Douglas Caddy

On December 28, 2012, the FBI released some new material from its files on Marilyn Monroe. http://educationforu...showtopic=19827 Actually there are (or were) two sets of FBI files on Marilyn Monroe: Those maintained by the bureau, some of which were recently disclosed, and those maintained by Director J. Edgar Hoover in the private, confidential file drawers in his office. When Hoover died on May 2, 1972, six weeks before the Watergate scandal broke open, there was a scramble to get possession of these confidential files. It was later claimed that the files had been destroyed within hours of Hoover’s death. This was not true. In 1985 I attended a meeting of the conservative Philadelphia Society in Washington, D.C. My guest was Edward Miller, a former Associate FBI Director, who in the years after Watergate was convicted along with Assistant FBI Director Mark Felt for illegal break-ins and black bag jobs that were aimed at members of the Weather Underground. I had retained Miller as a consultant in 1984-85 to assist me on a grant from the Moody Foundation to study terrorism. President Reagan had pardoned both Miller and Felt soon after he was elected president. A short time after Miller and I entered the meeting room, Laurence H. Silberman, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, greeted Miller whom he knew. The three of us were quietly conversing when Judge Silberman disclosed that he had been assigned after Hoover’s death to review the Director’s private, confidential files on prominent persons. He expressed his disgust and outrage at Hoover having maintained these files and at the nature of their contents. (His review took place years before he was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals.) He later said that reviewing the files was “the single worst experience of my long government service.” See link below. http://en.wikipedia....ce_H._Silberman Without a doubt Hoover maintained a confidential file on Marilyn Monroe. Its contents are not known at this time. However, a glimmer of what the file might have contained can be found in the recently published book by Professor Lois Banner titled, “Marilyn Monroe: The Passion and the Paradox.” http://www.amazon.co... banner marilyn The widely respected Gay and Lesbian Review (formerly the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review) in its September-October 2012 issue contains an interview titled “Marilyn Monroe: A Serious, Mysterious Life” conducted by Chris Freeman of Professor Banner, who is a feminist historian and scholar that spent “the better part of a decade researching the life and career of Marilyn Monroe.” The following are excerpts from Freeman’s interview with Banner: Chris Freeman: What first drew you to Marilyn Monroe? Lois Banner: I like to write about prominent women. They reflect society in important ways. She seemed to me a natural after I had written about some powerful political figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. CF: As a movie fan, you had never really taken Marilyn seriously before. LB: Not at all. I knew that I had grown up near her and that we had participated in similar worlds growing up in Los Angeles. The more I got involved, the more interesting the research became. Marilyn turned out to be the most complex person I’ve ever worked on. She did lead a serious, mysterious life. CF: Was there a moment when you realized that you had something new to say about Marilyn? LB: The big moment came when I was given access to the papers of Ralph Roberts. He was her best friend and masseur. Everyone I interviewed said he knew more about her than anyone else…. CF: You also went back to sources that have been ignored by previous biographers. LB: Yes, I used, for example, Arthur Miller’s memoir Timebends. It’s amazing how little attention Marilyn’s biographers have paid to the book. It’s filled with material about their relationship. I realized why he loved her from that book. Also, a British journalist named W. J. Weatherby did a long series of interviews with Marilyn. There is amazing material in those conversations, and no one has used it extensively.... CF: How did she improve her skills? LB: She studied acting, singing, and movement with some of the best teachers in Hollywood and New York for many years. She learned how to bring out the characters from within her. She had many selves, and she could turn them on and off. The major one was “Marilyn Monroe.” Her friends tell stories of walking down the street with her and she’d say, “I’m going to show you now.” She’s shake her head and "Marilyn Monroe” would show up. She used those aspects of herself in her acting. She told Weatherby, “I can be many people. I can always figure out what the person I’m with wants, and become that person.” That’s how she worked, too…. CF: Her long connection with Natasha Lytess, her acting coach, has been seen as potentially lesbian, but most Marilyn biographers have not said that it was a physical relationship. LB: An interview with Natasha was published in London the month Marilyn died. She talks, in detail, about her sexual relationship with Marilyn. At first, I didn’t trust the material but then I found many letters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret Herrick Library which, for me, authenticated it. A press agent in London helped Natasha get $25,000 to publish the interview. This is a very convincing documentation of their six-year relationship. Marilyn was terrified that she was going to be exposed, which would destroy her career. One reason she married Joe DiMaggio was to take the focus off the rumors about her relationship with Natasha. CF: Scotty Bowers has recently published his tell-all Full Service about this kind of secret sexual life in Hollywood. Marilyn doesn’t appear in that book, but she clearly was part of that world. LB: Marilyn was in the middle of that world. Producer Sam Spiegel ran a sort of upscale brothel – she was part of it. Talent agent Charles Feldman was a regular there, and he conducted his own sex parties. She met both John Kennedy and Arthur Miller at Feldman’s. In later years, Peter Lawford brought Marilyn to sex parties as his beach house, at which John and Robert Kennedy were present. I found an amazing book from 1950 called Hollywood: The Dream Factory, by an esteemed anthropologist named Hortense Powdermaker. She argues that sex fueled Hollywood… CF: What about the Kennedys – and the end of her life? LB: The Kennedys were outrageous. They were sexually aggressive. Marilyn thought one of the Kennedys would marry her. The “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” moment is when Marilyn went too far – Jack Kennedy dropped her after that. But she preferred Bobby anyway. Two different sources who don’t know each other told me that she had sex with Bobby in her dressing room before she sang that song to JFK. I’m surprised at how the Kennedys have kept so much of this quiet. CF: Did they have her killed? What do you think happened? LB: I have a couple of ideas. The Kennedys may have formed an alliance with J. Edgar Hoover, who hated Marilyn because she had allegedly converted to Communism. Or perhaps the Mafia was the ones who killed her, trying to frame Bobby Kennedy for it. I had a long interview with Phyllis McGuire, the mobster Sam Giancana’s girl friend, who tried to convince me that he had nothing to do with Marilyn’s death. I am skeptical of her story. Giancana hated the Kennedys because Bobby tried to destroy him. It’s also possible that it was suicide. There’s another narrative going on – the tabloids had the lesbian story. I found a document in her agent’s files where she is clearly worried that the story was going to come out. She felt betrayed by Natasha. [To read the full interview with Professor Banner, go to www.GLReview.com and request the September-October 2012 issue, which is available for $10. Also, see http://www.glreview....rticleid=1468].

