Paul Rigby

John, Wasn't the old fraud Churchill booed as he toured the East End during the Blitz? Presumably British voters in 1945 hadn't forgotten his lavish pre-war praise of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco. For documentation, see "Winston Churchill's Untold, Uncensored Story Reveals Him Pro-Hitler, Mussolini, Franco," In Fact, (No. 399, Vol XVII, No. 9), May 31, 1948, pp.1-4. In issue 395 (Vol XVII, No. 5) of In Fact, the lead story bore the title "Medical Lobby's Bribe Offer to Cartoonists Spotlights New Case of Press War Against US Health," May 3, 1948, pp.1-4. Plus ca change... Best to you and your wife, Paul

John, What about the small matter of the Falklands? The biggest SIS station in South America missed the Argentinian preparations for war? Preposterous, no? It was this event more than any other that transformed British domestic politics and saved Thatcher. A second, more general reflection. Much as I've enjoyed - and largely agree with - your posts on the CIA assault on Labour, I do urge you to revisit the falls of two Tory PMs, Macmillan & Heath. The former strongly backed Kennedy and detente, while the latter was a fierce sceptic of Cold War cliches and Britain's far-right intelligence "services". The Profumo affair is long overdue a thorough re-examination. I suspect Heath's fall is every bit as interesting - and Agency-driven - as the prolonged assault on Harold Wilson. Paul

Beautifully put. If you ever run for office - I know, unlikely - let me know. Paul

John, Below, a September 1967 piece from Evans which appeared in American Opinion:

John, Below, a September 1967 piece from Evans which appeared in American Opinion:

Fascinating post, Bill, not least on the closing down of the Philadelphian paper. I fear, however, Mr. Pleasants was not above a little misdirection. At pretty much the same time as our cultured CIA station chief was dismissing atonal music, the Agency was pumping money into, yes, atonal music, most obviously in Germany. The BBC radio station, R4, went some way to documenting the story in September last year. Try this link for details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/musicfeature/pip/etlar/ Paul

Brian, Exactly the same thing happened in the immediate aftermath of the public execution of the hapless Brazilian electrician in London. The eyewitness concerned went on ITN (?) news shortly afterwards offering an account alarmingly consonant with the earliest fairy tales emanating from the Metropolitan Police. Appears, then, that this is now a standard feature of political policing/state terrorism -and was, I have no doubt, back in 1963! Paul

Myra, Pleasure deferred has a depressing tendency to be pleasure wasted. If you've got some spare cash, or merely run out of patience waiting for the library, try this link for about the best search engine for second-hand books I've found: http://www.bookfinder.com/ Last time I looked, there was a fair bit of Seldes available at very reasonable prices. I also urge you to get hold of the Spivak pieces. They quickly disabuse the reader of any misguided notions about the recentness of the coalition which comprises the neo-Con lobby in the US: It was all pretty much in place in the mid-1930s. Spivak briefly revisited the case, I believe though don't know for sure, in his 1967 book, A Man In His Time (NY: Horizon Press). I am mildly astonished that the CIApedia contains any trace of the man. I assume it's all some ghastly mistake, and the real entry is for Gilbert (as in Sullivan). Paul

John, Don't forget the American - Morgan - money that kept the whole thuggish show afloat in the mid-1920s! Prior to that, I recall that the Foreign Office offered Mussolini significant subventions. So much for all that nonsense about the Anglo-American struggle in the twentieth century to ward off totalitarianisms of left and right. Turns out they created the right-wing version. Interesting to know if any of that kind of material makes it into the doc you refer to above. PS If you ever see anything approximating an answer to why Angleton Snr. turned up in Italy in '34, please share at once. Paul

This looked eerily familiar. And so it proved. Pratt's successor appears to done just that. Nice one, George. PS The source of the quote from Let Justice Be Done can be found here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/cia_garrison.htm

Myra, Always a pleasure to encounter a fellow Seldes admirer. In case you weren't aware - apologies for boring on if you are - the University of Pennsylvania has done him, and In Fact, proud. If you follow this address http://www.library.upenn.edu/rbm/ , then click on the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image, &, finally, tap in Seldes, you are confronted with a complete run of the paper. It's a splendid project, and a model for what universities could and should be offering, both here and in the States. Couldn't agree more. The continuities between US fascism in the 1930s and the Dallas coup remain a gaping hole in assassination research. Which is very odd, when you think about it, not least given the controversy that surrounds the Z-fake. And the Luce empire's inter-war politics? Paul

