Michael Hogan

Terri, I continue to find your account to be plausible and even riveting. I'm learning more about the KKK on this thread than in a dozen history books. The literature about the Klan in history books is sparse and one-sided.

No it is not sparse. On what basis do you claim that?

I totally agree -- this is typical of the one-sidedness of the Northern naivete; "either the KKK is gone or the whole South is KKK and there is no middle term."

Naivete or the lack thereof is not a function of geographic location. It is a function of intelligence, information and common sense. Where do you get your data to arrive at such a conclusion? To me naivete is actually believing any story, no matter how preposterous or implausible and regardless of other evidence, when it fits your personal theories.

Even though Michael is correct to point out that the WCC was founded by Patterson to be non-violent (and therefore to be separate from the KKK), and that this stipulation is part of the original WCC by-laws, it would be naive to imagine that the KKK members would simply stay away.

Paul, I would appreciate if you would leave my name out of your posts to others if you are not going to accurately address what I was really pointing out. It was namely this: Terri Williams' claim that the Citizens' Council was started by the Klan was a mistake, and demonstrably false to the point of being something she just made up in her head. If you find claims like that plausible and informative, you need to read some of those history books that you try to marginalize.

As for DeSlaughter, he was a great lawyer who cracked the Byron de la Beckwith case 30 years after the crime (because de la Beckwith had escaped conviction twice before). Americans owe DeSlaughter a debt of gratitude, but that does not make him the final expert on the KKK in Terry Mississippi. Since DeSlaughter wore a suit and tie and was not a member of the KKK, it is just as likely that the KKK withheld mountains of evidence from him. DeSlaughter was an expert in mainly one thread -- the Medgar Evers thread.

Until my post, I doubt you were familiar with DeSlaughter's name. I doubt you've read his book. But you've got the man measured.

DeSlaughter was born in Mississippi, lived his formative years during the Civil Rights era and got his law degree from the University of Mississippi. Throughout his life he undoubtedly encountered and engaged members and ex-members (and their families, acquaintances and enemies) of the various hate groups that existed. He probably defended some and he probably prosecuted some. To try and confine his life experiences to the Medgar Evers trial is typical of the way you treat evidence, in my opinion. He was chosen as a prosecutor in that trial for a reason.

He lived in Terry, MS and adjudicated in Hinds County for a decade. long after the Klans had been decimated. Your comment "that does not make him the final expert on the KKK in Terry, Mississippi" is relatively meaningless.. Who do you accept as a final expert? Terri Williams?

Apparently you believe her story that for the entire summer of 1963 that all the people in her grade school knew that President Kennedy was going to be shot in Dallis in November and that Terry wrote JFK a letter trying to warn him. Apparently you believe that the entire school immediately knew who actually fired the fatal shot and that he was one of their own. Apparently you believe that the entire town had that advanced knowledge and then managed to keep it a complete secret from their neighbors in surrounding towns and the rest of Mississippi and federal and state investigators for fifty years. And that no one has ever spoken about it anywhere, except for Terri Williams. How did such a loosely kept secret instantly become such a tightly held secret that has remained intact for fifty years?

It's hard to believe that someone who claims her life was so profoundly influenced by the Ku Klux Klan, and had foreknowledge of such a tragic and historic event would show no evidence of ever having read a book (or even conducting a cursory amount of online research) on the subject in fifty years. Where is the intellectual curiosity?

Her story would have been much better served if she had done that.

Paul, you can call it intended hyperbole, plausible and riveting, or anything else you want. My term would be a bit less euphemistic.

First, to Martin White: Meagher deals with that issue of the handloading and the machine on p. 281 of her book. If you don't have her book, then I strongly recommend you get it. No serious critic should ever be without it. I consider it the best overall of the first generation.

Yes, I've been looking for a copy of that book for a while. Unfortunately, all of the copies I've seen so far have been £80 or more.

Martin, the 1992 reprint is less: http://www.abebooks.... after the fact

From John Dolva's post:

During the White Citizens Councils’ heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members. Although they weren’t immune to violence — Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member — the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of “forced integration.”

