knew-about-oswald-before-kennedy-assassination/

Here is the interview on today's Face the Nation. Fascinating stuff.

CIA’s Overclassification Practices Declassified

National Security Archive

October 23, 2013

http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/cias-overclassification-practices-declassified/

Article by Doug Horne:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/07/douglas-p-horne/jfks-phonied-up-autopsy/

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20585

“The Family Jewels Then and Now”

October 25, 2013

by The National Security Archive

http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/the-family-jewels-then-and-now/

Jefferson Morley: What we still don’t know about JFK’s assassination

By JEFFERSON MORLEY

• Published: October 25, 2013 5:12 PM

Updated: October 26, 2013 6:50 PM

Dallas Morning News

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20131025-jefferson-morley-what-we-still-dont-know-about-jfks-assassination.ece

These White House communications tapes were discovered in 2011, made in the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination involving Air Force One in flight from Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.Joseph Kaczmarek / AP

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy endures as the pre-eminent mystery of American history. How a popular president came to be shot dead in broad daylight has never been explained by Washington in a way that the majority of the American people find credible. A new History Channel poll finds 71 percent of respondents reject the official story that one man alone killed JFK on Nov. 22, 1963.

The tragedy in Dallas has been the subject of six official inquiries over the past 50 years, hundreds of books and dozens of documentaries. By common consent, the release of 4 million pages of long-secret documents since Oliver Stone’s movie JFK has clarified some disputes about the events leading to Kennedy’s death.

Yet the new records also raise new questions.

Secret CIA files: The nature of the CIA’s interest in accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy was killed is still shrouded in official secrecy, even after 50 years.

The story the CIA gave to the Warren Commission in 1964 — that Oswald had attracted only routine and sporadic attention — is erroneous. Documents released by a civilian review panel in the 1990s revealed that senior CIA officers had monitored Oswald closely between 1959 and 1963.

The officers most knowledgeable about Oswald before JFK was killed reported to Jim Angleton, a legendary spymaster who headed the agency’s counterintelligence staff, and Deputy Director Richard Helms, who would become known as The Man Who Kept the Secrets.

Both are dead, yet their actions are not yet subject to full disclosure. Last year, a CIA official acknowledged in a sworn affidavit that the agency retains 1,100 records related to JFK’s assassination that have never been made public.

These files are “not believed relevant” to JFK’s death, according to the CIA.

The online database of the National Archives indicates these records concern the operations of six CIA employees involved in the JFK story who reported to Helms and Angleton.

The still-secret documents are found in files generated by:

William K. Harvey, a legendary operative who oversaw the CIA’s efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Harvey’s contempt for John and Robert Kennedy cost him a high-ranking position in mid-1963.

David Phillips and Anne Goodpasture, career officers who monitored Oswald’s movements in Mexico City weeks before JFK was killed. In the ’70s, they testified that they learned about Oswald’s recent contacts with suspected Soviet and Cuban intelligence officers in October 1963.

Howard Hunt and David Morales, two swashbuckling operatives who made statements late in life that seemed to implicate themselves in JFK’s assassination.

All of these officers knew each other in 1963. All are deceased.

In the affidavit filed in federal court, CIA information coordinator Michelle Meeks asserted that the 1,100 documents must remain secret until at least October 2017 for reasons of “national security.”

Air Force One tapes: New details about the Pentagon’s response to JFK’s assassination have emerged in recent years, but a significant portion of the story is missing.

In October 2011, a previously unknown recording of Nov. 22, 1963, radio communications to and from Air Force One, the presidential jet, surfaced at a Philadelphia auction house. The tape was found in the estate of Gen. Chester Clifton, an aide to JFK who died in 1991.

The recording, donated to the National Archives, revealed how the Air Force immediately sent a plane to pick up Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay in Canada. LeMay, a harsh critic of JFK’s foreign policy, returned to Washington, where he may have attended JFK’s autopsy.

The conversations about LeMay’s movements were edited out of the shorter version of the Air Force One tape released by the LBJ Library in the ’70s.

Both the LBJ tape and the Clifton tape were taken from a longer Air Force One recording, according to Primeau Forensics, an acoustic engineering firm that worked with JFK researcher Bill Kelley to clean up and transcribe the recordings.

The available tapes capture 88 minutes of conversation. Kelly notes that the flight from Dallas to take JFK’s body back to Washington took almost four hours, or 240 minutes.

So it is virtually certain that there were other conversations to and from Air Force One that fateful day that were recorded but have never been heard. Even after 50 years, the real-time response of the Pentagon to the violent death of a commander in chief is not part of the public record.

In a new book on JFK, University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato writes that it is “irresponsible” to accuse an agency of the federal government of orchestrating the assassination. “At the same time,” he argues, “it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a … cabal of CIA hard-liners, angry about Kennedy’s handling of Cuba and sensing a leftward turn on negotiations with the Soviets … took matters into their own hands.”

What these unknown chapters from the JFK story might reveal about the perennial conspiracy question will only be known if — and when — the CIA and Pentagon produce the missing JFK records.

Jefferson Morley is moderator of JFKFacts.org and author of “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA.” He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News. His email address is info@jfkfacts.org.

Jesse Ventura: Why the JFK assassination and cover-up matter more than ever

http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/jesse-ventura-killing-jfk/

Five myths about Jackie Kennedy

Washington Post

October 24, 2013

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-jackie-kennedy/2013/10/24/5cf1833a-3b2e-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

Interesting reviews of recently published books about JFK can be found on the article's left sidebar.