I like the spelling LaFitte 

3 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

Top rated for pod casts or so I’ve been told.  

And that’s a good thing in my opinion. He deserves a lot of credit for sticking his neck out.

Pretty sure the inclusion of Willoughby and Cannon came from Russell. 

Perhaps Dick Russell could be persuaded to come here and give his two cents on working with Reiner. 
How many books on the subject even mention Willoughby? 
Jim - who do you think were the shooters and planners?

7 hours ago, John Deignan said:

In the latest episode the podcast names their suspected shooters: Herminio Diaz Garcia, Jean Souetre, Charles Nicoletti, and Jack Cannon. Also places they believe shots came from: 6th floor TSBD, behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll, the Dal Tex building and the County Records building, and the overpass by the south knoll. However that would require one more shooter. 

Reiner and company make it clear that there is no certainty - by design and complicity in the coverup. But they make a reasonable assumption in the end. Named as the organizers are William Harvey and Charles Willoughby, with the knowledge of Allen Dulles.

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Interesting point: 

Who did LBJ tell on the Secret Service that he would not leave without the corpse?

 

It’s interesting to me that 60 years later we still don’t know some crucial and important info that should not have been a mystery. 

3 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Looks like we would have to leave that to Pat evaluate then Roger, of course no such call is on the AF1 tape we have now.  Certainly not a Johnson call to Parkland telling somebody (who?) there what to do with the president's body.  For that matter I'm not sure how the call would have been made given AF1 communications and the fact that the Secret Service folks were using extensions and even public phones at the hospital. Its an interesting idea but I would need to see a lot of leg work to be comfortable with it...

Perhaps you can reach out to Pat for some details, if true its amazing that nobody has made a point to research the timing in regard to the individual movements of Johnson, Jackie and the body and put this issue to bed up to now.

 

Yup - good ideas. 

37 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

I always thought it was odd to have JFKs personal physician at the autopsy but as you point out, with Burkley being a ranking naval officer, and the autopsy taking place at Bethesda, a case could be made for why it was ok to have Burkley present at the autopsy. 

Burkley was controlling the autopsy at Bethesda in an effort to conceal for Mrs Kennedy that JFK had Addisons disease. Its possible that at Parkland Burkley and Mrs Kennedy discussed this and Burkley realized that the only way to conceal JFKs Addisons disease was to get the body out of Parkland and back to Bethesda where he could control the autopsy to prevent JFKs secret from getting out. So its quite possible that the SS at Parkland were working under orders from Burkley. Burkley spinning the story to the SS officers that Mrs Kennedy wanted JFKs body out of Dallas while concealing the real reason why she wanted the body out of Dallas, to prevent JFKs Addisons disease from becoming public knowledge. 

Gerry - why would Jackie care if Addison’s disease was revealed? While he was alive maybe. Don’t you think she cared who done it, that her husband was gone, that LBJ was calling the shots? 

15 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

The 1967 oeral interview for the JFK Librarry also has this comment by Burkley:

When the President was on the Air Force One returning to Washington, Mrs. Kennedy, as has been noted, sat in the rear of the plane, next to the coffin bearing the President’s remains. During the flight I contacted her, and stated that an autopsy would be necessary, and that I was perfectly willing to arrange to have it done at any place that she felt it should be done. She said, “Well, it doesn’t have to be done.” I said, “Yes, it is mandatory that we have an autopsy. I can do it at the Army hospital at Walter Reed or at the Navy hospital at Bethesda, or any civilian hospital that you would designate.” However, I felt that it should be a military hospital, in that he had been President of the United States and was, therefore, the Commander in Chief of the Military. After some consideration she stated that she would like to have the President taken to Bethesda. This was arranged by telephone from the plane, and it was accomplished. 

Burkley accompanied the President in the ambulance going to Bethesda, and also accompanied him to the area where the autopsy was performed. He later stated that:

"I supervised the autopsy and kept in constant contact with Mrs. Kennedy and the members of her party who were on the seventeenth floor in the suite at that level. I made trips back and forth. I delivered to her personally the ring from the President’s finger and talked to her on a number of occasions. I also directed that the X-rays be taken for future reference and had complete knowledge of everything that was done. The records are also in possession of members of the family.