In January 1994 Byron De La Beckwith was brought to trial for the third time for the murder of Medgar Evers. One of the prosecutors was a man by the name of Bobby DeLaughter.

DeLaughter's successful prosecution inspired him to write a book which was later made into the movie Mississippi Burning.

http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B000FC0S78

DeLaughter attended law school at the University of Mississippi and was a graduate of the FBI's National Law Institute. As a life-long Mississippian, he obviously was very well connected when it came to understanding the hate climate of Mississippi in the 1960s. He decided to become a lawyer when his ninth grade civics teacher took the class to a trial held at the Hinds County courthouse circa 1968.

For the Evers case DeLaughter immersed himself in FBI and Jackson Police records, old trial transcripts, newspaper articles and taped interviews. His closing argument is considered by some to be one of the greatest in the annals of law.

In 1999 DeLaughter was appointed Hinds County Judge and in 2002 he was appointed Circuit Court Judge for Hinds County. He became a resident of Terry, MS.

Born in 1954, DeSlaughter is close to the age of EF member Terri Williams. Consider her account that it was common knowledge among grade schoolers in Terry, MS in the summer of 1963 that President Kennedy was going to be shot when he traveled to Dallas in November and, upon hearing of the shooting, they immediately knew the identity of the man that fired the fatal shot.

Living in Terry, MS, it's hard to imagine that Bobby DeSlaughter never ran into anyone in Hinds County that remembered those events.

(In 2009 DeSlaughter pled guilty to obstruction of justice in a fellow lawyer's bribery case. He spent a little over a year in prison.)

...I was Kennedy supporter and not popular in Mississippi; I did not fit in there. There were others like me, of both races. It is hard to say who might also come forward to back my claim. Certainly it should be the FBI (among others) investigating the claim, not me.

This is an interesting angle. Since Michael pointed out the research done by John Drabble about COINTELPRO-White Hate (an FBI domestic spying program against the KKK from 1964 to 1971) wouldn't it be interesting to review those FBI records with a focus upon Terry, Texas?

Paul. a careful reading of Drabble's article would show that he also relied on the FBI's MIBURN documents. I have spent hours

looking through them; they (and the COINTELPRO documents) are available at the FBI's website.

Drabble originally obtained them via the FOIA act. Historians and authors have written extensively on the Klan in Mississippi using these documents as sources.

You can be sure that Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler have reviewed each and every one of them under a researcher's microscope.

Although they were researching a book on the assassination of Dr. King, you can be sure that if there was anything there even

peripherally pertaining to President Kennedy's murder, it would be in one of Larry's books or on his blog.

.......And if you seriously think that only 10 people lost their lives at the hands of the White Knights, you are dead wrong. Lynchings were not an everyday occurrence, but they happened often enough and in enough places, that there was probably more like hundreds of people who lost their lives in lynchings.

I don't know where you get the notion that I think any such thing. I can only conclude that you are not a careful reader.

Until my last post you never mentioned the White Knights. Now all of a sudden you grew up surrounded by them. Now all of a sudden, you're writing about them.

As far as your claim that the KKK started the Citizens' Council, it is you that is dead wrong. You don't seem to want to talk about that.

There are a lot of EF members here that know more about Civil Rights and the South in the 60s than you might think.

You wrote about all the misconceptions that Northerners have about racism in the South and yet you continue to show a lack of even

the most basic knowledge or curiosity about the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. The material is out there and easily accessible.

Terri, I really don't have a desire to engage in extended debate with you. Just don't attribute things to me I didn't say. Please.

If Paul wants to find your stories reasonable and credible, that's his business. My thoughts are more in line with those of Lee Farley.

And it's really strange that the FBI with all their infiltrating didn't know the KKK started the White Citizens' Council......

It is a mistake to portray the Ku Kux Klan as a monolithic organization. It is a historical mistake to ignore the role of the White Knights of the KKK in the 1960s.

It is a mistake to claim that the KKK started the Citizens' Council.

