John Simkin

A new book on Pawley has just been published.

William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers by Anthony R. Carrozza

http://www.amazon.co.uk/William-Pawley-Extraordinary-Adventurer-Entrepreneur/dp/1597977144/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347689637&sr=1-1

William Douglas Pawley was a cross between Indiana Jones and Donald Trump. A self-made millionaire with little education, he immersed himself in whatever business venture he chose and usually came out on top. As a sales representative for the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Pawley travelled to China in the 1930s and positioned himself as the one source of American military aircraft for the Chinese government. Eventually, he worked to support the Flying Tigers, the American volunteers flying for the Chinese Air Force, and built an airplane factory in India to give the Allies air power in Asia. President Harry Truman appointed Pawley as ambassador to Peru (1945-46), and to Brazil (1946-48). When Dwight Eisenhower ran for president, Pawley switched parties, campaigned for Ike, and was later assigned to the State Department. During this period, he dealt with world leaders on sensitive national security matters, such as back-door diplomacy in the Dominican Republic under Rafael Trujillo in Cuba at the time of Fidel Castro's takeover, and in a plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government in 1954. Later, in an effort to discredit President John Kennedy, Pawley financed secret Operation Tilt to help Russian missile officers defect from Cuba to the United States. This episode, involving a cast of characters from Mafia members to soldiers of fortune, was one of many in an adventure story beyond belief. Anthony R. Carrozza's in-depth biography looks at the extraordinary life of a man whose work influenced thirty years of American and international relations during World War II and the Cold War, and whose death resulted from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm

All the surveys of historians show that the three top rated presidents of all time are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt. These surveys include the 2009 C-SPAN survey of American presidential historians, USPC survey of 47 UK scholars of American history and politics, 2005 Wall Street Journal poll of scholars, and 2008 New York Times poll of analysts.

You can read about the British survey of academic experts here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12195111

I am aware that the American public do not share this point of view. A Gallup poll carried out in 2011 showed the following: Ronald Reagan (1), Abraham Lincoln (2), Bill Clinton (3), John Kennedy (4), George Washington (5), Franklin Roosevelt (6) and Barack Obama (7).

This list only shows the lack of historical knowledge of the American public, the success of the propaganda machine of the two main parties and the power of the mass media. How else can you explain the rankings of Reagan (1) and Clinton (3)?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146183/americans-say-reagan-greatest-president.aspx

http://www.nytimes.c...assination.html

This article seems new and different, when compared to other NYT articles about the JFK assassination.

IMO this should be posted everywhere and LINKED TO THE AMAZON LINK TO THE BOOK.

There exist large groups of youngish people for whom a Times article like this could be a bridge over the moat. We should use it.

I agree and have added it to my page on Gaeton Fonzi. I am still number one at Google for "Gaeton Fonzi" (Wikipedia have never bothered to do a page on him).

http://www.spartacus...uk/JFKfonzi.htm

Paul Vitello is a respected writer and appears on the Pulitzer Prize website.

http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6078

I am a member of the email group of JFK researchers set up by Peter Dale Scott. This obituary really upset John McAdams and he sent out an unpleasant email about Fonzi. This has resulted in a series of interesting emails defending Fonzi by people like Tony Summers, David Lifton, David Kaiser, David Talbot, Rex Bradford, Jim Lesar, Paul Hoch, Jerry Policoff and Jeff Morley.

Eugene Meyer is an interesting character. He purchased the Washington Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933. His daughter, Katherine Meyer, married Phil Graham in 1940. He joined the OSS during the Second World War. Graham was sent to China where he worked with John K. Singlaub, Ray S. Cline, Richard Helms, E. Howard Hunt, Mitchell WerBell, Jake Esterline, Paul Helliwell, Robert Emmett Johnson and Lucien Conein. Others working in China at that time included Tommy Corcoran, Whiting Willauer and William Pawley.