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FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file By ANTHONY McCARTNEY, AP Entertainment Writer | December 28, 2012 | Updated: December 28, 2012 10:02am http://www.chron.com/news/article/FBI-removes-many-redactions-in-Marilyn-Monroe-file-4151493.php LOS ANGELES (AP) — FBI files on Marilyn Monroe that could not be located earlier this year have been found and re-issued, revealing the names of some of the movie star's communist-leaning acquaintances who drew concern from government officials and her own entourage. But the files, which previously had been heavily redacted, do not contain any new information about Monroe's death 50 years ago. Letters and news clippings included in the file show the bureau was aware of theories the actress had been killed, but they do not show that any effort was undertaken to investigate the claims. Los Angeles authorities concluded Monroe's death was a probable suicide. Recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, the updated FBI files do show the extent the agency was monitoring Monroe for ties to communism in the years before her death in August 1962. The records reveal that some in Monroe's inner circle were concerned about her association with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family over his leftist views. A trip to Mexico earlier that year to shop for furniture brought Monroe in contact with Field, who was living in the country with his wife in self-imposed exile. Informants reported to the FBI that a "mutual infatuation" had developed between Field and Monroe, which caused concern among some in her inner circle, including her therapist, the files state. "This situation caused considerable dismay among Miss Monroe's entourage and also among the (American Communist Group in Mexico)," the file states. It includes references to an interior decorator who worked with Monroe's analyst reporting her connection to Field to the doctor. Field's autobiography devotes an entire chapter to Monroe's Mexico trip, "An Indian Summer Interlude." He mentions that he and his wife accompanied Monroe on shopping trips and meals and he only mentions politics once in a passage on their dinnertime conversations. "She talked mostly about herself and some of the people who had been or still were important to her," Field wrote in "From Right to Left." ''She told us about her strong feelings for civil rights, for black equality, as well as her admiration for what was being done in China, her anger at red-baiting and McCarthyism and her hatred of (FBI director) J. Edgar Hoover." Under Hoover's watch, the FBI kept tabs on the political and social lives of many celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin and Monroe's ex-husband Arthur Miller. The bureau has also been involved in numerous investigations about crimes against celebrities, including threats against Elizabeth Taylor, an extortion case involving Clark Gable and more recently, trying to solve who killed rapper Notorious B.I.G. The AP had sought the removal of redactions from Monroe's FBI files earlier this year as part of a series of stories on the 50th anniversary of Monroe's death. The FBI had reported that it had transferred the files to a National Archives facility in Maryland, but archivists said the documents had not been received. A few months after requesting details on the transfer, the FBI released an updated version of the files that eliminate dozens of redactions. For years, the files have intrigued investigators, biographers and those who don't believe Monroe's death at her Los Angeles area home was a suicide. A 1982 investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office found no evidence of foul play after reviewing all available investigative records, but noted that the FBI files were "heavily censored." That characterization intrigued the man who performed Monroe's autopsy, Dr. Thomas Noguchi. While the DA investigation concluded he conducted a thorough autopsy, Noguchi has conceded that no one will likely ever know all the details of Monroe's death. The FBI files and confidential interviews conducted with the actress' friends that have never been made public might help, he wrote in his 1983 memoir "Coroner." "On the basis of my own involvement in the case, beginning with the autopsy, I would call Monroe's suicide 'very probable,'" Noguchi wrote. "But I also believe that until the complete FBI files are made public and the notes and interviews of the suicide panel released, controversy will continue to swirl around her death." Monroe's file begins in 1955 and mostly focuses on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. One entry, which previously had been almost completely redacted, concerned intelligence that Monroe and other entertainers sought visas to visit Russia that year. The file continues up until the months before her death, and also includes several news stories and references to Norman Mailer's biography of the actress, which focused on questions about whether Monroe was killed by the government. For all the focus on Monroe's closeness to suspected communists, the bureau never found any proof she was a member of the party. "Subject's views are very positively and concisely leftist; however, if she is being actively used by the Communist Party, it is not general knowledge among those working with the movement in Los Angeles," a July 1962 entry in Monroe's file states. ___ Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

The Kennedys' Last Christmas Fifty years ago - just months before his assassination - John F Kennedy celebrated his final Christmas surrounded by his wife Jackie and family... and with a mistress in the wings. Jacqueline Kennedy and her husband, President John F. Kennedy attend a White House staff Christmas Party December 1962 in Washington DC. Photo: Getty Images http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9767502/The-Kennedys-Last-Christmas.html By Sarah Bradford The Telegraph 2:24PM GMT 27 Dec 2012 Fifty years ago, John and Jacqueline Kennedy were celebrating what would turn out to be their last Christmas together. Within a year, a sniper's bullet would shatter America’s First Family - but December 1962 proved a time of joy and relief. Just weeks earlier, the Cuban Missile Crisis had had the world teetering on the verge of nuclear war. A fleet of Soviet missile-bearing ships had been detected steaming towards Cuba in October 1962, with the intention of establishing nuclear warheads capable that, for the first time, could threaten the United States. Jackie had pleaded with the President’s advisers to let her and her two children, Caroline and John Jr (“John-John”), remain in the White House during any emergency – and if necessary to die together as a family, rather than being sent to the safety of the presidential retreat at Camp David. Tension had risen over the following week until, on Sunday 28 October 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba. The sense of relief at Kennedy’s skilful facing-down of Khrushchev was enormous. Christmas 1962 would be an extra-special affair. A huge Christmas tree went up in the entrance hall of the White House in early December. Jackie’s restoration from the homely Eisenhower era, when it had resembled officer’s quarters more than anything else, to a magnificent setting for the Kennedy presidency, was almost complete. While her official interior designer was Oleg Cassini (whose bills were paid by his friend and patron, Jackie’s father-in-law, Joseph P. Kennedy), she secretly also used top European couturiers including Valentino and Givenchy through a network of high-society friends, including her sister Lee, Princess Radziwill. There were frequent “Battles of the Budget”, as Jackie called them, but in the end, Jack, possibly as compensation for his unceasing infidelities, always gave in. Related Articles History isn’t better for being jazzed up 05 Nov 2012 Intern tells of JFK affair 23 May 2009 The assassination of President John F Kennedy: the finger points to the KGB 24 Oct 2012 BBC under fire over Hitchcock drama 26 Dec 2012 At the end of the first week of December, instead of joining Jackie and the children at their rented Virginia house, Glen Ora, Kennedy went to a spectacular weekend orgy organised by his brother-in-law, the Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford, at Bing Crosby’s estate near Palm Springs. Among the women there was Jack’s latest fling, the former White House intern, Mimi Beardsley, now a 20-year-old college sophomore, who had flown out to Palm Springs on one of the air force’s “back up” planes. She would reveal details of her relationship with Kennedy in a sensational memoir, which was published last year. Reverting to his presidential role – but with Mimi Beardsley once again in discreet and carefully concealed attendance – Kennedy then flew to Nassau in the Bahamas to meet Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister. The luxurious Lyford Cay Club was the location for a vital discussion on nuclear defence, with the pre-Christmas conference resulting in the Americans offering the Polaris missile to the Royal Navy for use on specially constructed submarines. From Nassau, Kennedy left to join Jackie and his family for a two-week break over Christmas in Palm Beach. Christmas 1962 would be one of the happiest periods of the Kennedy marriage. For all his sexual shenanigans, JFK deeply appreciated Jackie for the social and political benefits she brought him. As well as overseeing the transformation of the homely Eisenhower White House into a magnificent setting for the Kennedy presidency, it was Jackie who gathered around him the glittering international and Anglo-American high society that he appreciated. The British Ambassador in Washington, David Ormsby-Gore, later Lord Harlech, was an old friend, as was David Bruce, US Ambassador in London, and his glamorous wife, Evangeline. Jackie’s sister Lee (“the only woman Jackie really liked”, as a friend told me) and her husband Prince Stanislaus ‘Stas’ Radziwill were a central part of the social circle which included the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and Gianni and Marella Agnelli of Fiat fame. With the family in Florida for its last Christmas, Jackie once again underlined her political value to the Kennedy presidency. On Christmas Day, she had flattered the sizeable Catholic population of Miami by appearing with her family at Mass in Palm Beach wearing a Spanish-style white lace mantilla. On December 28 1962, she stole the show at the Orange Bowl at Miami Beach, where 50,000 Cuban exiles had gathered to welcome the arrival of 1,113 veterans who had just been released from prison by Fidel Castro. For all his sopistication and intelligence, the President was no linguist; after his speech, Jackie enchanted the audience with a short contribution in Spanish. Despite Jack’s unrelenting womanising, the Kennedys were a couple again at Christmas 1962. Sometime after the birthdays of Caroline, aged five, and John Junior, aged two, Jackie knew she was pregnant again. In Florida, she lazed on the beach, cruised with Jack, Lee and friends on the Kennedy yacht, the Honey Fitz, and celebrated New Year’s Eve at a party given by Charles and Jayne Wrightsman, attended by no fewer than six of the World’s Best-dressed Women: Jackie herself and Lee, plus four others on her international social circuit – the hostess, Jayne Wrightsman, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli and Nicole Alphand, wife of the French ambassador to Washington. The night of their return from Palm Beach by helicopter, on January 8 1963, the Kennedys attended a dinner at at the French Embassy in honour of André Malraux, “Jackie’s favourite Frenchman”, who had come to unveil the Mona Lisa, on temporary loan from the Louvre, at the National Gallery in Washington DC, as he had promised Jackie he would do on her triumphant visit to Paris the previous May. Quite apart from its newly restored splendour, the White House under Jack and Jackie – and indeed, the other houses they occupied – was their family home. Caroline and John were always around, running in an out of the Oval Office. Once, when old friends came to dine with Jack and Jackie, they came out of the private lift to be greeted by the sight of Caroline “naked as a jaybird” pursued by an embarrassed nanny. “Caroline thought her father was a god,” Nanny Shaw said. “She adored him as much as he adored her.” Jack’s relations with his outgoing son were more robust: “John-John and JFK quite simply break each other up. Kennedy likes to laugh and likes to make people laugh, and his son is the perfect foil for him,” a friend said. “The President was careful to explain to the children, particularly Caroline, when they were going away on official trips,” the children’s nanny Maud Shaw remembered. “He would tell her where they were going and what the trips were for.” A happy family, a newly pregnant mother, and a future that seemed to hold nothing but promise; it makes the last Kennedy Christmas all the more poignant. Within the year – a month before Christmas 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald would aim his rifle through the window of the Depository Building in Dallas, Texas. Sarah Bradford is author of America’s Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Penguin, £14.99), which is available from Telegraph Books for £12.99 + £1.35 P&P. Her most recent biography, Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times (Penguin), is also available, for £7.99 + £1.10 P&P. To order either title, call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

