John Simkin

It is very interesting that several other people who were possibly connected to the assassination of JFK died in the same way (shotgun in the mouth). For example, Phil Graham, Frank Wisner, William Pawley, etc. I assume that this is a fairly easy way to kill someone and then make it look like suicide.

It is just possible that we are seeing the beginning of Tony Blair's Watergate. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6382

It is very interesting that the media pays little attention to the link between political donations and government policy. I believe that financial corruption is at the heart of all that has been wrong with the American political system over the last 50 years: McCarthyism, the arms race, the Cold War, foreign policy in the Americas and South-East Asia, assassination of JFK, Vietnam War, Iran-Contra, Iraq War, etc. The same thing has been taking place in the UK. It is just possible that we might be on the verge of hearing the truth about the link between financial corruption and the Iraq War: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6382

Kennedy was fairly reactionary during the early period of his presidency. This is reflected in his choice of LBJ as vice-president (this cost him the support of a lot of trade unionists – LBJ had a long record of being anti-labour). He speeded up the arms race, adding $7 billion to the military budget in the first year of his term and $10 billion over the next two years. He also agreed to the Bay of Pigs and an increase in the number of military “advisers” in Vietnam. However, his views changed dramatically after the Cuban Missile Crisis. His 1963 Tax Reform Bill was very progressive (it planned to bring an end to the oil depletion allowance and other tax loopholes). He also called for changes to the Federal Reserve and began trying to reduce tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, a policy that led to the Test Ban Treaty. Most importantly of all, the began to attempt to clean up corruption in American politics. This is why he told Evelyn Lincoln that he was going to remove Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Robert Kennedy began leaking information on Johnson’s illegal activities to John Williams that led to Bobby Baker resigning from office. Kennedy also sacked Fred Korth as Secretary of the Navy because of the TFX scandal (officially Korth resigned over using government notepaper to further his business interests). JFK also started an investigation into the “stockpile scandal”. This, like the investigations of TFX and the Bobby Baker cases, were terminated by LBJ. Kennedy also began pushing for a new Civil Rights Act. However, in 1963 it was still being blocked by LBJ’s mates in the Deep South. Therefore, I do believe the statement on the minimum wage, etc. was significant. It was all part of a new program that suggested JFK had changed direction. In doing so, he was betraying his financial backers. He was indeed entering dangerous territory.

Thanks for that. I am hoping that people will post details of their own experiences. The TES is well-known for the reactionary members of its Forum. It will be interesting if they respond to my article.

