Joseph McBride

Niall O’Dowd: Joe Biden’s debt to the Kennedys It is Robert Kennedy’s bust that now graces the Oval Office, not JFK. Thu, Feb 4, 2021, 11:16 Niall O’Dowd Ted Kennedy helped him overcome the incredible loss of his wife and child. Pic: Joseph Biden speaks during a hearing, Washington DC, October 6, 1987. Beside him is fellow Senator Edward M ‘Ted’ Kennedy . (Photo by Ron Sachs/CNP/Getty Images) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/niall-o-dowd-joe-biden-s-debt-to-the-kennedys-1.4476035

The question is whether or how much Rather "butchered" it or if he saw the unaltered film? Zapruder, for instance, testified under oath that he filmed the turn onto Elm Street. The jump cut on the extant film makes no sense. But some of Rather's description leaves out events we know occurred, such as Hill jumping onto the car. It's not believable on the extant film that he could reach the car in movement that way. The limousine stop was also removed.

Bill Moyers testified under oath to the HSCA that he gave the order for the removal of the bubbletop. Others have also made that claim. One of the oddities of this case is that Moyers has never written the memoir many would have assumed he would write and that would sell many copies, whatever he writes about the events and people in his life.

Baughman's book SECRET SERVICE CHIEF is quite good. I read it when it came out (it was published in January 1962). It is rather prophetic. The fact that I had read it was one reason I was not entirely surprised when Kennedy was shot and saw through some of the lies that were quickly spewed out that day about what happened. I wrote my short story about the Kennedy assassination, "The Plot Against a Country," even before that, in October 1961, for my freshman English class at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee. I believe I was concerned because of the lack of security around Kennedy and my concern about the vulnerability I witnessed in him when I met him twice during the Wisconsin primary campaign in March and April 1960 while working as a volunteer on his campaign and was in close proximity to him, talking with him on both occasions. And I was a student of the Lincoln assassination and had visited Ford's Theater in May 1962 but was surprised to find it closed and gutted at the time, before its restoration. On that visit I went around the Capitol, including the floor of the House while it was in session and the cloakroom, with a page boy, who showed me something he said he wasn't supposed to show people, the catafalque on which Lincoln's coffin had rested. It was in a locked, secluded room in the Capitol covered with a dusty black sheet. Kennedy's coffin later rested in state on that same catafalque. Also in May 1962, when I was in the honor guard at a speech he gave in the Milwaukee Arena, I impulsively said "Hi, Jack!" to him afterward when I pulled back a curtain behind the presidential podium five feet away from him, and he nodded and smile, then turned and walked down a ramp into the Lincoln limousine in which he would be killed the following year. My father at a reception before that event had time to ask Kennedy one question. He asked, "Do you ever worry about being assassinated?" Kennedy replied that of course he realized that was possible but that if he thought about it all the time, he couldn't do his job.

Jim, it's obvious she put it in writing. Various printed sources said he demanded that. Then there was a meeting. Then he OK'd her. Connect the dots. And if you Google for a minute or two, you get this on NPR's website: The Senate has voted to confirm Avril Haines to be director of national intelligence, making her President Biden's first Cabinet-level official to receive Senate confirmation. The vote was 84-10. Her confirmation comes after Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., briefly held up the process, asking for a written response from her about a question during her confirmation hearing a day earlier. "I no longer object," Cotton said Wednesday evening, noting that Haines had provided him with a response.

Although we narrowly fended off an attempted coup, Avril Haines could not be confirmed by the Senate today as director of national intelligence until she put in writing at the demand of the vile Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) that she and the Biden administration would not go after CIA officers from the Bush-Cheney regime for their involvement in the US government torture program. She had given verbal assurances, but he insisted on having it in writing. (See articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico. Cotton wanted this known.) That’s just Day One. The lines were drawn already. Cotton wants to be president. Imagine what he would do if he gets that job. I wonder if the torture program actually ended when Obama said it did or not (Haines was a deputy CIA director in the Obama administration). And I wonder what did Cotton himself do in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. A friend of mine says he would have demanded that Cotton specify in detail, on the floor of the Senate and for the Congressional Record, exactly what crimes he was referring to. Cotton strikes me as the kind of better-educated, more disciplined potential tyrant who has learned from what Trump did in his failed coup and could pull one off more efficiently if he takes office in 2025.

The Washington Post article today indicates Secret Service complicity in the attack on the Capitol, though the Post doesn't seem to fully grasp that. Since this event allegedly was an inside job, it’s noteworthy that, as the article points out, the Secret Service was very slow in getting Pence out of the chamber. It states that Pence "was not evacuated from the Senate chamber for about 14 minutes after the Capitol Police reported an initial attempted breach of the complex — enough time for the marauders to rush inside the building and approach his location, according to law enforcement officials and video footage from that day. Secret Service officers eventually spirited Pence to a room off the Senate floor with his wife and daughter after rioters began to pour into the Capitol, many loudly denouncing the vice president as a traitor as they marched through the first floor below the Senate chamber." Pence was there with his wife, daughter, brother, and some staffers. Similar to Dallas — as we know, the complicity of the Secret Service was necessary to Kennedy’s murder. There was a whole series of security-stripping actions in Dallas, including the car stop before the head shots that was removed from the Zapruder film (the car stop was described by dozens of witnesses, including Sen. Ralph Yarborough to me, as quoted in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE). If you want to kill a leader, you usually have to compromise his security. That’s a pattern long established. Trump tried to kill Pence — the first US president to attempt to assassinate his vice president.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a former US Air Force officer and currently a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, said on MORNING JOE today that the mob was trying to assassinate Pelosi and hang Pence and that members of Congress were involved in the planning of the attack on the Capitol.

