John Simkin

England won the 1966 World Cup thanks to three players from West Ham's Academy (Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst). Will the same thing happen in 2006 (Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand)?

Surely this is more to do with what he can afford? This is not the case. Pardew had £7.25m to spend on a striker in January. He used it to spend it on an Englishman, Dean Ashton. He joined three other English strikers he had bought for the club: Marlon Harewood, Bobby Zamora and Teddy Sheringham. Several seasons ago Ipswich finished 6th in the year it was promoted to the premiership. It was mainly done from players who had graduated from its academy and a few shrewd buys by George Burley from the lower divisions. Ipswich used the money from its 6th place to buy several foreign players. Their high wages caused disunity in the camp and Ipswich were relegated the following season. It is worth looking at the recently published Actim Index - English football's official player rating system and statistical guide. The Actim Index was first introduced for the 2004-05 season and was devised by statisticians at the University of Salford in partnership with PA Sport. The calculations are based on the four key factors that contribute to a player's effectiveness and his ability to help his team win matches. The ratings are used to create rankings such as the top 100 Premiership players, the top five goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards, plus the current team of the week and team of the season - categories which all heavily feature West Ham United players. In fact, the current Team of the Season includes no fewer than three Hammers - Anton Ferdinand, Matthew Etherington and Marlon Harewood, making Alan Pardew's men the second most represented Club in the chosen 11 - with Chelsea's Petr Cech, John Terry, William Gallas, Joe Cole and Frank Lampard unsurprisingly dominating the line-up. The remaining three places are taken up by Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand and Ruud Van Nistelrooy, while Steven Gerrard is Liverpool's sole inclusion. It should be noted that four of the team actually come from West Ham's academy (Cole, Lampard and the two Ferdinands) and two more are Englishman from the current West Ham team. England won the 1966 World Cup thanks to three players from West Ham's Academy (Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst). Will the same thing happen in 2006 (Joe Cole, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand)?

The election of Dwight Eisenhower seems to have been crucial in this. Up until then, the Truman administration had been trying to control the covert activities of the CIA. Eisenhower immediately gave the go-ahead for the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Guatemala. As David Atlee Phillips pointed out in his autobiography, Eisenhower was tremendously impressed by the way the CIA got away with their illegal activities in Guatemala (mainly because of Operation Mockingbird). Understandably, Eisenhower, made no more attempts to restrain the CIA’s covert operations and appears he have given his approval for the overthrow of Castro. JFK was briefed by Richard Bissell before he was elected to power about these attempts to overthow Castro (Nixon was furious and believed from then on that the CIA were pro-Democrat). JFK told Bissell that he approved this strategy and made speeches during the campaign attacking Eisenhower and Nixon for not doing more to bring down Castro. However, once in power, JFK was much more cautious than Eisenhower. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he attempted to control the CIA (he even considered making Robert Kennedy director of the CIA). However, he was persuaded to appoint John McCone as director. This was a strange choice as McCone was a key figure in the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex. It is at this point that Kennedy lost full control over the CIA.

John -There are now 2 cross threads relating to Piper and his book, wouldn't it be better to combine them into one? Tim already directed a question to him on the other thread. You could move the old thread over here to the books section. You could then edit your first post of the old thread to add a link to a new post on page 13 where you ask him the question above. IMO that would be the best solution. Len This is part of the book section where authors defend their writings. The other thread, taken over by Tim Gratz and now appears to be about his views on Michael Collins Piper's political opinions and judgements on the Second World War.

The idea that Holocaust deniers are worse than the people who allowed it to happen is completely bizarre. Six million plus people died as a result of the Holocaust. Those who denied it happened are just plan daft. It is only when they begin organizing behind a war criminal like George Bush do they become a problem. Some people, myself included, see George Bush and his Neo Cons as the new fascists. They definitely pose a serious threat to world peace. They are also motivated by a desire to make war profits (see the outrageous contract that Bush has given Halliburton). I will allow Michael Collins Piper to answer these questions. However, I have got a few for you. (1) Did you approve of the CIA plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954. (2) Did you support the creation of a blacklist in the 1950s that stopped people with left-wing opinions from working in the media? (3) Did you approve of the American invasion of Vietnam? (4) Did you approve of the CIA plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973? (5) Did you support Reagan’s decision to fund the Contras in Nicaragua by illegal arms sales to Iran? (6) Did you support Reagan’s funding of death squads in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s? (7) Did you support the illegal invasion of Iraq? (8) Do you support the illegal occupation of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? (9) Do you agree with holding people in prison without without access to any court, legal counsel or family visits? Do you agree with them being tortured? http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng

Nathaniel, are you referring to this passage? The accusation that Corcoran was involved in corrupting political leaders had not gone away. In 1950 a committee headed by Frank M. Buchanan, began investigating lobbying activities. Buchanan reported that “In the 1870’s and 1880’s, lobbying meant direct, individual solicitation of legislators, with a strong presumption of corruption attached.” (1) According to Buchanan, the “business of influencing legislation is a billion dollar business.” However, he added that lobbying had undergone a transformation that made it very difficult to show that corruption had taken place. (2) The point Buchanan is making is that in the early days lobbyists would hand money directly to the politicians. It would seem that very little attempt was made to disguise this type of corruption. For example, the large payments of money paid by Brown & Root to LBJ during the 1930s. It was Tommy Corcoran’s idea that Lady Bird Johnson should buy KTBC. Companies paid LBJ for government contracts by buying advertising on his radio/television station. This is why Don Reynolds testimony to the Senate Rules Committee was so important. He explained how the system worked. LBJ sometimes got lazy and used people like Walter Jenkins, Cliff Carter and Bobby Baker to transfer cash. I suspect Baker leaked information like this to people like Reynolds in order to blackmail LBJ into covering up his own illegal activities. For example, the Serv-U Corporation scam that LBJ does not appear to have been involved in. If done in the right way, it is very difficult to prove corruption. Here are two examples. When Tony Blair announced he was going to run as leader of the Labour Party he was given £7 million by a group of Jewish businessmen led by a man called Michael Levy. The money was for him to run his campaign. In the UK politicians don’t need such large sums to campaign within the party. Levy also agreed to become the Labour Party’s main fundraiser after Blair was elected. It is therefore no surprise that Blair has followed such a pro-Israel foreign policy. Just before the 1997 election, Blair had a meeting with Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the right-wing newspaper, The Sun. This newspaper has the largest circulation in the UK and has been blamed for keeping Labour out of power since 1979. However, surprisingly, The Sun supported Labour in the 1997 election. Soon afterwards, Blair signed a book contract with HarperCollins for £3.5 million (this was only revealed when he used this contract as security when he purchased a large house in London). HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Of course the company will never make those sorts of profits from Blair’s autobiography. It is in fact a bribe. Similar contracts were given by HarperCollins to Margaret Thatcher and John Major. It is therefore no surprise that Blair has moved his party sharply to the right. In fact, the policies are no different from those followed by the Conservative Party under Thatcher and Major. Gordon Brown, the man who will replace Blair, has done a similar deal with Murdoch. Just wait for the smear stories to appear against anyone who stands against Brown for the leadership. This sort of corruption is of course impossible to prove in a court of law (it is no coincidence that so many of our leading politicians are former lawyers).

Could you describe the key pieces of evidence that makes you believe that Israel was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

You are right about this. I have changed the title to "Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Complex".