There were photographs taken at various stages, and they are also in the possession of the family. And the only regret I have that I did not ask to have a photograph taken when he had been restored to his near normal appearance. And I may mention here that he was very lifelike in his appearance and there would have been no question of his having been viewed." 

In JFK Revisited, Jim DiEugenio points out that:

1. Sibert and O'Neill state that the autopsy report was false. The back wound was not where the Commission said it was, and there was a hole in the rear of JFK's head. (and Arlen Specter kept their testimony out of the record).
2. George Burkley agreed with the placement of that back wound-twice. Once in the official death certificate and once on the face sheet, though his name is erased from the latter (Specter kept him out of the record also).
3. In his 1967 oral interview for the JFK Library, Burkley’s conclusion in regard to the cause of death was the bullet wound which "involved the skull":

The discussion as to whether a previous bullet also enters into it, but as far as the cause of death, the immediate cause was unquestionably the bullet which shattered the brain and the calvarium.

When asked whether he agreed with the Warren Report on the number of bullets that entered the President’s body, he famously stated: "I would not care to be quoted on that”.

Gene

 

Hi Gene - thanks for the post. I read through the link you quote from which Larry posted. Plus you added a few more points from Jim D. I do wonder what Burkley kept to himself about the number of bullets etc. He must have been under enormous pressure that day, and surely saddened by the death of JFK. Do you know if his private papers are in a collection somewhere? 

14 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Paul,  there are other interviews by Burkley that are not quite so structured but certainly even in this one his wording is that he did not view any legal strictures that would have required not taking Jackie and the body back to DC and he expressed the desire not not to put Jackie though anything further. 

This is the sort of thing that encourages me to cease commenting here,  there is just such a strong drive to find mystery and evildoing in every detail that its become a drain.  Its about time I left everyone to their own directions..

 -- signing off,  Larry

 

 

 

But surely it was not Burkley’s decision to make. H wasn’t calling the shots. Is that, in your view, a farfetched statement? 

Burkley: ‘The coroner attempted to have the body retained there for a postmortem and investigation of the assassination. That was perfectly understandable, in that this condition existed. However, the people involved were not just anyone, it was the President of the United States. Mrs. Kennedy was going to just stay where she was and travel with the President at any time. It was felt advisable to return the President to the Washington area as soon as possible because of the uncertainty as to what else was happening in Dallas’. 
This interview from 1967, done for the historical record and donated to the JFK library, does not mention the struggle at gunpoint to take the body from Parkland onto AF 1. It does not appear to be under oath, is not questioning by an investigatory committee. And it doesn’t say what you originally suggested it did. Burkley’s exact language here appears very carefully constructed, does it not? 
 

9 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Larry - thanks for straightening me out about JFK’s doctor being behind the forceful removal of JFK’s body from Parkland. 

Did any secret service agents testify to removing JFK from Parkland at gunpoint? 

10 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Gerry is right, we keep going over and over this and there have been some really good posts on it...hopefully those interested will pick them up again....the last round was only a few months ago.

To recap a couple of other points we have discussed in the past....JFK's Doctor admitted that he felt he had forced the issue of taking the body because he told some of the SS agents that Jackie insisted on staying with the body and she was in no condition to do that and the agents were taking this all quite personally at that point in time and followed his lead and were going to take the body and her back to DC - regardless.

As to Domestic Ops, the CIA has always been authorized to collection information inside the US in regard to foreign affairs and on foreign targets of intelligence interests...meaning they have routinely interviewed business travelers, academics working or studying overseas, and for that matter CEOs running international companies.  They have had public offices in major cities, especially as was pointed out above, in cities with a good bit of international business or where international companies operate.

These issues come up over and over here - with some excellent posts and threads - and I suppose they will continue to do so - perhaps we need an AI to recover the threads and respond to key words...grin.

 

Larry - thanks for straightening me out about JFK’s doctor being behind the forceful removal of JFK’s body from Parkland. 

11 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Something that to me seems relevant to this conversation...

