Cliff Varnell

Here's Z335:

Please note that Jackie appears to be looking at her husband's

face. Her hand went right to the spot at the right-rear where the

wound has been described. Please note the curvature of her forearm,

wrist, and hand at the right back of JFK's head.

Here's Z337:

Please note that Jackie managed to lift her elbow off the seat and straighten her

arm/wrist/hand without pushing JFK's head forward.

That indicates to me that her finger-tips were going into the wound.

She described what we see in these frames thusly in her WC testimony, in a

passage the WC deleted:

Jackie K:

"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I

suppose there must have been, but from the back you could see, you know,

you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on."

The witness testimony and photographic record agree, with the exception

of two (2) faked autopsy photos and the mysterious 6.5mm x-ray frag.

According to your scenario, there wasn't one witness with his wits about himself in

Dealey Plaza, Parkland and Bethesda -- or they were all liars.

Witness bashing is de rigueur among Parlor Gamers.

Paul,

I've responded to your second post first, and I'll be back

Tue with my response to the first part. Happy New Year.

Paul Rigby wrote:

(quote on)

and 2) your failure to take account of the much greater benefits to the US of Castro

remaining in power.

(quote off)

I responded:

(quote on)

Paul, you write about "the US" is if it were a monolithic entity.

I think you make a crucial mistake in not recognizing the diverse power

centers within the American ruling elite.

Eastern Establishment blue-bloods like McGeorge Bundy represented

different interests than intel cowboys like Robert Maheu.

(quote off)

Paul Rigby:

Sorry, Cliff, but I just don't buy. Geographical conceptions of power diversity

seem to me superficial and ultimately untenable. Has real power in the US really

changed locus to that degree?

Cliff Varnell:

Ask a half million recently slaughtered Iraqis, Paul.

That is the result of a very real "geographical conception," the Neo-Con foreign

policy forged in the boardrooms of the energy/munitions/illicit-drug companies/ops --

and I'm not talking about some mythical "unseen hand.

The hands are all too well known -- Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Bechtel, Carlyle.

There was NO push to invade Iraq outside of a relatively small group within the

American ruling elite who allowed the attacks of Nine Eleven to manufacture

US public consent to invade Iraq.

The JFK plotters were attempting to use JFK's death for the same reason,

only the target was Cuba.

Paul Rigby:

By second or third generation, aren't the descendants of the Cowboys educating

their kids at the same schools and unis as the Yankees? Isn't there an elaborate

series of organisations and get-togethers - from CFR meetings to Bohemian Grove -

designed to prevent precisely the kind of regional fissiparousness you have set in

stone?

Cliff Varnell:

"Fissiparousness" is an exaggeration. The various factions of the ruling elite

have always worked together until their own agendas come into conflict.

On Eleven Twenty Two the factions of the American ruling class didn't come into

conflict until Oswald was captured. The Eastern WASPs killed the Castro-did-it

scenario because they didn't want business with the Reds disrupted without

"irrevocable" proof of Commie complicity.

In 1963 guys like H. L. Hunt and J. Edgar Hoover thought the "Eastern Establishment"

was Communist.

You can produce all the generalities you want, Paul, but looking at the forces

in play in 1963 defies your "set-in-stone" monolithic elite model.

Paul Rigby:

Hasn't that been something akin to a post-Civil War obsession with the Yankees?

Cliff Varnell:

Why would it be an obsession if it were not a systemic problem?

You claim that the CFR and Bohemian Grove are "designed to prevent" such conflict,

but you assume this preventative is always successful.

No such assumption can be made.

Cliff Varnell:

Just because there were CIA efforts in installing Castro, that doesn't mean

that people didn't change their minds after the deed was accomplished.

Paul Rigby:

Installing Castro was inherently a long-range gambit, for which a swift, public, rhetorical

volte-face was essential.

Cliff Varnell:

And yet out of the maw of this monolithic American Ruling Elite, which installed

Castro, came high-level secret plans to remove Castro...(?)

You can't have it both ways, Paul. If the American ruling elite had decided on

installing Castro as a long-time gambit, how is it that so much effort was put

into removing Castro at the highest levels of the government?

And explain how taking away the lucrative Cuban market -- 90 miles off

the US shore -- was in anyone's business interests.

CV: And how on earth does "CIA-Pentagon" reach differ in any respect from "the reach of

the politico-corporate elite"?

At most basic level, Wall Street, for example, sees not just an enemy, but a market.

But they didn't have a problem losing the Cuban market?

Letting LeMay loose on sparsely occupied jungle in south-east Asia is one thing: Letting him zap Moscow or Peking all together another.

are one and the same thing.

That's how the American ruling elite manifests its "reach" -- with the military

and intel services.

The unilateral bombing of Moscow and Peking was the mad dream of rabid

anti-Communists. In 1962-3 their focus was on Cuba, as I believe the Northwoods

documents reveal.

Could you expand on how "CIA-Pentagon reach" is divorced from the (usually cooperating

but oft times competing) factions within the American ruling elite?

There is a much greater tendency to group-think and top-down obedience in a military or secret police environments, despite the many and varied efforts to combat that at US military colleges, and CIA think-tanks (IDA, Rand etc.) Political thinking tends to be crude and often alarmingly short-sighted, a problem compounded by the nature of traditional recruitment practices.

officers. They don't go to the same schools. They didn't go to the same churches. And

during the Rockefeller v. Hughes battle over TWA these two wings of the CIA didn't go

to the same holiday parties.

Cliff Varnell:

I do not buy the view that "the CIA" was, or is, a monolithic entity

wherein all the players are on the same page.

In the Kennedy assassination? You must share with me the list of resignees or dissidents?

The only people who knew about it were the people involved.

The first two people to jump off the Commies-did-it bandwagon were McGeorge Bundy

and Averell Harriman.

