Myra Bronstein

I should add, to the thread in general, that a book I've been reading for a (too long) while: "Battling Wall Street" by Donald Gibson, is quite an indictment of the Rockefellers in regards to President Kennedy's murder.

Thank you so much Michael!

...

Hugo Chavez now fulfils the role of ostensible regional bogeyman, and US plots against him will almost certainly fail precisely as the elaborate paper exercises did in the case of Castro. The dirty secret in contemporary Venezuela's case is that Chavez is working for the economic integration of the region, an integration long earnestly desired by big capital in Washington and New York, but unachievable under overt US command. Hence Chavez's survival. The Guardian recently ran an unusually good piece arguing just this....

"Ok, hold the phone. You claim that Hugo Chavez, the man who stood on the floor of the UN and told America that the CIA was behind 911, is a CIA puppet?"

Myra,

Don't know for sure if Chavez is Agency, or merely a useful, if largely unwitting, tool. Ultimately, it makes little difference. Nevertheless, some reflections on the matter:

1) If he is Agency, he'd sure as hell undertake precisely the kind of action you accurately described, just as a Special Branch officer infiltrating, let us say, the Anti-Nazi League or the Socialist Workers'Party, would be sure to declaim his hatred of the SB/MI5 - before pouching the membership secretary's or treasurer's post!

2) His attribution of responsibility for 9/11 is, in my view, entirely justified. His recent decision to promote sales of the work of Noam Chomsky, the Agency's favourite "leftist" dissident, strongly suggests, however, a certain lack of lit crit rigour, and political consistency. Chomsky, is after all, the man who gave us the following pearl of Agency-serving nonsense:""One thing I would mention is that when it's a CIA operation, that means it's a White House operation. It's not CIA. They don't do things on their own…If it's a CIA operation it's because they were ordered to do it…" (Noam Chomsky. Class Warfare (London: Pluto Press, 1996), p. 92.) Very convincing.

2) On cue - very obliging of the chap, I must say - I note in my morning paper, under the headline "Chavez lays ground to socialism" (The Guardian, 8 January 2007, p.16) - that he is moving to occupy the vacuum left by the dying Fidel.

3) The Agency may yet decide to martyr him, but only if there's a suitable replacement in the wings.

4) A relatively unified Central and Southern American left offers rich scope for a Republican come-back after 4 to 8 years of Republican-lite government by the nominal opposition. (Buggins turn dictates some safe Democrat centrist is due for a spell in the White House.) In crude summary, think a re-run of the early/mid Reagan years.

5) All the while, Venezuelan oil money will be recycled on lots of essential infra-structure projects. They will benefit the countries concerned immensely, but prepare the country for integration with the US/North American trading bloc.

Sorry to seem so cynical, but this is the way it strikes me.

Paul

Well you did touch on the single most bothersome thing (to me) President Chavez has done--promoting pseudo-leftist CiaOmsky. Hard to believe that Chavez is naive enough to think Chomsky is for real, but a lot of people are and do.

Still, it would take a lot to convince me that Chavez is a fraud. Are you saying the CIA coup attempts against Chavez, which he openly blames on the CIA, were a big show?

And why would Cuba be allowed to starve and crumble for decades if Castro was really the CIA's boy?

Why not? The Agency cares not a jot about the well-being of most Americans, so what chance some islanders ninety miles off shore?

Paul

Yeah the CIA is/was a bunch of sociopaths. But the prospect of Castro letting his people suffer for decades... that's a lot to overcome both logically and emotionally. Dunno.

More evidence of early CIA involvement with George Bush and Zapata Offshore...

http://realnews.org/rn/content/zapata.html

I especially like this line:

Indeed, Zapata's annual reports portray a bewildering range of global activities, in the Mideast, Asia and the Caribbean (including off Cuba) that seem outsized for the company's modest bottom line.

That's all Bush ever had with Zapata -- a modest bottom line.

It's interesting that the Bush interests settled out with the Liedtkes by giving

the Texas boys the actual oil production company -- Zapata Petroleum, which

became very successful -- while the Bush clan got Zapata Offshore, which wasn't

much of a success at all unless they used it as a front for smuggling operations.

I'll bet Harriman/Bush got the best end of the stick when all was said and done.

That is a great quote Cliff. "Bewildering range"--right. Only bewildering for the history challenged.

Thank you, Charles. That was very gentlemanly of you to acknowledge points of alignment despite areas of considerable disagreement. And while I'm glad we have this point of agreement, Ms. Pease deserves all the acknowledgment, just to keep things in order.

Ashton

I would like to read more by Ms. Pease. All I've read is... what's in this thread.

Greg,

Wasn't the designated patsy in for the canceled Chicago trip a John Bircher, or at least Birch-dipped?

Don't know. Do you recall the name?