According to the American journalist, Edgar Ansel Mowrer, who worked closely with British intelligence in the 1930s, Eugene Meyer was a member of the media group who worked closely with first British Security Coordination (BSC) and then the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War.

In 1946 Eugene Meyer appointed his son-in-law, Phil Graham, as associate publisher. He eventually took over business side of the newspaper's operations. He also played an important role in the paper's editorial policy. It is claimed that Graham had close links with the Central Intelligence Agency and it has been argued that he played an important role in Operation Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American media. According to Katherine Graham, her husband worked overtime at the Washington Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends who had organized the ill-fated venture.

In the early 1960s Phil Graham began an affair with Robin Webb. Graham made a new will where he left everything to Webb, effectively depriving Katharine of her controlling interest in the Washington Post. Three times in the spring of 1963 Graham re-wrote his original will of 1957. Each of Graham's 1963 revisions reducing his wife's share and expanding the share he intended for his mistress. Ultimately, the last version cut out Katharine Graham altogether.

Katharine obviously knew something was afoot because, as Deborah Davis reports, Mrs. Graham "told [her own attorney] Clark Clifford that the divorce settlement must assign control of The Washington Post, and all of the Post companies, exclusively to her."

Matters finally came to a head when Philip attended a newspaper publishers convention in Arizona and delivered a blistering speech attacking the CIA and exposing "insider" secrets about official Washington-even to the point of exposing his friend John Kennedy's affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer, the wife of a top CIA official, Cord Meyer.

At that point, Katharine flew to Phoenix and snatched up her husband who was captured after a struggle, put in a straitjacket and sedated. He was then flown to an exclusive mental clinic in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Maryland. On the morning of 3rd August 1963, Katharine Graham reportedly told friends that Philip was "better" and coming home. She drove to the clinic and picked up her husband and drove him to their country home in Virginia. Later that day, while "Kay" was reportedly napping in her second floor room, Phil Graham shot himself in a bathtub downstairs. Although the police report of the incident was never made public, the death was ruled a suicide.

Probably the biggest cover-up was the fact that for 12 months after he took power, Winston Churchill was involved in secret negotiations with Adolf Hitler (May 1940 - April 1941). They could not agree about how much of the British Empire they could keep. The documents about this are still declassified. In many ways, Churchill was right to negotiate with Hitler at this time. However, we deserve to be told the truth of this matter.

I am currently reading Raymond Gram Swing's Good Evening (1964). He has an interesting section on meeting Churchill two months after the arrival of Hess in England:

The luncheon at Chequers as guest of the Prime Minister on Sunday noon was the accolade of the trip. I sat at the right hand of Mr. Churchill, in a room filled with about two dozen diners, among them Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman, who were in England on a lend-lease mission....

After the meal, the Prime Minister invited me to take a walk with him in the garden. This turned out to be the occasion for an unexpected and, I must say, somewhat disconcerting exposition to me of the terms on which Britain at that time could make a separate peace with Nazi Germany. The gist of the terms was that Britain could retain its empire, which Germany would guarantee, with the exception of the former German colonies, which were to be returned. The timing of this conversation seemed to me significant. Rudolf Hess, the number-three Nazi, had landed by parachute in Scotland less than two months before, where he had attempted to make contact with the Duke of Hamilton, whom the Nazis believed to be an enemy of Mr. Churchill and his policies. Hess was, of course, safely stowed away in a British prison. But if he had had anything fresh and authoritative to say on Hitler's behalf about a separate peace, his imprisonment would not have silenced him.