Good. You're fired. Your response is just what I am talking about. How about you, Paul ... are you going to contact MSNBC, FOX NEWS, or any other news affiliate and share these ground breaking finds wih the world or are you satisfied with just making stupid add nothing remarks on what is supposed to be an education forum? Let us see just how serious this topic is to you! Bill Bill, It's taken me too long, but I've finally worked out of whom - and what - you remind me: a Stalinist apparatchik of, say, anytime between the early 1920s and the early 1950s. The sort routinely called on by the Ossetian mountaineer to shout down dissent, and bully the meek. Incidentally, your masquerade as an impartial sceptic would be rather more convincing were you occasionally to show some - any -interest in the abundant evidence that the Z-film is a fake. That would be far cleverer. As to trotting off to MSNBC, Fox News, or any other news affiliate, I did, once, to a UK near-equivalent and a very interesting experience it was, too, if only for the opportunity to encounter first-hand executive paranoia. Paul

Excellent post, to which I add a few more suggestions for background reading: The initiation of this thread reminded me of some questions that have long nagged - why did James Angelton's father suddenly relocate to Italy in 1934? Was it simply a coincidence, or did Angleton pere have some role in establishing a line of communication between fascist plotters in the US and Mussolini's regime? Did Angleton Snr. hook up with Donovan when the latter visited Italy in December 1935-February 1936? Anyone know the answers? Paul

Quite so. But you unquestionably imply it, presumably unintentionally, we now learn. Myra Bronstein was right. Fiddlesticks.

I must thank the world’s leading expert on Len Colby’s choice of fonts for reminding me of my perspicacity on Weisberg and Thompson. I understand Hogan’s distress, readily discernible even beneath the thick carapace of sycophancy he carries about him: I accurately characterise their work.Here’s a little sample of the fearless Weisberg in that searing indictment of the FBI- Secret Service Cover-up otherwise known as Whitewash II: Pure Mills & Boon. Now for two real investigators on Kellerman, the Weisbergian hero of Elm Street: The same authors, from the same chapter, on another ripe lie from Kellerman: If Mellen wishes to rehash ancient CIA disinfo, that is, of course, her choice. It is mine to oppose it.

Fair point, though I have to observe, following Myra Bronstein, that if Mellen had expressed herself more clearly, there would have been no objection, save to point out that Eisenhower was not looking too closely at some of the funkier activities of think tanks and professors working with subventions emanating a long way from Texas. As it was, Mellen appeared to be arguing that Eisenhower confined contemporaneous opposition to the New Deal to the aforementioned Texan oil men. Now, really, Greg - anything on Garrison's conversion from Ayn Rand disciple to belated champion of the New Frontier? These were ideologically compatible? Is there truly nothing to explain on the subject? And how does Mellen deal with the founders of Truth and Consequences, Inc.? Are you not even mildly curious as to their motivation and past associations? And Mellen? Amd what are we to make of Mellen's rehash of the old CIA line that the Kennedys were up to their necks in secret plots to kill Castro? No agenda here? Paul

Deleted, duplicate.

