Peter McGuire

Any veteran JFK Researcher worth his salt is no doubt aware that a big part of the controversy and enmity that exists between the persons believing there was a conspiracy, and the beloved Lone-Nutters. On the alt.conspiracy.jfk newsgroup, as well as on the internet, Rose Cheramie is always right in the middle of allegations and counter-arguments that her information indicating foreknowledge was either invented after the fact, or, was actually before the assassination, as Fruge indicated. Irrespective of whether or not that is the truth, [and there is actually good reason to believe that it was before the assassination], there is a significant point that needs to be addressed regarding Cheramie. Rose Cheramie aka Melba Mercades, she actually had a multitude of aliases, is, in retrospect beyond simply "important." Why? Two reasons. One. if she was and is as insignificant as, certain idiots maintain, why are there at least four documents on her that are postponed in full? See bottom of post Two. Read the article in Probe Magazine by Jim DiEugenio Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted The JFK Assassination Postscript: The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X pg 230, by DiEugenio, James and Pease, Lisa, editors (2003) Amazon Rating: It should be noted that at this point there exists some confusion about Mac Manuals identification of Santana. Writers like John Davis have said that the man's last name was `Osanto'. This is based on Patricia Orr's summary of the Cheramie episode in Volume 10 of the HSCA volumes. Apparently Orr was working only from Fruge’s April 18, 1978 deposition transcript. There Fruge states that ther second man was, to the best of his memory, Osanto. But this confusion is now cleared up with the declassification by the ARRB of the rest of the HSCA records. For in the summary of Fruge’s deposition, and in the accompanying index, Blackmer notes that Fruge identified the actual photos that Manual picked out. The photos were of Sergio Aracha Smith and Emilio Santana. In 2006 on a JFK newsgroup, I am told there was a "Jaxie Stewart Fisher," who claimed that her relationship to Rose Cheramie, was intimate enough that she was known to her as "Aunt Pippy." also Galveston Daily News January 8, 1954 Frank Ragland, Alvin Resident, Succumbs Here Services for Frank Ragland, 41 Former Steamship Marrion Lykes Other useful idiots and scoffers may want to explain the following. AGENCY : CUSTOMS RECORD NUMBER : 196-10001-10049 RECORDS SERIES : FIELD OFFICE FILES DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR : CUSTOMS FROM : SAC NEW ORLEANS TO : [No To] TITLE : [No Title] DATE : 12/18/1963 PAGES : 1 DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT SUBJECTS : CHERAMI, ROSE CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL CURRENT STATUS : OPEN DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 12/21/1996 COMMENTS : CASE FILE CARD ON ROSE CHERAMI. CASE FILES TRANSFERRED TO FRC FT. WORTH AND CONFIRMED DESTROYED. NO FURTHER INFORMATION. AGENCY : CUSTOMS RECORD NUMBER : 196-10001-10059 RECORDS SERIES : FIELD OFFICE FILES DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR : CUSTOMS FROM : SAC NEW ORLEANS TO : [No To] TITLE : [No Title] DATE : 12/18/1963 PAGES : 1 DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT SUBJECTS : MARCADES, MELBA CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL CURRENT STATUS : OPEN DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 12/21/1996 COMMENTS : CASE FILE CARD ON MELBA MARCADES. CASE FILES TRANSFERRED TO FRC FT. WORTH AND CONFIRMED DESTROYED. NO FURTHER INFORMATION. AGENCY : CUSTOMS RECORD NUMBER : 196-10001-10059 RECORDS SERIES : FIELD OFFICE FILES DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR : CUSTOMS FROM : SAC NEW ORLEANS TO : [No To] TITLE : [No Title] DATE : 12/18/1963 PAGES : 1 DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT SUBJECTS : MARCADES, MELBA CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL CURRENT STATUS : OPEN DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 12/21/1996 COMMENTS : CASE FILE CARD ON MELBA MARCADES. CASE FILES TRANSFERRED TO FRC FT. WORTH AND CONFIRMED DESTROYED. NO FURTHER INFORMATION http://www.nara.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/6254/jfksnew.txt 22 Documents related to Rose Cheramie 01 180-10105-10328 02 180-10105-10330 03 180-10112-10058 ARRESTS ROSE CHERAMIE 04 180-10112-10057 MELBA MARCADES 05 180-10089-10046 06 124-10185-10123 07 124-10276-10427 08 180-10111-10073 POSTPONED IN FULL 09 180-10111-10074 10 180-10107-10062 11 180-10100-10004 1 page Customs Dept Staff 12 180-10147-10339 13 180-10104-10459 POSTPONED IN FULL 14 180-10105-10003 POSTPONED IN FULL 15 180-10106-10014 16 180-10112-10310 17 124-10373-10139 18 180-10067-10459 19 180-10074-10060 1 page 20 180-10065-10259 21 180-10089-10047 POSTPONED IN FULL 22 180-10095-10160 Rose Cheramie aliases POSTPONED IN FULL 23* 196-10001-10059 . 23* This document was under NARA as Melba Marcades PS Joan Mellen could offer some significant assistance in this area if she chose to do so. I can't seem to get this nara link to work. Any suggestions? Would be appreciated. Peter