Vincent Salandria:

The Situation Room of the White House first fingered Oswald as the lone assassin...McGeorge Bundy was in charge of the Situation Room and was spending that fateful afternoon receiving phone calls from President Johnson, who was calling from Air Force One when the lone-assassin myth was prematurely given birth.

cover-up -- the blame-it-on-Castro scenario fell apart -- and Bundy and Harriman took

over quarterbacking the "lone-nut" scenario.

LBJ wasn't in the White House more than a few minutes before Harriman came

over to nix all talk of Soviet complicity (Holland, THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

TAPES, pg 57.)

Paul Rigby:

And no, I don't think the analysts are synonymous with the cover-ops brigade. Real

power lies with the latter: the former is more often than not little more than a

retrospective fig-leaf.

Cliff Varnell:

Wasn't it the cover-ops brigade that pushed hardest for a Cuban invasion?

I don't see how you can deny the historical fact of this.

CV:

Paul, have you read the following?

THE LAST INVESTIGATION, by Gaeton Fonzi

BREACH OF TRUST, by Gerald McKnight

SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED, by Larry Hancock

Read those and come back and tell me how much scorn you have

for the false-flag scenario.

Read 1 and 2 on your list. 2 most recently. Very fine until it gets onto the Secret Service, at which point it's laughably bad.

SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED is a must-must read.

Cliff Varnell:

In 1963, I'll argue, there were factions in CIA loyal to different masters.

As I indicated earlier, I don't dissent on the mansion-has-many-rooms idea. But not when it came to killing Kennedy. For all that we disagree on this, I'd be delighted to see a thorough exposition of your ideas on which faction was loyal to whom/or what; and how such divisions manifested themselves both pre- and post-coup.

The plotters were loyal to a POLICY, not an organization.

Those people in CIA most devoted to this POLICY change conspired to kill Kennedy

in a manner that would propel them toward their goal: invade Cuba.

Why would we question the loyalty of any American NOT involved in the plot?

Cliff Varnell:

What united them was a desire to invade Cuba. To deny that such sentiment

existed is fallacious, to put it politely.

Paul Rigby:

No, it isn't. To the contrary: it is logical and sustained by the evidence. After all, they didn't invade Cuba!

Cliff Varnell:

So Operation Mongoose, Operation Northwoods, and that huge JM/WAVE station

were all figments of the imagination?

It is inconvenient to your pet theory that this anti-Castro effort existed, therefore

it did not exist?

Because a plot fails, that precludes any possibility of such a plot?

Plots only exist when they succeed, is that what you and Ashton are pushing?

And is it your position that faking all the medical visual evidence and all of the films would be easier than the CIA buying or coercing false closed testimony given to a federal commission with John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles on it?

Let's see, what would be easier?

Fake two (2) back of the head photos...Or get dozens of people to lie and make sure

each and every one of them maintain that lie for the rest of their lives?

Gee, I dunno, what's easier....uh...

Cliff Varnell:

Paul, I fail to see where you discount the following:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/northwoods.html

Cliff,

I don't. In fact, I welcome Bamford's work and think it very significant. I think you entirely right in urging its significance. Were I think you err is in 1) your interpretation of its significance;

all day long, but it isn't going to change the fact that these EXIST.

It is a fact that the Joint Chiefs in March of 1962 signed off on false-flag/ginned-intel

plots against Castro.

It is a fact that in August of 1964 the US military used the false-flag/ginned-intel

Gulf of Tonkin Incident to ramp up US involvement in Vietnam.

It is a fact that Neo-Con foreign policy is often based on ginned-intel, witness

the current war in Iraq.

Given the documentary and historical evidence of these false-flag/ginned-intel

plots and operations, how on Earth can anyone heap "ridicule and scorn" on the

notion that just such a false flag attack on Kennedy was possible?

I don't see where you show any proof that the anti-Castro forces

were any less committed to the overthrow of Castro merely because

other factions in the American ruling elite desired a different result.

and 2) your failure to take account of the much greater benefits to the US of Castro remaining in power.

Paul, you write about "the US" is if it were a monolithic entity.

I think you make a crucial mistake in not recognizing the diverse power

centers within the American ruling elite.

Eastern Establishment blue-bloods like McGeorge Bundy represented

different interests than intel cowboys like Robert Maheu.

Just because there were CIA efforts in installing Castro, that doesn't mean

that people didn't change their minds after the deed was accomplished.

What do I mean by 1)? Well, consider the case of China. Twice the military and CIA came close to provoking full-scale war with China, first through the medium of the US intervention in Korea, then again in Vietnam. In both instances, "higher forces" within the politico-corporate elite rallied to thwart the attempts. Luce and his publications, for example, offer fascinating insights into the limitations of CIA-Pentagon reach.

were monolithic entities with a lock-step super-hawk policy.

And how on earth does "CIA-Pentagon" reach differ in any respect from "the reach of

the politico-corporate elite"?

Could you expand on how "CIA-Pentagon reach" is divorced from the (usually cooperating

but oft times competing) factions within the American ruling elite?

Cliff Varnell:

I do not buy the view that "the CIA" was, or is, a monolithic entity

wherein all the players are on the same page.

I agree, but only up to a point. The degree of consensus among the leadership of the Agency, both formal and actual, as to the desirability of offing Kennedy seems to me formidable; and is reflected in the diverse components of the organisation deployed in coup preparation, execution, and cover-up.

THE LAST INVESTIGATION, by Gaeton Fonzi

BREACH OF TRUST, by Gerald McKnight

SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED, by Larry Hancock

Read those and come back and tell me how much scorn you have

for the false-flag scenario.

Cliff Varnell:

In 1963, I'll argue, there were factions in CIA loyal to different masters.

Again, qualified agreement. But surely these differences raised their head post-coup, not pre-? In other words, what united them was a shared contempt and hatred for Kennedy. After the coup, the fracture lines appeared.

Have a good New Year,

Paul

What united them was a desire to invade Cuba. To deny that such sentiment

existed is fallacious, to put it politely.

I have added the emphasis to the following:

Thursday, 2 May 1963

DOCUMENT

Memorandum From the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to the Members of the Standing Group of the National Security Council Washington, May 2, 1963.

