John Simkin

It seems that Vince Palamara believes the two men are the same person: http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/VP/0006-VP.html Clifton C. Carter and Dead Agents: From "Computers and People" magazine, March 1975 written by Grace Vale [inc. footnoted citations in brackets] "Clifton C. Carter: Intelligence Agent In September, 1963, the late Clifton C. Carter, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's chief adviser, set up an office in Austin, Texas [Manchester, p. 13]. Carter, a former intelligence agent*, commanded OSS operations in Italy during World War II** [R. Harris Smith, "OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency," (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 98]. His brother was General Marshall S. Carter, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1963, and later head of the National Security Agency, which engages in communications intelligence [ibid., and p. 98n]. On November 22 [1963], Clifton Carter was manning communications in the car following Johnson's. Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, the brother*** of General Charles P. Cabell[David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, "The Invisible Government" (New York: Bantam Books, Inc.,1964), p. 107], General Carter's predecessor as Deputy Director of the CIA, was in the motorcade in a car directly behind Clifton Carter's. After the assassination, Clifton C. Carter remained close to Johnson, staying overnight at his house for the next few days, and continued to meet with him every day in the White House during the first part of his Presidency, although Carter never actually worked in the White House [Michael Amrine, "This Awesome Challenge: The Hundred Days of Lyndon Johnson," (New York: Popular Library, 1964), pp. 25 & 70]. General Marshall S. Carter, His Brother When General Charles Cabell left the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, Nelson Rockefeller was advising the new CIA Director, John McCone, who owned a million dollars worth of stock in Standard Oil in California [James Hepburn, "Farewell America", p. 321]. Governor Rockefeller recommended General Marshall S. Carter as the new Deputy Director of the Agency, according to Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., former Executive Director of the CIA [Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., "The Real CIA," (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), pp. 236-237]." ---- My footnoted comments: *as was Secret Service advance agent Winston G. Lawson, a former CIC agent in the Army stationed at Fort Holabird, MD [4 H 318], during roughly the same time period as Richard Case Nagell (fellow agent Louis B. Sims also served here at the same time [RIF#180-10093-10022]). In addition, a Lt. Col. George Whitmeyer, who taught Army Intelligence, rode in the pilot car with Jack Puterbaugh, DNC advance man from the Agriculture Department [billy Sol Estes, Henry Marshall, Orville Freeman...Mac Wallace], although Whitmeyer was not scheduled to ride in the car in the first place[RIF#180-10074-10396]! **along with James Jesus Angleton, Ray Rocca (later, CIA liaison to the Warren Commission), and Paul J. Paterni (Deputy Chief of the Secret Service who inspected the limousine on the night of 11/22/63, as well as investigated LHO's income tax check, among other things [see KAC journal Spring 1998 issue---article by author entitled "The Secret Service: In Their Own Words"] ***other interesting connections/ relationships: Gaspard D'Andelot Belin, the General Counsel and the Acting Secretary of the Treasury [C. Douglas Dillon was on a crowded Cabinet plane on 11/22/63], was married to Harriet Lowell Bundy, a member of the William and McGeorge Bundy family [see KAC article mentioned above]. A Secret Service Inspector who would go on to debrief agents after 11/22/63 (and rise to Chief Inspector), N. Jackson Krill, was also a former member of the OSS [ibid]. Lt. Col. George J. McNally, Chief of the Army Signal Corps on 11/22/63 in Texas, was also a former Secret Service agent (1935-1942)[ibid]! Chief James J. Rowley was a former agent of the FBI before joining the Secret Service (he was also a very good friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover) [5 H 450]. --- DEAD AGENTS TELL NO TALES: The first agent to die after Dallas: ATSAIC/ Shift Leader Stewart G. "Stu" Stout, Jr., stationed at the Trade Mart on 11/22/63. Died of a sudden heart attack IN THE WHITE HOUSE in either late 1963 or early 1964 [further correspondence with former agent Rex W. Scouten and interviews with Floyd M. Boring and Samuel A. Kinney. Interestingly, both Boring and agent Donald J. Lawton seemed oblivious to the documented fact that Stout WAS in Dallas! Only Scouten would give me the cause of death---the others would NOT]---Stout quit the agency very soon after the assassination and became a White House Usher with Rex Scouten, the current White House Curator who also served with Stout during the Truman years (Stout was also in a building---Blair House---during another November day when shots were fired at a president). The second agent to die after Dallas: Fellow ATSAIC/ Shift Leader Emory P. Roberts, the commander of the Secret Service follow-up car on 11/22/63. Soon after the assassination, according to interviews with Kinney, Emory became the Off-Records Secretary to President Johnson while still a member of the Secret Service[apparently no relation to Mrs. Juanita Roberts, Johnson's Chief Private Secretary]. He died in the late 1960's, the same time an unnamed agent took his life "in the late sixties, in Washington, with his own weopon. There were signs that he was beginning to buckle," according to agent Chuck Rochner ["George Rush, "Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent" (New York: Pocket Books, 1988), pp. 216-217]! What did these men have in common? They were one of only three total Shift Leaders of the White House Detail; They were both on the Texas trip; They spoke to NOONE in officialdom (only Roberts spoke to anyone at all: William Manchester, author of "THe Death of a President"); They died mysteriously and suddenly, and at a relatively young age (late 40's to early 50's). Vince Palamara

It seems Namebase believes they are two different men. http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?_CART...28LBJ%20AIDE%29 http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?_CARTER_CLIFTON_C However, Danial Brandt at Namebase seems be aware that the two men both shared C. as a middle name. LBJ's aide middle name was Crawford. I have been unable to discover the middle name of OSS Clifton Carter. Nor does he appear anywhere on the web except for on Namebase.

