John Simkin

Political parties have never been very keen on loans. As one official pointed out: Loans are a pain in the arse. Frankly, if you are a fundraiser you want to get the money. And either the bugger wants it back so you’ve only bought time, or you have to go cap in hand and see if they’re prepared to convert it and go through all that.” Yet Dr Chai Patel, who has never voted for the party, originally offered to give New Labour a donation of £1.5m. However, he got a phone call from Sir Michael Levy and asked to turn it into a loan. How do you explain this? Although Levy is keen for millionaires to give gifts and donations to New Labour, he is very much against paying income tax. In 2000 the Sunday Times revealed that multimillionaire only paid £5,000 income tax the previous year. It seems that Gordon Brown had told him all about the tax loopholes in the system (in opposition Brown promised that these loopholes would be closed). The Jerusalem Post has described him as “undoubtedly the leader of British Jewry”. A leading international Zionist, Levy is Blair’s special envoy to the Middle East (that seems a wise choice). Levy was also a fundraiser for the Conservative Party before the arrival of Tony Blair. He then created a series of “blind trusts” that channeled funds into Blair’s private office without the identities of rich benefactors being disclosed. In 1997 Levy raised £12m for the New Labour election campaign. Blair used Levy to cut Labour’s dependence on the trade union movement so the party’s reliance has declined from two-thirds in 1992 to about a quarter now.

Fukuyama was a strong supporter of the invasion of Iraq. A member of Project for the New American Century he signed a letter in support of this action as early as 1998 (Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz also signed the same letter). Fukuyama now admits he got it completely wrong about the consequences of the invasion. Dalibor, are you willing to admit you got it wrong as well?

An important figure in the MICIC died yesterday - Caspar Weinberger. This is his obituary from today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story...1741661,00.html Harold Jackson Wednesday March 29, 2006 The Guardian Caspar Weinberger, who has died aged 88, was among the best friends the Pentagon ever had. In his seven years as US defence secretary (1981-87), he lavished unprecedented peacetime funds on military hardware, raising the annual defence bill by 50% in real terms, at a weekly cost to the American taxpayer of $6bn. This extraordinary arms race helped the Reagan administration plunge the United States into a national debt of $2,600bn, more than that achieved by any previous president. Weinberger met virtually every demand put forward by the services - there were 90 more naval ships, two divisions for the army, costing $10bn a year to maintain, and 94 B-1B bombers, worth $200m each, for the air force. He also embarked on Star Wars, the wildly expensive Strategic Defence Initiative, which has still not been made workable after an investment of $50bn. Yet there was little evidence of a coherent strategy behind this profligacy. Each of the services was left largely to pursue its own course, often in competition with the others. There were the inevitable scandals about the misuse of this largesse. Halfway through Weinberger's tenure a defence department audit team uncovered fraud in 10% of the contracts it monitored. Even manufacturers who played fair had an incentive to bump up their costs, with contracts written so that profits automatically rose by a similar proportion. This meant the Pentagon could be charged $2,000 for a standard half-inch nut and $33 for a canteen sandwich. In addition, by 1985 the country's largest defence contractor, General Dynamics, had paid no federal taxes for 13 years. But Weinberger's abrasive personality left him convinced that his policy was the only valid option. His memoirs contained waspish attacks on such varied officials as budget director David Stockman for disloyalty; on secretary of state Alexander Haig for ignorance of the US constitution; and on national security adviser Robert McFarlane as "a man of evident limitations which he could not hide". His running feud with Haig's successor at the state department, George Shultz, repeatedly paralysed American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. Weinberger's public career wound up in near ignominy when he became the most senior member of the Reagan cabinet to be indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice during the Iran-Contra