Cliff Varnell

At the 5 minute mark Dr. Wecht performs a 2 minute destruction of the SBT based on the back wound location indicated by the autopsy face sheet and the bullet the holes in JFK's clothing. This has been done many times before, but not so much in this century. It's the most economical way to establish the fact of conspiracy in the murder of JFK. No need to drone on and on about the provenance of CE339, or inveigh the public with animated recreations based on micro-analyses of the Z-film, or pontificate upon the Neutron Activation Analysis of the Magic Bullet, or bother with gunshots on the police dictabelt -- or dive down any of the other myriad rabbit holes so often touted hereabouts. The bullet holes in the clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound, as Dr. Wecht so ably demonstrated.

RIP Dr. Wecht

https://wtop.com/j-j-green-national/2014/10/how-the-cia-headquarters-broke-ground-in-langley-va/ Foggy Bottom is a neighborhood. The CIA was headquartered there in the 50's. A continued presence? Your guess is as good as mine.

Air Force Chief Gen. Curtis LeMay was on vacation and returned to view the autopsy. Planes in the air ready to bomb Cuba would have been under his command. There's no record of such a conversation, to be expected. Bundy came up with an affectionate nickname for Harriman -- The Ol' Crocodile. The Wise Men, Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, pg. 640: <quote on> [The Diem] coup was messy. Diem's body was found riddled with bullets and stab wounds. John Kennedy himself was shot to death three weeks later. Bill Sullivan [Harriman's chief of staff] found Averell Harriman that afternoon sitting on the edge of his chair, in front of a television set, holding his head in his hands. <quote off> Harriman appeared very uptight that afternoon. Sorrow over the death of the man who recently demoted him -- or sorrow the patsy was captured alive?

McGeorge Bundy was at the Situation Room. Averell Harriman was at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department. 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 US governments "top Kremlinologists" were Llewellyn Thompson, Charles Bohlen, George Kennan and Harriman himself. There was no consultation between them that day. There's no record of contact between Harriman and the generals. According to Craig Roberts and Jim Bishop, it was McGeorge Bundy who claimed to have spoken to Johnson on AF1.

I care about Marilyn. I just don't care who she slept with. Because the overthrow of Diem led to the death of millions, including my brother who finally succumbed to the leukemia he contracted from Agent Orange exposure in 'Nam. Junior probably has pushed Trump to the right on public health issues -- Don Fuhrer vows to abolish the pandemic-response team at the White House in spite of the looming threat from bird flu. Dumbing down to dictatorship...

How? You ask how? 1) The subject holds not a scintilla of significance -- a quarter scintilla at best. 2) I didn't want to distract you from the Prime Objective -- canvassing the neighborhood for permission to put up RFKjr lawn signs. 3) Payback for your snub of Faye Dunaway as Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray in your list of great Hollywood actress roles. Understand? Or is it too tough for you?

Hollywood’s blackmailer-in-chief: the dirty cop behind Confidential, the tabloid the stars feared https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/hollywoods-blackmailer-in-chief-dirty-cop-behind-confidential/

That had more to do with the magic mushroom chocolate bar I pounded earlier that evening. I neglected to mention that. You thought the grin on my face was because I was glad to see you, and I didn't want to indicate otherwise.

Forget it, Cory. It's the Ed Forum.

In James Ellroy's hard-boiled masterpiece The Cold Six Thousand, Ellroy fingers Fred Otash as the notorious "Raoul," James Earl Ray's alleged handler. I have no idea how he made that ID -- but it's a fictional tale, so who knows. Otash appears in three other Ellroy novels I haven't read yet. Screenwriter Robert Towne used Otash as his inspiration for Jake Gittes, the Jack Nicholson character in Chinatown. That is the limit of my interest in, or knowledge of, Fred Otash.

Taking my victory laps...