Top Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only.

The following assignments have been made as a result of the discussion in the Standing Group on Tuesday, April 30th:

1. There will be an examination of the possible developments in Cuba if Castro were to disappear from the scene. This analysis will be developed by Mr. Sherman Kent and will be available for discussion at the meeting of the Standing Group on May 14th.

2. There will be an analysis of the

possible use of contingencies

for the achievement of wider political objectives. This analysis will be conducted under the direction of Mr. Alexis Johnson and

Mr. Paul Nitze

, and its first results will be available for discussion at the meeting of the Standing Group on May 14th. This first analysis will provide:

a. A detailed examination of possible action in the event of interference with surveillance; and

b. a more general assessment of possible use of other contingencies in Cuba or in the waters around Cuba.

3. The Central Intelligence Agency will prepare a general paper on the possible forms of effective interference with the economic life of Cuba by sabotage or other means. In particular, CIA will report on the oil problem in relation to Cuba. It is hoped that a first report on this study may be available next week for distribution.

4. The Department of State will examine the possible use of the sugar market as a means of complicating the life of the Castro regime. It is hoped that this study will be available next week.

5. The principal topic of discussion for the meeting of the Standing Group on May 7th will be the development of a U.S. program and policy toward post-Castro Cuba, and the initial lead in the discussion will be taken by Mr. Wilson for USIA. Appropriate papers will be circulated before noon on Monday, May 6th.

McGeorge Bundy

James Bamford's BODY OF SECRETS pgs 89-90, emphasis added:

In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a plan to the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.

The recent exchanges on this forum between Ashton Gray and Cliff Varnell involved, among other things, a fierce dispute concerning the coup plotters intentions toward Cuba. The former poured scorn on the proposition that Kennedy’s murder was organised as prelude to, and pretext for, a concerted US drive to oust Castro. I agree with him, and think the topic so important I offer the radically incomplete work-in-progress below. My hope is to provoke a full debate on the issue, one I believe is long overdue.

Paul, I fail to see where you discount the following:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/northwoods.html

I do not buy the view that "the CIA" was, or is, a monolithic entity

wherein all the players are on the same page.

In 1963, I'll argue, there were factions in CIA loyal to different masters.

Classic stuff, Cliff. You call the bullet entrance at T1 my "pet" theory, even though it is the level of entrance revealed in the autopsy photos and the level of entrance as described by the HSCA FPP.

The widely regarded HSCA "back wound" location is C7/T1.

The Pat Speer/Anthony Marsh pet theory is T1.

Pray tell, Pat, how does your analysis, or the conclusion about the wound location by

the HSCA FPP, trump the clothing holes, the witness statements, and the official

contemporaneous documents?

And we've never seen the autopsy photos described by Rankin and Spencer.

The HSCA FPP based their conclusion about the C7/T1 wound on a photo they deemed

insufficient as evidence!

They expressed no confidence in that upon which they drew their conclusion.

They didn't have any confidence in Fox 5, but you do.

You insist that the photos were faked even though their existence proves Humes lied when he told Dan Rather the photos supported the Rydberg drawings. The photos prove the so-called military review was a deliberate lie. More importantly, they prove that Kennedy must have been leaning forward when hit, and he is never in this position in the Zapruder film prior to being hit.

You insist on mis-casting my argument. I singled out ONE photo -- Fox 5.

As I said, the alteration/fakery in Fox 5 so obvious, it has a Keystone Kops quality.

In order to get the photo with its "upward" trajectory to work they had to bend

JFK over. People have been bending over for these big lies for a long time.

Plan A was to pin the deed on Castro -- that didn't work out, so they had to improvise,

and the fakery/alteration of ONE photo had to serve the purpose.

Hey, the rubes have been buying this fraud for 40-odd years...

I just watched Baden on the Into Evidence DVD and amazingly he says Kennedy was leaning forward when hit but that he never bothered to look at the film to figure out when this was. He says he assumes this occurs when Kennedy is behind the sign. This alone should convince a reasonable person that the SBT is a fabrication.

The "low" location of the holes in the clothes render all this moot.

Which is why you'll never acknowledge the facts of the case -- it renders

your silly little analyses moot.

Pat, you HAVE to deny the obvious fact of the T3 back wound -- just to keep

your little Parlor Game alive (at least in your own head).

If CTs like yourself focused on just this one point you could convince anyone that the SBT was bs and that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.

We don't have to "convince" anyone of the failure of the SBT, all we have

to do is show them the location of the holes in the clothes.

It requires no further analysis, requires no corroboration other than

the Dealey Plaza photos that show that JFK's jacket dropped an inch

right before he was shot.

Instead you insist the photos were faked blah blah blah and drive everyone away.

away?

One cannot begin to grasp the nature of the crime, nor the nature of the

cover-up, without grasping the fact that JFK suffered a back wound in the

vicinity of his third thoracic vertebra, and the wound was shallow.

Any explanation of the crime and cover-up that does not account for

this fact is obfuscationary.

You say I avoid the evidence for an entrance at T3.

Yes. You steadfastly ignore the clothing evidence. You act like it

doesn't exist. You've claimed that it was elevated 2+" -- re your

pet theory -- but you can't support that in any way, so you act like

it doesn't matter.

Hogwash. Burkley said T3 in a report written after his seeing the face sheet.

Others merely said the entrance was below the shoulder.

Here's what others said:

Dr. John Ebersole attended the autopsy and told Dr. David Mantik

in a 1992 interview that the back wound was at T-4. (Harrison

Livingstone's KILLING THE TRUTH pg 721)

Nurse Diana Bowron washed JFK's body at Parkland, and she

told Livingstone the wound was "lower down on the back" than

shown in the autopsy photos (KTT pg 188.)

Autopsy photographer Floyd Reibe also claimed that the lower marking

on the autopsy photo actually showed the back wound (KTT pg 721).

