Paul Rigby

PS) Your thoughts about the grassy knoll as a fallback are interesting and plausible in many ways. As to Weisberg, in all of his writing that I remember, he refused to engage in speculation beyond the official record. He said so many times. He limited himself to taking the government's own investigation and proving that they had something to hide. As to speculation about others' means and motives, he always said that was not his provenance. Perhaps one of us can start a thread on that one of these days.

Mike,

Point taken - he didn't. I rather admire his deftness on that score. But my general point, I think, is a fair one.

Paul

…Paul, please don't take my responses to you as adversarial.

Mike,

Rest assured, I didn’t. You pointed out a mistake – “abreast” – and were entirely justified in doing so. You made a series of rational objections, supported by quotations and citations. Again, admirable, and no possible offence could be taken, or was. I profoundly disagreed with them, that’s all, and sought to demonstrate why.

Please bear with me, I have some more questions. Are you maintaining that the Stemmons sign did not interfere with Zapruder's filming? Are you maintaining that the first shot did not happen until President Kennedy emerged from behind the sign? Are you saying Zapruder did not stop filming when he realized that the lead motorcycles were not the sequence he was intending to shoot?

Absolutely, yes, to all three. That’s exactly where the evidence points.

Note that it wasn’t just Zapruder who saw a different, earlier version: Journos and their sources did, too, as I demonstrated above. The concordance between Z’s description and that contained in early reportage is striking. It just ain’t the same film.

And that’s to exclude not merely eyewitness testimony which placed the bullets’ impacts further up Elm, but also at least one early re-enactment.

Paul, do I have it right now? The first uninterruptedly refers to the break in filming the motorcade and the second uninterrupted refers to the street sign?

Yes. A failure of diction on my part, for which resultant lack of clarity, apologies. In mitigation, it was late, I was tired, and I was going purely from memory.

Paul, your point is taken that in his WC testimony, Zapruder didn't mention the suspension of filming the motorcade, but both Trask and Wrone describe the motorcycles and lead cars were quite a bit in front of the President's Lincoln, and that when Zapruder realized this, he stopped filming after 7 seconds. Like Weisberg, I guess they just assumed this.

Yes. Very convenient assumption, it has to be said. And are we really to believe that Trask, Wrone and Weisberg had no inkling of the journalism I’ve instanced? Or missed that Zapruder’s early interviews and testimony contained no reference to a suspension in filming? Is this plausible? It’s as if an archaeologist pronounced definitively upon a recently exposed cliff face after examining only the top layer.

I do want to mention one more thing, though. About Weisberg, you wrote: He was part of the cover-up. Only a witting servant of the CIA could conceivably have written...........

That, I think, would make for an interesting topic in and of itself.

Apply Peter Dale Scott’s “negative template” to Weisberg’s oeuvre, and the results are striking. Was Weisberg really unaware, for example, when he began writing in 1964/5, of the Luce empire’s fanatical hostility to Kennedy? Over, say, most obviously, Cuba? Or of its history of collusion with the CIA? Such propositions are self-evidently absurd. This was, after all, an ex-OSS man, a former Congressional researcher – in short, a politically savvy guy, with a fine mind, and a real eye for detail.

My broader point is this. For the past forty-plus years some simple-minded myths have dominated what is what called, rather grandly, “the research community.” A couple of useful correctives:

The fact that a critic opposes the Warren Report is no guarantee that he/she works in the interests of truth.

The Report was designed to be demolished by the evidence contained in the 26 evidentiary volumes.

Salandria saw this blatant disjuncture between Warren Report and the 26 volumes as evidence of what he termed, courtesy of an academic friend, a “transparent conspiracy.” I agree, but with this important addition: We were confronted by not one, but two layers of deception. The outer was the Oswald-from-the-rear-with-flintlock idiocy. For those who flattered themselves cleverer than the herd, however, there was a second, inner layer of deception provided, the grassy knoll.

The work of Weisberg (and others) in the sixties and seventies pierced the outer layer, precisely as intended, and left us stranded, none the wiser and permanently susceptible to further befuddlement, on the knoll.

PS Dave Healey's question about Zapruder's own testimony on the duration of his filming seem to me entirely legitimate. If there is a source for Zapruder himself attesting to his stopping, please instance it. It's not an unreasonable request.

"The primary purpose of the film was to hide the role of Kennedy's bodyguard"

Paul, who was assigned to Kennedy?

Thanks,

Peter

Peter,

Damned if I can work it out. Thomas Shipman?

Paul

Paul, I read Zapruder's testimony again. Is this the part of his testimony you meant when you used the word "abreast?"

Mike Hogan

Mike,

You’re right and I was wrong: I was thinking of the following when I used the word “abreast”:

1. AP, "Movie Film Depicts Shooting of Kennedy,” Milwaukee Journal, November 26, 1963, part 1, p.3:

Dallas, Tex.-AP - A strip of color movie film graphically depicting the assassination of President Kennedy was made by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8 millimeter camera.

