Anthony Thorne

Okay thanks Larry, that does make sense. I’ll read again with that in mind.

Larry, great update with solid arguments throughout the chapter. When the final part is published I intend to return to the start and give it all a second read.

Speculation - you cite September ‘63 as being a reasonable estimate for when the plot to kill JFK really took off. As a guess, how much earlier, if at all, do you think the idea to do it might have been floated, before the wheels were put in motion?

Two hypothetical scenarios come to mind, both conjecture. The first, Harvey and Roselli spoke and made plans and talked to groups earlier in ‘63, without a consensus to move forward being made. Then, in September, when the events you cite occurred, a consensus was reached and the wheels began turning more quickly.

And a second possible scenario - certain aggrieved higher ups had knocked around the idea earlier than that. Then Harvey, in the loop, eventually went off and and made sure that whatever things needed to be ready were made ready, if needed, and in September the fuse was finally lit.

Conjecture is a nice way of phrasing me conjuring up fictional scenarios of what might have happened that year, or earlier, but I just wonder what your thoughts are on how far back the idea to murder JFK might have been considered - obviously privately - before they eventually did it

I can still log in and watch the conference videos, which is great. How do I download my digital copies? I can’t see a link on those pages to do so.

The interview with Angleton reminds me of footage I saw of Paul Nizte, Scheslinger and a few others from the late 70's. They came across as methodically spoken rationalists endlessly dwelling on the threat of the Soviets. Once you pictured the way their meetings must have gone, you could have a better idea of how they must have eventually reached certain ideas.

An Australian broadcasting outlet (I forget if it was TV or radio) asked Angleton about the Whitlam dismissal, and he again was quite cagey in his response. It'd be lovely if that withheld report on Angleton's activities ever saw the light of day.

I enjoyed the portions of all the talks that I heard (and David Boylan’s discussion noted above was really great) but I’m going to wait for the emailed link to come out to rewatch the presentations tonight or tomorrow.

The Facebook page was linked in one of the emails that was posted and there’s been a bit of discussion there already.

I’ve got my ticket number and watched a little of Joseph’s presentation (just before 5am here Melbourne time). I’ve sent a request to join the FB group too. But everything is working smoothly for me.

Just bought a last minute ticket, (including the later digital downloads). I’m assuming the ticket number is different to the invoice number I just received. Looking forward to getting it, and to watching the presentations.

Great work Rob and well done, I’m looking forward to reading it.

I think multiple viewpoints are useful. Keeps everyone on their toes. And if we’re not prepared to listen to those who disagree with us, why should they listen to us?

Even a disingenuous presentation can often be interesting, just from who is presenting it, and what they’re presenting. 

That’s great, thank you Larry, looking forward to it. I’m also letting a Melbourne friend know about the serialisation. I’ll likely have more questions as each chapter goes up.

Here we go. Peretz mentions that he knew Roche at Brandeis in this article.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/N Disk/New Republic The/Item 01.pdf
 

He also mentions how he became close to Max Lerner. Lerner was another Brandeis figure who was previously in the OSS.

Roche joined Brandeis in 1956 as a Professor (Politics), and moved up to become Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1958. Peretz graduated from Brandeis in 1959. So it’s quite likely that they would have crossed paths to some degree.

Later in the week I’ll do a more detailed post with links that fills in the gaps, and add the Epstein stuff I found. There’s a few more wrinkles to the story but it all leans in the direction I’ve been indicating over the past few posts.

Larry, I'm looking forward to reading that, it sounds fascinating.

I read SWHT years ago (an earlier edition) and a few months ago read NEXUS on my Kindle, which I greatly enjoyed. Out of all your writing, which volume do you think contains your thoughts on the why of the event, as opposed to the what/when/how/where? NEXUS was informative but I'm just wondering if you've ever summarised why you think Kennedy was killed. I think NEXUS contained some material along those lines but I read it before lockdown here in Melbourne and my memory is frankly a bit frazzled.

