Christopher Hall
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I recently watched "An American Affair", which is largely based on JFK's affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer.
The names are changed, but she, Cord Meyer and James Jesus Angleton are easily identifiable.
They referred to a sort of Cuban henchman who did dirty work for the CIA, but they didn't show him and I couldn't determine who they were talking about.
Do yourself a favor and watch this movie - it's quite enjoyable.
The following is its IMDB listing:
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Since the late Cord Meyer is now being mentioned as a possible suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy, I've excerpted a few sections of his bio to get an idea of his background, friends and associations. This is about half of what I think is important. Will add more later if there's interest. -BK
Cord Meyer – Facing Reality – From World Federalism to the CIA (University Press of America, Latham , MD, 1980).
Acknowledgments: Winthrop Knowlton (H&R), Cass Canfield, Erwin Glikes, Georgetown U., Prof. Roy Godson, Peter Krogh (Dean of foreign Service), Richard Helms, Samuel Halpern Carmilla Hersh.
Preface. In this book I've attempted to tell enough of the story of my life for the reader to understand a career that almost ended at its beginning in a night battle on a Pacific island….In retracing with me thirty years of involvement in the foreign affairs of this country, readers will, I hope, be persuaded to think afresh and to reconsider opinions that may be firmly held…At the outset I want to make it clear that I submitted this text for security review by the CIA in accordance with the obligation that Agency employees must accept as a condition of their employment.
Unlike so much of the recent literature on American intelligence, this book attempts to describe the activities of the CIA in their historical context…..
Chapter 3 Peacemaking. (p.34- )
From Hawaii, I was flown to a hospital in the San Francisco area and finally back to New York City in September of 1944. I lived with my parents and communted to the Brooklyn Naval Hosptial,…I was ready to face the world and began seeing a lot of Mary Pinchot, whom I'd known slightly before the war and who was working in New York as a free-lance magazine writer……I saw Dean Acheson….(who)…offered me a job….Vienna. I would have taken it but by that time was so much in love with Mary Pinchot that trying to persuade her to marry me seemed far more important than a diplomatic assignment. As a result, I enrolled in the Yale Law School in January with the help of the G.I. Bill, and we saw each other on weekends…..
In April of 1945 Mary and I were married in her mother's New York apartment by Reinhold Niebuhr. He was more familiar with the intricacies of theological argument than with the marriage ceremony,…A few days later I boarded the official train in Washington that was taking the lower-ranking members of the national delegation to San Francisco, and Mary flew out to join me with press credentials from the North American Newspaper Alliance.
As the train rolled westward, I could not help comparing this trip with the voyage across the country by troop train in that innocent springtime of two years before. I felt myself much the wiser man, but I must have seemed incredibly naïve to a legal advisor to the Soviet delegation named Golunsky, whose acquaintance I made in the course of the trip….
p.35)
In a luncheon conversation with Alger Hiss, who was the secretary of the conference,….I became friends with Emery Reves. A Hungarian by birth, he had become a British citizen, had run an international press syndicate before the war, and was also Churchill's literary agent…..The Anatomy of Peace,….My other new friend was E. B. White, who was covering the conference for the New Yorker….
Suddenly, in the middle of May, reality crowded in upon me in a much more personal way. I was awakened one morning by a telephone call from my parents in New York, who told me through their tears that they had just been informed that my twin brother had been killed in action. He was a lieutenant with the First Marine Division, which I knew was engaged in the desperate fighting against the entrenched Japanese in Okinawa….Although we were not identical twins, we were very close and shared together all the days of our childhood and youth…
…I accepted eagerly a proposal by Edward Weeks, editor of the Atlantic, that I write an analysis of what had been achieved in San Francisco from the perspective of someone who had been in the war. My wife and I took a long-delayed honeymoon at a ranch in Montana….I finally made the decision not to return to law school but to enter the Harvard Graduate School….We moved to Cambridge, and my wife worked as an editoral assistant at the Atlantic Monthly,…Edward Weeks proposed me to join the Society of Fellows,…
…..They formed a group called the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, with the purpose of trying to get these convictions across to a complacent public. I was invited to attend one of their early meetings of the organization in Princeton….met Einstein, Leo Szilard,….Peace or Anarchy…..In the spring of 1946, I learned from (Charles) Bolte that the American Communist Party was attempting to infiltrate and gain control of the American Veterans Committee…..In 1949, I became convinced that our attempts to transform the United Nations had been overtaken by events that could no longer be ignored or explained away…..
(p56
…In the fall of 1949, I resigned as president of the Untied World Federalists, to be
succeeded by Alan Cranston, who later was elected to the Senate from California…..
(p. 60)
…..My mentor was a Harvard professor named Arthur Smithies, who combined theoretical brilliance with the practical experience derived from his previous position in Washington as chief of the fiscal policy division of the Bureau of the Budget….
(p.64)
My next interview was with Allen Dulles, who was at the time deputy director for plans of the Central Intelligence Agency. We had met as participants on radio and TV talk shows in New York and we had a number of friends in common at whose houses we had played tennis together on Long Island weekends. However, I did not know him well and knew little about his wartime career in the OSS. He was kind enough to give me more than an hour of his time, and we had a fascinating discussion. In a series and careful way,
he spelled out the nature of the world situation as he saw it and the complex challenge with which we were confronted by Stalin's regime. He was well-informed concerning my active role in the struggle for control within the American Veterans Committee, and we discussed at some length the strength and influence of the Communist parties of Western Europe. At the end of the meeting, he made me a firm offer of a job with the Agency at a middle level of executive responsibility and assured me that the work would be suited to my abilities and past experience, although for security reasons he could not describe the job in detail. I took with me the voluminous personal history forms that had to be filled out and said I would let him know within a week.