Mr. Churchill said nothing to me about Herr Hess. But he expounded to me the advantage of the German terms; and he seemed to be trying to arouse in me a feeling that unless the United States became more actively involved in the war, Britain might find it to her interest to accept them. I may be ascribing to him intentions he did not have. Later I was to learn that Hitler himself had proposed broadly similar terms to Britain before the war actually began. But I was under the impression that the allurements of peace had been recently underlined by Rudolf Hess, and that Mr. Churchill was impatient with the United States, lend-lease and Iceland not-withstanding. I did not have the impression that he meant me to convey what he was saying to Washington. Both Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman were at Chequers at that moment. They would be message-bearers, not I. But it troubled me to have him give me his exposition, which must have lasted a full twenty minutes. For my part, I believed that the United States's interests made our entry in the war imperative. But I did not believe it would spur the country to come in to be told that if it did not, Winston Churchill would make a separate peace with Hitler and put his empire under a Hitler guarantee of safety.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhess.htm

It is already being described as the largest political cover-up in British history. For over 20 years the British government have refused to disclose the documents concerning the deaths of 96 men, women and children who died at the 15th April 1983 at Hillsborough Football Stadium. After a long campaign, the last Labour government eventually gave permission for the Hillsborough Independent Panel to look as these secret documents. All those that have survived (some have clearly been destroyed including CTV footage) have today been published online. These documents show that there was a cover-up that included the police, politicians and the media. This is not unlike the JFK case and hopefully the CIA and FBI will eventually be forced to release their documents as well.

http://www.guardian....eron-apologises

http://www.guardian....live?intcmp=239

For the background of the case see:

http://en.wikipedia....orough_disaster

Since we're dispensing advice, I believe your reputation is adversely affected by your support of anyone willing to spread evidence-free gossip and innuendo about JFK's private life. But I don't believe for a second you'll heed that advice any more than you did when you were warned about some of your moderators.

I have high regard for you on a personal level John, but we have some fundamental differences which largely boil down to how we view substance and surface appearance.

Maybe you could be more precise about my “support of anyone willing to spread evidence-free gossip and innuendo about JFK's private life”.

It is true that I have in the past included information about JFK’s sex life in my posts (for example, Mary Pinchot Meyer), but this is more than gossip and it does, in my opinion, could have a direct bearing on the assassination.

Are you denying that JFK had numerous affairs or do you think some writers exaggerate this?

Should biographers include details of JFK’s sexual behaviour in their books? Yes, I think they should. I have recently finished a book on Charles Dickens where I look at his sexual relationships. I have done this because I believe it provides insights into his work. But a biographer is interested in the whole man. It is important to see beneath the public image the person wants to communicate. Personally, I believe the moral behaviour of JFK leaves a lot to be desired. More importantly, it gave information to his enemies to use against him. For example, it was the main reason why he could not sack J. Edgar Hoover. If any leader really wants to take on those really in control of society, he must make sure his personal behaviour is beyond reproach.

Also, after his post about his researcher, Debra Conway, you owe David an apology.

Has anyone come across the name "Albert T. Johnson"? His son believes he was a pilot for CIA gunrunning operations into Guatemala and Cuba in the 50/60s. On one operation into Cuba, he was apparently shot in the leg and nearly died. He died of an alcohol and drug overdose in 1964.

Out of 193 countries currently recognised by the UN, Britain has invaded 158. That’s 82 per cent.

That number seems extraordinarily high, do you have a list?

No, but you will find a full list in Stuart Laycock's All the Countries We've Ever Invaded (October, 2012)

The New York Times published their Gaeton Fonzi obituary today: http://www.nytimes.c...assination.html

One of the fairest articles that has appeared in the New York Times on the JFK Assassination. Clearly, Paul Vitello has spoken to Jeff Morley before writing the obituary.

Interesting story. It is amazing how long it takes for governments to admit their cover-ups.

Out of 193 countries currently recognised by the UN, Britain has invaded 158. That’s 82 per cent.

Greg,

You have to know it's against the forum rules to call someone a xxxx. Yet you called David Lifton a xxxx twice in this thread. There are other ways to make your point without resorting to such childish tactics. You also threw in a gratuitious bit of profanity. How does any of this strengthen your arguments?

I wish everyone would consider that your posts are being read by many, many people all over the world. Your real names are attached to these posts- do you really want to leave this kind of impression?

