Ronald R. Williams

Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived Part Two of a review by James DiEugenio Jim DiEugenio has reviewed the accompanying book to the film Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived and it is available on the CTKA web site: http://www.ctka.net/reviews/virtual_jfk_2.html Ron Williams

Jim DiEugenio has an article on this on the CTKA site: http://www.ctka.net/2009/specter.html Ron Williams

Jim DiEugenio has reviewed the book Legacy of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann. The review is available on the CTKA website at: http://www.ctka.net/2009/legacy_secrecy.html Ron Williams

Jim DiEugenio has reviewed the newly reissued Oswald and the CIA by John Newman. The review is available on the CTKA site. http://www.ctka.net/2008/newman.html Ron W

Jim DiEugenio has now written a review of Jefferson Morley’s book Our Man in Mexico and it is available on the CTKA site. http://www.ctka.net/2008/morley.html Ron W

Jim DiEugenio has reviewed A Certain Arrogance, by the late George Michael Evica, and it is available on the CTKA web site. http://www.ctka.net/2008/certain_arrogance.html Ron W

Appendix #7 in Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy (Kenn Thomas, IllumiNet Press, 1999) is an interview Kenn Thomas did with Michael Riconosciuto on February 10, 1996. (from page 282) Michael Riconosciuto: …Now Fred (Crisman) was very, very close to George Wackenhut. Kenn Thomas: I don’t know if that’s been established before. MR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I’ve known of it since 1963, maybe the first time I ever saw them together. Do you know who Chuck Emmert is? KT: I haven’t heard the name yet, no. MR: OK. His mother was a wealthy Florida socialite who financed George Wackenhut when he originally started Wackenhut. KT: Is that a name that I could do a Lexis/Nexus search on? MR: I doubt it, He managed to stay pretty buried, although his mother—I can’t remember her first name—but she was big in south Florida, with anybody in social circles down there would be able to steer you to her… Ron W

The CTKA site now has a review by Jim DiEugenio of JFK and the Unspeakable. http://www.ctka.net/2008/jfk_unspeakable.html Ron W

Jim DiEugenio has written a review of Someone Would Have Talked and it is available on the CTKA site. http://www.ctka.net/someone_would.html Ron W

Thanks a lot, Bill. When were you last in touch with him? A researcher talked to his wife a year or so ago (maybe longer) and she said Paul had died of a fall from a roof. Where ever his files are, they probably contain much that should be considered vital JFK assassination material. Ron W

[written for and originally posted on the JFK Research Forum: www.jfkresearch.com, 1/25/08] I’ve ...been using the Mary Ferrell Foundation site and found something interesting. I had thought it was odd that ...David Kroman was not listed in Mary Ferrell’s database. Well if I would have been half awake I would have checked some different spellings. He was there, but she had his name as “Krohman.” Here is what her entry says: DAVID R. (AKA DON MORGAN) KROHMAN, Gave information to Jim Garrison's office, mostly about Richard Nagell. So she knew about Kroman using the Don Morgan alias, but there was more. She also knew about the famous ...letter that Vaughn Marlowe had sent to Jim Garrison on March 23, 1967, that was signed “Don Morgan (alias).” She just (understandably) assumed the letter was from Kroman, and so later in entries in her “Chronologies” she thinks Vaughn Marlowe and “Krohman” are the same guy! For example, an entry for March 1963: Richard C. Nagell “befriends” Krohman (aka Don Morgan)… Krohman is proprietor of “left-wing book-store” in Los Angeles. (DA Garrison’s files: per Stephen Jaffe letter 3/23/67 to Garrison from “Don Morgan” of Berkely, Calif (?)) +++++ David Kroman seemed to be one of those researcher/investigators who were claiming that H.L. Hunt had some role in the JFK assassination and his investigative activities in Dallas, probably starting as early as December of 1963 (at which time he was using the "Don Morgan" alias), drew the attention of Paul Rothermel, the security director for the Hunt family interests. There most likely are references to David Kroman/Don Morgan in Rothermel's files, but I have not been able to determine if his files have been retained or if they are available to researchers. Ron W

reminder (as mentioned above) Oswald's Ghost on PBS (in the U.S.), Monday Jan 14th. also... link to Jim DiEugenio's review: http://www.ctka.net/lho_ghost.html Ron W

Bill, I think this is it. http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_...ue/vs_text.html Ron W