While in Washington, I looked up an old college friend who had joined the CIA a year before. I needed some reassurance about what life was like inside a large secret bureaucracy. He turned out to be enthusiastic about his work and high in his praise of the ability and quality of his colleagues…..I asked Walter Lippmann on his advice on whether to take the job. I had met him during the time I was active in the federalists movement…….On return to Cambridge, I found that my wife was all in favor of the move to Washington. Her sister and other good friends lived there and she looked forward to a change in scene…..By October 1951 I was at work with the Central Intelligence Agency in one of the dilapidated buildings along the reflecting pool that lies below the Lincoln Memorial.
After a brief period of training, I was assigned to what was then the Office of Policy Coordination, headed by Frank Wisner, which was responsible for the conduct of cover operations abroad. By chance, I arrived just as a new presidential directive called for an intensification of covert action operations to cope with what was seen as a worldwide Communist political propaganda offensive. This directive, NSC 10/5, was issue on October 21, 1951, and clearly assigned to the CIA the responsibility for mounting an expanded cover action program with policy guidance to be supplied by an NSC subcommittee. (65)
…..on August 31, 1953, I was summoned to a meeting with Richard Helms. At that time, Helms was chief of operations and second in command under Frank Wisner of what had become the Directorate of Plans. Although we later became close friends, I did not kow him well at the time…..
(70) ….On September 4,....I was called into Larry Houston's office and handed a memorandum that contained the summary of the charges contained in the FBI report……Under the provisions of Section 8(a)(5) of Executive Order 10450, there is evidence that you have appeared before or otherwise associated with the following organizations: National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (cited as a Communist front by the HCUA)….Massachusetts Citizens Political Action Committee….National Council Against Corruption…..Your wife, Mrs. Mary Pinchot Meyers, is alleged to have registered as a member of the American Labor Party of New York in 1944….Your wife…acquainted with James Aldridge….L.K. White (ADDA, CIA)…..
….Driving home I wondered who it was at the FBI who had spent so much time and effort researching every corner of my past to weave together this tapestry of unrelated incidents designed to prove my disloyalty. I speculated what his motives might have been and guessed that probably he was an ambitious bureaucrat who, sensing the climate of the times, believed he could make a name for himself by forcing the resignation of a ranking CIA official….Senator (Joe) McCarthy and Allen Dulles had already crossed swords over a number of cases where Dulles had refused to bow to McCarthy's pressure to fire certain Agency employees….
….I asked for advice from my then brother-in-law Steuart Pittman, an old friend and practicing lawyer. He introduced me to Walter Surrey, a young Washington attorney who had successfully handled a number of security cases before loyalty review boards. Surrey turned out to be exactly what I needed…..A colleague and friend, John Bross, was generous enough to offer financial assistance while I was deprived of my government salary…My immediate boss, Tom Braden, was consistently supportive....
….When Tom Braden decided to resign from the CIA in order to publish a newspaper in California, Dulles approved my appointment as Braden's successor as chief of the International Organizations Division in September of 1954. In that capacity I became head of one of the major operating divisions of the Directorate of Plans, with a growing budget and a wide policy mandate under a new National Security Council directive….In March of 1962, the International Organizations Division was merged with the Covert Action Staff. As the new head of the expanded Covert Action Staff, I became responsible not only for international operations but also for reviewing and providing policy guidance to the geographical area divisions in their conduct of covert activity authorized by NSC directives.
This bureaucratic history is relevant because it explains why my name inevitably came to figure prominently in the wave of publicity that crashed over the Agency in 1967. UP to that time there had been very few leaks, and over a period of fifteen years many American citizens and private voluntary organizations had cooperated secretly with the CIA in joint efforts to cope with the Soviet offensive….National Student Association,….Michael Wood…Ramparts….The New Left…..The James Bond image of the Agency in the public mind as being exclusively associated with the shadowy world of espionage gave credibility to these charges. As the first public exposure of the CIA role, the Ramparts coverage set the tone and colored the content of the massive press and media publicity that followed. (87)
xxxxxxx
I wish that some scholar or author (not mutually exclusive terms, I note) would write a book about Cord Meyer.
Ditto for James Jesus Angleton, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt (I have read and enjoyed St. John Hunt's book about his father, but I would like to see a lengthy biography of this fascinating man).
Jeffereson Morely did a great job with his book on Win Scott, but we need more books like this.
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I am mixed up about the debate within a debate regarding the hole (or alleged hole) in the front windshield.
The pictures that I have seen posted look authentic.
Apparently, someone thinks they have been altered.
Assuming the pics are authentic, from what shooting position do you think they originate?
1. Overpass (this seems most likely);
2. TBSD (the missed/Teague shot?);
3. DalTex Bldg (possible); or
4. GK (this seems like an odd (or impossible) angle)?
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I am reading this book and will post a report about it when I have completed it.
Thus far, it is quite enjoyable.
I enjoy reading about some ancillary figures relating to the Kennedys and the political dynamics of the 1959s and 1960s.
Roy Cohn was a man about town who had an impressive Rolodex, but who usually turned up in less than flattering circumstances.
When I was in law school, I remember reading how he was somewhat of a pioneer in the securities fraud class action litigation arena.
Lawyers called the practice "greenmailing" back then and it was looked down upon by most lawyers.
Now it is simply class action litigation, usually based on lies, contrived causes of action, extortion and settlements awarding vast sums to the law firms and pennies to the shareholders.