Called it! US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana in a historic shift, AP sources say https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-biden-dea-criminal-justice-pot-f833a8dae6ceb31a8658a5d65832a3b8 On the Jesse Ventura as VP-USA? The JFK Records Act? thread on March 16 I wrote: "A prediction: on April 20, 2024, the DEA will reschedule cannabis from Schedule I to 3 and the Prez race will be in the bag for Biden." This thread is the appropriate place for this, yo... "

Yes, the removal of Jupiter missiles was a major strategic victory. A major objective, yes. Another objective was to gain advantage in the struggle over Cuban influence with Red China, https://www.nytimes.com/1963/01/03/archives/cuba-hints-trend-to-china-in-split-but-castro-keeps-to-course.html WASHINGTON, Jan. 2--Premier Fidel Castro indicated in his speech today that Cuba would steer a middle course "within the socialist camp" between the Soviet Union and Communist China but was leaning toward Peking. What about it? What about it? So? That doesn't mean the Soviets would initiate a nuclear war they couldn't win. The notion is preposterous! Castro was closer to Red China. The Bay of Pigs and the constant attempts on Castro's life should of disabused Khrushchev of such naivete. You seriously think Khrushchev expected Kennedy not to respond to the placement of nukes 90 miles off our shore? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402399708437689#:~:text=It is on this legal,NATO Defense Forces in Turkey'.

In this scenario Castro would have been accused of starting it by whacking Kennedy. The Soviets got what they wanted out of Cuba when the US withdrew missiles from Turkey. Their response would have been diplomatic, railing against American imperialism at the UN. The US could have countered by citing the alleged Oswald meeting with Kostikov in Mexico City. No, the same principle would have been an attack on the USSR from the soil of an American ally. The US bombed the hell out of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and there was never talk of nuclear confrontation over it. Why would Kennedy's advisers think the US didn't enjoy nuclear superiority in 1963? And surely Khrushchev wasn't crazy enough to initiate a nuclear exchange over a country that wasn't vital to USSR security.

RO: But do not obscure the fact that the amorphous group that wanted to get rid of Kennedy had several factions. Only some of them thought it was a good idea to use the murder as a pretext to go after Castro, which would have led to a war with the Soviets, who were pledged to respond such an attack, not to mention Kennedy that had given them a no invasion pledge barely one year earlier. </q> Khrushchev would start a war he couldn't win over Cuba? Nonsense. According to Gareth Porter's The Perils of Dominance the USSR didn't reach nuclear parity until 1965. Sandy, it wasn't Harriman who contacted AF1 to inform LBJ the lone gunmen was in custody -- it was McGeorge Bundy.

The CIA didn't conduct any successful covert operations under Allen Dulles? I guess Joe Kennedy and Robert Lovett got worked up over nothing, eh?

Richard Bissell, Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '31 (turned down Skull & Bones) Tracy Barnes, Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '33 (Scroll & Key) McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor, Yale '40 (Skull & Bones) Either the Yale crew royally screwed the pooch with the Bay of Pigs -- or the long knives were out for Princeton Allen D. Either way, Dulles never saw it coming.