Carl T. Curtis from Nebraska was a member of the Senate Rules Committee that investigated the activities of Bobby Baker. In his autobiography, Forty Years Against the Tide (1986), Curtis gives an insider view of what happened. I have never seen it quoted in any book on the assassination. I therefore thought it might be worth posting some long extracts from the book. The Ascendancy of the Contact-Man (244-248) When Bobby Baker began as a page in 1943, his salary was $1,460 a year. Yet he soon became a wealthy man. The minority report of the committee that investigated his activities (filed on July 8, 1964) had this to say about Baker's amassing of wealth: "According to financial statements submitted by Baker, he had a net worth of $11,025 as of May 3, 1954. As of February 1, 1963, Baker claimed a net worth of $2,166,886. It is agreed, however, that this latter figure carried errors and exaggerations. After the known errors are taken into account, Baker's claimed net worth would be $1,664, 287. However, it may well be contended that Baker over-valued his Serv-U Corporation stock, with its very lucrative contracts in plants having huge government defense contracts, as well as his stock in the Mecklenburg enterprises and his land near Silver Springs, Maryland. If these assets are carried at their actual cost, Baker still would have a net worth of $447,849. It is obvious that these three assets were very valuable and their value had increased considerably over Baker's initial investment." The Committee's records show that between January, 1959, and November, 1963, Baker and his associates had borrowed $2,784,338 from lending institutions. These loans had come from twenty-four banks and other lending institutions. The Committee's investigator also reported that Baker's share in approximately six different loans was $1,704,538. All the time that Baker was making himself a man of wealth, he continued to serve as a most important and influential employee of the United States Senate. Fred B. Black, Jr., a management consultant whose clients included North American Aviation and Melpar, Inc., and who was associated with Baker in several business ventures, said that the late Senator Robert S. Kerr, of Oklahoma, had told him that outside of his sons and his wife, he never knew and loved a person so much as he did Bobby Baker; that there was nothing Kerr would not do for Baker if he would ask him. Later Black said that he and Baker and the Serv-U Corporation had borrowed over half a million dollars from Kerr's Oklahoma City Bank. Baker's operations became a subject of some discussion, raising questions in the minds of several senators and Senate employees. Eventually, on September 9, 1963, a law-suit was filed by Ralph L. Hill, president of the Capitol Vending Company, which alleged wrongdoing and the use of governmental influence in Baker's business dealings. In his suit, Hill alleged that Baker had employed political influence to obtain contracts in defense plants for his own vending-machine firm, called Serv-U Corporation. Hill also charged that Baker had accepted $5,600 for securing a vending-machine franchise for Capitol Vending with Melpar, Inc., a defense plant in Virginia. Hill stated that after Capitol had secured the contract with Melpar, Baker had tried to persuade Capitol Vending to sell out to the Serv-U Corporation; and that when Capitol refused to sell its stock to Serv-U, Baker had conspired maliciously to interfere with Capitol's contract with Melpar. The suit contended that Baker had told Fred B. Black, Jr., that he, Baker, was in a position to help obtain contracts with the government. Hill said that in return, North American (to which Black was a consultant) entered into an agreement to permit Serv-U to install vending machines in its Californian plants. The filing of this suit brought to light many unpleasant facts, reflecting not only on Bobby Baker but on those men about him and on the Senate generally. At this point, Senator John Williams, of Delaware, began to take an active part. Williams was a man beyond reproach, sincere and intelligent and dedicated. During his service in the Senate he was rightly referred to as "the conscience of the Senate." He was an expert investigator, tenacious and courageous. Senator Williams became the prime mover in bringing about the investigation of Baker. On October 3, 1963, Williams went to Senator Mike Mansfield, the majority leader, and to Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, the minority leader, and arranged for them to call Baker before the leadership at a closed meeting on October 8. It was Senator Williams' plan to confront Baker with questions about his activities. Bobby Baker never appeared before the Senate's leadership: the day before his scheduled appearance he resigned his post with its salary of $19,600. Senator Mansfield, announcing Bobby Baker's resignation, said that "Baker has discharged his official duties for eight years with great intelligence and understanding. His great ability and his dedication to the Majority and to the Senate will be missed." Developments during recent weeks, however, Senator Mansfield continued, had made it apparent that it would be best if Baker withdrew from office. "I deeply regret the necessity for his resignation and the necessity for its acceptance." Senator Williams introduced a resolution calling upon the Committee on Rules and Administration to conduct an investigation of the financial and business interests and possible improprieties of any Senate employee or former employee. On October 10, 1963, the Senate adopted this resolution by voice vote. The Committee on Rules and Administration was made up of nine members, six Democrats and three Republicans. The Committee's chairman was B. Everett Jordan, Democrat, of North Carolina. The other Democratic members were Carl Hayden, of Arizona; Claiborne Pell, of Rhode Island; Joseph Clark, of Pennsylvania; Howard W. Cannon, of Nevada; and Robert C. Byrd, of West Virginia. The Republican members were John Sherman Cooper, of Kentucky; Hugh Scott, of Pennsylvania; and Carl T. Curtis. This Committee held its first meeting for the Baker investigation on October 29. Senator Williams, testifying in closed session, recommended that the Committee investigate the FBI files of a deported East German woman, a Mrs. Ellen Rometsch (otherwise known as Elli Rometsch), who had been identified in news stories as a "party girl" associating with lobbyists and members of Congress. He urged also that the Committee look into Baker's transactions with the Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation; into the large sums of cash given by Bobby Baker to Mrs. Gertrude Novak, wife of a business partner of Baker; into the vending contract referred to in Hill's suit against Baker. Additionally, Williams recommended that the Committee investigate circumstances surrounding the rapid growth of the Serv-U Corporation, Baker's company; charges against Baker with reference to irregularities connected with the Senate payroll of pages and other employees working under Baker; Baker's brokerage-fee from the Haitian-American Meat Provision Company. The Committee should look into the transactions between Baker and Don Reynolds connected with Reynolds' selling of insurance to Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Williams continued. The Committee should check the performance-bond for the building of the stadium at Washington. Having heard Senator Williams, the three Republicans on the Committee requested that the Committee hire outside counsel to conduct the investigation. This move was opposed by the six Democrats on the Committee. Chairman Jordan, presently yielding to public pressure, announced on November 13 that L. F. McLendon, a lawyer from Jordan's home state of North Carolina, was appointed outside counsel. The Committee on Rules and Administration needed to agree on some procedures. In this the Committee received considerable help from the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Government Operations Committee, headed by Senator John McClellan, of Arkansas. McClellan had followed a procedure of first calling a witness-particularly a controversial witnessin a closed session of the Committee, to inform the Committee what to expect and how to frame their questions. Later the witness would be called in public session. In the investigation of Baker, this rule was not followed, as we shall see later in this account of the great cover-up. Bobby Baker was a highly successful contact-man. During and after the Second World War, on either side of the Atlantic, the contact-man loomed large. Contact-men existed primarily to obtain for their clients and themselves some share of the vast pool of riches in the possession of swollen centralized political bureaucracies. The more impressive a contact-man's political connections, the better he and his clients would fare. Professor W. L. Burn, in England, well described this international phenomenon: "One may imagine the stage festooned with forms, applications for licenses, refusals of licenses, checks that failed to command confidence and agreements that failed to produce the desired result. Music is supplied by the ringing of the telephone, the prelude to ambiguous and improbable conversations; and through the half-lit jungle, from public dinner to government department, from government department to sherry party, glides the contact-man, at once the product and the safety-valve of this grotesque civilization." In Washington, Bobby Baker had become a principal actor in such tragi-comic dramas. Johnson, Baker, Jenkins (pages 249-254) Baker was called as a witness early in the investigation, appearing both in a closed session and in a public session. He had received a subpoena directing him to appear and to produce certain documents. Senator Curtis requested him to submit the required records. Baker refused. The following extracts from the Committee's hearings may suffice to suggest Baker's response. (It should be remembered in this connection that a witness's refusal to answer on the ground that he might incriminate himself raises a legitimate presumption that indeed the witness has committed some act which might subject him to a criminal prosecution.) Replying to Senator Curtis, Baker refused to produce the desired records. He declared that he had so informed the committee earlier, and therefore should not have been called back to repeat his position. "Today's proceedings are an unconstitutional invasion by the legislative branch into the proper function of the judiciary," Baker argued. "I do not intend to participate as a defendant witness in a legislative trial of myself, when my counsel has no right to cross-examine my accusers, or summon witnesses in my defense, and when the testimony has been taken both in secret and in the open." Baker continued that the records were not "pertinent to any bona fide legislative purpose." A case pending in the U. S. District Court of the District of Columbia, he mentioned, in volved some of the documents