John Simkin writes: Many readers are no doubt familiar with the Silvia Odio story, but a short refresher is still in order. Briefly, Silvia Odio was the daughter of a prominent anti-Castro activist who was jailed in Castro's Cuba. In September of 1963 she was living in Dallas when three men, whom she did not know, came to her apartment out of the blue one evening. They told her they too were involved in the anti-Castro movement and wanted her help. Two of the men, Odio later said, appeared to be Cuban or Mexican, and identified themselves by their "war names," Leopoldo and Angelo (or Angel). The third was an American introduced as Leon Oswald. Uneasy with these men, Silvia Odio declined any involvement with them, and sent them away. A day or two later, Leopoldo called her on the phone and, among other things, said that Leon Oswald was a former marine, a crack shot - and that he thought President Kennedy should be assassinated. After the President was indeed slain, Silvia Odio was horrified to recognize Lee Harvey Oswald as the same "Leon Oswald" who had been outside her apartment. This identification was corroborated by her sister Annie who also saw and spoke with the three strangers. Silvia Odio gave this story to the Warren Commission. But the Commission decided she was mistaken in her identification of Oswald, in part because Oswald was, by the Commission's reckoning, in Mexico City at the time Odio said she was visited. This story - the conventional "Odio incident" - is explosive enough, tying Oswald to the idea of killing Kennedy several months before it happened. Sylvia Meagher called it "the proof of the plot." Anthony Summers said it represents "the strongest human evidence." And Gaeton Fonzi, who investigated this episode for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote that "the Odio incident absolutely cries conspiracy." Another case of the traitors tripping over themselves in the plot to kill President Kennedy.

"Even Dempsy Jones, who confirmed to the FBI that Yates told him at least one day before the assassination about the hitchhiker's talk on shooting the president, was skeptical. ( this and his cousin Ken Smith's comments about Yates obsession with the Oswald matter is all there is against his story ) There were too many Oswalds in view, with too many smuggled rifles,retelling a familiar story to too many witnesses. At least one curtain rods story, and the disposable witness who heard it, had to go. The obvious person to be jettisoned was the hapless Ralph Yates. His stubborn insistence on what he knew he had seen and heard, from the man he had given a ride,had to be squelched. Ralph Yates then went though eleven years of hell. Yet he could not forget, and would not stop speaking about, what he witnessed when he picked up the man he thought was Lee Harvey Oswald. Without ever understanding the full meaning of the experience he refused to renounce, Ralph Leon Yates was a witness to the unspeakable." Ralph Yates was a man with a wife and five children who had no reason to make up something like this.Given the fact that Oswald doubles have been confirmed in the area on other occassions during that time, there is no reason in the world not to believe his story. His memory deserves at least that.