I have argued over the years on this Forum that Tony Blair is a corrupt politician and needs to be removed from power. Recently events suggest that we might be on the verge of discovering the exact scale of his crimes. I suspect this is not the case and will end up as Britain’s Watergate. In the sense that Nixon was forced to resign but the full account of his crimes were never revealed to the public. Let me outline my case against Tony Blair. The story begins before Blair became leader of the Labour Party. In the past, attempts to undermine the Labour Party took place either just before or during a Labour Government. Kier Hardy was incorruptible but the ruling elite got rid of Labour’s first government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, with the Zinoviev Letter in 1924. More sophisticated methods were then used on MacDonald after that and by 1931 he was willing to completely sell-out the Labour Party. It took many years to overcome this treachery but by 1945 the Labour Party was able to win control again. Clement Atlee was also fairly incorruptible but fellow leaders of the party were willing to accept the money of the CIA via Tom Braden and the International Organizations Division to move to the right. This created internal division in the Labour government was by 1951 it had lost its majority. Harold Wilson was the next Labour prime minister. We now know that MI5 and the CIA began a long drawn out campaign to undermine his government. Edward Heath suffered from the same forces as he was considered by the establishment to be far too left wing. James Callaghan and Denis Healey (one of the original targets of CIA money in the late 1940s) successfully moved Labour to the right after Wilson was finally removed in 1976. Callaghan and Healey introduced monetarism that was developed by Margaret Thatcher’s period in office. In 1986, the newly elected Tony Blair took a “freebie” tour of the United States. At the time he was a member of CND. While in Washington he announced he had changed his mind and that that the “visit had persuaded him of the value of nuclear weapons”. The intelligence services always prefer their placements to have been a former “left-winger” because they rarely move back again after they have been “converted”. In March, 1994, Blair was introduced to Michael Levy at a dinner party at the Israeli embassy in London. Levy was a retired businessman who now spent his time raising money for Jewish pressure-groups. After this meeting, Levy acquired a new job, raising money for Tony Blair. According to Robin Ramsay (The Rise of New Labour, page 64), Levy raised over £7 million for Blair). In an article by John Lloyd published in the New Statesman on 27th February, 1998, the main suppliers of this money included Sir Emmanuel Kaye (Kaye Enterprises), Sir Trevor Chin (Lex Garages), Maurice Hatter (IMO Precision Group) and Maurice Hatter (Sage Software). In April, 1994, John Smith died and Blair won the leadership contest. With Levy’s money, Blair appointed Jonathan Powell as his Chief of Staff. A retired diplomat, Powell was not a member of the Labour Party. In fact, his brother, Charles Powell, was Margaret Thatcher's right hand man. Alastair Campbell was the other man brought into his private office with Levy’s money. Powell and Campbell were later to become key figures in the later invasion of Iraq. It is of course a pure coincidence that this decision reflected the thinking of Israel’s government. Another important figure in the corruption of Tony Blair was the media baron, Rupert Murdoch. It was widely believed that Labour Party lost the 1992 General Election because of the anti-Labour campaigns of Murdock’s newspapers. In 1995 Tony Blair flew to Australia to “pledge his allegiance at a meeting of News International’s executives… an extraordinary act of fealty”. (Peter Oborne, Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class” page 141) As a result of this meeting Murdoch’s papers were, at worst, neutral towards Labour. Alastair Campbell began writing articles to go under Blair’s name in the Murdoch papers. (Robin Ramsay, The Rise of New Labour, page 67) It was later announced that Blair had signed a book contract with Harper Collins (a company owned by Rupert Murdoch). The deal was worth £3.5 million to Blair. This information only came out when Blair used the contract as security when he purchased his house in London. Margaret Thatcher and John Major got similar book deals with Harper Collins. Of course, the royalties near reach the multi-million advances paid for them. However, it is a great way of bribing a prime minister. To create “New Labour”, Blair had to start removing the links with the trade union movement. Traditionally, the trade unions had been the main providers of money to the Labour Party. However, if Blair was going to this he had to find other financial backers. This became Sir Michael Levy’s job. However, the problem with obtaining large donations is that they always expect something back in return. Businessmen have always seen donations to political parties as an “investment”. Recently, there has been much speculation about this money being used to buy “honours”. For example, all but one of Labour’s top donors who have given over £1m has received a peerage. The exception is Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate. He was rewarded in other ways - the Romanian steel contract. This is the reality of large political donations. The granting of honours is just a sideshow. It is the granting of other political favours that is the real scandal. For example, soon after