called for. "I am presently being investigated by two agencies of the executive branch, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. To force production of these records against this background would be to do indirectly for these agencies what they cannot lawfully do direct. " Moreover, his "privacy of communication" had been invaded by government personnel, so he was refusing to provide any additional information to government agents. Baker concluded by invoking "the protection of the first, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth amendments of the Constitution, and I specifically invoke the privilege against selfincrimination." So it went through the questioning of Bobby Baker. Altogether, he "took the Fifth" in response to a hundred and twenty questions. Senator Curtis asked him, "Will you advise the committee whether or not you acquired the cash referred to by Mrs. Novak in the course of your duties as secretary to the Majority of the U. S. Senate?" Baker "stood on his previous answer" that is, refused to answer the question. Later, Curtis inquired, "Mr. Baker, a previous witness, Mr. Hill, testified under oath that he paid to you the sum of $250 for a number of months for the purpose of securing and keeping a contract which his company, the Capitol Vending Company, had with a government-contracting defense plant. Will you advise us whether or not Mr. Hill's testimony is true?" Baker refused. Still later, Curtis told him: "Now, Mr. Baker, I hope that you will consider this question carefully, and the rights of all people involved. The witness, Mr. Don Reynolds, has testified that he gave to one Lyndon Johnson a hi-fi set costing something over five hundred dollars. Statements have been made elsewhere that you were the giver of the gift. Will you tell this committee whether or not you made that gift?" Baker refused. Then came a related key question from Senator Curtis: "Mr. Baker - Mr. Reynolds, while under oath, testified before this committee concerning this hi-fi gift. He produced certain canceled checks and invoices. He also testified that he purchased $1,200 worth of television time on a TV station in A-astin, Texas. My question is: did you have any part in that transaction?" Baker refused to answer that question, too, and many more. It became clear in the course of the investigation that Baker's secretary, Nancy Carole Tyler, had assisted Baker in business transactions handled in his office and during his travels; and that she had handled funds involved in these transactions. Subpoenaed, Tyler was asked by McLendon, the Committee's counsel, certain important questions. Counsel inquired about trips made by Baker to Los Angeles in connection with the business of the Serv-U Corporation; and when Tyler had resigned her position with Baker, secretary to the majority. Tyler refused to answer on the ground that she might incriminate herself. The Committee learned no more from Carole Tyler; before the investigation ended, Tyler died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously in an airplane crash on the beach near the Carousel Motel, owned by Bobby Baker. The key witness in the investigation was Don Reynolds, an insurance agent in the Washington area. He and Baker had been friends, and Baker was an officer in Don Reynolds, Inc., although Baker had not supplied any money for the forming ot that company. Reynolds had been associated in, or was familiar with, many of Bobby Baker's transactions that were under investigation. After consulting with his wife and with Senator Williams, Reynolds decided to testify in full, under oath, whenever called upon by the Committee. Reynolds said that he had sold insurance on the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars; and that he had to make a "kickback" on the premium he received. The transaction with Johnson had been conducted through Walter Jenkins, a close aide to Johnson. (Jenkins later was disgraced by his arrest for soliciting homosexual acts in the men's room at the YMCA, late in 1964.) Baker had arranged Reynolds' appointment with Jenkins. Facing competition, Reynolds had bought $1,208 in advertising on Johnson's television station in Austin; Reynolds had re-sold this advertising contract, losing $1,100 on the deal. (This "kickback" arrangement had occurred while Lyndon Johnson still was senator from Texas.) "Why did you purchase the television time?" Senator Curtis asked. Mr. Reynolds: "Mr. Jenkins, in his discussion with me, showed me a letter from Mr. Huff Baines, indicating that if he had the privilege of writing. . .that he would purchase so much advertising time on the local- station, KTBC." Under more questioning from Curtis, it turned out that Station KTBC, in Austin, was owned by the LBJ Company. Reynolds went on: "And I told him that although I might not be able to do the same as far as dollar volume, that I would do the best I could, consistent with the fact that the contract I had offered him was the most favorable, if you exclude any question of advertising, sir." Curtis proceeded to obtain from Reynolds the testimony that Walter Jenkins had informed him he was expected to buy advertising from Lyndon Johnson's television station if he wanted the insurance contract. He had sold the contracted advertising time to Albert G. Young, president of Mid-Atlantic Stainless Steel, "because I saw no use whatsoever for Don Reynolds, who was unknown in Texas, sir, to get people to listen to something they had no interest in, nor could they." Walter Jenkins had confirmed this deal by telephone to Young, whose firm sold pots and pans. After Jenkins had called him, Young went to Austin and utilized the advertising facilities of KTBC; this was corroborated by Young's canceled checks, invoices, and correspondence, shown to the Committee. This testimony obviously alarmed the majority members of the Committee and the Committee's counsel. At the time of this investigation, Lyndon Baines Johnson was President of the United States; Walter Jenkins was one of the President's aides in the White House, handling much of Johnson's private business. Lyndon Baines Johnson had entered Congress a man of very modest means; but by the time he assumed the presidency, he was a very rich man. A principal source of Johnson's wealth appeared to be the television station he had acquired in Austin. KTCB was the only television station licensed in Austin; and every other city in the United States, the size of Austin, had at least two television stations. Such licenses were issued by the Federal Communications Commission, upon which political influence might be exercised by persons in power not overly scrupulous. How had Johnson and his family obtained a monopoly of Austin television? To what additional awkward testimony about KTCB might the statements of Reynolds and Young lead if this subject should be pursued? Therefore, in an effort to prevent Walter Jenkins - former Senate employee, now a White House aide-from being called before the Committee to give sworn testimony, Counsel McLendon had Jenkins sign an affidavit: an affidavit unique in that Jenkins swore to the truth of a memorandum which was written by the Committee's chief counsel and chief investigator. This curious memorandum, referring to Jenkins, stated, "Nor does he have any knowledge of any arrangements by which Reynolds purchased advertising time on the TV station. " Unimpressed by this remarkable document, Senator Curtis further questioned Reynolds. "Well, then," he asked the witness, "do you agree or disagree with this statement of Jenkins that Mr. McLendon, our counsel, has put in the record, as a statement, not of oral testimony but sworn to before a notary public: `Nor does he have any knowledge of any arrangements by which Reynolds purchased advertising time on the TV station.' You would disagree with that?" Reynolds disagreed completely with the statement. In further testimony, it was learned that Huff Baines, of Austin, Reynolds' alleged competitor for the sale of insurance to Lyndon Baines Johnson, was a cousin of Johnson, and had sold a number of policies on the lives of people connected with the LBJ Company. Even though Reynolds had offered a better insurance contract than Baines had, it appeared, he had been required to provide advertising revenue to the Johnson station and the gift of a high-fidelity set as sweeteners, lest the contract be awarded to kinsman Baines. And Baker had made the deal. Throughout these hearings, the Republican members of the Committee-Cooper, Scott, and Curtis-repeatedly endeavored to have Walter Jenkins called as a witness. Jenkins had been employed by Johnson for years. It was well established that he had handled many of Johnson's business concerns. The information given to the Committee by Reynolds clearly conflicted with the memorandum to which Jenkins had subscribed. This could be resolved only by calling Jenkins as a witness. On March 23, 1964, occurred a roll call on the question of calling Jenkins; the vote went along party lines. Why did these six prominent Democratic senators, several of them leaders of their party, vote against hearing and cross-examining Jenkins? After all, this elusive Jenkins had been an employee of the Senate; he enjoyed no senatorial immunity, nor was he the beneficiary of the usual "senatorial courtesy" tradition. The determined and successful fight by the Committee's majority to prevent the receiving of Jenkins' testimony may have been waged not to protect Walter Jenkins or Bobby Baker, but rather Jenkins ' principal - Lyndon B. Johnson. The purchase of time on the LBJ broadcasting station was not the only kickback required of Don Reynolds for selling insurance on Lyndon Johnson, for Reynolds was requested to provide a hi-fi set for Senator Johnson. Reynolds, questioned by McLendon, stated that he had bought a Magnavox stereo set, costing him $584.75, and installed it in Senator Johnson's Washington residence (also paying for the installation) in 1959. But Mrs. Johnson had found the set unsatisfactory: it did not fit the space for which she had intended it. In response to questioning from two Democratic senators, Reynolds made it clear that Bobby Baker had told him to give the set to Senator Johnson, and that Johnson knew Reynolds to be the donor. At a news conference, Johnson had told a reporter that the set was a gift from Bobby Baker. There were two witnesses who might clear up the questions as to whether the set was given by Baker or whether it was an obligation put upon Reynolds for his opportunity to sell life insurance to Johnson. Those two witnesses were Baker and Jenkins. Baker took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify on the ground that he might be incriminated. Walter Jenkins, protected by the Committee's majority, was not called to testify. Later that year, in the closing days of the JohnsonGoldwater race for the presidency, television technicians in Los Angeles wore a large round button, on which was inscribed the legend, "Johnson, Baker, Jenkins. The family that plays together stays together. "

