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Paul Brancato

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Posts posted by Paul Brancato

  1. 27 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

    From Pat on p.3 in this thread:

    From Jack Valenti's 1975 defense of Johnson, A Very Human President.  Valenti sat with Johnson on the plane while waiting for Mrs. Kennedy, and was intimately aware of Johnson's thoughts during this period. "before Air Force One departed for Washington, Johnson had also made his first command decision, on his own, to wait for the body of the dead president to be brought aboard before he gave an order to be airborne. This was an intuitive decision and a good one." So... Johnson, a man famous for seeking advice, had decided not to leave without the body, and had come to this decision entirely on his own, after reaching Air Force One. Hmmm..." 

    I said Johnson ordered the body to be brought to the plane because he knew Jackie would accompany it and, more importantly, because he could not let Dr. Rose do the autopsy.

    The scuffle in the hallway when Dr. Rose briefly resisted was with what is usually termed the secret service, at least one of whom had a weapon.  In any case, it's clear that Johnson knew who to call because the body was delivered to the plane.

    Seems to me that there is something missing in this particular moment. It’s implied but not stated. And it’s unclear who went into parkland machine guns drawn. So it could be another entity, military probably, and what Valenti saw may have been LBJ following orders. 

  2. As far as I’m concerned it’s a false debate. I read the article this morning. As usual NYT doesn’t really clarify what’s going on. And when they call for full disclosure after 25 years, using the JFK act as proof that this works, it’s a bunch of baloney. 

  3. 3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

    Bill Kelly discredited Elena Garo.

    Betsy Wolf found out that Angleton had Elena and Duran pirated off the day of the assassination to two different locales.

    I agree why three different threads on this?

    Jim - I’d like to read this. Where can I find it? 

  4. Why has Ben made three threads out of one story?

    Elena Garro paid a heavy price for the story she told, and she stuck by it. I think it shouldn’t be lumped in with the other sightings, and we should consider what Pat Speer said here not too many months ago - that like Ben said LHO could both be in MC and be impersonated there, by phone or in person, but unlike Ben that LHO might have been off on his own doing none of the things we are told he did. We could also keep in mind that once we accept that possibility there is no particular reason it has to be on those exact dates at the end of September. 
    Can you imagine an armed LHO entering the Russian Embassy in MC and having to be talked down? Ridiculous on its face. Why the Russians made up this fiction and PBS aired it I don’t know, but Ben, come on man. 

  5. 10 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

    Humm, if I said that about you, I'm pretty sure I'd get a moderator warning.

    Anyway, I think it is embarrassing that this thread is still going. The case for a John Lennon assassination conspiracy is ludicrous--it is built on reading miles between the lines and on choosing to see dark, sinister implications in meaningless discrepancies in the reports/accounts on the shooting.

    Maybe so, but can’t you stay out of it? You’ve made your point several times. 

  6. Good series of posts - thank you Roger. I think your explanation for the swearing in on AF 1 makes sense. What’s not entirely clear is whether LBJ was taking orders from the get go when he ordered the body of JFK be taken from Parkalnd and onto the plane. I believe he also ordered the Limo to be flown out. All of this is suggestive of his prior knowledge, but not proof of it or of his prior involvement.
    I am going to assume that the assassination was ordered from a high level. If it was LBJ then one can view all his subsequent actions through that lens. But if the coup was managed through the MIlitary/CIA there was no reason for them to doubt that LBJ would comply. Perhaps Madeleine Brown had it right when she said that she thought LBJ was brought in the night before. He surely wasn’t going to stop it, and if she is telling the truth he was thrilled. 
    MacBird - was that the name of the Broadway show? It remains most logical, most like human nature. 
    Question for Jim D - where is the line between LBJ and Hoover? 

  7. 6 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

    Who is SAMUEL CUMMINGS?

    Interarms (formerly  Interarmco and officially the International Armaments Corporation) was the world's largest private arms dealer, and once had enough weapons in their warehouses to equip forty U.S. divisions. The sole owner was Sam Cummings, who got his start working with the CIA to procure weapons for the 1954 coup in Guatemala

    A most interesting individual was James P. Atwood (April 16, 1930- July 20, 1997).

    A top US Army Intelligence agent and important CIA contract worker and former FBI employee who ran guns, drugs, counterfeit rare German daggers, stolen archives and much more in and out of various countries from his headquarters in Savannah, Georgia.

    During his career, Atwood worked with the CIA's Sam Cummings, Tom Nelson, Jim Critchfield and many others

    Atwood's activities are linked to Robert Crowley (who knew him and disliked him) ,to Jim Critchfield and a number of other CIA luminaries.