According to R. Harris Smith, Clifton C. Carter served with the OSS in Italy. His second-in-command was Major J. H. Angleton, the father of Jesus Angleton. Smith points out that he was the brother of Marshall Carter, who was later to become Deputy Director of the CIA (1962-65) and Director of the National Security Agency (1965-69). Is this the same Clifton C. Carter that worked as an aide to Lyndon B. Johnson?

Andy has told me that Varndean School is still willing to be the lead organization of the Citizenship Project. We will try to get together over the next few days to fill in the application form.

The picture above cuts out the person standing on the right. Please see the photograph below. It is Clifton C. Carter, the man who Billie Sol Estes says murdered Henry Marshall. The man next to him was a long term friend of Mac Wallace (they met at college). Wallace was the man who according to Estes, Johnson and Carter ordered to kill Marshall. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5988

To finish the story off: Billie Sol Estes told the grand jury that he had a meeting with Johnson and Carter about Henry Marshall. Johnson suggested that Marshall be promoted out of Texas. Estes agreed and replied: "Let's transfer him, let's get him out of here. Get him a better job, make him an assistant secretary of agriculture." However, Marshall rejected the idea of being promoted in order to keep him quiet. Estes, Johnson and Carter had another meeting on 17th January, 1961, to discuss what to do about Henry Marshall. Also at the meeting was Malcolm Wallace. After it was pointed out that Marshall had refused promotion to Washington, Johnson said: "It looks like we'll just have to get rid of him." Mac Wallace, who Estes described as a hitman, was given the assignment. Billie Sol Estes also told the grand jury that he met Carter and Wallace at his home in Pecos after Marshall was killed. Wallace described how he waited for Marshall at his farm. He planned to kill him and make it appear as if Marshall committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. However, Marshall fought back and he was forced to shoot him with his own rifle. He quoted Carter as saying that Wallace "sure did botch it up." Johnson was now forced to use his influence to get the authorities in Texas to cover-up the murder. The grand jury rejected the testimony of Billie Sol Estes. Carter, Wallace and Johnson were all dead and could not confirm Billie Sol's testimony. However, the Grand Jury did change the verdict on the death of Henry Marshall from suicide to death by gunshot. On 9th August, 1984, Estes' lawyer, Douglas Caddy, wrote to Stephen S. Trott at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the letter Caddy claimed that Estes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm (Mac) Wallace and Cliff Carter had been involved in the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. Caddy added: "Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders." Four days later, the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics ruled that there was now "clear and convincing" evidence to prove Henry Marshall was murdered and State District Judge Peter Lowry ordered that the death certificate should be changed to "homicide by gunshot wounds". http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmarshallH.htm

I of course condemn any person who kills or orders the killing of someone else. You only have to look at my website to realize this is the case. In fact, I would describe myself as a pacifist. It is also the reason why I am against capital punishment and the invasion of Iraq. There is no evidence that proves Arbenz ordered the assassination of his political opponents. In fact, considering the polls suggested he was going to have a clear victory, he would have been silly to get involved in such actions. It is only when you have politicians like Richard Nixon, who fear they will be defeated, that they resort to such tactics. What I do know is that the CIA has a long history of trying to set up left-wing political leaders. It is this CIA manufactured evidence that you find when surfing the net. For example, your claim that Castro was behind the assassination of JFK. I notice you have not responded to the point that Pat Speer and I made about the rights of the American government and the CIA to overthrow foreign governments. Until you answer that question, I will continue to consider you a hypocrite.

