Anthony Thorne

The log book stuff was great. I found it fascinating, but for people who haven't been immersed in much of the evidence, it must be mind-blowing. They'd be encountering stuff like the Chicago plot, the intelligence interest in Oswald, the problems with the autopsy, and numerous other points for the first time. I'm not surprised it's stirring up interest.

The incidental stuff is great too. Oswald unhappily describes how he's basically being set up while in the Dallas Police Station, and an unsympathetic cop says "That's right..", and the film subtitles the cop's comment so we don't miss it. There are many dozens of moments like that, where the film adds a clip or a subtitle to emphasise a point, and I can only assume newcomers will be taking it all in and seeing for the first time how the whole picture fits together.

Final thought for the moment - one of the really great things the film does is to repeatedly emphasise the HSCA and (in particular) the ARRB in a way that viewers will remember what those groups did, when they did it, and will remember the acronyms. I've seen my friend David Richardson have conversations with people locally about the JFK assassination, and when they shrug and assert they don't believe in a conspiracy, Dave has said, what about those document releases in the 90's. The person he's talking to then goes, "What documents?", and Dave will say, if you haven't looked at the case at all, why do you have an opinion about it? But this is better and pretty much everyone watching the series will now remember the ARRB, be aware of what they dug up, and be aware of its importance. So I think it was great for Oliver to begin the entire series mentioning the new enquiries, mentioning the HSCA and ARRB, showing clips of the legislation passing in congress that authorised it, and showing actual documents, just so people get really strongly that this isn't something made up out of thin air. The series does many wonderful things but I think that whole initiative is particularly well done, and very helpful in pushing forward the real story about the case.

DocPlay are really pushing it hard. Anyone who uses the service will be seeing this front and centre.

Episode 3 is great and there's a wonderful stretch detailing JFK's initiatives in Latin America, with outstanding footage of Jackie giving a foreign-language speech to an appreciative crowd. Top stuff on the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict,LeMay and the missile crisis, and other elements of JFK's foreign policy. The brief excerpts of archival footage and dialogue we get are really well chosen, and LeMay returns at the end of the episode for a powerful finale. 

They don't rank them numerically, but it's now in the prime spot under trending, and the first thing you see when you open the page. So people are watching.

Channel 9 is our biggest mainstream network in the country, and Today is probably the biggest show on it. It’s the dead centre of the mainstream establishment media here - the morning equivalent of going prime time on 60 Minutes.

They do tend to run things quick though, so I’m not surprised Jim only had four questions. But it’s great news he and and the series are getting exposure. If the series was trending before, it should really take off now.

JFK: DESTINY BETRAYED is now trending on the DocPlay streaming channel here in Australia. When I first started watching it, I had to search the title to find it. It's now very prominent on the main page as one of their top highlighted series. I'm assuming this is because word of mouth is spreading and more people are watching it. Good news.

Episode 2 ends with Oswald's murder, and the abundance of evidence indicating that Oswald was innocent. Powerful viewing, will begin episode 3 in the next day or two.

That’s a powerful moment in the longer version.

I’ll just mention, that whole section as described by Jim right above is narrated by Donald Sutherland. There’s quite a bit more of his narration in the longer version of the film and it works extremely well.

It's really good. Watching Matt Taibbi's enthusiasm for the film in his interview with Oliver Stone this morning - Stone mentions the long version, Taibbi perks up and immediately asks, "Oh, are you going to release that 4 hour version?" - I think a lot of people will encounter all that detail for the first time when they watch it. Harold Weisberg gets a mention in Episode 1, but I don't think he's in the shorter version. But I also like that short version of the movie and found it to be powerful. When both versions are finally out there, viewers can pick whichever one they want, and some will probably start with the shorter cut and then move on to the longer one.

The opening titles are different, but again really powerful, and we get the iconic 'conspirators' theme from the film JFK - the ticking, percussive drum and the growing sense of drama - with carefully chosen footage of Kennedy, Dulles, the military, the assassination and the aftermath. And you get a feel for what the whole story is, and who was behind the murder, just from the titles. It's very affecting and really great. I'm a big fan of this series so far.