Thomas Arthur Vallee was a member of the John Birch Society

Steve Thomas

Thank you Steve!

If you could share a source that'd be even better.

The thing that I find curious is that they were scapegoating the Birch Society with the Chicago patsy. How would that have helped them to justify an invasion of Cuba--ostensibly a major goal of the murder. ...Unless Paul is correct in his theory that Castro was a CIA ally.

I wonder who the pasty was for the Miami trip.

Ashton

I never thought that I would say this, but you offer an extraordinary amount of "very sound thinking", on those occasions when you descend from that area of the stratosphere where I often find you. I also look forward to your "Timeline".

Charlie Black

Yes. And I'm a fan of timelines because context is critical to true understanding. The more timelines the better. I look at them in the Seminars section all the time, and I work on combining them. Pieces of the puzzle.

Myra, I thought you might be interested in the following excerpts from a 1977 article by Lisa Pease in PROBE:

• Walt Rostow was one of Kennedy's "counterinsurgency" experts. "He made counterinsurgency seem profound, reasonable, and eminently just," said author Gerald Colby in his book Thy Will Be Done. Walt Rostow—like Dean Rusk, Roswell Gilpatrick, Edward Lansdale, Paul Nitze, Harland Cleveland, Roger Hilsman, Lincoln Gordon, Adolf Berle, McGeorge Bundy and Henry Kissinger—came to work in the Kennedy administration directly from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Special Studies Project. This group had been hand-chosen by Nelson Rockefeller to assist him when he himself was seeking the Presidency. Author Colby called this "Nelson's Secret Victory", pointing out that while Kennedy knew many powerful people, they were mostly politicians, not men with experience in foreign affairs. The Rockefeller family network, and Nelson's group in particular, provided a large assortment of bright, qualified men. However, with such a homogenous group surrounding him, Colby noted, "there was no one to advise the young president on the wisdom and efficacy of such covert operations as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA's secret war in Indochina, Project Eagle, or Lumumba's murder."
  [Otto] Otepka's biographer doesn't seem to understand the distinction between Kennedy and this group. He insinuates that Bobby was behind Walt Rostow's rise and Otepka's fall. Bobby was originally the true believer in counterinsurgency as a means for conducting limited warfare and thus saving a greater number of lives than in outright war, which at that point in time seemed to mean nuclear war. But Bobby became disenchanted himself with both Rusk and Rostow and their type of counterinsurgency. Colby includes the text of one of Bobby's speeches as released to the press, in which was written, "Victory in a revolutionary war is not won by escalation, but by de-escalation." Kennedy did not actually speak these words when the speech was delivered, but the words were widely quoted by the press.
  

Omitted from that list of Rockefeller alumni is Douglas Caddy.

The artilce opens with the statement: "Otto Otepka once told journalist Sarah McClendon that he knew who had killed JFK, but would say no more on the subject."

I suspect that may be one of the few valid claims in that regard.

Ashton

Thank you Ashton. It seems like every time I read about a member of President Kennedy's administration, it underscores the fact that he inadvertently isolated himself in his own administration. He'd reach across aisles and appoint Republicans and assorted non-Democrats, idealistically thinking (I assume) that inclusion in his gov't would be healthy and high-minded. Of course he didn't know they were snakes.

Kennedy was a smart man, brilliant even, but not being evil it was hard for him to anticipate and comprehend that depth of evil.

Good lesson for our times.

...

Hugo Chavez now fulfils the role of ostensible regional bogeyman, and US plots against him will almost certainly fail precisely as the elaborate paper exercises did in the case of Castro. The dirty secret in contemporary Venezuela's case is that Chavez is working for the economic integration of the region, an integration long earnestly desired by big capital in Washington and New York, but unachievable under overt US command. Hence Chavez's survival. The Guardian recently ran an unusually good piece arguing just this.

...

Ok, hold the phone. You claim that Hugo Chavez, the man who stood on the floor of the UN and told America that the CIA was behind 911, is a CIA puppet?

<span style='color:green'>A lot of people talk about Veciana as head of Alpha-66, but you don't hear much about Menoyo, which is interesting, because if I gather right, he was head of Alpha-66's military wing.</span> (Steve Thomas)

Hi Steve,

As an organization, Alpha 66 was pretty much based in militant ideals and they had many leaders who led insurgent teams into Cuba.

Menoyo was jailed in Cuba in 1965 and spent many years there. He was lucky not to be executed.

This image below is circa 1958 and shows from left to right, Nene Fraicais, Eloy Menoyo (standing), Jose Garcia (seated), Henry Fuerte and William Morgan.

James

I know this is a tangent, but I'm confused about Alpha 66. Sometimes it seems like it was led by the CIA, certainly funded by the CIA--at least partly. Other times it seems like it was independent of the CIA. Can anyone help de-confuse me?

