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John Simkin

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  1. To justify his support for South Vietnam, President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard Nixon put forward the "domino theory". It was argued that if the first domino is knocked over then the rest topple in turn. Applying this to South-east Asia he argued that if South Vietnam was taken by communists, then the other countries in the region such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, would follow. Lyndon Johnson was another strong supporter of the Domino Theory and believed that the prevention of an National Liberation Front (NLF) victory in South Vietnam was vital to the defence of the United States: "If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco." That was the same reason why the CIA wanted the overthrow of Castro. However, as JFK said just before he was assassinated: "I believe there is no country in the world . . . where economic colonisation, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, partly as a consequence of U.S. policy during the Batista regime. I believe that, without being aware of it, we conceived and created the Castro movement, starting from scratch. I also believe that this accumulation of errors has put all Latin America in danger. The whole purpose of the 'Alliance for Progress' (an economic aid programme for Latin America) is to reverse this fatal policy." As Theodore Draper pointed out in his great book, Abuse of Power (1967): "The Latin American dominoes did not fall after Castro's victory (in Cuba) because the world is far more complex and unpredictable than the theory gives it credit for being. Castro's growing force immediately set in motion counter-forces throughout Latin America, not sponsored by the United States alone, which was most ineffective, but in the domestic policies of each Latin American country... The Cuban experience does not prove that the Latin American dominoes could not have fallen; it merely proves that Castro's victory by itself was not enough for them to fall." The same was true of Vietnam. It remained a communist country but it did not export its revolution. In fact, the US has developed a good economic relationship with the country. However, I am not sure Larry is right when he says a capitalist country should be able to compete economically with communist China. It would be true if China was a communist country. However, it is more accurately described as "state capitalist". This is the most effective economic system ever and very difficult to compete with. Most importantly, the government controls "labor costs" and major investment in the economy (it also controls outside investment).
  2. When I first became interested in politics in the 1960s the most important issue was the Vietnam War. In 1965 I read Robert Taber's The War of the Flea. Taber is an interesting character and is slightly connected to the JFK assassination. He was one of the founders of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPFCC). The book should be read by all politicians. Taber points out that Germany was able to invade and conquer Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium and the Netherlands in six weeks in 1940. In April 1941 Germany tried the same tactic in Yugoslavia. The government of Prince Paul surrendered in ten days, but the people of Yugoslavia decided to carry on the fight. As a result the country was never conquered and the leader of the partisans, Tito, formed the new government in 1945. Taber argues that this example shows that however powerful you maybe, if the people decide not to be conquered and are willing to use guerrilla warfare, they will eventually win. This is why he predicted defeat for the US in Vietnam. He also predicted the same result if the US decided to invade Cuba. Afghanistan is only the latest example of a superpower being defeated by a smaller nation. At last a US politician has accepted this reality. Of course withdrawal has been done very badly and has been very embarrassing for all concerned (the UK government has also taken a terrible hammering over Afghanistan - our press still thinks the UK is a world power). There is only one superpower left and that is China. They will now take control over the country. Not by sending in troops, but by economic investment. Afghanistan holds an estimated 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs), minerals crucial for the production of renewable energy technology. America needs rare earths, and China controls 90% of processing capacity.