I'll update here as I make my way through the series. I'm watching the uncut series on Docplay here in Australia.

From the get go, this is different to JFK: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Episode one begins with Oliver Stone walking Dealey Plaza, talking about the impact his original film JFK had back on first release. We hear John William's main theme (something only briefly heard in the shorter version). The powerful opening montage is gone - perhaps it will appear later in the series. Instead, we go straight into a discussion of RFK's reaction to JFK's death, and the founding of the Warren Commission. There are longer sections on the Rockefeller Commission, the Zapruder Film, the Congo, longer interviews (including more John Newman) and a lot of other stuff. And some things that were present in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS are here in longer form as well.

I really like the visual timeline that appears on the left-hand side of the screen, vertically showing dates from the 60's into the 70's and 80's and onwards, so people can immediately see when the HSCA, the ARRB and other events occurred without getting lost. It's clever and should help relative newcomers quite a bit.

Episode 2 opens with the autopsy. I'll post more thoughts as I watch the later episodes. It's all as polished as the single-film version, but walks at a more measured pace and makes its points with greater emphasis and impact. I think the reaction to this long version will be very strong when it becomes more widely seen. Well done Oliver and Jim.

I’ve started a new day job so sadly don’t have time to write a full review of it - I’d thought of doing one - but within the next week or thereabouts, I’ll post thoughts on the board here about the uncut JFK: DESTINY BETRAYED series, as the four part version is now streaming here. Two parts are already streaming, the final two episodes appear over the coming week or so.

Weiner started out in 1988 doing articles on the Pentagon's 'black budget', and did a book based on his articles, and won a Pulitzer from the book.

I'm assuming he didn't just wander into the Pentagon itself and start snooping around, digging through filing cabinets, peeking through windows. He presumably sourced his material by talking to Pentagon insiders.

Weiner then worked as a foreign correspondent for the NYT (1993 - 2009), and at one point was stationed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He'd again be talking to government and military reps. There was a war in Afghanistan going on for half that time, and probably covert operations going on for the other half.

Weiner then did books on the CIA and FBI. The FBI book focuses on that agencies 'secret intelligence operations', and again I'm presuming he didn't just wander the FBI corridors looking for stuff to write about. He would have again been speaking to FBI insiders. Same with his CIA book, which presumably had interviews to go along with his research.

Weiner won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for his writing. Do they normally go out of their way to reward people deeply critical of the national security state? They might, but I'm not sure they do. Maybe Chris Hedges. But Talbot never received a Pulizter nomination for BROTHERS or DEVIL'S CHESSBOARD. But some people in the establishment seem really happy with Weiner's work.

Jim responded just as I was writing this up, but you have to assume Weiner is one of the last guys you'd expect to see giving a fair write up on Stone's new documentary. 

That was a really good part of the film. I know three people who have watched it, have heard back from one already who was blown away. But I'm pretty sure the widespread release locally will awaken a lot of people to what is going on here.

I'll just note too - I didn't see the issue, but I think this might have appeared in a magazine-style supplement down here. The Australian usually prints their longer stories in one of those and gives it away with the newspaper.

If you Google search 'The Australian DiEugenio' and click on the first link that coms up, it seems to take you straight to the un-paywalled version. It's very good.

Again, I want to stress, this is appearing in one of the biggest newspapers in the country here. It's unprecedented.

Quote

 

NO STONE UNTURNED

Oliver Stone’s JFK documentary revisits America’s darkest day and demands answers.

By Helen Barlow

 

Oliver Stone has always been politically outspoken and at 75 he shows no signs of quietening down. During publicity for his latest project in Cannes earlier this year, the iconoclast director – and Oscar winner several times over – trained his ire on revered figures of both liberal and conservative persuasion, declining to moderate his scathing language even for a dead former Supreme Court justice.

Of course, he has always been anti-establishment. Although what is meant by “establishment” seems to be ever-shifting.