Glad to learn about CTKA.NET Great resources there including letters to different people from you and others. the Unspeakable has helped me understand many aspects of the very complicated plot that just didn't make any sense. For example, why would an intelligent man like Oswald trap himself in a place like a movie theater? The answer in my mind has always been that he wouldn't. Then why did he go there? I always suspected it was because he was told to go there. But now with Robert Vinson's encounter with the Oswald double showing conclusively that there was a double, and witnesses Burroughs and Haire, we now get the picture of what happened in and around the theater. And in the end, we know that Oswald could have not shot Tippit either because Burroughs knew that Oswald had to come into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 and Oswald bought his popcorn at the EXACT time Officer Tippit was being shot to death. Cokes and Popcorn - who would know that they would exonerate a PATSY!

by James DiEugenio http://www.ctka.net/reviews/jfk_unspeakable.html "This book is the first volume of a projected trilogy. Orbis Books has commissioned James W. Douglass to write three books on the assassinations of the 1960's. The second will be on the murders of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, while the third will be on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. This is one of the few books on the Kennedy case that I actually wished was longer. In the purest sense, Jim Douglass is not a natural writer. But it seems to me he has labored meticulously to fashion a well organized, thoroughly documented, and felicitously composed piece of workmanship that is both comprehensible and easy to read. These attributes do not extend from simplicity of design or lack of ambition. This book takes in quite a lot of territory. In some ways it actually extends the frontier. In others it actually opens new paths. To achieve that kind of scope with a relative economy of means, and to make the experience both fast and pleasant, is quite an achievement. I should inform the reader at the outset: this is not just a book about JFK's assassination. I would estimate that the book is 2/3 about Kennedy's presidency and 1/3 about his assassination. And I didn't mind that at all, because Douglass almost seamlessly knits together descriptions of several of Kennedy's policies with an analysis of how those policies were both monitored and resisted, most significantly in Cuba and Vietnam. This is one of the things that makes the book enlightening and worthy of understanding." Nor did I mind the emphasis on his presidency. JFK was an effective president, in my opinion, who saved us from Nuclear War - no thanks to his "advisors."

I did a search, but did not find a dedicated thread on Robert Vinson. Why, I do not know, as he makes the case for CIA involvement like no other. "In a colossal CIA blunder, Robert Vinson's providential presence on the second Oswald's flight from Dallas has enabled us to see the planning for the Oak Cliff follow-up to the assassination." JFK and the UNSPEAKABLE Washington and Dallas On November 22, 1963, U. S. Air Force sergeant Robert G. Vinson of the North American Defense Command ( NORAD) saw the second Oswald escaping on the same C-54 cargo plane he was hitching a ride home on. Vinson also got off the plane at the same CIA base as Oswald's double did, a few minutes after him. On November 23, 1993, Robert Vinson told the story of his flight from Dallas to news anchor Larry Hatteberg on Wichita's KAKE-TV Channel 10 News. In 2003 James Johnston and journalist Jon Roe co-authored their book FLIGHT FROM DALLAS, describing Robert Vinson's experience in detail.

Gary Underhill was found dead on 8th May 1964. He had been shot in the head and it was officially ruled that he had committed suicide. However, in his book, Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio claimed that the bullet entered the right-handed Underhill's head behind the left ear. Underhill allegedly said "that the Kennedy murder wasn't as cut and dried as it might appear." There were too many murders or "suicides" surrounding this case.

Before Rose Cheramie was thrown out of the car, as seen in the opening scene of the movie JFK, a lot happened to Lee Harvey Oswald. There many instances where a Lee , or a Leon or a man man who looked like him were seen leading up to the assassination. "Executive Action" did a great job showing the framing of Lee Harvey Oswald. James Douglass has done a great job compiling the instances of Oswald being "sheepdipped" in the Unspeakable. You can not dismiss the movie "JFK" outright and many details can be defended as to their accuracy. My question to those who question the movies accuracy to provide me with which detail, specifically, is inaccurate. So how about the case of Rose Cheramie. Let's start there. Looking into the research done on her, what specifically is inaccurate about that research?