he was elected as prime minister, Blair announced that sport was being exempted from the ban on tobacco advertising. Everyone was surprised by this broken election promise until it was revealed that Bernie Ecclestone had given the Labour Party £1 million a few weeks previously. Another example of Blair’s corruption concerns his relationship with the businessman, Paul Drayson. Blair had a meeting with Drayson on 6th December, 2001. Soon afterwards two things happened: (1) Drayson donated £100,000 to the Labour Party; (2) Drayson’s company, PowerJect, won a £32 million contract to produce a smallpox vaccine. The most surprising aspect of this contract was that it was not put out to open tender. If it had of been the contract would have gone to a German-Danish company called Bavarian Nordic. It is this company that Drayson has purchased the smallpox vaccine from. It is believed that Drayson paid Bavarian Nordic £12m for the vaccine. In other words his £100,000 investment has resulted in a £20m profit. In all, Drayson has given £1.1m to New Labour. This was a good deal for Drayson, he was also given a peerage as a result of this donation. Another company that has a strange relationship with Blair is Jarvis Engineering. The chairman of this company is Steven Norris. He was formerly a Conservative MP and served as Minister of Transport (1992-1996). However, he decided to leave the House of Commons to become chairman of Jarvis Engineering. Although still a member of the Conservative Party, Norris decided it would be a good idea to make large donations of money to the Labour Party. This was followed by a change of Labour Party policy. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had in opposition been strong opponents of the Public Finance Initiative (PFI). A scheme brought in by the Conservative government that enabled private companies to obtain government contracts to provide public sector services. Jarvis Engineering had done extremely well out of this scheme. Blair and Brown decided that this scheme was now a good one. It was not very surprising that Jarvis Engineering soon began winning PFI contracts given out by the Labour Government. Jarvis was not the only company that found it very beneficial to give money to “New Labour”. History shows that it seems a very good way to get PFI contracts. When Tony Blair was elected he promised to reform the House of Lords in order to make it acceptable in a democratic society. However, he has failed to do this and Robin Cook disclosed in his diaries that Blair was never keen to reform the second chamber. The reasons are clear. Selecting who should be in the House of Lords gives tremendous power to the prime minister. It is also a source of income as Blair has been selling honours for the last nine years. Giving money to New Labour is good business. In 2001 Richard Desmond gave £100,000 to New Labour. Within days the DTI gave permission for Desmond to buy Express newspapers for £125m. Afterwards he admitted it was a good deal as New Labour spent £114,000 advertising in his newspapers “so I actually made money on the deal.” Over the last five years, 17 out of the 22 donors who have donated more than £100,000 have been given some kind of honour. The publicity over links between donations, honours, and government contracts (PFI was always going to lead to government corruption) has resulted in Blair developing a new tactic. This involves businessmen in providing loans rather than gifts. Loans do not have to be declared. The idea is that several years after the contract has been given or the honour awarded, the loan is turned into a gift. Chai Patel (1.5m), Sir David Garrard (1m) and Barry Townsley (1m) all gave this money to Lord Levy (Blair’s bagman). It has now been revealed that over £14 million in loans was raised by Levy before the 2005 election. As a businessman myself, I find it difficult to understand why Labour has been willing to sell honours in exchange for loans. How are they ever going to be paid back? Since 1997 the membership of the Labour Party has fallen by over 50%. Trade union contributions to the party have also nearly dried up. Therefore, the only way they will be able to pay this money back is by raising this money in donations. It is financial madness? Or is it? Remember, leading Labour Party officials are claiming that they knew nothing about these loans. Is it possible that some members of the party have received money for arranging these loan deals? The Labour Party is in danger of going bankrupt. One of the reasons the Labour Party sought out these loans is that its bankers refused to provide the necessary overdraft to fight the election. Even this is not the great scandal waiting to be exposed. This involves the relationship between Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, Michael Levy, Rubert Murdoch, etc. and the funding of the Labour Party and the Iraq War. Is it possible that some of these loans came from companies who have benefited from the Iraq War? This is of course what has happened in the United States (Halliburton & Bechtel). Is this the reason that Tony Blair is reluctant to reveal who gave such large loans in 2005? We now know that Lyndon Johnson manipulated Congress in order to start the Vietnam War. We also know that the greatest beneficiaries of the war was three companies based in Texas, Brown & Root, General Dynamics and Bell Corporation. All three companies had been long-term financial backers of LBJ. Will we find out the same thing about Blair and his backers? The fact that the man who arranged these loans was Sir Michael Levy.

