Paul Rigby

Does it really? http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/galle...bum=2&pos=5 Altgens cropped to focus on Chaney… http://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z255.jpg …who has mysteriously vanished in the alleged corresponding Z-fake frame. Wonderful things, telephoto lenses – they can make interposed objects and people disappear.

Has Mark Lane ever revealed the source of the transcript he was quoting? No, Jay, nor, disappointingly, is the pamphlet footnoted. It's one of the many curiosities of Lane's career - his pre-Rush To Judgment (1966) work is sprinkled with with quotes and statements utterly at variance with the drear orthodoxies embodied in that book. Paul

How different were the actual questions and answers at the doctors’ press conference at Parkland, as opposed to those contained in the fictional 1327C? Are there any non-mainstream media sources we can turn to for guidance? On the evening of December 10, 1964, Mark Lane, at the invitation of the British “Who Killed Kennedy?” Committee, delivered an “Extemporaneous Lecture” at University College, London. A tape recording was made of both Lane’s speech, and the subsequent question and answer session; and a transcript published in pamphlet form under the Committee’s aegis. On page 21 (of the 32pp pamphlet), we find the following: “I examined the President’s back, from the small of his back to the top of his neck, and I felt his whole back and I did not feel any wounds.” Try finding that sentence in 1327C! http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm

Meet the anti-alterationists... http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/areyoubeingserved/ As played by "Young" Mr. Thompson, "Major" Lamson, and Mrs. Slocombe...

Funny you should mention that. I know a guy who really wasn't sure - yes, step forward old Zappy himself: UPI, “Garrison shows Zapruder Movie,” Press-Telegram, (Long Beach, California), Friday, 14 February 1969, p.10 Another ringing endorsement from Zapruder of his film’s authenticity! PS You don't think he'd gone senile by this stage, do you?

A “graveyard,” “organized burials,” “lots of fun” – yes, you can take the philosopher out of Yale, but you can never quite remove Yale from the philosopher. Yet who but the most heartless among us can resist the heady atmosphere of the nocturnal Old Blue initiation ceremony, complete with corpses, shovels, coffins, nudity (compulsory) and, who knows, a little light onanism (optional), all rounded off with a rousing chorus of Die Wacht am Fetzer*, not to mention that all-important certificate of membership for Yale’s latest, and least prized, secret society: Celluloid and Old Rope. Yours for only £322 a throw! Pull the other one? No, it’s attached to WTC7. *“As long as a drop of blood still glows, a fist still draws the mouse, and one arm still holds the keyboard, no enemy will here enter our thread!”

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zapho...pson-proof.html Proof that the Zapruder Film is Authentic by Josiah Thompson The FBI must have been very puzzled by Thompson's claim. Not merely was the organisation confronted with a camerawoman who didn't know she'd taken any film of the presidential limo on Elm, but also by a film with a sequence - the presidential limo turning the corner from Houston onto Elm - that has never been observed on any known copy of the Muchmore film. Another Thompsonian claim falls apart under scrutiny. What a surprise. Paul A wee bump in tribute to the astonishing work of the great "Tink." Verily, we are not worthy...

In the eleventh paragraph of his piece in this morning’s Guardian, Simon Jenkins raises the spectre of CIA indifference to President Obama’s nominal control of the organisation. This is the first time I’ve seen this issue raised in print; and, to be frank, I can see no evidence that Obama has the slightest interest in curbing the assassins & torturers of Langley. Has anyone reading this seen such, perhaps in (what remains of) the US press? There was a second source for the overpowering sense of déjà vu I experienced as I read Jenkins’ article on the train to work this morning. The source of that overwhelming sense of familiarity follows: It's sound advice now, and was sound advice back in 1966:

Intelligent question, to which the answer is demonstrably no: From Mark Lane’s original article on the case, “Lane’s Defense Brief for Oswald,” published by the National Guardian, 19 December 1963: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/The_critics/L...l_Guardian.html As I've pointed out before, this was not an isolated instance of Lane "tweaking" the evidence, not least of his own work. Mark Lane and the “quiet transformation” of evidence Paul Lane was not exactly unaware of the related issues of Life's role and the general issue of photographic alteration/forgery. Here he is in a late 1966 interview: “Playboy Interview: Mark Lane,” Vol 14, No 2, (February 1967), p.64: Playboy: What proof do you have for the charge in your book that the famous Life cover photograph of Oswald holding the alleged murder weapon may have been forged? Lane: This photograph was the single document most responsible for persuading Americans that Oswald was involved in the assassination….