 

HOW THE CIA CIRCUMVENTS THE RESTRICTION AGAINST CIA COVERT ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE UNITED STATES:

The CIA has been known to flagrantly violate the domestic operations restriction and has -- or at the very least in the 1970's 'had' -- a program which entailed the CIA keeping four U.S. criminal defense attorneys on retainer to defend CIA agents and assets who happened to be criminally charged for crimes committed in the context of CIA covert actions undertaken within the United States (covert actions which, of course, are forbidden by the CIA charter). The program was known as "Index Four", and was the means by which the Watergate burglars and mafia chieftains such as Trafficante and Giancana -- who had collaborated with the CIA on its kill Castro operations -- had obtained their legal counsel, and which is how F. Lee Bailey was designated to represent Watergate burglar and CIA agent James McCord and mafia don Santo Trafficante during the period of the Watergate hearings in the early 1970's. Attorney Daniel Sheehan had learned about Index Four (as well as about the "S-Force" that executed President Kennedy [See below]) during a brief period in 1973 when F. Lee Bailey had hired him to assist with the defense of James McCord.

 

I have cued up the video lecture for you to the segment at which Professor Daniel Sheehan describes Index Four at 28:05 via the following link:

 

_______________

RE: THE S-FORCE

 

In 1960, once VP Richard Nixon came to believe he was going to win the presidential election and decided to send a hit squad after Castro, he called upon Howard Hughes on whose behalf Robert Mayheu contacted Johnny Roselli who contacted Santo Trafficante (because Trafficante was the Don over Cuba). Trafficante insisted upon proof that VP Nixon was authorizing it, so Nixon sent the CIA Chief of Security to a meeting with Trafficante and Roselli to confirm. They then assembled a 15-man team made up of anti-Castro Cuban mercenaries, Italian organized crime assassins (who had worked for Trafficante in Cuba), CIA operatives (such as Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, etc.) and special forces operators. This "S-Force" was funded by a skim off Las Vegas casinos, and was trained on U.S. military bases and Clint Murchison's ranch in Mexico to conduct triangulated crossfire ambush assassinations, and they were deployed to conduct such an operation against the President of the United States during the weekend of November 22, 1963. This information is primarily derived from what attorney Daniel Sheehan has divulged about the attorney/client privileged communications between Santo Trafficante and F. Lee Bailey while Bailey was representing them on CIA retainer during the period of the Watergate Hearings. Video is queued to 45:39 where Professor Sheehan describes Santo Trafficante's confidential attorney-client privileged explanation of the relationship between Operation 40 and the "S-Force" which was originally constituted under the auspices of VP Nixon to off Castro, but was instead ultimately deployed to assassinate President Kennedy:

 

 

Also see detailed account of the origins of the S-Force as presented in Daniel Sheehan's autobiography via the following link:

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/6787297377992940/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really appreciate you posting this. Sheehan gets little love from the assassination community at large, which has always puzzled me. In your synopsis you state that Nixon sent the CIA chief of security to meet with Trafficante. Is he identified?

It seems to me that we are missing the implications of Vince’s post here. First of all, why the back and forth about agents vs assets? Clearly the secret service officer identified him as an agent with ID. So why was he there? Then there is the FBI agent who is identified in the YouTube video as trying to get into the operating theater. Did I get that right Vince? You speculate he may have planted 399. 
here is the question I have for you Vince - who drew the guns that forced the Parkland doctors to give up the body of JFK? Was it Secret Service? If so who, and under whose orders? We know the story of LBJ ordering this by telephone, but If LBJ did order it, who carried it out? And isn’t it possible that LBJ was ordered by parties unknown to do so? 

Republican congressman from AZ - last summer. We haven’t heard much about it since. 

52 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Yes, Paul, I read that lone straw man propaganda response, which had very little to do with the substance of Sterling's article about JFK's disagreements with Ben Gurion and the militant right wing Zionists in Palestine.

It reminded me of Michael Griffith's standard, misleading straw man arguments in our debates on this forum.

The technique is, "Hey, look at this straw man over here!  If the author didn't describe this little straw man quite correctly, all of his work must be inaccurate," etc.

True, but one has to acknowledge that Arab hatred of Jews is also a problem. 

And then there is the lone response after the article by someone refuting much of what Sterling wrote regarding both the 1967 war and the mass expulsion of Arabs. 

29 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Dreyfuss said, I think in one of his speeches, that he thought the only time you could have had peace in the Middle East was under Nasser.