Yes, Don, I know it is against forum rules to tell the truth in some circumstances. I have no problem with my name being seen attached to these posts. Protection of liars is, ironically, the very thing we all agree is being done via the withholding of documents, and other ways and means of hiding behind "rules". If people get the wrong "impression" it is because you are pushing that wrong impression.

If you want this place populated solely by liars, their sycophants, and assorted snake oil salesmen, please enforce your "rules". You're certainly helping to drag in that direction.

I see no reason why you need to use the word "xxxx" in your criticism of David's work. Like Don, I think your approach to David only damages your own reputation.

Zach, if you are like me, you always try to find any "unusual" or hitherto "unknown" facts, that are not previously known when you peruse books, or documents for that matter....I had never been very interested in Dickey Chapelle and my interest had been pretty much confined to the fact that she was admittedly, just another journalist along the lines of Dorothy Kilgallen and Lisa Howard...I was, in that respect, real curious about her death in that context, but after realizing how long the period was between her death 1965 and JFK's 1963, mystery death's just aren't as hot a topic for me, as everybody else, although there are some very, very compelling areas....

To get back on to Chapelle, the areas that I have found compelling are not what everyone might think....The bio's mentioning of Lansdale are mainly after 1963......

In my mind, the chief areas of what I consider as "unusual," are as follows:

1. She met Admiral Byrd sometime before his Anartica expedition [1936] and was so enamored with Byrd as a child she fantasized about meeting him as well as flying, and of course, she really met him, by sheer force of will, as her parents who seem very responsible for her widely noticed state of "dysfunction, were horrified at the thought of really taking up flying.

2. He family surname was Meyer, and I believe there is a real possibility she was in some way related to Cord Meyer. more on that later.

3. She is noted for a clandestine trip to Hungary that dovetailed with the Hungarian Revolution, it is very, very, compelling if for no other reason than the fact that "her chief" at the time she was arrested and detained in Hungary was Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd.....of the International Rescue Committee, in light of Ferenc Nagy, living in Dallas in 1963, I consider this an area of interest, although no one else seems to.

More later.

Does Roberta Ostroff have anything to say about Dickey Chapelle's membership of the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC)? Formed in March 1963 it included several interesting figures that had links to the assassination of JFK. This included Henry Luce, Clare Booth Luce, Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, William Pawley, Virginia Prewett and Ernest Cuneo. I have recently read two biographies of Clare Booth Luce that do not mention the CCFC or the Luce's funding of Alpha 66. In 1962 Alpha 66 launched several raids on Cuba. This included attacks on port installations and foreign shipping. The authors of Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (1981) argues that Clare Boothe Luce paid for one of the boats used in these raids: "The anti-communist blonde took a maternal interest in the three-man crew she adopted... She brought them to New York three times to mother them."

In the 1964 Presidential Election the Luce media empire supported Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. One wonders what sort of deal Johnson had done with Luce?

Or with Hedley Donovan: http://www.nytimes.c...nted=all&src=pm

According to an Associated Press obituary, Donovan was a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.apnewsarc...20b8c243b469aa0

Thank you for that. It only adds to the puzzle.

Clare Boothe Luce claimed that Sam Rayburn gave her advice on how to be a successful politician, "explain nothing, deny everything, demand proof - don't listen to it - and give the opposition hell". That seems to be the tactics of Gary North.

Clare Boothe Luce was a strong supporter of the Republican Party and had been a member of Congress for Connecticut (1940-46). Her husband, Henry Luce, shared her beliefs and his media empire always supported the Republicans in elections. His support of Dwight Eisenhower was rewarded by appointing Clare Boothe Luce as ambassador to Italy.

However, in 1960, Luce took a keen interest in the Democratic Party nomination in the 1960 Presidential Election. They gave their full support to Lyndon Johnson. When it looked almost certain that Kennedy would win the nomination, Johnson assured Clare that he would "never, never, never accept the Vice-Presidency". A week after Johnson had taken the second spot to Kennedy she asked him why he changed his mind, he replied: "At least I'm only one heart beat away from the job I really want."