Intelligent question, to which the answer is demonstrably no: From Mark Lane’s original article on the case, “Lane’s Defense Brief for Oswald,” published by the National Guardian, 19 December 1963: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/The_critics/L...l_Guardian.html As I've pointed out before, this was not an isolated instance of Lane "tweaking" the evidence, not least of his own work. Mark Lane and the “quiet transformation” of evidence The strange case of the vanishing sentence (and left turn) If all else failed, the Warren Commissioners could rely on an eminent critic to help them perpetuate the cover up! In Mark Lane’s Citizen’s Dissent: Mark Lane Replies (Fawcett Crest, April 1969), he resurrects a line from Hugh Trevor-Roper’s verdict on the efforts of the Warren Commission (1), as to be found in the British historian’s Introduction to Lane’s own Rush To Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald (2). No less fascinating, I can’t help feeling, is the handling of the Zapruder film in the works of Mark Lane. Not so much “quiet” as stealthy: 1) Mark Lane. Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1966), p.66, footnote 2: So far, then, so clear: Zapruder filmed the turn from Houston onto Elm, precisely as attested by the former on November 22, 1963. Now, two years on, look what happens to the left turn at Lane’s hands: A source is conveniently truncated! 2) Mark Lane’s Citizen’s Dissent: Mark Lane Replies (Fawcett Crest, April 1969), p. 244: Notes: (1) Mark Lane’s Citizen’s Dissent: Mark Lane Replies (Fawcett Crest, April 1969), p.91 n9, detailed on p.293: “RTJ, 12.” (2) Rush To Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald (London: Bodley Head Ltd., 1966), p.12. The first version of the Z-fraud was shown on US TV on the evening/early morning of November 25/26. It included the left turn from Houston onto Elm; the first impact to Kennedy was not obscured by a street sign; and the wound to Connolly's chest was clearly visible. Paul

http://home.earthlink.net/~joejd/jfk/zapho...pson-proof.html Proof that the Zapruder Film is Authentic by Josiah Thompson The FBI must have been very puzzled by Thompson's claim. Not merely was the organisation confronted with a camerawoman who didn't know she'd taken any film of the presidential limo on Elm, but also by a film with a sequence - the presidential limo turning the corner from Houston onto Elm - that has never been observed on any known copy of the Muchmore film. Another Thompsonian claim falls apart under scrutiny. What a surprise. Paul

Wolper had "previous" as a propagandist for the spooks - at least 32 episodes of it, apparently: David Wolper and OSS TV series, 1954 http://www.davidlwolper.com/shows/details.cfm?showID=508