The recent exchanges on this forum between Ashton Gray and Cliff Varnell involved, among other things, a fierce dispute concerning the coup plotters intentions toward Cuba. The former poured scorn on the proposition that Kennedy’s murder was organised as prelude to, and pretext for, a concerted US drive to oust Castro. I agree with him, and think the topic so important I offer the radically incomplete work-in-progress below. My hope is to provoke a full debate on the issue, one I believe is long overdue.

What follows is an early draft of a chapterlet in my preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Journalism of Richard Starnes. A later, greatly expanded, version appears to have disappeared following my hard-drive’s recent encounter with a nifty little Trojan. (I stupidly failed to back up this & many other files.)

Tomorrow, I’ll append the Starnes article which gave rise to the chapterlet, so the reader can see what provoked it.

Cuban Smoke and the French Connection: why the CIA installed Fidel Castro

3 October –21 November 1963.

Between ‘Arrogant CIA’s’ publication on October 2 and the Agency coup in Saigon on November 1, Starnes twice more launched savage attacks on the organisation. America had been here before, insisted Starnes, and the lessons were plain. But the Castro precedent he instanced was a very different story from the fairy tale version propagated at the time by the New Left , and mainstream historians ever since. Starnes refused to forget an inconvenient fact: Castro was armed, financed, and propagandised for, and by, the CIA. And, not content with installing him in Havana, the Agency had then covered Castro’s back for sufficient time to permit the “revolution’s” turn to the left, the turn that sucked the Soviet Union in, and brought the Cold War to within ninety miles of America’s shores – the very object of the exercise for the CIA, and the nation’s military-industrial complex. It was the perfect rejoinder to Eisenhower’s “crusade” for détente.

Sections of the US elite had supported ostensibly “revolutionary” insurrections throughout the nineteenth century. Between 1840 and 1852, “American filibusterers, devoted to the slave system, aided Cuban risings against Spain. President Fillmore issued a proclamation forbidding the organization” of such “expeditions on American soil and ordered the civil, naval, and military authorities at the ports of New York and New Orleans to prevent” them from sailing. Kennedy was to face the same difficulty in 1962-63 with the support of Cuban exile raiders by, most notably, Henry Luce and his Time-Life empire.

The United States government later adopted the tactic officially, supporting or fomenting “revolutions” in Hawaii, Panama, and Nicaragua. On the eve of the First World War, the US, in a fight for Standard Oil to wrest control Mexican oil from Britain, the waning world hegemon, organised the Madero revolt against Diaz; and later backed Pancho Villa against Huerta. The propaganda campaign for Villa saw him lionised in Hollywood. The father of William F. Buckley, the CIA officer who founded the National Review, was involved in an attempt to overthrow the Mexican government – again, for reasons of petropolitik – in the late 1920s.

In the immediate post-war period, genuine Cuban leftists, mostly notably in the trade unions, were systematically murdered or driven into exile. The campaign was exposed at the time .In November 1946, Hoy, the then paper of the Cuban Confederation of Labour (CTC), ran a photostat of two letters, the second of which, from Francesco Aguire to the AFL’s man in Chile, Bernardo Ibanez, dealt with the splitting of Latin American trade unions and a planned campaign to assassinate “anti-Yankee” labour leaders. “Some of Cuba’s outstanding labour leaders were assassinated in that period and a plot to kill Lazaro Pena, the head of the CTC, was uncovered.” The result, in Cuba, as elsewhere, was to create opportunities for the production and insertion of simulacrums of genuine leftists. Into this breach stepped a Jesuit-educated Catholic rightist called Fidel Castro. In January 1948, a Communist leader of the sugar workers, Jesus Larrondo, was shot dead by an army captain in Manzanillo. Among the mourners at the ensuing funeral was, on cue, the enduringly unmolested Fidel.

A “hidden hand” recurs so frequently in Castro’s rise to power as to render mainstream accounts silly. In April 1948, Castro participated in a pseudo-Communist revolt in Colombia launched in ostensible response to the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. According to a conservative Colombian paper, Castro and the rest of the Cuban delegation were quietly evacuated from the country by the Cuban embassy.

Among the US Embassy staff in Bogota at the time was Roy Rubottom , who subsequently reappeared in the Sierra Maestra bringing succour to Castro in 1957. Rubottom was instrumental in organising a briefing for a newly arrived US Ambassador at the hands of Herbert Matthews, the leading, though by no means sole , propagandist for Castro in the pages of the New York Times. One veteran of Central American politics – and at least one CIA coup attempt, in 1954, opposed by the then US Ambassador – went so far as to describe Castro as a “fabrication” of the US press, which had “sold him to Latin America.” The Agency’s effective control of both right and left-wing Castro publicists is neatly conveyed by two figures, Hal Hendrix, and Jules Dubois. The latter was an asset , while the former gives every evidence of being a career intelligence officer.