Letter to DOJ and FBI from AZ State Reps. Athena Salman and Reginald Bolding et al:

Sherrill letter.pdf

DEVELOPMENTS RE THE ALLEGED 1/6 PLOT: Trump's attempt to kill his own VP is another first in American history (Pence also had his wife, daughter, and brother at the Capitol while the mob was chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and he was whisked to safety by the Secret Service, although he refused to go to Fort McNair and stayed within the Capitol). Politico and other outlets -- even the Washington Post -- are full of information about alleged plotters from within the Republican ranks in Arizona to plan the 1/6 assault on the Capitol (evidently also intended to hold as hostage and/or kill members of Congress) as part of the ongoing coup attempt. Alleged conspirators who have been named include AZ Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, State Rep. Mark Finchem, and former Rep. Anthony Kern. Kern was photographed at the event outside the Capitol and Finchem is alleged to have been there, although he denies involvement in the plot and blames it on the nonexistent "antifa." An organizer of the event, "Ali Alexander," who organized the "Stop the Steal" movement and is now supposedly in hiding (https://www.thedailybeast.com/stop-the-steal-organizer-in-hiding-after-denying-blame-for-riot), has said the attack was planned with Gosar, Biggs, and US Rep. Mo Brooks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/13/ali-alexander-capitol-biggs-gosar/). This is from the Business Insider about Alexander: "'We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,' Alexander said in a since-deleted Periscope video. He added to The Post that the plan was to 'change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.'" And this is from The Daily Beast: "Alex Jones claims that he and Alexander had some 'deal' with the White House about their protest outside of Congress. 'We had a legitimate deal with the White House,' Jones said in an InfoWars show filmed after the riot with Alexander. '"Hey Jones and Ali,' literally, they let us out early, we were supposed to lead a peaceful deal.' Video posted by InfoWars in an apparent attempt to distance Jones from the riots shows Jones and Alexander on the west side of the Capitol as tear-gas canisters went off in the distance and Trump supporters mounted MAGA flags on the inauguration risers. Jones unsuccessfully tried to convince rioters to move to the east side of the Capitol and attend their rally on the other side of the building instead. 'As much as I love seeing the Trump flags flying over this, we need to not have the confrontation with the police, they’re going to make that the story,' Jones said. But Alexander refused to disavow the riot. 'I don’t disavow this,' Alexander said in a video filmed overlooking the Capitol. 'I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks like, so far.'” Arizona state politicians have written a letter with detailed allegations (https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/arizona_politics/arizona-democrats-ask-feds-to-investigate-role-of-some-gop-lawmakers-in-capitol-riots/article_a4ee5c26-55e8-11eb-a25f-5b92114325a5.amp.html), and 30 members of the US Congress have written the Capitol Police and the sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate demanding further information and providing some documentation. Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy helicopter pilot, put out a video and headed the effort to send the letter. That letter is attached below in PDF format. Her video can be seen on the Politico site.

He wasn't actually on the scene of the assassination.

Much has been written about that topic. To quote Casey Stengel, "You could look it up." And the DPD sent Tippit and Mentzel to Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination, knowing Oswald would go to that area, where he lived.

The DPD had been tracking Oswald for quite some time and knew his Beckley address. They sent Tippit and Mentzel out to get him in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination, about an hour and a half before Oswald's identity was "officially" known by the department following his arrest in Oak Cliff and his transportation to the police station.

The DPD sent Officers Tippit and Mentzel out to track down Oswald in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination. So the department knew where he lived well before his arrest and where he would be going. Oswald met repeatedly with the FBI that November. They would have known where he lived.

Oswald was an FBI informant who infiltrated the plot and reported on it to them and then found out after Kennedy was shot that he was being made the patsy in the plot. The Dallas Police Department also knew who he was before the assassination. Both agencies knew where he lived -- and the FBI clearly knew he was going by the pseudonym of O. H. Lee. Gladys Johnson gave me a tour of the house on one of my research visits to Dallas.

Secret Service shakeup replacing agents who are Trump loyalists and stooges with those who have worked with Joe and Jill Biden: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-to-make-changes-to-presidential-detail-to-bring-on-agents-who-worked-with-biden/2020/12/30/d6fb8fe8-49ce-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html

What a shame we don't have the Babushka Lady film shot facing the Zapruder area and the rest of the Grassy Knoll, while panning with the presidential limousine. Or the 16mm film shot from a car in the motorcade by a CBS-TV photographer focusing on JFK at the time of the hit and then panning to the right and tilting upward to the TSBD corner window. If Oswald had been in the window, we surely would have seen that film.