It certainly did on the morning of Tuesday, 26 November, as noted elsewhere in this thread. Thereafter, however, a politic reticence took hold. Unsurprising if the film shown in the early hours on WNEW-TV was the first version of the Z fraud – and no sooner broadcast than withdrawn for reworking - rather less so if it was Muchmore’s, which, of course, it plainly wasn’t.* How did this volte-face manifest itself? Like many other US news-gatherers, UPI hastened, post-assassination, to commemorate and memorialise both the tragedy and its response to it. The booklet which issued, almost certainly published in December 1963, featured the front pages of a wide selection of UPI newspaper-clients. Many of those selected were of the small town variety, precisely the kind which we now rediscover had published UPI’s breathless despatch of early on Tuesday, 26 November, proudly boasting that “United Press International Newsfilm early today was first on the air with exclusive film showing the assassination of President Kennedy.” And even though the period covered by the booklet was, in conformity to the official ring-fence, from 22 to 25 November, the final nine front pages featured in the booklet were all published on Tuesday, 26 November. Not one featured UPI’s despatch heralding the Newsfilm division’s triumph in being the first to get on air film of the assassination itself, a claim which stood regardless of the taker’s identity, of course, and which had been the subject of a full page ad in the December 2, 1963, edition of Broadcasting: The Businessweekly of Television and Radio (Vol 65, No 23), p.69. Like Life magazine, UPI had suddenly ceased to behave as a large commercial media-enterprise should. We now know why, in both cases. * UPI (New York), “Film Showing Assassination Is Released,” The Valley Independent, (Monessen, Pennsylvania), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 5: “The sequence, shot by an amateur photographer in Dallas Friday, begins with motorcycle police coming around the corner followed by the Kennedy motorcade.”