Several persons in Dallas who have seen the film, which lasts about 15 seconds, say it clearly shows how the president was hit in the head with shattering force by the second of two bullets fired by the assassin…

This is what the film by Abe Zapruder is reported to show:

First the presidential limousine is coming toward the camera. As it comes abreast of the photographer, Mr. Kennedy is hit by the first bullet, apparently in the neck...”

2. John Herbers, “Kennedy Struck by Two Bullets, Doctor Who Attended Him Says,” New York Times, November 27, 1963, p.20:

A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8-mm camera tends to support this sequence of events.

The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President’s car come abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck. The President turned toward Mrs. Kennedy as she began to put her hands around his head…”

I have to observe that “almost in line” with is a pretty good match – a synonym, dare one say it – for “abreast” (“parallel to, or alongside of something stationary,” Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1987 edition, p.7).

Zapruder’s consciousness of the potential impediments on Elm Street to a clear filming line of sight is unambiguous: “I tried another place and that had some obstruction of signs or whatever it was there and finally I found a place farther down near the underpass” (7WCH570). A place which presumably suffered no such impediments, else why move and stay there?

Now, who introduced the street sign into Zapruder’s testimony/line of sight? It wasn’t there initially, as is clear from your extract from Z’s testimony (7WCH571). So who introduced it subsequently? Ah, yes, the scrupulous Mr. Liebeler:

Mr. Liebeler.

Now, I've got a list of them here that I want to ask you about--picture 207 and turn on over to this picture. It appears that a sign starts to come in the picture--there was a sign in the picture.

Mr. Zapruder.

Yes; there were signs there also and trees and-somehow--I told them I was going to get the whole view and I must have.

Mr. Liebeler.

But the sign was in the way?

Mr. Zapruder.

Yes; but I must have neglected one part--I know what has happened--I think this was after that happened- -something had happened (7WCH573)

This is priceless – Zapruder “remembers” a street sign impeding his view only after some less than subtle prompting from Liebeler? And then goes on to say: “I told them I was going to get the whole view and I must have”? Told who exactly? Wasn’t his possession of a camera on Elm a last-minute, spontaneous thing? And how to reconcile his expressed belief that he had obtained the “whole view” with his prior acceptance that it was in fact impeded?

I note that this sequence of contradictory nonsense follows the same pattern as an earlier one, in which Zapruder initially offers a definite location for the shots – behind him, to his right – then reverses himself under pressure from Liebeler (7WCH572).

And again, we find that early contemporaneous media descriptions of the film contain not a single reference to a street sign blocking the view, however fleetingly, between camera and President.

Which brings me back to the goose-farmer.

Weisberg ignores the context in which Liebeler introduced the street sign intrusion, and uses it to push the impact of the first bullet back down Elm Street to Houston, to before the street sign. I love the “therefore” in the Weisberg extract you quote. A sure sign a grotesque non-sequitur is to follow!

“The startling meaning of Zapruder's testimony comes through anyway: He saw the first shot hit the President! He described the President's reaction to it. Had the President been obscured by the sign, Zapruder could have seen none of this. Therefore, the President was hit prior to Frame 210, prior to Frame 205, the last one that shows the top of his head, and the exact point can probably be reconstructed from the Zapruder footage the Commission saw fit to ignore entirely” (Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report, NY: Dell, December 1967 edition, p.104).

So, in summary, let me see if I have this straight:

Zapruder goes before the Warren Commission’s Liebeler and says the first bullet hit Kennedy when the presidential limo was “almost in line” with him. Liebeler introduces a street sign impediment to Zapruder’s line of camera sight that Z had not recalled unprompted, and no contemporaneous reports had registered. Weisberg then proceeds, post hoc propter hoc, to argue that “almost in line” really means back down Elm toward Houston before the street sign!

The really startling meaning of Weisberg’s passage is much more interesting: He was part of the cover-up. Only a witting servant of the CIA could conceivably have written: “It would have been better had Life been able to buy all the films exposed at Dealey Plaza that day…” (Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover-up, NY: Dell, May 1967, pp.217/8).

My IQ test is on Tuesday – care to stand in for me? It appears I could use the help!

Paul

Paul, in light of the statement you made about IQs and reading abilities, I'm hesitant to admit I'm confused, but I am. Could you point to the part of Zapruder's testimony that indicated he filmed the motorcade uninterruptedly?

Michael,

Inference and supporting contemporaneous evidence:

When did Zapruder start filming?

“ I started shooting--when the motorcade started coming in, I believe I started and wanted to get it coming in from Houston Street” (7WCH571)

I interpret this as meaning there was no break in filming. After all, there's nothing in Z's testimony to suggest there was. Am I wrong? Humour me for a bit.