Clare did not campaign for Richard Nixon in the 1960 Presidential Election. She told her official biographer, Stephen Shadegg, that the reason for this was because of her close relationship with Joseph Kennedy. If that was the case, why was she campaigning for Johnson?

We now know that Henry and Clare Luce were both hostile to Kennedy's policy towards Cuba.

They joined with Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, William Pawley, Virginia Prewett, Dickey Chapelle, Edward Teller, Arleigh Burke, Leo Cherne, Ernest Cuneo, Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthau and Frank Tannenbaum to form the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC).

Luce also funded Alpha 66. In 1962 Alpha 66 launched several raids on Cuba. This included attacks on port installations and foreign shipping. The authors of Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (1981) argues that Clare Boothe Luce paid for one of the boats used in these raids: "The anti-communist blonde took a maternal interest in the three-man crew she adopted... She brought them to New York three times to mother them."

Luce later told Gaeton Fonzi that the attacks had been organized by her friend, William Pawley: "Luce said that Pawley had gotten the idea of putting together a fleet of speedboats-sea-going Flying Tigers as it were-which would be used by the exiles to dart in and out of Cuba on intelligence gathering missions. He asked her to sponsor one of these boats and she agreed." John Newman argues in his book, Oswald and the CIA (1995) that Pawley was working for the CIA in Miami. He argues that he was involved with Haroldson L. Hunt and quotes James P. Hosty as saying: "H. L. Hunt was backing Pawley's people, and they were also getting support from Henry Luce."

In the 1964 Presidential Election the Luce media empire supported Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. One wonders what sort of deal Johnson had done with Luce?

In 1975 Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Two years later the House Select Committee on Assassinations was established. Soon afterwards Schweiker was visited by Vera Glaser, a syndicated Washington columnist. Glaser told him she had just interviewed Luce and that he had given her some information relating to the assassination. According to Gaeton Fonzi, who worked for Schweiker: "Schweiker immediately called Luce and she, quite cooperatively and in detail, confirmed the story she had told Glaser."

In his book, The Last Investigation (1993), Fonzi points out that during the campaign against Fidel Castro in 1963 the captain of one of the boats they were using, was approached by Lee Harvey Oswald who offered his services as a potential Castro assassin. "He said his group didn't believe Oswald, suspected he was really a Communist and decided to keep tabs on him. Fernandez said they found that Oswald was, indeed, a Communist, and they eventually penetrated his cell and tape-recorded his talks, including his bragging that he could shoot anyone". Fernandez also told Luce that Oswald then suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKluceC.htm

Who said in 1938: "We are not, perhaps, sufficiently aware that Southernism is a particular and highly matured form of Fascism with which America has lived more or less peacefully for seventy-five years." A clue is that it was a woman who was a close associate of people thought to be behind the Kennedy assassination.

Clare Boothe Luce

That's impressive. She said it in the foreword of the book about her comedy, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, that ran for two hundred and eighty-six performances. The following year, she wrote her openly anti-Nazi play, Margin for Error.

Who said in 1938: "We are not, perhaps, sufficiently aware that Southernism is a particular and highly matured form of Fascism with which America has lived more or less peacefully for seventy-five years." A clue is that it was a woman who was a close associate of people thought to be behind the Kennedy assassination.

It is well-known that Henry Luce, as a key figure in Operation Mockingbird, played an important role in the cover-up in the assassination of JFK. What has been kept from the public domain until the release of recently published documents, that Luce was working for British intelligence as early as July 1940.

According to The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45, a secret report written by leading operatives of the British Security Coordination (Roald Dahl, H. Montgomery Hyde, Giles Playfair, Gilbert Highet and Tom Hill), William Stephenson and BSC played an important role in the Council for Democracy, a group established by Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, C. D. Jackson, Freda Kirchwey, Raymond Gram Swing, Robert Sherwood, John Gunther, Leonard Lyons, Ernest Angell and Carl Joachim Friedrich in July 1940. According to Kai Bird the organization "became an effective and highly visible counterweight to the isolation rhetoric" to America First Committee led by Charles Lindbergh and Robert E. Wood: "With financial support from Douglas and Luce, Jackson, a consummate propagandist, soon had a media operation going which was placing anti-Hitler editorials and articles in eleven hundred newspapers a week around the country."