I would think that the least the trial lawyers could do would be to erect a statue of Cohn.
As an aside, there is only 1 picture of RFK, which is, of course, in the McCarthy hearings.
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I would approach this issue from a different perspective.
Namely, is OBL dead or is he alive?
If he is dead, how, when and where did he die?
If one's goal is to perpetuate a WOT, is it better to have a live OBL or a dead OBL?
Other questions also arise, like whether it is relevant if a hit squad was assembled on the drawing board but never deployed, whether Panetta's diclosure of this issue is a transparent attempt to deflect attention from what Nancy Pelosi know about enhanced interrogation techniques and when she new it, and the legal effect of an executive order (as Paul Begalla famously said "Stroke of the pen - law of the land. Kind of cool!").
I probably take a different view than most of the people on the EF about matters like this (I trust the CIA more than I trust Congress), but these questions should be important to everyone.
The problem with buying into Sy Hersch is that, if you do, you also have to explain some of the utter silliness contained in "The Dark Side of Camelot".
Same way with decrying the JFK assassination-related fiction of Vincent Bugliosi when he writes about the SBT and then believing him when he writes a book critical of GWB.
Authors are either credible or unbelievable, but they can't be both.
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http://www.boston.com/news/packages/jfkjr/wreckage_moved.htm
Wreckage moved to Cape Cod
Associated Press, 07/24/99
....The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, hopes to learn what happened July 16 that caused the plane to dive into the sea off the coast of Martha's Vineyard - something James Hall, the board's chairman, acknowledges they may never find out.
But as investigators began the task of examining the wreck, reports emerged that there was no mechanical failure in the engine or with the craft's propellers.
CBS news reported Friday night that preliminary reports showed pilot error is suspected to be the cause behind the fatal accident.
Ordinarily, only one regional investigator would be assigned to examine the cause of a small plane crash, NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm told the Boston Herald.
In the Kennedy crash, a team of eight or nine people will investigate, Schlamm said, including specialists such as metallurgists, meteorologists and structures experts.
The safety board will examine all the available parts to figure out how the plane broke up - and the cause of the break-up....
Why so many investigators assigned?
Probably the same reason the US government deployed such a huge maritime effort to try to find the wreckage - because Jr was rich, famous and an important member of a politically influential family.
The government would do the same thing for a Clinton or a Bush or for Warren Buffett, but a few flyovers for the rest of us.
It's rather ironic that power and influence even matter at death.
I remember there being some outcry at the time as to how much the government was spending to find wreckage and bodies.
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I read, in some book during the last year, that RFK and Jackie had an affair after JFK's death and that they had even gone to a Carribean island together.
I think that it was Antigua.
I don't know (or really care) whether it is true.
Nor do I know whether RFK was a faithful husband to Ethyl or, instead, a cad like his brother and like his father.
Except for "The Other Side of Camelot", I try not to read hit pieces, because they don't help me with my ultimate objective of discovering who perpetrated the assassination of JFK.
I could speculate as to which book I read the above story/rumor, but I have read so many JFK assassination books that I wouldn't want to wrongly attribute it to an author who had nothing to do with the story.
JFK strikes me as the accidental President (in that Joe, Jr. was supposed to run for the office and that the role kind of descended to him after Joe's death).
RFK strikes me as, by far, the most intense of the brothers and, according to one book I read, the one who had the moxey to stand up to Joe, Sr.
EMK seems a born introvert who had the unenviable position of following in the footsteps of extrovert brothers and a father who had very high expectations.
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This is an aritcle about MCNamara's days at Ford Motor Company.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/07/robert-...con-dead-at-93/
I didn't know that he developed the Falcon.
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What is it with the wall-to-wall media coverage (both in the U.S. and, I hear, overseas) since Michael Jackson died, it seems like a year ago now? Cui bono? (His record sales have gone through the roof.) Did ownership of the Neverland Ranch make him a head of state? I'm told he revolutionized music. Well, not being a connoisseur of pop music (I quit listening sometime in the 1980s, I think, when it all became noise), how exactly did he do that? The moonwalk or what? I know he had a lot of big hits, but don't a lot of other people? I need to be educated, so that I too can appropriately mourn this twice (?) accused pedophile.
Michael Jackson was an important artist in the history of popular music but he clearly did not deserve this amount of media publicity. The music industry have used this opportunity to sell some records. I also find it difficult to understand why a pedophile has received so much good publicity. Our music stations are not allowed to play the music of the UK's pop pedophile, Gary Glitter. His problem was that he did not have enough money to buy off the victims.
"Our music stations are not allowed to play the music of the UK's pop pedophile, Gary Glitter."
Not allowed by whom or by what?
The Government?
I have tried to learn about personal liberties and freedoms in the UK after reading an article about stops and frisks and stops and searches.
What can you direct me to on this topic?
Thanks.
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The FBI says it's not investigating Palin for anything:
http://www.adn.com/palin/story/854318.html
And Ted Stevens (whom I pulled against, I might add) was acquitted.
Please post any proof you have to support your assertion that Sen. Ted Stevens "was acquitted" of the bribery and corruption charges he was tried in court for. My understanding is that one of the first official acts of newly confirmed US Attorney General Eric Holder was to determine that there was prosecutor misconduct committed in the prosecution of Stevens extensive enough to warrant overturning his conviction and sentence, and that Holder's DOJ further determined that
it would not retry Stevens.
Stevens seems to have committed the crimes for which he was prosecuted:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Corruption_c...ainst_0401.html
You are correct, Tom.