Captured in the aftermath of the militarily stupid, but profile-raising coup attempt of July 1953, Castro was not executed on the spot because he fell into the hands of “a humane officer who ignored orders to summarily execute prisoners.” The same Batista regime that ordered the summary execution of the other prisoners then acted in character by “unexpectedly” releasing Castro into exile a mere fifteen months later.

In 1956, in response to pressure from Batista, and as prelude to deportation back to Cuba, the Mexican government ordered the arrest of Castro and his 26 July Movement. Again the “hidden hand” – the CIA’s – intervened to safeguard Castro. “Details of the deal between Castro’s group and the Mexicans remain unclear,” wrote one British obituarist of a former Mexican secret police chief, Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, who reportedly brokered the deal, but what is clear is that the seemingly unlikely friendship between the interrogator from the fanatically anti-Communist DFS – which in the 1970s ran a murderous anti-leftist death squad, the Brigada Blanca - and Castro, endured: “Guttierez visited Havana on many occasions, and when Casto attended the 1988 inauguration of President Carlos Salinas, he was personally attended by his former jailer. The two men even travelled to Tuxpan, in Veracruz, for a memorial ceremony at the spot where the revolutionaries embarked for Cuba.” The same obituarist, writing this time of Arturo Durazo, the DFS member who oversaw the investigation of Castro and his group, wrote vaguely of “political pressure” for the group’s release. That Carlos Prio, the multimillionaire ex-President of Cuba and acknowledged financier of the 26th July Movement, wrote an open letter to the Mexican President in support of Castro is not at issue . What is is the sufficiency of this source in securing Castro’s release.

With Castro and his motley band safely restored to Cuban soil in December 1956, CIA money soon flooded in. Between “October or November 1957 and the middle of 1958, the CIA delivered no less than fifty thousand dollars to a half-dozen or more key members of the 26th July Movement in Santiago.” The funds were “handled by Robert D. Wiecha, a CIA case officer …who served in Santiago from September 1957 to June 1959.” In mid-October 1958, a senior figure within the 26th July Movement wrote to Castro detailing the extent of the CIA support in the US Embassy in Havana, and quality of the information that support gave: “I have been in contact with people close to the embassy. These contacts have told me that people who are on our side – but who do not appear to – have had conversations with the ambassador himself. I think this is the best possible, since we are kept up-to-date about everything happening there and of all the possible U.S. plans…” New York Times reporter Tad Szulc knew of this support in 1959, but disclosed it only in 1986. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA undertook a limited hang-out, conceding to a few, favoured mouthpieces that, yes, there had been some limited supply of arms in this period, but from an “ex-“CIA man, Sam Cummings, whose Interarmco was a private venture. Cummings had reportedly supplied the arms used by the Agency’s Guatemalan proxies to overthrow the Arbenz government in 1954.

In his testimony before a Senate Sub-committee on 30 August 1960, Earl T. Smith, the US Ambassador to Cuba from June 1957 to January 1959, complained of precisely this overt, and unbending CIA support within the Embassy for Castro. He drew this conclusion from his bitter experience at the hands of the Agency: “There is no advantage to the United States in sending an Ambassador to a country if the CIA representatives there act on their own and take an opposite position.” Among Ambassador Smith’s guests at the Embassy’s December 1957 Christmas party was a Senator from Massachusetts, whom Smith introduced as the man “who may very well be our next President.”

Castro has long been fond of boasting of the number of coup and assassination attempts he has allegedly survived. Almost as fond, indeed, as the CIA has been in confessing its many failures. On the 46th anniversary of his coming to power, readers of one British broadsheet were solemnly informed that the “Cuban Ministry of the Interior has investigated 637 assassination attempts.” And yet the same leader has always been renowned as one of the most accessible rulers in the world, and thus “an easy target for assassination. Yet,” mystifyingly, “no public attempt was ever made against him anywhere.”

The CIA had a variety of purposes in mind for revolutionary Cuba. A key intention was to use Cuba as the launch pad and pretext for a series of “revolutionary” movements throughout Latin America that would in turn “compel” CIA intervention in the unfortunate countries concerned. The Caribbean, Central and Latin America would thus be remade in the desired US image, the region’s reformist and nationalist governments alike destroyed in favour of murderous militarised oligarchies and US finance. Castro’s government was to arrest previously supportive CIA men engaged in precisely such activity – in this early instance, against the government of Nicaragua – no later than April 1959. Sihanouk offered a typically shrewd Asian encapsulation: “All the efforts of the CIA were aimed at implanting an armed political opposition inside the country so that we would have to beg for American arms to keep order…”

The Bay of Pigs operation was at once a self-sabotaged trap and a smokescreen: the real CIA action in late April 1961 was against De Gaulle. Even elements of the wretchedly timid and censored British press were stirred to a muted observation or two.