I thought members might like to see this FBI memo from A. Rosen to Alan Belmont on 28th August, 1964. At the request of J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel, President's Commission, Mr. Sebastian F. Latona, Latent Fingerprint Section, Identification Division, and A Malley met with Mr. Rankin, Mr. James Wesley Lieyeler and Mr Burt Griffin at the Commission office today. Mr. Rankin advised that the members of the President's Commission were rather anxious to try to resolve a question that existed relative to the palm prints and latent fingerprints that had been developed on four cartons that were located on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building in the area of the window from which it is believed Oswald shot President Kennedy. Mr. Rankin advised that the Commission had received a number of pieces of correspondence concerning this matter wherein it was set forth that Oswald's prints had been found among the latent fingerprints and palm prints located on the cartons but they were concerned over the identity of the latent prints which had not been identified. He commented that the Bureau had obtained prints for elimination purposes from the employees of the Texas School Book Depository Building which Mr. Truly, the manager, believed might logically have a reason to have been in the area of these boxes. Mr. Rankin commented that Truly had strenuously objected to all of his personnel being printed at that time due to the loss of work being sustained by his company. Mr. Rankin stated that the situation now exists where the Commission has not resolved the identity of these prints and it leaves room for the allegation and speculation that Oswald had a co-conspirator in killing President Kennedy. For this reason Mr. Rankin desired the Bureau to attempt to resolve this issue by whatever additional investigation that might be necessary, fully realizing the scope of the investigation that might be necessary. Mr. Rankin stated that he would appreciate the Bureau's making an effort to obtain Mr. Truly's permission to print all of the employees, of his company for elimination purposes. He advised that in the event there were any objections on Mr. Truly's part he would appreciate being told so that either he, Mr Rankin, or Chief Justice Warren could contact Mr. Truly to advise him of the importance of this matter to the Commission in order to obtain his full cooperation. A detailed letter is being prepared by Mr. Rankin's office outlining the investigation that is desired and will be sent to the Bureau as soon as it is ready. In the meantime, the Dallas Office has been filled in concerning the request of the President's Commission in order that they could get started on this rather large request for additional investigation. In addition to the foregoing, Mr. Rankin requested relative to the latent fingerprint and palm print impressions that a chart be made visually demonstrating the location of the latent fingerprints and palm prints developed on the four cartons. He stated that he would appreciate it if this chart would show the latent finger and palm prints that actually belonged to Oswald as well as the other impressions that were developed and remain unidentified. He stated he would appreciate these being numbered in such a manner that it would be easy for the Commission members or anyone else reviewing this matter at a subsequent date to follow the complete picture relating to these latent prints. Mr. Latona is proceeding with the preparation cf the chart as requested. Request for Additional Data Re Palm Print on Barrel of Assassination Rifle Mr. Rankin advised several questioris had been raised relative to the palm print found on the barrel of the assassination rifle located on the portion of the barrel which was attached to the wooden foregrip of the rifle. Mr. Rankin stated as he understood the matter the palm print located on the rifle barrel had been located by Lieutenant Day of the Dallas Police Department and had been lifted from the rifle by Lieutenant Day. He noted that the Dallas Police Department made no mention of this latent palm print for a number of days following the assassination. He commented that on November 23, the day following the assassination, Chief of Police Curry, when questioned by news media, answered that fingerprints had been found and when asked further questions about identification stated the rifle had been forwarded to the FBI Laboratory. On Sunday, November 24, District Attorney Henry Wade, when questioned before news media, made the statement that a palm print had been found. Mr. Rankin states that based on the information made available to the Commission the existence of this palm print was not volunteered to the Bureau until a specific request was made of the Dallas Police Department. Mr. Rankin further advised that when Lieutenant Day testified before the President's Commission he stated on finding the print he considered photographing it and had intended to do so and then lifted the latent palm impression. The Commission testimony does not show whether Lieutenant Day did or did not photograph the palm impression that he located prior to lifting the palm print impression. In view of the foregoing, Mr. Rankin desired that Lieutenant Day of the Dallas Police Department be contacted to ascertain from him whether or not he did or did not make photographs of the latent palm impression that he found on the rifle barrel and if he did, in fact, make photographs to obtain such photographs and make them available to the President's Commission. Mr. Rankin advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent palin impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source and that for this reason this matter needs to be resolved. During this discussion about the location of this latent palm impression there was considerable conversation about the use of fingerprint dusting powder, the procedure used by Mr. Latona in his examination of the rifle, and Mr. Rankin requested that an examination be made even at this late date to determine if any trace of a dusting powder other than that used by Mr. Latona could be located on the wooden foregrip of the assassination rifle. The Laboratory has been advised and is handling the requested examination.