  3. By 1963 John F. Kennedy realised that Lyndon B. Johnson had become a problem as vice-president as he had been drawn into political scandals involving Fred Korth, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. According to James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager of Life, the magazine was working on an article that would have revealed Johnson's corrupt activities. "Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major newsbreak piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public." The fact that it was his brother Robert Kennedy who was giving this information to Life Magazine suggests that Kennedy intended to drop Johnson as his vice-president. This is supported by Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary. In her book, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) she claimed that in November, 1963, Kennedy decided that because of the emerging Bobby Baker scandal he was going to drop Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election. Kennedy told Lincoln that he was going to replace Johnson with Terry Sanford, the Governor of North Carolina. Phil Brennan, a journalist working for The National Review, argued that the Washington press corps had buried the stories about the Bobby Baker scandal and the connections with Johnson. However, John J. Williams, the Republican Party senator for Delaware, called upon the Committee on Rules and Administration to conduct an investigation of the financial and business interests and possible improprieties of Baker. Brennan points out: "A few days later, the attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, called five of Washington's top reporters into his office and told them it was now open season on Lyndon Johnson. It's OK, he told them, to go after the story they were ignoring out of deference to the administration." John Williams was known as "Honest John" and "the conscience of the Senate" because of his investigations into the corrupt activities of officials in the Harry S. Truman and the Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations. This included the downfall of General Harry H. Vaughan (1951) and Sherman Adams (1958). In September 1963 Williams began to look into the business activities of Bobby Baker. On 7th October, Baker resigned from his post as Johnson's Senate's Secretary. Three days later, Williams introduced a resolution calling for an investigation by the Senate Rules Committee. The full article can be read here: https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL143.htm
  4. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, the author of Marina and Lee (1977) has died after a fall at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (7 July, 2021). In July 1964 Johnson moved to Texas and befriended Marina Oswald, and the two spent considerable time together. In November 1964, Johnson signed a contract with Harper & Row for a book to be published about the Oswalds. The book was expected to be published in 1965, however, Marina and Lee did not appear until 1977. In the book she argued that Oswald had assassinated the president and had acted alone. In an interview published 36 years later she said: "I'm just as sure now as I was then that he did it, and also that he couldn't have done it with anybody else. He wasn't somebody who, in his life, had ever done anything with anybody else." In the article that appears in Wikipedia nothing is said about her CIA background. This has been revealed in recent years by declassified CIA files. While studying Russian literature at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she became a member of the United World Federalists, an organization run by Cord Meyer. After graduating with a master's degree in 1952 she applied to join the CIA. According to CIA files she was rejected because some of her associates would require more investigation. The document was signed by Cord Meyer, who was now chief of CIA Investigations and Operational Support. On 17th March 1953, W. A. Osborne, sent a memo to Sheffield Edwards, head of CIA security, that after checking out Johnson's associates he "recommended approval." However, on 23rd March he sent another memo saying that "in light of her activities in the United World Federalists" he now "recommended that she be disapproved". In 1953 Johnson went to work for Senator John F. Kennedy. (It is claimed that Johnson was the only person who knew both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald). The following year she worked as a translator for the Digest of Soviet Press. In 1955 Johnson moved to the Soviet Union where she worked as a translator for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. This time the CIA made no objection to Johnson having access to classified information. Priscilla Johnson returned to the United States in April 1957. The CIA continued to take an interest in Johnson. In a CIA document dated 23rd August 1957, it stated that during the Second World War she was "utilized by OSO (Office of Special Operations) in 1943 and 1944". As she was only 15 at the time this is clearly inaccurate. John M. Newman has speculated that Johnson was being given a cover story of someone who had a "good security record". In February 1958 Johnson travelled to Cairo. The following month she was in Paris. According to her own testimony she worked for "someone I knew either for Radio Liberty or the Congress for Cultural Freedom." While in France she applied to the USSR consulate to go to the Soviet Union. On 6th May 1958, the Chief of CI/OA submitted a request for operational approval on Johnson. The operation for which she was being considered is still classified. Johnson arrived in Moscow for the third time on 4th July 1958. She did not stay for long and returned to the United States. Soon afterwards she obtained employment as a reporter for the North American News Alliance (NANA). Johnson arrived back in Moscow soon after Arline Mosby had interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald (13th November 1959). On her arrival