You clearly have not read my original posting or checked my references. Tommy Corcoran was a paid lobbyist for Sam Zemurray and the United Fruit Company (this fact was not revealed until after the overthrow of Arbenz). Zemurray became concerned that Captain Jacobo Arbenz Guzman would be elected as president as early as 1950. Guzman was one of the heroes of the 1944 revolution that overthrew the American backed military dictatorship in Guatemala. In the spring of 1950, Tommy Corcoran went to see Thomas C. Mann, the director of the State Department’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Corcoran asked Mann if he had any plans to prevent Arbenz from being elected. Mann replied: “That is for the people of that country to decide.” Mann of course was a member of Harry S. Truman's Democratic administration. Unhappy with this reply, Corcoran paid a call on the Allen Dulles, the deputy director of the CIA. Dulles, who represented United Fruit in the 1930s, was far more interested in Corcoran’s ideas. “During their meeting Dulles explained to Corcoran that while the CIA was sympathetic to United Fruit, he could not authorize any assistance without the support of the State Department. Dulles assured Corcoran, however, that whoever was elected as the next president of Guatemala would not be allowed to nationalize the operations of United Fruit.” (David McKean, Peddling Influence, 2004, page 220) It was no surprise when in November, 1950, Arbenz received more than 60 per cent of the popular vote. Arbenz was not a communist. The people of Guatemala had no desire to return to a military dictatorship. What the peasant farmers (the majority of the population) wanted was land. On 17th June, 1952, Arbenz announced a new Agrarian Reform program. This included expropriating idle land on government and private estates and redistributed to peasants in lots of 8 to 33 acres. The Agrarian Reform program managed to give 1.5 million acres to around 100,000 families for which the government paid $8,345,545 in bonds. Among the expropriated landowners was Arbenz himself, who had become into a landowner with the dowry of his wealthy wife. Around 46 farms were given to groups of peasants who organized themselves in cooperatives. (John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations, 1986, page 98) In February 1953, 209,842 acres of United Fruit Company's uncultivated land was taken by the government which offered compensation of $525,000. Later the figure was increased to over a million dollars. This figure was “in line with the company’s own valuation of the property, at least for tax purposes” (David McKean, Peddling Influence, 2004, page 221). However, the company wanted $16 million for the land. While the Guatemalan government valued it at $2.99 per acre, the company now valued it at $75 per acre. Of course you need to ask how United Fruit got this land in the first place. It had of course been given to them by the military dictator, Jorge Ubico. What right did Ubico have to give away land. How do you think you would feel if you were a landless peasant in Guatemala? The strategy of Tommy Corcoran was to recruit Robert La Follette (a former progressive) to work for United Fruit. Corcoran arranged for La Follette to lobby liberal members of Congress. The message was that Arbenz was not a liberal but a communist. Corcoran also contacted President Anastasio Somoza and warned him that the Guatemalan revolution might spread to Nicaragua. Somoza now made representations to Harry S. Truman about what was happening in Guatemala. After discussions with Walter Bedell Smith, director of the CIA, a secret plan to overthrow Arbenz (Operation Fortune) was developed (in exchange for a promise of a job with United Fruit after he retired). When the Secretary of State Dean Acheson discovered details of Operation Fortune, he had a meeting with Truman where he vigorously protested about the involvement of United Fruit and the CIA in the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected President Arbenz. As a result of Acheson’s protests, Truman ordered the postponement of Operation Fortune. It was because of this commitment to democracy that Republicans were later to accuse him of being "soft on communism". A tactic that McCarthyite Gratz is repeating on this Forum. Samuel Zemurray, United Fruit Company's largest shareholder, ordered Corcoran to organize an anti-Arbenz campaign in the American media. This included the claim that Guatemala was the beginning of "Soviet expansion in the Americas". Tommy Corcoran’s work was made easier by the election of Dwight Eisenhower in November, 1952. Eisenhower’s personal secretary was Anne Whitman, the wife of Edmund Whitman, United Fruit’s public relations director. Eisenhower appointed John Peurifoy as ambassador to Guatemala. He soon made it clear that he believed that the Arbenz government posed a threat to the America’s campaign against communism. This is the background to the coup. United Fruit found it impossible to get the Democratic administration to overthrow a democratically elected government. Eisenhower and Nixon were not so concerned with protecting democracy in the Third World (Republican administrations since the war have followed Eisenhower's example). The logic of Gratz's argument is that if the American government finds evidence that a foreign politician has been responsible for the death of an opponent (not too difficult to do as the CIA was involved in planting such information) during an election, the American president has the right to order the overthrow of that government. Does that mean foreign governments have the same right if they discover evidence of American politicians killing one of their opponents? For example, we have evidence that LBJ was involved in the death of JFK. Does that give the UK or France the right to try and overthrow the American government? Of course it doesn’t. Tim Gratz only wants America to have the right to overthrow governments it does not like. It is because of hypocrites like Gratz that America is hated so much in the world.

Please give examples of members who are breaking the rules and I will investigate your complaints.

I have to admit that when I was in Cuba in 1987 I was approached by two security men when I attempted to take photographs of the main public square in Havana. It was explained to me that this was where Fidel Castro made his public speeches and that they feared an assassination attempt might take place. Of course they had good reason to be suspicious of an American attempt to assassinate Castro. They became more friendly when they realized I was English and not American. It was the only time I had any problems with the Cuban authorities. When I entered the country they did not stamp my passport as they said it would cause me problems in the future if I had ever tried to get into the United States. In fact, a few months later I did arrive in New York. I was delayed for sometime as they went through a large black book that contained the names of left-wing activists. Luckily for me I had not been listed. However, a few weeks later, a friend of mine was refused entry because his name was in the book. He was indeed a left-wing activist. He was a libertarian socialist who had been a leading opponent of the communist government in Hungary. He managed to escape to the west and taught at Sussex University (I met him as a result of doing a research degree at the same university). He was going to America to publicize a book that he had written on communist dictatorships. You would have thought he would have been welcomed in the United States. Not true as his critique was from the point of view of the libertarian socialist. It is no coincidence that the American press actually supported the Stalin purges in the 1930s. The reason being that Stalin was following his policy of “communism in one country” and was purging those advocating world revolution.

Another example of you commenting without reading my posting. If you read the posting on Henry Marshall, how can you be unaware of Tommy G. McWilliams?

This mystery is easily solved. People apply to join the Forum. Sometimes they do not use their real names. All people who apply receive an email from me asking for their real name, a biography, and a photograph. It is a glitch in the software that until I send them this email it appears that they are members. They are not and cannot post.

John, can you please give the source for this quotation from Hoover? It appeared on a memo from Hoover to Tommy G. McWilliams. It was quoted on page 14 of an article entitled "The Killing of Henry Marshall" by Bill Adler that appeared in The Texas Observer (7th November, 1986).

