David Andrews

Didn't Trump just give CIA the director it had vetted for itself?

Congratulations, Steve - Executive Action is a courageous picture.

What was the genesis of Boot's book on Lansdale? Did he pick the subject, or was it commissioned by a publisher or agent? Does writing a neocon book on Lansdale as hero express someone's wish for another Lansdale to rise from the ranks? And - by extension - the wish for another Oliver North, who consulted with Lansdale on the Contra War? Is someone asking for another over-the-top, Lawrence of Arabia type figurehead to get a job done and endure the liberal brickbats hurled afterward? Maybe they should be giving a digital copy of Boot's book away with every e-reader purchased and every e-pub subscription. Maybe there ought to be a movie deal. Lansdale as a freewheeling loony out of Catch-22, the original Charlie Wilson, in Vietnam. Bombs exploding all around him - this big galoot don't care! He knows Vietnamese folklore and plays their reed pipes along with a good ol' American harmonica. That makes him invulnerable - until The Powers That Be tear him down. It's too bad Tom Hanks isn't young enough for the role.

How much of our aggression against Russia, North Korea and China is a put-on, a political show manufactured among the leadership of the four countries? Would this be even above the heads and pay grades of its televised advocates? The creation of chaos, conflict and even war for profit never goes away, of course - ask Saddam and Khaddafy. But is regime change in North Korea really on the table? Reformation of Syria by the US and Ukraine by Russia would seem the real prizes here, with US action against Iran perhaps unattainable on our wishlist. US bridgeheads - military or political - in Central Asia would seem desirable, but perhaps not in the present decade or under the current action plan. Perhaps that's a bridge too far, a hot-war issue not to be approached. I'm just wondering what Jim and the membership think is the end goal of the predominating bluster among the superpowers and North Korea. Do the players even have one?

I know, but as the poser of the question knows, and as you know, we are not talking about Tolstoy here.

Any dingus knows that there is no "straight," non-tendencied biography of Oswald, because the obvious prejudices of the publishing industry and of the general public. There is only propaganda of one stripe or another, or research works that support one of several conclusions about Oswald. So any posing of the question is disingenuous, and a kind of baiting of the Forum membership.

Is there any analog here between how we "want to" view Lenny Bruce and how we want to view the Kennedys? For true pedants, Bruce's co-edited transcript of his routines in book form, The Essential Lenny Bruce, may contain the version of the gag that Bruce preferred to put out for posterity. Albert Goldman and Lawrence Schiller's bio, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce may offer its own version. However, no account not audio-recorded or attested to by multiple witness can be called definitive. If we start picking the one that humanizes and ennobles Bruce to our taste, then we're headed for tendentiousness. And flattering ourselves.

Maybe he did it twice on the road, two different cities, the way I heard it and the way Joe heard it. Maybe also there was a Lenny Bruce imposter out there. Yet a third version: 'And Lenny Bruce provided the perfect epitaph by opening his first performance after the Kennedy assassination with the line, "Man, is Vaughn Meader f****d!" The crowd reportedly exploded with laughter.' https://deadspin.com/5829643/dead-comedian-of-the-week-vaughn-meader-assassins-victim

All versions of Windows above XP are pointless frippery.

Just after the assassination, Lenny Bruce did a gig that had been postponed that weekend out of respect. The audience couldn't wait for his commentary. Bruce came out, went to the edge of the stage, and stood a long time in silence, as if brooding. Then he threw up his arms and yelled, "VAUGHN MEADER!" Everybody cracked up in schadenfreude - the poor guy was over.

The Enquirer's horoscopes suck, too.

"I believe that Oswald, operating alone, killed President Kennedy. I can't prove it, and I have about a two or three percent doubt in the corner of my mind about that it's conceivable, possible maybe, in a very remote circumstance that [...conspiracy is...] an exceedingly marginal possibility and I only raise it because I can't absolutely rule it out." Was a man ever less pregnant?

A lot of people discount Loy Factor because he seems to have been manipulated into agreeing with the story propositions of the people who wrote The Men on the Sixth Floor.

There really should have been collectable action figures! Dan Rather, Cyril Wecht, David Atlee Phillips, William Colby, Carlos Bringuier, Oreste Pena, Robert McKeown, and more in The American Assassins, Parts I and II (1975, CBS) - with vintage commercials: Parts III and IV cover King, RFK, and Wallace.