CIA operations in Europe encountered opposition from Kennedy-appointed Ambassadors. In the summer of 1962, the left-wing Greek nationalist, Andreas Papandreou flew to Washington to protest at the Agency’s role in, among other dark adventures, fixing the October 1961 election. The President was in Florida, so Papandreou had to make do with Carl Kaysen. The protest, in conjunction with the findings of Henry Labouisse, appointed by Kennedy to the Athens ambassadorship earlier that year, resulted in the replacement of the CIA station chief, Laughlin Campbell, in August 1962. Somewhat ironically, Campbell was transferred to Paris.

Well, I'm open to the idea that Castro may have originally been a CIA puppet; he's supposedly survived too much. He's the roadrunner to the CIA's Willey Coyote. For example, I get more convinced every day that the Bay of Pigs was a trap for Kennedy--to discredit him, and to manipulate the Cubans into hating him and do the wet work on Nov 22, '63.

But, when did the supposed Castro/CIA alliance dissolve, if it ever did?

And why would Cuba be allowed to starve and crumble for decades if Castro was really the CIA's boy?

...

Prados' latest book is entitled Safe For Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA.

...

In the sixty years since the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency, presidents have continually harnessed the agency in service of their foreign policy goals. Three decades ago the "problem" of the CIA appeared to be the agency's status as a "rogue elephant"--unsupervised, tearing about the globe, acting at whim. By now it is evident that the agency and its cohorts were in fact responding to presidential orders. This seems to make it much more urgent to attempt to tell the story of exactly what the CIA has accomplished. What has the agency contributed toward the success of larger U.S. policy goals, and the global quest for democracy?

Perhaps the problem is more one of the "rogue" president than it is about an out-of-control Central Intelligence Agency....

....

[/indent].

In my opinion, Prados has written an important book. I do however, agree with one Amazon reviewer (although I would probably use the word unsatisfying rather than shallow) who wrote:

The secretive world of Covert Action makes a great subject. The problem is that the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) does not give authors such as John Prados access to many of the real secrets and they are left to sometimes write what they want to be true. Many of the Secret Wars of the CIA remain classified and Safe for Democracy is an instructive but shallow book.

http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Democracy-Secre...5689883-3398414

Isn't President Kennedy's war with the CIA, and their murder of him, a glaring and obvious exception to Prados' rule?

Here is the George HW Bush quote from today's all network televised eulogy for Gerald Ford, from CNN transcripts:

Why? Because Gerry Ford put his name on it and Gerry Ford's word was always good."

Does Junior realize that Ford was against the Iraq War? If Gerry Ford put his name

on his position against the war, is Bush agreeing with him, because ole Gerry's word

was always good? One of the more comical events of this five day marathon was

a dedication to "The Character of Gerald Ford." Character? The man lied about JFK

evidence, altered evidence, and should've been given a prison term for doing so. He's

in a league with Arlen Specter.

Good bye Gerald Ford !!!

Bill C

Well on this "national day of mourning," when the "character" of Gerald Ford is being evaluated, I thought it proper to quote Joachim Joesten, from his book "Gerald Ford: Coverup Artist Par Excellence: How he Misused his Power and Prestige." It was written in 1974, while Ford was President.

"Gerald Ford - The number one accessory after the fact in the assassination of President Kennedy.

No living person did more to conceal the true facts of the Kennedy assassination, to pervert and distort the evidence in the case, to shield the actual murderers by deliberately pointing the accusing finger in the wrong direction and generally to make sure that injustice prevailed than did the man who is now President of the United States, not by the people's choice but by the grace of the Establishment he had served so well - Gerald Ford. Of all the countless accessories after the fact who took part in the most infamous coverup in American history - one that makes Watergate look like innocent child's play - Ford was the most active, the most blatant and the most dishonest."

Amen. Give the devil his due.

12/29/06

Ford Told Reporter Friendship With Nixon Affected Pardon

Former President Ford once called himself Richard Nixon's only real friend.

Now audiotapes reveal that the friendship between the two former presidents was even closer than once thought, and that friendship played a role in Ford's decision to give Nixon a blanket pardon in the Watergate scandal.

These new tapes give insight into why Nixon chose Ford to be vice president and why Ford pardoned Nixon. They come on top of revelations Thursday that Ford was very much against the Iraq War even though he publicly defended it.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos spoke with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who revealed Ford's true feelings about Iraq, about the former president's private personality versus his public one.

Woodward said he learned from Ford's private files and Nixon tapes that had not previously come to public attention that Ford and Nixon were extremely close friends.

A phone call from Nixon to Ford reveals the depth of their relationship.

Ford: Hello?

Nixon: Just wanted to express my appreciation for your note.

Ford: Anytime you want me to do anything under any circumstances. ... You give me a call.