Assuming there was no break in filming, where is this footage of the turn from Houston? And how does Weisberg, that fearless apostle of truth, the restless intelligence ever eager to clarify and pin-point, deal with this question? There wasn't one, according to Wesiberg. Zapruder began filming, he writes, “before the first shot was fired” (Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover-up, NY: Dell, May 1967, p.213). Now that what’s I call incisive.

Of course, we don’t have to rely on my interpretation of Zapruder’s word alone, though you wouldn’t know it from Weisberg, who’s as anxious to suppress the confirmatory detail to follow as any Warren Commission shyster. (A challenge: name one newspaper article on the Zapruder film from the period November –December 1963 instanced by Weisberg. Some of us seek a free flow of information, while Weisy...?)

According to the legendary Mr. Dunkel, photographic curator at the Sixth Form Museum in Dallas, “reporters apparently viewed the film Saturday morning.” And so they did. Here’s Arthur J. Snider in a syndicated piece for the Chicago Daily News, describing the film as he, or his source, witnessed it: “As the fateful car rounded the turn and moved into the curving parkway, the President rolled his head to the right…” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 November 1963. It tells you all you need to know about Mr. Dunkel that he solemnly argued Snyder’s piece demonstrated the inviolability of the Z-film!

And then, of course, we have Mr. Rather famously describing the film to Mr. Cronkite: "The films we saw were taken by an amateur photographer...The films show President Kennedy's open, black limousine, making a left turn, off Houston Street on to Elm Street..." (CBS Evening News, 25 November 1963, from Trask, Pictures of the Pain, p.89)

To turn to the early newspaper descriptions is to be struck by the complete absence of any mention of a hiatus in filming. Perhaps all of this very disparate group of official briefers and reporters, some of whom presumably saw the film, either missed this break, or felt it unworthy of mention. Of course, one might simply flip question round, and say - where is the written or spoken confirmation that he did turn the camera off?

Here’s a list of early print descriptions, with their versions of the sequence’s duration. No wonder Weisberg sought to withhold this sort of basic info from his readers. After all, he was selling it as genuine:

1. 24 November 1963: 15 seconds

Richard J. H. Johnson, “Movie Amateur Filmed Attack; Sequence Is Sold to Magazine,” NYT, 24 November 1963, p.5;

2. 26 November 1963: 15 seconds

Associated Press, "Movie film depicts shooting of Kennedy," Milwaukee Journal, 26 November 1963, part 1, p.3;

3. 26 November 1963: 35 seconds

UPI (Dallas), “Movie Film Shows Murder of President,” Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, 26 November 1963, p.3 (4 star edition): “It is seven feet long, 35 seconds in colour, a bit jumpy but clear.”

4. 27 November 1963: 15 seconds

John Herbers, "Kennedy Struck By Two Bullets, Doctor Who Attended Him Says: Physician Reports One Shot Remained In President's Body After Hitting Him at Level of His Necktie Knot," NYT, 27 November 1963, p. 20;

5. 30 November 1963: 25 seconds

Rick Friedman, “Pictures of Assassination Fall to Amateurs on Street,” Editor and Publisher, 30 November 1963, p.16.

6. 30 November-4 December 1963: 20 seconds

"The U.S.," Time (International Edition), 6 December 1963, p.29

7. 28 September-2 October 1964: 8 seconds

Life, 2 October 1964

More to follow.

Paul

The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Thursday, 21 November 1963 p.25

CIA and Decay

by Richard Starnes

The decay of the American bridgehead on the mainland of Asia continues with news that the unlikely kingdom of Cambodia has spurned military and economic aid from the United States.

This represents a sharp defeat for American policy in Southeast Asia, certainly a disaster comparable to the loss of Laos, and it contains ominous portents for the future.

Once again the Central Intelligence Agency is credited with playing a role in a calamitous undoing of American aims. Once the conditioned reflexes of the State Department have produced an instant denial that the Ivy League spooks of the CIA had anything to do with it.

These reflexes are inherently incredible, of course. There is a rich and growing literature showing that too often the State Department doesn't know what the patient plotters of the CIA are doing. Moreover, Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, as vain and bombastic as he is, is not stupid. He is no more likely to eviscerate Santa Claus than any other money-hungry Oriental despot is - unless he has what seems to be compelling reason. The State Department may not believe the CIA was conspiring in the downfall of Sihanouk, but the prince thought so....

It is, of course, difficult to assay the CIA' s function in all of this. Dismiss, for the sake of argument, Sihanouk's proofs of CIA plotting against him as the paranoiac ravings of an uneasy tyrant. The fact remains that the United States secret, wholly unaccountable spy bureaucracy had carte blanche in Cambodia, had unlimited resources, and failed. It not only failed to keep Cambodia out of the Communist orbit, it provided Sihanouk with an excuse to cast out the last vestiges of American influence.

