John Simkin
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I have now added a page on Jason Epstein and this information will appear in the revised article.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKepsteinJN.htm
According to Wikipedia it is claimed that in 1993, Epstein married Judith Miller, the journalist who wrote for The New York Times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journalist)
Is that really true?
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Harold Feldman was Vincent J. Salandria's brother-in-law. Both men were on the left and became suspicious when the media reported that Lee Harvey Oswald had previously defected to the Soviet Union, had formed a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans and was a member of the ACLU. Salandria later recalled: "I began to examine the post-assassination events as they unfolded. I took note of the reports coming in about the alleged assassin. I wondered whether his alleged left-wing credentials were bona fide. Very early in my work in the peace movement, I learned that some ostensible peace activists were infiltrating government agent provocateurs who were not what they at first blush appeared to be." Salandria later commented: "It was apparent to me that no legitimate leftist straddles so many diverse political fences in a factionalized American left." Feldman and Salandria came to the conclusion that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent.
Feldman discussed the case with Salandria on Saturday 23rd November, 1963. Nearly 20 years previously Feldman had published an article on the psychology of assassins entitled The Hero as Assassin. "He has denied his guilt consistently, which no other lone assassin in history had ever done. They usually brag about it." Feldman added: "Look, Oswald will probably be killed. And they'll get a Jew to do it, because they always involve a Jew in these things." Salandria replied: "If Oswald is killed this weekend by a Jew, then we must look for a WASP conspiracy."
John Kelin has pointed out in his book, Praise from a Future Generation (2007): "Feldman and Salandria agreed that a Jewish killer would frighten the Left, and dampen the interests of normally left-leaning Jews in thinking critically about the assassination. Moreover, they both felt that the assassination could not be honestly probed by the government." After the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby, Feldman and Salandria "clipped and collated the multitude of articles on the assassination that were appearing in the nation's press". This included an article by Joseph C. Gouldon, a former counter-intelligence agent, reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on 8th December, 1963, that alleged that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Oswald as an undercover informant in Castro groups" two months before the assassination.
On 1st January, 1964, Alonzo (Lonnie) Hudkins in The Houston Post, also speculated that Oswald was closely connected to the FBI. As Feldman later pointed out: "Hudkins found that Oswald did know agent Hosty. He had Hosty’s home phone, office phone and car license number - this on the authority of William Alexander, assistant to Henry Wade, Dallas District Attorney. Alexander had attended the grilling of Oswald on November 22 and 23. Hudkins notes that if the FBI had Oswald under surveillance, the watch could not have been too close or they would have known about the rifle and other matters."
On 6th January 1964 Carey McWilliams, the editor of The Nation, rejected Feldman's article on the assassination, Oswald and the FBI. McWilliams told Feldman: "I have decided - most reluctantly, I must confess - not to use your piece. It is certainly a well-done job, and I was sorely tempted, but it seems to me that on balance and for a variety of reasons we should not use it at this time." However, he changed his mind and it appeared later that month. McWilliams commented: "We have made some cuts, but I think they are all to the good."
Feldman started the article with the following words: "The Warren Commission should, if possible, tell us how President Kennedy was killed, who killed him, and why. But beyond that, it must tell us if the FBI or any other government intelligence agency was in any way connected with the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. At this moment, the possibility of such associations in the young man’s life is intolerably a subject for speculation." Feldman then went on to discuss the information reported by Michael Paine, Joseph C. Gouldon and Alonzo (Lonnie) Hudkins.
Feldman went on to argue: "Was the alleged assassin of President Kennedy employed by the FBI? We have seen a news report that the agency tried to recruit him and that it has refused to say whether he accepted the offer. At present, all we know is that his history, as we have been able to piece it together, is not inconsistent with such employment. Indeed, his financial record seems entirely unexplainable unless we make some such hypothesis."
In the same issue of the magazine, Carey McWilliams suggested he did not consider Feldman's theory believable. He also argued the appointment of J. Lee Rankin and Norman Redlich indicated that the Warren Commission would get to the truth: "These are excellent lawyers, men of the highest integrity." When the report was published McWilliams commented: "In our view, then, the commission did its work well; the report is an admirable document, and the Chief Justice, his associates and the staff merit the praise they have received. The report should terminate the wilder speculations and more irresponsible rumor-mongering, but it will not do so. We have had occasion to experience, with more sadness than surprise, the depth and pervasiveness of the will to believe (notably among Left-of-Center groups) that the President’s assassination was the result of a sinister conspiracy - the names of the conspirators to be filled in as need, fancy and bias dictate."