Here are an old article that may add some information in response to Tom Scully’s prior posting in this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearn_Moody,_Jr. http://www.chron.com...?id=1987_435342 Houston Chronicle January 18, 1987 “In harm's way, again What do Watergate, CIA and Moody probe have in common? Caddy By Dianna Hunt Staff HE HAD RECEIVED bomb threats, been followed, had his phones tapped and the windows of his office shot out in the night. Yet Douglas Caddy still feared he might just be paranoid. "We used to joke about it," says Caddy, a Houston author and attorney. "Do you think somebody's trying to give us a message?" His fears, apparently, were not unfounded. In a sworn statement submitted to a Houston private investigator and the FBI, a former military explosives expert says Caddy was the target of an alleged bomb plot hatched by Galveston millionaire Shearn Moody Jr. Moody, says the expert, tried to hire him to "blow (Caddy's) legs off" because Caddy prompted investigations into impropriety within the multimillion-dollar Moody Foundation. For Caddy, the front-row seat in a money-and-power scandal is an all-too-familiar occurrence. As a defense attorney and witness in the Watergate scandal, a friend and former roommate to South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park, and a one-time publicist in a CIA front company, Caddy turns up in the strangest places. "I don't know why," he concedes. "I just do." He flatly denies ever working for the Central Intelligence Agency. "I get tarred with it, but I never have worked for the CIA," Caddy says. Caddy, 48, emerged as a central figure in the latest scandal after approaching Moody Foundation officials in 1985 with information about the possible mishandling of millions of dollars in foundation grants. His complaints prompted an internal Moody Foundation probe, which ultimately led to the hiring of Houston private investigator Clyde Wilson to look into the matter. The state attorney general's office and federal officials likewise are investigating. Five people - including Moody and his administrative aide Norman Revie - already have been indicted by a Houston federal grand jury. Caddy's life the last three decades has been scattered with similar brushes with important people and events. A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and New York University Law School, Caddy became involved in the Watergate scandal just half an hour after the arrest of five burglars in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel - when he received a 3 a.m. call from former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. Caddy served as defense lawyer to both Hunt and another Watergate conspirator, G. Gordon Liddy, and later testified about his refusal to accept $25,000 in "hush money." His involvement in Watergate stemmed from his friendship with Hunt, with whom he shared office space in the Washington-based Mullen Company - a public relations firm and offshoot of General Foods that was later identified as a front company for the CIA. Caddy went to work as a lobbyist in General Foods' New York office in 1967, but transferred to the Mullen Company in 1969. He left the company in 1971 to go into private practice as an attorney. "I didn't ask to be put in the Mullen Company," Caddy says now. "General Foods put me there. "I didn't even know the Democrats had their headquarters in the Watergate." Just a few years later, though, Caddy would be back in the midst of another scandal - one involving his former college roommate, Tongsun Park, a Korean rice dealer. Park, a glittering party-giver and a central figure in "Koreagate," was granted immunity from criminal prosecution in 1978 for his much-publicized testimony that he paid members of Congress in exchange for political favors. Caddy says Park was the first person he met at Georgetown University, and they later became class officers together, as well as friends. During that time, Caddy said he suspected - but never knew - that Park worked for the Korean CIA. "I suspected - much like working in the Mullen office - that something was up," Caddy said. Caddy says he was questioned by staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives ethics committee about his relationship with Park, but never testified publicly. Through it all, Caddy remained active in conservative Republican politics and helped found two youth groups, the Young Americans for Freedom and the International Youth Federation for Freedom. And in 1974, he wrote a book, "The Hundred Million Dollar Pay-off," about organized labor's role in campaign financing. Caddy came to Texas in 1979, and went to work in 1980 in Austin as director of elections for then-Secretary of State George Strake. While there, he agreed to a friend's request to serve as local counsel to a non-profit foundation that wanted to apply for a Moody Foundation grant. He moved to Houston in 1981. Caddy said he first met foundation trustee Shearn Moody Jr. at the foundation's Galveston offices, where they and other officials discussed the grant. Caddy eventually would serve as director or legal counsel to several organizations that would receive more than $1 million in Moody Foundation grants. Those grants are now among more than $3 million in grants under investigation. Caddy says the investigation of him is "retaliation" for his raising the initial allegations with officials. He also attributes the probe to what he says is a friendship between the Moodys and Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox. Caddy says he has cooperated fully with investigators because he has "nothing to hide." "We're very proud of what we did," Caddy said. "We fulfilled our contracts for the purposes stated." Among his grant-funded projects were conferences on terrorism, Hispanics and the "Star Wars" technology, and - at Moody's request - an investigation into allegations raised by convicted West Texas swindler Billie Sol Estes. Estes has long claimed to have information implicating former President Lyndon B. Johnson in wrongdoing. During that time, Caddy says he began to consider himself a friend to Moody, and once agreed to work undercover posing as Moody's lawyer to help an FBI investigation of alleged corruption among Alabama state officials. The friendship began to cool, however, after Moody's lawyer revealed the "cover" in a North Carolina bankruptcy court, Caddy said. Moody's increasing association with William R. Pabst, convicted in 1985 of charity fraud, furthered the split. Caddy said Moody ignored repeated warnings to steer clear of Pabst. On Oct. 31, 1985, Caddy urged the Moody Foundation to investigate grants to several foundations Pabst and his associate, Vance Beaudreau, helped set up. Moody, Pabst and Beaudreau have since been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly diverting Moody Foundation grants to pay personal expenses. It wasn't long after his split with Moody that Caddy says he started receiving threats. Caddy said he received three or four bomb threats over a period of several days, and the windows in his sixth-floor office were shot out during the night. About a month later, he found a spent cartridge near his desk. Throughout, he says, his house has been watched, he's been followed and his telephones have been wiretapped. Friends and associates, too, have been harassed, Caddy says. In a July 22, 1985, letter to Moody, Caddy attributed the threats to "Pabst and his kooky paramilitary colleagues." Last week, D. Michael Hollaway, the explosives expert, said under oath that Moody and Pabst tried to hire him later that year to plant explosives in Caddy's car. Hollaway said Moody told him he wanted to "blow his (Caddy's) legs off," or have him shot by a sniper. Hollaway declined the offer. "William R. Pabst just talked to me about using enough explosives to scare Caddy, but Shearn Moody wanted him either dead or his legs blown off," Hollaway said. "Shearn Moody was not kidding about this but was very serious." Hollaway said he was approached by Moody and Pabst "at the time that Douglas Caddy started causing problems at the Moody Foundation." Caddy says he's not surprised by Hollaway's allegations. "It's what comes out of a case involving a family fortune and a family dynasty," Caddy said. "I think quite frankly, yes, they were trying to send us a message." He remains worried, though - particularly since Pabst and Beaudreau are fugitives believed to be hiding in Mexico. "It still bothers me that Pabst and Beaudreau are still running around out there, because they're unstable people," Caddy said. "I am still fearful for my life and the lives of my associates. "We're not just paranoid. If he (Moody) had found the right guy, they would have done it."