Extract from Shadow on a Dry Light:

In February 1959, Cambodia police broke up the Dap Chhuon plot and fingered Victor Matsui, a CIA officer working under light diplomatic cover at the Phnom Penh embassy(1), as the co-ordinating agent(2). In late August of the same year, a bomb blast at the royal palace in Phnom Penh killed the protocol minister(3). The following month, Diem reached a modus vivendi with Sihanouk, despite the attempts of Viet-Nam Presse, the official Saigon news bulletin, to sabotage the deal(4).

(1)Michael Field. The Prevailing Wind: Witness in Indo-China (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1965), p.213, citing the French-language newspaper Realites Cambodgiennes, 19 September 1959.

(2)Mona K. Bitar, “Bombs, Plots and Allies: Cambodia and the Western Powers, 1958-59,” p. 162, within Richard J. Aldrich, Gary Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley (Eds.), “Special Issue on the Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-65: Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations,” Intelligence and National Security, Winter 1999 (Vol. 14, No. 4).

(3)“Friends of Former Envoy Questioned,” The Times, 3 September 1959, p.8.

(4)Bernard Fall, “Cambodia’s International Position,” Current History, March 1961 (Vol.40, No.235), p.167.

Jack White wrote: "Misdirection is vital to successful magic acts."

That immediately reminded me of one of my favorite quotes in this case, from the fascinating but flawed Farewell America:

President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and false mirrors, and when the curtain fell the actors, and even the scenery, disappeared.

In his book Post Mortem, Harold Weisberg said this about Farewell America:

Indeed, there is reasonable ground for suspecting that some of the most disreputable works were designed to kill interest. One is an extravagant work of unprecedented libel, meticulous in its pseudoscholarship, expertly written and edited, put together in an operation so vast and costly that I have traced those engaged in it to eight different countries. There is no doubt that those connected with intelligence operations of the United States and France at the very least were behind Farewell America and a movie of the same title, the aborting of which I was able to help in a small way. It was the book to end the credibility of all books on assassinations.

Incredibly, its excesses fascinate the intelligent but unthinking marginal paranoids among those genuinely concerned about these assassinations, even though the book itself cannot survive consideration of its content.

Perhaps true enough, but Farewell America was one of the first books to eschew the microanalyzation that Salandria talked about. It focused on larger issues like oil, race, motive, opportunity, and identity of the alleged plotters. Whatever its weaknesses, Farewell America said some very interesting things.

The plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silences, that it would be blamed on a 'madman' and negligence. (James Hepburn)

Michael,

In so far as I understand Weisberg's verdict - correct me if wrong, but from the extract quoted he appears to argue that Farewell America was a co-production of the Agency and its French assets - I endorse it. (I take that view even if Weisberg goes on to argue something very different...) I also believe, and have posted on JFK Lancer to this effect, that Weisberg possessed an acute intelligence. The question is, in whose service was it deployed?

One example of what I'm getting at.

When Zapruder came before the Presidential Commission of enquiry, he told us some very remarkable things. He was, for example, conscious of the possible impediments - street signs etc. - on Elm Street to a clear line of filming sight, and positioned himself accordingly. He told us that he filmed the motorcade uninterruptedly. He told us that Kennedy was first struck when "abreast" - parallel - to him.

In short, he told us - or rather, told anyone with an IQ higher than their age and the ability to read - that he was familiar with a version of the film attributed to him, but not the one proffered by his interlocutors.

Now how did Weisberg, this highly intelligent man with war-time experience in the OSS, deal with this testimony? Did he deal with it competently and honestly? Not a bit of it.

Instead, he sought to assist the Warren Report liars by pretending that Zapruder hadn't had an uninterrupted view of the killing; and that the first bullet to hit Kennedy had done so much further back down Elm toward Houston. The film version served up by the WC was true, he sought to convince us, not the testimony of the very man alleged to have taken it.

"flooding of the area with assets"

This was a key component of the plan. Control the area and create confusion. Prouty called the so called tramps "actors". In any event, you can clearly see Landsdale in this picture walking away from his men.

There were a lot of people in Dallas that day. It is a long list.

The Zapruder film? It is clearly altered but still shows the frontal shot.

PM

Peter,

Somewhere in one of Vance Packard's books of the the late 1950s/early 1960s, he quotes the motto of the tally men: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse them."

To put it another way, you first establish the contradictions, then multiply them. And why not - who was/is to stop them? Intelligence bureaucracies do things because they can, and do so with impunity.

But to introduce a note of caution: Saying there was a shot from the front is no great threat to the conspirators. On the contrary, unqualified, and minus precision, it serves their purposes admirably. After all, the grassy knoll is their built-in fall-back. They led us to it. And they're more than happy for us to remain there, ad infinitum.

