John Simkin

Namebase entry for Porter Goss: http://www.namebase.org/xgor/Porter-J-_28r_2Dfl_29-Goss.html Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Membership Directory. 1996 Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SP (20-1) Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SU (24) Bamford,J. Body of Secrets. 2001 (457, 466-7, 475) Coll,S. Ghost Wars. 2004 (424) Council on Foreign Relations. Membership Roster. 2004 Intelligence (Paris) 1997-02-10 (17) Intelligence (Paris) 2000-02-28 (20) Lewis,C. The Buying of the Congress. 1998 (227, 257) Mackenzie,A. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. 1997 (200) NameBase NewsLine 1997-01 (6) Nation 1995-03-13 (333) Nation 1997-05-19 (24) New York Times 2001-01-20 (A16) New York Times 2004-06-25 (A12) New York Times 2004-08-13 (A17) New York Times 2004-09-22 (A18) New York Times 2004-10-01 (A11) New York Times 2004-12-29 (A1, 16) New York Times 2005-08-26 (A12) Washington Post 1991-10-13 (A11) Washington Post 1992-08-22 (D5) Washington Post 1999-09-07 (A8) Washington Post 2000-02-11 (A39) Washington Times 1994-05-27 (A12) Washington Times 1996-08-01 (A17) Who's Who in America. 1992-1993

Namebase entry for Operation 40: http://www.namebase.org/main3/Operation-40.html Bainerman,J. The Crimes of a President. 1992 (67) Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1987-01-31 (32-4, 40) Christic Institute. Sheehan Affidavit. 1988-03-25 (9-14) Duffy,J. Ricci,V. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. 1992 (346) Escalante,F. The Secret War. 1995 (41, 45) Furiati,C. ZR Rifle. 1994 (12-4, 16-7, 136-7) Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (347-8) Hinckle,W. Turner,W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (52-3, 78, 201, 307-15) Inquiry Magazine 1979-03-05 (18-9) Lane,M. Plausible Denial. 1991 (3, 300-1) Lobster Magazine (Britain) 1986-#12 (4-5) Marshall,J... The Iran-Contra Connection. 1987 (37-8, 45, 135) Morrow,R. First Hand Knowledge. 1992 (26-7) New York Magazine 1976-08-16 (31) Operation Zapata: Bay of Pigs Testimony. 1984 (340) Russell,D. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1992 (190-1, 508-9) Scott,P.D. Marshall,J. Cocaine Politics. 1991 (27) Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (374) Thomas,K. Popular Alienation: A Steamshovel Press Reader. 1995 (21) Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (207, 219-20)

(1) Did the publication of Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala hurt or help your career? (2) Did you have any problems having your book published? Would it have been easier and better for your career if you wrote a book about more positive aspects of CIA’s activities? (3) The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s, the author of the official Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies? (4) What is your basic approach to writing about what I would call “secret history”? How do you decide what sources to believe? Is it difficult to write about subjects like this without speculating what might be in the sources that are not available to historians? (5) Historians writing about the CIA have tended to rely on “leaks” from former officers. Given that they are usually leaking this information because they have their own agenda, are these sources reliable? For example, have you read the internal CIA document, Cleveland Cram’s Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature (1993) that looks at the influence that people like James Jesus Angleton and other CIA leakers had on books written about the agency? (6) If you were publishing an updated edition of Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, what new material would you include?

Nick Cullather obtained his PhD from the University of Virginia. In July, 1992, Cullather was awarded a one-year contract as a staff historian at the Central Intelligence Agency. His work at the CIA was eventually declassified and published as Secret History: The Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-54 (1999). He is currently associate professor of history at Indiana University and associate editor of the Journal of American History. He is also co-author of Making a Nation: The United States and Its People (2001). (1) Could you explain the reasons why you decided to become a historian? (2) How do you decide about what to write about? (3) Do you ever consider the possibility that your research will get you into trouble with those who have power and influence? (4) Did the publication of Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala hurt or help your career? (5) Did you have any problems having your book published? Would it have been easier and better for your career if you wrote a book about more positive aspects of CIA’s activities? (6) The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s, the author of the official Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies? (7) What is your basic approach to writing about what I would call “secret history”? How do you decide what sources to believe? Is it difficult to write about subjects like this without speculating what might be in the sources that are not available to historians? (8) Historians writing about the CIA have tended to rely on “leaks” from former officers. Given that they are usually leaking this information because they have their own agenda, are these sources reliable? For example, have you read the internal CIA document, Cleveland Cram’s Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature (1993) that looks at the influence that people like James Jesus Angleton and other CIA leakers had on books written about the agency? (9) If you were publishing an updated edition of Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, what new material would you include?