And if you just apply some elementary logic, that would mean with JFK, since Foster Dulles before and LBJ after essentially had little use for Nasser, largely because of his pan Arab ambitions. What makes that notable is that Dreyfuss just presents the facts and has no attachment to JFK at all.  And I should add, he leaves some important stuff out.  But he does include the fact that Kennedy also commissioned a State Department study of the advantages and liabilities of bringing back Mossadegh in Iran also.

Kennedy's policy in the area was both creative and original.  And until the likes of Rakove and Muehlenbeck was pretty much hidden.

 

 

Jim - my post about Nazis in King Farouk’s government was not meant to derail your thread, but rather hopefully to deepen it. Alongside everything you mention about Nasser there is this history, and the successful operation to destroy Egypt’s nuclear ambitions by Mossad, using the very Nazi that set up Egypt’s post war program in the first place. In your reading did Nasser ever address any of this? 

1 hour ago, Paul Rigby said:

Dreyfuss's book is full of good things, but British financing of Islamists originates earlier, with Russian expansion into the Persian Caucuses. There are some fascinating details in Craig Murray's biography of the legendary Scottish spook Alexander Burnes, among them, this passage:

Palmerston sent a British ship, the Vixen, into the Black Sea in 1836 to run arms to Dagestani rebels, under cover of a cargo of salt. It caused a diplomatic incident when the ship was intercepted by Russian forces, but Palmerston sent an assurance to the Russian Foreign Minister Nesselrode that the British government had no knowledge of the venture. Palmerston was an accomplished xxxx. The Vixen was part of widespread activity by the British secret service in sending arms and advisers to the Chechen, Dagestani and Circassian rebels, which has modern echoes. The operation had been organised by David Urquhart ‘who had brought all the scattered mujahedin units together and even created a single command structure for them to direct their military action against the Russian army’ (10). Urquhart then took up his appointment as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Constantinople. Four years earlier Palmerston had organised secret smuggling of arms for the Polish uprising. Colin Mackenzie, who served in Kabul with Burnes, had taken part (11). The anti-Russian mood of the British establishment went well beyond rhetoric.

Craig Murray, Sikunder Burnes – Master of the Great Game (Birlinn, 2016)

Incredible. You mention Russian expansion into Persian Caucasus. I assume this was seen by Britain as a threat to their Empire, hence this decision to arm Islamists to counter challenges to their hegemony in the bud. And you’d think the Mujaheddin would be sick of this meddling by now. Your post illustrates so clearly how history gets rewritten, and how little we actually know about historical precedents.    

Tribalism. Just look around you. Stop picking good guys and bad guys. What Hamas did was horrible. What Israel is doing now is horrible. 

Thanks William. Is this a thread about RFK Jr? No. but since you brought it up his stance is closer to Ben’s than to mine. I listened to a long interview where he addressed this, and found it painful and disappointing. But which presidential hopeful are we comparing him to? 
One more thing - the two state solution may be preferable to what exists today, but don’t you think One state would be better? Two states living side by side in peace and harmony? Easy to see why there is so much opposition to the idea. One state was once a principled position, now it’s anathema, because we are devolving into tribal hatred. 

Standing Together - an antidote to Tribalism. We see the latter everywhere in every form, and it continues to be destructive. 
Ben - Pakistan is a Muslim state which, though almost entirely Muslim, guarantees freedom of religion in their constitution. Have you looked at all the Muslim countries to fact check your statement? It’s interesting that British rule is often the antecedent to religious or racial divisions. When each group in a country like India is given representation in a parliamentary government it reinforces tribal attitudes. Britain made Pakistan a separate country for Muslims, thinking it would solve a problem that barely existed prior to their colonial occupation. In their history India had had both Muslim and Hindu rulers. Now we have nukes on either side of the border. 
As much as I appreciate your analysis, and your condemnation of Hamas, and Putin, it just doesn’t go far enough in my opinion. As JFK said, one has to put oneself in the shoes of the ‘enemy’ of peace is the desired outcome. The last 100 years of middle east history cannot be reduced to the intolerance of Muslims. 

https://www.facebook.com/reel/250344348006576

Dr. Steven Greer, whose work prompted my thread, speaking about zero point energy, advanced technologies being hidden and why.

Agree