Weekend Edition December 21-23, 2012 www.counterpunch.org Carl Bernstein Caught in the Matrix Why the Washington Post Killed the Story of Murdoch’s Bid to Buy the US Presidency by JONATHAN COOK Carl Bernstein, of All the President’s Men fame, has a revealing commentary in the Guardian today, though revealing not entirely in a way he appears to understand. Bernstein highlights a story first disclosed earlier this month in the Washington Post by his former journalistic partner Bob Woodward that media mogul Rupert Murdoch tried to “buy the US presidency”. A taped conversation shows that in early 2011 Murdoch sent Roger Ailes, the boss of his most important US media outlet, Fox News, to Afghanistan to persuade Gen David Petraeus, former commander of US forces, to run against Barack Obama as the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Murdoch promised to bankroll Petraeus’ campaign and commit Fox News to provide the general with wall-to-wall support. Murdoch’s efforts to put his own man in the White House failed because Petraeus decided he did not want to run for office. “Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran,” Petraeus says in the recording, “but I won’t … but if I ever ran, I’d take him up on his offer.” Bernstein is rightly appalled not just by this full-frontal attack on democracy but also by the fact that the Washington Post failed to splash with their world exclusive. Instead they buried it inside the paper’s lifestyle section, presenting it as what the section editor called “a buzzy media story that … didn’t have the broader import” that would justify a better showing in the paper. In line with the Washington Post, most other major US news outlets either ignored the story or downplayed its significance. We can probably assume that Bernstein wrote his piece at the bidding of Woodward, as a covert way for him to express his outrage at his newspaper’s wholesale failure to use the story to generate a much-deserved political scandal. The pair presumably expected the story to prompt congressional hearings into Murdoch’s misuse of power, parallel to investigations in the UK that have revealed Murdoch’s control of politicians and the police there. As Bernstein observes: “The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal.” What Bernstein cannot understand is why his media masters don’t see things the way he does. He reserves his greatest dismay for “the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country’s political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch’s, Ailes’ and Fox’s contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.” But in truth neither of Bernstein’s explanations for this failure is convincing. A far more likely reason for the US media’s aversion to the story is that it poses a danger to the Matrix-like wall of static interference generated by precisely the same media that successfully conceals the all-too-cosy relationship between the corporations (that own the media) and the country’s politicians. The Petraeus story is disturbing to the media precisely because it tears away the façade of US democratic politics, an image carefully honed to persuade the American electorate that it chooses its presidents and ultimately decides the direction of the country’s political future. Instead, the story reveals the charade of that electoral game, one in which powerful corporate elites manipulate the system through money and the media they own to restrict voters’ choice to two almost-identical candidates. Those candidates hold the same views on 80 per cent of the issues. Even where their policies differ, most of the differences are quickly ironed out behind the scenes by the power elites through the pressure they exert on the White House via lobby groups, the media and Wall Street. The significance of Woodward’s story is not that it proves Rupert Murdoch is danger to democracy but rather that it reveals the absolute domination of the US political system by the global corporations that control what we hear and see. Those corporations include, of course, the owners of the Washington Post. The saddest irony is that the journalists who work within the corporate media are incapable of seeing outside the parameters set for them by their media masters. And that includes even the most accomplished practitioners of the trade: Woodward and Bernstein. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

In Filing, News Corp. Says Publishing Business Showed $2.1 Billion Loss By AMY CHOZICK The New York Times December 21, 2012 Potential investors got a glimpse of the financial challenges that Rupert Murdoch's soon-to-be spun-off publishing company could face. In a regulatory filing, News Corporation said its publishing businesses lost $2.1 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The disclosure was filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, as the media conglomerate prepares to split its publishing assets from its more lucrative entertainment segments. The new, stand-alone company will retain the name News Corporation and include newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and The Times of London; the HarperCollins book publisher; and a handful of fast-growing Australian pay-television assets. The entertainment company, which will be called the Fox Group, will include 20th Century Fox studios, Fox Broadcasting and cable channels like Fox News and FX. That company has annual revenue of more than $23 billion. The losses in the publishing business came largely from $2.8 billion in impairment and restructuring charges, mostly related to the closure of The News of the World tabloid in Britain, which was shut down in July 2011 after revelations of widespread phone hacking. Revenue at the publishing business fell to $8.65 billion in fiscal year 2012, from $9.1 billion a year earlier. The S.E.C. Form 10 filing moves the company closer toward the split and gives shareholders a better idea of what the stand-alone publishing company, called "New News Corporation" in the report, will look like financially when the spinoff is completed in mid-2013. The company warned investors that "newspaper and advertising circulation revenues have been declining, reflecting general trends in the newspaper industry." In addition to industrywide headwinds, the company said illegal activity at its British newspapers "could damage New News Corporation's reputation and might impair its ability to conduct its business." As additional civil lawsuits related to phone hacking are filed in Britain, News Corporation said it "is not able to predict the ultimate outcome or cost associated with these investigations." The fallout from the phone hacking scandal, and an investor base that increasingly expressed disapproval of the newspaper business, prompted Mr. Murdoch to announce the split of his $60 billion media conglomerate in June. "The filing of the Form 10 is another important step forward in the evolution of our company and in the establishment of two independent global leaders in Fox Group and the new News Corporation," said Mr. Murdoch, who serves as chairman and chief executive of the combined News Corporation. Earlier this month Mr. Murdoch said Robert Thomson, a confidant and the former managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, would serve as chief executive of the new News Corporation. Mr. Murdoch will continue to serve as chairman of both companies and chief executive of the Fox Group. In his new role Mr. Thomson, 51, will have a base salary of $2 million with a performance-based $2 million bonus, according to the filing. In addition to hundreds of newspapers on several continents, the publishing company will also include Australia's RealEstate.com.au; Fox Sports in Australia; 50 percent of Foxtel, the No. 1 pay-TV provider in Australia; and 44 percent of Sky Network Television in New Zealand. Analysts expect those businesses to drive profits and support some of the weaker newspapers. Fox Sports had revenue of $3.6 billion and Foxtel of $2.5 billion in 2012. Those results were not included in the publishing company's 2012 earnings, but will contribute to the new company's bottom line.

Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment? By Carl Bernstein ThGuardian, Thursday 20 December 2012 11.41 EST So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press. In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election. Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations. All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3. Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes' and Murdoch's disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country's political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch's, Ailes' and Fox's contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process. The tone of the media's reaction was set from the beginning by the Post's own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page. "Bob had a great scoop, a buzzy media story that made it perfect for Style. It didn't have the broader import that would justify A1," Liz Spayd, the Post's managing editor, told Politico when asked why the story appeared in the style section. Buzzy media story? Lacking the "broader import" of a front-page story? One cannot imagine such a failure of news judgment among any of Spayd's modern predecessors as managing editors of the Post, especially in the clear light of the next day and with a tape recording – of the highest audio quality – in hand. "Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran," Petraeus announces on the crystal-clear digital recording and then laughs, "but I won't … but if I ever ran, I'd take him up on his offer. … He said he would quit Fox … and bankroll it." McFarland clarified the terms: "The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger's going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house" – thereby confirming what Fox New critics have consistently maintained about the network's faux-news agenda and its built-in ideological bias. And here let us posit the following: were an emissary of the president of NBC News, or of the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post ever caught on tape promising what Ailes and Murdoch had apparently suggested and offered here, the hue and cry, especially from Fox News and Republican/Tea Party America, from the Congress to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, would be deafening and not be subdued until there was a congressional investigation, and the resignations were in hand of the editor and publisher of the network or newspaper. Or until there had been plausible and convincing evidence that the most important elements of the story were false. And, of course, the story would continue day after day on page one and remain near the top of the evening news for weeks, until every ounce of (justifiable) piety about freedom of the press and unfettered presidential elections had been exhausted. The tape of Petraeus and McFarland's conversation is an amazing document, a testament to the willingness of Murdoch and the wily genius he hired to create Fox News to run roughshod over the American civic and political landscape without regard to even the traditional niceties or pretenses of journalistic independence and honesty. Like the revelations of the hacking scandal, which established beyond any doubt Murdoch's ability to capture and corrupt the three essential elements of the British civic compact – the press, politicians and police – the Ailes/Petraeus tape makes clear that Murdoch's goals in America have always been just as ambitious, insidious and nefarious. The digital recording, and the dead-serious conspiratorial conversation it captures so chillingly in tone and substance ("I'm only reporting this back to Roger. And that's our deal," McFarland assured Petraeus as she unfolded the offer) utterly refutes Ailes' disingenuous dismissal of what he and Murdoch were actually attempting: the buying of the presidency. "It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have," Ailes would later claim while nonetheless confirming its meaning. "I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate." The recording deserves to be heard by any open-minded person trying to fathom its meaning to the fullest. Murdoch and Ailes have erected an incredibly influential media empire that has unrivaled power in British and American culture: rather than judiciously exercising that power or improving reportorial and journalistic standards with their huge resources, they have, more often than not, recklessly pursued an agenda of sensationalism, manufactured controversy, ideological messianism, and political influence-buying while masquerading as exemplars of a free and responsible press. The tape is powerful evidence of their methodology and reach. The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal. Like Richard Nixon and his tapes, much attention has been focused on the necessity of finding the smoking gun to confirm what other evidence had already established beyond a doubt: that the elemental instruments of democracy, ie the presidency in Nixon's case, and the privileges of free press in Murdoch's, were grievously misused and abused for their own ends by those entrusted to use great power for the common good. In Nixon's case, the system worked. His actions were investigated by Congress, the judicial system held that even the president of the United States was not above the law, and he was forced to resign or face certain impeachment and conviction. American and British democracy has not been so fortunate with Murdoch, whose power and corruption went unchecked for a third of a century. The most important thing we journalists do is make judgments about what is news. Perhaps no story has eluded us on a daily basis (for lack of trying) for so many years as the story of Murdoch's destructive march across our democratic landscape. Only the Guardian vigorously pursued the leads of the hacking story and methodically stuck with it for months and years, never ignoring the underlying context of how Rupert Murdoch conducted his take-no-prisoners business and journalism without regard for the most elemental standards of fairness, accuracy or balance, or even lawful conduct. When the Guardian's hacking coverage reached critical mass last year, I quoted a former top Murdoch deputy as follows: "This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch's orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means." The tape that Bob Woodward obtained, and which the Washington Post ran in the style section, should be the denouement of the Murdoch story on both sides of the Atlantic, making clear that no institution, not even the presidency of the United States, was beyond the object of his subversion. If Murdoch had bankrolled a successful Petraeus presidential campaign and – as his emissary McFarland promised – "the rest of us [at Fox] are going to be your in-house" – Murdoch arguably might have sewn up the institutions of American democracy even more securely than his British tailoring. Happily, Petraeus was not hungering for the presidency at the moment of the messenger's arrival: the general was contented at the idea of being CIA director, which Ailes was urging him to forgo. "We're all set," said the emissary, referring to Ailes, Murdoch and Fox. "It's never going to happen," Petraeus said. "You know it's never going to happen. It really isn't. … My wife would divorce me."

http://www.amazon.com/All-Education-General-David-Petraeus/dp/0143122991/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355612806&sr=1-1&keywords=all+in Broadwell did not write "All In" although she received a huge monetary advance to do so. The publisher later rejected her draft manuscript and a Washington Post reporter was then selected to write it. It was published when Petraeus and Broadwell were riding high in public acclaim. Take a look at who at the time praised Broadwell's "masterpiece" and General Patraeus to the sky: Tom Brokaw Doris Kearns Goodwin David Gergen Thomas Ricks The Wall Street Journal and others

Excerpts from a lengthy article titled, “U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens” published in the Wall Street Journal of Dec. 12, 2012: “Top U.S. Intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens – even people suspected of no crime. “Not everyone was on board. ‘This is a sea change in the way the government interacts with the general public,’ Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions. “A week later, the attorney general signed he changes into effect…. “The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary American citizens unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.”