Ford Stood by Nixon's Side

Most of the literature about Ford and Nixon suggests that when Nixon chose Ford to be his vice president, the two didn't know each other all that well -- Nixon made his choice based on the assumption that Ford was certain to get confirmed.

"That's what's in the historical record. That's what I thought quite frankly," Woodward said. "But then when you listen to these tapes. ... There's one moment where Nixon is almost begging Ford to go get support from Congress during Watergate. ... He literally says to Nixon, 'We will support you morning, noon and night.'"

Nixon: Tell the guys. ... To get off their ass and start fighting back.

Ford: You've got a hell of a lot of friends up here, both Republican and Democrat, and don't worry about anyone being sunshine soldiers or summer patriots.

Ford pardoned Nixon amid great controversy in 1974. At the time he said he did it to move the country forward, but Woodward believes friendship played a role, too.

"There was a personal element in pardoning Nixon. He felt he was lifting some sort of stigma," Woodward said.

In fact, that's exactly what Ford told Woodward in an interview.

"I looked upon him as my personal friend, and I always treasured our relationship," Ford said. "And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon. ... I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma."

Copyright � 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

Gee, here I thought a president took an oath to uphold the constitution, not to help criminal pals avoid prison.

...It involves an alleged Castro plot to kill Kennedy in Ireland.

So this could be yet another flurry of disinformation?

Total speculation here: Could be timed to distract from the Gerald Ford role in the cover-ups.

I highly recommend Kathryn S. Olmsted's book, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (1996). She teaches at the University of California and is currently writing a book called Governing Conspiracies: Conspiracy Theories about the U.S. Government from World War I to the present. I think I will ask her to join the forum. This is what she has to say about Ford and the Rockefeller Commission.

Beyond his ideological reasons for opposing a CIA investigation, Ford was also influenced by partisan and institutional considerations. Hersh's initial stories had accused Richard Nixon's CIA of domestic spying - not Lyndon Johnson's CIA or John Kennedy's CIA. If, indeed, the improprieties took place on the Republicans' watch, then too much attention to these charges could hasten the GOP's post-Watergate slide and boost the careers of crusading Democrats. Ford also opposed wide-ranging investigations because he felt responsible for protecting the presidency. "I was absolutely dedicated to doing whatever I could to restore the rightful prerogatives of the presidency under the constitutional system," he recalls. His aides list Ford's renewal of presidential power after Watergate as one of the greatest achievements of his administration. This lifelong conservative believed that he had a duty to control the congressional investigators and restore the honor of his new office.

Within days of Hersh's first story, Ford's aides recommended that he set up an executive branch investigative commission to avoid "finding ourselves whipsawed by prolonged Congressional hearings." In a draft memo to the president written on 27 December, Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney explained that the president had several reasons to establish such a commission: to avoid being put on the defensive, to minimize "damage" to the CIA, to head off "Congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch," to demonstrate presidential leadership, and to reestablish Americans' faith in their government.

Ford's aides cautioned that this commission, formally called the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, must not appear to be "a 'kept' body designed to whitewash the problem." But Ford apparently did not follow this advice. His choice for chairman, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, had served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which monitored the CIA. Members Erwin Griswold, Lane Kirkland, Douglas Dillon, and Ronald Reagan had all been privy to CIA secrets in the past or noted for their strong support of governmental secrecy.

In a revealing move, the president also appointed General Lyman Lemnitzer, the same chairman of the Joint Chiefs whose office in 1962 had been charged by Congressman Jerry Ford with a "totalitarian" attempt to suppress information.

...

Furthermore, Lemnitzer is the guy President Kennedy apparently canned over the Operation Northwoods plans which were finally implemented on 911:

"In March 1962, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the Operation Northwoods plan to President John Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The plan was rejected. Lemnitzer then sought to destroy all evidence of the plan. [baltimore Sun, 4/24/2001; ABC News, 5/1/2001] Lemnitzer was replaced a few months later, but the Joint Chiefs continued to plan “pretext” operations at least through 1963. [ABC News, 5/1/2001] One suggestion in the plan was to create a remote-controlled drone duplicate of a real civilian aircraft. The real aircraft would be loaded with “selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases,” and then take off with the drone duplicate simultaneously taking off near by. The aircraft with passengers would secretly land at a US military base while the drone continues along the other plane’s flight path. The drone would then be destroyed over Cuba in a way that places the blame on Cuban fighter aircraft. [Harper's, 7/1/2001] Bamford says, “Here we are, 40 years afterward, and it’s only now coming out. You just wonder what is going to be exposed 40 years from now.” [insight, 7/30/2001] Some 9/11 skeptics will claim that the 9/11 attacks could have been orchestrated by elements of the US government, and see Northwoods as an example of how top US officials could hatch such a plot. [Oakland Tribune, 3/27/2004]"

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity....an_l._lemnitzer

CNN is reporting Gerald Ford has died. The media is determined to remember him in the best possible light.

