Paul Rigby

Sorry to appear pedantic on this one, Sid, but just how does one go about animating a corpse? And then there's the tricky problem of Bin Laden...

Over to you, CIA - open the files! And how about all those others you've been refusing to release?

Interestingly line of thought. Problems: 1. Time - Krock was tasked by the Agency with producing an instant rebuttal that had to be ready for next day's edition. I'm very doubtful anything else impinged - or, indeed, had time to. 2. Unavoidable constraints - Krock couldn't very well say "Richard Starnes has said something nasty about the CIA, but I can't tell you what, dear reader!" He had to quote from Starnes' piece in order to render a rebuttal possible. Note, though, how he turns Starnes' alarming quotes to CIA purposes: JFK presides over a disorderly administration. This was a theme first taken up by Krock and Joe Alsop post-Bay of Pigs. 3. Connections - Krock's friendships appear to have been with senior CIA rather than military. See Harrison Salisbury's footnote to p.490, Without Fear or Favor: "Allen Dulles' correspondence at Prineton University's Firestone Library does not suggest intimacy between himself and Arthur Sulzberger nor between himself and Cyrus Sulzberger. Letters exchanged Arthur Krock and Dulles, Arthur Krock and John McCone, Arthur Krock and Frank Wisner, held at Firestone, indicate a considerably closer friendship." 4. Precedent - Krock had a record as a spook mouthpiece, one derived from his service to certain Wall St circles, going back to 1941 at least. In a future posting, I'll illustrate the point. Paul

Interesting stuff, which I'll have a look at before replying. In the meantime, a few links by way of return. All a bit disorganised, but germane, nonetheless: Namebase on Thomas D. Finney: http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?Na=Finney%2C+Thomas+D CIA in Denmark, 1952 Post-McCarthy, Curtis Gans later became the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate (!). Gans in 1983: "I didn't need demagogic television. All I needed was the war in Vietnam to be going on, and Lyndon Johnson to appear on the tube. . . . Where there is real dissatisfaction with the incumbent, the incumbent can get ousted without these devices. And where it is created dissatisfaction, he probably shouldn't be ousted.”* * Testimony before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, September 29, 1983 (available from Committee for the Study of the American Electorate); http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa112.html By Curtis B. Gans: "How to Take the Big Money Out of Politics," Washington Monthly, April 1979, pp. 40-42. “Table for One, Please,” Washington Monthly, July/August 2000: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/books/2000/0007.gans.html Try good old Namebase for the following: http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?Na=Gans%2C+Curtis Quotable Gans: "Paranoia is killing this country. It is essentially reducing cohesion in our society and creating fear in the minds of citizens.” McCarthy supporters in 1968: James Woolsey, ex-DCI : the founder and chairman of the Yale Citizens for Eugene McCarthy in 1967-68… http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/internation..._role_1-10.html Seymour Hersh, CIA mouthpiece: http://archive.salon.com/people/bc/2000/01...rsh/index1.html “After stints at United Press International and the Associated Press, he made a brief detour as a press secretary to antiwar presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy” http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/arch...5/21/2003156358 "That year, Sen. Gene McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam insurgency disturbed the Democratic Party’s equilibrium by mounting a serious challenge to the renomination of President Lyndon Johnson. McCarthy was able to do that only because a few wealthy people gave him large contributions." http://johnstodderinexile.wordpress.com/20...rverse-effects/ A retired CIA official who knew my father asked me to consider an intelligence analysis career during my senior year in college in spring 1971. I knew why he had retired when he did (December 1967) and why he became the Washington D.C. director of Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign two months later. http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001592.html McCarthy puff piece in the New Republic for the CIA-scripted Pentagon Papers: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=19710710&s=mccarthy071071

Len, I propose a swop in the best traditions of Cold War trading - you produce Bin Laden, and we'll produce hard evidence the video is faked. Now what could be fairer or more decisive? PS He has to be in something other than an advanced state of decomposition. Cryogenic suspension is also a no-no. I realise how unfair these conditions are, but that's, er, life.