Nathaniel, There is a new biography (I haven’t read it), Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand : The Life of Colonel Edward M. House, by Godfrey Hodgson. (2006). The one review on Amazon says good starting reference but too short “to do justice to House’s legacy.” It’s been quite a while since I read it but I thought this valuable: Road to War: America 1914 – 1917, by Walter Millis, 1935. Forum member Anton Chaitkin’s Treason in America: From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman has this on House: (after the collapse of the Maximilian regime in Mexico-rw) Most of the high-ranking Confederates in Mexico drifted back into the United States, where many of them simply reentered the mainstream of American life. In fact there was no accounting done, no sorting out, no “Nuremberg Trials” for the insurrection of 1861, which killed more than a half-million Americans—more than died in both of the World Wars. A particularly chilling example of the failure of post-Lincoln Americans to appreciate the nature of the Rebellion is the case of Edward House. His father Thomas House was a British merchant who came to the Texas province of Mexico in the 1830s. The elder House did not stick by Sam Houston when Houston fought against Secession; Thomas House made a fortune as a British national, carrying guns from Britain through the Union blockade to Texas. After the Rebellion was defeated Thomas House returned to England and educated his son Edward at Bath. Years later, the young man returned to America to tend his father’s cotton plantations; he despised the United States as an enemy land, retained a fierce loyalty to Great Britain. This was “Colonel” House, who directed the foreign policy and much of the domestic affairs of the United States during the administration of President Woodrow Wilson…the years of the World War and the League of Nations... (pp 258-259) The following are items from Lloyd Miller’s old A-Albionic book catalog: British-American Relations, 1917-1918: The Role of Sir William Wiseman by W. B. Fowler, 1969… Intriguing Establishment account of the intimate relationship between Sir William Wiseman and the notorious Colonel House. Philip Dru: Administrator--A Story of Tomorrow 1920-1935; by Anonymous, 1912… "Colonel" Edward Mandell House was eventually revealed as the author of this novel by Yale Professor Seymour's Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Seymour revealed that House would hand the book to influential people with the words, "This might interest you." House (Woodrow Wilson's "Kissinger", founder of the CFR, Federal Reserve System advocate, Income Tax advocate, WWI enthusiast, and Kuhn-Loeb associate) presented in the form of a novel, the actual rationale and program by which the welfare-warfare statism (veiled as socialism as dreamed by Karl Marx) required by the "Imperial Crisis" presented Britain by Germany was to be substituted for traditional American individual liberties and isolationism. We are still living in this novel. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: Volumes I, II, III and IV, by Charles Seymour Ron W

Jim DiEugenio’s review of David Talbot’s book Brothers has been posted on the CTKA web site. http://www.ctka.net/brothers.html Ron W

Charles, Here you are (best I could do). Ron W

A great follow-up for students of George Seldes and those concerned with the media in general is Donald Gibson’s book Communication, Power and Media. [originally posted on the JFK Research Forum (www.jfkresearch.com)] Communication, Power and Media by Donald Gibson Nova Science Publishers, Inc., Hauppauge, New York, 2004 ISBN: 1-59033-930-4 Donald Gibson has done it again! With his latest book, Communication, Power and Media he has done with the media what he did earlier for the JFK case. He has again taken a great crime—and what the media is doing to us is a great crime—and in this book lays out a convincing picture of who is doing the crime, and how and why there are doing it. This book is a well researched, well executed, scholarly little masterpiece and it represents a very big ray of hope. Students and researchers of the JFK assassination will especially reap benefits from it because it contains clues that could lead to an understanding of two of the most important unanswered questions in the case. How is the media controlled? And how is a rock solid cover-up maintained that has lasted for over forty years? There have been other books about the media but only Donald Gibson—of those working in the field—has the background and worldview to be able to paint a comprehensive picture of what the scope of the problem is. It took a lot of courage to write a book like this, and in addition to the author one must tip one’s hat to the publisher. In fact it seems a minor miracle that a book like this ever saw the light of day. And even though you won’t see it on any New York Times bestseller lists and you probably won’t see Professor Gibson on Book Notes, it’s out there (!) and that in itself is a big story. In the first chapter entitled “Language, Communication and Human Nature,” the author identifies the problem and then identifies where we should start looking for answers: We have serious problems with our media. These problems are related to both what the media does do and what it does not do. The first, the sins of commission, are related primarily to entertainment. The second, sins of omission, are connected primarily to the information and news aspects of media. In both areas there are major problems. The media acts in ways that can only end in the undermining of our democracy and our civilization. That the media does this is apparent if not obvious. We need to know, to the best of our ability, why they would do this. That requires that we have some idea of who directs the media… On the question of who runs the media it turns out that some relatively old ideas are probably closer to the truth than many recent ones. Bad ideas, especially if they take up enough space, can sometimes drive out the good. We are likely to do better if our starting point is Ferdinand Lundberg or George Seldes rather than, say, Noam Chomsky… (pp 8-9) The sins of omission are what the media doesn’t tell us and the incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading picture of the world it presents, and the sins of commission are the never ending waves of decadence, violence, and nonsense that it pushes on us. By analyzing what the author calls “interlocks,” he demonstrates that the great media conglomerates are closely linked to the largest and most powerful Establishment financial institutions and thus—as should come as no surprise to students of the JFK case—they are simply an arm of the Establishment and the media agenda is the Establishment’s agenda. The media’s behavior is itself a means to an end. In order to understand the reasons for the pornography, violence, banality and self-censorship, we must look at the content of media in relation to the Establishment agenda. Achieving the goals of this agenda is what explains the behavior. The agenda is in this sense the immediate cause of the media’s behavior. The overall goal of those who control the media is simple and banal; it is the same goal that motivated the English at the time of the American Revolution – world power. We need to look more closely at those who control the media. They are the promoters of the Establishment’s agenda. They are probably also the carriers of a culture of domination, a set of beliefs, values and rationalizations that support the goal of world power. (p79) Ron W