Doug Caddy has kindly sent me a batch of documents (letters, newspaper articles, etc.) and a video on Billie Sol Estes. Over the next couple of weeks I will make postings based on these documents. First of all I want to look at the Henry Marshall case. Henry Marshall, the son of a farmer, was born in Robertson County, Texas, in 1909. He studied chemistry at the University of Texas before becoming the only teacher at the Nesbitt Rural School. The school was forced to close in May, 1932, a victim of the Great Depression. Marshall managed to find work at a Franklin gin company. However, in August, 1934, Marshall became a clerk with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). He worked at the agency's Robertson County office. Marshall was a good worker and it eventually held a senior post in the agency. In 1960 Marshall was asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes. Marshall discovered that over a two year period, Estes had purchased 3,200 acres of cotton allotments from 116 different farmers. Marshall wrote to his superiors in Washington on 31st August, 1960, that: "The regulations should be strengthened to support our disapproval of every case (of allotment transfers)". When he heard the news, Billie Sol Estes sent his lawyer, John P. Dennison, to meet Marshall in Robertson County. At the meeting on 17th January, 1961, Marshall told Dennison that Estes was clearly involved in a "scheme or device to buy allotments, and will not be approved, and prosecution will follow if this operation is ever used." Marshall was disturbed that as a result of sending a report of his meeting to Washington, he was offered a new post in Washington. He assumed that Bille Sol Estes had friends in high places and that they wanted him removed from the field office in Robertson County. Marshall refused what he considered to be a bribe. A week after the meeting between Marshall and Dennison, A. B. Foster, manager of Billie Sol Enterprises, wrote to Cliff Carter, a close aide to Lyndon B. Johnson, telling him about the problems that Marshall was causing the company. Foster wrote that "we would sincerely appreciate your investigating this and seeing if anything can be done." Over the next few months Marshall had meetings with eleven county committees in Texas. He pointed out that Billie Sol Estes scheme to buy cotton allotments were illegal. This information was then communicated to those farmers who had been sold their cotton allotments to Billie Sol Enterprises. On 3rd June, 1961, Marshall was found dead on his farm by the side of his Chevy Fleetside pickup truck. His rifle lay beside him. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. Soon after County Sheriff Howard Stegall arrived, he decreed that Marshall had committed suicide. No pictures were taken of the crime scene, no blood samples were taken of the stains on the truck (the truck was washed and waxed the following day), no check for fingerprints were made on the rifle or pickup. Marshall's wife (Sybil Marshall) and brother (Robert Marshall) refused to believe he had committed suicide and posted a $2,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction. The undertaker, Manley Jones, also reported: "To me it looked like murder. I just do not believe a man could shoot himself like that." The undertaker's son, Raymond Jones, later told the journalist, Bill Adler in 1986: "Daddy said he told Judge Farmer there was no way Mr. Marshall could have killed himself. Daddy had seen suicides before. JPs depend on us and our judgments about such things. we see a lot more deaths than they do. But in this case, Daddy said, Judge Farmer told him he was going to put suicide on the death certificate because the sheriff told him to." As a result, Lee Farmer returned a suicide verdict: "death by gunshot, self-inflicted." Sybil Marshall hired an attorney, W. S. Barron, in order to persuade the Robertson County authorities to change the ruling on Marshall's cause of death. One man who did believe that Marshall had been murdered was Texas Ranger Clint Peoples. He had reported to Colonel Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that it "would have been utterly impossible for Mr. Marshall to have taken his own life." Peoples also interviewed Nolan Griffin, a gas station attendant in Robertson County. Griffin claimed that on the day of Marshall's death, he had been asked by a stranger for directions to Marshall's farm. A Texas Ranger artist, Thadd Johnson, drew a facial sketch based on a description given by Griffin. Peoples eventually came to the conclusion that this man was Mac Wallace, the convicted murderer of John Kinser. In the spring of 1962, Bille Sol Estes was arrested by the FBI on fraud and conspiracy charges. Soon afterwards it was disclosed by the Secretary of Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman, that Henry Marshall had been a key figure in the investigation into the illegal activities of Billie Sol Estes. As a result, the Robertson County grand jury ordered that the body of Marshall should be exhumed and an autopsy performed. After eight hours of examination, Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk confirmed that Marshall had not committed suicide. Jachimczyk also discovered a 15 percent carbon monoxide concentration in Marshall's body. Jachimczyk calculated that it could have been as high as 30 percent at the time of death. On 4th April, 1962, George Krutilek, Estes chief accountant, was found dead. Despite a severe bruise on Krutilek's head, the coroner decided that he had also committed suicide. The next day, Estes, and three business associates, were indicted by a federal grand jury on 57 counts of fraud. Two of these men, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, died before the case came to court. At the time it was said they committed suicide but later Estes was to claim that both men were murdered by Mac Wallace in order to protect the political career of Lyndon B. Johnson. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also began to look into the case of Billie Sol Estes. Leonard C. Williams, a former assistant to Henry Marshall, testified about the evidence the department acquired against Estes. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman also admitted that Marshall was a man "who left this world under questioned circumstances." It was eventually discovered that three officials of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington had received bribes from Billie Sol Estes. Red Jacobs, Jim Ralph and Bill Morris were eventually removed from their jobs. However, further disclosures suggested that Orville L. Freeman, might be involved in the scam. In September, 1961, Billie Sol Estes had been fined $42,000 for illegal cotton allotments. Two months later, Freeman appointed Estes to the National Cotton Advisory Board. It was also revealed that Billie Sol Estes told Wilson C. Tucker, deputy director of the Agriculture Department's cotton division, on 1st August, 1961, that he threatened to "embarrass the Kennedy administration if the investigation were not halted". Tucker went onto testify: "Estes stated that this pooled cotton allotment matter had caused the death of one person and then asked me if I knew Henry Marshall". As Tucker pointed out, this was six months before questions about Marshall's death had been raised publicly. However, the cover-up continued. Tommy G. McWilliams, the FBI agent in charge of the Henry Marshall investigation, came to the conclusion that Marshall had indeed committed suicide. He wrote: "My theory was that he shot himself and then realized he wasn't dead." He then claimed that he then tried to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe of his truck. McWilliams claimed that Marshall had used his shirt to make a hood over the exhaust pipe. Even J. Edgar Hoover was not impressed with this theory. He wrote on 21st May, 1962: "I just can't understand how one can fire five shots at himself." Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk also disagreed with the FBI report. He believed that the bruise on Marshall's forehead had been caused by a "severe blow to the head". Jachimczyk also rejected the idea that Marshall had used his shirt as a hood. He pointed out that "if this were done, soot must have necessarily been found on the shirt; no such was found." The Robertson County grand jury continued to investigate the death of Henry Marshall. However, some observers were disturbed by the news that grand jury member, Pryse Metcalfe, was dominating proceedings. Metcalfe was County Sheriff Howard Stegall's son-in-law. On 1st June, 1962, the Dallas News reported that President John F. Kennedy had "taken a personal interest in the mysterious death of Henry Marshall." As a result, the story said, Robert Kennedy "has ordered the FBI to step up its investigation of the case." In June, 1962, Billie Sol Estes, appeared before the grand jury. He was accompanied by John Cofer, a lawyer who represented Lyndon B. Johnson when he was accused of ballot-rigging when elected to the Senate in 1948 and Mac Wallace when he was charged with the murder of John Kinser. Billie Sol Estes spent almost two hours before the grand jury, but he invoked the Texas version of the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer most questions on grounds that he might incriminate himself. Tommy G. McWilliams of the FBI also appeared before the grand jury and put forward the theory that Henry Wallace had committed suicide. Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk also testified that "if in fact this is a suicide, it is the most unusual one I have seen during the examination of approximately 15,000 deceased persons." McWilliams did admit that it was "hard to kill yourself with a bolt-action 22". This view was shared by John McClellan, a member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He posed for photographs with a .22 caliber rifle similar to Marshall's. McClellan pointed out: "It doesn't take many deductions to come to the irrevocable conclusion that no man committed suicide by placing the rifle in that awkward position and then (cocking) it four times more." (see picture below) Despite the evidence presented by Jachimczyk, the grand jury agreed with McWilliams. It ruled that after considering all the known evidence, the jury considers it "inconclusive to substantiate a definite decision at this time, or to overrule any decision heretofore made." Later, it was disclosed that some jury members believed that Marshall had been murdered. Ralph McKinney blamed Pryse Metcalfe for this decision. "Pryse was as strong in the support of the suicide verdict as anyone I have ever seen in my life, and I think he used every influence he possibly could against the members of the grand jury to be sure it came out with a suicide verdict." In 1964 the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported that it could find no link between Marshall's death and his efforts to bring to an end Billie Sol Estes' cotton allotment scheme. The following year Estes went to prison for fraud relating to the mostly nonexistent fertilizer tanks he had put up for collateral as part of the cotton allotment scam. He was released in 1971 but he was later sent back to prison for mail fraud and non-payment of income tax. Clint Peoples retired from the Texas Rangers in 1974 but he continued to investigate the murder of Henry Marshall. In 1979 Peoples interviewed Billie Sol Estes in prison. Estes promised that "when he was released he would solve the puzzle of Henry Marshall's death". Billie Sol Estes was released from prison in December, 1983. Three months later he appeared before the Robertson County grand jury. He confessed that Henry Marshall was murdered because it was feared he would "blow the whistle" on the cotton allotment scam. Billie Sol Estes claimed that Marshall was murdered on the orders of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was afraid that his own role in this scam would become public knowledge. According to Estes, Clifton C. Carter, Johnson's long-term aide, had ordered Marshall to approve 138 cotton allotment transfers. Of course, the authorities have never re-investigated the Henry Marshall case. In fact, attempts have been made to prevent these charges entering the public domain (see the way the television documentary on LBJ was banned). I believe that Henry Marshall's death is linked to the assassination of JFK. Remember, in 1963, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations were still investigating the Henry Marshall case. We also know that JFK and RFK were taking a close interest in the case. The Marshall murder was only one of three Senate investigations that was linking LBJ with serious crimes. Bobby Baker and the TFX contract were also being investigated in 1963. When LBJ became president he was able to control the reports that came out of these investigations.