scandal. The charges arose from his testimony to a congressional investigation that he had known nothing about the illegal sale of arms both to Iran and to anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua. (Had he admitted such knowledge he would have had to testify that Reagan possessed it too.) Later, investigators found 1,700 pages of notes in his handwriting confirming that he had, indeed, had advance knowledge of the plan. In December 1992, in spite of congressional opposition, President George Bush granted Weinberger an executive pardon days before the case came to trial. Under his father's influence, Weinberger had been steeped in politics from his childhood in San Francisco. One of his clearest memories was listening, at the age of seven, to the radio coverage of the infamous 1924 Democratic convention, which took 102 ballots to pick Wall Street lawyer John Davis as its (losing) presidential nominee. By adolescence, his instincts were firmly conservative. He thought the election of Franklin Roosevelt a terrible mistake and became notorious as a student for the rightwing editorials he penned as editor of the Harvard Crimson. Academically, he did extremely well, graduating summa cum laude and being offered a scholarship to Cambridge. However, he decided to follow his father into the law, graduating from Harvard Law School in 1941. By now a convinced Anglophile, he tried to enlist in the Canadian air force but was rejected because of his poor eyesight. He volunteered for the US army and, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was sent to New Guinea with the 41st Infantry Division. He finished his military service on General MacArthur's intelligence staff. After a brief spell practising law, he was elected to the California state legislature in 1952 as a liberal Republican, where he quickly made his name as leader of a group determined to cleanse the state government. Their campaign saw a number of officials prosecuted for corruption and the introduction of tighter regulations. He became chairman of the California Republicans in 1962, but blotted his copybook with conservative members by supporting Nelson Rockefeller as the 1964 presidential nominee instead of Barry Goldwater. Two years later, he initially backed Reagan's opponent in the California gubernatorial primary, though, when Reagan secured the nomination, Weinberger joined his campaign team. He was pointedly ignored in the initial appointments but, after a year of financial chaos, a group of state legislators urged Reagan to appoint Weinberger as director of finance. In a series of policy shifts, he first raised state taxes, then lowered them, and then raised them to a point where personal taxation had doubled. California wound up with a vast revenue surplus, which, though it eventually generated a taxpayers' revolt, sufficiently impressed President Richard Nixon to make Weinberger head of the federal trade commission in 1970. Within six months, he had shed two-thirds of the senior staff and created a highly activist bureau of consumer affairs. Among its early campaigns, the bureau mounted a fierce attack on the car industry's quality control and called for greater regulation on vehicle design, a stance that did not win Weinberger many friends among conservative Republicans. He did better when Nixon made him budget director in 1972. His assault on social spending earned him the soubriquet "Cap the Knife" and he was soon in deep conflict with Congress. When the legislature refused to reduce appropriations for social programmes, Weinberger simply impounded the money. He continued this policy as secretary for health, education and welfare. In 1973, he seized more than $1bn of federal health funds, until he was ordered by a federal court to release the money. Because of his wife Jane's ill-health, he resigned from the Nixon administration in 1975 and returned to California. The Bechtel Corporation created the job of special counsel for him and eventually made him a vice-president at the then huge salary of $500,000 a year. By the time Reagan made him defence secretary, his personal fortune was reported to be $3m. After leaving the government in November 1987, he became publisher and chairman of Forbes Magazine and joined a Washington law practice. In 1988, he was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Thatcher government for the support he had given British forces during the Falklands war. He is survived by Jane, and his son and daughter. Caspar Willard Weinberger, politician and lawyer, born August 18 1917; died March 28 2006