[originally posted on the JFK Research Forum (www.jfkresearch.com), 8/24/2002] The Dulleses, the Bundys, and John J. McCloy: Where the Secret Team Met the Power Elite In past posts... I have often mentioned the afterword essay in William Davy’s book Let Justice Be Done, written by Robert Spiegelman. The essay is entitled: "Garrison’s Invitation To The Millennium Ball: Where Dallas ’63 Meets The Age Of Globalization (For the Re-Searchers Among Us)" This is a most important piece of work that I was hoping to see discussed... This essay goes a long way toward defining a post proving-it-was-a-conspiracy research agenda in the JFK assassination case. On page 215 we find: It is high time to revisit the JFK assassination in a revised framework that accepts Garrison’s invitation to begin the road toward a “better explanation.” Noting that most JFK-researchers no longer ask or analyze the “whys”, it seems long overdue to kick start that enterprise by revisiting Garrison’s analyses, deconstructing some if his expressions and parlaying the result in a research agenda that returns once more to the trail of the assassins. One of the specific recommended research agenda items is: "Re-examine the actual, elite composition of the so-called Kennedy Administration." From page 215 Evidence and analysis by Colby and Dennett demonstrates that the Kennedy Administration was staffed primarily by Wall Street banker and former Defense Secretary Robert Lovett and thereby composed of first-tier architects of the Cold War and Establishment icons, such as: John J. McCloy, C. Douglas Dillon, W. Averill Harriman and Paul Nitze, as well as Dean Rusk, Walt and Eugene Rostow, McGeorge and William Bundy, Allen Dulles (whose hawkish brother John Foster was Ike’s Secretary of State) and waiting in the wings, Dean Acheson. ...The Kennedy Administration was not so much staffed by “Cold Warriors” as by transnational bankers and lawyers with a long-view. They were progenitors, architects and proconsuls for the New World Order. A further sustained study of the lives and careers of “Establishment icons” like the Dulles Brothers, the Bundy Brothers, and John J. McCloy will, I believe, take us a long way in understanding how power functions in the world, how it functioned in 1963 and functions right up to the present time. Here is another part of the essay from page 207 that is especially relevant: Until the end of his life, Jim Garrison had a relentless conscience and hungry consciousness that continued to plummet the “why” of Kennedy’s murder. ...(Zachary) Sklar remembers Garrison (late in life) ...charting a set of converging lines of corporate interest and political alliance which finally would intersect at Harvard Brahmin, McGeorge Bundy, JFK’s national security advisor. Garrison, notes Sklar, was becoming especially interested in the Bundy Brothers, McGeorge and his elder brother William, a former CIA official who was Dean Acheson’s son-in-law and held a significant Defense Department post on international security in the Kennedy Administration. (Researchers, of course, have long noted that in the immediate aftermath of the murder, the returning Air Force One was radioed by the White House Situation Room under Bundy’s control to fix the lone nut as the sole perpetrator--this before Oswald was even indicted.) Sklar points out that Garrison had not concluded that Bundy himself ordered or coordinated JFK’s killing; but rather that, to Garrison, Bundy represented the type of high-level player who could well have been materially involved. Any advance in this research agenda should, of course, make use of the indispensable work of L. Fletcher Prouty. Colonel Prouty was right on the scene and saw with his own eyes how these “Establishments icons” operated and he understood that they were operatives and functionaries of great power, a power he could clearly sense, but which he did not completely understand. The Secret Team was his first attempt to define and come to terms with what he witnessed in his dealings with these icons. We are very fortunate indeed that he left us with this record, but we should recognize that this book is only a beginning. We should also recognize that this book has, in my opinion, been misused and misinterpreted by some to imply that “The Secret Team” was the real power in the world and that this power grouping somehow grew up after the passage of the National Security Act in 1947 and was centered around the CIA and the “Military Industrial Complex.” With a reading of Prouty’s second book, JFK. The CIA, Vietnam And The Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy, in which he begins to make use of the term “power elite,” we can start making real progress in understanding what his term the "Secret Team" means and what it does not mean. I believe it is now clear that Prouty meant something very different when he spoke of the "Secret Team" and when he spoke of the “power elite.” In 1973, when The Secret Team was published, Prouty had a much more limited world view that he did by the time of JFK. As is very clear in JFK, he was very much influenced by Buckminster Fuller, and especially his book Critical Path. Even though JFK is a great advance in our understanding, we should recognize, here too, that this is only a beginning and that our research agenda should move on to the works of Carroll Quigley, Lloyd Miller, Lyndon LaRouche (and associates), Eustace Mullins, Antony Sutton, Donald Gibson, and others. Because we know that Colonel Prouty was very much influenced by Buckminster Fuller and because we know that he had some knowledge of and contact with the LaRouche organization, an item in Lloyd Miller’s A-Albionic book catalog is of some interest. Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller & Adjuvant Kiyoshi Kuromiya, 1981 The creator of the Geodesic Dome and coiner of the term "Spaceship Earth" in setting forth his vision for the future of mankind adumbrates his insightful theory of the covert world-rule "Great Pirates." Many suspect that Fuller was the unacknowledged source of Lyndon LaRouche's theories, including much of his opposition to the no-growth ecology extremism of the "Great Pirate's" "Court Intellectuals"! Fuller does not condemn "environmentalism" with the same extremism as LaRouche, but does argue against no-progress extremism. Page 58-59: "It seems strange that we were not taught about the historical, philosophical, and economic significance of the foregoing transition to a closed-sphere world system (from infinite plane world view). Because the churches were strong and the "Great Pirates" wished to obscure both their monopoly of the riches of the now limited system and their grand world ocean strategy for its control, the significance of the concept of a closed world system was popularly unrealized. The power structure and its patronized educational systems 'let well enough alone'." (!!) Ron Williams