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19794

Peter Levanda is the author of a new book about the occult and Mormonism. Its title is “The Angel and the Sorcerer.” Among the topics it covers is the role that Mormons played in the Watergate affair, the most notable person being Robert Bennett, the man chosen by the CIA to take over the Robert Mullen Company when Mullen retired. Bennett had long-standing ties to the CIA, which had employed Howard Hunt for most of his adult career. Hunt was working for the Mullen Company when the Watergate break-in was being planned and when the scandal broke. After the Mullen Company was exposed by Senator Howard Baker as being a front for the CIA, Bennett went to work for the Summa Corporation, which also was a CIA front. Later he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where his father had served during the Watergate scandal. One of the longtime "public relations" clients of the Mullen Company was the Mormon Church. Robert Mullen was the author of a book about the Mormon religion.The CIA had a close relationship with the Mormon Church, which likely exists today. The murky origins of both Watergate and the JFK assassination began when Nixon contacted Howard Hughes in June 1960 to undertake the assassination of Castro without the killing being connected to the U.S. Government. Hughes agreed to do so and at the time had surrounded himself with members of the Mormon faith. Here is a link to Levenda’s new book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0892542004#_ Here is a link to the audio interview of Levanda on Dreamland on December 14, 2012. Although he doesn’t get into the discussion of Watergate in the audio program available free to the public, nevertheless his description of the founding of the Mormon religion is fascinating in itself and most worthwhile to listen to. http://www.unknownco...el-and-sorcerer

News Corporation spends £100m on management and standards committee Team set up to probe alleged illegal activity after phone-hacking scandal is costing more than £1m a week By Josh Halliday Guardian Thursday 13 December 2012 06.35 EST News Corporation's management and standards committee, established last year to root out alleged illegal activity at News International following the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, is costing Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group in excess of £1m a week and has cost £100m in total. The expense of running the body – which has passed information relating to alleged phone hacking, corrupt payments to public officials and other potential illegal activity to Scotland Yard – amounted to £76.8m in the year to 30 June 2012, according to accounts filed at Companies House on Tuesday. That figure dwarfs the £17.5m paid out in damages and legal fees to civil claimants over phone hacking and other alleged invasions of privacy. It is the largest of a string of mostly phone hacking-related charges that together amount to a quarter of a billion pounds that ensured that News Corp's traditionally profitable British businesses – the Sun, Times and Sunday Times publisher News International and Harper Collins UK – ran up an overall loss of £189.4m on turnover of £1.18bn. The cost of MSC, which is working with lawyers from Linklaters and Olswang, reached £99.7m between 31 June 2011 and 26 November 2012, according to the Companies House filings. The body, chaired by top commercial lawyer Lord Grabiner, was set up by News Corp in early 2011 to investigate allegations of criminal offences by journalists at the now-closed News of the World, the Sun, the Times and Sunday Times. The phone-hacking saga cost News International £140.9m in the year to 1 July, according to accounts filed by NI Group Limited, the parent company of Murdoch's UK newspapers. Part of this £140.9m is the £76.8m costs in relation to the MSC, plus a further £17.5m in claimants' legal fees and damages. The company incurred an additional £46.6m charge in relation to the closure of the News of the World. Restructuring costs at News International reached £51.6m in the period, the accounts show, including £22.2m in redundancy payments to News of the World staff after its abrupt closure last summer. The £150m sale in May of News International's Wapping site contributed to a loss on disposal of fixed assets of £65.2m in the year to 30 June.

Douglas, Any idea why the White House Plumbers would have wanted to eliminate international drug traffickers? Thanks, --Tommy It was Nixon's war so-called on drugs. Here is a link to an article about it. Below the link are relevant excerpts from the article: http://www.druglibrary.org/think/~jnr/nixon.htm There was, though, a hidden agenda. Nixon wanted all along to have his own private security agency, beyond the control of the FBI, the CIA or any other official government body, which could investigate leaks, tap phones and gather intelligence on his internal and external opponents G. Gordon Liddy came up with the brilliant idea that the best way to do this was to establish the agency under the cloak of the war on drugs. Who, after all, would complain if a little illegality was indulged in the cause of protecting the families of US from the plague of heroin? Nixon ordered John Ehrlichman and Egil Krogh to establish this unit which was to be called the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement The Watergate conspirators who came to be known as "the plumbers" - Liddy and Krogh, who had been leading figures in the administration's drugs war, Howard Hunt, who was brought in from the CIA, and others - were assembled, a preliminary version of this putative anti-narcotics agency. Krogh, the official co-ordinator of Nixon's war on drugs, was also, in his unofficial capacity, the head of "the plumbers" who organised the Watergate break-in Liddy, the most colourful and notorious of "the plumbers", was Krogh's assistant. Hunt was a consultant on the drug problem to the president's Domestic Council. Essentially, Nixon's covert criminals and his drug warriors were one and same. As Edward Jay Epstein put it in his remarkable 1977 investigation, Agency of Fear, "the new opiate war provided the perfect cover for this seizure of power" The weird thing is that long after these people were found out and sent to jail, the rhetoric and imagery which they had pioneered in the manipulation of the drugs issue retained its power

Eric Hamburg has written a lengthy and detailed Afterword titled “E. Howard Hunt and the JFK Plotters” to St. John’s book. He and St. John conducted a series of interviews with Howard Hunt in Miami that are recounted in the book. Here is his impressive biography: http://lib.stanford.edu/node/6237/ Hamburg starts the Afterword by asking:”How much of Howard Hunt’s scenario holds up under examination? Surprising, a great deal. The men he names as part of the plot have cropped up over and over again in the assassination literature. There is substantial supporting evidence to implicate them in a plot to kill JFK. For this reason, Hunt’s revelations are more credible than they might otherwise be. A review of the literature indicates why this is so.” Among other interesting aspects discussed by Hamburg is, “And what do we know about Lucien Sarti, the French Corsican Mafia gunman named by Howard Hunt as the second shooter on the grassy knoll?” He then quotes Prof. Peter Dale Scott as finding that “Lucien Sarti, a top Ricord [drug network] lieutenant, was shot and killed by authorities in Mexico on 27 April 1972, after being located there by U.S. agents." Hamburg believes that “This latter fact is quite interesting. Eliminating international drug traffickers was one of the missions of the White House plumbers unit, of which Hunt was a member, and Sarti’s murder occurred just before the Watergate break-in in June 1972. Is this a link between the JFK assassination and Watergate – or is it just another coincidence?” To which I might add: was it just another coincidence that J. Edgar Hoover died a week after Sarti, on May 2, 1972? It has been alleged the cause of his death was lethal poison that had been implanted in his toothpaste. Were the deaths of two key figures linked to the JFK killing part of an orchestrated mopping up operation of the assassination of which the Watergate break-in was also part? St. John’s book also reprints an excerpt from Mark Lane’s authoritative 1991 work, “Plausible Denial”, which contained the lengthy deposition witness testimony of Marita Lorenz that was introduced into the court record at the trial involving Hunt’s lawsuit against Liberty Lobby. Here are some key portions of her testimony: Q. What is your present employment? A. I do undercover work for an intelligence agency. …. Q. Have you been employed by the Central Intelligence Agency? A. Yes. …. Q. Have you been employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation? A. Yes. …. Q. During 1978, did you appear as a witness before the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations? A. Yes. …. Q. During and before November of 1963, did you work on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Miami area? A. Yes. …. Q. Tell me the circumstances regarding your seeing E. Howard Hunt in Dallas in November of 1973? A. There was a prearranged meeting that E. Howard Hunt deliver us sums of money for the so-called operation that I did not know its nature. Q. Were you told what your role was to be? A. Just a decoy at the time. Q. Did you Mr. Hunt actually deliver money to anyone in the motel room which you were present in? A. Yes. Q. To who did you see him deliver the money? A. He gave an envelope of cash to Frank Fiorini [sturgis]. …. Q. Did you see the person you identified as Jack Ruby? A. After Eduardo left, a fellow came to the door and it was Jack Ruby, about an hour later, forty-five minutes to an hour later. Q. When you say Eduardo, who are you referring to? A. E. Howard Hunt. …. Q. Now can you tell us in the relationship to the day that President Kennedy was killed, when this meeting took place? A. The day before. …. Q. When was the first time you met Howard Hunt? A. 1960, in Miami, Florida.