Johnson checked into the same hotel as Osward. The following day she visited the American Embassy to pick up her mail (16th November 1959). According to Johnson, John McVickar approached her and told her that "there's a guy in your hotel who wants to defect, and he won't talk to any of us here". She later told the Warren Commission: "John McVickar said she was refusing to talk to journalists. So I thought that it might be an exclusive, for one thing, and he was right in my hotel, for another." As Johnson was leaving the American Embassy McVickar told her "to remember she was an American." Lee Harvey Oswald agreed to be interviewed by Priscilla Johnson. She later testified that they talked from between nine until one or two in the morning. Oswald told her: "Once having been assured by the Russians that I would not have to return to the United States, come what may, I assumed it would be safe for me to give my side of the story." Johnson's article appeared in the Washington Evening Star. Surprisingly, the article did not include Oswald's threat to reveal radar secrets. Nor was it mentioned in any other article or book published by Johnson on Oswald. However, under oath before the Warren Commission she admitted that Oswald had told her that "he hoped his experience as a radar operator would make him more desirable to them (the Soviets)". On 11th December 1962, a CIA memo written by Donald Jameson (declassified in August 1993) reported: "I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want. It will require a little more contact and discussion, but I think she could come around... Basically, if approached with sympathy in the cause she considers most vital, I believe she would be interested in helping us in many ways. It would be important to avoid making her think that she was being used as a propaganda tool and expected to write what she is told." After the assassination of JFK Johnson wrote an article for the Boston Globe where she described Lee Harvey Oswald as a classic example of an "embittered psychological loner". She added: "I soon came to feel that this boy was of the stuff of which fanatics are made." Another CIA document dated dated 5th February 1964, reports on a 11 hour meeting with Johnson. The main objective of the meeting was to debrief Johnson "on her flaps with the Soviets when she was in the USSR, notably at the time of her last exit." She was also asked if she "would be interested in writing articles for Soviet publications." Gary Coit, the CIA officer who conducted the interview with Johnson reported that "no effort was made to attempt to force the issue of a debriefing on her contacts". However, Coit told her he would "probably be back to see her from time to time to see what she knows about specific persons whose names might come up, and she at least nodded assent to this." Priscilla Johnson’s Wikipedia article points out she married George McMillan in 1965. He is described as a freelance writer. However, in his obituary in the New York Times in 1985 it states he was also the author of The Making of an Assassin (1976), a book that claims that James Earl Ray worked alone in the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKjohnsonPR.htm
  5. Professor Gerald D. McKnight, the author of published Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (2005) has died. It is the best book available on the Warren Commission and one of the most important books written about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmcknight.htm
  6. Thank You John for all the education you have presented to the world!

  7. I am convinced that Carl Jenkins organized the assassination. Quintero was one of the gunman. There is also evidence that Herminio Diaz Garcia was another gunman in Dallas. As a result of the posting on this case yesterday I have been approached by someone who has the contact details of someone who might be the only one left alive (except for Jenkins) who knows the truth about the assassination. I will let you know if this witness is willing to talk. I have been sent some interesting information and some good photographs of Carl Elmer Jenkins. I have added it to my page on Jenkins. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKjenkinsC.htm
  8. I am convinced that Carl Jenkins organized the assassination. Quintero was one of the gunman. There is also evidence that Herminio Diaz Garcia was another gunman in Dallas. As a result of the posting on this case yesterday I have been approached by someone who has the contact details of someone who might be the only one left alive (except for Jenkins) who knows the truth about the assassination. I will let you know if this witness is willing to talk.
  9. I have been sent some interesting information and some good photographs of Carl Elmer Jenkins. It seems his second wife, who worked with him in the CIA, is still alive. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKjenkinsC.htm
  10. Robert F. Kennedy was America's first Assassination Conspiracy Theorist David Talbot, wrote in his excellent book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) that Robert F. Kennedy "was America's first assassination conspiracy theorist." Soon after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, RFK received a phone call from J. Edgar Hoover, who insisted that Cuba's communist government was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He claimed that Oswald had "shuttled in and out of Cuba" which was untrue. In reality, Oswald - or someone impersonating him - had tried only once, without success, to enter Cuba through Mexico, in September, 1963. RFK rejected the idea because he knew it was not in the interests of Fidel Castro to want his brother dead because of the secret negotiations that had been taking place between the two countries. This article looks at the RFK investigation and who he concluded was responsible for the assassination. It also looks at the latest evidence into the case and suggests that RFK was right and names the people within the CIA and the anti-Castro Cuban community involved in the conspiracy. This includes the name of someone who is still alive. The full article can be read here: https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL121.htm