In March 1965 Feldman published Fifty-One Witnesses: The Grassy Knoll in the Minority of One journal. He argued: "The human ear does not provide the best evidence in a murder case. But its perceptions are evidence not to be despised or dismissed, especially when the case is the murder of a President and more than half of all recorded witnesses agree. What follows is the result of a survey of the 121 witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy whose statements are registered in the twenty-six volumes appended to the Warren Report. On the question of where the shots that killed the President came from, 38 could give no clear opinion and 32 thought they came from the Texas School Book Depository Building (TSBDB). Fifty-one held the shots sounded as if the came from west of the Depository, the area of the grassy knoll on Elm Street, the area directly on the right of the President's car when the bullets struck."
Feldman eventually dropped his interest in the assassination of JFK. His brother-in-law, Vincent J. Salandria, later commented: "Harold was crucial in helping me think about the assassination of President Kennedy and to use this understanding as a prism through which I would better examine and gain insights into the nature of the society."
Harold Feldman died of liver cancer in August, 1986.
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I have also added information on Harold Feldman to the article (the revised article will be posted on this thread).
Harold Feldman was Vincent J. Salandria's brother-in-law. Both men were on the left and became suspicious when the media reported that Lee Harvey Oswald had previously defected to the Soviet Union, had formed a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans and was a member of the ACLU. Salandria later recalled: "I began to examine the post-assassination events as they unfolded. I took note of the reports coming in about the alleged assassin. I wondered whether his alleged left-wing credentials were bona fide. Very early in my work in the peace movement, I learned that some ostensible peace activists were infiltrating government agent provocateurs who were not what they at first blush appeared to be." Salandria later commented: "It was apparent to me that no legitimate leftist straddles so many diverse political fences in a factionalized American left." Feldman and Salandria came to the conclusion that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent.
Feldman discussed the case with Salandria on Saturday 23rd November, 1963. Nearly 20 years previously Feldman had published an article on the psychology of assassins entitled The Hero as Assassin. "He has denied his guilt consistently, which no other lone assassin in history had ever done. They usually brag about it." Feldman added: "Look, Oswald will probably be killed. And they'll get a Jew to do it, because they always involve a Jew in these things." Salandria replied: "If Oswald is killed this weekend by a Jew, then we must look for a WASP conspiracy."
John Kelin has pointed out in his book, Praise from a Future Generation (2007): "Feldman and Salandria agreed that a Jewish killer would frighten the Left, and dampen the interests of normally left-leaning Jews in thinking critically about the assassination. Moreover, they both felt that the assassination could not be honestly probed by the government." After the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby, Feldman and Salandria "clipped and collated the multitude of articles on the assassination that were appearing in the nation's press". This included an article by Joseph C. Gouldon, a former counter-intelligence agent, reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on 8th December, 1963, that alleged that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Oswald as an undercover informant in Castro groups" two months before the assassination.
On 1st January, 1964, Alonzo (Lonnie) Hudkins in The Houston Post, also speculated that Oswald was closely connected to the FBI. As Feldman later pointed out: "Hudkins found that Oswald did know agent Hosty. He had Hosty’s home phone, office phone and car license number - this on the authority of William Alexander, assistant to Henry Wade, Dallas District Attorney. Alexander had attended the grilling of Oswald on November 22 and 23. Hudkins notes that if the FBI had Oswald under surveillance, the watch could not have been too close or they would have known about the rifle and other matters."
On 6th January 1964 Carey McWilliams, the editor of The Nation, rejected Feldman's article on the assassination, Oswald and the FBI. McWilliams told Feldman: "I have decided - most reluctantly, I must confess - not to use your piece. It is certainly a well-done job, and I was sorely tempted, but it seems to me that on balance and for a variety of reasons we should not use it at this time." However, he changed his mind and it appeared later that month. McWilliams commented: "We have made some cuts, but I think they are all to the good."
Feldman started the article with the following words: "The Warren Commission should, if possible, tell us how President Kennedy was killed, who killed him, and why. But beyond that, it must tell us if the FBI or any other government intelligence agency was in any way connected with the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. At this moment, the possibility of such associations in the young man’s life is intolerably a subject for speculation." Feldman then went on to discuss the information reported by Michael Paine, Joseph C. Gouldon and Alonzo (Lonnie) Hudkins.
Feldman went on to argue: "Was the alleged assassin of President Kennedy employed by the FBI? We have seen a news report that the agency tried to recruit him and that it has refused to say whether he accepted the offer. At present, all we know is that his history, as we have been able to piece it together, is not inconsistent with such employment. Indeed, his financial record seems entirely unexplainable unless we make some such hypothesis."
In the same issue of the magazine, Carey McWilliams suggested he did not consider Feldman's theory believable. He also argued the appointment of J. Lee Rankin and Norman Redlich indicated that the Warren Commission would get to the truth: "These are excellent lawyers, men of the highest integrity."
McWilliams also gave his support to the report when it was published: "In our view, then, the commission did its work well; the report is an admirable document, and the Chief Justice, his associates and the staff merit the praise they have received. The report should terminate the wilder speculations and more irresponsible rumor-mongering, but it will not do so. We have had occasion to experience, with more sadness than surprise, the depth and pervasiveness of the will to believe (notably among Left-of-Center groups) that the President’s assassination was the result of a sinister conspiracy - the names of the conspirators to be filled in as need, fancy and bias dictate."