My memory failed me.
My feelings regarding Stevens were good riddance, but I forgot that he was convicted and then had his conviction withdrawn (they didn't teach me anything about withdrawing convictions in law school) by Holder for prosecutorial misconduct.
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Rumors Fly About Palin’s “Iceberg Scandal”
by Muriel Kane
www.rawstory.com
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/03/rum...ceberg-scandal/
Update: BradBlog now suggests that Palin’s resignation was due to an upcoming Federal indictment for embezzlement. Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast adds more details.
In the wake of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation on Friday, rumors are beginning to circulate that she might have acted in anticipation of a previously unsuspected scandal being revealed.
Alaskan blogger Shannyn Moore suggested at Huffington Post that “rumors of an ‘iceberg scandal’ have been circulating” even before today’s announcement.
“Resignation is certainly out of character for Sarah Palin,” Moore noted. “Senator Mark Begich had a meeting with Sarah Palin two days ago with no mention of her leaving office. Palin’s press secretary, David Murrow had posted on his Facebook page Wednesday, ‘David Murrow is considering life’s ironies.’ He was hired less than a month ago. Yesterday he wrote, ‘There’s gonna be some fireworks this weekend!’”
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo similarly suggested, “Remember that based on the public record, Palin is a wildly unethical public official, guilty at a minimum of numerous instances of abusing her authority as governor. And a lot of very damaging information has come out about her in the last few days — though mainly embarrassing information about her character rather than new evidence of bad acts. I would not be surprised if this latest round of revelations shook something else loose that we haven’t heard about yet.”
Moore later spoke by phone with BradBlog’s Brad Friedman and told him that “Palin is ‘resigning as part of damage control’ due to a scandal this is ‘not of a family nature.’”
“The governor would not be able to continue her job when it comes out,” Moore told Friedman. “Why would Mark Sanford not resign, but Sarah Palin did? Her family didn’t even know about the resignation until they were standing with her by the lake when she made her announcement.”
Update: BradBlog is now reporting additional information received from Alaskans who follow Palin: “I’ve now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin’s house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the ’same windows, same wood, same products.’ Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.”
Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast offers additional details:
One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd.
Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state. …
Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.
Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an additional $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.
Questions about the construction of Palin’s house are not new. An article last fall by Wayne Barrett at the Village Voice offered many of the same speculations that are now being presented by Blumenthal and others as possible explanations for Palin’s resignation.
If these allegations turn out to be accurate, Palin’s problems would be ironically similar to the scandal which torpedoed former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ career. That also involved improvements to his home for which he made no payment.
The FBI says it's not investigating Palin for anything:
http://www.adn.com/palin/story/854318.html
And Ted Stevens (whom I pulled against, I might add) was acquitted.
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This is a new Crime Magazine article on the above topic.
http://crimemagazine.com/richard_nixon_kennedy.htm
I don't vouch for its accuracy or know anything about the author.
Maybe some other forum members can offer some insights on the topic.
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The following excerpts come from the column of someone who I read regularly. I think his points are of even greater concern because the author of the column is even more left leaning, politically, than I am. If what he is pointing out is correct, how will we explain to our grandchildren that we JFK CTs, folks who presumably know better than the average person, did not attempt to step in front of this "silent coup" while there was still any chance of the final outcome being in doubt.....the bankrupting of the future of said grandchildren, as official policy?
From transcript of Bill Moyer's PBS show, aired last night:
...Moyers: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?Black: Absolutely.
LNs will tell you that the above displayed accusation of a former S&L regulator cannot be true....too many would have to be involved, it just couldn't happen. Despite his personal tax problems and his complicity in what has already happened, Tim Geithner did get confirmed in the senate to be US Treasury Secretary, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, the recent US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, did appear to give Goldman "special treatment" and access during the final six months of the Bush admin., and Obama did invite into his administration, Bush secretary of defense, Robert Gates and his top military appointees in their Bush era positions.
Military funding is still growing, even during financial crisis, and a "Vietnam like" escalation policy in Afghanistan has been put into motion, topped with an "Iraq like", troop surge.....
CHICKEN SALADWhen I was a young man in the late 1960's, there was a now-extinct species known as "The Left." Some of these exotic creatures would bleat out a refrain that went something like, "This country is run by Wall Street." Although I was (and still am) a liberal, I thought these people were basically conspiracy theory screwballs. Now I realize that they were right and that I've been a sucker all my life. The joke's on me. On all of us. We put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop, not understanding that we're the chickens. How stupid is that?
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazin...tures/born.html....As chairperson of the CFTC, Born advocated reining in the huge and growing market for financial derivatives. . . . One type of derivative—known as a credit-default swap—has been a key contributor to the economy’s recent unraveling. . .
...Greenspan and his deregulation-minded brain trust saw no need to upset the status quo. The sheer act of contemplating regulation, they maintained, would cause widespread chaos in markets around the world...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-adviceMay 2009 Atlantic
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
by Simon Johnson
The Quiet Coup
Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large. . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=topnewsThe Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials. . . .
The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials. . . .
In one program, designed to restart small-business lending, President Obama's officials are planning to set up a middleman called a special-purpose vehicle -- a term made notorious during the Enron scandal -- or another type of entity to evade the congressional mandates, sources familiar with the matter said.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript3.htmlApril 3, 2009
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, "How do they get away with it?" Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black.
The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course.
Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."
Bill Black, welcome to the Journal....
Black: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.
These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...
Moyers: What do you mean?
Black: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator. . . .
The Great Depression, we said, "Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?" Where's our investigation?