The truth of the matter is that you need to post on every thread even when you have nothing to say on the subject. As I have said before, as most members avoid your postings, it is probably an attempt to stop people reading the rest of the thread. I have provided no evidence that Albert Thomas was involved in the assassination of JFK. All I have done is to provide information concerning his involvement in the Suite 8F Group. The fact that he winked at LBJ is just interesting and an example of inappropriate behaviour.

Why should you be concerned with Albert Thomas? He was not a member of the Republican Party.

The photograph below has been posted before. However, I think it is worthwhile starting another thread on the man winking at LBJ. Albert Thomas was a close friend of LBJ. He was also a key figure in the Suite 8F Group. The reason for this was that he was chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Committee. In this position he was able to obtain a lot of government contracts for Brown & Root (Halliburton). Thomas also served on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and was instrumental in securing the location of the United States National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) and the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1961 (built by Brown & Root). Like other members of the Suite 8F Group, Thomas would have been very pleased with LBJ getting the top job. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKthomasA.htm http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2868

I am on the libertarian left. I agree with most of the policies posted on this website. Where I tend to disagree with American libertarians is the issue of progressive income tax. This is the most effective strategy for redistributing wealth and power currently available in capitalist societies. Wealth and power are inextricably linked. You cannot redistribute power without redistributing wealth. I also support your views on fiscal and personal responsibility. One of the great myths is that right-wing governments are in favour of reduced government spending. I know they always say they are (Ronald Reagan, George Bush, etc.) but they never deliver. The main reason is that the corporations who provide the funding for their political campaigns, are in favour of increased spending in certain areas. They are in fact after the government contracts on defence spending, etc. The money that corporations give to politicians is seen as a business expense, not some form of charity.

Could you provide me with any examples of Dirksen campaigning for Civil Rights legislation before 1964? You should read The Case Against Congress by Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson on Everett Dirksen. The authors consider Dirksen to be one of the most corrupt politicians in American history. Interestingly, they argue that he was under the control of Lyndon Johnson. This is illustrated by the released tapes of the telephone conversations of the two men. For example, Dirksen did everything he could to stop the publication of Don Reynolds' secret testimony to the Senate Rules Committee on the day that JFRK was assassinated.