"Jack Ruby knew his CIA involvement with Thomas Eli Davis in running gun against Castro and Davis's ongoing CIA assassination ties were dynamite. When Ruby warned his lawyer about his association with Thomas Davis, he was tiptoeing through a minefield. If a witness or investigative reporter had revealed the Ruby - Davis connection, it could have blown open not only Ruby's trial but also the Agency's behind-the-scenes role in the assassination plot. Ruby's CIA background may have been the lead that nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen told friend she was following when she attended the trial, gained a private meeting with Ruby behind closed doors,and then, while being hounded for months by the FBI, died mysteriously in her Manhattan home. " JFK and the UNSPEAKABLE Washington and Dallas page 358 She drank. She took "sleeping pills" which were overprescribed at the time and not even in pill form usually. But she did not kill herself. She was having the time of her life in her affair with Johnny Ray. Richard still loved her, she was onto the story of any reporter's dreams and it would have broken open the case of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. So, one more person died. But oh, well - many did , so whats one more?

At 10:30 A.M. on November 22, 1963 Sheriff Bill Decker held a meeting in preparation for the President's visit to Dallas that day. Decker had called together all his available deputies, about one hundred men. They included the plainclothes men and detectives who were especially important to the president's safety as he passed through the streets of Dallas. Decker gave his assembled officers an unusual order. The Sheriff said that they "were to take no part whatsover in the security of that motorcade. " The Sheriff told his officers they were simply "to stand out in front of the building, 505 Main Street, and represent the Sheriffs Office." Sheriff Decker gave the order of noninvolvement to his security teams just two hours before the president's assassination in Dealy Plaza, which was just outside the window of the sheriff's office. As Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig later reflected back on the sheriff's words, he realized that Decker had withdrawn the Dallas County component of President Kennedy's security at the motorcade most vulnerable location only a few feet away. Washington and Dallas

He did. David , thanks for opening up to what Piper has said all along. Because the so called "research community" has written him off outright, nothing along those lines is discussed. That is unfortunate. The very survival of a nation has to be considered as a reason to take out a president. And "Dimona" is much more than a rumor. And it certainly is a denial. As it is, I am supposed to believe that Kennedy's Generals wanted to start a nuclear war that would have killed millions of us and hundreds of millions of Russians and Kennedy opposed this and that is why he was killed? Yet, he opposed nuclear capability in Israel which denied this country the means to defend itself - and that was not motivation?

Those in dreamland like to discredit the movie "JFK" wholesale and there is not enough opposition to that. Jim Marrs and many others have done a great job letting us know what really happened. Even if these folks are off a little, clearly their ( private researchers ) version is far more accurate than the bull we were forced to believe. "The assassination of John F. Kennedy was like the sudden coming of a tornado that sucked people up into death, both Kennedy's death and their own. One such victim was a woman who predicted the killing of Kennedy, Rose Cheramie. Lee Harvey Oswald was being systematically set up for his scapegoat role in Dallas, just as Thomas Arthur Vallee had been set up as an alternative patsy in Chicago. Vallee escaped that fate when two whistleblowers, Chicago Police Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland and an FBI informant name "Lee," stopped the Chicago plot. Oswald was not so fortunate in Dallas. His incrimination by unseen hands continued. Oswald, or someone impersonating him, continued to engage in actions evidently designed to draw attention to himself, laying down a trail of evidence that could later be drawn upon to incriminate Lee Harvey Oswald as the president's assassin. However, the Warren Commission ended up ignoring or rejecting much of that evidence, because it indicated the work of intelligence agencies at least as much as it did the guilt of Oswald." JFK and the Unspeakable Washington and Dallas