What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, "Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don't want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. . . .
Moyers: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?
Black: Absolutely.
Moyers: You are.
Black: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. . . . What we're doing with -- no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson's firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn't want us to know that. And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG.
Where Congress said, "We will not give you a single penny more unless we know who received the money." And, you know, when he was Treasury Secretary, Paulson created a recommendation group to tell Treasury what they ought to do with AIG. And he put Goldman Sachs on it.
Moyers: Even though Goldman Sachs had a big vested stake.
Black: Massive stake. And even though he had just been CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary. Now, in most stages in American history, that would be a scandal of such proportions that he wouldn't be allowed in civilized society....
This is some good info.
I am waiting for an "insider account" book to reveal some of the particulars of the massive bailout/sellout/fraud.
I would add that it is no small coincidence that Warren Buffett agreed to inject Goldman Sachs with $5 billion the week that Congress was considering passing the bailout legislation, contingent on the passage of such $700 billion bailout.
And then Buffett went on national television shows to assure us that life as we knew it would stop if the legislation wasn't passed.
We now find from the TARP Special Inspector General that the total TARP program needs, not the paltry amount of $700 billion, but $2.6 - 2.9 trillion.
Everyone who supported this multi-generational throwaway of money (GWB, Paulsen, Bernanke, Obama, McCain, approximately 75 Senators and I forget how many Congress members) is complicit in the fraud.
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The following link has some FBI files re threats made against Ted Kennedy:
http://foia.fbi.gov/jpkenn/jpkenn1a.pdf
They are contained in the FBI file on Joe Kennedy.
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This is great news.
It is a classic example of the Federal government running roughshod over a private citizen in a politically motivated attack which leaves the victim exhausted and penniless at the end of the day.
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The article below is from Gary North’s Specific Answers website. Gary North’s invaluable website, subscription based, has provided me with countless insights into how the real world works, not only in the realm of finance and business but in other key areas as well.
__________________
May 30, 2009
Charlie Skelton was assigned by the Guardian to cover the 2009 meeting in Greece. At first, he did not take it seriously. After run-ins with the Greece police for daring to try to cover the meeting, he finally figured out what and whom he was dealing with. They have power. He has none. It miffed him.
I have never read anything like this in the mainstream press -- not in 40 years of reading.
Spend an hour reading this series. It could change your outlook permanently -- or reconfirm it.
Start with the oldest first (bottom-up).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/cha...ilderberg-files
Thanks, Douglas.
This was well worth the read.
It's the elite being kind enough to set the global agenda for the unwashed masses for the ensuing year.
Doug,
From my standpoint someone like William F. Buckley, Jr. was the classic Bilderberg elitist and he was so well
connected into this millieu that he is in my Dirty Dozen who are directly responsible for the JFK hit...
Would you agree or disagree after browsing some of these postings...?
Did you read my posts on:
1) The Buckley associations with the Carlist Catholics under "Killing Commies for Christ the King..."
2) His friends from Brown University: E. Howard Hunt, Anastase Vonsiatsky and George Lincoln Rockwell head of the ANP
3) His history with The Coudert Brothers Law Firm who ran Buckley's 1965 NYC mayoralty race who were immigration
lawyers for all the ROCOR Fascists and Nazis including people like George de Mohrenschildt, Adrian Arcand, Boris Brasol
and Anasatase Vonsiatsky among others. The Rapp-Coudert Committees actually were the forerunner of McCarthyism.
Shouldn't Buckley actually get as much credit for founding McCarthyism as was given to Robert J. Morris by Whittaker Chambers?
Do you think Buckley was short-changed by Chambers on this score?
4) His association with Clendenin J. Ryan, during the founding of YAF, who had worked with Ulius Amoss and Carleton Coon
of the OSS on programmed assassination squads which were later turned over to Ray S. Cline of WACL and the CIA.
Ryan, Coon and Amoss basically originated the concept of Murder, Inc. in Latin American "banana dictatorships" for United Fruit
5) His father's history with Pantapec Oil in Mexico, the Cristeros Rebellion and the Gang of Four who rode
after Pancho Villa into New Mexico for John J. Pershing's cavalry: Angleton's father, James Hugh Angleton, Buckley's father,
William, Sr., a young Charles Willoughby and Wickliffe Draper's uncle, George Otis Draper. This was the paradigm for all United Fruit
coups in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatamala and Cuba for the next 75 years.
6) Buckley's mention in The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon as "...that fascinating younger fellow who wrote about men and
God at Yale." Of course Buckley wrote "Man and God at Yale" in maybe 1952 for the Regnery Press who published more anti-Semitic
and Holocaust Denial material than anyone in that period. Just seems like he was involved with Edward Hunter and his "Brainwashing"
ventures as early as 1952 with American Mercury where Buckley worked. Why do you think Richard Condon mentioned "men and God at Yale?" What was he possibly trying to warn us all about here?
John-
You try hard (and perhaps successfully) to associate WFB with McCarthyism, but completely fail to mention RFK.
When I think of Joe McCarthy, the 2 people who come to mind are RFK and Roy Cohn.
Chris
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The article below is from Gary North’s Specific Answers website. Gary North’s invaluable website, subscription based, has provided me with countless insights into how the real world works, not only in the realm of finance and business but in other key areas as well.
__________________
May 30, 2009
Charlie Skelton was assigned by the Guardian to cover the 2009 meeting in Greece. At first, he did not take it seriously. After run-ins with the Greece police for daring to try to cover the meeting, he finally figured out what and whom he was dealing with. They have power. He has none. It miffed him.