According to an American Radio Works documentary by Kate Ellis and Stephen Smith (bold added):

When the Supreme Court handed down its landmark 1954 desegregation ruling, segregationists in Mississippi moved fast. A prominent planter and World War II veteran in the Delta, Robert “Tut” Patterson, had already begun organizing whites just prior to the ruling. A racist tract written by Mississippi Judge Tom Brady shortly after the decision outlined a platform opposing racial integration. With Brady for inspiration, Patterson got busy. On July 11, 1954 Patterson convened a group of prominent leaders in Indianola. Later that month they held a town meeting. Roughly 100 people came. They created the first Citizens’ Council, an organization that would grow to be the most powerful opponent of civil rights activism in Mississippi.

By 1956, the Citizens’ Council had chapters in a majority of Mississippi counties and had attracted some 80,000 members. The movement also spread quickly across the South. Membership tended to be highest in counties where the population was more than 50 percent black. Headed by the most prominent local businessmen, professionals and governing officials, the goal of the Citizens’ Council was to use every possible means to lawfully resist desegregation.

......For all its economic and social force, the Citizens’ Council denied having any hand in violence against African Americans. Indeed, the Council explicitly rejected any association with the Ku Klux Klan. The Council dismissed Klan members as low-class troublemakers who would tarnish Mississippi’s reputation. According to Neil McMillen, Judge Tom Brady warned, “Unless we keep and pitch our battle on a high plane, and unless we keep our ranks free from the demagogue, the renegade, the lawless and the violent, we will be branded, as we should be branded, a fearful, underground, lawless organization.”

Nevertheless, historian John Dittmer observes, “Through its unrelenting attack on human rights in Mississippi, the Citizens’ Council fostered and legitimized violent actions by individuals not overly concerned with questions of legality and image.” McMillen says this was one reason, at least, that the KKK did not organize extensively in Mississippi until the early 1960s. The Klan wasn’t needed -- yet. The Citizens’ Council provided adequate cover for white vigilantes.

Since the end of the 1920s, the Klan had been largely inactive in Mississippi. Historians say the Klan simply wasn’t needed to maintain white supremacy. But as the civil rights movement gained momentum in the state, a man named Edward L. McDaniel was recruited to revive the Klan. McDaniel was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, near the border of Louisiana. He grew up in Depression-era poverty and dropped out of high school to help earn money for his family. He was mobilized to fight civil rights activists by the Ole’ Miss crisis. McDaniel was especially embittered toward the federal government. “We had witnessed what happened in Little Rock under the Eisenhower administration,” McDaniel said in an oral history interview. “And then this happen[ed] here at home. It really upset me and it upset a lot of other people. But it seemed like every way you'd go your hands were tied.”

In 1963 McDaniel was working as a truck driver and made frequent deliveries in Louisiana. One day when he was discussing the Ole’ Miss crisis with a friend in Louisiana the man invited him to a meeting. “We sat there and talked a while, and then about that time a guy come out and he was robed out [wearing a Klan robe],” McDaniel said.

“He went through the process of wanting to know if I wanted to join the Klan and how I felt about the situation with the Klan,” McDaniel continued. “I made a decision that evening. I went in, was sworn in the Klan, and I guess thirty or forty guys that was robed out and everything. It was a real experience. And when they took the robes off, I knew half of them or more.”

McDaniel worked relentlessly to build up the Klan in Mississippi. Within six months, he had organized chapters in 76 counties in the state. In 1964, McDaniel became Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America (UKA). Like the Citizens’ Council, the UKA disavowed violence, while secretly condoning it. But a rival Klan emerged in Mississippi at the same time, the White Knights of the KKK. They were more secretive than the UKA, but more deadly. According to sociologist David Cunningham: “ The White Knights were responsible for most of the highly visible acts of violence in MS throughout ‘60s,” including at least ten murders.

http://americanradio...ippi/index.html

I came across this book on EBay, allegedly signed by Hoover http://www.ebay.com/...r-/380401140740

Of course the book was written from a pro-FBI point of view.

Deleted.

I didn't see Bill Kelley's post.

What's the matter Michael? You're a little slow on the draw there.

BK

I got so shook up, I spelled your name wrong and I've never done that before.

Bill Kelly. Bill Kelly. Bill Kelly.

Deleted.

I didn't see Bill Kelley's post.