Yes, page 198. I could post the entire quote but is it just the regular information that everyone is familiar with by now. Ron Williams

This indeed is an important book and I wish Paul Rigby would have told us more about it. Here is my take. [written for and originally posted on the JFK Research Forum (www.jfkresearch.com)] Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich by Guido Giacomo Preparata Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor, 2005 ISBN 0-7453-2181-X (paperback edition) Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich, is a sweeping economic and historical analysis of the process whereby Germany, the greatly feared continental land-power rival of the dominant sea-power empire of Great Britain was--over an approximately fifty-year period--set up and maneuvered into its own destruction, and was thus eliminated once and for all as a geopolitical threat. This first half of the twentieth century is called in the book “the great siege of Europe.” The author, Guido Giacomo Preparata, currently an Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the University of Washington/Tacoma, received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Economic History from the University of Southern California in 1998. The book grew out of a continuation of his doctoral dissertation and a five-year long series of lectures. In addition to his teaching duties, Professor Preparata is also the managing editor of the American Review of Political Economy (www.arpejournal.com). Although the book is related to works by Antony Sutton (Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, and Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution), John Loftus (The Secret War Against the Jews), Charles Higham (Trading With the Enemy), James Stewart Martin (All Honorable Men), and the accumulated works of the LaRouche historians, Anton Chaitkin, Webster Tarpley, H. Graham Lowry, et al, I believe it stands uniquely alone in its field. With this work, the author has succeeded in bringing “conspiracy theory” into the mainstream in a resounding fashion. But this book is not theory, this is real history. History is conspiracy! The book is divided into five chronological chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter called “Introductory: The Eurasian Embrace. Laying Siege to Germany with World War I” describes how, by 1900, it was clear that Germany, the continental upstart, was a dead serious rival of the British Empire, and the empire leaders schooled in the emerging geopolitical “heartland” theory were convinced that action could no longer be delayed. All the skills, all the methods, all the key operatives would have to be utilized in order to counter the deadly threat. Steps that had to be taken included a “regime change” in Russia, the unleashing of the “useful idiots of Sarajevo” to put a spark to the planned great siege war, and finally the maneuvering of the American colonial dumb giant into providing the supplies, financing, and manpower that would make it all possible. This last section in the chapter is called--most appropriately--“The Last Days of America: from Republic to Truculent Empire.” In the second chapter entitled “The Veblenian Prophecy. From the Councils to Versailles by Way of Russian Fratricide” the author presents the breathtaking prophecy by socio-economist Thorstein Veblen, that he says “...stands possibly as Political Economy’s most extraordinary document – a testimony of the highest genius – and as the lasting and screaming accusation of the horrendous plot that was being hatched by the British during the six months of the Peace Conference following World War I.” Also described is the Allied Russian “intervention” that was actually a betrayal of the White Russian generals in the civil war that followed the Revolution, and lastly the infamous Versailles Treaty that helped lay the foundation for the horrible catastrophes that were to follow. The third chapter, called “The Meltdown and Geopolitical Correctness of Mein Kampf (1920-1923)” lays out the time of the great hyperinflation and the futility of the Weimar Republic that cleared the ground for the emergence of Hitler “the drummer.” Chapter four “Death on the Installment Plan, Whereby Governor Norman Came to Pace the Damnation of Europe, 1924-1933,”describes the incredible machinations of the governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman. Also