I have been asked to write an article for the TES that is controversial and likely to cause some debate. You will find it here: http://www.tes.co.uk/blogs/blog.aspx?path=...'%20Corner/

I have started two threads that I think could be added to our E-HELP website: Quotations on Education http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6367 Quotations on History http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6368 Please add your own quotations to these threads.

I have just had a phone call from the British Council. They are discussing our application this afternoon.

“Disobedience in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion.” (Oscar Wilde) “In history one is absolutely sickened, not by the original crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishment that the good have inflicted.” (Oscar Wilde) "We get our ethics from our history and judge our history by our ethics." (Ernst Troeltsch) “The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.” (Herbert Butterfield) “History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past, and finds new areas of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors.” (Christopher Hill) “There are few activities more cooperative than the writing of history. The author puts his name brashly on the title-page and the reviewers rightly attack him for his errors and misinterpretations; but none knows better than he how much his whole enterprise depends on the preceding labours of others.” (Christopher Hill) “Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands.” (Robert Conquest) “Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.” (Duke of Wellington) “The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.” (Oscar Wilde) “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.” (William Hazlitt) “History is but a pack of tricks we play on the dead.” (Voltaire). “History is little more than the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” (Edward Gibbon). “History is as much an art as a science.” (Ernest Renan). Men make their own history, but they do not know that they are making it.” (Karl Marx). “There will always be a connection between the way in which men contemplate the past and the way in which they contemplate the present.” (Thomas Buckle). “It is a reproach of historians that they have too often turned history into a mere record of the butchery of men by their fellow men.” (J. R. Green). Such is the unity of history that anyone who endeavours to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web (F. W. Maitland). History is the sextant and compass of states, which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position.” (Alan Nevins). “The historians are the guardians of tradition, the priests of the cult of nationality, the prophets of social reform, the exponents and upholders of national virtue and glory” (Philip Bagby). “The study of history is a personal matter, in which the activity is generally more valuable than the result." (V. H. Galbraith). “A society sure of its values had needed history only to celebrate the glories of the past, but a society of changing values and consequent confusions also needed history as a utilitarian guide.” (Thomas Cochran). “Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfilment." (Arthur Schlesinger Jr). “Political and social history are in my view two aspects of the same process. Social life loses half its interest and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately." (F. M. Powicke). “The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.” (James Joll). “History free of all values cannot be written. Indeed, it is a concept almost impossible to understand, for men will scarcely take the trouble to inquire laboriously into something which they set no value upon (W. H. B. Court) “What better preparation for a history which seeks to bring societies to life and to understand that life than to have really lived, commanded men, suffered with them and shared their joys.” (Lucien Febvre) “A mere collector of supposed facts is as useful as a collector of matchboxes.” (Lucien Febvre) “Consciousness of the past alone can make us understand the present.” (Herbert Luethy). “The justification of all historical study must ultimately be that it enhances our self-consciousness, enables us to see ourselves in perspective, and helps us towards that greater freedom which comes from self-knowledge.” (Keith Thomas). “History is not a succession of events, it is the links between them.” (E. Evans Pritchard). ' “It is a mark of civilised man that he seeks to understand his traditions, and to criticise them, not to swallow them whole.” (M. I. Finley). “The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.” (William Hazlitt) “The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.” (G. K. Chesterton) “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” (Cicero) “Peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” (Hegel) “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” (Aldous Huxley) "Until the lion has a historian of his own, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." (African Proverb) “When a man of true genius appears in the world, you may know him by the infallible sign, that all the dunces are in conspiracy against him.” (Jonathan Swift) “The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.“ (Henry Miller) “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe” (H. G. Wells) “More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.” (John Barth). “The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for, if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.” (Henry Adams) “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana) "Pronounce us guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile. She will acquit us.” (Adolf Hitler, 1924) "Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me." (Fidel Castro, 1953) “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” (Voltaire) "The motive force of history is truth and not lies." (Leon Trotsky)

“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.” (Elbert Hubbard) “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” (Albert Einstein) “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain) “Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.” (George Halifax) “Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.” (Albert Camus) “One does not actually learn anything new. What we call learning is really nothing but recollecting true knowledge that we already have within us.” (Socrates) “We praise or blame according to whether the one or the other offers a greater opportunity for our power of judgement to shine out.” (Nietzsche) “We learn what we do.” (John Dewey) “Knowledge is not “to know” but to schematise – to impose upon chaos as much regularity and form as suffices for our practical requirements.” (Nietzsche) "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." (Proust) "Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out." (James B. Conant) "None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm." (Henry David Thoreau) "Good teaching is more a giving of the right questions than a giving of the right answers." (J. Albers) "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." (J.C. Dana) "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." (W. A. Ward) "The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones." (John Maynard Keynes) "It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question." (Ionesco) "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it." (Samuel Johnson)

The introduction has been changed but the simulation is virtually the same. I left Tressell a couple of years later but my two co-authors remained and eventually Tressell went bust and they are still paying off their creditors. I therefore feel that they don't deserve to be ripped off like this.

As co-author and copyright holder of this computer simulation I would be very interested in hearing who is publishing the PC version. Especially as I have not received any royalties from the company who has published this version.