David, I want to assure you that the finest cryptologists at the CIA are working overtime to decipher what exactly it is you are trying to say.

C'mon, Brenda, it wasn't that difficult, even for a Republican...

In fact, I send 99% of your posts directly to Langley, as they are all equally banal and confusing.

And the cheques come back by return of post, presumably?

Marvellous thing, this neo-connery: You get to plunder the public purse even as you decry the role of big government.

Paul, you have zero evidence for any of the lamebrain things you posit. Kennedy was killed because he had the misfortune of driving past a crummy little Commie's place of employment. Please find a new hobby. Fast.

The four dominant stands of the contemporary GOP embodied in one man: Sophistry, floristry, garbology, and chickenhawkery.

Respect!

Great talking points, Paul! Should be posted elsewhere...

David, Jack, Ashton -

A pleasure to be in the company of those for whom first principles are not at issue.

Paul

...might I amend the above with another mention of smoke (literally) from the knoll/fence area (including an officer later testifying that he'd burned his hand on something he erroneously had believed to be a steam pipe, but nobody ever determined what it was)...

Allen Dulles' briar?

Why did the conspirators offer the Z-film?

An important subject, rarely addressed head on. Below, a preliminary sketch of an answer. I leave aside two other obvious motives, as trophy and training aid:

Kennedy had to be killed in a public space to allay suspicion of an inside job.

Yet it had to be an inside job to ensure its success.

How to reconcile these conflicting imperatives?

A false film, buttressed by a series of measures designed to render the location a pseudo- or controlled public space:

1) Location of crime scene at the end of the motorcade route, thus limiting potential number of independent witnesses;

2) Largely portable scene-of-crime, leaving little to examine, provoke reflection or, not unimportantly, clear-up;

3) Further limiting independent witness presence in the chosen public space by misdirection as to the precise motorcade route;

4) Minimisation of independent witness presence at key vantage points through guards at aforesaid key points;

5) Flooding of public space by intelligence assets, using pre-established business proprietaries as thoroughly plausible pretext for presence;

6) Misdirection of independent eyewitnesses (and subsequent enquirers) by use of both planted and/or manufactured witnesses; and rehearsed misdirection actions by motorcade figures designed to support the built-in fall back position (the grassy knoll);

7) Deliberate investigative failure to account for, and adduce the testimony of, all those present: inconvenient witnesses were marginalised, ignored, and/or replaced by more helpful material. The fake film showed only those witnesses the conspirators wanted us to see.

The primary purpose of the film was to hide the true role of Kennedy’s own bodyguard.

The second, to inject the required quota of ambiguity and paranoia into the case: the Z-film, in the version we are familiar with, is quintessentially the product of the counter-intelligence mind.

The public understanding of the case would thus be shaped not by testimony, but by the false visual depiction.

Of course, things didn’t go quite according to plan. But the essential task did.

The Times, Tuesday, 8 October 1963, p.13:

Second leader

An Elusive Agency

The American Government was split over the proper policy for Vietnam, and in the resulting cleavage the State Department went one way and some of the C.I.A., with some of the Pentagon, another. There should have been especially keen vigilance over the C.I.A., for it is well known that many members of its staff are out of sympathy with the basic assumptions of the Administration’s policies, as they were not, on the whole, in the days of MR. DULLES.

Starnes returned to the subject of the CIA's catastrophic conduct in south-east Asia on the eve of Kennedy's murder. The country was Cambodia, where Sihanouk had been the object, as with Diem in neighbouring Vietnam, of repeated Agency assassination attempts well before Kennedy reached the White House. Note the sharp distinction drawn yet again by Starnes between State Department policy and that pursued by the Dullesians of Langley.

The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Thursday, 21 November 1963 p.25

CIA and Decay

The decay of the American bridgehead on the mainland of Asia continues with news that the unlikely kingdom of Cambodia has spurned military and economic aid from the United States.

This represents a sharp defeat for American policy in Southeast Asia, certainly a disaster comparable to the loss of Laos, and it contains ominous portents for the future.

Once again the Central Intelligence Agency is credited with playing a role in a calamitous undoing of American aims. Once the conditioned reflexes of the State Department have produced an instant denial that the Ivy League spooks of the CIA had anything to do with it.

These reflexes are inherently incredible, of course. There is a rich and growing literature showing that too often the State Department doesn't know what the patient plotters of the CIA are doing. Moreover, Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, as vain and bombastic as he is, is not stupid. He is no more likely to eviscerate Santa Claus than any other money-hungry Oriental despot is - unless he has what seems to be compelling reason. The State Department may not believe the CIA was conspiring in the downfall of Sihanouk, but the prince thought so.

