Cliff Varnell

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

 

Lyndon Johnson, behind the scenes, told many people over the years that Fidel Castro murdered JFK before the Kennedys could murder him.

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.

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

Cliff Varnell: here is Lyndon Johnson AT PARKLAND HOSPITAL, as he sucked on his inhaler, REPEATEDLY SAYING "The International Communists did it" and LBJ is doing this in ultra right wing Dallas while so many, many people are immediately assuming that a Right Wing Dallas Nut has just killed JFK.

This is called DEFLECTION (from his own participation in the murder of JFK). Alfred Steinberg, was an accomplished and seasoned political reporter who knew Lyndon Johnson well.

A few hours later on Air Force One, Jackie Kennedy would tell her press secretary "Lyndon Johnson did it" as she was a firsthand witness to LBJ's totally fake histrionics.

Lyndon Johnson to Malcolm Kilduff, after Kiduff asked if he could make a statement that the president was dead:

"No, wait. We don't know if it's a communist conspiracy or not. I'd better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?" [Sam Johnson's Boy, Steinberg, p. 606, published in 1968]

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

On the night of 11/22/1963 Lyndon Johnson tried hard to convince Ted Sorensen, a close aide to JFK, that the JFK assassination was a foreign conspiracy and he (LBJ) was worried about his own safety and security

 QUOTE

           On that Saturday evening, in Johnson’s vice presidential office in the Old Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, with his aide Bill Moyers sitting in, LBJ and I talked, as he had requested during his phone call the night before. We had scheduled the meeting earlier, but I bumped into LBJ that afternoon in the West Wing basement and he was running late.

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

          Almost immediately, LBJ asked, “What would you think of the possibility that a foreign government was involved in this?” “Do you have any evidence?” I asked. He handed me a government memorandum, not identifying any specific source, saying in effect that a foreign government had hoped to assassinate President Kennedy. “Meaningless,” I said. He persisted. Concerned that there was an international conspiracy, he raised the issue of his own safety and security.

 UNQUOTE

Meaningless.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

 [Ted Sorensen, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, p.380]

Alexander Haig on 11-22-1963 below: Lyndon Johnson believe that Fidel Casto killed JFK and LBJ believed that for the rest of his life

 QUOTE

 Soon President Johnson arrived with a small retinue, and he, McNamara, Vance, and a few others met in McNamara’s office.

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

 

Busy with my own concerns, I paid little attention to this. Later on, however, I learned that Johnson expressed deep concern over the circumstances of President Kennedy’s death and the effect it might have on the future of the Democratic party.

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

          The fact of the matter is that Lyndon Johnson believed then, and believed until the day he died, that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and that the murder of the President resulted from Robert Kennedy’s “obsessive desire to eliminate the Cuban leader.” As Johnson put it to Califano, among others, “Kennedy tried to get Castro, but Castro got Kennedy first.” If the Kennedy administration’s plots against Castro’s life became public knowledge, the logical conclusion of any investigation would be that President Kennedy’s assassination had been carried out by persons who had an interest in preserving Fidel Castro’s life. The implication hat the KGB was involved was inescapable; it exercised proprietary control over the Cuban intelligence service and must have regarded Castro as a unique Soviet asset to be protected by the most extreme measures. (Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin, had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and lived there until 1962, having married the niece of an official of the KGB before returning to the United States.) Should the background to the crime be exposed, it could be devastating to Democratic prospects for retaining control of the White House in the 1964 presidential election. Johnson believed that any finding that an assassin activated by a Communist government had killed the President of the United States would set off a reaction among the American people, in their fervent patriotism and what he described as their “natural conservatism” that would sweep the Democrats from office and probably deny them power for many years to come. I did not fully understand this argument, but of course I am not a politician.

 UNQUOTE

 [Alexander Haig, Inner Circles, pp. 114-115]

 

Johnson was good at BSing people, but push come to shove he did as he was told.

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

While at the SAME TIME, Lyndon Johnson was telling everyone he could BEHIND THE SCENES that JFK had been killed by a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY. And within a week, LBJ was telling this to Earl Warren as well, saying millions will die in a NUCLEAR WAR if we don't cover this thing up. This was a deflection.

LBJ did not want any public talk of "conspiracy" because ... he had just "conspired" to murder JFK.

“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.

9 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I have not had time to type in the relevant sections of Ted Sorensen's book and Al Haig's memoir. That is exactly what LBJ was doing. Give me a couple of days. I do have this from Alfred Steinberg, a seasoned insider journalist of the era. This is LBJ at Parkland Hospital already pushing "The commies did it."

QUOTE

          When they reached the hospital, Johnson jumped out of the car and held his left bicep with his right hand while he rushed indoors with five Secret Service agents, leaving Lady Bird with Yarborough.  Rumors spread that he had been shot, that he had suffered a heart attack. Once inside the hospital, Johnson and the agents were ushered to the rear of the Minor Medecine area, where between deep sniffs from his nasal inhalator, he said repeatedly, “The International Communists did it!” …Nor had Salinger’s chief assistant Andrew Hatcher, gone to Texas, because Kennedy had been considerate of the anti-Negro bias in that Southern state. This was the reason Malcolm Kilduff, another assistant press secretary, was present at the hospital and became the first person to call Johnson “Mr. President.” Kilduff had come to Booth 13 to ask his permission to make a statement that Kennedy was dead, but Johnson barked at him, “No, wait. We don’t know whether it is a Communist conspiracy or not. I’d better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?”