In Denial, pg 204: <q> While purely speculative, any telephone dialog which could have occurred between Bissell and the president would have had to cover some very dicey issues in respect to Kennedy’s orders — including the fact that the complexity of the amphibious landing, the Navy landing craft involved, and the quantity of tanks, trucks and a massive amount of cargo had actually precluded any real chance of completing the landing and withdrawing all ships (including the command LCI’s) by dawn. The true extent of the remaining Cuban air threat would have also had to be disclosed, no doubt raising further questions of the plans for resupply of the beachhead over the longer term, which involved extensive flights out of the Nicaraguan base, something which would almost certainly demonstrate American involvement. The issue of the contingency plans for guerrilla action or even re-landing the force, directed as backup options by the president, might also have been raised by President Kennedy. If that sort of dialog had occurred there is certainly a possibility that the president might have aborted the landing, as he had continually reserved the right to order. At the point in time when Bissell and Cabell determined not to talk to President Kennedy the landing force was still some two to two and a half hours from its scheduled deployment off the transports. </q> [Ibid, pg 158] <q> Based on Kennedy’s directives about lowering the visibility of the landings, Richard Bissell, apparently with Director Dulles’ support, did indeed go back to his military officers and craft a less visible plan for inserting the expeditionary force. In only three days the daylight landing at Trinidad, a town with a port and docks available, and with unencumbered access to the Escambry Mountains, was changed to a night landing which required all men, material, and supplies to be directly on the beaches. To some extent the plan offered more geographic protection for a lodgment given that the beaches were surrounded by swamps, with only a few undeveloped roads offering access to them. However, the location selected moved the force well away from the mountains and effectively eliminated the guerrilla option that President Kennedy still seemed to anticipate. It also made it significantly more difficult for any indigenous fighters to link up with the volunteer force unless they quickly broke out and moved beyond the swamps, something not anticipated in the lodgment plan... (Ibid, pg 159) ...A very brief Joint Chiefs assessment of the new plan limited itself to declaring that in its essentials it still did appear feasible that a force could be landed and sustained for some limited time, but that the isolated location could well restrict any indigenous support. In turn President Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy praised the CIA for the steps towards making the revised plan quiet and less “spectacular.” He also described it as “plausibility Cuban” in its essentials, with no elaboration on that point. To some extent Bundy appears to have fallen back on the standard concept of deniability, which had been in play since the CIA began its covert actions — if Americans are not involved in the combat then its not officially an American intervention. </q>

That's what happened, didn't it? During Eisenhower's second term, Joe Kennedy and Robert Lovett lobbied Ike to fire Dulles. https://cryptome.org/0001/bruce-lovett.htm#schlesinger <q> [T]he increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being. ... Busy, moneyed and privileged, [the CIA] likes its "King Making." responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!)... Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government on a continuing basis, be . . . calculating . . . the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? . . . Where will we be tomorrow?” </q> Although the above denunciation of "bright, highly graded young men" was written in 1956, it certainly applied to Richard Bissell, who became CIA Deputy Director for Plans at the beginning of 1959. Bissell pushed for the creation of the ZR/RIFLE assassination squad, and ordered hits on Patrice Lumumba, Rafael Trujillo, and Fidel Castro. Lovett and Bissell had worked on the Marshall Plan starting in 1948. Both of them worked closely with Averell Harriman (Skull & Bones 1913) After the 1960 election, Lovett and Joe Kennedy formed JFK's kitchen cabinet. Lovett recommended Dean Rusk for State, C. Douglas Dillon for Treasury, Robert McNamara for Defense and McGeorge Bundy National Security Advisor. Lovett and Bundy's father Harvey were Skull & Bones members who worked closely together at the Department of War during WW2. McGeorge and his brother William were also Skull & Bones. Bissell had been tapped to join S&B but he turned them down. Did gaining power slacken Bob Lovett and Joe Kennedy's desire to get rid of Allen Dulles? Did Lovett convince his fellow Yalies, Bissell and Bundy, to botch the BOP intentionally? I can't say as a fact that the BOP failure was planned to provide a rationale for Dulles' dismissal, but in my book that scenario makes as much sense as the incompetence/inertia scenario described by ace BOP historian Larry Hancock (see In Denial: Secret Wars with Air Strikes and Tanks?)

Happy Let's Get Rid of Allen Dulles Day. Joe Kennedy soon after the BOP: . "I know that outfit, and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week. It's a lucky thing they were found out early." I don't think luck had anything to do with it. Intentional sabotage by Richard Bissell and McGeorge Bundy, more like it.

Much better. And a water cooler for "Those who believe alternative/MAGA facts." Works for me. I entertain "alternative" views on a number of subjects, none are MAGA tho. 2 threads cover it.