After his first Oscar for the prison drama Midnight Express, early directing glories featured Willem Dafoe starring as a Christ-like figure in the best picture Oscar winner Platoon, for which Stone also won for best director; Tom Cruise as a beleaguered Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July where Stone again won the best director Oscar, and Tommy Lee Jones in Heaven and Earth, the third in Stone’s Vietnam trilogy based on his experiences in Vietnam.

Then he moved on to examine another war in Salvador, eviscerated the financial sector in Wall Street where Michael Douglas delivered his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko, wrought an exceptional performance from Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors, and dealt with criticism for the ultra-violent Natural Born Killers, heavily revising Quentin Tarantino’s script much to Tarantino’s chagrin.

Stone’s greatest controversy though – at least until recently, where his defence of Russia and sympathy for Donald Trump have raised eyebrows (he told The Times the former president had been “picked on from day one”) – revolved around his 1991 movie JFK.

The epic political thriller, which was nominated for eight Oscars, examined the events leading up to president Kennedy’s assassination as viewed through the eyes of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner. Based in part on Garrison’s co-authored book On the Trail of the Assassins, the film in part reframed public perceptions of the assassination and kicked off another trilogy of films from Stone focusing on American Presidents. Anthony Hopkins left his indelible mark on Nixon, while Josh Brolin was exceptional as George W. Bush in W.

But if JFK was decried by a critic as “the greatest lie Hollywood ever told”, with his new documentary series, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, Stone is doubling down.

With the growing appeal of ­superhero comic book cinema, Hollywood became less conducive to funding Stone’s decidedly adult and potentially inflammatory films. He’s turned increasingly to documentaries, most prominently delivering an astounding 2016 portrait of the exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden, and even interviewed Vladimir Putin over two years for a four-part 2017 series. He’d also made documentaries about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Now in the four-part series JFK: Destiny Betrayed, written by Jim DiEugenio, Stone has returned to re-examine the murder of president Kennedy. The series, which has its world premiere in Australia on November 22 – the 58th anniversary of Kennedy’s death – goes into extensive detail regarding information that has been unearthed as some – though, significantly not all – documents have been declassified and subsequently scrutinised in a raft of recent books.

It’s worth noting that these document dumps — first in the 1990s and then more recently in 2017 — have been attributed to the outcry that acc­ompanied Stone’s original film.

Moreover, it has been regular citizens who have trawled the papers, and painstakingly re-traced events to unearth new “findings” – the strong conclusion it all draws is that there were indeed two “shooters” when the 46-year-old president was assassinated while his limousine drove in that fateful ­parade in Dallas in 1963 and Lee Harvey Oswald took the fall.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Stone presented the material as a feature-length film, an edit of the series. He is now happy that we will see the material as a series as it provides more depth about Kennedy, the man.

Stone narrates with the help of Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland, who appeared in the original JFK film. The series starts as images of Kennedy’s funeral unfurl with Stone giving an introduction as he stands at Dealey Plaza where the assassination took place.

He explains how his 1991 film “tried to explore the mysteries that enshrouded this place that day; we also tried to explore the reasons why president Kennedy was killed. At the end of our film we alerted the public that almost 30 years after Kennedy’s assassination, tens of thousands of documents were still being kept secret (at the House Select Committee on Assassinations) about his murder and his policies.

“JFK created a year-long sensation in the media. Some quarters praised the film, others attacked it. But at the end of that unprecedented controversy, a new agent of government was formed. It was called the Assassination Records Review Board. The board went to work declassifying this immense amount of material, yet the public has not been made aware of what in fact constitutes a new factual record of who Kennedy was and the real circumstances. In this series, you will be informed for the first time what was in many of the most important of these files.

“We have to keep doing this because democracy and our freedom from fear dies when there is no longer trust between the people and their government.”

So why should people watch it? I ask Stone at Cannes. “I think it’s very important,” he responds. “America plays a dominant position in the world and has a controlling interest. I think the question, how did America get to where it is now? is answered in this movie. It’s up to people if they are interested in history or not. Some people will say, ‘What difference does it make? They killed him. I accept that. And you know, we’re into this new world and we have other leaders.’ But I’m interested in history and how this happened.”