Maybe he was just a French cook? I was amazed to hear that Spurs stayed at a London hotel for a local derby.

Has anyone obtained any declassified documents that help to explain George Bush's relationship with Donald P. Gregg?

Has anyone obtained any declassified documents that help to explain George Bush's relationship with Donald P. Gregg?

Was this Hal Hendrix or Don Bohning? Other investigative journalists who need taking a close look at include Jack Anderson, Joe Trento and Dan E. Moldea. Interestingly, Moldea used to work for Anderson.

Ed, sorry about that. Ironically, it was West Ham that stopped my prediction that Spurs would finish 4th being correct.

Dan, we did the business for you today. Ironically, it was West Ham that stopped my prediction that Spurs would finish 4th being correct.

I have invited Dan E. Moldea to join the discussions on the Forum. However, he says he is too busy at the moment. I will try again later. Two important writers have agreed to join: Nick Cullather (Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala) and Joel Bainerman (The Crimes of a President). I am also trying to get Bradley Ayres and Gary Cornwell to join. Unfortunately, Gary has changed his email address. Does anyone know what his current email address is?

Is there any attempt to allow the pupils to create blogs on their learning experience in the school?

What do members think of Dan E. Moldea as an investigative journalist. He has an interesting background. He was born in Akron, Ohio, on 27th February, 1950. He graduated from the University of Akron in 1973 before going onto post-graduate work in history at Kent State University. A member of the Teamsters Local 24 in Akron and was the spokesman for the Independent Truckers Unity Coalition. Moldea worked as Deputy Director of the Portage County Community Action Council, a federally-funded anti-poverty agency. This was followed by posts at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (1977) and ACTION/Peace Corps (1979-1980). Books by Moldea include The Hoffa Wars (1978), The Hunting of Cain (1983), Dark Victory (1986), Interference (1989), The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (1995), Evidence Dismissed (1997) and A Washington Tragedy (1998). Moldea's work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Observer, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Constitution, and the Nation. In addition, Moldea has done free-lance work with NBC Nightly News, National Public Radio, the Detroit Free Press, and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson.

There have been two government investigations of the JFK assassination. The Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The first argued that Oswald was the lone gunman who killed JFK. The HSCA rejected this idea and suggested that there had been a conspiracy. Therefore, as the HSCA was the second investigation, officially JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy. It therefore makes more sense for researchers to concentrate on the conclusions of the HSCA than the WC. In his book, Real Answers (1998) Gary Cornwell, the man who ran the HSCA investigation, points out the following: The main findings of the Select Committee, as summarized in the Table of Contents to the final Report, were that: (1) Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy. The second and third shots he fired struck the president. The third shot he fired killed the president. (2) President Kennedy was struck by two rifle shots fired from behind him. (3) The shots that struck President Kennedy from behind him were fired from the sixth floor window of the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository building. (4) Lee Harvey Oswald owned the rifle that was used to fire the shots from the sixth floor window of the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository building. (5) Lee Harvey Oswald, shortly before the assassination, had access to and was present on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. (6) Lee Harvey Oswald's other actions tend to support the conclusion that he assassinated President Kennedy. (7) Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. (8) Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the president. (9) Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations. (10) The committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. (11) The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. (12) The committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that: the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. (13) The Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. (14) The anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved. (15) The national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved. (16) The Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. (17) Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive. (18) The Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties. (19) The Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the president's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the president from a sniper. (20) The responsibility of the Secret Service to investigate the assassination was terminated when the Federal Bureau of Investigation assumed primary investigative responsibility. (21) The Department of Justice failed to exercise initiative in supervising and directing the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the assassination. (22) The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties. (23) The FBI adequately investigated Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination and properly evaluated the evidence it possessed to assess his potential to endanger the public safety in a national emergency. (24) The FBI conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination. (25) The FBI failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the president. (26) The FBI was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments. (27) The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination. (28) The Warren Commission performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties. (29) The Warren Commission conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination. (30) The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the president. This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government. (31) The Warren Commission arrived at its conclusions, based on the evidence available to it, in good faith. (32) The Warren Commission presented the conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definitive. How many of these points do you disagree with?