Responsible and law abiding gun owners commit very few of the gun crimes in the US.

What a brilliant observation.

Martin, he quotes Tom Robinson to that effect. I find it hard to believe Humes would perform surgery on Kennedy's head and then utter his statement about surgery to the head as recorded by the FBI. Or is this Humes' way of trying to extricate himself out of the task he was given? I don't know.

Thanks for the information Daniel. Like you, I would be surprised by this, so I'd like to see the evidence behind the claim.

http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2009/12/doug-horne-makes-astounding-claims-on.html

From huffingtonpost.com

John Brennan and the CIA's Last JFK Secrets

by Jefferson Morley

January 11, 2013

http://www.huffingto..._b_2441856.html

John Drabble is a historian that has published a series of articles and papers on COINTELPRO - WHITE HATE, "the FBI's domestic covert action program against the Ku Klux Klan 1964-1971."

...

In September 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a highly secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program, known as "COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE." This covert action program sought to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" Ku Klux Klan groups, whose violent vigilante activities had begun to alarm the nation, and with it, the national government. ...

Michael, although I agree that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI worked to "neutralize" the KKK in America, we must also consider the other side, namely, that J. Edgar Hoover spent more time and money spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. than any other single American.

We should not conclude that the FBI was a friend to the Civil Rights movement in the USA, simply because they opposed the KKK here and there. We should also bear in mind that JFK and RFK took a public position of condemning the vigilante raids against Cuba, and closed down Minutemen and other vigilante training camps -- while at the same time they continued underground and secret activities against Castro's Cuba.

In other words -- some actions that powerful public figures perform for the Mass Media are strictly intended for public consumption, while privately they may hold different attitudes.

Paul, my post had nothing to do with Hoover's views on Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. Nor did I offer the opinion anywhere that Hoover was a friend of that movement.

For example, J. Edgar Hoover was a zealous Anticommunist -- and yet he also convinced himself and his followers that the Civil Rights movement -- especially with regard to Negroes -- was part of the Communist movement and the USSR underground. That is, Hoover twisted his Anticommunism to attack the USA Civil Rights movement!

Granted, Hoover might have believed this fantasy in his heart. But the end result was racist business as usual, was it not? Terri's perception that the FBI acted to suppress the rights of black Americans to an equal extent as the KKK did, has real merit in the light of actual history. .

Paul, do you believe that Hoover was a member of the Klan? Do you believe he was a Grand Dragon in that organization? Do you believe Hoover WAS Klan?

Those ideas are what my link was addressing. Just curious, did you read Drabble's paper?

From comicbookresources.com:

For every comic book you see on shelves, there are dozens of ideas, proposals and half-finished creations that never see the full light of day. Red Light Properties writer/artist Dan Goldman recently showed off one such project on his Flickr account, an adaptation of James Douglas’ popular 2007 nonfiction book JFK & The Unspeakable: How He Died and Why It Matters, praised by filmmaker Oliver Stone as the “best account” of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Goldman was in talks to adapt the work alongside writer Seth Jacobson, but sadly the project never got beyond the cover and six pages created by Goldman and Jacobson.

http://robot6.comicb...ssination-book/

(Dan Goldman's Flickr page (linked in the text) has a few more images and commentary)

" While Kennedy’s assassination continues to garner many conspiracy theories, our story is based on facts, some that haven’t been publicly known. And with National Geographic Channel and Scott Free once again at the helm, I have the utmost trust and faith that they will bring the story of Kennedy and Camelot to life.” (Bill O'Reilly)

“Collaborating with National Geographic on Bill O’Reilly’s follow-up was an easy decision. They share the same passion of storytelling, willing to take creative leaps and risks to keep viewers entertained to tell the provocative story of Kennedy’s last days, a pivotal and historic moment.” (Ridley Scott)

(Bold added)

http://www.screenafr...dy#.UOwaBOQ8B8E

.....About Hoover, I just can't see him keeping quiet. It is plausible that he gave advice on plans and made suggestions for cover ups. From what I have heard from the Klan in Mississippi, Hoover WAS Klan.