One suspects that off-the-books assassination squads and assassination projects at CIA and OSS well predate 1961. Is the dating of events in QJWIN and WIROGUE histories a paper cover intended to throw shade on the Kennedy administration? Or can we say, more benignly, that these histories only exist because of (in response to) the assassination? Are there histories of "execution squad" activities in the 1950s?

Why did the Agency hang the Hunts out to dry, Doug? Was his mission not to bring down Nixon?

Here's the hilarious companion piece to the Hunt interview, in which Buckley chases his fellow Catholic, G. Gordon Liddy, around the set with a catechism addressing Who Is Morally Justified To Be A Rat. Who would pay Buckley to do this, and why? The absent target seems to be Hunt, but it's Liddy who gets the St. Sebastian treatment here. Suffer those slings and arrows, someone said:

In the Watergate thing, Hunt must have missed the days when he had Allen Dulles's protection. That wasn't always something every officer could count on (see Frank Wisner), but there must have been something - perhaps only a turning point in their relations - that caused Helms to put him in the White House and then hang him and his wife out in the wind. What brought the Hunts to a point where they knew they could no longer count on the Agency? On the Buckley show, Hunt starts complaining about it from the minute he begins speaking - almost explicitly tipping that he was still Agency at the White House. He's willing to tip Francis Gary Powers by comparing their cases, which also tips that Hunt was on domestic duty for CIA. Yet, of course, neither Buckley nor any other interviewer of the hour was willing to ask Hunt what the CIA was doing inside CREEP, leaving Hunt's mission at the burglary and the dirty tricks (so, leaving him under Nixon's command). One would think that the Nixon blackmail was Agency-directed to embarrass the President, but the financial and legal pressures on the Hunts seem to have been very real. This is like the nastiest parts of John Le Carre. Who'd have thought one could dredge up any sympathy for the Hunts?

Just a stray thought: being that Dealey Plaza narrows into a reversed triangle, with the base at Houston Street and the apex at the underpass, wouldn't it make logistical sense to have the field of fire arranged in roughly an hourglass shape, with the base of the bottom, upright triangle at the underpass, the apexes overlapping. It couldn't be a perfect, symmetrical plan, owing to topography and available firing platforms. But - whatever other shooter positions there were at the grassy knoll, TSBD, Dal-Tex, the southeastern building rooftops - the final line would be two shooters at either end of the underpass, one in the north end storm drain, and one at the south end bridge top. The last line of offense, blocking escape. Is there a matching storm drain at the south end of the underpass that could be used instead of the bridge top? Or not, because the north side of Elm is the lowest ground for rainwater flow? The east base (Houston Street) would be at the top of this diagram adapted from another purpose. The west base (triple underpass) would be at bottom. The plan would be also effective had the limo taken the Main Street route. When we think of triangulation of fire...we ought to think of two triangles, though there might have been a northward concentration of firing positions (TSBD, grassy knoll) since the finalized route would use the Elm Street dogleg to slow the limo. Was the Main Street entrance to the Plaza blocked off at all?

Please delete post, thanks.

One interesting thing - and I forget what book I read this in - was that the two passenger-side doors had large vertical dents in them. You can see the dents in photos of the car being raised from the pond. The book's author claimed that the car couldn't have gotten these parallel dents from going into the water and landing on its roof. The author theorized that the car skidded on dry land and struck a pair of trees on that side before going into the water. Wish I could remember the book, as it impressed me at the time - part of its thesis is that Ted wasn't in the car, and the car was pushed off the bridge with Kopechne in the back seat.

Where was that picture taken?

Did I get the name wrong (H. H. Davis)? The guy in the natty, checkered sport coat with the soft shawl collar, which I'm sure put him in good with the ladies. In contrast, "Bush man" looks like he's in a suit jacket, and his hair is relaxed and down on the forehead. Sport coat man has hair swept up in front with a little Brylcreem hold to it. The resemblance was posited out in another, earlier thread, but I'm not made sure.

I understand that H. H. Davis has been tentatively ID'd as "George H. W. Bush man," but there's something about the suit lapels and the front hairline that I can't make completely match. Not that that's necessarily Bush, just that it doesn't seem necessarily Davis in both pics.

There's a photo of Angleton carrying Dulles's ashes out of the chapel after the ceremony - the sole pallbearer. Clover Dulles was perhaps the most critical. She locked Dulles's bedroom door and threw a party while he was dying - suffocating from pneumonia, if I recall. Concerned Agency types at the party broke open the door and called an ambulance. Clover later died in an old age home. I wonder what the intervening years were like for her.