This is an interesting story that is very relevant to the JFK assassination. There have been close links between business leaders and the intelligence community since the late 1940s. The man who first brought these people together was Tommy Concoran. William Pawley also played an important role in this. They started off in China after the war and then moved into Latin America. The first successful venture concerned drugs in South-East Asia. Then they got involved in Latin America. Guatemala in 1954 was their big success story. Their first real defeat was in Cuba. After licking their wounds they moved back to South-East Asia and made profitable deals in Laos and Vietnam in the 1960s. They moved from drugs into the arms industry, assassinations and banking. Important CIA figures in this corrupt network included Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Paul Helliwell, Lucien Conein, Irving Davidson, Donald P. Gregg, Carl E. Jenkins, David Morales, Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Ed Wilson, Richard L. Armitage, Michael Hand, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, Ricardo Chavez, Ray S. Cline, John Singlaub and Mitchell WerBell. They were the same people involved in Chile in the 1970s and the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. See the following thread for the full story (Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-2006): http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

This is what happened. Except that Prescott was allowed to keep his pay and perks without having to do the job. This will only make matters worse and according to reports, senior Labour MPs will be sending an open letter to Blair calling on him to resign. Blair is clearly not willing to go. He has promoted the last few Blairites left. This includes Hazel Blears as chair of the party. This was an important move as the chair was expected to negotiate the succession. Des Browne is another interesting promotion. His job will be to arrange the massive privatization of military support services. No doubt the luck companies will become the major funders of the Labour Party at the next election. The most interesting move was the demotion of Jack Straw. The reason for that is that Straw has made it clear that he would resign if Blair supported the bombing of Iran. Blair has taken Bush’s advice and sacked Straw. It is possible that Blair also wanted to punish Straw, who has got very close to Brown recently. There is another explanation for this move. Most political commentators are suggesting that Blair will be ousted over the next few months. The only thing that would stop this happening is if the UK is involved in a serious international crisis. If Bush bombs Iran it will probably lead to a war in the Middle East. With troops in Iraq, there would be no way that the UK could withdraw from the region. At the same time, it would be difficult to remove Blair during this crisis. Is it possible that Blair would resort to such a tactic to hold onto office?

The BNP won 11 seats in Dagenham & Barking on Thursday. I lived in the area when I was a child and it was always solid Labour. In fact, because of the Ford car factory, it was always a left-wing community and rarely returned any Tory councillors. According to reports, the party had only 11 people to put up as candidates. If they had more active members, they would have won more seats. I am sure they will have more candidates next time. I also expect the BNP to do well in other councils after this experience. I am not surprised. In fact, the amazing thing is that it has taken so long in happening. I still have friends and relatives who live on the council estates of Essex. This includes former activists in the Labour Party. They are very angry and comments made to me over the last few months have suggested that this was on the cards. They see Tony Blair’s New Labour as being a middle-class party that is not interested in their problems. Interestingly, these are people who could never vote Tory, but could give their support to the BNP. I, like other middle class professionals, am appalled by this result. I was hoping that they would switch to Respect or Green. I was talking to one woman who said she was going to vote for BNP. I asked her if she realized that the BNP was a fascist party. Yes, she said, but I am a fascist now. She had always voted Labour in the past but over the last few years has read the Daily Mail. Like in the 1930s, the right-wing press is making fascism respectable. I don’t think this is mainly about race. However, it is about immigration. The main concern is about white immigration. Over the last few months I have had conversations with plumbers, electricians, plasters and bricklayers. They are all suffering. An electrician friend, aged 59, is currently out of work for the first time in his life. He occasionally gets the odd short-term contract but the pay is much lower than he has had in the past and barely covers his mortgage repayments. The others have all seen a decline in their wages. The reason for their plight is the importation of cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Another friend who is in the building trade, now employs teams of workers from Eastern Europe. As he points out, they are cheaper but more importantly, they work harder. Interestingly, he used to employ labourers who were former miners from South Wales. Now he prefers workers from Poland. Voting BNP will not change this situation but it might well change the political landscape. I cannot see the BNP winning seats in a general election. However, I can see them winning enough votes to cause Labour serious problems. The Tories are unlikely to gain from these events. They won virtually no seats in working class areas in the local elections. Who knows, the vote might be so split that Respect or the Greens might take seats as a result of the BNP intervention.