Fair point, Len, and had time and access permitted – I can’t get at some of my more interesting bits and pieces: they’re in Ramsay Clark’s draw – I’d like to have offered more supporting detail. The most important of the CIA men under discussion was Allard K. Lowenstein. His case also happens to be the most publicly discussed, so let’s begin with him. You’re normally an indefatigable searcher of the internet, so I’m a little surprised you didn’t turn up Richard Cummings’ book on him, or, indeed, the NYRB spat between said Cummings and his detractor-in-chief, Hendrik Hertzberg. Still, I’m sure that for you, like me, time is frequently short, so I’ll lend you a hand. The following link takes you straight to the 1986 NYRB argument between Hertzberg and Cummings following the publication of the latter’s The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (Grove Press, 1985). Hertzberg’s attempt to preserve the façade of Lowenstein’s philanthropic sponsorship is a hoot. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5226 For more on the strength of Lowenstein’s link with Fran Carlucci, see this Lew Rockwell site contribution from Cummings, wherein we find other fascinating bits and pieces of Agency business, not least in the literary world: http://www.lewrockwell.com/cummings/cummings29.html For an African perspective on Lowenstein’s African imposture – as dedicated anti-colonialist, while not, of course, working for the Central Intelligence Agency – try this link: http://www.nshr.org.na/modules.php?op=modl...cle&sid=674 For Lowenstein’s connection with CIA’s Gloria Steinem, try this: http://www.theconspiracy.us/vol9/cn9-47.html Finally, for the moment, William, you appear pained at the mis-spelling of the surnames in the JKF Assassination Forum newsletter. I suspect the solution lies in the original source for the piece, Private Eye, which has from its inception played fast and loose with names for comic effect: in the Assassination Forum edition from which I quoted, Raborn is thus spelt “Rayburn.” If I manage to get hold of the 1968 PE edition in question, will confirm or refute. Pip-pip!

Ah, yes, good old Gene McCarthy and his children’s crusade. So pure it hurts:Objections general… And objections specific… According to Time (“The Nonconsensus,” Friday, Jul. 05, 1968 – see this link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,941595,00.html ),Thomas Finney was “the Senator's organization chief.” In 1980, William Blum notes, good old Gene, the eternal splitter of the anti-Republican vote, backed Reagan: For a further peak into the netherworld of Simon Pure's conduct in 1968, see this 2004 book review in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/0...?printable=true For those short of time, the germane paragraphs: McCarthy appears to have harboured a Lasky-like hatred of the Kennedys.

Ah, yes, good old Gene McCarthy and his children’s crusade. So pure it hurts:Objections general… And objections specific… According to Time (“The Nonconsensus,” Friday, Jul. 05, 1968 – see this link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,941595,00.html ),Thomas Finney was “the Senator's organization chief.” In 1980, William Blum notes, good old Gene, the eternal splitter of the anti-Republican vote, backed Reagan:

Most likely despatcher of bogus defectors to Russia? Ah, yes, the CIA - so trusting old Otto, bureaucratic naif, sends request to, er, yes, Langley, for...well, what exactly, an honest response? Forsooth, she must think us all stupid. Goodness, you couldn't make this woman up.

Bang on the money, Myra. California violences (copyright Mae Brussell) = America's strategy of tension (part thereof) = the U.S. equivalent of Gladio

What, and reverse forty+ years of CIA policy? A truly shocking suggestion! You should be ashamed.

Sid, Bin Lid isn't dead, merely, like all good thespians, "resting" between cameos, albeit in a non-conscious state. I thought I saw him yesterday in Haldon Street, Lakemba. Shares in the terrorism industry's major players have risen accordingly. Good news for the world.

Sid, Bin Lid isn't dead, merely, like all good thespians, "resting" between cameos, albeit in a non-conscious state.

So remind me, Charlie, in which direction did Greer eventually drive?

If we ever meet, the first round's on me! Thanks, Paul

From the Times (London): 1. "Man in the News: Driving force behind Italy's State Oil Corporation," Thursday, 22 December 1960, p.11 2. Editorial, "Oil from Russia," Saturday, 23 February 1963, p.9 3. "E.N.I. Oil Pact with Russia," Tuesday, 19 November 1963, p.17 Mattei described by CIA-asset C.L. Sulzberger: "Foreign Affairs: The Specter Behind the Jugglers," NYT, 11 April 1962, p.42: The Italian supporters of Kennedy's "opening to the left," launched in June 1961: PM Fanfani, Florence's Mayor La Pira, and Enrico Mattei, here described as "an intimate of Fanfani's," who is "anti-NATO and ardently neutralist." Articles from 1997 in British press on Mattei's murder: 1. John Hooper, "Italian oil mogul 'was murdered by Mafia bomb,'" The Guardian, Friday, 29 August 1997, p.12 2. Andrew Gumbel, "Autopsy may solve deadly mystery of the Mattei Affair," The Independent, Friday, 29 August 1997, p.11 From the latter comes the following paragraph: "The U.S. National Security Council described him as an irritation and an obstacle in a classified report from 1958." Anyone seen this ? Please add any germane bits and pieces you have. Italian contributors particulary welcome. Paul PS Anyone know how to edit the topic title? "Bibliography" and "assassination"!