In March 1965 Feldman published Fifty-One Witnesses: The Grassy Knoll in the Minority of One journal. He argued: "The human ear does not provide the best evidence in a murder case. But its perceptions are evidence not to be despised or dismissed, especially when the case is the murder of a President and more than half of all recorded witnesses agree. What follows is the result of a survey of the 121 witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy whose statements are registered in the twenty-six volumes appended to the Warren Report. On the question of where the shots that killed the President came from, 38 could give no clear opinion and 32 thought they came from the Texas School Book Depository Building (TSBDB). Fifty-one held the shots sounded as if the came from west of the Depository, the area of the grassy knoll on Elm Street, the area directly on the right of the President's car when the bullets struck."
Feldman eventually dropped his interest in the assassination of JFK. His brother-in-law, Vincent J. Salandria, later commented: "Harold was crucial in helping me think about the assassination of President Kennedy and to use this understanding as a prism through which I would better examine and gain insights into the nature of the society."
Harold Feldman died of liver cancer in August, 1986.
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News Corporation spends £100m on management and standards committee
Team set up to probe alleged illegal activity after phone-hacking scandal is costing more than £1m a week
After reading their accounts most of this money was spent on hush-payments to former employees.
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Leon Jaworski came from Texas and was a close friend of Lyndon Baines Johnson (he represented him in a lawsuit in 1960). Jaworski was also the Special Prosecutor during the Watergate Scandal. He died in 1982 and in 2006 his prosecution of 43 soldiers, all of them African-American, in the 1944 Fort Lawton Riot was questioned by Jack Hamann's book, On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II. Sentences ranged from six months to 25 years. All but one defendant were issued dishonorable discharges at the completion of their prison sentences. As a result of Hamann’s book, it was eventually decided by the U.S. Army Board for Correction of Military Records that Jaworski had committed "egregious error," and that all convictions should be reversed.
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I have just been told by Tony Summers that Joseph C. Gouldon was a close friend of David Atlee Phillips and defended him against claims that he was behind the assassination. They were so close that Gouldon was the executor of Phillips's will.
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In his book "Pictures of the Pain", Richard Trask states on page 545 that Allan Sweatt of the Sheriff's department confirmed that Jim Braden appeared in a photo taken in Dealey Plaza, appearing as a man wearing dark glasses and a hat, and apparently listening to Charles Brehm.
I am looking for either some kind of documentation on what Sweatt said exactly, or an email address for Trask so that I can ask him about it.
Any help would be appreciated.
Have you seen this:
http://jfkassassinat...mony/sweatt.htm
You might also be interested in this about Sweatt.
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On 1st January, 1964, Alonzo (Lonnie) Hudkins in The Houston Post, speculated that Osward was closely connected to the FBI. As Harold Feldman later pointed out: "Hudkins found that Oswald did know agent Hosty. He had Hosty’s home phone, office phone and car license number - this on the authority of William Alexander, assistant to Henry Wade, Dallas District Attorney. Alexander had attended the grilling of Oswald on November 22 and 23. Hudkins notes that if the FBI had Oswald under surveillance, the watch could not have been too close or they would have known about the rifle and other matters."
This created a stir at the Warren Commission and Leon Jaworski was sent to interview Hudkins. Jaworski reported back to the commission that Hudkins had invented the story. However, when Hudkins was interviewed by the Secret Service several months later, he said his source was Allan Sweatt, the head of the criminal division of the Dallas Sheriff's Office. Sweatt told him that Oswald was an FBI employee with a known number getting $200.00 a month. Sweatt and Hudkins were both not called to appear before the Warren Commission.
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On 8th December, 1963, Joseph C. Gouldon reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Oswald as an undercover informant in Castro groups" two months before the assassination. I have just done a search for Gouldon and discovered that before working as a journalist, he was a former counter-intelligence agent. Maybe he had inside information.
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Fred Cook was The Nations's main investigative journalist in 1963 (Stud Terkel called him the best investigative journalist working in America. He was unconvinced that JFK had been assassinated by a lone-gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. He wanted to investigate the case at the scene of the crime in Dallas but Carey McWilliams was unwilling to fund the trip. Cook did carry out research on the Mannlicher Carcano, the alleged murder weapon, and came to the conclusion that no assassin would have used such a "grossly inferior rifle". However, "Carey McWilliams was not enthusiastic about the trend of my researches" and the article was not published.
After the publication of the Warren Commission Cook decided he must write an article on the Kennedy assassination. Warren Hinckle, the editor of Ramparts Magazine, agreed to publish the 20,000 word article. It was delivered in September, 1965, and was due to appear in its December issue. However, at the last moment it was pulled. He was told it would be in the January 1966 issue. Once again Hinckle failed to keep his promise and in March he told Cook that he had decided not to publish the article. Cook told Ray Marcus that it was "the worst double-cross I have had from a publisher". In April, 1966, Cook received a "token payment" of $500, along with his unpublished manuscript.