I doubt that Goss would ever take any line against military action anywhere. Tim Carroll posted yesterday on the Lancer forum the rumor that Goss may be involved in the "poker" (no pun intended) parties organized by US defense contractors/lobbyists in the "Duke" Cunningham scandal investigation, which allegedly involved supplying female entertainment for poor lonely congressmen. Yes, I am aware of Goss’s problems. As Walter Shapiro points out in Salon Magazine: “NBC News reported Thursday night that the CIA is investigating whether a top agency official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, improperly steered a $2.4 million contract to his close college friend Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor implicated in the Cunningham case. Wilkes reportedly supplied prostitutes to Cunningham at poker parties that Foggo also attended, though the CIA official denies seeing the female entertainment." "There is no obvious connection between Goss and Cunningham, aside from their having served together in the House for 13 years. But the real mystery is how Foggo became the CIA's executive director, the official in charge of day-to-day operations at the entire agency: He was a midlevel field officer with a procurement background when Goss appointed him in 2004. A CIA spokeswoman, who did not want her name used, said Thursday that the two men met when Foggo testified before the House Intelligence Committee, which Goss chaired from 1997 until 2004, when Bush made him the CIA director. No date was provided for Foggo's testimony before Goss' committee.” It seems that Goss is following in the example of his bosses, Ted Shackley and Tom Clines at JMWAVE. This is something that has been going on in the CIA since the late 1940s. It started in Taiwan with Paul Heliwell (another person at JMWAVE in 1963). You are probably right that it has nothing to do with Iran. However, if Bush does intend to bomb Iran, he will need the full support of the CIA. Blair is in serious trouble in the UK. There are moves within the Labour Party to oust him within the next couple of months. The only thing that would stop this happening is if the UK is involved in a serious international crisis. Jack Straw had made it clear that he would resign if Iran was bombed. While Straw was foreign secretary, Blair would have found it difficult to support Bush. The situation is now very different. If Bush bombs Iran it will probably lead to a war in the Middle East. With troops in Iraq, there would be no way that the UK could withdraw from the region. At the same time, it would be difficult to remove Blair during the conflict.

Bush's decision to appoint Porter Goss as director of the CIA in 2004 is very interesting. Goss joined the CIA in 1962 and over the next few years was based at the JM/WAVE, the CIA station in Miami where he worked with people such as Ted Shackley, David Sanchez Morales, Tom Clines, David Phillips, William Harvey and Tracy Barnes. Goss is probably the last surviving officer based at JM/WAVE in 1963. Is this a coincidence or did George Walker Bush ask his son to make this appointment? Good article by Walter Shapiro in Salon Magazine on Porter Goss: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/06/goss/ There is a story in the UK that might be linked to Goss going. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, lost his job yesterday. Rumour has it that Straw was sacked by Blair because he opposed military action in Iran. Maybe Goss took a similar line and that action is imminent.

I have just finished reading Real Answers. It is one of the most rational books I have read on the assassination with only one major flaw (the way he deals with the evidence that Oswald was one of the gunmen). I think it is probably the best book available to give someone who believes in the "lone gunman" theory. I have invited him to answer questions on the book on the Forum.

A very perceptive post. Too many investigative journalists rely on leaks from sources in a position to know the secrets. They seem too grateful for this information and rarely ask about the motivation of the person doing the leaking. The classic example of this concerns journalists who have relied on information supplied by James Angleton.