Perhaps he's taken a leaf out of NIST's playbook - you know, the one that says "thou shalt not release your modelling data for fear of public humiliation..." "Geeky"? You mean shifty, hesitant, and very, very obviously embarrassed? I wonder why. Could it be something to do with the manifest pack of porkies they were obliged to improvise? For connossieurs of the shifty in the service of an on-going cover-up, here's parts 2 and 3: Part 2: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKLtUiww80 Part 3: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz43hcKYBm4 NIST: “pseudo-science in the service of an on-going cover-up,” David Chandler.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11548 Understanding the Crisis in Zimbabwe: Cynicism as a substitute for scholarship by Stephen Gowans Global Research, December 31, 2008 1. Timothy Scarnecchia, Jocelyn Alexander et al, “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” Letters, London Review of Books, Volume 31, No. 1, January, 2009. 2. Horace Campbell, “Mamdani, Mugabe and the African scholarly community,” Pambazuka News, December 18, 2008. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52845 3. Bond, Patrick, “Mugabe: Talks Radical, Acts Like a Reactionary: Zimbabwe’s Descent,” Counterpucnh.org, March 27, 2007, http://www.counterpunch.org/bond03272007.html 4. Heritage Foundation, Index of Economic Freedom, 2008, http://www.heritage.org/research/features/...fm?ID=Zimbabwe) 5. Stephen Gowans, “Zimbabwe at War,” What’s Left, June 24, 2008. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/ 6. Campbell. 7. US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/ge...s494enr.txt.pdf 8. Campbell. 9. See the section titled “Regime Change Agenda” in Stephen Gowans, “Zimbabwe at War,” What’s Left, June 24, 2008. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/ 10. Look under funders at Pambazuka News’ “About” page at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/about.php . 11. Ibid. 12. See Stephen Gowans, “Grassroot Lieutenants of Imperialism,” What’s Left, April 2, 2007, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/gra...of-imperialism/ and Stephen Gowans, “Talk Left, Funded Right,” What’s Left, April 7, 2007, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/tal...t-funded-right/. 13. Campbell. 14. Jim Fisher-Thompson, “Zimbabwean receives International Woman of Courage Award,” USINFO, March 7, 2007. http://www.america.gov/st/hr-english/2007/...F0.7266962.html 15. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACL121.pdf . See also Stephen Gowans, “Stephen Zunes’ false statements on Zimbabwe and Woza,” What’s Left, September 30, 2008. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/ste...babwe-and-woza/ 16. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, p. 28 17. Michael Barker, “Sharp Reflection Warranted: Non-violence in the Service of Imperialism,” Swans, June 30, 2008. http://www.swans.com/library/art14/barker01.html 18. See Woza’s website, http://wozazimbabwe.org/?page_id=29 ; “Studio 7, launched in 2003, is the Zimbabwe program of Voice of America, which is funded by the United States. The program is broadcast in Shona, Ndebele and English, and is beamed into Zimbabwe from a transmitter in Botswana on the AM signal and by shortwave.” Globe and Mail, March 26, 2005. In an April 5, 2007 report, the US Department of State revealed that it had worked to expand the listener base of Voice of America’s Studio 7 radio station. On SW Radio Africa see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SW_Radio_Africa . 19. See Stephen Gowans, “Stephen Zunes’ false statements on Zimbabwe and Woza,” What’s Left, September 30, 2008. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/ste...babwe-and-woza/ 20. In 2000, the (British Parliament’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy) provided the MDC with $10 million. Herald (Zimbabwe), September 4, 2001 cited in Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006; “WFD has been involved in over 80 projects aiding the MDC, and helped plan election strategy. It also provides funding to the party's youth and women's groups.” Herald (Zimbabwe), January 2, 2001, cited in Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006; “In a clandestinely filmed interview, screened in Australia on February 2002 on the SBS Dateline program, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was caught on camera admitting that his organization was financed by European governments and corporations, the money being channelled through a British firm of political consultants, BSMG.” Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for independence,” Communist Party of Australia; Civil society groups “and the Movement for Democratic Change…have broad Western support, and, often, financing.” New York Times, December 24, 2004; The International Republican Institute, the international arm of the Republican Party, “is using (the US State Department’s) USAID and the US embassy in Harare to channel support to the MDC, circumventing restrictions of Zimbabwe’s Political Parties Finance Act. Herald (Zimbabwe) August 12, 2005; USAID bankrolls sixteen civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, with emphasis on supporting the MDC’s parliamentary activities. "Zimbabwe Program Data Sheet," U.S. Agency for International Development, cited in Gregory Elich, Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit, Llumina Press, 2006; “USAID has a long and successful history of working with Zimbabwe's civil society, democratic political parties, the Parliament and local government.” Testimony of Katherine Almquist, USAID Assistant Administrator for Africa, The Crisis in Zimbabwe and Prospects for Resolution. Subcommittee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, July 15, 2008. From the MDC’s 2008 policy platform: The MDC does not believe that government should be involved in running businesses and it will restore title in full to all companies; Private enterprise in general, and industry in particular, will be the engine of economic growth in a new Zimbabwe; The MDC government will remove price controls and reverse the coercive indigenization proposals recently adopted; (An MDC government will show) an unwavering commitment to: * The safety and security of individual and corporate property rights. * Opening industry to foreign direct investment and the unfettered repatriation of dividends. * The repeal of all statutes that inhibit the establishment and maintenance of a socio-economic environment conducive to the sustained growth and development of the industrial sector. The MDC will…(open)…up private sector participation in postal and telecommunication services; (The MDC believes) the private sector is in a better position to finance new development and respond to customer needs (in telecommunications); (An MDC government will) look into…the full privatization of the electronic media. According to progressive scholar Patrick Bond: “…very quickly, what had begun as a working-class party … was hijacked by international geopolitical forces, domestic (white) business and farming interests, and the black petite bourgeoisie.” Noah Tucker, “In the Shadow of Empire,” 21st Century Socialism, August 3, 2008, http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/in...pire_01694.html 21. The “IRI held a workshop for Tsvangirai’s shadow government at which each shadow minister presented and defended his/her policy positions. A panel of technical experts grilled presenters on the technical content of their policies.” US State Department report. See Stephen Gowans, “US government report undermines Zimbabwe opposition’s claim of independence,” What’s Left, October 4, 2008. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/us-...f-independence/ 22. Campbell. 23. That Campbell thinks there’s any possibility of the MDC being budged from its neo-liberal position shows that he should spend less time worrying about whether others are falling for Mugabe’s anti-imperialist rhetoric and more time worrying about whether he has fallen for the rhetoric of the MDC and its imperialist backers. The nascent MDC appointed an official of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Eddie Cross, as its Secretary of Economic Affairs. In a speech delivered shortly after his appointment, Cross articulated the MDC economic plan. "First of all, we believe in the free market. We do not support price control. We do not support government interfering in the way people manage their lives. We are in favor of reduced levels of taxation. We are going to fast track privatization. All fifty government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year frame, but we are going far beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the Central Statistics Office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge - Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, Merlin Press, 2002. A policy paper issued by the party in 2000 spelled out its plans to attract “foreign direct investment…on a substantial scale." The party planned to: “Appoint a "fund manager to dispose of government-owned shares in publicly quoted companies"; “Privatize all designated parastatals [public companies] within two years"; Encourage “foreign strategic investors … to bid for a majority stake in the enterprises being privatized." "Social and Economic Policies for a New Millennium," MDC policy paper, May 26, 2000.

