Cliff Varnell

Sheep in wolves' clothing don't run in packs -- they move in flocks. Neutron Activation Analysis of CE399? Get flocked.

No Douglas, I never thought the subject was relevant and I'm appalled that new members of the Forum will be lead down yet another meaningless rabbit hole. Any discussion of anything in regard to the SBT is an abject waste of time, a distraction from the fact that 6.5mm FMJ don't leave shallow wounds in soft tissue.

The mystery to me is why this subject is of any interest whatsoever. More false mystery rabbit-holery.

Or it proves that the arrest of Oswald made their plan to blame Castro untenable.

Robert, you continue to reinforce the observation that Harriman/Bundy had more power than LBJ over the official US Government position on Lone Nut Oswald. The same dynamic prevailed years later in regard to Vietnam.

Since the Lone Nut Scenario fell apart for a majority of people by ‘66 it’s no surprise LBJ needed someone else to blame privately. In the few days after the JFKA the only people he confided with this claim were Sorensen and Warren.

Robert, I’ve cited this quote many times myself. Johnson cooled his heels at Parkland waiting to hear if the patsy had been whacked. Plan A was to blame the deed on Castro with Soviet complicity. But when the patsy was captured alive that narrative became problematic. So LBJ boarded AF1 and waited to hear how to move forward. Bundy called from the Situation Room saying the lone assassin was in custody, and the minute LBJ got to the White House Harriman shows up with a tall tale about the unanimous view of the top Kremlinologists that the Soviets were not involved. Cliff Carter then called Texas to insist Oswald was a Lone Nut. LBJ followed orders then, just like he did years later with Vietnam.

Wait a minute — what’s this about LBJ trying hard to convince Sorensen of foreign involvement on Saturday night? That’s not 11/22/63, that’s 11/23/63. The people above LBJ in the scheme of things had already laid down the law on 11/22/63. Meaningless. Soon when? LBJ’s first meeting when he got to the White House was with Harriman and Fulbright. Jack Valenti – in “A Very Human President” (1973, p3) <quote on> Shortly before 7:00 P.M., I escorted Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ambassador Averell Harriman into the office. I fidgeted outside, in the middle of what would have appeared to be an objective onlooker to be a mélange of confusion. No one of the Johnson aides, Marie Fehmer, his secretary; the late Cliff Carter, his chief political agent; Bill Moyers, nor any of the rest, was quite certain of what lay ahead. We were all busy on the phone and trying to assemble what measure of office discipline we could construct. <quote off> Soon after that Cliff Carter called Texas to pass on the order to charge Oswald as a lone gunman. So later on Haig discovered LBJ’s “deep concern” — so what? The elites made the decision on 11/22/63 to go with the Lone Nut scenario. In ‘67 the same people told Johnson to carry on with the Vietnam War and in March ‘68 they told him to try to get out. Johnson was good at BSing people, but push come to shove he did as he was told.

“Everyone he could”? Sorensen, Haig and Warren were “everyone he could”? Not much of a lobbying effort. Looks like ol’ Lyndon took his marching orders from the “Wise Men” elites. As always. https://www.politico.com/story/2010/03/johnson-meets-with-the-wise-men-march-25-1968-034945 Johnson meets with ‘The Wise Men,’ March 25, 1968 On this day in 1968, as pessimism over U.S. prospects in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with 14 informal advisers. In 1945, some of them had forged a bipartisan foreign policy based on containing the Soviet Union. They went on to craft key institutions like NATO, the World Bank and the Marshall Plan. They were known, collectively, as “The Wise Men.” They met with LBJ after being briefed by officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. They had been informed of a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, for additional troops in the wake of perceived U.S. setbacks in the Tet Offensive. Present at the White House meeting were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy, Cyrus Vance and Gens. Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. In the words of Acheson, who summed up the recommendations from 11 of the men, “we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.” Murphy, Taylor and Fortas dissented. That was a change from Johnson’s first series of such meetings, on Nov. 1-2, 1967. Then, the Wise Men had unanimously opposed leaving Vietnam. “Public discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Bundy had said, but he told Johnson to “stay the course.” <quote off> After the March 1968 meeting Lyndon dropped out of the Prez race and began peace negotiations with North Vietnam. Who headed those negotiations? W. Averell Harriman.

Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289. <quote on> On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy. Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message. </q>

Robert, your challenge is to find LBJ claims of a commie conspiracy after the 7pm EST meeting with Harriman — other than what he told Warren to get the Chief Justice on board with the new commission.

Why was that? Because Diem sought rapprochement with the North, threatening continued US military presence in SE Asia? Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57: <quote on> At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association. </q> The top four Kremlinologists at the time were George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, Llewelyn Thompson and Averell Harriman. According to their biographies, Bohlen was traveling in Europe that day, and Kennan spent a quiet day of mourning up in Princeton with Robert Oppenheimer. In his WC testimony Thompson said there were no discussions of Soviet involvement. So Harriman lied. How could he possibly have known there was no Soviet involvement unless he knew who did it? He had Diem whacked to insure continued US military presence in So. Vietnam — the same motive for killing Kennedy. Or so I reasonably speculate. I don’t buy the claim Lansdale was involved with the JFKA. He and David Phillips were psy-op specialists, more suited to the LHOA.