Cherne died in January 1999. http://ria.thomson.com/70years/cherne.asp

Seymour Hersh is probably America's best investigative journalist. However, he has shown very little interest in the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. Why? Here is David Wrone's review of The Dark Side of Camelot, Capital Times (16th January, 1998): In an interview given on publication of his alleged expose of John F. Kennedy's private life and public policies, the famed investigative reporter Sy Hersh said he wanted to make "a big score" and retire. To this end the Pulitzer prize winner has prostituted his nation's history and, at the same time, sustained the intelligence and military forces that bitterly opposed JFK - those who among other infamies sunk us in Vietnam and who tried and failed to initiate nuclear war over Cuba. Hersh does it with a corruption of scholarship perhaps unequalled in recent times. He uses not a single source note, but employs caption notes that refer to many books and no pages, so a reader cannot easily check his truthfulness. Hersh has corrupted the facts. On major issues he is coy, strongly using suggestive language with a statement of fact where none exists. Sources are often made up to fit his perceived beliefs. In addition he relies on interviews with people bitterly opposed to JFK's policies and usually not identified as such. Hersh reviews JFK's rise to power and then largely concentrates on the foreign policies of his presidency, alleging that the crude principles of his reckless and corrupt personal life - astutely masked during his lifetime by his power and friends - led the United States into one disaster after the other. Hersh suffuses the book with putative accounts of JFK's sex scampers but these are a honey trap to snare a reader into accepting Hersh's false presentation of his foreign policy - which is the true intent of the book. How bad is Hersh's scholarship? Consider the Section of The Dark Side of Camelot in which Hersh states that JFK "endorsed" the CIA assassination of Lumumba of the Congo. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since CIA thugs beat Lumumba to death on January 17 and JFK was sworn in on January 20, Hersh must overcome a serious chronological problem. He does this by baldly asserting Kennedy vigorously supported and emphatically agreed to Eisenhower's policy to kill the African leader. Hersh carries this subterfuge off by only quoting former CIA men who were ideologically opposed to JFK's policies, by refusing to cite the copious well-known record affirming an opposite interpretation, and by not interviewing the numerous individuals who would have provided a true picture. Early in January 1961, Kennedy's staff and special Congo study group had alerted the CIA that American reactionary policies in the Congo would change and that a JFK emissary had warned Belgium intelligence services not to "liquidate" Lumumba. By February 2, Kennedy had devised a plan for a new Congo policy that would ultimately include Lumumba. He did not learn of the murder of Lumumba until February 13; a famous photograph depicts him receiving the news, his head bowed in anguish. Hersh also devotes much attention to "proving" JFK tried to assassination Castro using the CIA and Mafia. In the course of this effort, he asserts that President Kennedy used Judy Exner, a sex partner, to carry cash to the mob bosses to pay for making the hit. A key document of the Castro murder attempts is a 1962 Department of Justice memorandum by the CIA's inspector general Sheffield Edwards. Hersh uses parts of the document in other contexts, but when he comes to the attempts on Castro's life he carefully omits what it says about them, since the document's contents would destroy his framing of JFK. The CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro began in August 1960 and ended in November 1960, before JFK took office in 1961. Only six people knew of it, all CIA men, and they only orally. No one else knew - not Ike, not JFK - until many months after the fact when the FBI stumbled onto a bungled CIA phone tap for a mobster and it exposed the affair. A shocked Robert Kennedy ordered a complete explanation. As it turns out, the CIA had set aside $150,000 for the job, but the Mafia said no and refused to accept any money. Exner could not have carried money, as she told Hersh; there was none to carry and the affair had occurred and was over before he entered office. There were, in fact, no JFK directed or encouraged attempts on Castro's life. Hersh frequently castigates JFK for using private back channels to negotiate a secret deal with Khrushchev to end the Cuba missile crisis - a deal Hersh suggests Kennedy pursued in order to improve his standing with the American people. The fact is back channels worked and, after the crisis, the executive branch institutionalized it with direct phone lines and other systems, which later presidents have found to be quite useful. The real reason JFK kept the pact secret was spelled out in Khrushchev's memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers, and in Robert Kennedy's writings on the subject. It had nothing to do with self-promotion. The Kennedys were intensely afraid of an American military coup d'etat and overthrow of the U.S. government accompanied by a launching of a massive nuclear strike against the whole of the communist world. Only through this private method could and did JFK hold the irate military in check. It can be argued today that nuclear war was avoided by President Kennedy's unparalleled action. Even in the minor themes of The Dark Side of Camelot, Hersh perverts our history. He states a high-ranking Navy officer told him that, "at the request of Robert Kennedy", the notes containing vital information about JFK's postmortem were not published. By exclusively relying on that prejudiced source, Hersh sustains the generation-old effort of many federal officials to blame the failed inquiry into JFK's death upon his brother's refusal to give them access to key medical records. But in well-known sources, which were spurned by Hersh, we know RFK by letter gave explicit permission to use all autopsy materials. The same definitive sources also show it was the FBI that, after realizing the materials might hold data incompatible with its invented lone assassin theory, manufactured the libel that Robert Kennedy had denied access. Significantly, prosecutors did take the critical notes. They were not destroyed and were, in fact, placed in Navy hands. They were released by the Navy for Arlen Specter, Warren Commission counsel, who used them to examine the autopsy doctors. They were supposed to be part of Exhibit 397 of the Warren Commission, but it does not contain them. They are not in any archive or known agency files. On this serious issue--which genuinely is worthy of discussion - Hersh is embarrassingly silent.