It seems to me that it would benefit the bid to make most of our research available in several different languages. I propose that the country overviews and the case-studies should be made available in the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish and Hungarian. This will cost a considerable amount of money. However, I believe it can be done by cutting other areas of the budget. For example, the number of meetings we hold and the number of outside experts we employ. However, all this will be academic unless we find another teacher training institution. I have still to hear from Pedro’s contact.

Benayoun of course comes from Israel. With relatives from the East End of London he has been a long-term supporter of West Ham. I am afraid I cannot say the same for Scaloni. Our first choice was the West Ham supporting Liam Rosenior (his father, Leroy Rosenior, is a former West Ham player). Fulham would not let him go so we will have to wait until the end of the season.

I have no time for people who deny the Holocaust. However, their crime needs to be seen in perspective. Who is worst, the people who denied it happened, or the people who allowed it to happen? What about those British and American politicians who denied Jews entry when they tried to flee from Nazi Germany? What about those British and American military commanders who refused to bomb the transport links to the concentration camps? My least favourite historian, David Irving, aged 67, has been held in an Austrian prison since 17th November, 2005, because he said in 2000 that there had been no gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp. Yet this is a country that elected a former Nazi to become its president.

Part 2 Some politicians believed that the end of the war would result in a decline in government spending on armaments. The same feeling existed at the end of the Korean War. This was openly admitted by the president of Standard Oil of California, who declared in 1953: "Two kinds of peace can be envisaged. One would enable the United States to continue its rearmament and to maintain important military forces in the Far East; it would have very little effect on industry, since the maintenance of a peace-time army requires almost as much oil as in time of war. But if there should be a great improvement in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in particular a disarmament agreement, the blow to the oil industry and the rest of the economy would be terrific." I t was therefore important to the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC) that the fear of communism remained intense. This strategy was highly successful and the 1950s saw a dramatic increase in defence spending. “In 1950 the military budget was $13 billion; by 1961, this had risen to $47 billion.” (11) The MICC was more important than ever. The easiest people to identify as members of the MICC are those businessmen who ran and owned the large corporations that owed their wealth to lucrative government contracts. A study of these contracts issued between 1940 and 1960 enables the identification of such people as John McCone, Henry J. Kaiser, Herman Brown, George R. Brown, Frank Pace, Steve Bechtel, Lawrence Bell and Howard Hughes. The 1960 military budget included $21 billion for the purchase of goods. Over 75% of these contracts went to a small group of large corporations. Eighty-six percent of these defense contracts were not awarded on bids. These large corporations relied heavily on a small group of lobbyists (sometimes called contact-men). These men provided the link between these businessmen and the politicians with the power to grant and approve government contracts. Important lobbyists working in this field included Tommy Corcoran, Irving Davidson, Alan Wirtz, William Pawley, Clark Clifford, Bobby Baker and Fred Black. In his speech, Dwight Eisenhower talked about this “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry”. (12) He clearly has in mind those leading military figures who were campaigning for higher levels of defence spending.” However, as William Proxmire pointed out in a speech in 1969, retired military officers played an important role in the MICC. (13) He discovered that 2,072 retired military officers were employed by the 100 contractors who replied to his survey. This was an average of almost 22 per company. However, when he considered the ten most successful contracting companies, this increased to an average of 106. This included Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (210), Boeing Corporation (169), McDonnell Douglas Corporation (141), General Dynamics (113), North American Rockwell Corporation (104), General Electrics Company (89), Ling Temco Vought Incorporated (69), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (59), TRW Incorporated (56) and Hughes Aircraft Company (55). William Proxmire also attempted to identify the politicians who were members of the MICC. In his book, “Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex”, Proxmire, identified the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Brevard Russell from Georgia, as a key figure in the MICC. He had previously been chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee. According to Proxmire it was while Russell held this position “that the huge C-5A contract went to Lockheed’s Marietta, Georgia, plant.” The Air Force Contract Selection Board originally selected Boeing that was located in the states of Washington and Kansas. However, Proxmire claimed that Russell was able to persuade the board to change its mind and give the C-5A contract to Lockhead. Proxmire quotes Howard Atherton, the mayor of Marietta, as saying that “Russell was key to landing the contract”. Atherton added that Russell believed that Robert McNamara was going ahead with the C-5A in order to “give the plane to Boeing because Boeing got left out on the TFX fighter.” According to Atherton, Russell got the contract after talking to Lyndon Johnson. Atherton added, “without Russell, we wouldn’t have gotten the contract”. (14) Lyndon Johnson was indeed the most important member of the MICC in Congress during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. As Majority Party leader, Johnson decided the membership of the various Congressional committees. Johnson was therefore the key figure in the MICC. As Atherton pointed out, Boeing was expected to get the TFX contract. Instead it went to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas, Johnson’s home state. A study of the TFX contract reveals the way that the MICC worked. In the 1950s General Dynamics was America’s leading military contractors. For example, in 1958 it obtained $2,239,000,000 worth of government business. This was a higher figure than those obtained by its competitors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell and North American. (15) More than 80 percent of the firm’s business came from the government. (16) However, the company lost $27 million in 1960 and $143 million in 1961. According to an article by Richard Austin Smith in Fortune Magazine, General Dynamics was close to bankruptcy. Smith claimed that “unless it gets the contract for the joint Navy-Air Force fighter (TFX)… the company was down the road to receivership”. (17) General Dynamics was in a good position to get the TFX (F-111) contract. The president of the company was Frank Pace, the Secretary of the Army (April, 1950-January, 1953). The Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1962 was Roswell Gilpatric, who before he took up the post, was chief counsel for General Dynamics. The Secretary of the Navy in 1962 was Fred Korth. He had been appointed by John F. Kennedy after strong lobbying by his vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Korth from Fort Worth, Texas, was the former president of the Continental Bank, which had loaned General Dynamics considerable sums of money during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Korth told the McClellan committee that investigated the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics “that because of his peculiar position he had deliberately refrained from taking a directing hand in this decision (within the Navy) until the last possible moment.” (18). As I. F. Stone pointed out, it was “the last possible moment” which counted. “Three times the Pentagon’s Source Selection Board found that Boeing’s bid was better and cheaper than that of General Dynamics and three times the bids were sent back for fresh submissions by the two bidders and fresh reviews. On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable.” (19) Stone goes on to argue: “The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force.” Later, McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because “Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics.” (20) During the McClellan committee hearings, Senator Sam Ervin asked Robert McNamara “whether or not there was any connection whatever between your selection of General Dynamics, and the fact that the Vice President of the United States happens to be a resident of the state in which that company has one of its principal, if not its principal office.” Several journalists speculated that Johnson played a key role in obtaining the TFX contract for General Dynamics. (21) This was confirmed when Don B. Reynolds testified in a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee. As Victor Lasky pointed out, Reynolds “spoke of the time Bobby Baker opened a satchel full of paper money which he said was a $100,000 payoff for Johnson for pushing through a $7billion TFX plane contract.” (22) Burkett Van Kirk, chief counsel for the Republican minority on the Senate Rules Committee later told Seymour Hersh that Senator John Williams of Delaware was being fed information by Robert Kennedy about the involvement of Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker in a series of scandals. Williams, the Senate’s leading investigator of corruption, passed this information to the three Republicans (John Sherman Cooper, Hugh Scott and Carl Curtis) on the ten-member Rules Committee. However, outnumbered, they were unable to carry out a full investigation into Johnson and Baker. Van Kirk claimed that Kennedy supplied this information because he wanted “to get rid of Johnson.” (23) In his autobiography, Forty Years Against the Tide, Carl Curtis gives an insider view of the attempted investigation into the activities of Bobby Baker, Walter Jenkins and Fred Black. According to Curtis, Lyndon Johnson managed to persuade the seven Democrats to vote against hearing the testimony of important witnesses. This included Margaret Broome, who served as Bobby Baker’s secretary before the position was taken by Carole Tyler, who later became his mistress. Tyler did testify but refused to answer questions on the ground that she might incriminate herself. Tyler was later to die in an airplane crash on the beach near the Carousel Motel, owned by Bobby Baker. In his autobiography, Curtis described Baker, Jenkins and Black as “contact men”. He added: “Contact-men existed primarily to obtain for their clients and themselves some share of the vast pool of riches in the possession of swollen centralized political bureaucracies. The more impressive a contact-man’s political connections, the better he and his clients would fare.” (24) Johnson now launched a smear campaign against John Williams. He arranged for the IRS to carry out an investigation into his tax returns. According to Victor Lasky: “This meant the senator had to leave Washington and submit to a line-by-line audit by an IRS agent. It also meant that Williams had to curtail his personal investigation into Baker’s tangled affairs.” (25) An official working for Johnson told Williams that his mail was being intercepted and read before it was delivered. Williams went to the press with this story but despite an editorial in the Washington Star that stated: “The Senate should be totally outraged. Obviously someone high in the Executive Branch issued the instructions for this monitoring.” The press ignored the story and the full story was not published for several years. (26) Johnson also ordered his aides, Walter Jenkins (27) and Bill Moyers (28) to obtain information that they could use to blackmail Reynolds into silence. When this failed, this information was then leaked to Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. As a result, The Washington Post reported that Reynolds had in the past “brought reckless charges in the past against people who crossed him, accusing them of being communists and sex deviates”. (29) The treatment of Reynolds in the press had an impact on other potential witnesses. One important businessman, who previously had promised Williams he would provide evidence, told him: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Senator. I never talked to you before in my life. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you understand.” (30) The investigation into the role Johnson and Baker played in obtaining the TFX contract therefore came to an end. The original contract was for 1,700 planes at a total cost of $5.8 billion, or about $3 million per plane. By the time they were delivered they cost over $9.5 million per plane. General Dynamics had been saved from bankruptcy by the TFX contract. Frank Pace had every reason to thank the Military Industrial Congressional Complex. (31) Notes 11. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, 1989 (page 302) 12. Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation (17th January, 1961) 13. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 24th March, 1969 14. William Proxmire, Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (pages 100- 102) 15. William Proxmire, speech in the Senate, 24th March, 1969 16. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969 17. Richard Austin Smith, Fortune Magazine, February, 1962 18. Robert J. Art, The TFX Decision, 1968 (page 5) 19. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969 20. Quoted by Frederic M. Scherer, The Weapons Acquisition Process: Economic Incentives, 1964 (page 37) 21. See “Missiles and Rockets” (11th February, 1963) and Aviation Week & Space Technology (25th February, 1963) 22. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 144) 23. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1997 (page 407) 24. Carl T. Curtis, Forty Years Against the Tide, 1986 (page 248) 25. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 146) 26. John Barron, The Case of Bobby Baker and the Courageous Senator, Reader’s Digest (September, 1965) 27. Walter Jenkins, telephone call to Lyndon B. Johnson (7.30 p.m. 27th January, 1964) 28. Bill Moyers, telephone call to Lyndon B. Johnson (6.28 p.m. 3rd February, 1964) 29. The Washington Post (5th February, 1964) 30. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 149)