The BSC report claimed: "William Stephenson decided to take action on his own initiative. He instructed the recently created SOE Division to declare a covert war against the mass of American groups which were organized throughout the country to spread isolationism and anti-British feeling. In the BSC office plans were drawn up and agents were instructed to put them into effect. It was agreed to seek out all existing pro-British interventionist organizations, to subsidize them where necessary and to assist them in every way possible. It was counter-propaganda in the strictest sense of the word. After many rapid conferences the agents went out into the field and began their work. Soon they were taking part in the activities of a great number of interventionist organizations, and were giving to many of them which had begun to flag and to lose interest in their purpose, new vitality and a new lease of life. The following is a list of some of the larger ones... The League of Human Rights, Freedom and Democracy... The American Labor Committee to Aid British Labor... The Ring of Freedom, an association led by the publicist Dorothy Thompson, the Council for Democracy; the American Defenders of Freedom, and other such societies were formed and supported to hold anti-isolationist meetings which branded all isolationists as Nazi-lovers."

Jennet Conant, the author of The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (2008) argues that Ernest Cuneo was "empowered to feed select British intelligence items about Nazi sympathizers and subversives" to friendly journalists such as Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, Walter Lippman, Dorothy Thompson, Raymond Gram Swing, Edward Murrow, Vincent Sheean, Eric Sevareid, Edmond Taylor, Rex Stout, Edgar Ansel Mowrer and Whitelaw Reid, who "were stealth operatives in their campaign against Britain's enemies in America". Cuneo also worked closely with editors and publishers who were supporters of American intervention into the Second World War. This included Henry Luce (Life and Time), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Helen Rogers Reid (New York Herald Tribune), Paul C. Patterson (Baltimore Sun), Marshall Field III (Chicago Sun) and Ralph Ingersoll (Picture Magazine).

These groups came under the control of William Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), after the United States entered the war. Donovan had worked for British Security Coordination under Stephenson (they had been friends during the First World War). The OSS of course turned into the CIA in 1947. Therefore, the origins of Operation Mockingbird, dates back to the OSS and the Second World War. This explains why other OSS officers such as Phil Graham (Washington Post), Jack Anderson and Frank Wisner, played such an important role in Operation Mockingbird.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAluce.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdonovanW.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

John:

You say that it is uncalled for to write that you were in a position to do anything about the result of Janney's work.

But yet, it is pretty obvious you were privy to how he was progressing.

Peter did send me a copy of his early manuscript and it did include things that had appeared on my Spartacus website and on the forum. However, most of what I say is taken from other books so he might have got them from the same sources as I did. Yes, I did make comments on his manuscript and I definitely did not tell him not to publish the book. Not that he would have taken any notice of me if he had. Why should he? I was not in a position to “allow” him to publish the book.

You were the one who knew he was picking up exactly where Damore had left off. You, like Janney, called Damore a "prodigious" researcher. You then went ahead and got in contact with Talbot and pushed Janney's work on him. In the material I saw, he and you talked about the work of Heymann in this regard--and in fact, somehow, some way, Talbot actually sourced Heymann in his book.

It is a complete lie that I contacted David Talbot and “pushed Janney's work on him”. Why do you make such statements when you do not have the evidence to back them up. The truth of the matter is, and I am sure David will confirm this, is that David phoned me up in 2005 while he was writing “Brothers”. I did not know who David was at the time. He told me that he was writing a book on Kennedy and that he had found my website useful. He spent an hour asking me questions about the assassination. It is possible we did discuss Mary Pinchot Meyer, but I don’t remember it. David was more interested in what I knew about the Cuban connections to the death of JFK and the reliability of people like Gerry Hemming. In fact, he did not take my advice on Hemming and gave him more credibility than he deserved.