Cook now returned to Carey McWilliams and asked him to publish it in the Nation Magazine. Again he refused but when Cook told him that Edward Jay Epstein was about to publish Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, it might help him to get in before him. McWilliams saw the logic of the argument and the two-part article was published in June, 1966. Both parts of the article appeared with editorial disclaimers.
The first part, published on 13th June, was entitled Some Unanswered Questions and concerned itself with the way the Warren Commission dealt with the events in Dealey Plaza. Cook pointed out: "Not a single eyewitness the commission heard saw the action in the way that the commission decided it had happened. All, without exception, were convinced that the President and Governor Connally were felled by two separate, wounding shots." Cook went onto argue that he considered the evidence linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the purchase of the weapon, to the same weapon discovered on the TSBD sixth floor, and the ballistics linking CE 399 to that weapon convincing: "To contend in the face of all this - and more besides - that Oswald was innocent is to endorse absurdity." However, he added that it was impossible for him to believe that Oswald acted alone.
The second part of the article, published on 20th June, was called Testimony of the Eyewitnesses. He argued that in spite of the speed with which Dallas authorities all but closed the case against Oswald, with a lone shooter, three-shots-fired theory, "a surprising number of spectators insisted with varying degrees of certainty that they had heard four, five or six shots." Cook went onto point out: "Exhibit 386, is a back view of the President's head and shoulders; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder, not always in the middle of the back, but well above the shoulder level on the right side of the President's neck. In other words, the location of this wound has been changed!".
On 11th April, 1966, Nation Magazine published an article by Jacob Cohen, criticising the work of Cook and Edward Jay Epstein for not accepting the findings of the Warren Commission. This time there was no editorial disclaimer. Cook was furious with Carey McWilliams and insisted he ran his reply without deleting a single word, or he would never write for the magazine again. McWilliams agreed to do this and Cook's letter that appeared on 22nd August dismantled every point that Cohen had made.
I have ordered a copy of Cook's autobiography, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting (1984), to see if he had anything else to say about the assassination.
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I have taken Jim's advice and added Fred Cook's contribution to the left's response to the JFK assassination. Cook was The Nations's main investigative journalist in 1963 (Stud Terkel called him the best investigative journalist working in America. He was unconvinced that JFK had been assassinated by a lone-gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. He wanted to investigate the case at the scene of the crime in Dallas but Carey McWilliams was unwilling to fund the trip. Cook did carry out research on the Mannlicher Carcano, the alleged murder weapon, and came to the conclusion that no assassin would have used such a "grossly inferior rifle". However, "Carey McWilliams was not enthusiastic about the trend of my researches" and the article was not published.
After the publication of the Warren Commission Cook decided he must write an article on the Kennedy assassination. Warren Hinckle, the editor of Ramparts Magazine, agreed to publish the 20,000 word article. It was delivered in September, 1965, and was due to appear in its December issue. However, at the last moment it was pulled. He was told it would be in the January 1966 issue. Once again Hinckle failed to keep his promise and in March he told Cook that he had decided not to publish the article. Cook told Ray Marcus that it was "the worst double-cross I have had from a publisher". In April, 1966, Cook received a "token payment" of $500, along with his unpublished manuscript.
Cook now returned to Carey McWilliams and asked him to publish it in the Nation Magazine. Again he refused but when Cook told him that Edward Jay Epstein was about to publish Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, it might help him to get in before him. McWilliams saw the logic of the argument and the two-part article was published in June, 1966. Both parts of the article appeared with editorial disclaimers.
The first part, published on 13th June, was entitled Some Unanswered Questions and concerned itself with the way the Warren Commission dealt with the events in Dealey Plaza. Cook pointed out: "Not a single eyewitness the commission heard saw the action in the way that the commission decided it had happened. All, without exception, were convinced that the President and Governor Connally were felled by two separate, wounding shots." Cook went onto argue that he considered the evidence linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the purchase of the weapon, to the same weapon discovered on the TSBD sixth floor, and the ballistics linking CE 399 to that weapon convincing: "To contend in the face of all this - and more besides - that Oswald was innocent is to endorse absurdity." However, he added that it was impossible for him to believe that Oswald acted alone.
The second part of the article, published on 20th June, was called Testimony of the Eyewitnesses. He argued that in spite of the speed with which Dallas authorities all but closed the case against Oswald, with a lone shooter, three-shots-fired theory, "a surprising number of spectators insisted with varying degrees of certainty that they had heard four, five or six shots." Cook went onto point out: "Exhibit 386, is a back view of the President's head and shoulders; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder; it places the entry wound, not on a line with the tip of the shoulder, not always in the middle of the back, but well above the shoulder level on the right side of the President's neck. In other words, the location of this wound has been changed!".