Bethesda lab assisstant Jan Gail Rudnicki told Livingstone

that he saw "what appeared to be an entry wound several inches

down on the back." (HIGH TREASON 2, pg 206)

Bethesda x-ray tech Edward Reed reported seeing a back

wound "right between the scapula and the thoracic column."

(KTT pg 720)

James Curtis Jenkins, a lab tech who attended the autopsy,

placed the back wound below the throat wound with this

diagram for the HSCA:

http://jfklancer.com/pub/md/jenkins.gif

He graphically described it as even lower than he indicates in

the diagram.

Jenkins quoted in BEST EVIDENCE pg 713:

(quote on)

I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the

probe...through the pleura [the lining of the chest cavity]...You

could actually see where it was making an indentation...where

it was pushing the skin up...There was no entry into the chest

cavity...it would have been no way that that could have exited

in the front because it was then low in the chest cavity...

somewhere around the junction of the descending aorta [the

main artery carrying blood from the heart] or the bronchus in

the lungs.

(quote off)

Chester H. Boyers was the chief Petty Officer in charge of the

Pathology Department at Bethesda in November 1963. This is

from Boyers signed affidavit:

(quote on)

Another wound was located near the right shoulder blade, more

specifically just under the scapula and next to it.

(quote off)

That's consistent with T3 or lower.

Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett reported, "I saw a shot hit the

Boss about four inches down from the right shoulder."

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, who was at the autopsy, testified

before the Warren Commission:

(quote on)

Yes, sir; I saw an opening in the back, about 6 inches below the

neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column.

(quote off)

This sample should carry the flavor of the variety of anatomical

landmarks all these people used to describe the same thing -- T3.

Well, where does the shoulder begin? Where the neck begins to taper or where the arm connects at the shoulder socket? And those that gave an estimate as to how far below the shoulder, how many of them, including Burkley, measured? The entrance at T1 is a shoulder wound, a back wound. It was a lie that this wound was on the neck. If the photo was faked why not just put the wound on the neck?

(1) the actual wound at T3, a photo of which Rankin noted

2) and (3) the two seperate wound locations in the autopsy report locating the wound

at just above the upper margin of the scapula (T2) and 13cm below the mastoid process

(C7/T1)

(4) the Rydberg drawing.

By buying into your own pet theory about (3), Pat, you're perpetuating the cover-up.

BTW, when Rankin was discussing the "picture" he was obviously discussing the face sheet. Notice that he does not say "photograph."

Notice he doesn;'t say "drawing" or "diagram" either. We'll get to what

he actually said after this brief exposition...

If a 4 year old draws a stick figure he might call it a "picture."

But when adults use the word "picture" -- as in, "Hey mister, will you

take our picture?" -- they're refering to a photgraph.

Rankin: "the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone."

Rankin couldn't see the shoulder blade on the face sheet -- he could see it

in the photograph.

Many descriptions of the wound noted it just below the upper margin

of the scapula -- so Rankin's observation was based on something

he could see -- a wound right below the upper margin of the shoulder blade.

Rankin refered to two anatomical landmarks that don't show up on the face

sheet. The comment doesn't make sense applied to the face sheet.

Today's Educational Forum Fairy Tale:

Sycophantic CIA golum, gofer, boy toy, and hand-puppet Darlin' Arlen Specter got to see the SS medical photos—but John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles didn't. How do we know? Well—Darliin' Arlen sez so, chillun. That's why Brother Speer passed it along to you as the word of God.

And it isn't to be questioned or doubted. Got it?

Ashton Gray

Ashton, please do a little research before spouting your paranoid claptrap. If you read the executive sessions--never meant to be released to the public in part because they're so damaging to the official lies--you'll see that McCloy and Dulles discussed the autopsy photos with Warren and agreed that Warren should look at them with Humes. Warren subsequently admitted he saw them by himself. Specter subsequently admitted he got the SS to show him the back wound photo. There is no evidence whatsoever that either Dulles or McCloy saw the autopsy photos. If you have any, please cough it up.

WC chief counsel J. Lee Rankin and Rep. Wade Boggs in the WC Executive Session of

January 27th, 1964:

(quote on, emphasis added)

Rankin: Then there is a great range of material in regard to the wounds...ince we

have the picture of where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below

the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone, which is below the place where the

picture shows the bullet came out in the neckband of the shirt in front, and the bullet,

according to the autopsy, didn't strike any bone at all, that particular bullet, and go

through. So...how could it turn...

Boggs: I thought I read that bullet just went in a finger's length.

(quote off)

This is hard documentary evidence the WC had the autopsy photos.

This is hard documentary evidence of an autopsy photo the world has never

seen -- one that shows the back wound in the vicinity of T3, where the vast

bulk of evidence places it.

Over and over again, Ashton follows the same pattern. He takes something damaging--Specter and Warren's behavior regarding the autopsy photos--and tries to blow it up into some vast conspiracy involving others purportedly working for an unseen hand.

He's too busy trying to study 'n spin the evidence to match his pet theories.

It's a Parlor Game.

I hate to say it, Pat, but you do the exact same thing.

The Fox 5 autopsy photo, upon which you base your research, was faked in the

manner of the Keystone Kops.

Set aside the fact that the holes in the clothes don't match the "back wound"

location, the purported "wound" shows an abrasion collar consistent with a

bullet that struck on an upward trajectory.

The HSCA concluded Fox 5 was prima facie inadmissible in court, and disputed its

evidentiary value -- all the while basing its conclusion of a C7/T1 back wound

exclusively on this improperly produced, poor quality artifact lacking in

a chain of possession!

Pat, you've picked the weakest "evidence" in the case as primary. You

proceed in your arguments as if the irrefutable evidence of the T3 back

wound simply doesn't exist.

The T3 back wound is impeccably corroborated, but because this evidence

is inconvenient to your pet theory you simply ignore it.

Ashton Gray implies that witnesses inconvenient to his Parlor Game are

part of the dark forces arrayed against Kennedy.

Pat Speer pretends that witness statements inconvenient to his Parlor Game

don't exist.

Forget Warren. He was a puppet.