John Drabble is a historian that has published a series of articles and papers on COINTELPRO - WHITE HATE, "the FBI's domestic covert action program against the Ku Klux Klan 1964-1971."

http://cointelprowhi...0&max-results=1

An excerpt from one of Drabble's articles:

The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Mississippi, 1964-1971

Introduction

In September 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a highly secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program, known as "COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE." This covert action program sought to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" Ku Klux Klan groups, whose violent vigilante activities had begun to alarm the nation, and with it, the national government. This article will assess that program's effect on Klan groups in Mississippi, between 1964 and 1971, when the program was exposed. In doing so, it will add an entirely new dimension to the question of how and why an important change in race relations came to one state in the American South during this period.

......To begin this process, I have chosen to trace systematically each documented covert operation used by the FBI against Klan groups and Klansmen in Mississippi, to assess their effects. My research is based primarily upon the COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE file. I also use documents from the MIBURN file, an investigation of the murder of three civil rights activists in Neshoba County in June 1964, as well as FBI intelligence files I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Additional conclusions are drawn from white supremacist publications I acquired from a number of archival collections.

The COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE operation endeavored to expose and disrupt Klan activities, cause disillusionment, and create factional splits within Klan organizations. It aimed to increase animosity and factional activities among Klansmen, and cause expulsions and defections from the Klans. A careful reading of these sources indicates that COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE operations aggravated factionalism in Mississippi, contributing to the splintering of Mississippi's Klan organizations. They discredited high-ranking Klan officers, many of whom were purged or quit. They brought about resignation, frustration and fear among rank and file Klan members, which, in turn, brought about drastic reductions in the membership rolls and the concurrent disbanding of most of the local Klan units in the state. In combination with criminal prosecutions, this article concludes, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE vitiated all of the KKK organizations that operated in Mississippi.

For those wanting to read a more complete version of John Drabble's paper, see this post from another Forum thread on the Klan:

http://educationforu...53

From the Fred J Cook papers at Syracuse University:

When Cook's 1964 book Goldwater: Extremist on the Right was published, it -- and Cook -- were attacked by Conservative evangelist and radio broadcaster Billy James Hargis on his radio show on station WGCB, based in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. Cook sued, arguing that under the Fairness Doctrine he was entitled to free air time to respond to the attack. Red Lion Broadcasting, the company that owned WGCB, decided to challenge the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine. The case went to the Supreme Court as Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission in 1969, which resulted in the Court's ruling that the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional.

http://library.syr.e...s/c/cook_fj.htm

In the book O'Reilly actually declares, with laughable solemnity, words to the effect that "Either Oswald would win Marina's love again that night or he would kill Kennedy the next day. That was the choice." It's an utterly laughable theory based on lame armchair pseudo-psychology.

Along comes David Von Pein, intent on proving DSL correct:

It's not a laughable theory at all. Not in the slightest. It makes perfect sense--from the point-of-view of Lee Harvey Oswald on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 1963.

I, too, think that the assassination would almost certainly have not occurred had Marina and Lee agreed to get back together on November 21st.

Marina Oswald said that Lee, on November 21, offered to go look for an apartment in Dallas "tomorrow" if Marina would agree to come back and live with Lee right away....

.....Therefore, given that testimony from the lips of Marina Oswald herself, is it likely Lee would have had thoughts of taking his rifle to work with him the next day and killing JFK at noontime just before he went to look for a new apartment for his family after work? I kind of doubt it.

The fact that Marina rejected Lee on November 21 is, in my view, a key event that allowed Lee Oswald's plan of attempting to assassinate President Kennedy to go forward uninterrupted.

One couldn't ask for a better example of lame keyboard psuedo-psychology. And yes, it's a laughable theory.

Technically speaking, the testimony referenced by DVP did not come "from the lips of Marina Oswald herself." Those words came from the lips of the interpreter.

The distinction is worth noting.

The Warren Commission carefully concluded: No one will ever know what passed through Oswald's mind during the week before November 22, 1963.

No one except O'Reilly, Von Pein and other like-minded theorists.