He was a loyal foot soldier for the regime.

Maybe they'll name the next war after him or something.

And here's a little something I like to call... a little something.

Song by someone who used to be my favorite artist, until he sold his anthem as a commercial...

Anyways, without further ado...

Christmas In Washington Lyrics

by Steve Earle

It's Christmastime in Washington

The Democrats rehearsed

Gettin' into gear for four more years

Things not gettin' worse

The Republicans drink whiskey neat

And thanked their lucky stars

They said, 'He cannot seek another term

They'll be no more FDRs'

I sat home in Tennessee

Staring at the screen

With an uneasy feeling in my chest

And I'm wonderin' what it means

Chorus:

So come back Woody Guthrie

Come back to us now

Tear your eyes from paradise

And rise again somehow

If you run into Jesus

Maybe he can help you out

Come back Woody Guthrie to us now

I followed in your footsteps once

Back in my travelin' days

Somewhere I failed to find your trail

Now I'm stumblin' through the haze

But there's killers on the highway now

And a man can't get around

So I sold my soul for wheels that roll

Now I'm stuck here in this town

Chorus

There's foxes in the hen house

Cows out in the corn

The unions have been busted

Their proud red banners torn

To listen to the radio

You'd think that all was well

But you and me and Cisco know

It's going straight to hell

So come back, Emma Goldman

Rise up, old Joe Hill

The barracades are goin' up

They cannot break our will

Come back to us, Malcolm X

And Martin Luther King

We're marching into Selma

As the bells of freedom ring

Chorus

[Amen]

...

Personally, after all that's been said in this thread, I don't give a damn what you think, anymore. I happened to be sorry and still grieving for what was allowed to occur, and for the events that culminated in the escalation of a totally deceitful and unneccessary war perpetrated on the citizens of this country by those Wall Street profiteers/privateers, for the intended purpose of fullfilling their profit margins that equated body counts with the bottom line. Included in my grief are those who lost their lives, their minds, friends, former boyfriends, my patients at the V.A., and U.C.L.A. affiliated medical centers, and your very own cousin, and brother, notwithstanding.

I have nothing more to say on this thread.

Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated Major General in Marine Corps history, and two time recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor:

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm

Also see General Butler's book "War is a Racket"--

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Anti-War-...TF8&s=books

I'm starting to think that it's not terribly important whether or not President Kennedy bypassed the Federal Reserve bank to print US treasury notes. I mean, it's interesting, and the actual notes would be great metaphors (and evidence), but it already seems clear enough that he was at odds with the banking establishment.

I'm reading "Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency." http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battling-Wall-Stre...y/dp/1879823101

It's remarkable. Totally bypasses the subject of which drooling thug aimed a gun at the President, and points to the people who likely bought the bullets.

Here's a passage, Pg 73 on:

"During Kennedy's presidency, David Rockefeller was emerging as one of the leaders of the financial community and of the upper class in general. He was president of Chase Manhattan Bank--in line to become its chief executive--and he was vice-president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In July of 1962, Life magazine featured an exchange of letters between David Rockefeller and President Kennedy. In this public and somewhat polite airing of differences, Rockefeller offered praise for some of Kennedy's actions, but he ultimately located the source of the country's economic problems in the president's policies. Claiming to reflect the concerns of bankers in the U.S. and abroad, Rockefeller advised the president to make a "vigorous effort" to control government spending and to balance the budget. He also suggested to Kennedy that interest rates were being kept too low and too much money was being injected into the economy. In his reply, Kennedy either rejected or ignored these arguments.

Rockefeller's concern for what he called "fiscal responsibility" was also expressed in a report issued around this time by another influential group with which Rockefeller was involved. This was the Committee for Economic Development, which was created in the early 1940s and largely made of of leaders from the major non-financial corporations in the U.S., including two of the directors of Time [magazine].

...

The commission wanted to make free trade and private initiative central to U.S. foreign policy.

...

When David Rockefeller ventured to publicly condemn Kennedy's policies he was adding his personal prestige to the campaign run by Morgan-Rockefeller related media. These interests were also represented within the Kennedy administration, and they attempted to steer Kennedy in certain directions, with little success.

As noted above, there was a clear split within the Kennedy administration over economic policy. The Kennedy group, which included Walter Heller and FDR Jr., opposed the Dillon-Federal Reserve group, which spoke for the major banks. Dillon was a close associate of David Rockefeller's and a director of the Chase Manhattan Bank. The Federal Reserve, particularly the New York regional bank, has always been tightly interconnected with Morgan and Rockefeller banking. William McChesney Martin, the Fed's chairman, would become supervisor of the Rockefeller family's trust fund.

...