Of course he was. I attribute your conclusions otherwise to naivete.

Forget Specter. He was a puppet.

I'm sure before too long he'll be saying that LBJ was nothing but a puppet in the Kennedy assass and that the real evil culprit were those G14 civil servants waiting for their government pensions over at Langley.

I'm saying that LBJ was nothing but a puppet in the Kennedy assass and that the real

evil culprits were those G16 civil servants like Richard Helms and James Angleton, and

former civil servants like Allen Dulles, as well as civil servants such as Gen. Curtis LeMay,

Gen. Edward Lansdale, David Atlee Phillips, and David Sanchez Morales -- all waiting for

an opportunity to incite a US invasion of Cuba and taking their ONE chance by shooting

Kennedy and pinning it on Castro.

Ashton Gray illogically implies that the failure of this plot precludes the possibility

of its existence. There is going to be pushback against this conclusion because

of its implications about the use of false flag attacks in Neo-Con foreign policy.

Neo-Cons don't want the JFK assassination placed in the context of the Gulf of Tonkin

Incident, the ginned intel behind the Iraq War, and the willingness of Dick Cheney

to disarm America's air defense system on Nine Eleven.

The JFK assassination was organized around a POLICY change, not around the

individual agendas of those who worked to kill Kennedy. They all shared one goal:

invade Cuba. They all had individual agendas incidental to the plot.

For the plot to succeed there had to be "irrevocable proof" of Castro complicty.

The captured Oswald deprived the plotters of this "irrevocable proof."

Everything changed when Oswald was captured. The plotters lost control

of the cover-up.

Harriman and Bundy took over, Bundy calling the shots on the Oswald-as-lone-nut

scenario while AF1 was still in the air, according to Vincent Salandria.

The vast preponderance of evidence is so consistent with this conclusion that

I regard it as obvious.

Oh wait, that's right. He's already said this. Never mind. And I'm the supposed apologist!

Anyone who touts the authenticity of Fox 5 is an apologist, imo.

The photos are not fake. The doctors did not spew scripted lies.

I love it how people cherry pick the evidence.

What about the 15 people who described the back wound at T3, Pat?

That is inconvenient to your T1 pet theory -- so they were delusional?

The level of nastiness and religiosity involved in this issue is truly amazing. Here, when I try to defend them, and denounce Ashton's ridiculous assertion that all the doctors, including the Parkland doctors were controlled and forced to go along with a scripted lie that the wound was on the back of the head, Miller and Varnell attack me as naive. What the? Take the time and read what people are saying, will ya? If Miller and Varnell honestly believe that the Parkland doctors were forced to lie about the wound location, starting with their earliest reports, I'll eat my hat. No, better yet, I'll eat Ashton's hat.

No, Pat, I'm not taking you to task for sticking up for the witnesses. You have, once

again, attributed to me an argument I haven't made.

I am a champion of the first day witnesses.

I am taking you to task for exactly what I quoted you as saying:

It's ridiculous to think the WC covered up the location of the back wound while simultaneously deliberately sowing confusion about the head wound.

You're sticking up for the Warren Commission's wound conclusions, are you not?

Aren't you expressing contempt for the should-be-oh-so-obvious fact that the Warren

Commission covered up, deliberately sowed confusion, and otherwise acted as accessories

after the fact of JFK's murder?

Thank you, Gary.

The autopsy photos contradict. This "back of the head" Fox 5 photo

stands as a proven fake.

The above cannot be reconciled with the other autopsy photos

or the witness statements; nor can the back wound location be

reconciled with the holes in JFK's clothing + the Dealey Plaza photos

that conclusively show that JFK's jacket dropped a good inch right

before he was shot.

For all of those so inclined to bare their fangs at me over points of

disagreement, may the following inventory of my life experience give

you just one moment of pause going forward.

I spent 20 years dealing No Limit Lo-Ball and Texas Hold'Em in northern

San Mateo county CA poker houses, watching people use well-timed verbal

jabs as a way of making a living.

I spent the better part of nine years engaged in point-by-point debate

on the subject at hand on usenet, and I've seen every rhetorical dodge, feint, slip,

spin, gambit and bluff.

I rarely stray into areas where I'm not confident of my command of the

facts.

Let's all play nice, okay?

Otherwise, pack a lunch...

Yeah, there's the guy that lets you know that he's read three of four books on poker and is now an expert. He's convinced he knows poker and you don't. He brags about himself and radiates a know it all attitude that belittles the skills and abilities of others. He's cocksure, conceited, arrogant, and convinced he's the best player at the table. He's always talking, telling you how the game should be played and where you went wrong. He eagerly points out your mistakes, oblivious to his own. The players at the table that are easily intimidated may fall victim to his tactics.

But the players that know the game see him for what he really is.....just another easy mark.

Touche, Michael. They always go broke in the end...

It's ridiculous to think the WC covered up the location of the back wound while simultaneously deliberately sowing confusion about the head wound.

This is a statement of stunning naivete.

Human nature is enduringly comic.

The first people to cop a self-righteous attitude are also the first people

to engage in slimey rhetorical tactics.

At least, that's how it works on the Education Forum...

Ashton,

If you have a couple of minutes I wonder if you could explain why

the Parkland doctors immediately performed a tracheometry on

a guy with gun wounds in his head but not his throat.

I'd start a seperate thread on the issue, but I'd have to see more

of the Gospel According to Ashton Gray.

Very edifying and an interesting thread.

....indeed....and I'll add my vote to Robert being one I'd put some weight on the thoughts of. I can 'buy' Dulles being in on the hit, and always had though he was...but he is the type not to dirty his hands...but just ask the 'stone be removed from his shoe'.....

Thank you, Peter.

The guy who WOULD get his hands dirty was Lansdale.

Lansdale has been positively ID'd in Dealey Plaza by counter-insurgency

legend Gen. Victor Krulak in this tramp photo, AFTER Oswald's arrest.

http://www.geocities.com/quaneeri3/LastScan58.jpg

http://www.ratical.org///ratville/JFK/USO/appD.html

I'll argue that the ONLY way Lansdale would have exposed himself

by appearing in Dealey Plaza was if something had gone WRONG.