On 11th April, 1966, Nation Magazine published an article by Jacob Cohen, criticising the work of Cook and Edward Jay Epstein for not accepting the findings of the Warren Commission. This time there was no editorial disclaimer. Cook was furious with Carey McWilliams and insisted he ran his reply without deleting a single word, or he would never write for the magazine again. McWilliams agreed to do this and Cook's letter that appeared on 22nd August dismantled every point that Cohen had made.
I have ordered a copy of Cook's autobiography, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting (1984), to see if he had anything else to say about the assassination.
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John, you've admitted Terri to your forum and now she's placed her OT accusations in a prominent spot on the internet, and just beloe your name. It is easy to see how Terri benefits, if getting an opportunity to pitch what she has linked to here is actually in her best interests to do, but how do you or the forum membership benefit?
It might seem strange to you but I do not ask the question: "How do I benefit?" when I admit people to the Forum.
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This is indeed a very chilling story. I have heard stories about cheering taking place but I have not heard a first-hand account of it.
Are you talking about Arthur Leigh Allen or Charles F. Albright as the possible assassin?
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Terri, I have reposted your post here:
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I'm not sure where my information fits in but I thought I would mention what I experienced on November 22, 1963. at the time I was in the sixth grade and only ten years old.
On that date I was living in my hometown, Terry, south of Jackson, in Mississippi. It was just after lunch when I heard the principal of our school going from door to door making an announcement. Although I could not hear what he was saying, a loud cheer came from each classroom in response.
So I was expecting good news when the principal of our school, a card carrying member of the KKK, stuck his red neck in the door and said, "The president's has been shot", to which every student, but me, jumped up and cheered.
Noticing that my head hung sadly low, a Klan Kid said to me, "Ha, that's nuthin'. They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK!" (Kennedy King Kennedy)
I felt stunned as all the children in my class were so excited and happy. They all ran out into the hall where the principal, the teachers and most of the students gathered around one eighth grade boy. The principal rubbed the boy's head and said, "Son, your father's a mighty hero". Teachers exclaimed, "You should be proud of your pop" and students shouted, "Yo' daddy's one fine shot!" Nearly everyone wanted to shake his hand.
Of course I suspected his father had just shot the president, so I walked up to him and asked, "Did your father just shoot the president?".
His homeroom teacher was standing proudly beside him and answered saying, "Naw honey, he just won a 'Turkey Shoot'!" (three marksmen in a triangular formation)
I had known all summer that there were many members of the KKK in my hometown who hated Kennedy. I lived across the road from the man who shot his gun from the grassy knoll and knew he was in the National Reserves. He was the best marksman in all the south at the time. I had grown up living across the road from the man and knew he had bombed a church in '59, just down the road, among other crimes. He had thrown me off his property when I was 5, because he said, "We don't tary with nigga lovuhs. You go on home and don't come back, y'heah". What was even sadder on November 22, 1963, was the fact that I had written to President Kennedy to warn him of the planned attempt on his life. It was at Klan rallies across the road from my house (I did not ever attend a Klan rally, but they used a PA system which I could clearly hear from our front porch), and the Klan kids, that I had learned of their plans. I had mailed the letter shortly before his trip to Dallas. I prayed the letter would reach him in time and it did, but who listens to a 10 year old? That letter must be sealed up with all the other evidence. I wrote it and I would like it back.
Also I would like to mention to people who want to know why the Klan would have used a PA system, that in the 50's & 60's I lived in the country outside of Terry with my great grand parents. There were also many Klan rallies in Byram that summer, a town 5 miles north of Terry. In the country (and most of the south) the Klan reigned supreme. There was no one to tell about anything that was heard, because anyone you might have wanted to tell, law enforcement, judges, etc, were at the rally. So who could anyone tell?
As I walked back to my classroom, the seventh grade teacher was standing in her doorway. She had not congratulated the boy. She scurried me into her empty classroom, seeing the stunned look on my face and sat me down.
"Mrs. Long, E_____'s father just shot the president. We have to tell someone", I said.
Mrs. Long took a long look at me and said, "Nothing will be done about the men who did this. The same group of men who just shot the president also murdered my uncle, Huey Long, who was governor of Louisiana and they got away with it. Nothing was ever done to them then and nothing will be done about what they have done now. There is nothing anyone can do. There is no one you can tell".
There was another man, who everyone called "Doc", in our hometown. He lived down the road from me. He was a rich doctor, Joel Garrett Brunson. He was gay and had my brother and his friends over to his house when they were in high school, after school for "drug parties". My brother stayed in his house while the doctor attended in the autopsy of RFK.