http://visibility911.com/blog/?p=781 The incoherent in defence of the preposterous.

Did you fall into your own footprint? Just for the record...

A quite devastating critique of NIST! Well done, Evan, I didn't think you had it in you. Paul

How little has changed - the sound of the well-bred murmur once more: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/08/cia/ The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash The coordinated, successful effort to implant false story lines about John Brennan illustrates the power the intelligence community wields over political debates. Glenn Greenwald Dec. 08, 2008 The backlash from the "intelligence community" over John Brennan's withdrawal -- which pro-Brennan sources are now claiming was actually forced on Brennan by the Obama team -- continues to intensify. Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and -- more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished "intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views: Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly, 12/5/2008: Anyone connected to post-Sept. 11 “enhanced interrogation measures,” no matter at arm’s length, is apparently disqualified to run Barack Obama ’s spy agency. Hence the immolation of former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan, the president-elect’s closest intelligence adviser, as the lead candidate to run the spy agency. The left-wing hit job on Brennan showed that liberals may have a taste for covert action after all, the spooks chuckle. . . . Can anybody who could do the job, get the job? “Beats me,” said a well-wired former senior intelligence official. “Brennan’s hands were not very dirty at all. He was apparently thrown under the bus because some ill-informed bloggers thought they were [dirty] and the transition folks didn’t have the will to explain that they were wrong.” A former national security official and friend of Brennan, who asked not to be identified, is disgusted by what happened. “Ninety-nine percent of” what the CIA has been doing since Sept. 11 “is not related to torture, but now everybody is tarred with this brush,” he said. Diane Rehm Show, NPR, 12/5/2008: Tom Gjelten, NPR: I understand that it was the Obama team who pulled the plug on John Brennan. Diane Rehm: Why? Gjelten: I don't know why. But Brennan had become a real target of criticisms of all those sectors -- largely on the left -- who were very concerned about interrogation and rendition and other such -- Rehm: And it was lots of bloggers who apparently pointed out that he had somehow been involved in the decisions -- Michael Hirsh, Newsweek: Without any direct evidence, of course -- as is so often the case in the blogging world (chuckles). . . . The people with the most experience in the intelligence world, like Brennan -- Brennan was a first-class professional -- are getting sidelined because of these controversial issues surrounding detention, interrogation, Guantanamo Bay and so forth -- and the risk remains that you have someone there who really isn't the best candidate. Shane Harris, National Journal, 12/6/2008 (sub. req.): (Image available from Salon link.) Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, New York Times, 12/2/2008: Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama’s likeliest choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal critics attacked his alleged role in the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Mr. Brennan protested that he had been a “strong opponent” within the agency of harsh interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left. Mr. Obama’s search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda. Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said Mr. Obama’s decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a message that “if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted,” and had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service. Tom Gelten, NPR, 12/3/2008: Brennan's withdrawal, offered in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama, came after liberal bloggers mounted an opposition campaign against his possible appointment. They said he was tainted by his service in the CIA at a time when the agency was employing coercive interrogation methods, including "waterboarding," on detainees. Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times, 11/25/2008: The opposition to Mr. Brennan had been largely confined to liberal blogs, and there was not an expectation he would face a particularly difficult confirmation process. Still, the episode shows that the C.I.A.’s secret detention program remains a particularly incendiary issue for the Democratic base, making it difficult for Mr. Obama to select someone for a top intelligence post who has played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks. This is why I went through that long, arduous exercise with NPR's Gjelten the other day -- culminating in his admission that he should have reported the Brennan story more accurately ("Okay. That would be fair. That's how I should have said it. You're absolutely right. I should have said it that way"): it's because these inaccurate themes, along with the coordinated planting of these storylines and the shoddy reporting which enables them, are everywhere. And this matters for reasons far beyond the specific controversy over John Brennan. All of this illustrates the unparalleled power which the "intelligence community" exerts over our political debates, how easy it is for them to manipulate intelligence reporters who depend on cooperation with their intelligence sources and who thus identify with them and happily amplify whatever they are fed, and -- most of all -- how profoundly unrealistic is the expectation that, now that Democrats are "in control," they're just going to blithely proceed to impose all sorts of new restrictions on the CIA and the rest of the Surveillance State -- let alone launch probing investigations and impose accountability for past crimes -- without much of a major fight. Just consider what all of this "reporting" has in common: (1) All of these reports rely exclusively on pro-Brennan sources, allies and friends of his in the CIA who have fanned out to plant their storyline with their favorite reporters. This truly excellent and amply documented critique by Columbia Journalism Review's Charles Kaiser of The New York Times' reporting on these matters is applicable to all of these reports, not just the ones in the NYT: If you’ve only been reading The New York Times, you’re probably aware of these battles — but almost everyone you have seen quoted about them has similar points of view. Most of the Times’s sources don’t think that anyone who formulated or acquiesced in the current administration’s torture policies should be excluded as a candidate for CIA director, or prosecuted for possible violations of criminal law. The story, by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, noted that John O. Brennan