    Arrested by the Army's CIC in the early 60s, for misuse of government mail, tax fraud and other matters,  Atwood  got the CIA to force the charges against him dropped. All the paperwork was supposed to have been destroyed but a copy of the 62 count indictment plus the Chicago Federal judge's orders have survived.

     

    Gregory Douglas writes "It was an easy matter for Cummings to procure two silenced .38-caliber pistols, two 7.65-mm surplus Argentine army Mausers"

     

    argentine-mauser-stamp.png

    Tony - interesting subject and conjecture. I do agree with Nick - I find it inconceivable that the MC could have been misidentified as a Mauser at first. 
    when you mentioned Atwood it rang a bell. I don’t think one can look at Cummings and Interarmco without looking at Merex. I believe that Atwood was connected to both. I tried to post a link but it won’t take. The issue of ‘gun running’ comes up over and over again when studying the assassination, such as the weapons being stolen from the 112th and sold to Minutemen and Cubans, being investigated by the three goons who later found them selves on the 6th floor of the TSBD - ATF agent Ellsworth, FBI Hosty, MI Ed Coyle, meeting together at the time of the assassination because their sting of the gun runners had been interrupted the night before by Dallas Police, Jack Ruby in so many ways, Alpha 66. I think the identification of the TSBD rifle is a crucial point, and the truth still eludes us. There is recent evidence being dug up suggesting that LH Oswald was involved in this, not as a gun runner but as an agent investigating same. I know PD Scott decades ago conjectured that LH Oswald’s gun purchases were part of a Congressional investigation into illegal maiil order arms sales. But the truth may be much deeper than that. 

  8. 6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    It's real easy to be an armchair quarterback, isn't it Doug. What would you have done to prevent the death and misery in Gaza? What would you have done with the troops in Afghanistan?

    Biden is one of the few Americans who are trying to free hostages and get humanitarian aid to Gazans. He should be thanked, not blamed.

    Out of curiosity, did you blame President Carter for his failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran? Did you blame Ronald Reagan for the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut? (I could go on, but I'll stop there.)

     

    What was Reagan’s response? I would say to Doug we should never have gone into Afghanistan or Iraq. 
    Brown University study from 2021 on the costs of post 9/11 conflict? 940,00 at least, including 432,000 civilians. There is much more to this study. Google Costs of War Brown University. The political blowback in Europe of 25 million refugees is ongoing. 
    I do think, as Leslie called my attention to this, that we should remain civil. If I have failed to do so I would appreciate knowing that. I finally, after 10 years, put someone on ignore after repeated insults. 

     

  9. 52 minutes ago, Leslie Sharp said:

    @John Cotter I’m pointing out the burden any administration carries.  Trump, in spite of his blathering bluster promising to take down the “deep state” (a misnomer if ever there was one*) backed down.

    *I’m told that Prof. Peter Dale Scott says among any regrets, introducing that term into the popular lexicon in place of the Military-Industrial Complex, ranks high.  Does anyone think Trump would take down the Military-Industrial Complex which employs tens of millions of voters?  On the contrary, he poured trillions into it, and increased our debt in the process. He/they are after our institutions and judicial system that safeguard our democracy, full stop. 

    And Biden’s military budget was even larger. What’s worse than Trump? Endless war for one. in 2016 and 2020 the efforts by the Democratic Party insiders to deny Bernie Sanders a fair shot at the nomination shows their true Empire driven colors. Go back and watch the whole 1963 JFK ‘Peace speech’. Ponder who killed him and why, and then fast forward to today where we are told every day in every way that we have no choice but to back the Pax Americana JFK warned about. The decade long declining American life span, the obscene cost of higher education and quality health care, the lack of equal opportunity, and a host of other things I could enumerate, are not the fault of one party or another but of a rigged system. We are in this predicament because we allowed our own institutions to fail to protect our Democracy and to cover up crimes of State, and we are still at it, turning a blind eye to the corruption within. Making sure Trump never sets foot in the White House again does nothing to change the trajectory we are on, but gives us a false sense of hope and pride, and to me that may even be worse because it is so insidious. 

  10. 1 hour ago, Mart Hall said:

    Whatever your beliefs are on the assassination when you consider that these records should have been released years ago and the laws governing these records have not been followed by the highest elected official in the world you have to ask yourself, "in whose interest is it that these records remain classified after 60 years?"

    I struggle to see this petition as something that should be divisive. 

    Indeed, yet it is, in my opinion because the propaganda against RFK JR is effective, leaning heavily on ‘Trump derangement syndrome’. Trump must be defeated, ergo dissenting voices among Democrats must be snuffed. I wish we would take heart by looking at the origin of the Republican Party. Would slavery have ended without its creation? There are worse things than Trump, but my liberal friends, nearly all of them, are blinded by fear of what he would do if he was re-elected. 

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