You might be interested in this: New Times, December 10, 1998 "Lew Wasserman--co-founder, with the late Jules Stein, of MCA (now known as Universal Studios)--will forever be extolled in the pages of his lifelong mouthpiece, the [Los Angeles] Times, as the brilliant businessman who practically created Hollywood, who erected the financial bridge that tightly binds Hollywood to the Democratic Party, and who graciously gave to charity once his work was done. But in an earth-scorching new epic on Hollywood, The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood, longtime rumors and dark whisperings finally come to the fore in a devastating portrayal of Wasserman and Stein as two men so in bed with the Mob and so willing to ruin others in their quest for gold that they must be regarded with fascinated contempt ... As for [Lew's wife] Edie Wasserman, long portrayed in the L.A. media as a big-hearted philanthropist and hostess extraordinaire, [investigative journalist Dennis] McDougal claims instead that she was a manipulator who introduced Lew to mobsters via her dad, Henry Beckerman, connected to the Moe Dalitz Mayfield Road gang of Cleveland ... McDougal cites numerous examples of Stein and Wasserman's dealings with the Mob, including an incident in the 1960s when Meyer Lansky, the feared New York mobster, waltzed into Jules Stein's Hollywood office to drink liqueur and meet with well-known mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, the labor fixer who also just happened to be Lew Wasserman's best friend and legal confidante." Then there is this book review of When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence. In When Hollywood Had a King, the distinguished journalist Connie Bruck tells the sweeping story of MCA and its brilliant leader, a man who transformed the entertainment industry--businessman, politician, tactician, and visionary Lew Wasserman. The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Wasserman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios--which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars--to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA's evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike. That Wasserman's reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz--along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman's eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens. The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman's rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry's greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown's absolute monarch. Then there is: http://www.portifex.com/BSPages/Wasserman.htm Lew Wasserman's Hollywood Two pairs of twin stars orbit the center of the universe of desire. One is made up of wealth and power, the other of fame and love. Some people see the twins as singletons, often with confused, even dire consequences. Smart, successful people seem unusually capable of keeping the twins apart. They may know that power brings wealth, and vice versa, but they decide which one of these goods is their true heart's desire, and don't think much about the other. Matters are not quite so symmetrical between love and fame, of course; to be successful in love is a good way of guaranteeing a complete lack of celebrity, and celebrity can kill love. But it is not impossible to reconcile the two. It makes sense that love and fame would be a more complicated couple, because they both excite enthusiasm in others. Power and wealth have always been seen to be comparatively cold-blooded. You can do one of two things with power. You can become a leader, inspiring followers and enlisting their support in the pursuit of a common objective. The example of Adolf Hitler shows us that leadership can be malign, and recent generations have tended to see all would-be leaders as egotistical, ill-informed oppressors. This is careless, however, and I classify malignant or inept leadership as having more to do with the other thing that can be done with power. The other thing is that you can become a thug. Two years ago, I read an excerpt from what would become Connie Bruck's book, When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence (Random House, 2003). The excerpt appeared in The New Yorker, I gathered that it was part of a story without many appealing figures. Indeed. Having read the book, I must say that I couldn't find a sympathetic character anywhere in it. Even Jackie Kennedy, corresponding with Jules Stein about fine furniture (of which Stein was a collector, and which the First Lady, determined to polish up the White House, longed to acquire), at a time when the Justice Department was investigating the Stein's talent agency for antitrust violations (thus precluding any gifts from this source to the White House), comes off looking just a bit foolish. Books about Hollywood always make me glad that I don't live anywhere nearby or have any friends in the industry. Movies may be great, and the development of American cinema may be fascinating. But the people who make the movies happen have not, as a rule, been the sort of people I'd want to live next door to. What's surprising about Ms Bruck's book is how much worse than average-for-Hollywood a person Lew Wasserman was. The Music Corporation of America was a grandly named, skin-of-the-teeth agency founded in 1924 by Jules Stein, a medical doctor with an interest in dance bands. It grew the way most things grew in the Twenties, by a combination of muscle and exhilaration. But it held on because Dr Stein and his men did their homework. In 1936, the decision was made to move the center of operations to Beverly Hills. In 1939, the agency signed its first major star, Bette Davis, and it never looked back. But like an exotic weed, MCA flourished in the very atmosphere that the old studios found toxic: that of television. By the time television began to outgrow its infancy, MCA could expect to collect commissions on every aspect of production, from the stars that it represented to the network stagehands who (otherwise) had no connection with the agency. Thanks to a waiver of Screen Actors Guild rules, arranged by Ronald Reagan, MCA could even produce its own television shows and collect commissions! The beauty part of the inevitable antitrust proceedings was that the government forced MCA to