Does the film prove that the CIA orchestrated Kennedy’s murder? “I think it’s implicit, but it’s not proven. It’s just, how do you do this? How do you move all these pieces around the board? You can see the extent of the planning in the documentary. You ask yourself who can bring in units, call off security or change parade routes? It’s a big deal to pull off an assassination. It’s a Black Op, it’s been done. And they did it. They did it abroad, they had training to do it. But they didn’t do such a great job. In many ways it was sloppy. There were a lot of mistakes.”

The Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination, he says was corrupt and covered over the cracks. The FBI was the main investigatory agency for the commission, and J Edgar Hoover “fed them what he wanted them to hear”.

“The evidence was so corrupt, we’re talking about ballistics, the trajectories, the rifle itself, the bullets, the fingerprints and the autopsy was a disgusting, disgusting mess. They were allowed to get away with that. They’ve gotten away with it for so long in so many other forms. Today that wouldn’t happen. We have too much information. The only thing they understood back then was to make it as confusing as possible. Researchers are still fighting with each other, which is distracting.”

Of course today everyone would be filming on their mobile phones. Back then the only visual evidence of the killing came from a Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder filming on a Super 8 camera. “The Zapruder film, no one will agree on that one. Was it altered? Or was it not altered? That goes on forever,” he sighs.

As the result of the declassifications there’s new evidence regarding Oswald. “We now know for sure that Oswald was not on the sixth floor and that he was involved with the CIA as an asset from 1958 till 1963 and that what he said was accurate. ‘I’m a patsy’. His behaviour after the assassination was so amazingly clear. I mean, anybody who assassinates a president for political reasons takes credit for it and is proud of what he did.”

After the release of the 1991 film, which Stone insists was based on “the facts as we knew them at that time” the circumstances around Kennedy’s death captured the public’s imagination.

“I was as surprised as everybody. I didn’t know that he was so loved. And I’m glad that we hit a nerve. But above all, it’s the evil of these government organisations that we hit. Boy, and they brought the attention, because by attacking me and the film, they brought more ­attention to the case.”

Stone insists that the idea that the CIA orchestrated Kennedy’s death is not just another conspiracy theory.

“That’s what they say. That’s CIA terminology. You know, that’s what they said from the early 1950s, that when we get attacked, we will say that the people attacking us are conspiracy theorists and make fun of them.”

One might imagine that Stone has been obsessed with Kennedy’s death. “No, Jim DiEugenio is obsessed. He’s the series’ writer and he’s a real researcher. He reads every document. He runs a website, he defends it and he attacks. He writes books and criticisms and I would call him obsessed. You have to be kind of an autodidact and he’s very good at that. His memory is very good. He remembers details. I’m just a passer-by, I’m a tourist.”

Unsurprisingly, the series was financed out of the UK. “If you’re attacking the American military, foreign policy, strategy and the CIA, you’re in trouble.”

Stone made Snowden in Germany. “We didn’t feel comfortable working in the US and we were ­financed by France and Germany essentially. The US did add some money at the end, but it was a small company.”

He concedes that the negative US response to the film weakened his ability to finance the JFK series. “I guess the American public doesn’t want to know. It’s like an ostrich, burying your head in the sand.”

In many ways, Stone was attracted to Kennedy as a subject because of his own early life experiences. “I was a teenager in a boarding school in Pennsylvania when president Kennedy was killed – and, like all the other students, I did not believe what I saw on TV,” he recalls.

“The world changed on that day. Who knew that my future would also involve Vietnam four years later?”

During his military service, Stone was injured several times. “A bullet penetrated my neck and only a few inches separated me from death. But I am still here. Fate helped shape my personality.”

Kennedy did too. Stone, having already made two anti-war Vietnam War films, eagerly immersed himself in mountains of research before making JFK.