I’ll write more about Brandeis in a bit. If you rewind the clock and check the history of both the campus and the department Roche ran, you hit numerous OSS and CIA figures, including one - Herbert Marcuse - that openly wrote anti-Soviet propaganda in the 50’s for the CIA, and another - William L. Langer, Marcuse’s boss in the OSS - who worked to cultivate ties between the CIA and universities. Langer left the OSS, set up the Russian Institute at Columbia University, and gave Marcuse a fat scholarship to write a book on Soviet Marxism. Langer - who sat alongside Allen Dulles on various committees during and after the war - was running the Office of National Estimates at the CIA while Marcuse was writing his thesis. When Marcuse finished, he headed off to Brandeis, thanked Langer in the introduction to his book, and helped set up the department that Roche later ran. In the late 60’s, Marcuse had to cancel a European speaking tour when a German journalist accused him in an article of working for the CIA. By my count, around five or six guys from the OSS ended up teaching at Brandeis, which was set up a couple of years after the war. I Googled the background of one of the other OSS-to-Brandeis guys, and read that he was eventually put in charge of psychological warfare operations in Vietnam. These guys were presumably just a small part of Brandeis, which has been running successfully for more than seventy years, but you can kind of see how Jacob Cohen would have been welcome to join that department, spend fifty years out of the seventy attacking JFK assassination researchers, and teach a class saying that conspiracy theories about JFK’s murder were rubbish. Side note - Marcuse, who founded that department where Roche and Cohen later worked together, pops up in a reprinted article from the 70’s in Dick Russell’s recent book on the case. He drops by to visit another JFK assassination author, derides the guy’s theories, and then gives the guy a buck when he leaves to jokingly subscribe to his newsletter. 

Roche, both during and after his time at Brandeis, was a fanatical anti-communist and penned dozens of articles through the late 60’s and early 70’s defending the war. In the latter part of the 70’s, Roche wrote an article attacking JFK assassination researchers. A couple of months afterwards, Moyers produced a documentary interviewing CIA folk and anti-Castro Cubans, and used that documentary to push the ‘Castro did it’ theory. Roche then wrote another article, a weird one, like many of his pieces around then, stating that people shouldn’t watch the documentary as anything detailing the activities of the CIA was usually a big yawn. If so, why mention the documentary, John? Not long after this, Roche joined the Committee on the Present Danger and started writing articles for an obscure neocon/military publication, alongside contributors such as Richard Perle. Roche was a diverting writer with a witty turn of phrase, but as you scroll through his pieces chronologically, you begin to feel like you’re dealing with the academic version of Curtis LeMay.

Roche assisted Moyers during LBJ’s 1964 campaign against Goldwater - that’s the campaign where Moyers was later accused of using the FBI to engage in dirty tricks spying - and a memo from that era shows Roche passing letters to Moyers that Moyers would eventually pass on to the President. A resignation of a key advisor years later allowed Roche to take that advisor’s place and join the discussion and decision making process on the running of the Vietnam war. At one point, Roche is both sending LBJ letters on war strategy, and also writing the speeches that LBJ was delivering about the war in public. One LBJ biography I found implied that Roche was the key guy in government devising a response when Manchester’s DEATH OF A PRESIDENT caused ripples, and when Richard Russell had also made some comments that the government found unhelpful. A sub-chapter of Lance deHaven-Smith’s CONSPIRACY THEORY IN AMERICA discusses how Roche quickly inserted himself into the process of defending the Warren Commission and attacking ‘conspiracy theorists’ in the media. I’ll say more about Epstein in a future post as well, as the nature and background of his advisors at Harvard is now a bit clearer. 

In an interview, Roche emphasised how much he detested Bobby Kennedy, and noted how he’d been in near fistfights with RFK twice at opposite ends of the decade. In 1968, there’s a quote from him telling someone (I think Johnson) that MLK should be ‘destroyed’. The book with the quote continues, ‘of course, John Roche hated Robert Kennedy even more’.

On page 440 of Praise for a Future Generation, John Kelin records letters exchanged between Vincent Salandria and Sylvia Meagher. Salandria makes an observation to Meagher about what he believes is government interest in the case.

Quote

 

This note went unanswered, but Salandria soon followed it up. "May I have a final, final word?" he wrote. A man that both he and Sylvia had been in contact with nearly two years before had, in fact, been a government agent, he informed her. "This species apparently abounded in our work. If we ever talk again, and let me make it clear that I am always willing to talk to you, I will tell you what I learned and show you some supporting documents on this ugly subject."