That man who shot the president and his friends (one of whom was Doc) financed many atrocities in the south over the decades that their lives spanned. The man who was a "Star" in the greatest coup d'etat in the history of the USA, died just a few years back and was never charged with ANY of the crimes he committed. Even if I told you who he was and even if you believed me, nothing could be done about it, because the will to have true justice in this case was never there. That was perhaps the saddest thing I have learned from the events of November 22, 1963.There WERE three marksmen and the one who was on the other side of the limo from the grassy knoll, went on the become a serial killer (Zodiac); he was another one who died without ever being charged, yet probably killed more people than any one single person in history, save someone in the military. No one in authority could have afforded to bust him; he might have talked.
On the evening of November 22, 1963, as I sat and watched the news with my grandmother, she was happy, I was sad. I told her that E_____'s father had shot the president. She shot an angry look at me and started boasting about how my uncle had also been present and part of the team and said I should be proud of him. I do not know everything about my uncle, but I know he was a lousy shot. He shot his own right middle toe off in a hunting accident when he was a teenager. That's why he used a flashlight on top of his gun to shoot people in the Zodiac killings. He was never even investigated in relation to the crimes. I guess no one could afford to bust him as he might have talked about Dallas. I know more about the Zodiac Killings, but that is not on topic here.
One year after the death of Kennedy, I wrestled with my conscience about whether to tell anyone and did finally muster up the nerve to tell the town Marshal. He just laughed at me and called me a 'crazy little girl', said no one would ever believe me. So if you want to call me crazy, well at least it isn't a bullet and won't really hurt me. I have grown accustomed to the insult. But I know the truth, not that it does any good. People talk about where they were that day. This is my story.
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I had the pleasure of reading this article before it was published online. Well worth reading.
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The journalist, Zalin Grant, interviewed Dovey Roundtree on November 3, 1993. She told him that she thought that there was something in the Meyer case she could never get at. “I felt I was against a big force of the government.” She believed it led to the CIA.
Only a day or two after Crump was arrested, the Washington Post had editorialized about the case in a strange and most unprofessional way. As the Post saw it, there was no question about it: Ray Crump was the killer.
Dovey called the Post and asked if they had information about Crump’s guilt that wasn’t available to her. The Post said no, they had nothing that wasn’t generally known to the police.
She heard that Ben Bradlee, the Washington Newsweek Bureau chief, was also trumpeting his belief that Crump was the killer and that it was an open and shut case.
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Watergate Files Released: Once-Secret Files Published By U.S. Government (VIDEO)
By STEPHEN BRAUN and RICHARD LARDNER 11/30/12 07:07 PM ET EST(AP)
http://www.huffingto...html?1354309867
Reports from prison psychiatrists and probation officers also show that four of Hunt's co-defendants justified their role in the Watergate break-in on national security grounds, saying they were under orders to search for evidence that Cuban government funds supported Democratic party campaigns. Dean said Friday that Hunt once told him that excuse was a ruse used to persuade the others to participate in the burglary.
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I found that the most interesting.
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As a facts-oriented guy, I think you've cited plenty of sources to prove most of your points. One minor concern is about the suggestion that I F Stone and Carey McWilliams of the Nation somehow got a warning from governmental officials about a Soviet conspiracy. There's no evidence of it, and I think it weakens your approach. There's no question that the spectre of "40 million dead" was made to Earl Warren and others by LBJ - you can even hear those discussions in the LBJ tapes available for listening at the Mary Ferrell site. I think that spectre was evident to people like IF Stone and McWilliams, and they censored themselves like the Left historically does when it feels threatened. The Nation refuses to cover these kinds of stories to this day, which is really unfortunate.
I agree there is no evidence that I.F. Stone and Carey McWilliams were in the pay of the CIA. In fact, all the evidence that we have in the forms of their writings indicate a permanent hostility to the CIA. I have also read the two major biographies of Stone: D. D. Guttenplan, American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone (2011) and Myra MacPherson, All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalists (2006). They also make no references to any suspicions that Stone was compromised by the CIA. The same is also true of Peter Richardson’s American Prophet: The Life & Work of Carey McWilliams (2005). However, all three writers are extremely sympathetic of their subjects and they are clearly not looking for such evidence. They also show no interest in the way both men reported the assassination.
It also has to be said that when the CIA decided to discredit so-called left-wing writers by exposing their involvement in CIA-fronted organizations, such as Dwight McDonald, Louis Fischer, Arthur Koestler, Jason Epstein, Arthur Schlesinger, Mary McCarthy, Melvin Lasky, etc. they never mentioned Stone and McWilliams. However, I think that is understandable. They played such an important role in the JFK assassination cover-up that they would not have liked them discussing the one occasion when they followed the CIA line on a subject.
I agree what I have said is pure speculation. It is just an attempt to explain what I find puzzling behaviour. I can understand why they did not immediately suspect a conspiracy (I will return to that point later). However, I do find it strange that they were extremely hostile to the idea that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy (for example, Stone’s reaction to Ray Marcus and McWilliams’s reaction to Mark Lane). I am especially intrigued by Abraham Wirin’s comments on 4th December 1964 while discussing the Warren Report: “I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God bless him for what he has done in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin.” (1)
An additional aspect that I'd like to see you address is the historic tension between the Left and independent researchers. On one hand, as I'm sure you're aware, many of us on the left and in various walks of life do not like to see an issue presented as "a conspiracy".