“Kennedy actually went after peace and he made it happen. But in doing that, he alienated so many people. He was the last American president who really struggled for peace in the world … He also, of course, was looking for a peace with Cuba, which was a big problem for the United States.”

Notwithstanding those latent sympathies for Trump, Stone voted for Biden. “I think he’s a cold warrior from way back. He brings us a sense of calmness to this bad political situation. I was tired of Trump, but I do think he shook up things up. Still, his nuclear talk was insane. It made me very worried about his marbles. I mean, he would drop a nuclear bomb if he could get elected. This guy will not lose. He can’t lose in his mind. He’s unable to accept that he lost so is a fascinating character that way.”

Would he consider making a movie about Trump? “I think no,” he replies decisively. “I do think there will be somebody, you know the younger filmmakers. But it depends on what their take is. I hope it’s a mature one. Trump’s funny. I used him in a movie; he was briefly in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. He is not as important to me as Bush. You understand why I made W? W is about a man who was really an idiot.”

There’s that political outspokenness again.

But Stone is just warming up, and eventually he reaches full speed. “Snowden was a patriot. He did good for the country … I think ­Assange’s work with diplomatic ­cables to the United States when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was amazing.”

Back to Bush, who “destabilised the entire Middle East and made America the enemy of the world by saying, ‘You are either with us or against us’ ”.

“He polarised the world and he started this campaign against Russia too or he let the people around him start it.”

Then he’s onto Al Gore, whose election defeat was “a great mistake, a great loss and tragedy, because I do think he won the election. And I think it was stolen. That’s another thing. Another crime of Bush, by the way. Scalia put him in the presidency. That’s right, Scalia,” he repeats, referring to Justice Antonin Scalia who served as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. “Jesus, what a monster.”

And now it’s Hillary Clinton’s turn: “In my opinion, she’s a monster.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Stone didn’t vote Republican or Democrat at the 2016 election, opting for Jill Stein, a peace candidate. “A lot of people didn’t understand because they thought that you had to vote for Hillary because the Democrats had to be voted in. As secretary of state she did a lot of damage not only in invading Libya – and she gloated over that – but she started the whole conflict with Syria.

“She also set off this whole four-year bullshit about Russia-gate. The whole thing was coming from her. She was a bad loser.”

But all that’s in the past. What does Stone think is the biggest problem in the world at the moment? “Climate change, I think CO2. It’s more important than all this ideological conflict. We’re on a timetable where that is going to get worse and worse and worse. Countries have political differences and cultural differences and people argue and they go back and forth. We have to get to a fact-based scientific conclusion.”

Stone has been making the eco-documentary Starpower on the subject, together with scientists. “It includes all the methods of providing clean energy to the world. I’m not quite sure when it will come, out but we’re working very hard on it.”

At Cannes, Stone expressed the hope that the remaining JFK files would be released. Back in October 2017, then president Trump released 2800 previously classified files, announcing that he was looking into the rest, but backed down in the final hours, citing national security reasons. He did grant an extension and the deadline expired earlier this year.

It’s been said a group of private citizens are organising a lawsuit against the Biden administration to get the files released. Biden in turn said on October 22 that the remaining files “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 2022 – nearly 60 years after Kennedy’s assassination.

A statement from the President said the delay was “necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defence, intelligence operations, law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relations” and that this “outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure”.

Despite all the travesties of justice he feels have taken place in the US, Stone says he remains a patriot. “I went to school there, I was educated there. I served in Vietnam and I love my country. I just want to see it reform itself. It could be such a force for peace and co-existence, if they wanted it to be.”

The first episode of JFK: Destiny Betrayed world premieres on DocPlay on November 22 with further episodes screening on November 29, December 6 and December 13.

 

The Australian, Australia's oldest and most conservative daily newspaper, published a big story on the film.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/no-stone-unturned-in-jfk-destiny-betrayed/news-story/330649fe4edaf9884298519ab52c5852

The Australian is published by News Corp (ie Rupert Murdoch) but in Oz basically acts as the equivalent of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. It skews to an older readership, is probably not as conservative as Fox News (our version of that in Australia would be Sky News), and it's available pretty much everywhere and anywhere that newspapers are still sold. They never, ever cover conspiracy discussion in a fair and thoughtful way, so it's a major development that they're printing that story.