Harriman’s fondest desire was to be Secretary of State. He threw that out the window as the driving force behind the Diem coup. If he was willing to make such a personal sacrifice to maintain American military presence in So. Vietnam, why would this utterly ruthless SOB refrain from sacrificing JFK for the same goal?

Like I like to say — better a beaten dead horse than a horse’s ass! The root facts established by the clothing evidence are ignored by self-aggrandizing hustlers who have books and documentaries and websites to fill with inferior proofs of conspiracy. Bursting their hot air balloons is a hobby of mine.

Averell Harriman was not a close friend of JFK. He was initially left out of a position in the new Administration and had to wheedle his way into the State Department. He was tight with Bobby, not Jack.

Surprise surprise! They left out this bit: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/appeasement-of-the-nazis_b_28440 The Union Banking Corporation was shut down in 1942 under the Trading With the Enemy Act. From the BBH website: Long before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, BBH had begun to reduce its remaining exposure in German markets. And by that time Union Banking had financed 45% of the 3rd Reich’s raw material purchases.

And yet in this very thread DiEugenio wrote: But Ed Lopez told me that once Blakey came in Purdy got religion about the SBT. He and Ed had some strong arguments about this. Ed would raise his arms in his dress shirt and say, "Andy, you cannot get a hole 5 .5 inches from the collar to go up that far!" The clothing evidence is indisputable. Croft shows the jacket collar in a normal position. Physical evidence is always best, but it takes a level of competence beyond DiEugenio’s grasp. Given the fact that the bullet holes in the clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound, it takes 45 seconds to dispatch the SBT not the 45 minutes DIEugenio/Stone wasted.

The elite cabal Harriman headed sought to wrest control of the world’s heroin market from the Corsican Mafia. In 1963 opium poppies were grown in Turkey then shipped to Marseille where the heroin was processed. For the enormous American market, the heroin was then sent to the Caribbean where the Sicilian-American Mafia and elite entities such as Zapata Off-Shore took over distribution into the United States. Harriman and his American Mafia allies wanted to replace the Turkish fields with poppy from the Golden Triangle. Against the advice of the entire US foreign policy establishment, Harriman in 1962 negotiated the partition of Laos giving the Communists control of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the east, and American allies control of the Golden Triangle in western Laos, Thailand and Burma. This cabal required a militarized South Vietnam to insure the American foothold in South East Asia. Diem was an unreliable nationalist rumored to be seeking rapprochement with the North. Harriman’s hostility toward Diem led to the latter’s overthrow. Kennedy was also unreliable. Ideally, the best location for distribution of narcotics in the Western Hemisphere was Cuba. Havana was the international hub for narcotics before Castro took over. I speculate Castro received regular shipments of heroin from Red China — pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the most productive form of foreign aid. After the Diem overthrow, Kennedy was committed to withdrawal from Vietnam. By killing JFK and blaming it on Castro the cabal could insure the American presence in SE Asia and, after bombing the hell out of Cuba, restore Havana as a narcotics hub. If Oswald got shot 11/22/63 (I speculate) that’s exactly what would have happened. As it was, Castro took the hint and started moving his Red Chinese donated dope thru Zapata Off-Shore. I don’t call the above my Pet Theory — it’s my Favored Scenario. I highly recommend The Great Heroin Coup by Henrik Kruger, and The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy.

How silly of me! The clothing evidence short circuits the Prove Conspiracy Parlor Game, and the False Mystery Industry grinds to a halt. We can’t have that!

Cold blooded? Here’s cold blooded: in the late ‘20s and early 30’s Averell Harriman helped the Soviets resuscitate their oil and manganese industries. In the 30’s the Harriman controlled Union Banking Corporation financed 45% of Nazi Germany’s raw material purchases, including Soviet manganese used to make the steel for the German war machine, which aimed, unsuccessfully, to capture Soviet oil fields. Harriman was the #1 War hawk in FDR’s Administration, in charge of the Lend-Lease program to aid England and the SU in their fight against Germany. He was Churchill’s favorite Yank. Harriman played all ends against the middle. After WW2 who was put in charge of rebuilding Europe under the Marshall Plan? You guessed it — W. Averell Harriman. Hanging out with the widow of the man he had whacked (so I speculate) was a walk in the park for Ave.

Sandy, whatever you do don’t let Jim know he missed the point. He’s a critic who’s ultra-touchy when criticized.

Sandy, I think we got our answer. Looks like Jim DiE slipped up on the Tim Smith thread and acknowledged the physical evidence at long last! If he truly grasped the significance of the clothing evidence, he wouldn’t have spent more than 30 seconds on CE399. The Gang That Couldn’t Research Straight in effect!

This is why I hold the Expert Class in utter contempt. DiEugenio doesn’t grasp the issue at hand. I acknowledged the fact he conceded the T3 back wound — but that wasn’t the point. The JFKA Critical Master Class ignores the physical evidence, which marks them as collectively incompetent.

At one time or another the gentlemen I mentioned either put the back wound at T1 or insist the issue isn’t settled. IOW, they ignore the physical evidence.

The Dealey Plaza photos show a normal amount of shirt collar visible above the posterior jacket collar. Ergo, the jacket collar wasn’t elevated. According to T1 wound advocates, multiple inches of shirt and jacket were elevated without pushing up on the jacket collar just above the base of the neck. This scenario is contrary to the nature of reality.