I am currently reading Clark R. Mollenhoff’s Despoilers of Democracy. It is the best account I have read on the scandals surrounding Lyndon Johnson at the time of the assassination. It is especially good on providing information on Fred Korth, LBJ’s pal who replaced his other pal, John Connally, as Secretary of the Navy. Mollenhoff points out that as well as being General Dynamics’ banker before becoming Secretary of the Navy, Korth was also a director of the Bell Corporation. Soon after taking the post, Korth granted the X-22 contract to Bell. This was in spite of the recommendation of the Navy Board that the contract should go to the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. At the time the X-22 contract was given to Bell it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Bell went on to make billions from the Vietnam War. John Connally said he resigned as Secretary of the Navy because he wanted to run for the post as Governor of Texas. Is it possible that he resigned because he thought that granting the X-22 and TFX contracts to Texas-based companies was too risky? After all, Korth was forced to resign over these issues in October, 1963. Connally survived and was able to serve under Richard Nixon (he was eventually forced out of this job for corruption). LBJ was also aware that he was highly unlikely to get away with such a blatant example of corruption. In fact, the only reason he did get away with it was because of the assassination of JFK. Mollenhoff points out that McClellan’s Senate Committee never issued its report on the TFX scandal. In fact, it stopped meeting after the assassination of JFK. Officially, it was because the report would have condemned JFK as well as Johnson, Korth, Gilpatric, and McNamara. The main question concerns why JFK and McNamara went along with the X-22 and TFX decisions. If JFK had stepped in he would have had to have sacked both McNamara and Gilpatric. It also explains how LBJ was able to force McNamara into going along with sending combat troops to Vietnam. It was a common tactic of LBJ to involve as many politicians as possible in his various scams. Once they were implicated in these corrupt activities, they became under his control.

Pfieffer died on the 31st of January, 1997. James Thanks. Does this mean that Pfeiffer's legal action against the CIA died with him?

I am currently reading Clark R. Mollenhoff’s Despoilers of Democracy. It is the best account I have read on the scandals surrounding Lyndon Johnson at the time of the assassination. It is especially good on providing information on Fred Korth, LBJ’s pal who replaced his other pal, John Connally, as Secretary of the Navy. Mollenhoff’s interviewed all the main figures in the TFX scandal and attended all the sessions of John McClellan’s Senate Committee that investigated the granting of the contract to General Dynamics. Mollenhoff points out that as well as being General Dynamics’ banker before becoming Secretary of the Navy, Korth was also a director of the Bell Corporation. Soon after taking the post, Korth granted the X-22 contract to Bell. This was in spite of the recommendation of the Navy Board that the contract should go to the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Within weeks of taking office he was also overruling the unanimous recommendation by the Navy Board that the TFX contract should go to Boeing. At the time the X-22 and TFX contracts were given to Bell and General Dynamics, both corporations were on the verge of bankruptcy. They were saved not only by these contracts but by the Vietnam War. Mollenhoff points out that McClellan’s Senate Committee never issued its report on the TFX scandal. In fact, it stopped meeting after the assassination of JFK. Officially, it was because the report would have condemned JFK as well as Johnson, Korth, Gilpatric, and McNamara. The main question concerns why JFK and McNamara went along with the X-22 and TFX decisions. If JFK had stepped in he would have had to have sacked both McNamara and Gilpatric. It also explains how LBJ was able to force McNamara into going along with sending combat troops to Vietnam. It was a common tactic of LBJ to involve as many politicians as possible in his various scams. Once they were implicated in these corrupt activities, they became under his control.

I am currently reading Clark R. Mollenhoff’s Despoilers of Democracy. It is the best account I have read on the scandals surrounding Lyndon Johnson at the time of the assassination. It is especially good on providing information on Fred Korth, LBJ’s pal who replaced his other pal, John Connally, as Secretary of the Navy. Mollenhoff’s interviewed all the main figures in the TFX scandal and attended all the sessions of John McClellan’s Senate Committee that investigated the granting of the contract to General Dynamics. Mollenhoff points out that as well as being General Dynamics’ banker before becoming Secretary of the Navy, Korth was also a director of the Bell Corporation. Soon after taking the post, Korth granted the X-22 contract to Bell. This was in spite of the recommendation of the Navy Board that the contract should go to the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Within weeks of taking office he was also overruling the unanimous recommendation by the Navy Board that the TFX contract should go to Boeing. At the time the X-22 and TFX contracts were given to Bell and General Dynamics, both corporations were on the verge of bankruptcy. They were saved not only by these contracts but by the Vietnam War. Mollenhoff points out that McClellan’s Senate Committee never issued its report on the TFX scandal. In fact, it stopped meeting after the assassination of JFK. Officially, it was because the report would have condemned JFK as well as Johnson, Korth, Gilpatric, and McNamara. The main question concerns why JFK and McNamara went along with the X-22 and TFX decisions. If JFK had stepped in he would have had to have sacked both McNamara and Gilpatric. It also explains how LBJ was able to force McNamara into going along with sending combat troops to Vietnam. It was a common tactic of LBJ to involve as many politicians as possible in his various scams. Once they were implicated in these corrupt activities, they became under his control.