Interestingly, the left in the UK did not have any problem with viewing the JFK assassination as a conspiracy. The “Who Killed Kennedy Committee” established by Bertrand Russell in the aftermath of the assassination included all the leading figures of the left at the time: Victor Golancz, Michael Foot, Kingsley Martin, J. B. Priestley, John Arden, John Calder, Kenneth Tynan, Mervyn Stockwood, etc.
Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine wrote in March,1964: "Is the possibility of a treasonous political conspiracy to be ruled out? Not the least fantastic aspect of this whole fantastic nightmare is the ease with which respectable opinion in America has arrived at the conclusion that such a possibility is absurd; in most other countries, what is regarded as absurd is the idea that the assassination could have been anything but a political murder." (2)
One of the main reasons that the left in America have not embraced the idea of a conspiracy behind the death of JFK is that they did not see him in 1963 as posing a threat to the status quo. If you read the work of people like Casey McWilliams and I.F. Stone in the early 1960s they see JFK as a traditional Cold War warrior. What is more, they disapproved completely of Robert Kennedy as his attorney general. The main reason for this was the Kennedy’s involvement with McCarthyism and the purge of the left in the 1950s. Stone and McWilliams felt so strongly about this that they actually joined other members of the left in supporting Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating when RFK was campaigning to become the Senator for New York in 1964. (3)
What the left did not realise in November 1963 was that JFK had changed his views on the Cold War and that he was secretly negotiating with the Soviets at the time. This of course did pose a threat to the status quo and JFK was clearly more dangerous than he was perceived by the left at the time.
Of course, we now have the documents to show that JFK was a reformed Cold Warrior. Why don’t those on the left, such as Noam Chomsky, accept the fact they made a miscalculation in their assessment of the assassination in 1963? Mainly, for the same reasons why members of this forum are so reluctant to change their minds on subjects relating to the assassination. People find it very difficult to accept they are wrong.
Anthony Summers made a very good point when he commented on the way journalists reacted to the publication of the HSCA report in 1979. “The American press, to its discredit, has generally played down the achievements of the Assassination Committee or brushed its conclusions aside. This lethargy may stem in part from the fact that-sixteen years ago - there was no serious attempt at investigative reporting of the Kennedy assassination. In those days, before Vietnam and Watergate, investigation was left to the government.” (4) I think this also explains why Stone and McWilliams did not reassess their view of the assassination after the publication of the report.
1. Abraham L. Wirin, speech, Beverly Hills High School (4th December, 1964)
2. Norman Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine (March, 1964)
3. Myra MacPherson, All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalists (2006) page 223
4. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy (1980) page xxi
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One of the subjects I examine in the book I'm presently marketing is the fact many high profile "leftists" were co-opted by the CIA. The CIA ties of Timothy Leary and Gloria Steinem, for instance, are well documented. I.F. Stone, on the other hand, may well have been some sort of Soviet agent. There have been numerous allegations to this effect (and one of those involved in this issue has been Max Holland) since the KGB files were opened in the early 1990s.
As William Colby said, "the CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
I do not agree that Stone was a Soviet agent. I know this is suggested in his FBI files but that was because they lumped all the left together. Stone was always a harsh critic of the Soviet system. Anyway, what information did he have that would have been of use to the Soviets that he did not publish in the I.F. Sone Weekly? These smears against the left are on virtually every left-winger on Wikipedia. The KGB recruited spies who appeared to have right-wing views. The Kim Philby group were all recruited in the 1930s. The first thing they were told was to join right-wing political groups. It was from these groups that they were recruited into MI5/MI6. The KGB was fully aware of how the SIS found its agents. I am sure the same was true of the United States.
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I have always been puzzled by the attempt to assassinate Franklin D. Roosevelt. The assassin, Guiseppe Zangara, was known to have developed a strong hatred of President Herbert Hoover, who he blamed for his problems caused by the Great Depression. However, Roosevelt had just defeated Hoover and was of course not responsible for anything suffered by Zangara.
On 13th February, 1933, Zangara read that Roosevelt was to visit Bayfront Park on 15th February, 1933. Zangara bought a .32 caliber pistol and joined the crowd. As he was only 5 feet tall, Zangara had difficulty seeing his proposed victim. He climbed on top of an old unstable wooden chair and started to fire. One bullet hit Anton Cermak the major of Chicago who was with Roosevelt. Four members of the crowd were also injured but none of the bullets hit the president. Roosevelt comforted Cermak who had suffered an abdominal wound. On the way to the hospital Cermak told Roosevelt, "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President." Cermak died three days later and Zangara was executed on 20th March, 1933. This seems very quick and suggests a cover-up.