Can someone help me? I am sure I commented here on this Forum about a movie that resembled Mary Pinochet Meyer with Donald Sutherland. You are probably thinking of An American Affair directed by William Olsson and starring the fetching Gretchen Mol. Donald Sutherland, recently honoured with a Hollywood Star, was not in this movie. <quote on> Catherine is clearly inspired by Mary Meyer, the real-life Washington socialite who trysted with Kennedy and was slain within a year of his assassination, but "An American Affair" is more focused on Adam than D.C. lore. <quote off> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/AR2009022603742.html See also: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0899138/ Cheers Mary Pinochet Meyer must have been one the first to be killed in the cover up of the assassination of President Kennedy. "An American Affair" doesn't feel like a Washington movie at first, even though it dabbles in local conspiracy theory, makes dramatic use of the "Exorcist" steps and has a main character who's sleeping with John F. Kennedy. The typical Washington movie, even if it's a thriller, has that museum smell. "An American Affair" is fresh, earthy and open -- maybe because it plays out in homey parlors and on leafy residential streets, maybe because it's not about state secrets as much as it's about friendship, maybe because most of it was shot in Baltimore (but never mind that).

I understand what you are saying about the three brothers and JFK Jr's deaths. Quite impossible. Throw into the mix Ted being discredited out of the presidency and you have something that you just can not believe. Also a great point about the double standard of proof. When it comes to his death, nothing is absurd for those who cover this thing up and give us their excuses. Yet, there is very little concrete evidence of the Kennedys affairs either. Do note how the president turned away from the camera at that shot with Ms. Monroe. Like Dorothy Killgallen, Ms. Monroe did not die from an overdose, nor did either of them commit suicide.

You are right about one thing, in that I can believe what I want. And I shall.

Dorothy Kilgallen was killed because of her interview with Jack Ruby. Her friend was also killed a few days later who she passed on her notes. Too much of a coincidence in a matter where there are a thousand coincidences according to the liars covering this up. Medical reports show she did not "overdose or commit suicide." Too many , again, committed suicide to the point where only a damn fool would believe all those coincidences.

Proganda tonight on the Kennedy Tragedy. My opinion is as the late Ted Sorensen in that the Kennedies were blessed, not cursed. Problem is that I know that JFK's bodyguards facilited JFK's killing - then I hear on this episode the naive RFK had only one FBI bodyguard in California. True or not true, what the hell was RFK thinking? He knew more or less how his brother was killed, yet he did not seek revenge nor did he protect himself from a similiar fate! This is history now, but why do those of us who know what really happened have to have our Saturday nights ruined by this lying propaganda? Stop insulting our intelligence by clinging to the decades disredited lies, and at least let the Kennedy family rest in peace without causing so many of us to keep this going because we continue to be lied to.

She was murdered. It would be nice to know why.

Has the book been published?

Is it possible..Just possible, That Marilyn was a troubled, self medicating, woman who made that classic mistake, she overestimated how much junk her system could take? My work brings me into daily contact with people who abuse drugs ,alcohol ect, the reasons for this abuse are legion. But they all share one characteristic, they overestimate there bodies capacity to handle their drug of choise. Marilyn's pre-morbid behavior shows,IMHO, a large capacity for self destructive behavior, which I belive ultimately caused her death. Just a thought....Steve. In the case of Marilyn Monroe: * The toxicology report showed high levels of Nembutal (38-66 capsules) and Chloral Hydrate (14-23 tablets) in Monroe's blood. * Police noted that the bedside table had numerous pill bottles but the room contained no glass to wash down the pills and the water was turned off. (no, that's not suspicious!) * The pathologist Dr. Thomas Noguchi could find no trace of capsules, powder or the typical discoloration caused by Nembutal in Monroe's stomach or intestines, indicating the drugs that killed her had not been swallowed. * Monroe was found lying face down but lividity on her back and the posterior of her arms and legs indicated she had died lying on her back. * Eunice Murray, Monroe's housekeeper, claimed that she couldn't open Monroe's bedroom door the night she died because it was locked, but she also had a spare key. (so why did she not use it?) Police noted that Murray appeared quite evasive and extremely vague and she would eventually change her story several times. It's clearly obvious that the death scene was faked, and Monroe did not swallow all of those pills.

