David Andrews

It would be interesting to analyze which names and powers would be on and off this board a decade before and a decade after. A study of power and its conduits.

No more good men going down, please.

Thanks, Ron and Tom.

Ron Ecker, is your Albert Osborne article available online at all? The links above are dead. THANKS

More chunky-gooey-nutty press on the movie: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/27/spielberg-the-post-pentagon-papers-trump

Reminds me a bit of the Ricky White/Roscoe White thing. Makes me wonder if the White family saw this...

Dick Russell wrote that Richard Case Nagell said that he had gotten Oswald to mail-order the revolver from Seaport Traders under the auspices of participating in Senator Dodd's gun control program, FWIW.

Tom Hume was kind enough to direct me to this info on a previous thread. See the entry for curtjester1 if the link takes you to a choice of posts: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.assassination.jfk/Y08uda_h65c "In the late 1940's and early 1950's millions of surplus military rifles and pistols were imported into the United States, and Canada and sold to sports enthusiasts. The S&W pistol take from Oswald on November 22 was imported from Europe by Empire Wholesale Sporting Goods, Ltd., 300 Craig Street West, Montreal 1, Quebec, Canada. Canadian law exempted wholesalers of surplus firearms from keeping a record of the serial numbers of weapons that were exported from Canada. U.S. Law, however, required that importers record the serial numbers of all weapons imported into the country. "On October 19, 1962 George Rose & Company (aka Seaport Traders), 1221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, placed an order for 500 pistols from Empire. The guns were sent from Montreal to Century Arms, Inc. of St. Albany, Vermont and then re-shipped to George Rose & Company in Los Angeles on January 3, 1963. (The .38 Smith & Wesson revolver allegedly used to kill Officer J.D. Tippit and a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (SN 2766) were shipped from Empire Wholesale Sporting Goods to Century Arms. The pistol was re-shipped to George Rose & Company in Los Angeles while the Italian rifle was shipped to Aldens in Chicago)."

Indeed, some of CIA's cryptonyms seem too apt or too humorous to be machine generated. So is DECANTER someone who drank a lot? Or talked a lot? descant 1 a : a melody or counterpoint sung above the plainsong of the tenor 2 : discourse or comment on a theme

Does anyone know what the crypts GPIDEAL and GPFLOOR stand for?

JFK was quick, thoughtful, purposeful and sincere even without Ted Sorensen. As a politician, of course, the sincerity part was mutable. "...So much rhythm, grace and debonair in one man?" -- The Spinners, "Rubberband Man" *** Thanks, Joe McBride, for remembering this remarkable moment.

"I got soul...and I'm superbad!" -- James Brown

I was four, and able to see all the coverage on TV, mostly CBS. I was down with a cold the night before, and so woke up very late on Friday and came downstairs to see a revision of reality. I missed by a year the primal experience of hearing the assassination announced in school, and being sent home early. In high school, probably in December 1974, our Social Studies teacher took us to see Mark Lane give a presentation at Niagara University. Lane only spoke for the first half of the evening, giving general background on the assassination, the attempted coverup, and the struggle to get the truth out. The second half was a discussion of the mechanics of the ambush, conducted by a younger man with a mustache and long, dark hair in ponytail. That part drew more questions from the audience, and lasted longer in memory -- it certainly inspired my later reading. Does anyone know who Lane's co-presenter was? However involving was the second half, I'm sorry now that I can't source Lane's presentation for information. Does anyone know if there is a record of that speaking tour?

Thank you, Don. A nice commemoration.

Jefferson Morley on the most significant redactions: https://www.salon.com/2017/11/18/5-of-the-most-important-jfk-files-the-cia-is-still-hiding_partner/

Again, his Senate oral history interview is a corker, worth reading. Despite its length, maybe now it'll get attention like an Elvis record in 1977. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/sex-in-the-senate-bobby-baker-099530?o=2

Ted Shackley at JM/WAVE in the loop?

Four copies of one photo? Major cities had shops specializing in turning out passport photos in a few hours. Four prints sounds like a standard order. Surely they had such shops in tourist traps and hotbeds of international intrigue such as New Orleans and Mexico City.

Thanks, was waiting for this.