The patsy was captured alive, the blame Castroconspiracy Plan A scenario

was killed, and like an quarterback calling an audible at the line, Lansdale

was out fixing the patsy chain to leave only one link -- one Lee Harvey Oswald.

I was supposed to be on the road an hour ago...peace and love, y'all...

I agree Cliff - we should all try to maintain a sense of professionalism. As for your responses here - agreed that there appears to have been a motive which would imply the use of rifles to push blame on a Castro stint - let's never forget how many people he was executing on a daily basis at one point - gagged even, so that even their final words couldn't even be uttered as per Valladares - however - how well read are you with respect to PSYOPS? I assume that you are - but thought I would simply ask the question. A book could be written - which I have no intention of doing - with respect to the funding, the origins, the organizations involved, the projects, the reasons, the people, the progress, the implementation, etc, with respect to PSYOPS. There is plenty of documentation - even though some fill-in is probably required. I suggest that PSYOPs made a statement here. Funny that Aquino should write such an interesting report on PSYOPS years later.

- lee

Hi Lee

Thanks for helping restore some civility to the thread...Terry brought up the subject

of assassination-as-psyop. I doubt I am anywhere as well read on the subject as

yourself (or Terry for that matter, for all I know).

I was relating my emotional reaction to the events of Saturday and Sunday following

the assassination. I was 8 and there was nothing on TV. I certainly didn't mean to

denigrate any one's emotional response to the events of Friday the 22nd or Monday

the 25th, or to imply that I took JFK's death lightly. In fact, my sister has reminded

me (I'd forgotten this) that JFK died one week after my first personal pet, a turtle,

was crushed under the couch. A week after JFK's death one of our favorite uncles

died. My sister tells me I was wailing about all three deaths, but I don't remember.

I personally don't buy the assassination-as-psyop scenario, but I thought it was

interesting to consider.

Anyhoo...As we say on the south side of Haight St. -- happy holidays y'all!

"Well, I think you're a Neo-Con shill givin' the Texas perps a pass, so there."

I'd bitch-slap you, if I wasn't laughing so hard at you! I'm more of a Socialist,

If that's the case I sincerely apologize for the imprecision of my retort.

The way you wrap your ugly little smears in high self-righteousness makes you kin

to Karl Rove, exactly.

I stand corrected.

To my fellow Forum members and the gentle reader at large:

I am here to discuss the cover-up of the assassination of John Kennedy,

the assassination itself, and its ramifications and implications that reverberate

into the current day.

I'd prefer a lively but polite exchange of views.

Otherwise, it's just engaging in a flame-y Parlor Game, albeit a game

I have enjoyed considerably in the past, I must admit.

For all of those so inclined to bare their fangs at me over points of

disagreement, may the following inventory of my life experience give

you just one moment of pause going forward.

I spent 20 years dealing No Limit Lo-Ball and Texas Hold'Em in northern

San Mateo county CA poker houses, watching people use well-timed verbal

jabs as a way of making a living.

I spent the better part of nine years engaged in point-by-point debate

on the subject at hand on usenet, and I've seen every rhetorical dodge, feint, slip,

spin, gambit and bluff.

I rarely stray into areas where I'm not confident of my command of the

facts.

Let's all play nice, okay?

Otherwise, pack a lunch...

Terry,

I think you could make a stronger argument that it was a psy-op

designed for MINIMUM visual effect.

By pre-empting all regular programming that weekend (Saturday

and Sunday) it left people to stew in their grief with less to take

their minds off it.

I think Mr. Knight's recollections are telling because he doesn't

include any memories of Saturday and Sunday.

Obviously Mr. Varnell lived in a VERY different world than I did in 1963.

Obviously, Mr. Knight didn't read what I wrote.

I spoke of the events of the weekend -- Saturday and Sunday -- as regards to the

VISUAL impact of the assassination.

Terry claimed that the reason JFK was murdered in the manner he was because

it was a psy-op designed for maximum visual effect.

I say it was a murder designed to indict Castro and provide a rationale

for the invasion of Cuba.

Several members of this forum have done break-through research on

this subject -- Larry Hancock and Rex Bradford. Gerald McKnight's

must-read work on the WC cover-up BREACH OF TRUST also leads in

this direction, as McKnight himself speculates.

I hope this clarifies the context of the discussion.

But please, continue...

I was a 9 year old kid, a Cub Scout, and I was proud of America and its president and what the nation stood for. One of the first things we did in Mrs. Broglin's 3rd grade class the year before was to learn the names of all the members of President Kennedy's cabinet.

On November 22, 1963, my 4th grade class was enjoying a post-lunch recess when a friend who'd just emerged from a trip to the restroom inside the building came running up, breathless, shouting that President Kennedy had been shot. We all called him a xxxx, but he insisted that when he passed the principal's office, he'd seen Mr. Crowley standing in front of the black-and-white TV there with tears coming down his face.

We returned to class after recess, and a short time later the intercom in the classroom crackled to life.

"May I have your attention, please? The President is dead...I repeat, the President is dead..," Mr Crowley announced, his voice trailing off.

We were dismissed early from classes, just as soon as they could round up the school bus drivers. As our bus drove through town, I saw more Civil Defense vehicles on streetcorners than I'd ever seen in my life. The thought that the country might be under nuclear attack was an overriding concern. I spent that evening and the next 3 days glued to the television, a witness to the history that was being made. The casket being unloaded at Andrews, and LBJ's brief speech there...the crowds filing into the Capitol Rotunda as the President's body lay in state...powerful images, all.

Please, Mr. Knight, perhaps you can explain why these powerful images

would have been any less powerful if Kennedy had died of apparent "natural

causes."

Would our grief have been less?

Would the shock to the nation been less?

No. He had his brains blown out in a public square in a obviously

conspiratorial manner because the plotters had more to their agenda

than merely ending JFK's life, or so I'll argue.