The four part series is now streaming on Docplay. The first episode has been released, episodes 2,3 and 4 are being released weekly. DocPlay has a free trial membership so in a week or two people will be able to join up for a trial and watch the series. I'm reading that DocPlay is viewable in Australia, NZ and the UK. Viewers in the USA might be able to join and watch by using a generic email address and signing in with a VPN, and putting their region as the UK or Oz or something.

The information in this show has never really been publicly discussed in Australia before, so I want to say thank you to Jim and to Oliver Stone for getting the series made. 

Docplay page on the series, where people can sign up and watch it.

https://www.docplay.com/shows/jfk-destiny-betrayed?gclid=Cj0KCQiAhf2MBhDNARIsAKXU5GQF6tQrCDmlAsah32_OE3C1YAiry152QKGhiTykwqLlVpqoV-oPxioaAs6VEALw_wcB

Australian announcement.

https://tvblackbox.com.au/page/2021/11/15/uncover-the-truth-in-oliver-stones-jfk-destiny-betrayed-on-streaming-platform-docplay/

Is the title down here JFK Through the Looking Glass, or JFK Destiny Betrayed? I'll look out for it today.

I have a PDF copy, which I'm told is possibly clearer than what was in the book.. Here's a blow-up of the text from April 30th 1963, which is quite small on the page in the print version. Very thoughtful analysis by Greg above.

It would be easier to judge the 1963 Lafitte volume if we could see the dozens of other volumes that he apparently had.

Just as an aside (and I'll dig up the source in a couple of weeks, have started a new day job) - 

My essay at the end grew out of efforts to have a look at the background of the GRCSW - the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest - which is cited in the volume. During that process, I dug up some annual reports from the GRCSW, including their mid-1963 report which listed the full membership, who ran it, who was on the board, who in Dallas had joined it etc. Clint Murchison was there, as were the owners of several Dallas banks, people from the military, the CEO's of various companies. It was a high-powered bunch. Some of the links that seemed of interest are now in the book, some were left out for reasons of space.

Lauriston Marshall from the GRCSW was a key point of interest for Leslie. From JFK Facts, Albarelli and Leslie both made comments on the subject in 2015 in this thread:

https://jfkfacts.org/more-on-oswalds-job/

Leslie noted in the thread,

Quote

 

The deMohrenschildt’s arrived late at Everett Glover’s home on February 22, 1963, and stayed only a short time. Unless there are records to prove otherwise it was at this gathering that the deMohrenschildts were introduced to Ruth Paine. And it was at this gathering that Ruth Paine first met Marina and Lee Oswald. Of note: during Ruth’s WC testimony, Albert Jenner never asks her about the deMohrenschildts, and there are only two references to Everett Glover; one with her commenting “and whose connection is known,” and the other to confirm Feb 22, 1963 as the date she first met the Oswalds in Dallas at “Everett’s” as noted in her diary. Michael Paine’s testimony indicates he was not present on the 22nd, but met the Oswalds later.

In essence, it was Lauriston Marshall’s friendship with Sam Ballen and Marshall’s separate friendship with Everett Glover that started the ball rolling. Ballen and Glover strengthened their friendship with one another and with the deM’s. The deM’s introduced Glover to Marina and Lee, then Glover introduced Marina and Lee to his friends, Ruth and Mike Paine. I see no link between the Paines and the deMohrenshildts without Everett Glover and Sam Ballen – and they met thru Lauriston Marshall of the science research center.

The fact that deMohrenschildt was out of the country from May, 1963 until after the assassination, and the manner in which he died on the eve of testimony before the HSCA strikes me as indication that in spite of being a vital pawn he should never have become a diversion in the investigation.