Let's play Devil's Advocate. From the article: "Worst of all, from the standpoint of the Pentagon and the CIA, President Kennedy initiated secret personal negotiations with Khrushchev and Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro to end the Cold War. While the CIA undoubtedly learned about the negotiations through wiretaps on Cuban officials at the UN in New York City, Kennedy did everything he could to keep the negotiations secret from both the CIA and the military. In fact, on the very day that Kennedy was assassinated, he had a personal emissary having lunch with Castro to discuss an end to the Cold War (and implicitly the decades-long U.S. economic embargo against the Cuban people)." But at the same time, the AMLASH program was in the works. Other Castro assassination plots as well? "Now, ask yourself a simple question: Why would the Soviets and the Cubans want to kill Kennedy? Why would they want to elevate Johnson, who was still a died-in-the-wool Cold Warrior whose mindset mirrored that of the Pentagon and the CIA and who would quickly reverse JFK’s attempts to reach out to the Russians and Cubans in a spirit of peace and friendship? That would not have been rational." Yet a Johnson reversal on Russia and Cuba didn't happen. Was it only the fear of nuclear war? If a Pentagon group wanted Kennedy out of the way over Cuba, what prevented them from connecting Oswald to Castro? The diligence of our FBI and CIA? The real action for all involved was moving to Vietnam.

Perhaps it's not for what GHWB did as president, but for what he fostered as vice-president. Interesting to speculate on who, if anyone, the building would be named for absent GHWB.

Here's an article that explores the Nixon-Helms tarantula dance: https://www.salon.com/2012/05/05/watergates_final_mystery/ Nixon and Helms met at least twice, but at the White House: in 1971, over Ehrlichman's request for the BOP papers you mention; and in 1973 when Nixon promised Helms early retirement rather than replacement (which Nixon welshed on) plus the ambassadorship to Iran.

That's a cool scene, Michael. In a 3 hour picture, with this much material, you have to combine characters. But in a series, you can have both characters playing off each other in scenes.It would shame to leave out Angleton (and his orchids), he's such a great, creepy character. Notwithstanding that Nixon never visited Helms at Langley while president. He seems to have been scared to, and sent Bob Haldeman instead (as the film later shows). This is not to say that Nixon and Helms didn't meet during the Eisenhower or even the Kennedy years, since the Haldeman errand suggests Nixon understood Helms very well. In Nixon, Nixon visits Helms to ask for all documents and copies pertaining to an SOG on Castro that Nixon ran under Ike. I have to check when (and if) that happened in history, as Haldeman's mission was to try to bully Helms into quashing the Watergate investigation at FBI.

Stone said that he was conflating the two characters. I suppose it does suggest the rarefied air in the Dulles Corridor - though Angleton kept his precious pets at home, in a hothouse. Don't get me wrong - there's still a lot to like in Nixon, which has a perverse fascination for me as filmmaking. One of Stone's problems - his response to the laws of big-budget filmmaking - is that he rushes into, and rushes through, projects before the scripts and the edits get judicious consideration for merit and appeal. (Think of Hargraves and Hemming dictating the Dealey Plaza scenes to him on the spot during JFK, and the re-writes and ad-libs that ensued.) Then his "Director's Cut" video edits wind up throwing in the kitchen sink. The Nixon DVD suffers from that - at least a half-hour of the family tuberculosis saga in black-and-white flashbacks, when there's better dramatic material in the Nixon life. But the real murder victim on DVD is Alexander, whose scenes are rearranged from the tight theatrical version, and padded with so much outtake footage that the film is now unwatchable.

I watched Oliver Stone's Nixon again the other night, with part of my mind on Jim DiEugenio's criticisms of the Ken Burns Vietnam series. I know that Nixon isn't a documentary, but in three-plus hours Stone could have been much more exact and coherent on Nixon's Vietnam strategy, which the dialogue merely makes passes at. The Paris peace talks, which consumed his and Kissinger's attention for so long, get perhaps one throwaway line. The famous October Surprise Nixon pulled in sabotaging LBJ's talks with Hanoi is left to the viewer to figure out from the context of a blackmail threat whispered in Nixon's ear. Or not. If you don't know the story, you won't get it from the film. The dialogue is much more concerned with the emotional effect of the war on the country and the president, which would be better balanced by some incisive war history. The film gives a much better picture of how the Watergate affaIr unfolded, which is a shame since Stone wastes much too much time on Nixon's childhood tragedies, and these were not as significant as his war policies. I have to fast-forward through the black-and-white toned family flashbacks, which are a waste of human life to watch. And this is a film that I like, and look at every couple of years. The best parts of those three hours are captivating and inimitable.