Three days after the President of the United States was gunned down on an American street, watching DeGaulle and Adenauer and the other foreign heads of state walking in the funeral procession, relatively unprotected...that was a strong image...John-John's salute...the lighting of the flame...

Maybe all of this escaped Mr. Varnell's notice.

are the Friday JFK was shot and the Monday he was buried -- and I specifically

was refering to the weekend, which is, in The City where I live, on Saturday and

Sunday.

Maybe they do it differently where Mr. Knight lives.

But where I live, the nation spent an entire weekend in shock and sorrow, and the MAXIMUM VISUAL EFFECT was Jackie still wearing that dress, stained with her husband's blood and brains, when she got off the plane at Andrews AFB. Sorry you missed that detail, Mr. Varnell.

Are you claiming that that image was shown over and over and over on TV?

No. That's not how they did it in those days. Maybe you are attributing the

modern 24-hour news practice of showing the same images over and over

to the events of Eleven Twenty Two.

[

Not trying to jump into Terry's fight; I just wanted to demonstrate, Mr. Varnell, that there were some of us nearly the same age as you whose whole world was jarred by the events of November 22, 1963,to an extent much greater than simply pouting after discovering that Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear and Fred Flintstone wouldn't be on TV that afternoon or evening.

Except I wasn't talking about that afternoon or evening.

And if you think the major networks broadcast gruesome images

of Jackie's dress over and over for MAXIMUM EFFECT you've

mis-remembered.

Spoken from the standpoint of a true idiot.

Terry, how can we coax you out of your shell?

Ashton

Ashton, care to explain why the Parkland docs immediately performed a

trach on a guy with a big hole in the back of his head but no throat wound?

Just curious...

"That's funny, the film of the assassination was suppresed for almost 12 years."

Well guess what, wiseass? We didn't have to see the actual film to be

traumatized that day.

The reason liberal Republicans whack a moderate Democratic President

was to create maximum visual effect?

You're making this up out of your own fevered imagination.

"I guess Rockefeller/Morgan wanted to bring the nation to its knees in the

MID-SEVENTIES...?"

Well, you know what else, asshole?

Yes, Neo-Con queen?

I started questioning the WCR, from the minute those crude sketches came out in The New York Times in June 1964. I shouldn't EVEN have to reiterate the same words I've repeated countless times [on other threads and on other forums]of what exactly was going through my mind, nor the distinct feeling that came over me of how MY OWN xxxxING

GOVERNMENT WAS LYING TO ME, and I was nineteen years old at that time.

Big deal.

Ruby whacked Oswald and my old man said the US government was behind the whole

thing. He was a Kennedy liberal from Arkansas, my Pop. Of course, we lived about 50

miles north of San Francisco and enjoyed a fresher view of world and national affairs

than those poor souls back east who were kept in the dark and fed xxxx.

It's true. When the MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was pulled off the market after

the Kennedy assassination, there was only one TV station in the country that

broadcast it: KTVU Oakland.

There's always been a freer flow of information in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Well, Rocky was VP by that time, so maybe these guys *are* that prescient..."

You're pissing in the wind, Varnell.[

And what audio of the assassination are you refering to?

You know something, Varnell? You are really barking up the wrong tree when you attempt to take me on.

This is a fight you picked. I made a collegial argument that a powerful cabal

within the National Security state murdered Kennedy and for that you accused

me of being a lamebrained Langley whore, or words to that effect.

Well, I think you're a Neo-Con shill givin' the Texas perps a pass, so there.

THE AUDIO I WAS REFERRING TO happened to be the first accounts coming in over a CBS News Bulletin, at 2:00 PM [after my mother had dropped me off from just having had the first half of my wisdom teeth surgery done] and I was lying on the couch in our living-room waiting for her to come back from the Rexall Drugstore with antibiotics and Demerol. I jumped up off the couch and couldn't move my mouth to talk, cry, or scream out. The people in Manhattan were thunderstruck and went into a state of shock, just like what happened during 9/11. It was bi-partisan in reaction, Democrats and Republicans, alike. We thought a bomb was going to be dropped on us by Russia.

Yeah, we didn't have that problem out West. We're not given to such hysterical

over-reaction...Given the tenor of your posts...I take it you've never recovered.

We felt naked, vulnerable, panicked, and depressed ALL AT THE SAME TIME! You see, this was being felt, TELEVISED, observed, and IN YOUR FACE, right at the hub, the nerve center, the heartbeat, of the Western World, NOT in some po-dunk place like Petaluma, for chrissakes! This was broadcast on a scale so massive and monumental in scope, that if you think for one minute it wasn't intended to be psychologically crippling to a nation, then your ability to use your reasoning faculties leaves alot to be desired.

They could have achieved the same result without the elaborate ambush.

Therefore, when you deride my explanation or description of MAXIMUM EFFECT

I deride your claim that the assassination was done to maximum visual effect.

You're inventing things because you have a weak argument. Weak arguments

always tend to ad hominem.

believe me when I tell you, this country DID NOT NEED TO VIEW THE ZAPRUDER CARTOON, in order to experience what MAXIMUM EFFECT felt like. WE xxxxING LIVED IT! We were forced to stand by and watch our brothers, boyfriends, and husbands be marched off to a place that had never even fired a xxxxing shot at us!!! And for what? JFK said he would be bringing the boys back home by the beginning of '64. I didn't have to worry about my boyfriend get shipped out to Laos. That's what they called the place, back then, LAOS. And then, right there on a sunny day on some downtown street in Big D, at HIGH NOON, my dreams as well as a whole generation's were blown to smithereens just as sure as if we'd been standing there watching it, ourselves. And then, after what they tried to palm off on us with the WCR, I just knew at the tender age of nineteen that I would never be safe again, that I would never be able to trust a government official to tell me the truth, ever again. And, one by one they began to murder what was left of our heroes, and more and more body bags began arriving back home.