do what its president most wanted to do anyway but could never have done voluntarily: dump the agency business altogether. By then, MCA had acquired Universal Studios, and Lew Wasserman, president of MCA since 1946 (under Stein's chairmanship), became top dog in Hollywood. Coming up today, Wasserman would probably have found a way into computers. He was a numbers man with a photographic memory who appears to have reduced everything important to a figure which could be retrievably placed in an interior galaxy. He wrote almost nothing down, and his meetings were always brief unless prolonged by one of his tirades. Wasserman's displays of temper were no less terrifying for being rigorously controlled - just as everything in Wasserman's life was rigorously controlled. An oversight, a violation of one of his rules (however well-intentioned), or an act tinctured by disloyalty would all trigger eruptions from which men were known to leave in tears. So far as I know, Wasserman never had anybody killed, but he could cut people out of his life, which sometimes meant cutting them out of the industry altogether. He was not a decent man. His rock-ribbed loyalty was legendary, and his displays of generosity were not uncommon, but without more these are not virtues. They are both the plumage of the thug and the engine of his authority. Wasserman had little interest in the movies themselves; what engaged his attention, aside from grosses, was labor relations. Hollywood was a union town by the time he got there, in 1939, and far from struggling against the organized labor, as most of the early tycoons had done, Wasserman exploited his connections with union leadership. The Teamsters, for example, acting alone, could bring film production to a halt. Wasserman staved off such threats with the help of a shadowy éminence grise, the lawyer and fixer Sidney Korshak. Wasserman also took an interest in politics - or, rather, in political contributions. Money spent in Washington was money spent on protection. The film industry operates on the frontier between regular, heavy industry, where widgets are produced day and night by companies that stay in business for decades, and the drug underworld, where every deal stands alone, and may, but probably won't, involve a serial cast of participants. Every film is made, technically, by its own production company, or by a company formed to make two or three films; such companies are usually limited partnerships. A film studio is simply an outfit prepared to act as the general (or responsible) partner for limited partnership production companies. It may own the rights to film distribution, but it does not actually own any movies all by itself. Because of the need to create every product (film) from scratch, and because the film industry is even less predictable than the trade in illegal drugs, it is natural that underworld-type figures, lawful behavior notwithstanding, rise to eminence in Hollywood. The lawfulness of Lew Wasserman's behavior is something that Connie Bruck's biography leaves open to question. This is a serious failing for so comprehensive a book. Ms Bruck anatomizes the industry that Wasserman wrought, and she clearly charts the course of that industry's undoing by forces that Wasserman had unleashed long before but that he could no longer control. But she does not judge. One suspects that she would pronounce Wasserman's work as ultimately benign. Certainly the man kept intramural strife to a minimum, and almost everyone involved got rich. But to leave us with the portrait of a benign, if occasionally terrible, dictator, without assessing the nature of the dictator's regime, is to shirk what ought to have been a principal objective. The days in which the success of a business can be determined by its balance sheet are over. On top of the structural differences from mainstream industry that I have already pointed out, Hollywood is unusual both for the nature of its product and for the intensiveness of its demand for human talent. Movies don't have to be any good at all, and many aren't (and hardly any work done for television is any good), but the fact that some movies rise to prominence, and even eminence, in our cultural pantheon implies a responsibility to the world at large that is rather like the chemical industry's responsibility to avoid environmental contaminations. Simply cranking out mediocre fodder for hungry 'outlets' is morally bankrupt. (It worried me very much that, unlike almost every other writer on Hollywood history that I've come across, Ms Bruck has nothing to say about the merits, apart from popularity and earnings, of a single motion picture.) Trained in the utterly ephemeral atmosphere of booking dance bands, Stein and Wasserman seemed unaware of any long-term implications that might attach to their work. Alfred Hitchcock's movies of the Fifties would probably not be so sleekly harmonious to watch if it hadn't been for Lew Wasserman's wizardry as a packager of talent, but Hitchcock himself appears to have responded with a very ambiguous gratitude, as if to say thanks for an unintended gift. It is difficult to feel any enthusiasm for a book about a successful thug whose achievement seems ever more evanescent. Ms Bruck writes with great brio, considering the density and darkness of her material, but transitions for foreground to background are not well-modulated. On at least two occasions, her book lurches into protracted episodes that don't much concern Wasserman himself, and these episodes seem to be the fruit of irresistibly piquant research that would probably never see the light of print between the covers of a more appropriate volume. (The history of Richard Nixon and Taft Schreiber - Wasserman's deadliest rival at MCA - climaxes on a note that's more Watergate than Hollywood.) The illustrations seem miscellaneous rather than illustrative, more the trophies on an executives wall (which is what almost all of them undoubtedly were) than sources of information. Thanks to the always pulse-quickening appearances of mobsters and strongmen, this is a hard book to put down, but the reader can expect to have a nasty hangover. How can a book of nearly five hundred pages, with 'Hollywood' in its title, say so little about the movies? How can a book about dreamworks be so silent about fame and love? (August 2004)