JFK, SUKARNO’S GOLD, AND UBS http://gizadeathstar...s-gold-and-ubs/ ------------------------ http://gizadeathstar.com/2012/12/banks-and-the-national-security-state-1977/

http://www.acorn.net...rmblr94.fp.html and... WASHINGTON. — Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, a former ... jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg.../Hunt%20Buckley%2024.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View a former CIA agent who helped plan the 1961 Bay of. _ Pigs invasion of ... David Franke, senior editor of Arlington House, the pub- lishers, said contracts for the .... Judging by what you shared in your second post on this thread, it seems you did not fully weigh then and still do not now, that there were and still are so few of your old circle that despite the active association with and support of the CIA, (financing, organizing, and propaganda expertise) done as secretly as possible, the ideology of the Buckley and the Stanton Evans "brand" had to be inserted into American politics from the top down. The CIA playbook for the U.S. tracks closely to what is attempted outside the country, an all out effort to overcome the lack of grass roots support by faking it. Thus, there is no place to hide. You were a member of a near empty church, a congregation in which deniability was a challenge to convincingly pull off.: .....Evans was present at Great Elm, the family home of William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, at the founding of Young Americans for Freedom,[19] where on September 11, 1960, he drafted YAF's charter, the Sharon Statement.[20] Some conservatives still revere this document as a concise statement of their principles.[21] The group responsible for attempting to give the appearance of wide grass roots support in the U.S. for CIA stepfordism did do one thing impressively well, they employed and published each other. I have made replies above to postings in this topic by Pat Speer and Pamela Brown. I now will address the posting Tom Scully. I gather from the Tom’s scattered broadsides against me that somehow he believes I should have been aware of the activities of the CIA in the 1950’s. I have discussed much of the material alleged in Tom’s broadsides when I joined the Forum in 2007. I have reprinted some below. To summarize, I was graduated from high school in June 1956 and enrolled in the School of Foreign Service in September 1956 at the age of 18 years. In my sophomore year, I was given a working scholarship by the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists to intern at Human Events newsletter. I did this for two years, 1957-1958. There were two other interns: David Franke, who was a sophomore at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and William Schulz, who was a graduate of Antioch College. Stan Evans, who had been graduated from Yale a few years before, was the managing editor at Human Events. None of us -- Franke, Schulz, Evans or me -- at that time or since then have been employees of the CIA. For you to infer otherwise is ridiculous. While enrolled in studies as a full time student as Georgetown, I was also class president, editor of the school’s magazine, President of the District of Columbia College Young Republicans, intern at Human Events. If the CIA existed (which it did), it was not on my radar screen. Two years after being graduated from Georgetown, I enrolled as a student at New York University Law School and was graduated from there in June 1966. The CIA did not appear on my radar screen until I met Howard Hunt in 1970 when he joined the staff of the Mullen Company. You leveled a broadside that mentioned David Franke. He dropped out of George Washington University after the second year to work full time for Human Events and in June 1960 was asked to join the staff of National Review as an editorial assistant. For the past 40 years he has been a close working associate of Conservative guru, Richard Viguerie. Evans’ father was Medford Evans, who was a writer and organizer for the John Birch Society. Evans has never worked for the CIA. http://www.spartacus...k/JFKcaddyD.htm Douglas Caddy: I became active politically while still in high school in New Orleans in the early 1950's. Later, as a student at Georgetown University, I helped organize the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath in 1959. This led to the creation of Youth for Goldwater for Vice President in early 1960 and later that year to Young Americans for Freedom. This was the genesis of the modern conservative movement in the United States. In 1961 the first mass conservative rally, sponsored by YAF, was held in Manhattan Center in New York City. The next year an even larger rally was held in Madison Square Garden. If I were to pinpoint when the conservative movement was first hijacked by sociopaths, I would say it took place in 1974, just after President Nixon was forced to resign. His resignation opened the way for the sociopaths to take over. In late 1974, the board of directors of the Schuchman Foundation met. Robert Schuchman was the first national chairman of YAF. In attendance at the meeting, in addition to the foundation's directors, were Edwin Feulner, Paul Weyrich and Joseph Coors. Coors, president of Coors Beer Company, told the foundation directors that unless they did exactly what he and Feulner and Weyrich directed them to do, he would destroy them and their organization. The Schuchman Foundation directors brushed aside Coors' threat. Shortly thereafter, Coors, Feulner and Weyrich organized the Heritage Foundation and the Committee for a Free Congress. The latter two organizations, extremely well funded in the last 30 years, have crafted the national legislation and federal regulations that have enriched the wealthy and crucified the poor and disabled in America. Since 1974 the conservative movement and the Republican Party, dominated by sociopaths with no social conscience whatsoever, have successfully engaged in what I call "The Politics of Death. From my reply on the Education Forum of February 10, 2007: http://educationforu...opic=4727&st=15 The National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath, organized in 1959, was the initial cornerstone in the building of the mass Conservative Movement in the U.S. The strategic goal of David Franke and myself was to attract like-minded students around the country in an attempt to show that Conservatism was the wave of the future. When the Student Committee was launched I was still an undergraduate in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. A number of national publications published articles about the group, inevitably linking my name as a student to Georgetown University. As a result mail from interested persons was sent to me c/o the University. This mail was opened up without my permission by the Jesuit Vice President of the University, who was hostile to conservatives. He courteously noted with his initials that he had read my mail before it was presented to me. However, this activity suddenly ceased when he opened an envelope from Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, who was chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Senator Bridges’ letter enclosed a copy of the Congressional Record in which he praised our Student Committee. Apparently even a Jesuit had second thoughts about opening the private mail sent by a member of the U.S. Senate. The Student Committee led to the creation of Youth for Goldwater in early 1960 and later that fall to the founding the Young Americans for Freedom. The best history of the era is chronicled by M. Stanton Evans’ book, Revolt on the Campus, published by the Henry Regnery Company in 1962. The Conservative Movement of the 1960's bore no resemblance to what passes as the Conservative Movement of today. --------------------------------------------------- From my reply on the Education Forum of March 25, 2007: No, I had no information that William F. Buckley was involved with the CIA during the period that Young Americans for Freedom was founded and launched in the early 1960's. To be best of my recollection, I first learned that Buckley had worked for the CIA after being so informed by Howard Hunt soon after I met him following my being assigned in 1969 by General Foods Corporation in New York to work out of the Mullen Company offices in Washington, D.C. I was quite surprised to learn of Buckley’s past association with the CIA. While Hunt was a close friend of Buckley, he was quite upset with Brent Bozell, a brother-in-law of Buckley. One of Hunt’s sons was seriously injured in an automobile accident when Bozell foolishly allowed a Mexican gardener whom he employed to drive Hunt’s young son home after the latter had spent the weekend as a guest with the Bozell family. Hunt told me the gardener didn’t even have a driver’s license. I have often wondered if the fact that both Hunt and James McCord were burdened with heavy medical bills for their children did not lead them to take the gamble of engaging in the Watergate break-in as a mean of securing additional income to pay for the medical expenses. Hunt told me that he and his wife incurred heavy medical bills as a result of the vehicle accident that injured their son. The McCords had an autistic child to whom they were devoted but also burdened them with medical bills. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, I was employed in the New York City office of Governor Nelson Rockefeller located at 22 West 55th Street, on the staff of Lt.-Gov. Malcolm Wilson, who was as conservative and Rockefeller was liberal. I juggled my work load with also attending New York University Law School. As such, I was “out of the loop” as to Buckley’s activities in the years following 1962.