  11. If you do a search for the “Assassination of John F. Kennedy” at Google, websites, forums and Facebook groups that suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone gunman do not appear until the fifth page of results where the “Mary Ferrell Foundation” is listed. It has not always been the case. A few years ago, my Assassination of John F. Kennedy index page was at number one at Google. Now you don’t get to it via Google unless you type “Assassination of John F. Kennedy Spartacus Educational”. In other words, you need to know of its existence before you can go to the site via Google. One reason why I was taken out of the Google Database was the article that I wrote: “Google, Bing and Operation Mockingbird: The CIA and Search-Engine Results” on 10th June, 2014. https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL31.html However, the main reason is the way Google now ranks websites. Google’s great innovation when it began in 1998 was to rank websites by the number of links it had (they called it peer group approval) rather than the number of times the keyword or phrase appeared on the page. This enabled anti-establishment websites to get to the top of Google searches. A few years ago, Google changed its system. It was now “Domain Authority” that was the major factor in searches. The Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. Google now has the power to give an anti-establishment website a low Domain Authority number. If you go back to your Google search for “Assassination of John F. Kennedy” you will see how this works. The first page is dominated by large organisations such as Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, JFK Library, CNN, National Archives, etc. Then comes any articles that have appeared in the national press on the assassination. It is not until you reach the 5th page before you get to any website that is really questioning the official account of the assassination. Other search engines are better. Bing also favours the establishment websites but does not take out completely those websites that provide an alternative view. Therefore my JFK assassination page appears at the top of its second page. The best search-engine to use is Dogpile, where my site comes in 6th place. Dogpile is a metasearch engine for information on the World Wide Web that fetches results from Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo! and results from other popular search engines. This illustrates the hostility that Google shows to those websites willing to question the official story. Despite Google’s campaign against my JFK assassination website I still have 330 Facebook “Likes. I am therefore willing to use my position to help other good websites, blogs, forums and Facebook groups who are willing to take a serious approach to the assassination. Please send me details if you want me to add your site to my index page. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKindex.htm
  12. I am sorry to hear about the death of my old friend. For many years he was one of the leading figures in the Dealey Plaza UK: The British JFK Assassination Research Group. (http://jfkassassinationuk.com/) I have updated my page on him. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKgriggs.htm
  13. I have now updated my page on Bernardo De Torres and it is now fully referenced. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKtorres.htm I see it is not now banned by Google. The CIA do not protect assets after they have died. For example, there was no problem naming David Sanchez Morales as being behind the assassination after his death in 1978. Most of the early information I got about Bernardo De Torres was someone who was clearly frightened of him. Although he did not think De Torres was directly involved in the killing (he did admit to being in Dealey Plaza at the time and of even having photographs of the event), he was involved in the clean-up operation and probably was the man responsible for the death of people like Eladio del Valle.
  14. In 1960 Lisa Howard became a correspondent for Mutual Radio Network. In June 1961 she covered the Vienna summit between President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet leader. Later that year she became the anchor for ABC's noontime news broadcast, The News Hour with Lisa Howard. In April 1963 Howard arrived in Cuba to make a documentary on the country. In an interview with Howard, Castro agreed that a rapprochement with Washington was desirable. On her return Howard met with the Central Intelligence Agency. Deputy Director Richard Helms reported to President Kennedy on Howard's view that "Fidel Castro is looking for a way to reach a rapprochement with the United States." After detailing her observations about Castro's political power, disagreements with his colleagues and Soviet troops in Cuba, the memo concluded that "Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the US Government." CIA Director John McCone was strongly opposed to Howard being involved with these negotiations with Castro. He argued that it might "leak and compromise a number of CIA operations against Castro". In a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy, McCone commented that the "Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner," and "that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time." Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978 why the CIA did not want President Kennedy to negotiate with Fidel Castro during the summer of 1963: "The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba - an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence - which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded - it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy." Howard now decided to bypass the CIA and in May, 1963, published an article in the journal, War and Peace Report, Howard wrote that in eight hours of private conversations Castro had shown that he had a strong desire for negotiations with the United States: "In our conversations he made it quite clear that he was ready to discuss: the Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil; compensation for expropriated American lands and investments; the question of Cuba as a base for Communist subversion throughout the Hemisphere." Howard went on to urge the Kennedy administration to "send an American government official on a quiet mission to Havana to hear what Castro has to say." A country as powerful as the United States, she concluded, "has nothing to lose at a bargaining table with Fidel Castro." William Attwood, an adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, read Howard's article and on 12th September, 1963, he had a long conversation with her on the phone. This apparently set in motion a plan to initiate secret talks between the United States and Cuba. Six days later Attwood sent a memorandum to Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Attwood asked for permission to establish discreet, indirect contact with Fidel Castro. On September 20, John F. Kennedy gave permission to authorize Attwood's direct contacts with Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. According to Attwood: "I then told Miss Howard to set up the contact, that is to have a small reception at her house so that it could be done very casually, not as a formal approach by us." Howard met Lechuga at the UN on 23rd September 23. Howard invited Lechuga to come to a party at her Park Avenue apartment that night to meet Attwood. The next day Attwood met with Robert Kennedy in Washington and reported on the talks with Lechuga. According to Attwood the attorney general believed that a trip to Cuba would be "rather risky." It was "bound to leak and... might result in some kind of Congressional investigation." Nevertheless, he thought the matter was "worth pursuing." On 5th November 5, McGeorge Bundy recorded that "the President was more in favor of pushing towards an opening toward Cuba than was the State Department, the idea being - well, getting them out of the Soviet fold and perhaps wiping out the Bay of Pigs and maybe getting back into normal." Bundy designated his assistant, Gordon Chase, to be Attwood's direct contact at the White House. Attwood continued to use Howard as his contact with Fidel Castro. In October 1963, Castro told Howard that he was very keen to open negotiations with Kennedy. Castro even offered to send a plane to Mexico to pick up Kennedy's representative and fly him to a private airport near Veradero where Castro would talk to him alone. John F. Kennedy now decided to send Attwood to meet Castro. On 14th November, 1963, Lisa Howard conveyed this message to her Cuban contact. In an attempt to show his good will, Kennedy sent a coded message to Castro in a speech delivered on 19th November. The speech included the following passage: "Cuba had become a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible." Kennedy also sent a message to Fidel Castro via the French journalist Jean Daniel. According to Daniel: "Kennedy expressed some empathy for Castro's anti-Americanism, acknowledging that the United States had committed a number of sins in pre-revolutionary Cuba." Kennedy told Daniel that the trade embargo against Cuba could be lifted if Castro ended his support for left-wing movements in the Americas. Daniel delivered this message on 19th November. Castro told Daniel that Kennedy could become "the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas." Daniel was with Castro when news arrived that Kennedy had been assassinated Castro turned to Daniel and said:"This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed." President Lyndon B. Johnson was told about these negotiations in December, 1963. He refused to continue these talks and claimed that the reason for this was that he feared that Richard Nixon, the expected Republican candidate for the presidency, would accuse him of being soft on communism. Howard refused to give up and in 1964 she resumed talks with Fidel Castro. On 12th February, 1964, she sent a message to President Johnson from Castro asking for negotiations to be restarted. When Johnson did not respond to this message she contacted Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. On 26th June 26, Stevenson sent a memo to Johnson saying that he felt that "all of our crises could be avoided if there was some way to communicate; that for want of anything better, he assumed that he could call (Lisa Howard) and she call me and I would advise you." In a memorandum marked top secret, Gordon Chase wrote that it was important "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages" from Cuba. In December, 1964, Howard met with Che Guevara to the United Nations. Details of this meeting was sent to McGeorge Bundy. When Howard got no response she arranged for Eugene McCarthy to meet with Guevara in her apartment on 16th December. This created panic in the White House and the following day Under Secretary George Ball told Eugene McCarthy that the meeting must remain a secret because there was "suspicion throughout Latin America that the U.S. might make a deal with Cuba behind the backs of the other American states." Howard continued to try and obtain a negotiated agreement between Fidel Castro and Lyndon B. Johnson. As a result she was fired by ABC because she had "chosen to participate publicly in partisan political activity contrary to long established ABC news policy." Lisa Howard died at East Hampton, Long Island, on 4th July, 1965. It was officially reported that she had committed suicide. Apparently, she had taken one hundred phenobarbitols. It was claimed she was depressed as a result of losing her job and suffering a miscarriage. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhowardL2.htm You can now see extracts from the interview Howard had with Castro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rlTfMewsV0
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