The Warren Report stated:

.....The Commission does not believe that the relations between Oswald and his wife caused him to assassinate the President. It is unlikely that the motivation was that simple. The feelings of hostility and aggression which seem to have played such an important part in Oswald's life were part of his character long before he met his wife and such a favorable opportunity to strike at a figure as great as the President would probably never have come to him again.

After claiming that Oswald would not have shot the President if Marina had not rebuked him, David issued a qualifier of sorts:

When Lee went to Ruth Paine's house in Irving on November 21st, he had, of course, already been thinking about shooting the President with his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. We can know he had thoughts of shooting JFK as early as Thursday morning, November 21 when he made up his lie to Buell Wesley Frazier about the nonexistent "curtain rods".

So Marina's rejection on the night of the 21st was certainly not an overriding motive of Lee's in his decision to take his gun to work the next day and shoot the President of the United States. Obviously, he must have had a motive for wanting to kill the President even before riding to Irving with Wesley Frazier on Thursday afternoon. And the proof of that fact rests in the provable "curtain rods" lie he told Frazier on Thursday morning. So Lee Oswald had a motive for shooting the President even before he saw his wife on November 21, although we will never know for sure what that motive was.

But Lee Harvey's assassination plan was not yet finalized in his mind or fixed in stone as late as Thursday night. If Marina had responded differently to Lee's request to get an apartment in Dallas right away, I think history would have been different on November 22, and John F. Kennedy would very likely have lived to make his speech at the Trade Mart that day.

....

People are, of course, free to disagree with the above assessment of Lee Harvey Oswald's perceived thought processes. Is it a guessing game? Sure it is. It can't be anything else, given the fact that the President's assassin was himself killed just two days after JFK was slain. But in my view, the above evaluation is a reasonable one when trying to get inside the head of Lee Harvey Oswald on the night of Thursday, 11/21/63.

It is one thing for DVP to offer his assessments of Lee Oswald's perceived thought processes. Of course he thinks his evaluation is a reasonable one. He is, of course, free to offer all the unsubstantiated and illogical guesses he can conjure up and post them here on the JFK Education Forum or on his blog. Few take him seriously.

It is an entirely different matter for O'Reilly to put crap like that in his book and try to pawn it off as history.

O'Reilly even wrote that Oswald was standing up while he fired shots at the President's motorcade. That false description of such a tragic event is both disgusting and dishonest.

Otherwise, it would be laughable.

In March, 1976, James Truitt, a former senior member of staff at the Washington Post, gave an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Mary Pinchot Meyer was having an affair with John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated. He also claimed that Meyer had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me".

Ann Truitt was living in Tokyo at the time that Meyer was murdered on 12th October, 1964. She phoned Bradlee at his home and asked him if he had found the diary. Bradlee, who claimed he was unaware of his sister-in-law's affair with Kennedy, knew nothing about the diary. He later recalled what he did after Truitt's phone-call: "We didn't start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary's house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found Jim Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary's diary."

James Angleton, CIA counterintelligence chief, admitted that he knew of Mary's relationship with John F. Kennedy and was searching her home looking for her diary and any letters that would reveal details of the affair. According to Bradlee, it was Mary's sister, Antoinette Bradlee, who found the diary and letters a few days later. It was claimed that the diary was in a metal box in Mary's studio. The contents of the box were given to Angleton who claimed he burnt the diary.

Article on the Truitts' son Sam: http://www.woodstock...idden-meanings/

Excerpt:

“It’s ‘about’ the JFK assassination — or, as it is written, ‘Made of maps, mirrors and labyrinths — though grounded in proprietary knowledge — DICK is a book that explodes the Kennedy assassination and the machinations around that event. References to the JFK murder are in fact quite oblique: in fact, the whole work is, including most obdurately the integral deployment of Morse Code as text.’”

Truitt works in layers. Taken as transmitted what comes across is a robotic British female voice reading bits of text interspersed with long renderings of “dash dot dot dash dash” Morse Code, simultaneous to a fast-paced flickering of partial images and appearing/disappearing notes. One gets a sense of things happening, of a narrative being unveiled somewhat reluctantly, and huge amounts of work at play. The very cross-pollination of media is impressive…and about the only welcoming element of the whole enterprise, at least until one starts returning to it daily and getting a sense of something unfolding.