I have no time for people who deny the Holocaust. However, their crime needs to be seen in perspective. Who is worst, the people who denied it happened, or the people who allowed it to happen? What about those British and American politicians who denied Jews entry when they tried to flee from Nazi Germany. What about those British and American military commanders who refused to bomb the transport links to the concentration camps? My least favourite historian, David Irving, aged 67, has been held in an Austrian prison since 17th November, 2005, because he said in 2000 that there had been no gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp. Yet this is a country that elected a former Nazi to become its president. Tim says that people who he says are Holocaust deniers should be banned from this Forum (it is not at all clear that Michael Collins Piper falls into this category). Yet I allow him to support a man who has caused an illegal war to take place in order to satisfy the needs of his financial backers.

In case anyone had not noticed it, West Ham have won their last seven games and are now in sixth place in the premiership. Alan Pardew is now the highest positioned English manager in the league. This is not an irrelevant point. One of the reasons Trevor Brooking selected Pardew for the job was that he supported West Ham as a boy. It has been Pardew’s policy to buy players who supported the club as fans. As a result, nine members of the regular team were born in the UK. This is in stark contrast to teams like Arsenal who sometimes appear with no players from the UK. When I was a boy football teams were very much part of the community. You supported your local team and dreamt of playing for them when you got older. When I saw West Ham win the 1965 European Cup Winners Cup, ten of the team were born in London (the other one was born in Worcester). We will never return to those days, but surely teams like Arsenal have gone too far in the wrong direction.

We seem to have gone off topic with this thread. Maybe these issues should be discussed here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6125

Interesting article by Ronald Dworkin in the Guardian today about democracy and freedom of speech. Dworkin is professor of law at University College, London. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1709372,00.html The British media were right, on balance, not to republish the Danish cartoons that millions of furious Muslims protested against in violent and terrible destruction around the world. Reprinting would very likely have meant more people killed and more property destroyed. It would have caused many British Muslims great pain because they would have been told that the publication was intended to show contempt for their religion, and though that perception would have been inaccurate and unjustified the pain would nevertheless have been genuine. True, readers and viewers who have been following the story might well have wanted to judge the cartoons' impact, humour and offensiveness for themselves, and the media might therefore have felt some responsibility to provide that opportunity. But the public does not have a right to read or see whatever it wants no matter what the cost, and the cartoons are in any case widely available on the internet. Sometimes the media's self-censorship means the loss of significant information, argument, literature or art, but not in this case. Not publishing may seem to give a victory to the fanatics who instigated the violence and therefore incite them to similar tactics in the future. But there is some evidence that the wave of rioting and destruction - suddenly, four months after the cartoons were first published - was orchestrated from the Middle East for larger political reasons. If that analysis is correct, then keeping the issue boiling by fresh republications would actually serve the interests of those responsible and reward their strategies of terror. There is a real danger, however, that the decision of British media not to publish, though wise, will be wrongly taken as an endorsement of the widely held opinion that freedom of speech has limits, that it must be balanced against the virtues of multiculturalism, and that the government was right after all to propose that it be made a crime to publish anything "abusive or insulting" to a religious group. Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of western culture that might be generously abridged or qualified as a measure of respect for other cultures that reject it, the way a crescent or menorah might be added to a Christian religious display. Free speech is a condition of legitimate government. Laws and policies are not legitimate unless they have been adopted through a democratic process, and a process is not democratic if government has prevented anyone from expressing his convictions about what those laws and policies should be. Ridicule is a distinct kind of expression; its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended. That is why cartoons and other forms of ridicule have for centuries, even when illegal, been among the most important weapons of both noble and wicked political movements. So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended. That principle is of particular importance in a nation that strives for racial and ethnic fairness. If weak or unpopular minorities wish to be protected from economic or legal discrimination by law - if they wish laws enacted that prohibit discrimination against them in employment, for instance - then they must be willing to tolerate whatever insults or ridicule people who oppose such legislation wish to offer to their fellow voters, because only a community that permits such insult may legitimately adopt such laws. If we expect bigots to accept the verdict of the majority once the majority has spoken, then we must permit them to express their bigotry in the process whose verdict we ask them to respect. Whatever multiculturalism means - whatever it means to call for increased "respect" for all citizens and groups - these virtues would be self-defeating if they were thought to justify official censorship. Muslims who are outraged by the Danish cartoons point out that in several European countries it is a crime publicly to deny, as the president of Iran has denied, that the Holocaust ever took place. They say that western concern for free speech is therefore only self-serving hypocrisy, and they have a point. But of course the remedy is not to make the compromise of democratic legitimacy even greater than it already is but to work toward a new understanding of the European convention on human rights that would strike down the Holocaust-denial law and similar laws across Europe for what they are: violations of the freedom of speech that that convention demands. It is often said that religion is special, because people's religious convictions are so central to their personalities that they should not be asked to tolerate ridicule in that dimension, and because they might feel a religious duty to strike back at what they take to be sacrilege. Britain has apparently embraced that view because it retains the crime of blasphemy, though only for insults to Christianity. But we cannot make an exception for religious insult if we want to use law to protect the free exercise of religion in other ways. If we want to forbid the police from profiling people who look or dress like Muslims for special searches, for example, we cannot also forbid people from opposing that policy by claiming, in cartoons or otherwise, that Islam is committed to terrorism, however silly we think that opinion is. Religion must be tailored to democracy, not the other way around. No religion can be permitted to legislate for everyone about what can or cannot be drawn any more than it can legislate about what may or may not be eaten. No one's religious convictions can be thought to trump the freedom that makes democracy possible.

Guns don't hurt people, vice-presidents do. Cheney, like LBJ, believes that you're not a real man until you've been hunting for dangerous animals like quail and deer. His only complaint is that these animals don't greet him as a liberator.

I would be interested in reading the information that you have on John J. McCloy and General Maxwell Taylor to support this view. Agree. Hobson (Imperialism: A Study) for example was talking about the UK. As with Prescott Bush and Nazi Germany, the MIIC in different countries often worked together.