When I was a high school student in Milwaukee, I listened to network radio reports on 11-22-63 from 12:40 p.m. onward. For twenty minutes, the reports all said the shots came from the front, from the railroad bridge area or the hill to the right of the motorcade. At 1 p.m., the radio networks started saying all the shots came from behind, from a building called the Texas School Book Depository. No explanation was offered for the change of direction or for the lack of mention of the previously reported shots from the front. I listened to the radio in a drugstore until I had to leave at 1:30 to go back to Marquette University High School (where the scheduled topic in our junior Religion class was "The Ethics of Murder"; the class went on as planned with only a brief interruption at 1:40 when the principal came on the PA system to announce that the President was dead, and we said a brief prayer). I was not fully conscious of the significance of the change of reporting of the shots at the time, but as the day went on and I watched the live TV reports, that early switch contributed to my realization by night's end that Oswald was telling the truth and that he had not shot anyone.

It's sad and outrageous that the argument of innocence carries no weight with the parole board, but the alternative to trying to argue that in letters is acquiescing in letting Sirhan die in prison, which would be intolerable. I remember reading that John F. Kennedy said when he was in Congress that if he received eight letters from constituents on an issue, he would take notice, and it would influence him, because few people take the trouble to write their congressman. Writing, printing, and mailing a physical letter to the parole board may make an impact on them.

Laurie Dusek adds in a Facebook post, "Sirhan needs letters in support of him being granted parole. This isn’t about retrying the case as the Parole Board won’t listen to anything about the underlying crime. This is about Sirhan being in prison for over 52 years and denied parole 15 times even though he has a clean record in prison and both State and defense psychologists say Sirhan poses no threat to himself or society. "Please, even just a short letter saying 'I support parole for Sirhan' would help. Sirhan deserves justice."

Thank you, Ray. He needs all the help we can give him.

I am glad you will write one, Chris. A physical letter is required.

JUSTICE FOR SIRHAN SIRHAN To forum moderators and fellow members, I am posting this here so JFK researchers can read it and hopefully take action and because relatively few people visit the RFK assassination section of this forum. Attorney Laurie Dusek, who has been diligently representing Sirhan Sirhan and trying to free him from prison, tells me he has another parole hearing scheduled for March 12, 2021. His attorney for that hearing will be Angela Berry. It will be his sixteenth parole hearing; what a long struggle it has been trying to bring justice to his case. Laurie tells me that letters from informed people who are U.S. citizens would help his chances with the parole board and that he “NEEDS letters of support.” Those of us in the JFK research community who also care about the RFK case and about Sirhan and about justice can do a civic duty by writing a letter to the parole board; I will be among those doing so. Most of us here understand that Sirhan did not shoot Senator Robert Kennedy, although he did shoot other people, and that he genuinely has no memory of those events but is regretful that they occurred and that he had a role in them. He was a patsy who was programmed to be involved. And he has been in prison now for fifty-two years for wounding other people. If he hadn’t been falsely accused of killing RFK, he would have been freed long ago. But as Laurie Dusek tells me, and as I have understood from watching his parole hearings and reading about the case, that argument does not convince the parole board. Even the passionate pleas of one of the shooting victims, Paul Schrade, who understands that Sirhan did not shoot RFK, have gone unheeded by the board. It is also not beneficial to Sirhan at this point to bring up the other probable shooter, Thane Eugene Cesar, or the actions of Kamala Harris in keeping Sirhan in prison. So another approach is called for in writing to the board about Sirhan urging that he be paroled from prison. Laurie Dusek suggests, “People can raise the question of his innocence but it would be better if they focus on his age, 76, the fact that after more than 52 years in prison he has paid his debt to society, Covid19 issues, outrage at spending taxpayers $ to keep him in prison, his clean prison record, the fact that both the State psychologists and Dan Brown [Dr. Daniel Brown of the Harvard Medical School, an expert on hypnosis and coercive persuasion, who has worked pro bono with Sirhan to try to recover his memory of the shooting] agree that Sirhan is not a threat to himself or others, and the issue of JUSTICE. As many people you can reach would be appreciated. Letters do not have to be long — they can simply state the writer's name and say ‘I am an American citizen and send this letter in support of parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan.’” Letters should be mailed to: State of California, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Board of Parole P.O. Box 4036 Sacramento, Ca. 95812-4936 The salutation is “Dear Parole Board.”

I wil never forget when I was working as an orderly in my college years and had to go to the morgue with a body, as was part of my duties. An autopsy was in progress, and I had not seen one before. Just as I entered the doctor lifted the brain out of the skull. I almost passed out, but after that I was OK with anything at the hospital. It was a good education -- for a salary of $1.40 an hour. I quit after six months when a nurse ordered me to cut off my goatee and cut my hair. Later the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional, but too late for me.