This time Sylvia responded, and within just a few days. Salandria's declaration about a presumed agent among them was not surprising, she said. Salandria had accused so many: "Epstein, Thompson, Jacob Cohen, William Gurvich ... not unnaturally, then, the cry wolf may not raise any hackles even if a real one is finally in the chicken coop."

 

So Meagher is basically dismissive of Salandria's suspicions, and feels that Salandria has been crying wolf and accusing people with no justification.

One of the people Salandria had accused - Jacob Cohen - pops up periodically in Kelin's book, and is also noted in Jim's article at K&K. Here's Jim's reference to Cohen.

Quote

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1966, there was a debate arranged in Boston about the Warren Report. Epstein was invited to be a participant, but he declined the invitation. Vince Salandria did participate and his main opponent was a young scholar named Jacob Cohen. Cohen had presented an article defending the Commission in the July 11, 1966 issue of The Nation. To say this was an interesting event does not begin to describe its importance.

John Kelin describes Cohen in some more detail.

Quote

Cohen was the Yale professor who had published “The Vital Documents” in The Nation the previous summer. He had written a second article, “The Warren Commission Report And Its Critics,” which was in the then-current issue of Frontier magazine. He had also just appeared in a television discussion with Jones, Mark Lane, Leo Sauvage, and Harold Weisberg called “A Reexamination of the Warren Report.” His book, Honest Verdict, had not yet been published but was still being mentioned as a work-in-progress. Cohen was emerging as one of the most prominent defenders of the Warren Commission.

So I have two things to say about this, both of which are a prelude to info I'll be posting later about things that were evidently going on behind the scenes.

The first is, Cohen's career in defending the official story ran much longer than the period outlined in Kelin's book, and might be one of the longest in the entire field. Cohen dedicated the rest of his working life to defending the official story, and attacking critics of the Warren Commission. He taught a class on the JFK assassination - debunking 'conspiracies' - for more than 30 years, and appeared continually in articles on the case for nearly a half century. 

In November 1966, Cohen did the above noted article for Frontier magazine, The Warren Commission and its Critics.

https://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/History/WC_Period/Reactions_to_Warren_Report/Reactions_of_left/WCR_and_critics--Cohen/WCR_and_critics.html

In October 1975, Cohen wrote Conspiracy Fever for Commentary magazine.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/conspiracy-fever/

In November 1975, Cohen was cited as an expert in a NYT hit piece on Jim Garrison, written by James Phelan.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/23/archives/the-assassination-assassination.html

In June 1992, Cohen attacked Oliver Stone's JFK.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/yes-oswald-alone-killed-kennedy/

In November 1993, Cohen was cited as an expert in articles discussing the release of Posner's CASE CLOSED.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1993-11-22-0000001655-story.html

And in December 2013, again for Commentary magazine, Cohen attacked books on the assassination that had come out for the 50th anniversary. The article is paywalled, but according to a Google link, Jim's Reclaiming Parkland is one of the volumes.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jacob-cohen/will-we-never-be-free-of-the-kennedy-assassination/

Cohen, more than almost any other academic, had devoted his life to defending the Warren Commission, to protecting the official story, and to attacking researchers of the subject. He began doing this in 1966, and by all accounts was doing this when he retired from academic life a half century later in 2017.

The second point is, a clue as to why Cohen did what he did can be found by looking more carefully at his background. John Kelin describes Cohen as a 'Yale professor', but Cohen had left Yale in 1960, six years prior to the debate. From 1964, to 1968, Cohen was on leave of absence from teaching, and was serving on the staff of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). But prior to 1964, Cohen was at another academic institution. It was a place he'd spent the four years prior to his work with CORE, and it was a place he'd spend the next five decades at, after he finished his work with CORE.

When Cohen arrived at the institution I'm referring to in 1960, one person was the Dean of the Arts and Sciences Faculty there. This person had been running the Faculty since 1958, and continued to be the Dean of the Faculty for another year until 1961. He was the Dean when Cohen was hired, and continued to serve on the Faculty in various capacities until 1970.