I have never read anything like this in the mainstream press -- not in 40 years of reading.
Spend an hour reading this series. It could change your outlook permanently -- or reconfirm it.
Start with the oldest first (bottom-up).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/cha...ilderberg-files
Thanks, Douglas.
This was well worth the read.
The secrecy and security surrounding the Bilderburg Group throwdowns lends credence to its (well-denied) significance.
It's the elite being kind enough to set the global agenda for the unwashed masses for the ensuing year.
What are the identity cards he refers to in the article?
Is Great Britain trying to impose a national id card system?
Perhaps to assist law enforcement with its warrentless stops and searches?
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What has always bothered me about the Oswald assassination is the fact that Ruby shot him only once (I believe) and didn't squeeze off a few extra quick shots to ensure that he had done the job.
Am I correct that Ruby shot Oswald once?
If so, it looks like he got lucky by disposing of Oswald fairly quickly.
From what I have read, most mob-style hits leave little to luck (by emptying a magazine or cylinder in the victim).
I understand that Ruby was working in close quarters and put himself at great risk.
Thanks for any comments that any of you may have.
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Documents from the Clinton Adm. missing from the National Archives.
Sounds familiar.
Kind of reminds me of Sandy Berger, who is presently serving a modest period of time in the penalty box before resuming his multi-million dollar lobbying business.
If Obama insists on transparency, why doesn't he demand that Congress and the CIA release any and all documents relating to the CIA's briefings of Congress (including the Speaker of the House) on interrogation of captured prisoners?
What could possibly be wrong with that?
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Progress from Obama adminstration in "erring on the side of the people's right to know"= T-R-A-S-H-E-Dhttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-hou...as-excuses.html
Deconstructing Obama's Excuses by Dan Froomkin
...."[T]his is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken."
But this suggests that Obama has bought into the false Bush-administration narrative that the abuses of detainees were isolated acts, rather than part of an endemic system of abuse implicitly sanctioned at the highest levels of government. The Bushian view has been widely discredited -- and for Obama to endorse it suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the past.
The notion that responsibility for the sorts of actions depicted in those photos lies at the highest -- not lowest -- levels of government is not exactly a radical view. No less an authority than the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded in a bipartisan report: "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own....The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."
But as The Washington Post notes: "[N]o commanding officers or Defense Department officials were jailed or fired in connection with the abuse, which the Bush administration dismissed as the misbehavior of low-ranking soldiers." And the "appropriate actions," as Obama put it, have certainly not yet been taken. The architects of the system in which the abuse took place have yet to be held to account.
Then there was the no-good-would-come-of-this excuse.....
......And finally, there was the new-argument excuse.
Gibbs said "the President isn't going back to remake the argument that has been made. The President is going -- has asked his legal team to go back and make a new argument based on national security."
But as the Los Angeles Times reports, the argument that releasing the photographs could create a backlash "was raised and rejected by a federal district court judge and the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which called the warnings of a backlash 'clearly speculative' and insufficient to warrant blocking disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
"'There's no legal basis for withholding the photographs,' said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, 'so this must be a political decision.'".....
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...otos/index.html......(7) We are supposed to have what is called Open Government in the United States. The actions of our government -- and the evidence documenting it -- is presumptively available to the public. Only an authoritarian would argue that evidence of government actions should be kept secret in the absence of a compelling reason to release it.
The presumption is the opposite: documents in the government's possession relating to what it does is presumptively public in the absence of compelling reasons to keep it concealed. That the documents reflect poorly on the government is not such a reason to keep them concealed. If it were, then it would always be preferable to have political leaders cover-up their crimes on the ground that disclosing them would reflect poorly on the U.S. and spur anti-American sentiment. Open government is necessary precisely because only transparency deters political leaders from doing heinous acts in the first place.....
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein...ouse_again.htmlGroups: let us FOIA (part of) White House again
More than three dozen open-government groups are asking the Obama Administration to reverse the Bush Administration's policy and again accept Freedom of Information Act requests for a portion of the White House known as the Office of Administration.
In a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel Greg Craig, the transparency advocates say such a move would send a signal that President Barack Obama is serious about implementing his post-inauguration promises to institute "an unprecedented level of openness in government."
"Such a reversal best accords with the actual functioning of [the Office of Administration] and President Obama's January 21 memoranda concerning transparency and open government," the letter said. "As the President noted, '[a] democracy requires accountability and accountability requires transparency.' Without question, transparency in the functioning of the Executive Office of the President and its components like OA play a critical role in meeting this commitment."
A White House spokesman had no immediate comment on the letter.
Some offices at the White House which directly advise and coordinate with the president have never been subject to FOIA. However, the Office of Administration, which handles personnel, technology and financial support for the White House was considered subject to FOIA until 2007, when the Bush Administration abruptly asserted that the office was exempt......
Anybody wanna bet above request to rescind the Bush ban of FOIA requests to the white house OA will be
approved anytime soon?
We've just come from eight years of a secretive, far right presidential administration. By too many emerging measures
we are burdened with yet another one. Do you think it will be any easier to successfully demand the initiation of impeachment investigation of this "poser" and hypocrite in the white house, a year or two from now? Obama only took his oath of office four months ago, and he acts as if he's forgotten what it is he swore to "preserve and protect".
Bob Gates at the Pentagon was supposed to "stay on" for "six months", but..... not enough difference between the old Bush and this new Bush, to matter much, IMO.
"Meet the new boss - same as the old boss."