That November I gave a talk on the JFK assassination in Dallas. David invited me to San Francisco while I was in the US. I accepted the invitation and we had a long meeting over dinner. Again, I do not remember if we discussed the Mary Pinchot Meyer case but it is possible. I definitely did not discuss Peter Janney’s book because he was not writing one at the time. In fact, Peter also contacted me for the first time in 2005. Like David he said he had been using my website to gain information for a film script he was writing on Mary Pinchot Meyer. I might have mentioned this but I don’t remember. I definitely did not know any details about the material he had on the case at the time.

In the many years since Janney has labored so hard to bring forth his bizarre book, you have talked about how you knew someone who was working on a new book on that case. You have also often started threads on the Meyer case, and used many of the same sources that Janney used. You also posted that preposterous quote Damore gave the NY Post comparing President Kennedy to Emperor Caligula. And you have a bio of Damore here even though Damore never wrote anything about the JFK assassination. As I said, you bought into Damore to such an extreme that you even implied he was murdered because he was getting too close to the actual facts about the Meyer case. You then made a comment here about how Leary's actions through Meyer altered JFK's foreign policy. Which would indicate to me that even though that has been completely vitiated by now, you still want to push that stuff.

My first post on the Mary Pinchot Meyer was on 23^rd March, 2005. It was a criticism of an article on the John McAdams website that claimed that there was no connection between her death and the assassination of JFK. As I pointed out, the article, like most on the McAdams website, left out some very important information about the case. At this stage Peter Janney had not contacted me and so this post had nothing to do with him at all.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3520

You say “you have a bio of Damore here even though Damore never wrote anything about the JFK assassination”. So what? The JFK assassination is only a very small part of my Spartacus Website (In words, I am told, equivalent to 23 copies of War and Peace). I have a very large section on journalists. That is why I have a biography of Damore. You also make the silly mistake (like the Finnish government who tried to get my website banned) of believing that I agree with everything I include in the sources section of my web pages. In British schools we teach “interpretation” in history lessons (it is part of our National Curriculum). This mainly involves studying sources that give different interpretations of past figures or events. It is why many schools use my website to study the JFK assassination (a subject that has many different interpretations as you well know).

I do believe Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered by someone other than Raymond Crump. I suspect that her death might have something to do with the assassination of JFK. However, this is pure speculation and we will never find the evidence to prove this.

I also think that Peter Janney’s book is worth reading for what it tells us about the cover-up of Meyer’s death. Especially the role played by James Jesus Angleton, Ben Bradlee and Wisner Janney in the cover-up.

To Robert:

My whole point is simple. We, and Janney, would have been better served if Mary's Mosaic had not been written. And I began my review with saying, its hard to understand why he wrote this book....

These are the first two paragraphs from Jim's article:

Mary’s Mosaic, Part 2: Entering Peter Janney’s World of Fantasy

Part Two by James DiEugenio

The first two people to inform me of Peter Janney’s upcoming book on Mary Meyer were Lisa Pease and John Simkin. Many years ago I wrote a two-part essay for Probe called “The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy” (This was later excerpted in The Assassinations.) The first part of that essay focused on the cases of Judith Exner and Mary Meyer giving me a background and mild interest in the subject. Consequently, when Lisa Pease told me about Peter Janney I wondered what kind of book he was going to write. After Lisa exchanged e-mails with him she told me not to expect much, since Janney had bought into Timothy Leary hook, line and sinker.

JFK forum owner John Simkin’s backing was a real warning bell. For two reasons: first, Simkin is an inveterate Kennedy basher. He once wrote that Senator Kennedy was the choice of the so-called “Georgetown crowd” for the 1960 presidential election. Most accurately described as Georgetown, which seemed to house half the hierarchy of the State Department and the CIA and the journalistic establishment, many of whom gathered for argumentative high-policy dinner parties on Sunday nights (‘The Sunday Night Drunk,’ as one regular called it.” Smithsonian magazine, December 2008) This shows that Simkin is the worst kind of Kennedy basher: the kind that knows next to nothing about Kennedy.