Does anyone know when Jack Pfeiffer wrote his report on the Bay of Pigs for the CIA? (On his website David M. Barrett only says it was in the 1970s). Does anyone know the date and cause of Pfeiffer's death?

It sounds like you are viewing the "Lo-Fi" version of the board. Scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the following wording: "This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?." Once you click the "click here" link, you should see the full version again.

Sorry, I missed this thread when it was first posted. I have now merged these two threads. The Miami Herald (Thursday, April 30, 1998) CORRESPONDENT'S LETTER BY DON BOHNING Bay of Pigs issues still unanswered It was a major coup when the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental documentation center in Washington, recently obtained the declassification of a controversial CIA inspector general's report on the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. But, according to the Archive's Peter Kornbluh, the 150-page report by the late Lyman B. Kirkpatrick is only the tip of a paper iceberg still stashed away at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. He estimates there are still about 30,000 pages of CIA operational documents related to the Bay of Pigs that remain secret, of which perhaps 10 percent -- or 3,000 pages -- is expected to be declassified soon. Kornbluh, a senior analyst who heads the Archive's Cuba documentation project, has been engaged in a 10-year effort to obtain documents related to U.S.-Cuba relations since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. That effort helped obtain the release some years ago of 10,000 pages of documents related to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and a small number relating to the Bay of Pigs. Documents still withheld Only several hundred pages of Bay of Pigs documents have been released by the CIA, including the lone remaining copy of Kirkpatrick's report, which came after a two-year effort by the Archive. The remaining still-classified documents, Kornbluh contends, ``continue to be withheld because members of the directorate of operations [clandestine services] are concerned that they will reflect badly on the early history of the CIA.'' Among the significant ones still to be released, Kornbluh says, is the complete report by the Taylor Commission -- headed by the late Gen. Maxwell Taylor -- which analyzed the invasion for the Kennedy administration. Portions of the Taylor report were released years ago, but the complete document remains classified. Also yet to be declassified, Kornbluh says, is a four-volume internal history of the invasion written by the late Jack B. Pfeiffer, an agency historian. Pfeiffer himself wanted to see his work declassified and before his death sued the CIA unsuccessfully for its release. Still another document that remains secret is a 47-page ``after action'' report written by Jack Hawkins, a retired Marine colonel who headed the paramilitary staff for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Hawkins recently made a formal request for its release, so far to no avail. Jake Esterline, who headed the CIA's Bay of Pigs Task Force, has also requested release of documents he authored, again so far without success. Kornbluh believes it's too early to tell what unanswered questions might be answered by the still-secret Bay of Pigs documents. Waiting for Cuba's story Kornbluh notes, however, that history is usually written by the victors and the full story from the Cuban side has yet to be told. ``The thing that bothers me,'' Esterline says, ``is that the recent death of [Manuel] Piñeiro further closed the window of opportunity of ever understanding the full extent, if any, of the Castro government involvement with the death of President Kennedy.'' Piñeiro, known as Barba Roja (Red Beard), Cuba's longtime foreign intelligence chief, died in a car crash in Havana this year. ``With [Che] Guevara also gone, there probably are only two or three, including Castro himself, who would be familiar with things we have never understood,'' Esterline says.