I believe that Pamela’s perceptions about Howard Hunt are right on target. As St. John’s book reveals, Howard’s wife, Dorothy, strongly opposed his getting involved in what came to be known as Watergate. St. John reports that there were numerous meetings at the family residence, Witches Island, between Howard and various persons involved in the venture. St. John reports Dorothy even threatened to divorce Hunt over what she saw occurring. One should not forget that Dorothy was a skilled CIA intelligence agent herself and met and married Howard when both were employed by the OSS. St. John states in his book at in his later years Hunt lamented that he should have listened to Dorothy’s urgings, that she was right. Dorothy’s death remains a mystery as to the events surrounding it. From St. John’s book I learned for the first time that Dorothy was carrying $2,000,000 in money orders, traveler checks, etc. in addition to the publicly reported $10,000 in cash at the time the plane on which she was a passenger crashed in Chicago. St. John writes: “One further piece of evidence regarding CIA involvement in Watergate: the supplier of the actual recording devices used by McCord was a wireman named Michael Stevens. His company was Stevens Research Laboratories (SRL), headquartered in Chicago… “After the plane crash and the headlines about Dorothy Hunt’s death and the money, Stevens called the FBI and told them his life had been threatened and he believed that Mrs. Hunt had been murdered. He said that Mrs. Hunt was in fact on her way to pay money to maintain his silence…Stevens reported to investigators that the devices that he was working on for McCord were set to transmit over secret CIA frequencies and able to transmit to highly classified CIA, DIA and NSA networks. Keeping this secret was why Mrs. Hunt flew to Chicago.”

St. John Hunt in his book states that Bill Snyder, who was Hunt's attorney, having performed that difficult task from 1973 until Hunt's death in 2007, was vehemently opposed to Hunt's memors, published in the year of his death, discussing in any detail what Hunt knew about the JFK assassination. Only Snyder knows as this time what was contained in the passages removed from the book prior to its publication. Sirica's long-time mentor was Edward Bennett Williams, legal counsel to the Washington Post and the Democratic National Committee. Sirica used his position as judge to aid and abet the prosecution. He was not a fair and impartial judge. Even Bob Woodward has commented that Sirica acted to a large degree as a prosecutor in the case. What Sirica did to me in the early days of the case clearly showed that from the beginning he was not going to administer justice in a fair way. Recently Watergate documents kept under seal for all these years were released. They reveal Sirica's bias and his hand in shaping the case's outcome as he so desired. I expect as more documents are released in the future there will be additional evidence of Sirica's tampering. http://educationforu...showtopic=19750 I fully recognize that the original prosecutors also had their agenda in making certain the case was limited as to the five arrested burglars and Hunt and Liddy. This was obvious not only from their altering my federal grand jury transcript and that of Alfred Baldwin but from their posture to the press. Decades ago in a treatise I wrote on Watergate I cited Robert Jackson's report in the Los Angeles Times of January 29, 1973: "A clubby atmosphere has prevailed in federal court during the three weeks it has taken the government to present their case in the Watergate bugging trial. The questioning of Republican officials and others has been more polite than penetrating. Entire areas have been left unprobed. In corridor discussions, prosecutor Earl Silbert has been asked repeatedly by newsmen why he has not posed additional questions to witnesses or called higher Republican officials to the stand. Silbert’s contention is that the government is submitting only evidence that is necessary to prove charges in its indictment of the original seven defendants last September. There is no evidence of a wider conspiracy, he has told reporters. Additional testimony could be immaterial and irrelevant, he has said. Not only have the prosecution’s questions been limited but the defense attorneys at times have even waived their opportunity to cross-examine." [End of quote from Jackson's article] To say that judge Sirica should be given a bravo for what he did in collapsing Nixon's "house of cards" is akin saying that the Warren Commission, headed by another judge, should also be given a bravo for the how it conducted its biased investigation as to what happened in the JFK assassination. Perhaps in the really important events in our nation's history, whether the be Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate or 9/11, we should learn to expect that the personal motivations of the really key persons involved in investigating what occurred will shape the outcome as officially announced.

US government's handling of state secrets is 'outmoded', says report Public Interest Declassification Board urges Obama to shake up 'outmoded and unsustainable' By Ed Pilkington in New York guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 December 2012 14.21 EST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/06/us-government-state-secrets-classified-report The US government's handling of state secrets is out of date, over-cautious and incapable of keeping up with the vast quantities of electronic data produced in the digital age, a federal committee says in a report to President Barack Obama that is published on Thursday. The report from the Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory committee set up by Congress, paints a devastating picture of a secrecy system that is "outmoded and unsustainable". The credibility of the system is under threat, it says, from widespread over-classification that in turn is fostering the growth of leaking of government information. "The current classification system is fraught with problems. It keeps too many secrets, and keeps them too long; it is overly complex... and a culture persists that defaults to the avoidance of risk rather than its proper management," the report says. At worst, the report warns, the expansion of secrecy in the modern world of digital communications could undermine democratic accountability: "At its most benign, secrecy impedes informed government decisions and an informed public; at worst, it enables corruption and malfeasance." The board's conclusions point to a mounting crisis that faces the US government over secrecy. On the one hand, it is producing petabytes – that is, quadrillions of bytes – of classified information every year. On the other hand, the increasing number of leaks of classified information, which the board suggests is directly linked to the mushrooming of secrecy, is being stamped on more ruthlessly by the Obama administration than ever before. The 1917 Espionage Act has been wielded six times since Obama entered the White House, twice the number of prosecutions started by all previous administrations combined. One of the six individuals to have fallen foul of the Espionage Act is Bradley Manning, who faces possible life in military custody for having supplied hundreds of thousands of state documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Manning downloaded classified material for which 4.2 million Americans have security clearance – almost as many people as the population of metropolitan Washington. Experts say that with such a huge number of individuals able to access gigantic quantities of secret documents, many of which should not have been classified in the first place, it is no wonder that leaking is becoming a growing problem. "The system is losing integrity, and that in turn makes people more likely to leak," said Amy Bennett, assistant director of openthegovernment.org . Bennett pointed out that the WikiLeaks trove of US diplomatic cables leaked by Manning included such portentous confidential documents as a description of a lavish wedding in Dagestan, in the North Caucusus. "That was just funny, it didn't deserve the level of security the government had given it," she said. The board's report is being seen by campaigners for freedom of information as an important first step in fixing a broken classification system that was set up on paper 70 years ago. In its set of recommendations, the board suggests that the three current levels of classification – top secret, secret and confidential – should be simplified into two, that official documents relating to time-specific events should be released to the public as soon as the event is over, and that the system should be modernised to exploit new digital technologies. Crucially, it says that the White House has to take the lead in forcing the changes through. "There is little recognition among Government practitioners that there is a fundamental problem," the report says. "Clearly, it will require a Presidential mandate to energise and direct agencies to work together to reform the classification system

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2qrl6Q2rk Levenda is a gifted speaker whose knowledgeable discourse is full of fascinating twists and turns.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/12/lbjs-last-interview.html#commentsform Nixon's phone call to LBJ took place on the eve of the first Watergate trial of Hunt, Liddy, McCord and the four Cuban-Americans. The first trial ended with guilty pleas by Hunt and the Cuban Americans and by the jury's verdict of Liddy and McCord being guilty. McCord's letter to Judge Sirica a few months later exposed the "hush money" cover-up, which led to the second Watergate trial and later to Nixon's resignation from the presidency. I testified at the first Watergate trial as a voluntary witness for the defense and an involuntary witness for the prosecution. My testimony occurred the same day that LBJ died.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/us-news-blog/2012/dec/03/elisabeth-murdoch-profile-new-yorker

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/better_than_bourne_who_really_killed_nick_deak/