That is exactly what Tim Gratz is quoting. Anybody who wants to find out the full story about the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of the democratically elected Guatamalan government in 1954 should read Bitter Fruit by Stephen Schlesinger & Stephen Kinzer. It has been constantly updated over the years as new CIA documents have been declassified. The other book Tim should read is Operation PBSuccess: The United States and Guatemala, 1952-54. The CIA commissioned the historian, Nicholas Cullather, to write an account of what the CIA was up to in Guatemala. They gave him full access to CIA files. Finished in 1994, it immediately became a classified document. However, Cullather, began to leak what he discovered and in 1999 it was decided to declassify the document and it was published as a book. Tim will of course not read this book or any other book I suggest. Instead he will rely on outdated CIA disinformation campaigns. It seems strange that Tim is willing to defend this imposition of a military dictatorship in Guatemala in 1954. Most of the CIA operatives involved in this were suitably ashamed after they realized what they had done. They also admitted that they had carried out this conspiracy on behalf of a multinational company. It had nothing to do with the “interests” of the American public. For a full account of this guilt see Evan Thomas’s The Very Best Men. It never ceases to amaze me how Tim defends the dirty tricks carried out by the CIA on behalf of multinational corporations. Even the CIA are unwilling to defend this part of their past. Sometimes I wonder if Tim is not really a Marxist posing as a right-wing extremist in an effort to discredit the neo-fascists.

There seems to be two major things going on here. As always, the dominant ideology plays a major part. This ideology changes as the capitalist system changes. It attempts to respond to the needs of the economic system. As Marx pointed out, this is not always a perfect match and those who are aware of the flaws in the system attempt to use this to undermine or even overthrow the system. One of the major functions of the education system is to prepare the “masses” to accept low paid, low status, occupations. It does this by convincing them that they have had their chance but failed and therefore deserve the form of employment they eventually obtain. The main way that this is achieved is through the examination system. The ideology of comprehensive education actually fitted into the needs of the capitalist system in the 1960s. The economic system needed to recruit more people from the working class to do middle class jobs. Therefore it needed an increase in the aspirations of the working class student. The result was comprehensive education. This suited the capitalist system for two reasons. (1) It increased the number of people capable of social mobility. (2) It helped to convince those who failed to achieve social mobility, that it was their own fault. The needs of the economic system changed in the 1980s. We saw a decline in middle class jobs. Therefore, the children of the middle-classes found it difficult to find work that reflected their class background. The working class found it difficult to find work of any type. Working class social mobility virtually came to an end in the 1980s. This was a problem that comprehensive education could not solve. Politicians in the Conservative Party blamed the comprehensive system itself for the problems being encountered by capitalism. That somehow it was the ideology of “equality” that was causing the problems. In reality, comprehensive education had little to do with “equality” as “success” was still linked very closely to class background. Conservatives had a major problem. Ideology had moved on. The public would not accept a return to the 11+. Only the very daft could be convinced that you could have grammar and comprehensive schools side by side. Thatcherism came up with the idea that what you needed was more tests and examinations. The big new idea was that children would be tested and ranked as soon as they entered the school. This ranking system would continue throughout the child’s education. In fact, it became the new dominant ideology. This was combined with the introduction of league tables. This was a vital ingredient of these reforms. Teachers came under constant pressure to teach to the test. They became very good at this and results dramatically improved. This of course had nothing to do with an improvement in educational standards. In fact, these had actually fallen as a result of the changes. This was inevitable as teachers found it increasingly difficult to find time to teach what they considered to be important. In opposition the Labour Party had been committed to overturning the educational reforms introduced by the Tories. However, once in power, they kept these changes. In fact, Blair, a public school boy who is fully committed to an elitist educational system, thought that Thatcher had not gone far enough. He is now trying to reintroduce the old grammar school system (see the proposed new Education Act). However, there are enough Labour MPs who still believe in comprehensive education and it seems that Blair will need the support of the Tories to get it passed in the House of Commons. The second important factor is the cultural changes that are taken place in society. These are in themselves linked to the needs of the economic system. For example, the need for both parents to work long hours in order to bring in a reasonable income. This has resulted in parents spending less time with their children. Children now spend more time with portable televisions, computers, video-games, mobile phones, etc. This has resulted in a decline in language and social skills. In fact, it has completely undermined the socialization process and is contributing to a whole range of social problems.