Joan Mellen’s lecture is not history, but a weapon, one consciously fashioned for the particular needs of the establishment (anti-Bush) moment. It thus offers a blend of the truth and rank disinformation. It begins with a useful, if hardly earth-shaking, discrimination: Fine, but then look what happens…. Two classic pieces of nonsense here. First, Mellen seeks to sell us Otto Otepka as a “liberal,” by the thoroughly convincing business of tenuously linking him to Eisenhower, whose very illiberal Sec of State, Foster Dulles, not Eisenhower, once commended Otepka. Curious, this, as Otepka was long a hero to the anti-Kennedy US Right, who could spot a zealous McCarthyite with rather more accuracy than Mellen. As the tremendously liberal John A. Stormer wrote, in that legendary hymn to liberalism, None Dare Call It Treason (Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1964), “In November 1963, the several years drive to destroy the last remnants of a security program in the State Department culminated with the firing of Otto F. Otepka, chief of the Division of Evaluations in the Office of Security. Otepka was veteran security employee and dedicated anti-communist. He was fired by the State Department after he furnished the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee evidence to show that high State Department officials had lied under oath about security matters when they testified before the committee” (p.71). No more reassuring is Mellen’s attribution of an alleged remark by Eisenhower to the effect that “most of America accepted the New Deal, but for a few oil millionaires in Texas.” This is both a very unEisenhower-sounding remark, and duff history. The finance for the planned fascist putsch outlined to Smedley D. Butler was to come from Wall St.; and both the Liberty League and the various fascist militias of the 1930s were pure Yankee corporate aristocracy. In short, what we appear to have here is an invented quote deployed to fashion a new, false paradigm – a rewrite of history, no less - for Mellen’s subsequent claims about the centrality of the Texas oil-CIA nexus in the assassination. I note in passing that this refashioning of history for subsequent purposes bears alarming similarities to the work of retired CIA man William A. Tidwell on the Lincoln assassination. Oswald “defected” to Russia in 1959. Otepka wasn’t dismissed until 1963. He must have pushed very hard and very early for that investigation of Oswald. Note the ensuing, and distinctly calculated, vagueness: “This all took place in the early sixties.” Not all, Ms. Mellen, just the “defection.”Later, that hoary old disinfo line about Cuba rears its head: Bilge. The CIA installed Fidel Castro, and used the sabotaged Bay of Pigs raid as cover for the attempted overthrow of De Gaulle. It was so committed to the invasion of Cuba post-JFK that it launched how many subsequent attempts? That’s right, none. This is not the only occasion that an absence of proof is held to be irrefutable evidence. Mellen first claims that Robert Kennedy sent Walter Sheridan to sabotage Garrison’s investigation; and then tells us he remained “aloof” from it. Well, which was it? Committed to its destruction or entirely disengaged? And how does an absence of proof – Mellen cites none – mysteriously metamorphose into hard and fast proof of RFK’s position? Furthermore, why the need to sabotage an investigation launched by a self-declared disciple of Ayn Rand, funded by oil-men not unfamiliar to the CIA, and assisted by such a fearless truth-seeker as Dick Billings?The above paragraph of Mellen’s is the inevitable prelude to a hoary old piece of CIA-serving propaganda: Let me reveal my own incredulity that Mellen should place any reliance on “the CIA’s own Secret History,” Sam Halpern, and a source like Charley Fiscalini. This is no more or less fantastic than Noam Chomsky seeking to persuade us of JFK’s love for the CIA based on one book – a hasty post-coup reissue at that - by Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden. Peter Lemkin seems to wish us to give a free pass to guff like Mellen’s. That’s his preference. It isn’t mine, and I urge others to resist as well.

Good. You're fired.

The single most shameful and contemptible post I've yet seen on an assassination website.

I had no idea the following piece existed until I stumbled across it on Ebay a couple of months ago: It is absent from Guthrie and Wrone’s seemingly definitive The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography, 1963-1979 (Greenwood Press, 1980); and, upon cursory inspection, David Lifton’s Best Evidence (Signet, 1992). Nor does it appear to be available anywhere on the internet. This is a pity – whatever my disagreements with it, it’s unquestionably full of good things, and deserves a new audience, not least on this forum, where some recent threads have sought to wrestle with key issues it confronts. Paul

Duplicate post deleted.

Hey Mark,Show Charlie how it's really done: And just in case the inattentive reader thought the above was a one-off, here's our real pro a few exchanges later in the same thread: What an impressive rhetorical amalgam: pomposity, puerility, and predictability. Face it, Charlie, you're a mere amateur when it comes to childish insults.

Nathaniel, A brief glimpse of both Goodfellow in action post-war, and the clique's approach to the conduct of foreign policy: Quite who - or what - is running U.S. foreign policy in the post-war era remains a continuing puzzle! Or perhaps not... Paul

Dacre is loathsome - didn't he offer a platform to the grotesque Angelton in an interview in the 1970s? - and so is his paper. But on the above point, he couldn't be more right: The BBC is appalling, most notably when it comes to regurgitating spook lies. No wonder. MI5 still vets its employees - and still has an office in the building, no? - and MI6 ("the Foreign Office") funds the World Service. And the sheer gutlessness of what pitifully little investigative journalism it undertakes is an enduring source of wonder. That is, of course, when Panorama etc., isn't simply acting as a front for Britain's murderous secret police!