My brother volunteered for 'Nam. My Pop told me never to ask him about it, it wasn't

to be discussed, period. My first cousin didn't come back with all the same parts that

he took over there.

So the LAST thing I need from some stuck up New York clown is a xxxxING LECTURE

ABOUT VIETNAM.

I'm done with you.

How much more plainer can we make that for you, Mr. Snidely Whiplash [Ron]? And, don't give me that old crap about "giving you concrete evidence for tying this in with The Federal Reserve's actual perpetrative involvement in what happened in Dealey Plaza on 11-22-63." All the motives were in place,

It was well within the power of Rockefeller/Morgan to turn just one of Kennedy's

doctors -- and JFK could have died in his sleep, or been incapacitated and forced to

step down for health reasons.

Instead they had his brains blown out right into the face of Eastern Establishment

high society Queen Jackie Bouvier with flecks of skull and brain and blood and

cranial fluid all over.

Do you really think they'd put her -- and the nation! -- through that needlessly?

The manner of JFK's execution strongly suggests that ending his life was not

the primary motive, but rather as a means to the primary motive, which

eventually failed: establishing a pre-text for the invasion of Cuba.

*****************************************************

"Do you really think they'd put her -- and the nation! -- through that needlessly?

The manner of JFK's execution strongly suggests that ending his life was not

the primary motive, but rather as a means to the primary motive, which

eventually failed: establishing a pre-text for the invasion of Cuba."

It was a massive psy-ops ploy at bringing the citizenry to their knees, psychologically, and in the most traumatic, audio/visual way possible, for MAXIMUM EFFECT.

That's funny, the film of the assassination was suppresed for almost 12 years.

I guess Rockefeller/Morgan wanted to bring the nation to its knees in the

MID-SEVENTIES...?

Well, Rocky was VP by that time, so maybe these guys *are* that prescient...

And what audio of the assassination are you refering to?

Were you alive on 11/22/63, Terry? (Your photo indicates you were not).

The only visual this 8 year old in Petaluma CA saw was a picture of Kennedy

on the cover of the local newspaper. As I recall vividly, the one aspect of

that weekend following the assassination that most sticks in my mind, is

that there was nothing on television and I spent that weekend bored

out of my mind.

Oswald getting shot by Ruby -- maybe "they" thought that would traumatize

the nation. Otherwise, that has to be the weakest psy-op ever attempted.

Taking people's regularly scheduled entertainment away for a weekend led

to the war in Vietnam?....not so much.

Thus, guaranteeing to render the U.S. totally impotent, and completely subjective to anything the power structure

[referred to in the above information, so painstakingly detailed and submitted by Myra, Bernice, Stan, and myself] figured they'd be able to convince the electorate to follow through the gates of hell, known as Laos, VietNam, and Cambodia, for which they had long-range plans in just ONE of their new money-making ventures. Cuba? An afterthought, maybe? A scapegoat, maybe?

The historical record indicates otherwise.

From James Bamford's BODY OF SECRETS, pg 90:

Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.

In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.

It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.

Terry, the events of this decade. coupled with this-decade's groundbreaking

research by James Bamford, Larry Hancock, Gerald McKnight and Rex Bradford,

(added to the prior writings and investigations of Gaeton Fonzi and Vincent Salandria)

have lead me to conclude that the following is obvious:

There's a straight line from Dealey Plaza to the Baghdad Green Zone,

by way of the Gulf of Tonkin and Ground Zero.

It's called "false flag."

Staple of American foreign policy since the USS Maine blew its last bubble.

East-based bankers aren't the only ones to play this game, hate to tell you.

Gary,

Thank you very much for your collegial response.

I prefer collegial discussions, much more productive, etc.

Hi Cliff,

Don't think this argumentative, but I don't prescribe to the CIA as a monolithic org. I do feel it has been controlled and headed by generally the same folk since it's inception. But like any large - and in portions of the CIA deliberately unweildy - organisation there will be factions, even in a goup of 4 friends there may be. This does not preclude the same goals being shared.

I'm unsure of what the Angleton piece was meant to illustrate

Angleton was the key member within Kennedy's Catholic constituency

in CIA -- they shared social circles. Losing Angleton sealed his fate, I'd

speculate. After all, who would have been Oswald's ultimate boss at CIA

if not Angleton at counter-intel?

Also, we associate Angleton with an interesting word Ashton cited: mad.

The manner in which Kennedy was killed indeed reflected something unhinged.

I'll argue that the "unhinged" elements in the American ruling class in 1963

operated within the National Security state and not among the bean counters

at the Fed.

I also want to point out the sectarian fault lines within the CIA as it relates to

the Y/C dichotomy. Robert Maheu's "Mormon mafia" CIA faction controlled the

Hughes empire, and those dudes were Cowboys.

Here's a passage from the memoirs of CIA case officer Joesph B Smith,

PORTRAIT OF A COLD WARRIOR (pg 13), explaining why he quit in 1973 after

23 years with the CIA.

...[A]lthough I had gone to Harvard, it would have been better if I had gone to

Princeton and been a member of the OSS. I was not a Catholic, nor an Eastern

European ethnic. I just did not fit into the ruling cliques in the Clandestine Services.

Furthermore, I had always been in the minority of officers who sought to enlist

the efforts of the non-communist left. Perhaps my greatest shortcoming, I guessed,

was that I could not treat people as unimportant spare parts to be used up and thrown

away as administrators like Ted Shackley could. I asked for early retirement, and I

decided to stay in Mexico.

Usually when you see a phrase like "CIA memoir" ya need yer back-up bullxxxx

detector to be in as good a shape as yer main rig.

But PORTRAIT OF A COLD WARRIOR managed to get published without being

vetted by CIA -- something to do with Smith living in Mexico, if I recall correctly.

That crack about Princeton was a direct slap at WASP blue-blood Richard Helms,

key figure in CIA's covert action programs. Most CIA blue bloods went to Yale

(like Bush) but Dickie Helms was the Princeton man.

As Smith indicates, however, Clandestine Services was dominated by Catholics.