Lord David Sainsbury has been the one who has given the most money to New Labour over the last ten years (£15m). What has he got for this money? Well he has been given a peerage and the post as minister of science. It is the other things he has got that is more important and the real scandal. Since being elected in 1997 the Blair government has continually backed down on attempts to protect the health of the UK population by regulating the food industry. In the last week we have seen the government climbdown on its promise to force food manufacturers to cut salt levels in our food. The plan was to reduce personal daily intake by 10gm to 6gm to 2010. This target has now been changed to 8gm. According to health experts, this will result in around an extra 14,000 people dying a year. The Food & Drink Federation that represents supermarkets like Sainsbury have welcomed the relaxed targets. Other members of this organization, such as Asda, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose can be expected to donate money to Blair over the following months. Yesterday it was announced that celebrities are to be stopped from advertising junk food during television programmes designed to appeal to the under-10s. However, as health campaigners have pointed out, there are to be no changes in advertising during other programmes that children watch. The new proposals are just delaying tactics. TV has three years to be put into effect the proposals that will not become law until next year. Can we really be surprised that companies like Sainsbury are willing to donate large sums of money to New Labour? It is not only over Iraq that Blair has “blood on his hands”.

Exactly right. This is the theme of Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-2006: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

As members most probably realize, I am more interested in the whole history of political corruption than I am with the JFK case (this is just one example of this corruption that has come close to destroying democracy). The main reason that they get away with it is because of the way the network has been created. It has pulled into its web politicians, businessmen, journalists, military officers and leading figures in the intelligence agencies. In cases like the JFK assassination, Watergate and Iran-Contra scandal, the public gets glimpses of what is going on, but there is no mechanism to fully expose the network that I am describing here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799 Those who do try to expose the MICIC usually end up dead, discredited or corrupted. There is also the other problem of the public being unwilling to believe that the democracy they are living in is a sham. We are currently having a police investigation into political corruption in the UK. Although it is clear that there is a close link between donations to political parties and government favours (PFI contracts, planning permissions for buildings, peerages, government legislation, etc.) nobody will be charged with any offence. Government corruption is very sophisticated in today’s world. The only risk is with the person’s reputation for honesty and integrity. Blair and Bush lost that a long time ago. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6382

Yes I have tried to contact him by email but he has not replied. He knows what I have been saying about him and so far he has not threatened legal action. However, he was able to pressurize Lee Israel not to use his real name in her book "Kilgallen". This is why I believe her answers above on Pataky are so significant.

I'm not so sure that Kilgallen's determination to "break the case" means that Ruby had given her any real information. It may only mean that, like many researchers, she was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. With her background in crime reporting, no doubt she felt qualified for the task. To my mind this passage suggests that, at least at the time she wrote this, Kilgallen was not really clued in to the forces behind the assassination. After more than 40 years of research, I doubt if anyone (besides Norman Mailer) believes that Lee Oswald's relationship with Marina can tell us anything about who killed JFK. If I have followed this thread correctly, it is not established that Kilgallen gave her notes to Florence Pritchett Smith. It seems implausible that she would impose in this manner on a friend who was literally on her death-bed. If Kilgallen was murdered, it may not be because of what she knew, but rather because of what she was determined to find out. Kilgallen was by far the most high-profile person to raise doubts about the Warren Commission, and that alone could have made her a target. Ron is probably right about the murder being a “warning”. If not, it was a very careless operation (I do not go along with the idea that the CIA is an incompetent organization). Dorothy Kilgallen may or may not have got important information from Jack Ruby. What we do know about her is that she had very good sources from within the CIA. For example, she was the first person to publish an article about the CIA and the Mafia working together to assassinate Castro. She also published a story that attempted to link JFK and RFK with the death of Marilyn Monroe. Kilgallen, like Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, allowed herself to be used by the CIA and FBI. However, she was in financial difficulties in the 1960s and had a good reason to publish a book exposing the truth behind the assassination. The important point is that Kilgallen’s manuscript was never found. Why was it destroyed?

This is happening to me as well. For example, it happened on the thread on "Graham Davies". The failure to post is also still a problem. It happens about 1 in 3 posts. I use the backspace and is usually posts second time round. However, sometimes, it posts it twice and I then have to delete one of the postings. Emails from Forum members suggests this is happening to others as well.

Clearly the best foreign team in London.

The main objective of Operation Mockingbird has always been to control the “liberal” media. Tom Braden revealed this in his 1967 interview. As he pointed out, those on the right were willing to write pro-CIA articles for free. It was the ability to get CIA disinformation into the liberal press that was really important. It is significant that Phil Graham was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird. His Washington Post was seen as a "liberal" newspaper. Cord Meyer, who ran Mockingbird in the late 1940s and early 1950s was seen as left-wing (he was denounced by Joe McCarthy as a communist). Jack Anderson is the classic example of an investigative reporter who was manipulated by the CIA and the FBI. Even the great Drew Pearson went along with this occasionally if it meant the opportunity to hurt his enemies (see the Owen Brewster/Howard Hughes case). I am also suspicious of David Corn. Blond Ghost is a good read and contains a lot of interesting information. However, I think this is an excellent example of what Victor Marchetti called a “limited hangout”. See his article about Howard Hunt and the assassination of JFK here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3841 Here is the relevant quotation: Victor Marchetti, The Spotlight (14th August, 1978) A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency. The topic of discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? (Spotlight, May 8, 1978.) A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever "limited hangout" when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month. A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further. The Washington Post reporting on Watergate was another example of a "limited hangout". Corn’s book is interesting for what it does not include. The section on Ted Shackley’s relationship with Edwin Wilson is very poor. There is also little in the book on his involvement with Paul Heliwell in the operations against Fidel Castro. This is no coincidence. The same is true of Evan Thomas’ The Very Best Men. Again it is full of fascinating information but is once again a “limited hangout”. I think Joe Trento is another one who falls into this category. Like Anderson, Pearson, etc. he publishes some good stories based on CIA leaks. Unlike Corn and Thomas, he is not paid to protect Shackley. However, he is very keen to believe any information he receives that suggests that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. As you will remember, Tim Gratz used to keep on pointing out “Trento is on the left”. That is of course the message. “He is trustworthy because he has a reputation of exposing the CIA”. This is also true of Corn and Thomas. It is all part of the “limited hangout” strategy. You will find a good summary and links to other articles here: http://www.oilempire.us/the-nation.html

