Paul Brancato

Maybe Trump's current demeanor is in part because he sees that there is a nest of viper insiders surrounding him and trying to manipulate him. Too much to hope for probably. Funny how I found myself agreeing alternately with Cliff and Ron while they face off. The exchange seems like a microcosm of the inability to communicate across a cultural divide that is very complex. Sources of facts are hard to come by in this media driven environment. One thing I notice is that when progressives criticize Clinton it's because she seems wedded to policies we don't agree with. The Republican criticisms are more like a witch hunt, and on the far right the demonization takes extraordinary leaps into complete fabrications.

Yes, but trying to understand is better than not. The Russians are understandably pissed off about a lot of things. Maybe business is a way to find common ground.

Michael Ledeen - the names floating around Trump are all the same damn neocons. Republicans like large deficits, despite their noise, because concern over deficits is used as leverage to defund social programs. And Capitalism runs on debt. What I think will be interesting is whether interest rates on longer term bonds really go up, the way they have since the election. Because the national debt is much harder to finance if we have to pay more interest to the global investors that are buying our debt. It's been my contention that for over 30 years the rates have declined because if they hadn't debt servicing as a percentage of GDP would be too high for even Republicans to get behind because their pet spending programs - corporate welfare - would be adversely impacted. Of course how that long term decline in rates, so convenient to our nation, was enabled I am not expert enough to figure out. But it has happened that way, and without it we would be screwed. For the global elite, buying US debt is a mainstay. As rates came down here, they have collapsed elsewhere. Maybe someone here can help me understand why we have to pay out the rates we do on 2,5,10,30 year debt when alternative investments in other country's bonds yield so much less, or even negative rates. Is the dollar considered more risky long term despite its elevated status relative to other currencies?

So damn true, and no one ever believes me when I mention agent provocateurs. Amazing, considering that the practice goes back at least as far as the Roman Empire. It's especially the peaceful protesters that need to understand this, because it only takes a few agents to cause others who are not thinking clearly and are angry to follow them. But we have seen all this before. Recall the 1968 Chicago Convention.

I'm quoting you Pamela for a second reason. You recall Bonnie Franklin and her KPFA show Guns and Butter. Two weeks ago she had a guest on - Michele Chussodovsky, a man with controversial ideas that are sometimes interesting - and he said that the most dangerous candidate was Hilary Clinton, because she was the most likely to use nuclear weapons. And of course the statement went unchallenged. I flipped and called the station. They have now lost my support. i agree completely about the Nazis. Not sure about the Israelis.

Michael Walton - you are correct. Where did you read the three reasons the Dems lost?

The great David Lifton? Who's exaggerating their case? HSCA was a joke? Marina's WC testimony is the truth? How do you know? WC lawyers said otherwise.

Trejo will say that her WC testimony was under oath. But I agree with you

I think that Comey might have decided to go public because the NY office was leaking to Giuliani, and Comey may have decided to close ranks in order to preserve what he saw as the integrity of the FBI. Eventually the leaks became news too, but it had less impact than it would have. I don't mean to be whitewashing Comey's actions. He may have had a political agenda. But I'm presenting another possibility.

I think this election result was more about a backlash against economic globalism that moved good jobs overseas without compunction or compensation, than it was about the politics of hate. We've always had the haters. I agree with Cliff that allowing the travesty of 1963 to go unsolved and unpunished, for which the media is to blame, is where this really begins.

Quite a conincidence. I always wonder about the ex FBI ex Hoover agents whether they had ongoing communications with Hoover, especially Guy Banister.

George DeM thought he was very intelligent.

No doubt it's the same person. I must have missed something Thomas. Were there others that said they weren't?

Vince I watched the movie. You were very articulate and convincing. Thanks for the suggestion.

James - did you see a post of mine on a Ruby thread about the man seen with Oswald at Ruby's club with the scar over his left eye? When I was reading the notes made by Richard Billings when he was working with Garrison I noticed the peculiar fact that when Billings mentioned this sighting at Ruby's the very next paragraph he said that Garrison was speculating that the man with the scar might have been with Oswald in MC, and that perhaps the photos of Oswald were all of him with this man with the scar. I'm fairly certain that David Sánchez Morales had such a scar, but that he was completely unknown to Garrison. I'm putting this here because at the beginning of your Probe article you mention David Atlee Phillips following Oswald to MC. If I'm not mistaken Phillips was in close contact with JM Wave where Morales worked. We know for sure that Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas. I think that in this context Garrison's surmise about Oswald being accompanied by the man with the scar is very interesting. Thomas Graves thinks Morales was with Oswald in NO as well. I did not know that mcGeorge Bundy and Dulles were close. For me that is like the nail in the coffin. Bundy running the White House communications with AF 1, calling the shots early on.

Paul T - you sound desperate. Drama queen? Completely inappropriate metaphor. Too bad your hero Caulfield wrote such an unreadable book. With all apologies to Jim Hargrove, calling Armstrong's book the 'last gasp of the CIA did it theory' is grasping at straws. You know beyond a doubt that what you are trying to do is discredit people who find the CIA in any way culpable. This is a false equivalence, a dishonest tactic, a page from the CIA propaganda playbook. Phillips would love it. Repeating your personal theory every time you post, mischaracterizing anyone else's theory, plugging Caulfields book - shameless. Hargrove beat you fair and square, point by point, without plugging any books.