covered in this chapter are the great American bailouts, the Dawes and Young Plans which made possible the growth of the German war machine. In chapter five, “The Reich on the Marble Cliffs. Fire, Legerdemain and Mummery all the Way to Barbarossa, 1933-41,” we have Hitler’s coup - the final consolidation of power that followed a spectacular act of synthetic terror, the great Reichstag Fire. Then the “money magic” is explained that allowed prostrate Germany to come miraculously to life and with full employment begin the great war machine production. Also in this chapter is explained and put to rest the potent and persistent myth of “appeasement.” “All appeased the Nazis: the Pope for fear, the British by design, and the Russians to buy time. Stalin, too, had read Mein Kampf – he harbored no illusions: the Nazis would come to him sooner or later.” When this phase had run its intended course, the time for Winston Churchill and the war party had come, and in turn the Americans would be “dragged in” to do their part. And “then and only then (1944) did Britain deem that the time had finally come to dispatch this Nazi creature, by now mortally wounded, that she had nurtured for over a quarter of a century for the sake of her Eurasian ambition.” I do not find a lot to criticize in this book. Professor Preparata explains in the preface, that being trained as an economist, he first set out to explain the Nazi economic boom of the 1930s. He has accomplished that with flying colors, but that is only the beginning. What grew out of this first step is a book that brilliantly demonstrates how power is exercised and how things in this world really work. I think that students and researchers of the Kennedy assassination will find this book invaluable. This is a book about the who and the why and a model of explanation for a huge historical calamity, the planned destruction of nations. After a thorough reading and the appropriate reflection it may not be out of place to say that the who and the why and a model of explanation for the assassination of an American president will just naturally fall into place. Ron Williams

A History of British Secret Service, Richard Deacon, 1969 British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945, (edited by Sir William Stephenson), 1945? Room 3603: The story of the British Intelligence Center in New York during World War II (published in the UK and Canada as The Quiet Canadian), by H. Montgomery Hyde, 1962 Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson, and the Origin of the CIA, by Thomas F. Troy, 1996 Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, by Thomas E. Mahl, 1998

Bill, This is a very important post. The role in the JFK case of Vincent Salandria cannot be over emphasized, as to its significance. John Kelin’s work in putting this publication together deserves high praise. Last September there was a discussion on Rich DellaRosa’s JFK Research Forum about another major Salandria contribution. Some know that between (roughly) 1993 and 2000 there was an intensive correspondence that took place between a “committee” made up of Salandria, Michael Morrissey and others that had a close connection to the publication of E. Martin Schotz’s book History Will Not Absolve Us. This correspondence was published on Michael Morrisey’s web site and I made the comment that I thought if this would ever be made available in book form it would be one of the most important books in all the JFK assassination literature. The last time I checked Michael Morrisey’s site is still there but it appears the 300 or so pages of the Salandria correspondence has been removed. I wonder if any who have read this correspondence have any comments or any ideas of what could or should be done with it so it could be available as an important historical source in the Kennedy assassination literature. Ron W

Jim DiEugenio’s review of Joan Mellen’s A Farewell to Justice is now available on the PROBE/CTKA site. http://www.ctka.net/mellen_review.html Ron W

Harvey & Lee by John Armstrong has the following on pages 801 and 802:

Jim, It is good to see you posting. I always look forward to reading what you have to say. This is TYPICAL (and educational), isn’t it? It’s like Pavlov’s dog. Jack White posts something on a forum and these same mutts show up and start foaming at the mouth. It’s just soooo predictable. Ron W