Such is the neurotic haze of secrecy under which the CIA coils and writhes that the specimen American lawgiver (to say nothing of the ordinary taxpayer) will never know the truth about America's defeat in Cambodia. But never doubt for a moment that it is a defeat, and a resounding one. If Viet Nam, Thailand and Laos are worth the lives and money we have so recklessly dedicated to them, then so is Prince Norodom's flyblown little kingdom.

The United States has spent more than $350 million (plus what ever clandestine appropriations the CIA has devoted to the country) in an attempt to keep Cambodia from swinging completely into the Communist orbit. At best all we got for our money was a precarious neutrality, while Sihanouk gleefully played East and West off against each other with all the oily skill of a chop suey tycoon playing fan-tan. It takes no great prescience to understand that freed of any restraints from the West, Sihanouk will zoom straight for the candle flame held out by Communist China.

The capture of Cambodia, like Laos' similar fate, may not be ratified for some time. But when it is, it will require only a moment of map reading to understand what has happened: Communist China now has a clear corridor from her borders to the Gulf of Siam. South Viet Nam is now flanked from the west, beleaguered from the north, surrounded by totally hostile neighbours and pinned against the sea. Thailand is just as ill-used. Malaysia is jeopardized; so it the sprawling, lunatic empire of Indonesia.

To be sure, no one who has seen the miserable, almost impassable mountains, jungles and swamps of the Laotian-Cambodian corridor expects the people's army of China to go rolling down to the sea any time soon. But inexorably the Chinese Communist cadres will infest the countryside, subvert it, and bend it to Peking's grand designs.

It is, of course, difficult to assay the CIA' s function in all of this. Dismiss, for the sake of argument, Sihanouk's proofs of CIA plotting against him as the paranoiac ravings of an uneasy tyrant. The fact remains that the United States secret, wholly unaccountable spy bureaucracy had carte blanche in Cambodia, had unlimited resources, and failed. It not only failed to keep Cambodia out of the Communist orbit, it provided Sihanouk with an excuse to cast out the last vestiges of American influence.

All this, in the Orwellian language of Washington's CIA stiffs, will be cited as more evidence of the sad truth that the spooks get lumps every time the United States takes a licking, but never get credit for its mysterious, unknown feats of derring-do. The CIA remains above the battle of agencies which have to account for themselves. Only from time to time (and at times like this), its well-bred murmur is heard in the expense clubs in the nation's capital, explaining why it cannot be held accountable to democratic processes, as all our other great organs of government, secret and overt, are.

You're equating that to intentional mass murder? Bill Greer lied thru his teeth to the WC, but that doesn't come close to proving he was part of a conspiracy.

Non sequitur of the year award - with bouquet - goes to Mr. B, the Artie Fufkin of neo-con apologetics

Paul, get off the computer. Your mom needs to use the phone.

I told her not to bother with the police: The weirdo in the undergrowth with the white spray is good old Slatttery, the nocturnal neo-con. Three sniffs of the laundry line and he's gone.

how and why did Abe Zapruder and Ms. Sitzman continue to stand erect on a prominent raised platform in the middle of the likely firing zone with Zapruder resolutely locked on the Presidential limousine until it disappeared under the overpass?

Um, because he's not a big wuss like you?

Say it with flowers, Brendan, you know it makes scents...

A little twist on an old axiom.....

Slattery will get you nowhere.

Thank you..thank you...

Chuck Robbins

Chuck,

Well-intentioned and doubtless, in other contexts, sage words.

Two probs:

1.Old Liverpool axiom: If you dish it, be prepared to take it, with interest.

2. Never assume motivation. Always permit the possibility of an ulterior one.

Paul

You're equating that to intentional mass murder? Bill Greer lied thru his teeth to the WC, but that doesn't come close to proving he was part of a conspiracy.

Non sequitur of the year award - with bouquet - goes to Mr. B, the Artie Fufkin of neo-con apologetics

Which is a bigger waste of time--this, or Clint Hill Shoegate?

The sad-sack who spots mobile Asters on Elm gets my vote.

The view of the State v. CIA war in Vietnam embodied in Starnes’ ‘Arrogant’ CIA was to receive powerful corroboration in the pages of The Times, then still the house-organ of the British elite. On Macmillan’s last day in No.10, it offered a succinct summary of the forces in play and what they represented. British historians, it should be noted, have spent over forty years avoiding this and similar meditations on the CIA under Kennedy in the Times 1961-63. More fool them.

The capitalisation follows the original.

The Times, Tuesday, 8 October 1963, p.13:

Second leader

An Elusive Agency

President Kennedy’s failure to control the political activities of the Central Intelligence Agency has been one of the more disappointing and mysterious aspects of his Administration. It is to be hoped that his belated recall of MR. RICHARDSON, the head of the C.I.A. mission in South Vietnam, is a sign of a new determination to exert the full political control which the agency so badly needs. Few things damage a country more than if its representatives on the spot appear to be at odds with each other.