In these conflicts, as well as those discussed earlier, Kennedy was coming up against those people variously referred to as the East Coast Establishment, Wall Street, finance capital, the higher circles, etc. The label is not important. In the end they all refer to Morgan interests, the Rockefellers, and the many other wealthy and influential families allied with them (including Harriman, Cabot, Lodge, Dillon, Bundy).

Kennedy's ideas about the responsibilities of the presidency, his attitude about economic progress and the role of the federal government in achieving that progress, his view of foreign aid and foreign policy, and his recommendations and actions in a variety of specific areas disrupted or threatened to disrupt established order. In that established order, in place for most of the century, major government decisions were to serve or at least not disrupt the privately organized hierarchy. Many in the upper levels of this hierarchy, most emphatically those in and around Morgan interests, were--and still are--involved in a relationship with the British establishment. Their ideas about the world are similar to, if not direct imitations of, those of that older British elite rooted in inherited wealth and titles and organized in the modern world around control of finance and raw materials.

In this world view, the Anglo-American upper class should maintain its global position by suppressing progress elsewhere and by preventing or containing disruptive changes within England and the United States. Important decision-making power should be kept in private hands, or, if necessary, in government agencies under their influence. From this perspective, Kennedy must have looked like a wild man. Economic growth, scientific and technological progress, expanding opportunity, development in the Third World, and social justice were the goals for Kennedy, not preservation of the class structure. Not only were the government policies he undertook intended to further this disruptive agenda; in many specific instances those policies meant that decision-making power was being taken over by the author of that agenda. Even where Kennedy's efforts only meant changes in the rules, these changes were intended to alter investment patterns and tax burdens in a way not in tune with upper-class interests.

Seen in this context, the rhetoric of the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Life and Newsweek makes sense. Also understandable is the unusual spectacle of a private establishment figure such as David Rockefeller going public to personally challenge the president. Rockefeller's Life magazine admonishment was polite; the polemics elsewhere were not. To label a popular president a cultist, a reactionary, a threat to freedom, was to engage in serious conflict with the democratically elected leader of the Republic. It suggested great anger, and it indicated a frustration produced by Kennedy's failure to heed the criticism.

President Kennedy's refusal to surrender to the pressures from such powerful forces was a demonstration of courage. In discussing the meaning of courage Kennedy said:

"A man does what he must--in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures--and that is the basis of all human morality."

His repeated efforts on behalf of economic progress and justice demonstrated the highest form of morality."

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I would love to see those letters exchanged between Rockefeller and the President, and the Committee for Economic Development report. Anyone got a lead on them?

When the theory that the FED got rid of JFK because of Executive Order 11110 has arisen in the past, I have posted this link to an article by economics professor Edward Flaherty.

The article seems to thoroughly debunk this theory, but I am no banker and know nothing about economics. If the article is wrong, I would appreciate someone pointing out why, and I will stop posting it whenever this subject arises.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senat.../flaherty9.html

Ron, I have no way of knowing if Edward Flaherty is a credible expert or some guy with an agenda. He seems to be very much into discrediting critics of the Federal Reserve. If you google his name you'll see what I mean.

He may be right; like you I don't have the expertise about economics to judge. But I wouldn't accept Flaherty's version without question. He could be another McAdams for all I know.

If I hear ONE more person attempt to argue that JFK was killed by "rogue elements of the CIA" I am going to f*****g scream. "Rogue elements" do not take out the Commander -in- chief. I doubt that "rogue elements" actually do much of consequence.

I wonder where this idea even originated. (Probably Langley central) But it has always brought to my mind Tony Summers, who Jim Garrison called "One of the CIA's more accommodating whores". For those lamebrains who perpetuate this assinine myth I can only agree with the DA.

Dawn

I'm pretty tired of hearing it too.

I guess it's the CIA apologists' come-back when confronted with the fact that the CIA killed President Kennedy. It's getting harder and harder to deny the CIA's role, so they try to muddy the water with some murky inane claim about amok agents. Bullxxxx. The CIA killed the President on behalf of their business clients and/or their own business interests. You know, to keep the world safe for capitalism.

http://cgi.ebay.com/5-00-note-1963-with-Re...bayphotohosting

...

This is not a federal reserve note, correct?

Sorry to be obtuse, I'm just sort of incredulous.

This is proof that Kennedy had US treasury notes printed, right?

I read somewhere that President Kennedy's executive order to print US notes was never actually reversed by subsequent white house occupants, just not utilized. Now I don't recall where I read it. But the point is, maybe not every executive order has to be reversed, they can just be ignored (?) That might partly explain the lack of subsequent paper trail.

...

I'd argue HL Hunt as the top Evil-Rich-Perp, since he owned a building in Dealey Plaza, and

could wield influence with Dallas law enforcement.

...

Cliff, Do you know which building HL Hunt owned in Dealey Plaza? Do the Hunts still own it?

Thanks.