Jim - well done. Trejo's dismissal of Joannides as just another xxxx who kept the HSCA in the dark because it was 'merely Congress' is laughable. CIA could have sent anyone to do that. They chose Joannides because he knew how to keep hidden the JM Wave operations and the DRE - knew what to watch for better than anyone. They are still hiding the documents on him. It is also ridiculous that he keeps insisting on using a novel by Phillips, a professional xxxx and propagandist, as proof of LHO's connection to Castro assassination plots. Veciana was very clear when he said in 2013 that Phillips knew Oswald would not succeed in getting into Cuba, and that therefore the MC visit had a hidden purpose. What else could it be but to set Oswald up? And - why would Dulles and the WC want to keep things hidden for 75 years? To protect Edwin Walker?

James - thanks for the clarifications. As you know, Bill Simpich believes that CIA did not know who impersonated Oswald, and instituted a mole hunt with marked cards in order to figure this out. The implication is that if CIA agents, such as David Morales, were behind the assassination they were working outside of the CIA chain of command, I.e. rogue. Personally I think the mole hunt does not prove that high brass did not know what was going on. In the hall of mirrors world it might even suggest the opposite - that they knew who was impersonating Oswald and trying to connect him with Kostikov, but wanted to appear like they didn't to intrepid researchers who might in the future be able to penetrate deeply enough to see what appeared to be confusion in the ranks, so that they would draw the conclusion that CIA was in the dark about this. What is your opinion on this whole episode? If my thoughts fly in the face of reason or seem naive, feel free to reject my framework and insert your own.

Good post Jim. It is amazing that CIA and FBI were on the same page leading up to Nov. 22. Conventional wisdom has, for decades, said that the intelligence agencies are so engaged in turf battles that they cannot coordinate. In reality the distance between Dulles and Hoover is a phone call. And if Hoover's agents, like Gheesling and Hosty and the SAC in New Orleans, whose name escapes me, do the incomprehensible things they did, it's Hoover, a hands on FBI director, that we should question. We know he was integral to the coverup, but want to absolve him for the actions of his agents. And I should add ex agents like Banister.

Jim - thanks for the document. I wonder whether Mae Brussell had more than this? She mentioned Division 5 often. Paul - it does matter who Kostikov was, because if he wasn't the scary dude he was portrayed as, it wouldn't matter what ties LHO had with him. Then it would be important to know who created that legend. I've tried finding out more but hit a brick wall. Does anyone have proof that he was, or wasn't KGB head of assassinations? Paul - there is another way to read the CIA actions leading up to Nov 22, 1963. The effect of what Simpich refers to as the mole hunt, combined with Gheesling's removal of LHO, enabled the plotters to have Oswald in place at the TSBD for whatever purpose they had in mind, and regardless of whether he was an actual part of the plot, which as you know we disagree on. I've read Simpich, and read your interpretations of it many times as well. You overstate his case consistently, and seem to elevate his work to a status alone at the top of researchers who have studied Mexico City in detail, because your interpretation of his book dovetails with your personal theory. Before that book David Sánchez Morales was no where in your theory, and when it became obvious to you that leaving him out was a mistake, you then incorporated him into your theory as a 'rogue', using Simpich as proof that he couldn't possibly be working within some CIA chain of command, and completely and conveniently absolving Phillips, Shackley, Angleton, Helms, Dulles in the process. Since then you have been on a rampage against what you call the CIA did it researchers. What the mole hunt definitely proves is that Angleton and Goodpasture were up to something. It does not prove, and I wish you and others would think about this more clearly, that the aforementioned CIA brass were in the dark about the Oswald impersonations. It remains only one possibility for the deliberate obfuscations of Angleton and Goodpasture that enabled the plot to move forward. There are others. I remain open to Simpich, but also think that Newman has done incredible work in this area, and he has a lot more of a resume than Simpich. Jim DEugenio - you have many years of experience, and have studied Ann Goodpasture extensively. What is your reading of her actions after the Mexico City visits of whoever that was, Oswald or not? Did you ever dig into the Kostikov story?

i recall reading somewhere that Kostikov wasn't connected to the KBG assassinations at all. I cannot figure out where I read this, but the implication was that his scary bonafides were planted not real. . Gheesling was ordered to remove Oswald from the flash list by headquarters. Who exactly? How is that different from the watch list? Very confusing indeed.

Exactly right. The hand of Allen Dulles is apparent.

I should add that I'm not absolving the CIA in regards to warnings about LHO in Dallas.

Is there any evidence that Hoover knew about LHO before the assassination? Is there any evidence that Marvin Gheesling was following orders when he removed LHO from the FBI watch list? Paul T - is it your contention that Hosty worked for Walker while in his official FBI capacity he was supposed to be watching him and others? Where does the blame fall, in your opinion, for leaving LHO in place without any suspicion, Hosty, or Gheesling, or both? To turn this on its head a bit, if we assume LHO was innocent, and a patsy set up by someone, what difference does it make what Hosty or Gheesling did about LHO other than to possibly help set him up? In this scenario. Whatever either of them did or didn't do, it had the effect, intentional or not, of keeping him in place as a patsy, not as a marksman. I think that matters a lot.

Jim - is, or was there really an FBI division 5?