The Cuban fiasco provided a unique opportunity to reassess the role of the C.I.A. The evidence of Laos and South Vietnam is that the opportunity was fumbled. (In Laos two years ago the C.I.A. was still opposing the neutralist coalition some time after PRESIDENT KENNEDY had formally endorsed it.) It is important, however, that the C.I.A. should not become a scapegoat for what are often the sins of the Government. Its involvement with NGO DINH DIEM’S family in Vietnam was encouraged by the absence of clear direction from Washington. The American Government was split over the proper policy for Vietnam, and in the resulting cleavage the State Department went one way and some of the C.I.A., with some of the Pentagon, another. There should have been especially keen vigilance over the C.I.A., for it is well known that many members of its staff are out of sympathy with the basic assumptions of the Administration’s policies, as they were not, on the whole, in the days of MR. DULLES.

The difficulty that has always dogged the C.I.A. is that it is basically inimical to American traditions, and the country has been unable to assimilate it. Born out of the shock of Pearl Harbour, it found its present name in 1947. The original intention was that it should confine itself to the collection and evaluation of information, and many think it should return to this pristine state. It outgrew the restrictions almost by accident. The State Department was weak in staff and funds, and American policy demanded methods that were not compatible with normal diplomacy. Gradually MR. JOHN FOSTER DULLES found that he could sometimes act more effectively through his brother ALLEN, then head of the C.I.A., than through his own department. Repeated attempts to subject the agency to Congressional control stumbled on the obvious need for secrecy. Secrecy would disappear in the open arenas of American political life. At the same time the Dulles fraternity inhibited control by the Executive. The result was a new and secret kingdom which combined the collection of information with the formulation and the execution of policy.

After the Bay of Pigs PRESIDENT KENNEDY tried to restore the making of policy to the State Department, local authority to his ambassadors, and most operational responsibilities to the Pentagon. He has had some success with these reforms, but not enough. The recent troubles have already revived demands for more Congressional control, and some increase may be possible. In the end, however, only one person is in a position to exert full control, and that is the President himself.

how and why did Abe Zapruder and Ms. Sitzman continue to stand erect on a prominent raised platform in the middle of the likely firing zone with Zapruder resolutely locked on the Presidential limousine until it disappeared under the overpass?

Um, because he's not a big wuss like you?

Say it with flowers, Brendan, you know it makes scents...

"The 9/11 conspiracy movement exploits the public's anger and sadness."

Sooo unlike those principled neo-cons who seized the pretext to attack Afghanistan, Iraq, now Lebanon...

"It traffics in ugly, unfounded accusations of extraordinary evil against fellow Americans."

-- Sen. John McCain "

Goodness , this the same guy the draft-dodging little simian, Rumfella and the Defibrillated Man smeared as a Commie leadswinger? I feel chastened.

By the way, great spot on the Asters! You've found your niche. And redefined YAF: Young American Florists.

One man's filet is another man's palate-cleansing sorbet.

MV

Sorry, Mark, but after that outstanding summary of the meandering thread about, oh, ROFLMAO, or somesuch, this represents an unacceptable dip in quality. Pseud's corner, sir, for the duration.

Excuse me, but quoting Chip Berlet is not what I consider using "a good faith effort to wade past the obvious bullxxxx."

MV: I'm not sure we're talking about the same Chip Berlet. The guy I'm talking about has confronted many right-wing extremists over the years. I know he's not particularly fond of Prouty but do you really consider Chip Berlet a right winger?

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Chip Berlet is what G.K. Chesterton termed, in The Man Who Was Thursday, a "philosophical policeman." He attacks conspiracy theory and conspiracists in defence of rich people. The latter never engage in such things, you understand. But where Hofstadter attacked de haut en bas, Berlet proceeds de haut en FBI, ADL et al.

Try this link for some well-informed and intermittently amusing stuff on his nonsense. He was memorably filleted by the late Ace Hayes in the mid-1990s. You should find Hayes' work among it.

www.oilempire.us/berlet.html

"The work of the philosophical policeman is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists."

And in Berlet's case, cure them, courtesy of those kind men and women at the Ford Foundation.

Two questions.

1, Where did the dog come from? Jackie certainly doesn't have it at Love field. Nor do any of the retinue appear to be carrying a dog.

2, Where did the dog go to after the assassination, it couldn't have simply disappeared.

I have no doubt that Jean Hill saw something that she took to be a small dog, but in all the excitement who could quible about a misidentification.

Stephen,

God knows if this is germane, but your question reminded me of this curio from the testimony of a Scotsman on Elm, Robert Henderson. Reportedly a Glaswegian WWII veteran holidaying in Dallas. With wife and daughter, took grandson, Roddy, to see presidential motorcade:

“I Saw the Kennedy Killing,” The Weekly News (Manchester), 30 November 1963, p.8:

“We settled for a spot on Elm Street. There weren’t all that many people around and it was easy to get a place by the kerbside…The President was sitting in the side of the car nearest us…The car stopped momentarily [after first shot – PR]…Then everything seemed to happen at once”

“A stray dog wandered into the roadway” before shooting began. After shooting, “The dog that had been wandering about in the road was still there.”