Thought members might be interested in these two articles. Mel Ayton is a member of this Forum and might be willing to add to these comments. Mel Ayton: Review of Joan Mellen’s A Farewell To Justice – Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, And The Case That Should Have Changed History Mr. Ayton is the author of The JFK Assassination: Dispelling the Myths (2002) and Questions Of Controversy: The Kennedy Brothers (2001). His new book, A Racial Crime - James Earl Ray and the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr., was published in the United States by ArcheBooks in January 2005. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began his investigation into the JFK assassination by exposing alleged contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. Joan Mellen asserts that Oswald was no Marxist and was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with U.S. Customs, and that the attempts to discredit Garrison’s investigation reached the highest levels of the U.S. government. Mellen claims to have uncovered new evidence establishing the intelligence agencies’ roles in both a president’s assassination and its cover-up. She believes the cover-up began well before the assassination. Oswald, she alleges, was closely connected to CIA-sponsored anti-Castro figures in New Orleans who included Clay Shaw, David Ferrie private investigator Guy Banister and his associate Jack Martin. Central to Mellen’s thesis is her assertion that the CIA and FBI worked with the conspirators to cover up the assassination.The massive cover-up began, Mellen posits, when Oswald, in the company of Shaw and Ferrie, applied for a job at the mental hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. According to Garrison, conspirators wanted Oswald working at the hospital so they could later switch his records to support a frame-up in which Oswald would be characterized as a mental patient. On the strength of an interview with anti-Cuban exile Angelo Murgado (alias Angelo ‘Kennedy’) she also alleges – most strikingly of all - that Robert Kennedy was aware of Oswald and his connection to the FBI before the assassination. RFK purportedly put Oswald under surveillance and had his Cuban associates tracking Oswald's movements during the summer of 1963. On ‘Black Op Radio’ (Show 234, 2005), Mellen stated that, in March 1967 it was her to-be- husband, Ralph Schoenman (- a JFK conspiracy advocate and committed Marxist), who gave Jim Garrison the now infamous articles about Clay Shaw that had been published in the Italian newspaper ‘ Paese Sera’. The articles stated that Shaw had been on the board of directors of an organisation in Rome which the articles alleged had been a CIA front. As Max Holland has demonstrated, the evidence indicates that these articles convinced Garrison that Shaw was a CIA agent and that the agency was behind the assassination. Despite Max Holland’s debunking of the Italian newspaper’s stories in his article ‘The Lie That Linked The CIA To The Kennedy Assassination’ Mellen unashamedly gives credence to their distorted facts. As Max Holland wrote, ‘Paese Sera’s successful deception turns out to be a major reason why many Americans believe, to this day, that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.’ Mellen’s ‘proof’ of the invalidity of Holland’s research centers around the simple denials of the editors of Paese Sera who said their reporters were not duped by the KGB and that ‘Garrison had focused on the CIA well before the publication of the Paese Sera articles’.This is a pivotal issue because Garrison, in his memoir ‘On The Trail Of The Assassins’, lied about when he received the articles; that lie suggests the true significance of these articles to him. Moreover, the articles were NOT already in the works long before Shaw’s arrest, as Mellen claims, on the basis of interviews conducted by the aforementioned Ralph Schoenman. It was Shaw’s arrest that prompted those stories. And Garrison only knew of the alleged CIA/Shaw connection through the newspaper articles. Readers should also be aware that the KGB was doing everything in its power to link the JFK assassination with the CIA, and that Paese Sera was an outlet for KGB disinformation, as the recently released Mitrokhin Archive proves. Branding authors who reject JFK conspiracy theories as 'CIA assets' is Mellen's favourite smear tactic in the book. It is a common tool used by JFK conspiracy writers - it is also 'McCarthyite' in nature. Don Bohning, a former Miami Herald reporter and author of 'The Castro Obsession' (2005) is incensed with references made by Mellen that he was a 'CIA sponsored' reporter. Bohning contacted the book's publishers, suggesting it was libelous. They contacted Mellen and said she agreed to change the description to 'CIA linked.' The reference is still extremely misleading, Bohning said. “ (I)...never took a cent from the CIA and was outraged by the implication - along with the terms 'writer asset' and 'utilized'.” (Email to the author, 3.10.2005)….Top editors at the Herald were well aware – and approved – of my contacts with the CIA during the 1960s.”(Email to the author 9-10-05). Mellen’s theories, which center around a CIA conspiracy, make little sense once examined closely. Her allegations that Clay Shaw was created and supervised by the CIA have been examined time and time again by JFK researchers and found to be false. In reality, Clay Shaw had simply been one of thousands of businessmen who had once been a source for the CIA through its Domestic Contact Service (DCS). (See John McAdams’s website). Instead, as Patricia Lambert has proven, in a far superior examination of the Garrison case, ‘False Witness’, Shaw was a Kennedy supporter, a decorated war veteran and a gifted intellectual who had rightly been found innocent of the conspiracy charges Garrison made against him. Mellen’s allegations that the CIA wanted to impede Garrison’s investigation is true but not because the Agency had something sinister to hide. The Agency was in a quandary because of its innocuous relationship with Shaw and it monitored Garrison’s investigation, alarmed that the New Orleans DA was wrongly linking the Agency with the JFK assassination. As Max Holland wrote, “Shaw was not ……developed as a covert operative…. the relationship (with the CIA) just lapsed. He had never received any remuneration and probably considered the reporting a civic duty that was no longer urgent once the hostility between the two superpowers became frozen in place and a new world war no longer appeared imminent…. Garrison’s allegations— the “grossest we have seen from any responsible American official”—gave the Agency fits, just as they did Shaw and Shaw’s lawyers.” (see: The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination by Max Holland) It is difficult to exaggerate the number of previously debunked myths Mellen resurrects.In fact her book is no different from previous JFK conspiracy books which promote theories based on gossip, innuendo and tall tales from unreliable sources. She rehabilitates old shibboleths about the Garrison investigation including the myth that Oswald was in possession of ‘a Minox spy camera’ and Ferrie’s alleged possession of Oswald’s library card both of which have been examined carefully over the years and found to be false. Mellen’s thesis also depends on the veracity of New Orleans ‘character’ Jack Martin and countless other actors in the New Orleans ‘drama’ whose stories have been fully researched. There are too many to cover in this book review but the following are examples as to the lengths to which this author will go in building her conspiracy tale. Mellen recycles as if true