It is another example of the corruption of Tony Blair. I suspect that elearning credits led to donations to the Labour Party. I am afraid the Guardian newspaper is unlikely to expose this scandal as it has received a great deal of these elearning credit money via Learn. I worked for the Guardian while this lobbying was taking place. Education ministers were keen to please the Guardian as it was aware of the role the paper played in delivering the "educational" vote. The full story will appear in my memoirs. This includes material on the elearning negotiator having an affair with a cabinet minister (sex for credits scandal). I wonder if Rupert Murdoch (Harper Collins) will give me a contract like Tony Blair (£3.5 million) for his autobiography?

History shows that the intelligence services have always tried to undermine Labour governments. It is of course highly significant that these intelligence services have worked with, rather than against, the current Labour government. Ramsay MacDonald became Labour’s first prime minister in 1923. The following year, MI5 joined forces with the Conservative Party and the right-wing press to bring down MacDonald. In October 1924, MI5 obtained a letter written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union. In the letter Zinoviev urged British communists to promote revolution through acts of sedition. This letter had been produced by two MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory. Its contents were passed onto Major Joseph Ball who made the information available to the Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Research carried out by Gill Bennett in 1999 suggested that there were several MI5 and MI6 officers attempting the bring down the Labour Government in 1924, including Stewart Menzies, the future head of MI6. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUzinoviev.htm MacDonald learnt his lesson and the next time he was elected prime minister in 1929, he worked closely with the establishment (Blair has followed MacDonald’s example) and in 1931 conspired with the Conservative Party in order to cut unemployment benefits. This resulted in a National Government (only three Labour MPs joined the administration) led by MacDonald. This act of betrayal kept Labour out of office until 1945. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmacdonald.htm As a result of a confession by Tom Braden (head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division) in July, 1975, we discovered that the CIA was creaming off funds from Marshall Aid to bribe senior figures in the Labour Party and the trade union to move to the right. If this had not been successful, the CIA would have resorted to the tactics used in other countries in order to organize a military coup (see Guatemala in 1954). http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbraden.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKarbenz.htm It was inevitable that MI5 and the CIA would have joined forces to destabilize the 1964 Labour Government. I will write about this in more detail later.