The main objective of Operation Mockingbird has always been to control the “liberal” media. Tom Braden revealed this in his 1967 interview. As he pointed out, those on the right were willing to write pro-CIA articles for free. It was the ability to get CIA disinformation into the liberal press that was really important. It is significant that Phil Graham was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird. His Washington Post was seen as a "liberal" newspaper. Cord Meyer, who ran Mockingbird in the late 1940s and early 1950s was seen as left-wing (he was denounced by Joe McCarthy as a communist). Jack Anderson is the classic example of an investigative reporter who was manipulated by the CIA and the FBI. Even the great Drew Pearson went along with this occasionally if it meant the opportunity to hurt his enemies (see the Owen Brewster/Howard Hughes case). I am also suspicious of David Corn. Blond Ghost is a good read and contains a lot of interesting information. However, I think this is an excellent example of what Victor Marchetti called a “limited hangout”. See his article about Howard Hunt and the assassination of JFK here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3841 Here is the relevant quotation: Victor Marchetti, The Spotlight (14th August, 1978) A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency. The topic of discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? (Spotlight, May 8, 1978.) A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever "limited hangout" when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month. A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further. The Washington Post reporting on Watergate was another example of a "limited hangout". Corn’s book is interesting for what it does not include. The section on Ted Shackley’s relationship with Edwin Wilson is very poor. There is also little in the book on his involvement with Paul Heliwell in the operations against Fidel Castro. This is no coincidence. The same is true of Evan Thomas’ The Very Best Men. Again it is full of fascinating information but is once again a “limited hangout”. I think Joe Trento is another one who falls into this category. Like Anderson, Pearson, etc. he publishes some good stories based on CIA leaks. Unlike Corn and Thomas, he is not paid to protect Shackley. However, he is very keen to believe any information he receives that suggests that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. As you will remember, Tim Gratz used to keep on pointing out “Trento is on the left”. That is of course the message. “He is trustworthy because he has a reputation of exposing the CIA”. This is also true of Corn and Thomas. It is all part of the “limited hangout” strategy. You will find a good summary and links to other articles here: http://www.oilempire.us/the-nation.html

I found this map on Civil War battles useful: http://find.mapmuse.com/re1/interest.php?b...ES&authCod=oran

In 2002 the MP for Hemel Hempstead, Tony McWalter, asked Tony Blair a question in the House of Commons: "Since my honourable friend is sometimes subjected to unflattering and even malevolent descriptions of his motivations, will he now provide the House with a brief characterisation of the political philosophy he expouses and which underlines his policies?" As one political commentator who witnessed this event later said: "Mr Blair paused for what seemed a hideous eternity to many in the chamber, before mumbling some waffle about bringing in foreign consultants to fill NHS vacancies."