had withdrawn his name from consideration for CIA director after liberal critics attacked his role in the agency’s interrogation program, even though Brennan characterized himself as a “strong opponent” within the agency of harsh interrogation techniques. Brennan’s characterization was not disputed by anyone else in the story, even though most experts on this subject agree that Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there. “I was aghast reading this,” said Scott Horton, a professor of human rights law at Hofstra and a contributing editor at Harper’s, whose blog was instrumental in framing the opposition to Brennan’s appointment. “The Times doesn’t even do a reasonable job of presenting the conflicts — their principal source today was John O. Brennan. They have not reached out to the other side. It looks like Mark and Scott have decided that it’s payback time for a couple of their sources at the agency.” In all of these accounts, Brennan's false claims of unfair persecution -- that he was attacked simply because he happened to be at the CIA -- are fully amplified in detail through his CIA allies, most of whom are quoted at length (though typically behind a generous wall of anonymity). But Brennan's critics are almost never quoted or named (of all of the above-cited reports, only the National Journal article includes a quote from a named Brennan critic: a couple vague snippets from one of the pieces I wrote about Brennan). The "reporting" is all from the perspective of Brennan and his CIA supporters. None of these journalists even entertain the idea of disputing or challenging the pro-Brennan version. (2) None of this reporting even alludes to, let alone conveys, the central arguments against Brennan and the evidence for those arguments. Unmentioned are his emphatic advocacy for rendition and "enhanced interrogation tactics." None of the lengthy Brennan quotes defending these programs are acknowledged, despite the fact that not only bloggers, but also the much-cited psychologists' letter, emphasized those defenses (that letter complained that Brennan "supported Tenet's policies, including 'enhanced interrogations' as well as 'renditions' to torturing countries"). The seminal article on these CIA programs by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- who interviewed Brennan and identified him as a "supporter" of these programs despite "the moral, ethical, and legal issues" -- does not exist in the journalists' world. What instead pervades these stories is the patently deceitful claim typified by Newsweek's Michael Hirsh, who asserted that the case against Brennan was made "with no direct evidence" and then chuckled that this is "common for the blogging world" -- an ironic observations given that Hirsh himself is either completely ignorant of the ample evidence that was offered or is purposely pretending it doesn't exist in order to defend the CIA official Hirsh lauded as "the first-class professional." That's how the persecution tale against Brennan is built -- by relying on mindless reporters to distort (when they weren't actively suppressing) the evidence against him. (3) In these accounts, Brennan is described in reverent terms ("first-class professional"; a "natural candidate"; "the guy who's most qualified for the job") while his critics remain unnamed and unseen though dismissed with derogatory, demonizing terms ("some ill-informed bloggers"; "ill-informed but powerful activists"; "a few obscure blogs"; "bloggers" who don't "have that familiarity"). (4) Concerns over torture and rendition -- despite being widespread among countless military officials and intelligence professionals -- are uniformly depicted as nothing more than ideological idiosyncrasies from the dreaded Left ("left-wing hit job on Brennan"; "largely on the left"; "left-leaning bloggers and columnists"; "Obama's liberal base"; Obama's "most ardent supporters on the left"; "liberal critics"; "liberal bloggers"; "confined to liberal blogs"; "the Democratic base"). Thus: non-ideological, pragmatic, Serious centrists (which, as everyone knows, is what we need now) are free of this nattering fixation on all this "torture" talk. Serious adults know that it's time to move on and not hold grudges. It's only the shrill ideologues on the Left who care about such things and want to hold it against those who defended these programs. Depicting one's critics as confined to "the Left" is a time-honored Beltway method for rendering the criticisms unserious, and it's in full force here (and, as Digby ironically notes, it is the Right, far more than the Left, that has waged war against the CIA in recent years; the Left has largely defended the CIA against manipulation and abuse by the Bush White House). (5) What all of this is -- more than anything else -- is a clear warning to Obama from the CIA about the dangers of paying heed to anti-torture and pro-civil-liberties factions, and they're not really even hiding that. They're explicitly expressing the message as a warning: "the President-elect risks sending a troubling signal to the intelligence community." As Mazzetti and Shane put it after speaking with their favorite sources: Obama risks "alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda." Those warnings are issued with an eye towards the events they know full well are imminent: debates over how legally restrained the CIA should be in its interrogation and detention powers; demands that light be shined on what the CIA spent the last eight years doing at the behest of Dick Cheney and with the legal imprimatur of David Addington's cabal; and, most of all, efforts to hold those who committed war crimes accountable (efforts which would and should be directed at high-level Bush policy makers and legal advisers who enabled those crimes, not lower-level intelligence agents, but which the CIA nonetheless fears). What happened with John Brennan is very straightforward and ought not be particularly controversial. This is someone who explicitly defended some of the most controversial Bush interrogation and detention policies. Everything that Obama said about such policies, and everything his supporters believe about them, should, for that reason alone, preclude Brennan from being named to any top intelligence post, let alone CIA Director. It's just as simple as that. But, as has been historically true, many in "the intelligence community" are outraged by what they perceive as outside "interference" -- as though the CIA shouldn't be subjected to the same set of oversight, limitations, and democratic accountability, debate and restrictions as every other part of government. That something as straightforward as the John Brennan controversy can produce this level of backlash from the intelligence community is a very potent sign of the formidible barriers to real reform of our interrogation and detention framework and, especially, to the prospects for meaningful disclosure of, and accountability for, past crimes. -- Glenn Greenwald