Great review by Robert Steele. Luckily I visited the Magellan Hotel in Cebu in April of 1993 just before the May 22, 1993 fire that destroyed it. There were a few books written with the Maggelan as a backdrop, weren't there? It seems that I read a novel before going to the Philippines in 1993 and was drawn to the Magellan.

http://www.guiltandpleasure.com/index.php?site=rebootgp&page=gp_article&id=101 The story of Erik Jan Hanussen, the Viennese-Jewish psychic who befriended Adolf Hitler and became known as the “Prophet of the Third Reich,” is one of the most peculiar in modern European history. Few twentieth-century historians have acknowledged Hanussen as a factor in the dissolution of the Weimar Republic. That the Führer had engaged a wily Jewish clairvoyant might seem the stuff of mocking political fantasy or occult make-believe — but the story is true. Sadly, on the evening of March 24, a squadron of SA men showed up at Hanussen’s apartment. The Prophet of the Third Reich was about to depart for a nine o’clock performance. When informed that he was under arrest, Hanussen laughed it off as a practical joke. The commanding officer then demanded that all of the loan receipts Hanussen had collected from his SA debtors be turned over immediately. Hanussen was driven to Gestapo headquarters on General-Pape Strasse, where he faced charges of complicity with Communists and of submitting a phony Aryan certificate in order to gain admittance to the Nazi party. A few hours later Hanussen was executed with three pistol shots. Two struck him in the head. His corpse was robbed of everything except thirty marks in bills, and he was dumped in a field north of Berlin. In the end, the Hanussen-Hitler saga proved to be an embarrassment for everyone involved: Nazi historians — as well as their Allied counterparts — attempted to destroy or conceal all materials linking the two “H’s.” The relationship was bad for the National Socialists and bad for the Jews. For post-war America, exposure of the complicity of any Jews in Hitler’s coup and the Nazi policies that followed was, at the very least, an exercise in poor political taste. The most famous clairvoyant in Europe was consigned to the dustbin of history, with only traces left to tell his extraordinary story.

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=31108&sid=1167eae51f093f9ecca00a75baf3ab20 What is needed are several items (which I'll explain below) in order to obtain a work permit. But please understand that this is not an individual requirement. It's not like the green card in America that foreign individuals carry which permits them to legally work anywhere. It's a requirement schools must have on file for every foreign teacher they employ. Therefore, every school you work for is required to have on file an original work permit for you. The bad part is that you'll have to do most of the foot work to get everything the school is required to have. The criminal background check is only one part of what is needed for the work permit. It's not entirely true that not all schools require criminal background checks from their teachers. It's more true that many schools are not even obtaining the work permits required to legally employ their teachers which includes the criminal check. They've chosen to assume the risk of being fined for being caught employing without permits rather than going through the hassle of getting them done. Teachers are so scarce around here that many schools just don't want to drive them away by inconveniencing them with these issues. Then add to that the fact that permits aren't required for employment of less than three months and also that there is such a high turnover rate of teachers anyway that many times the permits prove to be unnecessary. Rest assured that you can start teaching legally without initially needing a permit. Having said all of that, to be in legal compliance, there must be an original work permit on file at every school you work for. This means you'll need to bring as many notarized and authenticated copies of documents as the number of schools you plan to work for. There is some debate, however, as to whether or not the permits on file at schools must always be originals. My school has said that I can make a copy the work permit they have on file for me which other schools can use for their files if I were to gain other employment. But I'm not convinced that this is legal.