Pete Townshend, The Who (1971)
Won't Get Fooled Again
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_...EMPLATE=DEFAULT
Evidence against celeb pathologist Wecht dismissed
By DAN NEPHIN
Associated Press Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A federal judge on Thursday dismissed evidence gained from search warrants prosecutors used to build their fraud and theft case against celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht, who has investigated the deaths of Elvis Presley and JonBenet Ramsey.
The ruling should effectively end the prosecution's effort to retry Wecht, whose previous trial ended in a hung jury, one of Wecht's attorneys said after the ruling was issued.
"They used all this evidence in the first trial against Dr. Wecht ... and they couldn't get a conviction with it," attorney Jerry McDevitt said at a news conference. "Without this evidence, they don't even a have a case, in my opinion."
Wecht, of Pittsburgh, is accused of using his former Allegheny County Coroner's Office staff and resources to benefit his lucrative private practice, which also probed the suicide of Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel under former President Bill Clinton and a longtime law firm partner of Hillary Clinton, among other cases.
Wecht, 78, also is accused of overbilling private clients for limousines and air fare and of ripping off prosecutors in surrounding counties for mileage fees when he appeared as an expert witness.
Acknowledging that the judge did not outright dismiss the case, Wecht said he had a "sense of temporary or partial relief."
Wecht's attorneys have maintained that the allegations are, at best, minor abuses, not federal crimes.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said in a statement that the office would review the opinion and decide what to do.
McDevitt said he didn't think prosecutors had much of a chance of getting the ruling overturned on appeal.
"Now is the time to end this thing and let this man get on with his life," he said.
During a March video conference with U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin, McDevitt argued that warrants for Wecht's private office and a county employee's laptop weren't specific about what authorities were seeking and, therefore, should be declared invalid.
The prosecution acknowledged the office warrant might have been overly broad but said officers who conducted the search acted in good faith so the evidence should stand. The prosecution maintained the computer warrant was specific.
In his 55-page ruling, the judge agreed with Wecht's attorneys.
"... the result reached here today is not based on what amounts to constitutional hair-splitting or what is sometimes referred to in common parlance as a mere 'legal technicality,'" the judge said. "Rather, these rulings are grounded in well-established Fourth Amendment principles which serve as a bulwark against unwarranted governmental intrusion into the private affairs of every citizen, not just this defendant."
However, the judge refused to dismiss the case, which Wecht's attorneys also wanted.
Wecht resigned his government office when he was indicted in January 2006 on 84 counts of mail and wire fraud and theft charges. The government whittled that down to 41 counts for his first trial, and now just 14 counts remain.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
This is outstanding news.
It is a victory for Dr. Wecht and for the 4th Amendment.
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... "Strong Man" is a massively well-documented biography, packed with new information, that moves the Watergate story forward by leaps and bounds.
... Who ordered the break-in is, of course, an essential question and one, moreover, that has never been satisfactorily answered - until the appearance of Rosen's "Strong Man."
Mr Hougan,
Very interesting to hear that you find Rosen's conclusions on target and well supported. I had ignored his book, under the impression that it was rehash of Silent Coup -- which I'd always seen as COUNTER to your own views.
That is: Secret Agenda's prime thesis (if memory serves) was that the Wgate team, unbeknownst to its masters and (goofy pawn?) Gordon Liddy, was actually a CIA team employed (opportunistically, it seems, perhaps by Helms himself) to assist Nixon to early retirement.
Then along came Silent Coup to protect the Company's honor -- by pointing fingers at the Pentagon (the Radford business) and John Dean instead.
Perhaps memory ISN'T serving me perfectly well here. But let me ask:
1. Have your views changed much on Watergate since you wrote Secret Agenda -- in particular re institutional CIA involvement & manipulation?
2. Do you see important differences between Rosen's book and Silent Coup?
3. Even if John Dean pushed the button on the Wgate break-ins -- what of import follows?
For myself:
-- The Radford business seems important to understanding the Nixon White House's siege mentality: to an extent, the famous Enemies that fed their paranoia were on the Right, pissed off for being cut out of the China and North Vietnam talks and determined to protect turf (to put it kindly).
-- The Wgate team is indeed best thought of as a CIA team. And the particular history of Nixon and Helms -- which Prouty (re Indonesia 1958), Ehrlichman (in his roman a clef The Company) and Haldeman (memoir and posthumous diaries) throw light on -- is relevant.
So I guess I carry around large chunks of Secret Agenda and select bits of Silent Coup.
But I no longer think it very important (nay, possible) to understand how precisely the Wgate burglaries got authorized. To a good extent the money has to talk there, and doesn't that mean Mitchell? Beyond that, winks and nods (and nodding-offs misconstrued as such) go a long way with eager beavers like Liddy.
I guess the "level of organization" at which the Dean question resides doesn't trigger my own (rather robust) paranoia. So maybe the guy was trying to find his wife ...
(Disclosure: I've found a lot of Dean's topical writing at FindLaw valuable over the years. If he's Guilty as Rosen apparently charges, I reckon he's Paid His Debt to Society ...)
I don't think Rosen's book is a "rehash" of anything, though I'm certain he's read everything on the subject - and then gone out to do his own work. Which is why he's been able to move the story forward.
The biggest obstacle to understanding "Watergate" is unquestionably getting past the myth in which the story is embedded. We are told that a couple of hard-working journalists, abetted by their self-effacing secret source and intrepid editors, saved the republic by exposing the misdeeds of a quintessentially evil president. It's a grand story in the David & Goliath tradition, and anyone who would revise it is likely to find himself reviled as a conspiracy-theorist and/or as a "revisionist" (you know, like those guys who deny the reality of the Holocast).