Thought members might be interested in reading David R. Wrone's review of Gerald Posner's Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Journal of Southern History 6 (February 1995) Gerald Posner argues that the Warren Commission properly investigated the assassination of JFK. He claims to have refuted the critics, purports to show what actually occurred, and asserts simple factual answers to explain complex problems that have plagued the subject for years. In the process he condemns all who do not agree with the official conclusions as theories driven by conjectures. At the same time his book is so theory driven, so rife with speculation, and so frequently unable to conform his text with the factual content in his sources that it stands as one of the stellar instances of irresponsible publishing on the subject. Massive numbers of factual errors suffuse the book, which make it a veritable minefield. Random samples are the following: Pontchartrain is a lake not a river. The wounded James Tague stood twenty feet east, not under the triple underpass. There were three Philip Geracis, not one; he confuses the second and the third. A tiny fragment, not a bullet, entered Connally's thigh. The Army did the testing that he refers to the FBI. None, not three, commissioners heard at least half the hearings. The Warren Commission did not have any investigators. Captain Donovan is John, not Charles, and a lieutenant. The critics of the official findings are not leftists but include conservatives such as Cardinal Cushing, William Loeb, and former commissioner, Richard Russell. Posner often presents the opposite of what the evidence says. In the presentation of a corrupt picture of Oswald's background, for example, he states that, under the name of Osborne, Oswald picked up leaflets he distributed from the Jones Printing Company and that the "receptionist" identified him. She in fact said that Oswald did not pick up the leaflets as the source that Posner cites indicates. No credible evidence connects Oswald to the murder. All the data that Posner presents to do so is either shorn of context, corrupted, the opposite of what the sources actually say, or nonsourced. For example, 100 percent of the witness testimony and physical evidence exclude Oswald from carrying the rifle to work that day disguised as curtain rods. Posner manipulates with words to concoct a case against Oswald as with Linnie Mae Randle, who swore the package, as Oswald allegedly carried it, was twenty-eight inches long, far too short to have carried a rifle. He grasped its end, and it hung from his swinging arm to almost touch the ground. Posner converts this to "tucked under his armpit, and the other end did not quite touch the ground" (p. 225). The rifle was heavily oiled, but the paper sack discovered on the sixth floor had not a trace of oil. Posner excludes this vital fact. To refute criticism that the first of three shots (the magic bullet) inflicted seven nonfatal wounds on two bodies in impossible physical and time constraints, he invents a second magic bullet. He asserts that Oswald fired the first bullet near frame 160 of the Zapruder film, fifty frames earlier than officially held, and missed. The bullet hit a twig or a branch or a tree, as he varies it, then separated into its copper sheath and lead composite core. The core did a right angle to fly west more than 200 feet to hit a curbstone and wound Tague while the sheath decided to disappear. The curb in fact had been damaged. He omits that analysis of the curb showed the bullet came from the west, which means the bullet would have had to have taken another sui generis turn of 135 degrees to get back west with sufficient force to smash concrete, which he pretends was not marred. He asserts proof of a core hit because FBI analysis revealed "traces of [sic per reviewer] lead with a trace of antimony" (p. 325) in the damage. What he omits destroys his theory. He does not explain that a bullet core has several other metallic elements in its composition, not two, rendering his conclusion false. He further neglects to inform the reader that by May 1964 the damage had been covertly patched with a concrete paste and that in August, not July, 1964, the FBI tested the scrapings of the paste, not the damage, which gave the two metal results. He says the second shot transited JFK's neck and caused the nonfatal wounds striking Connally at Zapruder film frame 224 where Connally is seen turned to his right, allegedly lining his body up with JFK's neck, thus sustaining the single bullet explanation. He finds proof that a bullet hit then in Connally's lapel that was flapping in that one frame as it passed through. But he does not conform to fact. Wind gusting to twenty miles per hour that day ruffled clothing. And, there is no bullet hole in the lapel but in the jacket body beneath the right nipple area. Posner crowns his theory with the certainty of science by using one side of the computer-enhanced studies by Failure Analysis Associates of Menlo Park that his text implies he commissioned. The firm, however, lambastes his use as a distortion of the technology that it had developed for the American Bar Association's mock trial of Oswald where both sides used it. Posner fails. I believe that irrefutable evidence shows conspirators, none of them Oswald, killed JFK. A mentally ill Jack Ruby, alone and unaided, shot Oswald. The federal inquiry knowingly collapsed and theorized a political solution. Its corruption spawned theorists who tout solutions rather than define the facts that are locked in the massively muddied evidentiary base and released only by hard work.