This looks like a very interesting book. Jack Pfeiffer claims in the introduction that the classified CIA documents “make clear that various US corporate interests played an active (sometimes overactive) role in support of the anti-Castro efforts of the Government.” This is the same picture that is emerging from my own research. “Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-1990”. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799 I suspect that the unholy alliance of the CIA with large multinational corporations that shaped US Foreign Policy from the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 is the real reason why so many documents remain classified. I have been interested in the work of Jack Pfeiffer since I came across this interview with Jake Esterline on 10th November, 1975. Jack Pfeiffer: I have a question, and it is what was Pawley's relation to this whole operation... and your relation with Pawley seems to have been quite close, too. Jake Esterline: I think it was a hangover relationship from the things that Bill Pawley had done as quite a wheel with a number of very senior people during the Guatemalan operation ... that they felt that Bill, who had been very closely tied into Cuba ... that he was a very prominent man in Florida... that there were a lot of things that he might be able to do, in the sense of getting things lined up in Florida for us... and also his ties with Nixon and with other republican politicos. I used to deal with him quite a bit before.... From my point of view, we never let Bill Pawley know any of the intimacies about our operations, or what we were doing. He never knew where our bases were, or things of that sort. He never knew anything specific about our operations, but he was doing an awful lot of things on his own with the exiles. Some of the people that he had known in Cuba, in the sugar business, etc. I guess he actually was instrumental in running boats and things in and out of Cuba, getting people out and what not, and a variety of things that were not connected with us in any way. He was a political factor from the standpoint from J.C.'s standpoint. I don't know whether Tommy Corcoran entered in at this point... I think Tommy Corcoran was strictly in Guatemala. I guess Corcoran didn't come into this thing, at least not very much. Jack Pfeiffer: His name turns up once or twice. Jake Esterline: Yes, I met him once, in connection with Cuba, but I don't remember who... for J.C King, but I don't remember why, at this point. It wasn't anything of any significance. My feeling with Pawley... he was such a hawk, and he was every second week... he wanted to kill somebody inside... . It was from my standpoint - we were trying to keep him from doing things to cause problems for us. This was almost a standing operation. Jack Pfeiffer: This is what I was wondering, because Tracy Barnes, I know on a number of occasions, seemed to make it quite clear that what the Agency had to be careful of was getting hung with a reactionary label, and then at the same time that was going on, here is all of this conversation back and forth with Pawley and his visits... Jake Esterline: Really to keep him from doing something to upset the applecart from our standpoint. In that sense, I did fill that role in part for a long time; and the net result of the thing is that Bill thinks I am a dangerous leftist today. If I hadn't been a foot dragger, or hadn't taken all these dissenting opinions of this, things in Cuba would have been a lot better. Jack Pfeiffer: Was Pawley actually involved in the covert operation in Guatemala? Jake Esterline: Yes, he, well I am sure he was, in a... Jack Pfeiffer: I mean, with you as far as you... Jake Esterline: Not I personally, but he was involved with State Department. I said Rubottom a couple of times, I didn't mean Rubottom, I meant Rusk. He was involved - especially in Guatemala with Rubottom or whoever Secretary of State was, and Seville Sacassaa and Somoza and whoever Secretary of Defense was in getting the planes from the Defense Dept., having them painted over, the decals painted over and flown to Nicaragua where they became the Defense force for that operation. Jack Pfeiffer: I ran across some comment that he had made to Livingston Merchant. Jake Esterline: They were good friends, and knew each other. But to my knowledge, he never had any involvement like that during the Bay of Pigs days, although you'd have to ask Ted Shackley about what they did later, because I think he ran some things into Cuba for Ted Shackley. Jack Pfeiffer: That is beyond my period of interest. He was involved in a great amount of fund raising activity, in the New York area apparently - pushing or raising funds in the New York area - wasn't Droller involved in this too? What was your relation with Droller... were you directing Droller's activities, or was Dave Phillips running Droller... Jake Esterline: Oh, I sort of ran Droller, except I never knew what Tracy Barnes was going to do next, when I turned my back. Droller was such.an ambitious fellow trying to run in... trying to run circles around everybody for his own aggrandizement that you never knew... but Droller would never have had any continuing contact with Pawley, because they had met only once, and I recall Pawley saying that he never wanted to talk to that "you know what" again. He was very unhappy that somebody like Gerry... he just didn't like Gerry's looks, he didn't like his accent. He was very unfair about Gerry, and I don't mean to be unfair about Gerry - the only thing is that Gerry was insanely ambitious. He was his own worst enemy, that was all.... We just didn't think that Tracy really understood it that well, or if Tracy did, he coudn't articulate... he wouldn't articulate it that well. Tracy was one of the sweetest guys that ever lived, but he coudn't ever draw a straight line between two points.... Jack Pfeiffer: What about JFK? Jake Esterline: JFK was an uninitiated fellow who had been in the wars, but he hadn't been exposed to any world politics or crises yet if he had something else as a warm up, he might have made different decisions than he made at that time. I think he was kind of a victim of the thing. I blame Nixon far more than I do Kennedy for the equivocations and the loss of time and what not that led to the ultimate disaster. Goodwin, I just thought was a sleazy; little self-seeker, who I didn't feel safe with any secret. His consorting with Che Guevara in Montevideo had rather upset me at the time... Jack Pfeiffer: How about McNamara did you get involved with him at all? Jake Esterline: No. Jack Pfeiffer: Bobby Kennedy? Jake Esterline: I wouldn't even tell you off tape. I didn't like him. He's dead, God rest his soul.

I thought this deserved its own thread.

My brother has done a fair bit of research into the families of our parents: Simkin/Hughes. In both cases they have been locked into the working class. In some cases they moved from unskilled to semi-skilled. By the time I was born my father was an unskilled factory worker (my mother stopped work once the children were born but had been a semi-skilled factory worker). Both my parents had shown promise at school but had been forced to leave at 14 (their families needed their wages). We were all educated at a secondary school on a council estate. My sister and I at 15 and my younger brother at 16. We all did working class jobs but all returned to education and eventually got degrees and middle-class jobs – two teachers and a social worker. The reason for this is the expansion of the economy in the 1960s and early 1970s. This meant they needed to recruit people from the working-classes to do middle class jobs. This was a time of high social mobility. This is not true today. The three of us had four children between us. They have all received a middle-class upbringing. Two went to university and obtained middle class jobs. The other two did badly at school and have struggled to achieve this. Class mobility is clearly closely linked to education and the needs of the economy.