Some political commentators such as Walter Winchell believed that Cermak was the real target. It was argued that Al Capone or Bill Thompson had hired Zangara to assassinate Cermak. However, a FBI investigation concluded that Zangara was a mentally deranged loner and was not involved in any conspiracy to kill Cermak.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAzangara.htm
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Is Communist = Stalinist TRUE ? No. As long as the two are equated, any discussion on the left that must rely on notions like a non-communist left reveals a fundamental flaw, irrespective of truisms that may follow.
I use the term "Non-Communist Left" because they were the words used by the CIA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Later, they became hostile to anyone left of centre.
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4. The main fault of the piece is that it tries to say that somehow this was all part of a grand conspiracy played on the left. I don't agree. The idea that somehow Jason Epstein was a CIA asset is untenable. This is a guy who later sponsored and edited the best book on Watergate--JIm Hougan's Secret Agenda, and the best book on the RFK case, the Turner-Christian book.. Both of these works target the CIA.
Jason Epstein confessed to his work with the CIA in an interview with Frances Stoner Saunders in New York in June 1994. As he pointed out, he was a member of the Non-Communist Left and was only too pleased to take a strong anti-Soviet line in the books that he published: “Who wouldn’t like to be in such a situation where you’re politically correct and at the same time well compensated for the position you’ve taken? And this was the occasion for the corruption that followed.” (Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, page 346)
Epstein helped to establish the New York Review of Books with CIA money. It came in via Jack Thompson, Executive Director of the Farfield Foundation. Epstein was a personal friend of Thompson and claims that he held the job under contract to the CIA for over a decade (page 243). Epstein told Stephen Spender, editor of Encounter, that the journal was being funded by the CIA. Spender told Epstein that he did not believe him. However, according to his wife, he knew as early as 1955 that it was CIA money. This supports CIA’s Tom Braden’s account. Lawrence de Neufville, who was Braden’s boss, commented: “Who didn’t know, I’d like to know? It was a pretty open secret.” (page 394)
Epstein commented: “What most irritated us was that the government seemed to be running an underground gravy train whose first-class compartments were not always occupied by first-class passengers; the CIA and the Ford Foundation, among other agencies, had set up and were financing an apparatus of intellectuals selected for the correct cold-war positions, as an alternative to what one might call a free intellectual market where ideology was presumed to count for less than individual talent and achievement, and where doubts about established orthodoxies were taken to be the beginning of all inquiry.” (page 409)
Epstein, like I.F. Stone and Carey McWilliams, broke with the CIA over Vietnam: “come Vietnam, and our anti-Stalinism gets used to justify our own aggression. These people (CIA funded writers) get into a real bind now. They’re caught with their pants down: they have to defend Vietnam because they’ve toed the anti-Communist line for so long that otherwise they stand to lose everything. They did help make Vietnam possible.” (page 369) In fact, they made the CIA cover-up of the JFK assassination possible.
As Deborah Davis pointed out in her book on CIA infiltration of the Washington Post newspaper, Katharine the Great: (1979): “The practice, the old intelligence principle translated, contained the seeds of political blackmail: once the newsman or his organization has been compromised, the politician can threaten to expose his (its) lack of independence unless he (it) cooperates further. Many Mockingbirds have been faced with this choice.” (page 190)
To his credit, Epstein, like Stone, refused to give in to this threat of blackmail. Epstein, played an important role in the establishment of the New York Review of Books. It was here that Epstein rebelled and took a strong anti-Vietnam War stance. As CIA officer, Lee Williams, who was involved in the media project, later admitted: “We had a big problem with the yin and yang of the New York Review crowd, especially when it got so anti-Vietnam, and so left-wing.” (page 361) This was the reason for the CIA leaking stories about these Non-Communist Left writers in 1967.
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3. The Nation actually did publish a couple of decent articles on the JFK case by Harold Feldman, a relative of Salandria. But the Nation then reversed itself when the report came out. Prof. Andrew Hacker wrote a nauseating accolade for it. Then, when their ace reporter Fred Cook wanted to do a long analysis of the flaws in the report. They put him off for months on end. And after he did write the piece, they allowed a reply by Jacob Cohen.
Yes, I should have included Harold Feldman and Fred Cook in the original article. They will appear in the revised version. Several researchers have sent me detailed comments. I found those from Peter Dale Scott and G. Robert Blakey particularly helpful. Robert said: “I wish I had seen this article when I was chief counsel of the HSCA. It certainly explains the favorable media coverage, especially from the Times, we got when we debunked the critics, but the shock and disbelieve, when we pointed to guys behind the grassy knoll. Thanks for running it by me. Let’s see if you can get it published state’s side. I’ll bet you have to go to the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Keep me in the loop. I would print it word-for-word if I were the editor of a major outlet in this country, but then, again, I doubt that I will ever get that sort of position in this go-around in life.”
Jackie Kennedy Tapes
in JFK Assassination Debate
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