Good to hear from you again, Mr. Seagrave. I look forward to getting my copy of Red Sky. I spent a lot of time in the Philippines while I was teaching English in Korea and Taiwan. It is too bad The Philippines did not accept statehood when they had the chance. An Amazon review: I first met the authors after reviewing Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamaxxxxa's Gold and then traveling to Europe to interview them--they are in self-imposed exile--for a DVD that was shown at one of my earlier international conferences. [My rendition of this review at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, has live links Amazon does not allow here.] They are among the most serious and talented investigative journalists I know, easily ranking with John Pilger Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, Robert KaplanThe Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War; and my special favorite, Robert Young Pelton Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places). This is a great read. I attended boarding school and later served as a Marine Corps infantry officer passing in and out of the Philippines; I have been inside Japanese tunnels and have a great regard for the Filipino people. Because the US has been so asidious in writing (and fabricating) the history of the Cold War, few know that the Huks were originally a loyal resistance to the Japanese occupiers--the US, despite its tolerance for out of control atrocity mongers like Landsdale, has managed to "occupy" with a softer touch, but one no less detrimental. As a former spy--a recovering spy--for the Central Intelligence Agency I would certify that 90% of the CIA is good people trapped in a bad system with no blood on their hands. Our problem is the 10% that does renditions, tortures, helps train and arm those who would do genocide and atrocities (including the Israelis, who now teach us rather than learn from us). RED SKY has no endnotes, but is based on solid evidence. [i provide others supporting references at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, as live links within this review there.] I consider Gold Warriors (with its CD containing 60,000 pages of maps and supporting documentation) to be the better book, but for some readers, this book will be much more fun and memorable. Here are the highlights from this most truthful account + Landsdale was never in combat--he spent WWII in San Francisco writing propaganda for the OSS. + When Truman closed down the OSS (he later regretted every starting the CIA) OSS people were scattered around to hide them, Lansdale was sent to Manile to work a desk for Army G-2. + Landsdale's bright shining moment came when he recognized the value of a captured driver (Major Kojima Kashi) to General Yamaxxxxa, and bribed him to reveal treasure locations. That treasure became the basis for the USA's covert post-war Black Eagle and Golden Lily slush funds used to restore Nazis in Germany and fascists in Italy and Japan, and to do those things Congress would never agree to pay for. + Santa Romana, a Vatican agent and member of Opus Dei, was Landsdale's co-conspirator (fast forward to the Opus Dei penetration of the US Government today, every bit as good as the Mossad's sayonim and the Mormon network). + Landsdale--the model for the book The Ugly American and also featured in Edward Lansdale's Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War)--became a "big shot" in OSS-CIA circles because of this success at finding and secretly harvesting the Japanese thefts from China and all across Asia that were hidden in the Philippines when US dominance of the seas prevented onward passage to Japan. + Landsale--whom all the books I've seen describe as an opportunist and con artist at heart--saw that anti-communism was the wave of the future in Washington circles (even then CIA was busy importing 100 Nazis a year), and he came up with the idea of demonizing the Huk's, who were freedom fighters, as part of the "Communist Menace." + The book also covers the Chinese diaspora that the US Government has never understood and never taken seriously. The Chinese "High Cabal" is easily as powerful as the European "High Cabal," they just work more discreetly and make better use of local fronts. + Landsdale needed to invent evidence of Russian support for the Huks, so he focused on Russian exiles living in Manila or enroute through the Philippines to other locations including the US. + The heart of the story is how Landsale personally destroyed one innocent person and their family, ultimately making the person disappear after five years of surveillance, prison, and torture were brought to an end by a crusading attorney. Some sources have suggested that Landsdale ordered the murder of his trumped up Russian spy, who is believed to have been thrown from a helicopter into the South China Sea. + The book ends with Landsdale being rewarded by being sent to Viet-Nam to support Diem (a Catholic mandarin hated by the Buddhists, with a sister that makes Idi Amin look like a wimp) and I have seen other reports that suggest that Landsdale led an effort to plant bombs in the 1950's and early 1960's to achieve the US end of creating a local civil war that would demand US intervention. There is also a happy ending, despite all the ills that befall the patsy, the source of much of the information in this book escapes and lived happily every after. I still believe in America the Beautiful and the righteousness of The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen but I am disgusted and alienated by all that has been done "in our name" over the years, ultimately impoverishing the many to benefit the few. I earnestly believe that the public is a populist power that cannot be suppressed, and that information and communications technologies have changed the balance of power to favor the possibility of creating a prosperous world at peace. This book is one of the many nails in the coffin of Cold War "irrational exhuberance" that has clearly been repeated in the failure to keep capitalism moral and the failure to keep government honest at home and abroad. We can do better. Rather than provide links here, see the 98 categories of Reviews at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.