At a minimum, any investigative reporter who would dare to suggest that there is more to the Watergate story than the Post has revealed or, worse, that the Post's coverage was inaccurate, incomplete or (Zooks!) manipulated, will likely be dismissed as an apologist for Nixon (Mitchell, Ehrlichman, etc.).
Which is upsetting.
But make no mistake about it: the stakes are huge, as are the equities of people like Woodward and Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham, John Dean and the Democratic Party - not to mention the many reporters, pols and lawyers who have built successful careers on the basis of some slim connection to the story. Watergate is an industry.
(There I go again...but I think you had some questions about a book I'd written.)
"Have (my) views changed much on Watergate since (I) wrote Secret Agenda?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the Watergate mythos has begun to fray over the years. John Dean's role in the affair has become much clearer. For this, we may thank the authors of Silent Coup and The Strong Man - as well as Dean himself. The litigation that he's initiated or encouraged, first against Len Colodney and then against Gordon Liddy, has been the political equivalent of an own-goal - for which he should be thanked.
In addition to the wealth of new information generated in the aftermath of my own book, I have come to understand that the affair was even more complex than I realized when I was writing Secret Agenda. It now seems to me that John Dean's manipulation of Gordon Liddy and his client, Richard Nixon, not to mention the Ervin Committee's staff had a profound effect on the way in which the affair unwound in the courts and the Congress, and on the world stage. This was not apparent to me when I wrote Secret Agenda, or if it was apparent, it did not interest me. It should have.
That said, I would add that my views of Watergate have not changed - not, at least, in the sense that I would retract anything that I have written about the affair. The book is correct in all details, and in its central thrust: Watergate was a set-up. The CIA and the Pentagon were spying on the White House (through Howard Hunt and Adm. Thomas Moorer's minions) - and James McCord sabotaged the break-in. He did this - apparently in an effort to protect an extremely important CIA operation involving DNC Chairman Larry O'Brien - with the help of a man named Lou Russell, a former FBI agent who was also, and in particular, the former chief investigator of the House Committee on Un-American Activities ("HUAC").
The point being that Secret Agenda ought to have recognized the fact that there were several agendas at work - not one. To understand Watergate, we need to consider not only the CIA's "agenda," but John Dean's, as well. And we need, also, to recognize that the intelligence community is not a monolith. The Pentagon had its agenda, as the Moorer-Radford affair proved, but so also did the CIA's counterintelligence staff, particularly where it intersected with the interests of the Security Research Staff (under Gen. Paul Gaynor) and the private-sector American Security Council. These are people who see themselves as an Elect, charged with the sacred mission of saving the Republic not only from its foreign enemies, but from its own citizenry and elected officials. I would suggest that the agenda of the Security Research Staff, with which James McCord was intimately connected, was far more radical than any "institutional agenda" that the CIA may have had.
Your second question: "Do (I) see important differences between Rosen's book and Silent Coup?" Well, yeah. "The Strong Man" benefits massively from the litigation that Dean and his attorneys instigated against Colodney, Gettlin and Liddy. Depositions and other evidence in those cases did much to focus and bolster Rosen's argument(s). It seems to me, as well, that Rosen's book is unusually well-written. And, of course, it's a biography - which Silent Coup is not. But as for any substantive differences between the two books, with respect to the actual meaning of Watergate, I don't know of any. There may be some.
Your third question: "Even if John Dean pushed the button on the Wgate break-ins -- what of import follows?" Well, our perception of Watergate would certainly be different if it were shown that the affair was initiated by a minion in the White House, acting without authority, rather than by a government official acting with the presumed, if tacit, approval of the President and/or his immediate subordinates. So, too, "if John Dean pushed the button on the Wgate break-ins," a great injustice has been done to a string of people, including Dean's client (Nixon) and his boss, Mitchell (who was left to take a very hard fall).
In your post, you make the point that "The Radford business seems important..." Indeed, it is/was. One of the best things about Secret Agenda is that it was the first book to relate the Moorer-Radford affair to Watergate - this, because while the Moorer-Radford affair preceded Watergate, it was not made public until after Watergate unfolded.
You write that "The Wgate team is indeed best thought of as a CIA team." Actually, it was more of a conglomerate than a team. Hunt and McCord had an agenda that was very different than Liddy's. Hunt and McCord were carrying water for one of the darkest corners of the CIA, while Liddy was simply "following orders" - orders that he mistakenly thought had come from John Mitchell.
Regards,
Hougan
Could you please offer some details of the CIA operation involving Larry O'Brien and its relation to the break-in that you believe was a sabotage?
Thanks.
Chris
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The following is an interesting article about 10 failed assassination attempts:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/200...able-aspec.html
It is easy to forget about these.
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I have spent a fair amount of time on No Name Key (mostly eating hamburgers in the No Name Bar and watching the Key Deer (which are dog-sized deer)), and I had heard rumors about CIA activity there before getting interested in the JFK Assassination.
I can only imagine how primitive No Name Key was when Hemming, Roselli, et al. were there.
I have a hard time reading the article linked in Wade's post, because the print is so small.
Antonio Veciana
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
I agree that Fonzi covers this material quite well.
I think that, at a minimum, Veciana was involved with the perps of the assassination.
Perhaps he was more involved.
When I was a boy (in the mid to late 1960s) a young man whose last name was Veciana joined our class at the Catholic boys' school I attended..
He said that his family had fled Cuba a few years earlier.
His father was a doctor, but I forget his name.
I don't know whether he was related to Antonio Veciana.