Having been cheat-slipped a copy of the text as a whole, before Truitt came up with the transmission idea for its initial “publication,” DICK — as a whole document — is similarly mysterious in its constant use of Morse Code and Shakespearean stage directions amid an apparent stream of consciousness babble of statements, descriptions, and epiphanies. Yet it also imparts a building sense of outrage and dangerousness. Something evil is being imparted, it appears, that creates a sense of outrage in the writer.

Partly that comes from the sense of background Truitt allows to precede his transmissions.

“The story behind DICK lies in my family’s association with Kennedy’s assassination,” he writes. “My mother, the visual artist Anne Truitt, was a close friend of Mary Pinchot Meyer, the ex-wife of Cord Meyer, who helped found the World Federalist Movement and was subsequently a CIA official. Mary Meyer had an on-going affair with President Kennedy up to his death, about which she wrote in a diary. On our family leaving Washington for Tokyo in 1963 (my father, a journalist, had been appointed bureau chief of Newsweek in Japan), Mary Meyer told my mother that if anything happened to her she should find and safeguard the diary. Mary Meyer was assassinated in Washington in October 1964, and on this news my mother contacted James Angleton, the CIA’s head of Counter Intelligence and a family friend, to secure the diary. He did so and having read the diary kept it in his safe at CIA. Subsequently the diary was given to my mother and to Mary Meyer’s sister, Antoinette Pinchot Bradlee, the wife of Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post. They read and then burned it.”

Unstated in the annotations Truitt provides are such elements as his father’s eventual release from Newsweek and eventual suicide, the fact that his sister’s godparents were Angleton and Meyer (and his godfather, Cord Meyer), or his toddler memories of having had his first school experience alongside the Kennedy kids in the White House nursery.

After running some of the Morse Code through translators, uncovering what appears to be a gobbledygook of capital letters, I asked Truitt if I was missing something. He said he’d added that another cryptographic layer that needed cracking by those searching out the deeper messages he was trying to impart.

“You can continue the penetration and find out what was transmitted by Mary Meyer’s diary,” he said. “Why do I bury it all? Unless there’s an outright release of all the documents involved in her assassination, the Kennedy murder, and the other records kept top secret — unless everybody were to become clear and come clean at the CIA, the FBI and so forth — the whole of this narrative will never be clear. I chose this as a way of sharing the impenetrability of what really happened.”

Sam Truitt's Facebook page: http://www.facebook....494093407275592

Robert,

I think someone has confused an earlier incident here. Carter was actually cut off when the subject of the CIA came up, in a debate with Gerald Ford during the 1976 campaign. I don't recall Carter ever bringing up the JFK assassination (and I was keenly watching for this at that time), even though his sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was publicly vocal about the issue.

If I recall correctly, he wasn't cut off by a questioner, but the audio (perhaps video, too- can't remember) suddenly failed at the moment the CIA was mentioned. It was certainly fittingly paranoid.

I'd love to be wrong, but I'd have to see an actual film clip to believe it.

A portion of the transcript from that September 23, 1976 debate:

Ms. DREW. Mr. President, the real problem with the FBI--in fact, all of the intelligence agencies--is there are no real laws governing them. Such laws as there are tend to be vague and open-ended. Now, you have issued some Executive orders, but we have learned that leaving these agencies to executive discretion and direction can get them and in fact the country in a great deal of trouble. One President may be a decent man, the next one might not be. So, what do you think about trying to write in some more protection by getting some laws governing these agencies?

THE PRESIDENT. You are familiar, of course, with the fact that I am the first President in 30 years who has reorganized the intelligence agencies in the Federal Government--the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the others. We've done that by Executive order. And I think we've tightened it up; we've straightened out their problems that developed over the last few years. It doesn't seem to me that it's needed or necessary to have legislation in this particular regard. I have recommended to the Congress, however--I'm sure you are familiar with this--legislation that would make it very proper and in the right way that the Attorney General could go in and get the right for wiretapping under security cases. This was an effort that was made by the Attorney General and myself working with the Congress. But even in this area where I think new legislation would be justified, the Congress has not responded. So, I feel in that case as well as in the reorganization of the intelligence agencies--as I've done--we have to do it by Executive order. And I'm glad that we have a good Director in George Bush; we have good Executive orders. And the CIA and the DIA and NSA are now doing a good job under proper supervision.

