Paul Brancato

reslly great, especially the impressive sources. Russ Baker goes much further, investigating not just the history of the corporate entity known as Zapata and Zapata offshore, but the Bush family itself. So, was Zapata set up as a CIA front? Was George Bush CIA at the time? Well, I've posted on this many times, but in general people avoid it, and I think, based on minor personal dealings with the Bushes, perhaps wisely. Russ Baker showed a lot of courage writing his book, as did others. But why the research community won't take the Bush family connection to the assassination of JFK seriously is incomprehensible to me.

Douglas - I'm disappointed. I realize I've been harsh recently. I'm just really sick of the crap. Judyth deserves no respect, and my point about her impressive line up is not whether all of them are full of bs, but whether they think participating in an event put on by an obvious fraud is in any way effective. Of course it is not, in the short or long term.

Really Ron?

Mr. Doyle - I couldn't possibly agree more with your rebuttal. Of course the CIA heavies had the means motive and opportunity, and as you point out the experience, to eliminate JFK.

Haslam has lost credibility for sure. I read his books. They were interesting. But I the end I have to conclude he was mistaken or worse. All the stuff about Banister's files, monkey viruses and polio being the origins of AIDS, the idea that Ferrie or anyone else in that milieu were serious cancer researchers is just nonsensical.

ron - as I said, I see plenty of problems with Clinton, just not the ones you are focussed on, which do indeed emanate from right wing hit squads. What she did with her emails was not the horrible thing Republicans say it was, or that you believe. She didn't cause the terrorism in Benghazi, didn't cause Syria to fall apart, etc etc. The coming election is most certainly not a choice of equally bad candidates.

Here here

Ron - I think most people reading what you write wish you would get over your moral equivalence argument. I sure would. Clinton is establishment, but not a crook, a xxxx, a crazy person, dangerous to our democracy. I don't like things she stands for, but hey I don't like the Democratic Party as whole either. But Trump? Please, for me you lose credibility, and considering how level headed you usually are it makes no sense that you have taken the right wing blogosphere bait.

Right on Dawn. Anyone singing Baker's praises loses credibility - that's it in a nutshell for me. I've read Linda Minor's stuff here in the past, but not for a long while. Why do you respect her as a researcher?

Ernie - there's Hoover, and there's the larger institution. I was asking about Hoover himself. My parents were cpusa in the early 1950's. Their best friend in the party turned out to be FBI. Did Hoover's institution similarly infiltrate the JBS? Or the Minutemen? Can you point to any American communists who you would have considered dangerous? Do you think American communists had anything to do with any assassinations in the U.S. during our lifetimes? The cpusa was so concerned with civil rights that they kicked my father out of the party for not taking the side of a black man who robbed an Italian grocer in Halem NY. To hear my parents talk about their membership, it was all about idealism, wanting a more egalitarian society. Whatever shenanigans the Stalinists were up to, the average member was like my parents - wanting a better more fair society. You would not dispute that Hoover was a racist would you? He targeted MLK mercilessly. He famously tried to paint MLK as under communist influence because of some of his associates. Can you not see those associates as, like my parents, idealists looking to create a more just society? Was MLK targeted really because of Commies in his camp? Come on. My mother was brought to DC as a member of Women's Strike For Peace and brought before Congress to explain herself to HUAC. Why? Because she had formerly been a member of Cpusa, and HUAC wanted to smear that good idealistic organization with a communist brush, as they did MLK. Really now, just who were they trying to kid? This thread is largely between you and Trejo. He argues that a right wing cabal killed JFK. He is at least in part right. It certainly wasn't leftists that killed JFK. The dispute I have with Trejo is about definitions, and private vs public rightists. But there is no dispute about the right wing origins of the plot. It never ceases to amaze me when people try to parse the right, claiming the national security state military industrial complex was somehow not right wing. What the hell else would you call guys like Curtis Lemay, or JEdgar Hoover?

Ernie - great and prodigious efforts over the decades on your part. What confuses me is how, given the fact that your research clearly proves that Hoover's FBI targeted the 'left' for expressing themselves freely (think Leonard Bernstein for one example) and did not do the same to the right, you can take the position that Hoover was some kind of centrist? Am I misrepresenting your point of view?