I happen to think that John F. Kennedy was the second best president of the 20^th century (In my opinion Franklin D. Roosevelt was the best). Like FDR he challenged the power elite. That is why he was assassinated. That is why I am interested in the assassination. This is no big secret. I have written about this on numerous occasions. It is on the public record. To say that I am an “inveterate Kennedy basher” only damages your own credibility.

That is not to say I have not been critical of JFK on this forum. I do think he tried too hard to show he was a real “Cold War Warrior” in the first two years of his presidency as shown by the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, I agree with David Kaiser (American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000) that in the second-half of his presidency he did try to adopt a foreign policy that was different from every other post-war president and showed signs that he wanted a negotiated end to the Cold War. I also believe that this could have well been a factor in his assassination (for example, this new policy was kept from the CIA but they knew about it because of the bugging of the United Nations). For example, see the thread I started on Lisa Howard (12^th May, 2004).

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I have also criticized JFK for not trying to do more on civil rights but I accept that he would have found it virtually impossible to get any legislation past Congress. However, as I posted yesterday on the Carl Rowan case, he did make personal gestures that showed he was in favour of bringing racial discrimination to an end.

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The same is true of the ending of the Hollywood blacklist. According to some sources he did put pressure on Frank Sinatra to sack Albert Maltz from the proposed film, The Execution of Private Slovak, in 1959. However, Kirk Douglas decided a few weeks later to employ another of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, to write the screenplay for his proposed film, Spartacus. Based on the novel by another left-wing blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, it is a film that examines the spirit of revolt. Trumbo refers back to his experiences of the House of Un-American Activities Committee. At the end, when the Romans finally defeat the rebellion, the captured slaves refuse to identify Spartacus. As a result, all are crucified. This was a reference to those Hollywood figures who named other members of left-wing organizations in the 1930s in order to continue their own careers.

As Ring Landner Jr., another member of the Hollywood Ten, pointed out in his autobiography, I’d Hate Myself in the Morning (2000): “Sinatra caved in, paying off Maltz in cash and eventually scrubbing the project, perhaps partly out of fear of harming his friend John F. Kennedy, a candidate for President at the time. (Following the election that fall, however, the President-elect and his brother, Attorney-General-to-be Robert Kennedy, crossed a picket line to see Spartacus at a theater in Washington D.C., and pronounced it good.)”

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As a libertarian socialist I am highly critical of all politicians from all countries. However, some are better than most, and Kennedy is definitely one I admire a great deal.

I am currently reading Raymond Gram Swing's autobiography Good Evening! (1964). He tells an interesting story of how he, along with John Kennedy and Kenneth Galbraith, he broke the color bar of the two main social clubs in Washington, the Metropolitan and the Cosmos. Galbraith nominated Kennedy for membership of the Metropolitan. Kennedy then withdrew his application when the club refused to serve lunch to a black diplomat. Galbraith now nominated Kennedy to the Cosmos Club. Swing also nominated Carl Rowan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs for the membership to the club. Rowan, who had been active in the civil rights campaign, nomination was rejected, Swing and Gailbraith now resigned from the the club and Kennedy withdrew his own nomination. This caused so much bad publicity that both the Cosmos and the Metropolitan were forced to change their policy and began to allow black people to be members. However, the clubs still refused to accept Rowan as a member. In 1963 Kennedy showed his disapproval of this by appointing Rowan as his Ambassador to Finland.

John, is it unreasonable to assume that Peter Janney's most recent post on this thread, and your most recent two, are the best responses either of you could muster? In hindsight, five years ago, diEugenio's criticism could have been received as constructive. It is not DiEugenio who has turned my opinion of you in a different direction, you, Mr. Janney, and my own googling are primarily responsible for that.

Maybe you should tell the rest of the Forum what your "Googling" has found out about me.