Nathaniel, Again, not sure if you need the pointer, but, for an overview, try Daniel Ganser's NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (Oxon & NY: Frank Cass, 2005). I have a few other bits and pieces. Will add as find. Damned if I can find the book, but I have found its title, and, from memory, it was very good: Franco Ferraresi. Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton UP, 1996). Paul

Can't wait for this investigation to unfold! Incidentally, Preparata has Churchill hand-in-glove with the mass murderers of Brit intel from circa 1909! Paul

Outstanding post, for which many thanks. Paul

Nathaniel, Again, not sure if you need the pointer, but, for an overview, try Daniel Ganser's NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (Oxon & NY: Frank Cass, 2005). I have a few other bits and pieces. Will add as find. Thanks for the above references: will add them to the voluminous reading list. Paul

Stephen, The really striking feature of post-WWII Anglo-American policy toward Germany is its continuity with the pre-1st WW stratagem outlined by Halford Mackinder. I don't know if you've come across the book before, but in case you haven't, try Guido Giacomo Preparata's Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich (London: Pluto Press, 2005). The author demonstrates that British policy from before 1914 was to prevent German and Russia uniting in trade, and collaborating extensively on the political level. We see the same policy in action at the time of the Beria interregnum in the spring of 1953, when the tentative embrace of Beria's sweeping overtures to the West by Churchill and Eisenhower is sabotaged by what one can only call the permanent government. It would appear that British enthusiasm for the strategy waned considerably in the 1950s. Kennedy's determined attempt to end the Cold War had no more prospect of success than any of his predecessors, not least because of the presence of Allen Dulles at the head of the CIA: Dulles was an important figure at the American end of the Mackinder strategy from as early as 1922. Brandt's Ostpolitik could not be allowed to proceed beyond a certain point either. Hence the bewildering proliferation of pseudo-leftist terrorist groupings in Germany. Paul

No dissent from any of the above. I think the tactic now is to keep PLO and Hamas fighting - the classic divide and rule, with intermittent pretexts for intervention. I just fear that in this particular context, we may be about to witness something very much more terrible. Paul

I'm sure Sid knows, but others may not: Hamas was founded by Israeli intel. to attack the secular PLO. This tactic has a long pedigree in the Arab world. British intel. founded the Muslim Brotherhood to attack secular Egyptian nationalists.

Bill, you're retreating into the anti-alterationists' bunker: I don't blame you. Just remember to refuse all proferred tablets and medicines. Richard Trask on the Muchmore film, in Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, MA: Yeoman Press, 1994), p.205: “Following its development at the Eastman Kodak lab in Dallas, the film was sent to New York City. Those who examined it found the film to have some fair pre-assassination scenes of the motorcade, and a short, jerky snippet of the assassination. This portion of the film transpired so quickly as to be difficult to follow or to comprehend.” Of course, if we switch the films round - the longer, more graphic Zapruder for the rapid, more distant Muchmore shooting sequence - then we have sense. Paul

To which one might add the curious case of Alan Johnston, the disappeared BBC correspondent in Gaza. Now who could possibly want to drive all foreign correspondents out of that particular area? If the group responsible turns out to be Al Qaida-linked, we'll know for sure its a pseudo-gang operation; and a prelude to something nasty for the people of the area. Paul On cue, Gaza in turmoil; and the media again embroiled/targeted. Gaza erupts in renewed violence Last Updated: Wednesday, 16 May 2007, 18:14 GMT 19:14 UK “Staff in the building that houses most of Gaza's broadcasters were forced to seek refuge for several hours in one room as Fatah gunmen traded gunfire with Hamas militants on the ground.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6663141.stm One could be forgiven for concluding that media focus upon what happens next is not wanted. Let's hope this isn't the prelude to another Sabra and Shatila.