 

My essay expanded a little when we noticed that Lloyd Berkner, who helped run the GRCSW alongside Marshall, was a deep Pentagon/intelligence insider who had worked alongside Dulles for many years. Berkner's friends from Texas Instruments (a few of whom joined him at GRCSW) had worked with Berkner in the military (I think a branch of the Navy) during World War II. Berkner was a top level strategic advisor to Dulles, the Joint Chiefs, Pentagon brass, the works. When Paul Nitze was preparing major strategy documents, he'd run them past Berkner for approval. Leslie and I spent a couple of months running over the backgrounds of GRCSW figures, Berkner in particular, and there was a lot of eye-opening stuff that couldn't be squeezed into the final book, including some anecdotes that come to mind just as I'm typing this. Marshall's sister Betty is named at the beginning of my essay. She married Frederick Seitz, another GRCSW member who had similar ties to the Pentagon.

Anyway, when I sent Leslie the screenshot of the GRCSW members from 1963, she wrote back, "Five of those guys knew Otto Skorzeny". It might have been six. When I next chat with Leslie I'll ask her to elaborate on which ones they were. The whole GRCSW membership is of interest, and I'll post what we dug up about them down the track.

Leslie was also disappointed in the typos - the book was proof-read five times, but a few snuck in. 

Jim, if you have details of the Aussie show (date or channel or what show it will be) once they can be shared, please do.  Some friends and I down here in Melbourne will keep an eye out.

A Melbourne cinematographer friend of mine, David Richardson (no relation at all to Bob Richardson) watched the documentary this week. He thought it was stunning, and looked stunning. “Amazing - best doco on the subject by a mile.” He and I are both looking forward to the book and to the extended cut.

1960 article/essay on Jack Canon, who is cited in COUP. Posts here don't necessarily imply endorsement, etc etc

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP75-00001R000300470028-4.pdf

Thanks Vince.

A powerful moment from the opening montage in the movie.

Two men on live TV are listening to an interview with a woman in Dallas.

"Where did the shots come from?"

"The shots came from the hill."

A hand immediately attempts to reach towards the microphone, to take the woman off the air.

I'll post bits and pieces that popped up during the research process when time permits. Since my essay ends on a cliffhanger, some might find the following paragraph of interest. The removed portions of the essay carefully followed the paths of the war profiteers who were keeping a close eye on the spoils of victory following JFK's murder. As far as I can tell, this particular CIA group has been rarely, if ever, mentioned online.

Several members of the below group would join the Defense Science Board (DSB), and DSB/JASON member Richard Garwin would later be drafted to help reinforce the official story of JFK's murder.
 

Quote

 

In 1970, after working with John S. Foster Jr. for five years in the Department of Defense, Norman Augustine becomes the Vice President of LTV Missiles and Space Company. When Augustine returns to government in 1973, he joins the secretive Intelligence Research & Development Council, a group set up that year by the CIA as a guidance and advisory forum linking R&D figures from government with the intelligence community. The IR&D Council of the 1970’s - composed of high ranking military figures working alongside Sayre Stevens, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology - eventually sees its entire membership move into the most powerful positions of the armaments industry. IR&D Council members become Vice Presidents of System Planning Corporation, Texas Instruments, General Motors and Lockheed, and CEO’s of Hughes Aircraft and Lockheed. (23)

(23) IR&DC members in January 1974, DRAFT MINUTES OF THE 15 JANUARY 1974 IR&DC MEETING, January 31st, 1974, CIA-RDP80M01082A000200170008-8 , MEMBERSHIP ROSTER, March 6th 1975, CIA-RDP80M01133A000200040017-5 . David S.. Potter became a Vice President at General Motors. George H. Heilmeier became a Vice President at Texas Instruments. Walter B. LaBerge became Lockheed’s Vice President of Advanced Planning. Sayre Stevens became the executive Vice President of System Planning Corporation. Leslie C. Dirks became Vice President of Strategic Planning at Hughes Aircraft Company. Norman Augustine became the chairman and CEO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. H. Tyler Marcy was already IBM’s Director of Technology. Daniel O. Graham helped promote Reagan’s SDI initiative with GRCSW member Frederick Seitz.