Paul Comstock interviewed Lamar Waldron in the California Literary Review (February 13, 2006) http://www.calitreview.com/Interviews/waldron_8024.htm So much has been written about JFK's assassination - what in your book is new? A tremendous amount. With the help of almost two dozen people who worked with John and Robert Kennedy--backed up by thousands of documents in the National Archives--we discovered that JFK and his brother had a never-before-revealed plan to stage a coup against Castro on December 1, 1963. The CIA's code-name for their part of the plan--AMWORLD--has never appeared in print before, and was withheld from the Warren Commission and later Congressional investigating committees. As part of the coup plan, in the days and weeks before Dallas, Robert Kennedy even had a top secret committee making plans for dealing with the possible "assassination of American officials," in case Castro found out about the coup plan and tried to retaliate. However, the Kennedy's coup plan was infiltrated by three powerful Mafia bosses being targeted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy: Johnny Rosselli of the Chicago Mafia, Tampa godfather Santo Trafficante, and Carlos Marcello (godfather of Louisiana and east Texas). The Mafia dons used parts of the secret coup plan to try and assassinate JFK first in Chicago (on 11-2-63), then in Tampa (on 11-18-63, an attempt never revealed before), and finally in Dallas. By planting evidence implicating Castro, the mob bosses prevented Robert Kennedy and other key officials from conducting a thorough investigation, in order to protect the coup plan and prevent nuclear confrontation with the Russians. While it's been known since the early 1990s that Robert Kennedy eventually told close associates the Mafia was behind his brother's death, the book finally explains how the Mafia did it, presenting a huge amount of new information. Can you tell us more about these two attempts on JFK’s life just prior to Dallas and their connection to November 22nd? As we were told by Chicago Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden, they had uncovered a plot by four men to kill JFK during his Chicago motorcade planned for November 2, 1963. An ex-Marine (with several recent parallels to Oswald) was arrested, but the four men remained at large. So, JFK had to cancel his motorcade at the last minute, even as people were lining the motorcade route. Pierre Salinger told us about the two different excuses he gave for the cancellation. In addition, Salinger--who began his work for the Kennedys as a Mafia investigator--revealed that Jack Ruby had been in Chicago a week prior to the motorcade, where he had received $7,000 from someone who worked for an associate of Trafficante and Marcello. Salinger's revelation was confirmed by two eye-witnesses and FBI reports in the National Archives. The Tampa attempt had more than a dozen parallels to JFK's assassination in Dallas, including a male suspect in his early twenties linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The Police and Secret Service warned JFK about the threat, but JFK bravely went ahead with the motorcade anyway, because of an important speech about Cuba he had to give in Miami that night, a speech that was part of the coup plan. No news reports about the Tampa threat appeared while JFK was alive--just a tiny article the day after this death; by the following day the Tampa Chief of Police and Secret Service weren't talking to the press about it. On the very day Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden went to Washington to tell Warren Commission staff about the Tampa and Chicago attempts, and other Secret Service laxity, he was framed by the Chicago Mafia and arrested. He was sent to prison for six years, even though his main accuser later admitted committing perjury against Bolden. The book finally explains exactly who framed Bolden, and why. Why did the three Mafia godfathers want to assassinate JFK? Because Robert Kennedy was waging the biggest war against organized crime that America has ever seen, and the Mafia families of Chicago, Tampa, and Louisiana were under incredible pressure. Rosselli's boss was under "lockstep surveillance" by the FBI, and even Trafficante's family members were being prosecuted. Marcello himself was put on trial by Robert Kennedy's prosecutors the day before the Chicago attempt. Marcello bribed a key juror to ensure his acquittal, which Marcello timed for 11-22-63, when JFK was shot in Dallas. Marcello had a big celebration that afternoon and the only other known celebration after JFK's death was in Tampa, were Trafficante publicly toasted JFK's murder at the very restaurant where JFK had given a speech, just four days earlier. The Kennedys had worked hard to keep the Mafia from having a role in their coup plan, and JFK's plans for a democratic government in Cuba after the coup would have kept the Mafia from returning to reopen their casinos there. So, the Mafia dons had to kill JFK before December 1, 1963, because only the secrecy surrounding the coup plan could prevent a thorough, public investigation that could have exposed their involvement. Walk us through exactly what transpired in Dealy Plaza. Where did the shots come from and who were the shooters? Very briefly: There is much evidence that Oswald was in the lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting. Two men were seen behind the fence on the "grassy knoll." Other witnesses saw two men on the sixth floor of the Depository. Riding in the limo directly behind JFK's were his two closest Presidential Aides, Dave Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell. As Powers told my co-author Thom Hartmann, both men heard--and Powers saw--shots from the grassy knoll. That explains why JFK's limo slowed at the sound of the first shot from the front, because they thought they were riding into an ambush. Powers and O'Donnell confirmed the shots from the knoll to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who wrote about it in his autobiography, Man of the House. Our book also explains why Powers and O'Donnell were pressured to alter their Warren Commission testimony "for the good of the country," and which current US Senator was involved with that. The book deals with evidence indicating that Mafioso present in Dealy Plaza that day could have included Johnny Rosselli, Chicago Mafia hitman Charles Nicoletti, French assassin Michel Victor Mertz, and a CIA operative working on the Kennedys' coup plan who was (unknown to the Kennedys) also working for the Mafia. As you state in your book, there are many credible witnesses who believe shots were fired from the grassy knoll and it certainly looks on the Zapruder film that Kennedy has been shot from the front, but isn’t the autopsy of President Kennedy proof that the bullet entered the rear of his skull? The entry wound on the back of his head was small, but the exit wound on the right side of his head was nearly six inches. Many distinguished experts disagree with what you've just stated, including Dr. Cyril Wecht, one of the country's leading forensic pathologists. Remember that what is visible in the remaining photographs doesn't sometimes match what is in the surviving x-rays--and there is considerable testimony that photos and x-rays were taken that are not part of the evidence today. Plus, crucial evidence, like JFK's brain, disappeared once it was in the custody of Robert Kennedy. Entire books have been written about the autopsy, so I won't try to cover everything here. Suffice it to say that the wound descriptions by the Dallas doctors didn't sometimes match those of the autopsy physicians at Bethesda, and vice versa. For example, in Dallas the small wound in JFK's throat was described as an entrance wound. Because they made a neat tracheotomy incision over the wound, the doctors at Bethesda didn't even realize it was a bullet wound. JFK's back wound was almost six inches below the base of his neck--making it impossible for a bullet coming down from the steep angle of the sixth floor of the Book Depository to have entered there and emerged many inches higher, from the front of JFK's throat. (where it would have been heading up, only to have to head down again to hit Gov. Connolly--that's just one reason the pristine bullet is called the "magic bullet"). In addition, new information declassified from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the JFK Assassination Records Review Board casts further doubt on the Warren Commission theory of JFK's wounds. We present new information in the book, based on interviews with two people at Bethesda during the autopsy, including David Powers, a JFK aide who was also one of the closest eye-witnesses to the assassination. Much evidence we cite shows that Robert Kennedy essentially controlled JFK's autopsy. After the autopsy, control of JFK's body was turned over to two officials who had been working with Robert Kennedy on covert Cuban operations. Even JFK's personal physician, Admiral Burkley--the only doctor present in both Dallas and Bethesda--believed JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy. What were Oswald’s actions from the time of the assassination until he was arrested? After reviewing all the evidence as part of seventeen years of research, we were stuck by how much of the conventional Warren Commission story is contradicted by other evidence, including earlier statements by many of their key witnesses. Thus, Oswald's movements from shortly after the assassination until he returned to his rooming house can't be pinned down with certainty. While Oswald was in his rooming house, a police car pulled up, honked its horn, then pulled away. A short time later, Oswald walked out of the rooming house. The Warren Commission says then that Oswald was walking (since he didn't drive or own a car) on a quiet street, when a patrolman drove up to him. According to the official story, the crazed ex-serviceman pulled out a pistol, shot the patrolman and fled. As our book points out for the first time, that exact scene (involving an ex-serviceman) is in a movie that Johnny Rosselli produced (uncredited, but confirmed by court documents) in 1948, called "He Walked by Night." Oswald next shows up at the Texas Theater, where he was arrested, though again, much evidence contradicts the conventional version of events. We present evidence (including some from secret Warren Commission memos not included in their final report) that Oswald thought he was going to Mexico City, on a "mission" that involved getting into Cuba on a mission in support of upcoming US action against Cuba. The theater was where Oswald had been told he would meet his contact. The book presents a huge amount of evidence that Oswald was a low-level asset for a US intelligence agency, and not a communist. For example, the Warren Commission claimed Oswald was a Marxist as teenager, but how many communist teenagers join the Civil Air Patrol? And not only join the US Marines, but try to join before he's even old enough? We uncovered new information showing that Oswald was under 'tight" surveillance by Naval Intelligence from the time he returned to the US from Russia. Oswald's role as an intelligence asset explains why US authorities weren't concerned when Oswald--a seeming former defector with a Russian wife--got a job in Dallas at a firm that prepared material for maps created from U-2 spy plane photos, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oswald had been looking for work in Dallas in October of ’63 and found the job at the School Book Depository through a friend of his wife’s. He started work there October 16th. It doesn’t sound like an active plot to kill the President is in place at that time (Kennedy’s motorcade route had not yet been planned) and it also wouldn’t give much time for anyone to set him up as a patsy – creating a bogus snipers nest, etc. That's a common misconception. JFK's long-rumored Dallas visit had finally been announced on Sept. 26--right before Oswald tried to go to Cuba via Mexico City. It was well known by Jack Ruby and others in Dallas that any major motorcade would go through Dealy Plaza along Main Street. It's not generally known, but 11-22-63 wasn't the first time JFK had been through Dealy Plaza in a motorcade--JFK had been there in 1960, during the campaign. (Of course, Oswald was in Russia at that time, but Ruby and the Marcello associates he worked for were in Dallas then.) The mob bosses who'd been carefully planning to kill JFK had plenty of time make sure Oswald got a job near the motorcade route. In fact, Oswald applied for several jobs near and along the motorcade route. It's important to note that around the same time Oswald moved to a new city (Dallas, from New Orleans) and got a new job, so did the ex-Marine arrested at the time of the 11/2/63 Chicago attempt against JFK and the young man linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee who was investigated by authorities after the 11/18/63 Tampa attempt to assassinate JFK. Where does Ruby fit in to all of this? Why would he kill Oswald knowing that he would spend the rest of his life in prison or be sentenced to death? Ruby was a long-time Mafia associate who was in desperate financial straits at the time. In addition, the book documents for the first time that Ruby (who ran guns to Cuba) had been part of the 1959 CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Ruby had also been an informant for the FBI at that time--and for other law enforcement agencies later--which would also insure the various agencies couldn't dig too deeply into Ruby's background or share key information with those investigating JFK's assassination. As if to drive the point home to authorities, even the pistol Ruby used to shoot Oswald came from Ruby's time in the first round of CIA-Mafia plots against Castro. Ruby's job--in Chicago and probably Tampa, as well as Dallas--was to get a policeman to quickly kill the patsy, since Ruby had numerous friends in law enforcement. Failing to do that, Ruby had to do the job himself, though Congressional (and even Warren Commission) investigators felt he had the help of one or more policemen. One of them let Ruby know when Oswald was heading to the basement, the day he was shot. Under Texas's "sudden passion" murder defense at the time, Ruby could have received as little as five years, and with good behavior, had to serve less than three years. Ruby's mob-linked lawyer chose not to use that defense, and instead used a bizarre "psycho-motor" defense that had never worked before. But once Ruby’s in jail for life, and particularly after his diagnosis of cancer, what would prevent him from telling the truth about his role in the assassination? One reason the Jewish Ruby had been able to work with the Mafia for so long was that he'd shown he could keep his mouth shut, even when it came to murder. Robert Kennedy wrote in his book "The Enemy Within" about a Mafia murder in 1939 that was important in forging a link between the Mafia and the Teamsters--and police records show that one of the mobsters who kept his mouth shut about that hit was Jack Ruby. By 1963, Ruby was a long-trusted lower-level mob associate, part of a tight-knit Mafia heroin network that went through Dallas. The night before the assassination, Ruby dined at the restaurant of a long-time Marcello associate. After Ruby's arrest, he was visited by the same Marcello associate. As we cite in the book from Warren Commission testimony, there are indications that the lives of Ruby's family (sister, brothers, their children) had been threatened, that Ruby had been told they could face death or torture if he didn't cooperate. One of the Chicago mobsters that framed Abraham Bolden was known for the same type of brutal torture murders that gave Ruby nightmares. In addition, it's been said that for much of the time of Ruby's incarceration, Dealy Plaza was visible from Ruby's jail cell in Dallas. That's the ultimate reminder of what could happen to those who angered the Mafia, even a President. In the same way Ruby's close connections to hundreds of Dallas police made him valuable to the Mafia, Ruby knew that it would be just as easy for the Mafia to take action against Ruby, even in prison. Ruby didn't have that much time to talk after his sudden diagnosis of cancer. Ruby had received a clean bill of health from a medical exam not long before. As I write in the book "Ruby had been diagnosed with cancer three days after winning a December 7, 1966 appeal for a new trail, to be held in Wichita Falls." Just over three weeks later, he was dead. By not talking after his cancer diagnosis, Ruby probably felt he had insured the safety of his family. Will we ever find a definitive answer to this mystery? Is there anyone alive who was involved and could provide important information? The answer to both questions is "yes" and "yes." NBC News and a government watchdog group, OMB Watch, both reported that well over a million documents remain secret, possibly until the year 2017. Everyone we have uncovered who was knowingly involved in JFK's death (less than a dozen) is either dead (most of those confessed to associates prior to their death), in prison, or has served time for a crime related to the assassination. With so much still secret, and so much time having passed, further prosecutions for the assassination would be difficult if not impossible. That's why we recommend a South African-style truth commission about the assassination. They could review and release the vast majority of the million still-secret files, and take testimony from those who were involved. We also feel strongly that Abraham Bolden--who had a sterling service record before his arrest and was America's first black Presidential Secret Service agent-- deserves to finally have his name cleared.