A cynic might wonder if this was part of an early - and early abandonned - attempt to explain the stop on Elm.

Fortunately, I am not a cynic.

Two questions.

1, Where did the dog come from? Jackie certainly doesn't have it at Love field. Nor do any of the retinue appear to be carrying a dog.

2, Where did the dog go to after the assassination, it couldn't have simply disappeared.

I have no doubt that Jean Hill saw something that she took to be a small dog, but in all the excitement who could quible about a misidentification.

Stephen,

God knows if this is germane, but your question reminded me of this curio from the testimony of a Scotsman on Elm, Robert Henderson. Reportedly a Glaswegian WWII veteran holidaying in Dallas. With wife and daughter, took grandson, Roddy, to see presidential motorcade:

“I Saw the Kennedy Killing,” The Weekly News (Manchester), 30 November 1963, p.8:

“We settled for a spot on Elm Street. There weren’t all that many people around and it was easy to get a place by the kerbside…The President was sitting in the side of the car nearest us…The car stopped momentarily [after first shot – PR]…Then everything seemed to happen at once”

“A stray dog wandered into the roadway” before shooting began. After shooting, “The dog that had been wandering about in the road was still there.”

A cynic might wonder if this was part of an early - and early abandonned - attempt to explain the stop on Elm.

Fortunately, I am not a cynic.

I remember now why I thought it relevant:

Stephen Barber, “President Kennedy Is Assassinated,” Daily Telegraph, Saturday (4 am edition, reprint), 23 November 1963, p.1:

“A woman witness, Mrs. Jean Hill, said in a radio interview that the President and Mrs. Kennedy were looking at a dog in the middle of the road, near an underpass, when the shoots rang out. She said: “There were three shots. He grabbed his chest and fell over his seat, and Jackie fell over him.”

“Murder Charge Lodged,” Dallas Times Herald, 23 November 1963, p.8:

“The President passed directly in front of us on our side of the street,” Mrs. Hill said.

Richardson Sr., a long time CIA official, seemed to feel Diem was a workable solution -- Lodge did not. The result is now history -- the overthrow and assassination of Diem and his brother.

A sidebar on the question of Lodge and his role in Saigon in the period August-November 1963.

I thought it might be interesting to see what an identified CIA asset had to say about him more or less contemporaneously. One example was ready to hand, courtesy of Pan & Lyons’ Vietnam Crisis.

In that riveting tome, the authors offer an alleged verbatim extract from an interview with Nhu conducted by Suzanne Labin, the French “leftist” who enjoyed the somewhat surprising distinction of being permitted to address Pentagon high-fliers; and of having had at least one book - The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China - subsidised by the Agency through its best-known publishing arm, Praeger of New York, in 1960.

Labin attributes the following to Nhu: “His political views seemed to be dominated by the fashionable decrees of Linus Pauling in the New York Times, and the neutralist preachings of Walter Lippmann in the New York Herald-Tribune.” Labin goes on to offer the classic Agency line on Lodge’s role, as supposedly recounted unbidden by Nhu, that renowned master of colloquial English: “Lodge never stopped working against us, with the cocksureness that a representative of a colonial power might have evinced, thirty years ago toward protectorate…Lodge does not bother with the normal business of an Ambassador, which would be to galvanize and to strengthen the friendship between our two governments. No, his only care is to intrigue against the legal government to which he has been accredited.” (Stephen Pan & Daniel Lyons, SJ. Vietnam Crisis (NY: Twin Circle Books, 1967 edition, p.117), citing Suzann Labin. Vietnam: An Eyewitness Account (Springfield, VA: Crestwood Books ), 1964, pp.34-35.)

Interesting to note that Labin’s 1965 book, Embassies of Subversion (New York: American Afro-Asian Educational Exchange), carried a forward by one Thomas J. Dodd, the same Senator who, as we have seen, attacked Starnes at the CIA’s behest in February 1964. In early March 1963, Dodd had entered a gushing tribute to the CIA asset into the Congressional Record. It went by the modest title "Suzanne Labin: Joan of Arc of Freedom" (Congressional Record, 1963 March 4).

You couldn’t make this up.

Labin and Daniel Lyons were themselves to collaborate on Twin Circle’s 1968 book, Fifty Years: The USSR vs. The USA.

Small world, indeed.

Nathaniel's quote:

"Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?"

[Endquote]

Nathaniel,

Don't forget to factor in the "apertura a sinistra" factor when considering Harvey's "banishment" to Italy. What better place to sabotage that particular Kennedy initiative?

Paul