The real story (maybe should tell Dunne) was the person Kilgallen met after Arlene Francis that night. In her book, Kilgallen, Lee Israel gave him the name of the “Out-of-Towner”. According to Israel she met him in Carrara in June, 1964, during a press junket for journalists working in the film industry. The trip was paid for by Twentieth Century-Fox who used it to publicize three of its films: The Sound of Music, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Israel claims that the "Out-of-Towner" went up to Kilgallen and asked her if she was Clare Booth Luce. This is in itself an interesting introduction. Kilgallen and Luce did not look like each other. Luce and her husband (Henry Luce) however were to play an important role in the events surrounding the assassination. Luce owned Life Magazine and arranged to buy up the Zapruder Film . Clare Booth Luce had also funded covert operations against Fidel Castro (1961-63). I believe that Kilgallen suspected that "Out-of-Towner" was working for the CIA. She therefore told her friends this is what he said so that if anything happened to her, a future investigator would realize that he was a CIA agent with links to Clare Booth Luce. Lee Israel has always refused to identify the "Out-of-Towner". However, I discovered via a man called David Herschel that his real name was Ron Pataky. In 1965 he had been a journalist working for the Columbus Citizen-Journal who had published articles about the assassination of JFK. Here is a conversation that took place between Lee Israel and myself on the Forum on 20th December, 2005. John Simkin: In your book you make a lot of Kilgallen’s relationship with the man you call the "Out-of-Towner". In fact, you imply that he was in some way involved in her death. Is it correct that the man’s name is really Ron Pataky? Lee Israel: Yes. John Simkin: Did you find any evidence that Ron Pataky was working for the CIA? Lee Israel: No. Only that he dropped out of Stanford in 1954 and then enrolled in a training school for assassins in Panama or thereabouts. John Simkin: Do you believe that Ron Pataky murdered Dorothy Kilgallen? Lee Israel: He had something to do with it. Ron Pataky is still in the disinformation business. See the following: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3N6S...9937193-1916714 Her also has his own website: http://worlds-premiere-ransom-note-factory.us/index2.htm Unfortunately for him, if you do a search at Google for "Ron Pataky" my page comes up first. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpataky.htm

The real story (maybe should tell Dunne) was the person Kilgallen met after Arlene Francis that night. In her book, Kilgallen, Lee Israel gave him the name of the “Out-of-Towner”. According to Israel she met him in Carrara in June, 1964, during a press junket for journalists working in the film industry. The trip was paid for by Twentieth Century-Fox who used it to publicize three of its films: The Sound of Music, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Israel claims that the "Out-of-Towner" went up to Kilgallen and asked her if she was Clare Booth Luce. This is in itself an interesting introduction. Kilgallen and Luce did not look like each other. Luce and her husband (Henry Luce) however were to play an important role in the events surrounding the assassination. Luce owned Life Magazine and arranged to buy up the Zapruder Film . Clare Booth Luce had also funded covert operations against Fidel Castro (1961-63). I believe that Kilgallen suspected that "Out-of-Towner" was working for the CIA. She therefore told her friends this is what he said so that if anything happened to her, a future investigator would realize that he was a CIA agent with links to Clare Booth Luce. Lee Israel has always refused to identify the "Out-of-Towner". However, I discovered via a man called David Herschel that his real name was Ron Pataky. In 1965 he had been a journalist working for the Columbus Citizen-Journal who had published articles about the assassination of JFK. Here is a conversation that took place between Lee Israel and myself on the Forum on 20th December, 2005. John Simkin: In your book you make a lot of Kilgallen’s relationship with the man you call the "Out-of-Towner". In fact, you imply that he was in some way involved in her death. Is it correct that the man’s name is really Ron Pataky? Lee Israel: Yes. John Simkin: Did you find any evidence that Ron Pataky was working for the CIA? Lee Israel: No. Only that he dropped out of Stanford in 1954 and then enrolled in a training school for assassins in Panama or thereabouts. John Simkin: Do you believe that Ron Pataky murdered Dorothy Kilgallen? Lee Israel: He had something to do with it.

great information Greg, James and Robert. Mollenhoff clearly made a mistake with the middle name. During his testimony Reynolds said he accompanied Webb to the Teamsters' Union building in Washington for discussions with Jimmy Hoffa to discuss a loan for $15,000 for the Wertco land-development project near Jackson. The fact that Webb was a lobbyist in Washington for the oil industry makes him especially interesting. This is the same job performed by Tommy Corcoran, Irving Davidson, Fred Black and Bobby Baker. He therefore becomes another candidate as the man who passed the money to the people who carried out the assassination (Gene Wheaton claims that Davidson played that role). The comment that he was paid by the Tecon Corporation could also be significant. As you know, Fred Korth was sacked as Secretary of the Navy by JFK in October, 1963, for his role in the TFX scandal. However, he was also sacked for his role in the granting of the X-22 contract. A few weeks after replacing John Connally in 1961, Korth overruled top Navy officers who had proposed that the X-22 contract be given to Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Instead he insisted the contract be granted to the more expensive bid of the Bell Aerosystem Development Company. This was a subsidiary of Bell Aerospace Corporation of Forth Worth, Texas. For many years Korth had been a director of Bell. The chairman of the company, Lawrence Bell, was a fellow member of the Suite 8F Group. In 1960 the Bell Aerospace Corporation was in serious financial difficulty and was taken over by the Tecon Corporation.