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/120108a.html Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era.

As in Vietnam, so in Laos the summer before:

Nothing for me to deliver, Paul .. the newspaper in question is in the Museum. Like Denis said ... you make up 90% of this thread .. a fraction of that time spent looking for the paper in question, contacting Lane, etc., should keep you busy, but it appears that you aren't interested in doing anything that means doing research. Everything sourced, much of it new - in summary, the most extensively and best researched thread on the alleged "Muchmore" WNEW-TV debut yet offered by anyone. It thus exposes as false and baseless the various claims advanced for it by Mack, Thompson, and, of course, you. No wonder you hate it. Paul

Paul must not be getting attention these days. No mention of him contacting Lane or following up with UPI. Good ol' Paul Rigby~ Nor, too, it would appear, of the clipping allegedly lurking in Mack's box. Still looking, Bill, or that another evidentiary promise you can't deliver? Paul

Always a pleasure to hear from the Alf Garnett of Warren Commission orthodoxy. PS More work needed on those percentages: But it does explain the sustained excellence of the thread...

It gets stranger. Here’s an extract from David R. Wrone’s The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination (University Press of Kansas, 2003), pp.150-152: “At nine o’clock on the morning of November 25, 1963, three days after the murder of President Kennedy – but early on the first working day after the murder – Walter Bent, sales service manager of the Eastman Kodak Company, the same firm that had developed Zapruder’s film, telephoned the Dallas FBI office and spoke to FBI special agent Milton L. Newsom (41). His company had just received film from Charles Bronson to be developed. In his package Bronson had included a note advising Kodak that the film may be of the assassin as he fired the shots. Would the FBI, said Bent, be interested in viewing the film? (42) Newsom’s memorandum of the conversation reads as follows: Bent then phoned Bronson and set up a meeting at the Kodak plant for 3:00 P.M. At 3:00 Special Agents Milton Newsom and Emory Norton appeared at the plant and together with Bronson watched the films (44). Afterwards they did not ask for copies. When they returned to their office, they wrote up a memorandum on the films... According to Richard Trask’s Pictures of the Pain (p.205), citing Maurice Schonfeld’s July-August 1975 Columbia Journalism Review piece, “The Shadow of a Gunman,” Muchmore’s film was developed at the same “Eastman Kodak in Dallas” on the same day as Bronson’s – but entirely unbeknownst, it seems, to Mr. Bent, either at 9am, when he rang the FBI, or at 3pm, when he met with the Bureau’s Newsom and Norton. Schonfeld’s version of how UPI acquired the film which its alleged taker subsequently denied (to the FBI) contained any footage of the assassination, runs as follows. Burt Reinhardt, by way of explanation, was “general manager of UPI’s newsfilm division, who had flown to Dallas to acquire amateur footage of the assassination” (1): As we have seen from SA Newsom’s report on his exchanges with Walter Bent, Eastman Kodak’s Sales Service Manager, Processing Division, on 25 November, Schonfeld’s claim – that UPI took the film to Eastman Kodak in Dallas - was a retrospective fiction, and of a piece with his insistence that the film shown on WNEW-TV at 12:46 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, 26 November, was the Muchmore film, not the first version of the Zapruder. Schonfeld was notably coy on the question of when and where this film was first shown. But while evasive on these details, he did at least offer a duration for the sequence seen by, among others, Mark Lane in New York, courtesy of the city’s WNEW-TV, and, in the process, confirmed key details of its presentation, as contained within the UPI despatch of the morning of 26 November: Of course, as previously demonstrated, the Muchmore film bore no relation to the film shown on WNEW-TV in the first hour of 26 November, as UPI’s own press release on its New York television debut made clear: Schonfeld, predictably, omitted mention of the fact that UPI Newsfilm was so concerned by the tastefulness of the assassination sequence in question that it had, according to the UPI’s own despatch of 26 November, “rushed” copies “to United Press Newsfilm clients all over the world” (5). (1) Maurice W. Schonfeld, “The shadow of a gunman,” Columbia Journalism Review, July-August 1975, p.46. The CJR, it should be noted, was founded by Edward W. Barrett, ex-OSS and Office of War Information (“Edward W. Barrett dies: Started Columbia Journalism Review,” Washington Post, 26 October 1989). According to Christopher Simpson, “Barrett omitted that information from biographical statements published during his lifetime” (Science of Coercion: Communication Research & Psychological Warfare 1945-1960 [NY: Oxford UP, 1996], p.141, n.39.) (2) Ibid. (3) Ibid. (4) UPI (NY), “Film showing assassination is released,” The Valley Independent, (Monessen, Pennsylvania), 26 November 1963, p.5 (5) Ibid.