UNQUOTE

          [Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, pp. 605-606, published in 1968]

           Alfred Steinberg was a seasoned journalist who knew Lyndon Johnson very well, up close and personal. 

 

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I totally 100% agree with you that Averell Harriman was the driving force behind the Diem coup and very probably the assassination of Diem.

Why was that?  Because Diem sought rapprochement with the North, threatening continued US military presence in SE Asia?

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I just don't see any evidence that Harriman 3 weeks later arranged the murder of JFK, especially if Lansdale was involved in JFK's murder.

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?

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I like my mangled delivery. Varnell makes this lucid argument many times and is often ignored. It is as if Cliff is the beaten dead horse ... but completely correct in the simple point that he is making. The bullet holes in JFK's clothes make the Single Bullet Theory (Magic Bullet Theory) absolutely impossible to be true.

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.

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Not really. I just know that Averell Harriman, a close friend of the Kennedys, had absolutely nothing to do with the JFK assassination.

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.

16 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Robert, do you have any thoughts on Brown Brothers Harriman's denial of Nazi sympathies, which can be found on their website?

 https://www.bbh.com/us/en/bbh-who-we-are/our-story/200-years-of-partnership/brown-brothers-harriman-in-the-second-world-war.html

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.

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The same reason we decided not to do a trajectory simulation.

The other side would say: look at Croft, or the clothing was  bundled up.

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!"

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

We went with the evidence of the low back wound that was not disputable, because its in their own hands: the doctors and the FBI. 

The clothing evidence is indisputable.  Croft shows the jacket collar in a normal position.  

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I mean how many different ways were we expected to prove conspiracy?  This is just one.

Physical evidence is always best, but it takes a level of competence beyond DiEugenio’s grasp.

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I count about five. Quite enough I think.

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.

4 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

So for WHAT MOTIVE would Averell Harriman murder JFK?

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.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

But Cliff, it wouldn't have been much of a documentary had Jim presented the clothing evidence and called it a day 'cause that was enough to prove conspiracy.

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!

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

Way too cold blooded for that to have happened. Jackie and Harriman very close friends for years afterwards.

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!

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

On example:  If you look in the book, we use Burkley and his death certificate at  T-3 and also the face sheet which matches.  And which Burkley's signature is absent from in the volumes.  We also note that Specter did not depose Burkley.  (See p. 155)

Dr. Miller expands on this strophe, on p. 157 as he says, "Dr. Burkley's death certificate makes the single bullet theory bogus."  Kind of clear?

Miller repeats this on p. 173 and its amplified by quotes from Sibert about moving the back wound up to the neck. (Personally I thought Miller was really effective.)

PS This is why I have CV on ignore.  

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.

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

Most of those aren't in here so do you write them about the clothing? What's the response they give you?

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.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Cliff,

I recall Jim D. once saying that he tried to include in his documentaries only those things that "couldn't be answered." (Or something like that.) Which I took to mean that WC apologists didn't have a (believable) alternative answer for.

Maybe Jim didn't include the shirt and jacket evidence because of the excuse that they could have ridden up on him. I know that WC apologists have a photo of JFK who has slid down in his chair so far that his shirt and jacket indeed are very high on his torso.

Regardless, I'm with you... the shirt and jacket are indeed damning evidence. And the films of JFK pretty much prove that they had not ridden up.

 

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.

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

Who else?

Tink Thompson, David Mantik, Gary Aguilar, Pat Speer, Roger Feinman, Stu Wexler, John Hunt...that’s just off the top of my head.

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

Yet, he gets your attention on this subject. Are you as dogmatic with the other researchers on this subject?

Absolutely!  Those who do not grasp the primacy of physical evidence in a cold case murder investigation are utterly incompetent.

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. Directors typically have final say. 

 

I’m critical of the writer ignoring the physical evidence.  Unless you can point out where the clothing evidence is cited.

On the “Tim Smith’s book on the HSCA” thread Jim DiEugenio wrote in reference to the scripts he wrote for 2 Oliver Stone documentaries:

I was the writer and we did address this issue. More than once.

The issue at hand is any reference to the JFK clothing evidence.  If the clothing evidence is cited in those documentaries I’ll be happy to stand corrected and apologize to Jim profusely.

Can any of Jim’s legion of fans cite where in those documentaries the clothing evidence is mentioned?

16 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

The odds of the Kennedys' very close friend Averell Harriman being involved in the JFK assassination are .... ZERO

After JFK was murdered, Averell Harriman moved out of his home in Georgetown and let Jackie Kennedy and her kids live there.

Averell harriman jackie kennedy - Search Images (bing.com)

 

 

What better way to deflect suspicion?