Clark R. Mollenhoff's book, Despoilers of Democracy is very good on the corrupt activities of LBJ. Mollenhoff also took a close interest in the Don B. Reynolds case. During his testimony to the Senate Rules Committee, Reynolds claimed he had been involved in a Florida land-development project in partnership with Bobby Baker, Scott I. Peck (the former administrative assistant to Senator George Smathers) and Thomas E. Webb. I had never come across the name of Thomas E. Webb before. His name is of interest as he was Clint Murchison's financial adviser. Anybody know anything about Webb?

Another witness who saw the pool of blood on the steps of the Grassy Knoll. Mr. SPECTER - You just had the general impression that shots were coming from the knoll? Mrs. HILL - Yes. Mr. SPECTER - And you had the general impression that the Secret Service was firing the second group of shots at the man who fired the first group of shots? Mrs. HILL - That's right. Mr. SPECTER - But you had no specific impression as to the source of those shots? Mrs. HILL - No. Mr. SPECTER - Did you get a very good look at that man, who you say was starting to run? Mrs. HILL - Well, as I said, when I looked down at this red stuff on the ground, I said, "Oh," you know, to myself, "they hit him." You know, I was going to follow that, and when I looked up again, I looked all around and I couldn't see him anywhere and I kept running toward the train tracks and I looked all around out there and I couldn't see him---I looked everywhere and I heard someone yelling something about---it was just this voice that was yelling, "It looks like he got. away," or something---I thought I had been right, you know, that he had really gone up there and he had gotten away some way in the tracks or had gone around behind the Depository, and so, I didn't know where he had gone. By that time I saw policemen---where he had gone. By that time I saw policemen---some were coming off of their motorcycles just around the curb here just at the underpass here, and of course, the motorcade sped away and. the policemen were coming from all sorts of different directions, people were closing in, and all I could think of was, "I want to get out of here fast. I don't want to be caught by anybody. I don't want to be in on anything," and every-time anybody would come toward me I would go another way until I got off of that hill back up there where the tracks were. Mr. SPECTER - Did you run up toward the hill? Mrs. HILL - Yes; I ran up toward the railroad tracks. Mr. SPECTER - Let me draw the triple underpass there, and you ran up to what point-where? About the point of "D" here? Mrs. HILL - Yes. Mr. SPECTER - Why did you run up there after the man? Mrs. HILL - I was still looking for him. I didn't know where he had gone. I heard lots of people yelling, "Did he get away, did he get away, and which way did he go." Mr. SPECTER - You were trying to catch him? Mrs. HILL - Yes. Mr. SPECTER - But you couldn't find him any more? Mrs. HILL - No; I just couldn't find him again. When I stopped to look down at the grass, at this red stuff and when I looked back up, by that time everyone was screaming and moving around. Mr. SPECTER - And where were you when you looked down at the ground? Point it-out to me on the diagram. Mrs. HILL - The steps that go up to this colonnade thing right there and I saw it right about here. Mr. SPECTER - Well, mark it with the letter "E" there. Mrs. HILL - All right. http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/hill_j.htm

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell

I have also been told this by an “insider”. Nothing will give me more pleasure than historians or journalists using this Forum to solve this and other historical "mysteries".

You could also do with journalists like Drew Pearson, George Seldes and I. F. Stone.

It was reported in the Sunday Times yesterday that John Prescott has twice approved planning permission for controversial Minerva property projects. Six months after Rosenfeld gave Labour a £1m loan, Prescott gave permission for the building of the £600m Park Place in Croydon. This involved killing a rival bid by a consortium called Whitgift. Before this decision, Minerva had suffered heavy losses. Prescott’s decision resulted in a boost to Rosenfeld’s personal shareholding by £4m. The £1m loan was obviously a shrewd piece of business. Prescott also gave permission for the building of the 50-story Minerva tower. This will become the tallest building in the City of London. At the same time, Prescott intervened in two similar developments by other companies. Six months previous to this decision (June, 2003), Gerrard, the chairman of Minerva, gave a £2.3m loan to Labour. Prescott of course has denied knowledge of these loans and therefore claims it did not influence his decisions.

Well it is true. So is the fact that I have to spend time deleting member's double posts.