Paul Comstock interviewed Lamar Waldron in the California Literary Review (February 13, 2006) http://www.calitreview.com/Interviews/waldron_8024.htm So much has been written about JFK's assassination - what in your book is new? A tremendous amount. With the help of almost two dozen people who worked with John and Robert Kennedy--backed up by thousands of documents in the National Archives--we discovered that JFK and his brother had a never-before-revealed plan to stage a coup against Castro on December 1, 1963. The CIA's code-name for their part of the plan--AMWORLD--has never appeared in print before, and was withheld from the Warren Commission and later Congressional investigating committees. As part of the coup plan, in the days and weeks before Dallas, Robert Kennedy even had a top secret committee making plans for dealing with the possible "assassination of American officials," in case Castro found out about the coup plan and tried to retaliate. However, the Kennedy's coup plan was infiltrated by three powerful Mafia bosses being targeted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy: Johnny Rosselli of the Chicago Mafia, Tampa godfather Santo Trafficante, and Carlos Marcello (godfather of Louisiana and east Texas). The Mafia dons used parts of the secret coup plan to try and assassinate JFK first in Chicago (on 11-2-63), then in Tampa (on 11-18-63, an attempt never revealed before), and finally in Dallas. By planting evidence implicating Castro, the mob bosses prevented Robert Kennedy and other key officials from conducting a thorough investigation, in order to protect the coup plan and prevent nuclear confrontation with the Russians. While it's been known since the early 1990s that Robert Kennedy eventually told close associates the Mafia was behind his brother's death, the book finally explains how the Mafia did it, presenting a huge amount of new information. Can you tell us more about these two attempts on JFK’s life just prior to Dallas and their connection to November 22nd? As we were told by Chicago Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden, they had uncovered a plot by four men to kill JFK during his Chicago motorcade planned for November 2, 1963. An ex-Marine (with several recent parallels to Oswald) was arrested, but the four men remained at large. So, JFK had to cancel his motorcade at the last minute, even as people were lining the motorcade route. Pierre Salinger told us about the two different excuses he gave for the cancellation. In addition, Salinger--who began his work for the Kennedys as a Mafia investigator--revealed that Jack Ruby had been in Chicago a week prior to the motorcade, where he had received $7,000 from someone who worked for an associate of Trafficante and Marcello. Salinger's revelation was confirmed by two eye-witnesses and FBI reports in the National Archives. The Tampa attempt had more than a dozen parallels to JFK's assassination in Dallas, including a male suspect in his early twenties linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The Police and Secret Service warned JFK about the threat, but JFK bravely went ahead with the motorcade anyway, because of an important speech about Cuba he had to give in Miami that night, a speech that was part of the coup plan. No news reports about the Tampa threat appeared while JFK was alive--just a tiny article the day after this death; by the following day the Tampa Chief of Police and Secret Service weren't talking to the press about it. On the very day Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden went to Washington to tell Warren Commission staff about the Tampa and Chicago attempts, and other Secret Service laxity, he was framed by the Chicago Mafia and arrested. He was sent to prison for six years, even though his main accuser later admitted committing perjury against Bolden. The book finally explains exactly who framed Bolden, and why. Why did the three Mafia godfathers want to assassinate JFK? Because Robert Kennedy was waging the biggest war against organized crime that America has ever seen, and the Mafia families of Chicago, Tampa, and Louisiana were under incredible pressure. Rosselli's boss was under "lockstep surveillance" by the FBI, and even Trafficante's family members were being prosecuted. Marcello himself was put on trial by Robert Kennedy's prosecutors the day before the Chicago attempt. Marcello bribed a key juror to ensure his acquittal, which Marcello timed for 11-22-63, when JFK was shot in Dallas. Marcello had a big celebration that afternoon and the only other known celebration after JFK's death was in Tampa, were Trafficante publicly toasted JFK's murder at the very restaurant where JFK had given a speech, just four days earlier. The Kennedys had worked hard to keep the Mafia from having a role in their coup plan, and JFK's plans for a democratic government in Cuba after the coup would have kept the Mafia from returning to reopen their casinos there. So, the Mafia dons had to kill JFK before December 1, 1963, because only the secrecy surrounding the coup plan could prevent a thorough, public investigation that could have exposed their involvement. Walk us through exactly what transpired in Dealy Plaza. Where did the shots come from and who were the shooters? Very briefly: There is much evidence that Oswald was in the lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting. Two men were seen behind the fence on the "grassy knoll." Other witnesses saw two men on the sixth floor of the Depository. Riding in the limo directly behind JFK's were his two closest Presidential Aides, Dave Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell. As Powers told my co-author Thom Hartmann, both men heard--and Powers saw--shots from the grassy knoll. That explains why JFK's limo slowed at the sound of the first shot from the front, because they thought they were riding into an ambush. Powers and O'Donnell confirmed the shots from the knoll to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who wrote about it in his autobiography, Man of the House. Our book also explains why Powers and O'Donnell were pressured to alter their Warren Commission testimony "for the good of the country," and which current US Senator was involved with that. The book deals with evidence indicating that Mafioso present in Dealy Plaza that day could have included Johnny Rosselli, Chicago Mafia hitman Charles Nicoletti, French assassin Michel Victor Mertz, and a CIA operative working on the Kennedys' coup plan who was (unknown to the Kennedys) also working for the Mafia. As you state in your book, there are many credible witnesses who believe shots were fired from the grassy knoll and it certainly looks on the Zapruder film that Kennedy has been shot from the front, but isn’t the autopsy of President Kennedy proof that the bullet entered the rear of his skull? The entry wound on the back of his head was small, but the exit wound on the right side of his head was nearly six inches. Many distinguished experts disagree with what you've just stated, including Dr. Cyril Wecht, one of the country's leading forensic pathologists. Remember that what is visible in the remaining photographs doesn't sometimes match what is in the surviving x-rays--and there is considerable testimony that photos and x-rays were taken that are not part of the evidence today. Plus, crucial evidence, like JFK's brain, disappeared once it was in the custody of Robert Kennedy. Entire books have been written about the autopsy, so I won't try to cover everything here. Suffice it to say that the wound descriptions by the Dallas doctors didn't sometimes match those of the autopsy physicians at Bethesda, and vice versa. For example, in Dallas the small wound in JFK's throat was described as an entrance wound. Because they made a neat tracheotomy incision over the wound, the doctors at Bethesda didn't even realize it was a bullet wound. JFK's back wound was almost six inches below the base of his neck--making it impossible for a bullet coming down from the steep angle of the sixth floor of the Book Depository to have entered there and emerged many inches higher, from the front of JFK's throat. (where it would have been heading up, only to have to head down again to hit Gov. Connolly--that's just one reason the pristine bullet is called the "magic bullet"). In addition, new information declassified from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the JFK Assassination Records Review Board casts further doubt on the Warren Commission theory of JFK's wounds. We present new information in the book, based on interviews with two people at Bethesda during the autopsy, including David Powers, a JFK aide who was also one of the closest eye-witnesses to the assassination. Much evidence we cite shows that Robert Kennedy essentially controlled JFK's autopsy. After the autopsy, control of JFK's body was turned over to two officials who had been working with Robert Kennedy on covert Cuban operations. Even JFK's personal physician, Admiral Burkley--the only doctor present in both Dallas and Bethesda--believed JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy. What were Oswald’s actions from the time of the assassination until he was arrested? After reviewing all the evidence as part of seventeen years of research, we were stuck by how much of the conventional Warren Commission story is contradicted by other evidence, including earlier statements by many of their key witnesses. Thus, Oswald's movements from shortly after the assassination until he returned to his rooming house can't be pinned down with certainty. While Oswald was in his rooming house, a police car pulled up, honked its horn, then pulled away. A short time later, Oswald walked out of the rooming house. The Warren Commission says then that Oswald was walking (since he didn't drive or own a car) on a quiet street, when a patrolman drove up to him. According to the official story, the crazed ex-serviceman pulled out a pistol, shot the patrolman and fled. As our book points out for the first time, that exact scene (involving an ex-serviceman) is in a movie that Johnny Rosselli produced (uncredited, but confirmed by court documents) in 1948, called "He Walked by Night." Oswald next shows up at the Texas Theater, where he was arrested, though again, much evidence contradicts the conventional version of events. We present evidence (including some from secret Warren Commission memos not included in their final report) that Oswald thought he was going to Mexico City, on a "mission" that involved getting into Cuba on a mission in support of upcoming US action against Cuba. The theater was where Oswald had been told he would meet his contact. The book presents a huge amount of evidence that Oswald was a low-level asset for a US intelligence agency, and not a communist. For example, the Warren Commission claimed Oswald was a Marxist as teenager, but how many communist teenagers join the Civil Air Patrol? And not only join the US Marines, but try to join before he's even old enough? We uncovered new information showing that Oswald was under 'tight" surveillance by Naval Intelligence from the time he returned to the US from Russia. Oswald's role as an intelligence asset explains why US authorities weren't concerned when Oswald--a seeming former defector with a Russian wife--got a job in Dallas at a firm that prepared material for maps created from U-2 spy plane photos, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oswald had been looking for work in Dallas in October of ’63 and found the job at the School Book Depository through a friend of his wife’s. He started work there October 16th. It doesn’t sound like an active plot to kill the President is in place at that time (Kennedy’s motorcade route had not yet been planned) and it also wouldn’t give much time for anyone to set him up as a patsy – creating a bogus snipers nest, etc. That's a common misconception. JFK's long-rumored Dallas visit had finally been announced on Sept. 26--right before Oswald tried to go to Cuba via Mexico City. It was well known by Jack Ruby and others in Dallas that any major motorcade would go through Dealy Plaza along Main Street. It's not generally known, but 11-22-63 wasn't the first time JFK had been through Dealy Plaza in a motorcade--JFK had been there in 1960, during the campaign. (Of course, Oswald was in Russia at that time, but Ruby and the Marcello associates he worked for were in Dallas then.) The mob bosses who'd been carefully planning to kill JFK had plenty of time make sure Oswald got a job near the motorcade route. In fact, Oswald applied for several jobs near and along the motorcade route. It's important to note that around the same time Oswald moved to a new city (Dallas, from New Orleans) and got a new job, so did the ex-Marine arrested at the time of the 11/2/63 Chicago attempt against JFK and the young man linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee who was investigated by authorities after the 11/18/63 Tampa attempt to assassinate JFK. Where does Ruby fit in to all of this? Why would he kill Oswald knowing that he would spend the rest of his life in prison or be sentenced to death? Ruby was a long-time Mafia associate who was in desperate financial straits at the time. In addition, the book documents for the first time that Ruby (who ran guns to Cuba) had been part of the 1959 CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Ruby had also been an informant for the FBI at that time--and for other law enforcement agencies later--which would also insure the various agencies couldn't dig too deeply into Ruby's background or share key information with those investigating JFK's assassination. As if to drive the point home to authorities, even the pistol Ruby used to shoot Oswald came from Ruby's time in the first round of CIA-Mafia plots against Castro. Ruby's job--in Chicago and probably Tampa, as well as Dallas--was to get a policeman to quickly kill the patsy, since Ruby had numerous friends in law enforcement. Failing to do that, Ruby had to do the job himself, though Congressional (and even Warren Commission) investigators felt he had the help of one or more policemen. One of them let Ruby know when Oswald was heading to the basement, the day he was shot. Under Texas's "sudden passion" murder defense at the time, Ruby could have received as little as five years, and with good behavior, had to serve less than three years. Ruby's mob-linked lawyer chose not to use that defense, and instead used a bizarre "psycho-motor" defense that had never worked before. But once Ruby’s in jail for life, and particularly after his diagnosis of cancer, what would prevent him from telling the truth about his role in the assassination? One reason the Jewish Ruby had been able to work with the Mafia for so long was that he'd shown he could keep his mouth shut, even when it came to murder. Robert Kennedy wrote in his book "The Enemy Within" about a Mafia murder in 1939 that was important in forging a link between the Mafia and the Teamsters--and police records show that one of the mobsters who kept his mouth shut about that hit was Jack Ruby. By 1963, Ruby was a long-trusted lower-level mob associate, part of a tight-knit Mafia heroin network that went through Dallas. The night before the assassination, Ruby dined at the restaurant of a long-time Marcello associate. After Ruby's arrest, he was visited by the same Marcello associate. As we cite in the book from Warren Commission testimony, there are indications that the lives of Ruby's family (sister, brothers, their children) had been threatened, that Ruby had been told they could face death or torture if he didn't cooperate. One of the Chicago mobsters that framed Abraham Bolden was known for the same type of brutal torture murders that gave Ruby nightmares. In addition, it's been said that for much of the time of Ruby's incarceration, Dealy Plaza was visible from Ruby's jail cell in Dallas. That's the ultimate reminder of what could happen to those who angered the Mafia, even a President. In the same way Ruby's close connections to hundreds of Dallas police made him valuable to the Mafia, Ruby knew that it would be just as easy for the Mafia to take action against Ruby, even in prison. Ruby didn't have that much time to talk after his sudden diagnosis of cancer. Ruby had received a clean bill of health from a medical exam not long before. As I write in the book "Ruby had been diagnosed with cancer three days after winning a December 7, 1966 appeal for a new trail, to be held in Wichita Falls." Just over three weeks later, he was dead. By not talking after his cancer diagnosis, Ruby probably felt he had insured the safety of his family. Will we ever find a definitive answer to this mystery? Is there anyone alive who was involved and could provide important information? The answer to both questions is "yes" and "yes." NBC News and a government watchdog group, OMB Watch, both reported that well over a million documents remain secret, possibly until the year 2017. Everyone we have uncovered who was knowingly involved in JFK's death (less than a dozen) is either dead (most of those confessed to associates prior to their death), in prison, or has served time for a crime related to the assassination. With so much still secret, and so much time having passed, further prosecutions for the assassination would be difficult if not impossible. That's why we recommend a South African-style truth commission about the assassination. They could review and release the vast majority of the million still-secret files, and take testimony from those who were involved. We also feel strongly that Abraham Bolden--who had a sterling service record before his arrest and was America's first black Presidential Secret Service agent-- deserves to finally have his name cleared.

I have not invited Piper to join the Forum. However, he did request to join the Forum at 21:18 on 10th Feb 2006. As it is not our policy to reject proposed members because Tim Gratz disapproves of them, his application to join is currently being processed.

The journalist, Wallace O. Chariton, in 1990.

As I pointed out, Jim Hood took a photograph that was taken away by the FBI. Hugh Aynesworth confirmed that he saw the photograph. However, he believed it was a photograph of a spilt drink. Jerry Coley's wife also confirmed that her husband told her about the pool of blood, photographs, visit by the FBI, etc. She also received the threatening phone-calls that forced her to go into hiding with her children.