So with that noted, I just want to detail what Cohen's onetime boss and later work associate was doing through the period that Cohen was first appearing in public as a critic of the Warren Commission. All the following are things that Cohen's Dean of the Arts and Science Faculty was doing through the years covered in John Kelin's book.

This person was also a fierce defender of the official story. He defended the Warren Commission in public, and attacked its critics. 

He was a member of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, alongside Virginia Prewitt and Hal Hendrix, both of whom had worked with David Atlee Phillips.

He served as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, and worked alongside Walt Rostow, acting as a consultant on Vietnam policy. He also personally drafted letters of advice to the President on the running of the war, and wrote speeches for President Johnson.

He maintained high level communications with the CIA. He asked for and received memorandums from George A. Carver, the CIA official who worked as head of the CIA's National Planning Task Force on Vietnam. When he visited Carver in person, memorandums about the visit were sent directly to Richard Helms.

He warned Lyndon Johnson that something should be done about critics of the Warren Commission, and sent a detailed memo to Johnson to that effect.

He sent a letter to the Times Literary Supplement attacking Warren Commission critics. His letter closely matched CIA Dispatch 1035-960, and what he wrote was later used as the basis for an early Time magazine article that defended the official story.

He returned to the subject of the assassination in articles throughout the 70's, and continued to attack researchers of the subject. In one instance, an article of his appeared carefully timed to match similar efforts from another figure from the Johnson administration.

All those things were done by the Dean of the Arts and Sciences Faculty from the institute where Cohen had moved to work after Yale, and where Cohen would ultimately spend the next half century working.

The institute where Cohen took up residence was Brandeis University, and the Dean of the Faculty at the time Cohen arrived was John P. Roche. Roche owed his career in the Johnson administration to Bill Moyers, who he'd known for some years prior, and who had recommended Roche for his position as an advisor to government. When Cohen appeared as a prominent critic, and ultimately debated Vincent Salandria, he likely had an important supporter in government - Roche. I'll have more to say about this, and about Brandeis University, in my next post.

Those blurbs are great. I’m sold. When’s the print edition of the book coming out?

That’s really fascinating, Larry, thank you. I’ll keep an eye on those details when I read the upcoming chapters.

Hi Larry, which section of the book do you think benefited most from the availability of new documentation? Or did the whole text - and your view of the assassination - benefit from the new info?

That sounds great, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It sounds like a useful and enjoyable read.

Pat, I sent you an email the other day.

Thanks, this looks like a good one. I can’t find any links to the volume online though.

I enjoyed the opening and am looking forward to the later chapters. That noted, I'll be buying the print edition when it becomes available too. Good work Larry.

I'm encouraged by Larry's comment a few pages back that Mike Swanson is bringing a book out on the Vietnam war. Swanson's The War State was a great, helpful book that covered a lot of ground in an easy to read fashion. If you check the Amazon reviews for it, a lot of people feel the same way. So I'll be keen to see what he has to say about the origins of the war.

Quote

LBJ had a secret committee working on the planning of  his escalation of the war. 

Jim, to your knowledge, who was on that committee?

Good questions.

Quote

I see "legal battles are underway behind the scenes" but nothing about documents.

I can't see what else Newman and his researchers would have to pursue legal battles about, other than documentation - trying to get some they've heard about, trying to get material unredacted that has been redacted, asking people to search for further documentation on stuff they've already heard about, or that they suspect things about.

Quote

But let's assume you are right and Newman obtains court documents.

It doesn't have to just be court documents - although they could be. But they could also be HSCA records, CIA documentation, FBI materials, or who knows what. Beats me.

Quote

What would these documents prove in your opinion?

Depends entirely on what's in the documents, what's redacted (or not), and how much is stated directly, or inferred. I've read the first two volumes of Newman's new JFK series and a good chunk of the third. Some things I agreed with, and others have kept me receptive, waiting for more info, but not yet totally decided. So I'll be curious if he can get more documentation that supports his arguments. And I'm undecided about the Veciana claims, as Newman has only really started to touch on that subject, and hasn't unfolded the whole story.