Ms. Baker gets away with this because some reputable researchers swallow their pride for a buck. Ok I know that some need the money, but if you are in this game to ferret out the truth it would be wiser to find another way to earn a living. If you are a writer, write something else, or teach, or whatever. I think it's shameful - sorry to those of you well meaning people that have made this deal with this devil. You think that getting your word out is worth sacrificing your principles, but it's not. It's too important historically, and she is muddying the waters and serving as a disinfo specialist. I don't know if she is on a payroll or is just crazy or crooked. Pamela, who surely knows this from the inside, will recall that Guns and Butter, a Pacifica show that was often interesting, had her on several times, and the producer was basically unresponsive when I pointed her in a more truthful direction than James Fetzer. Now when I happen upon that show I listen with a jaundiced ear, and often just change the channel. So basically, those that give Ms. Baker air time without doing any fact checking are ruining their own reputations. But of course the idiots abound out there, so there is no shortage of fodder. Trump is the perfect example of the effect of this dumbing down that has been going on for decades now.

Of course it is possible that the Oswald file got Otepka in trouble, but if it did then it's far more likely that his secret enemy was someone like Angleton, who may have been running Oswald.

I agree Otepka should have been in the WC report, along with umpteen others. But there is something about the story as Otepka told it that rings untrue. As you know he personally blamed the Kennedy's, Robert in particular, for his troubles, and he claimed that it was his Oswald file that was the problem. That just doesn't make sense. Sourwine and Senators Eastland and Dodd and their Senate Internal Security Subcommittee were clearly up to no good and were enemies of the Kennedy administration. That should hardly be surprising given the awful history of that committee. So when they stood up for Otepka that, to me, was a mark against Otto and regardless of his protestations puts him in their extreme anti communist camp. If memory serves, they were up to their eyeballs with Pawley and the failed Operation Red Cross or Tilt or the Bayo Pawley affair. So that means they were illegally trying to go operational in their opposition to the Kennedy clan. Wasn't it they that came up with the idea that the Soviets still had military advisors in Cuba in 1963, a few of whom wanted to defect and tell their story to the U.S.? Well, at least they bought that lie hook line and sinker in their zeal to deal a death blow to JFK. So these are the people who tried to protect Otto Otepka? Doesn't that indicate that old Otto was supplying them with info against the Kennedys? If so its no wonder that RFK and Sheridan went after him. He was a far easier target than the senators and their attorney. In my opinion he was a self serving xxxx and got what he deserved. Unfortunately John and Bobby, true patriots, received far harsher punishment. I have read as much as I could find on the SISS over the years, yet find too much of what those racist rabid dogs did wrapped in secrecy.

Just ordered.

Jim - I'm sure you've done this before, but could you provide a link to LHO's Texas drivers license?

I'm inclined to believe it is genuine. I'll avoid the comments - thanks Michael. Like you I don't judge him. I'm sure Mary was far more interesting than Jackie.

Steve - I agree it is interesting. Cuba seemed to be the motivation before the killing, yet afterwards Vietnam became the prime mover. It is clear that JFK was in the way. This is where I think the theory of a fake false flag assassination being hijacked by a real one makes sense. Had JFK survived what appeared to be an attempt by Castro to kill him I think Cuba would have been toast. But a live JFK would never have allowed the Vietnam escalation that followed his death. The Cuba issue was small potatoes, and largely ideological. But Vietnam was a huge money maker, and money almost always overtakes ideology. The most important of the Bay of Pigs conspirators, the ones that worked with the CIA well before BOP and well after Vietnam, worked for Theodore Shackley and his buddies, and for George Bush 'of the CIA' - Hoover's words and to me the central clue.

Chuck Schwartz - great post on Dealey Plaza witnesses to possible shots from the 'grassy knoll'. I followed Mark Lane closely as a 15 year old Bronxite, and went to see him at least twice, most memorably in a debate with Melvin Belli in NYC 1964. It was specifically his recordings of Dealey Plaza witnesses that convinced me and got me forever hooked on this search for truth. Many of these witnesses said they heard more than 3 shots, that they came from in front, that they were questioned (intimidated) by FBI shortly after and told they had it wrong there were only 3 shots. It seemed a natural progression to me to believe Mark Lane. When Oswald was taken into custody and paraded about in the halls of the Dallas police station as the presumptive commie assassin, and then murdered in a well televised spectacle two days later, we all wanted to make sense out of these horrible events. Officialdom, media and government, immediately rallied behind the already official story, which just rang false, incomprehensibly false. It was into that breach, that vacuum, that Mark Lane stepped. Some time ago there was a lot of criticism of Lane on this forum. Are any of them reading his now? Questions linger about his associations with the Liberty Lobby and with Jonestown. I personally don't think they besmirch his work on JFK.

David - do you think it possible that Baker was supposed to kill Oswald but failed?

Cliff - very convincing.

David Lifton - did you tell Ron Ecker that you thought officer Baker was supposed to kill Oswald?

David et al - who is standing between Prescott Bush and Richard Nixon in the photo of them in the Armstrong article?

Sandy - don't know how to post the link to another thread on this one

When did Ruby first mention Walker?