THE MODERATOR. Governor Carter.

MR. CARTER. Well, one of the very serious things that's happened in our Government in recent years and has continued up until now is a breakdown in the trust among our people in the . . .

[At this point, there was an audio failure which caused a delay in the debate until 11:18 p.m.]

THE MODERATOR. Ladies and gentlemen, probably it is not necessary for me to say that we had a technical failure during the debates. It was not a failure in the debate; it was a failure in the broadcasting of the debate. It occurred 27 minutes ago. The fault has been dealt with, and we want to thank President Ford and Governor Carter for being so patient and understanding while this delay went on. We very much regret the technical failure that lost the sound as it was leaving the theatre. It occurred during Governor Carter's response to what would have been and what was the last question put to the candidates. That question went to President Ford. It dealt with the control of Government intelligence agencies. Governor Carter was making his response and had very nearly finished it. He will conclude that response now, after which President Ford and Governor Carter will make their closing statements.

MR. CARTER. There has been too much Government secrecy and not enough respect for the personal privacy of American citizens.

THE MODERATOR. It is now time for the closing statements which are to be up to 4 minutes long. Governor Carter, by the same toss of the coin that directed the first question to you, you are to go first now.....

http://www.fordlibra...ches/760947.asp

The actor Sterling Hayden, was one of the first famous people to come out as a critic of the Warren Commission. Hayden supported Mark Lane in his attempts to reopen the case and joined the Citizens Committee of Inquiry. Lane pointed out in Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK (1991): "Having almost exhausted the available traditional resources, I turned toward an informal network that had been established years before... I formed an organization... the Citizens Committee of Inquiry. Its purpose, from the time it was founded in 1964, was to bring together people interested in securing the facts about the death of the president. It was clear that an extraordinary response was required to meet the effort of the police and spy organizations to offer a sanitized solution to the murder and to discourage serious inquiry."

Interestingly, Hayden had worked with several future members of the CIA when he was a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War. Hayden also acted in the conspiracy film, Winter Kills (1979), that is based loosely on the JFK assassination.

http://www.spartacus...USAhaydenST.htm

Sterling Hayden and Frank Sinatra starred in the 1954 film Suddenly, an American film noir about a plan to assassinate the President of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia....enly_(1954_film) (When the link appears click the link next to "Did you mean")

Folks, it might be good for some JFK assassination researchers to post in the comments section of this article in the Dallas Observer. Jim Schutze has been giving some favorable coverage to Robert Groden and doing a good job of detailing efforts to persecute and silence all JFK researchers who sell their materials on the Grassy Knoll.

http://blogs.dallaso...onor_jfk_si.php

A follow-up article by Jim Schutze: http://blogs.dallaso...nts_to_keep.php

From The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.co...=googlenews_wsj

In late 1966 Shirley Martin was approached by two journalists, Lawrence Schiller and Richard Warren Lewis, who were writing an article about the critics of the Warren Commission. The article was published by the New York World Journal Tribune on 22nd January, 1967. It was followed by a book, The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report (1967) and a record album, The Controversy (1967).

In February 1967 Penn Jones published Shirley Martin's An Open Letter To Father Oscar Huber in The Midlothian Mirror.

Shirley Martin was taking Father Huber to task for a published report (see above) that he denied ever meeting her and her children and claiming that he "had no knowledge of such a wound (over Kennedy's left eye)."

Mrs. Martin scathingly wrote: Consequently, Father, your denial of the children and me may lead to trouble yet. We are not accustomed to being called liars, either by a priest or a Hollywood "journalist."

http://jfk.hood.edu/...or/67-03-02.pdf

(Also see the article by Penn Jones and Shirley Martin (using information furnished by Bill Barry of the Miami News) that appeared in Forgive My Grief II. It has come to be known as the Milteer story.)