the testimony of witnesses who were discredited before the Shaw case came to trial in 1969, or who were never called to testify precisely because they lacked credibility. She apparently assumes that readers will not know that these witnesses were discredited. Her ‘new’ revelations almost always center around the tales told by anti-Cuban exiles and others on the periphery like Thomas Edward Beckham, a semi-literate who claims, along with dozens of other fantasists, to have observed Ferrie, Oswald and Ruby together; Richard Case Nagell and Jules Rico Kimble, known liars and fantasists, (see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell1.htm ) Mellen also plays the conspiracists’ game of ‘A knows B who knows C who knows D therefore A must know D’. One witness who Mellen interviewed is Angelo Murgado, mentioned earlier, who changed his name to ‘Angelo Kennedy’. Angelo purports to have known about RFK’s pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald. Yet Don Bohning’s Cuban exile contacts in Florida have poured scorn on Murgado’s credibility. (email to the author, 3.10.2005) He joins the battalions of ‘soldier of fortune’ types who have, for 40 years, claimed some knowledge of the JFK assassination – all of them supplying no credible evidence of their participation whatsoever. The most important witness in the trial of Clay Shaw, was Perry Raymond Russo and Garrison's case was built around Russo's testimony. According to Mellen, Russo was truthful - but the facts reveal otherwise. Russo began recanting his conspiracy stories almost immediately, beginning in 1967 to his polygraph examiners. In 1971, Russo recanted to Clay Shaw’s attorneys, admitting to them that he was coached, brainwashed and hypnotized into lying under oath. In the mid-1990’s, shortly before his death from a heart attack, he recanted again, this time to author Patricia Lambert. A particularly glaring example of the kind of distortions Mellen routinely engages in concerns a CIA officer named Joseph James Martin. Mellen cites CIA documents about him, and alleges he is identical to the ‘Jack Martin’ who was an associate of Guy Banister. It is a preposterous claim when the full CIA record on this issue and Jack Martin’s FBI biography is examined. Garrison’s initial ideas and actions were based on allegations made by Martin who was frequently characterized by people who knew him as a notorious storyteller. Acting on Martin's stories David William Ferrie, a former airlines pilot who had worked for Carlos Marcello’s lawyer, G. Wray Gill, was put under round the clock surveillance. It was years before Martin's allegations against Ferrie were discovered to be inspired by a long-standing grudge.The mystery is why Garrison, who knew Martin was alcoholic, fabricated information, and had received treatment for mental illness, took his allegations seriously. Hubie Badeux, the former chief of the New Orleans Police Intelligence Division told author Gerald Posner, "[Martin] was goofy to begin with and lied all the time". Badeux said Martin had a reputation for "wild and crazy stories." Jack Martin later claimed, with some justification, that Garrison's investigation was based on “information” he and a friend, David Lewis, "made up". In constructing her story Mellen takes many leaps of the imagination. For example she states that Oswald wanted to name his first child David, if it was a boy. She then links this fact with the ridiculous assertion that the only ‘David’ in Oswald’s life was David Ferrie. Mellen posits this as proof of Oswald’s connection to the alleged JFK conspirator.This is not analysis but paranoia. Mellen’s book has the façade of scholarship but it is in fact a hocus pocus act. Many of her strongest assertions are not footnoted and thus undocumented. Incredibly, she gives credence to an anonymous telephone call to Garrison in which the caller, allegedly a friend of Shaw’s, said the DA’s suspicions about Shaw were correct. She also ignores documents she doesn’t like, i.e. that contradict her inferences. She claims, without backing it up, that the FBI and CIA files are ‘papered’, which presumably means they contain false documents. She also claims that incriminating documents were destroyed. Yet she also (mis)uses CIA and FBI documents to ‘make’ her case when it suits her purpose. She has created a researcher’s ‘perfect universe’.Documents she doesn’t like are inserted concoctions, and important documents that would prove her allegations are missing (though she purports to know their contents)..One wonders why she bothers with documents at all. The answer is it gives her book a façade of accuracy. People who want to believe Mellen doubtless will, but those who are at least a little skeptical should read Patricia Lambert’s book ‘False Witness’. Lambert meticulously traces Garrison's story from the very beginning of his investigation, through the Shaw trial and its aftermath. She provides compelling evidence that Jim Garrison's case against Shaw was non-existent, and that Garrison himself was a reckless, mentally unstable demagogue. Mellen’s book is typical of many conspiracy books in that the impact of her tome depends on the reader having little independent knowledge of the facts of the case or the dramatis personae in this shocking tale of the abuse of a District Attorney’s power. Judged on its merits, the book should have no impact on the history of the JFK Assassination . In November 1997 the Assassination Records Review Board, instituted by Congress as a result of public pressure after the release of the movie 'JFK', released Clay Shaw's secret diary. In it he wrote of being wrongly persecuted, "I am still dismayed to find myself charged with the most heinous crime of the century but I am completely innocent and the feeling of being a stunned animal seems to have gone now." In another section of Shaw's diary he wrote about his feelings of being accused of having associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie, "Aside from any questions of guilt or innocence,” wrote Shaw, “anyone who knows me knows that I would have better sense than to plot with two nuts like that." Posted on Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 5:19 PM http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/18394.html Mel Ayton: Review of Joan Mellen’s A Farewell To Justice – Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, And The Case That Should Have Changed History Ayton's review of "A Farewell to Justice" (#72180) by Gary L. Aguilar on December 8, 2005 at 1:36 AM Who Better to Defend the CIA than the CIA? Gary Aguilar, San Francisco Among myriad ironies in Mel Ayton’s review of “A Farewell to Justice,” perhaps the greatest is Mel Ayton’s offering author Max Holland’s CIA-published work as an answer to Joan Mellen’s exhaustive elucidation of the myriad CIA ties to the Kennedy case. For example, Ayton trots out Holland’s remarkable discovery that the sole reason Jim Garrison had for suspecting the CIA in the events in Dallas was because he’d been duped by fiendishly clever KGB dezinformatsiya planted in a Rome daily, Il Paese Sera. Ayton apparently has more faith in the theory than even its supposed author does. For Holland refused to defend it in a public debate with me last September in Washington, D.C. before a live audience and rolling C-SPAN cameras. [1] On why he might have chosen not to, one scarcely knows where to begin. But perhaps it’s worth starting with the fact that Holland’s famous breakthrough isn’t Holland’s, something he has never disclosed (apparently even to Ayton), but was forced to admit when I confronted him during our debate. Steve Dorril was the first one to make “Holland’s” argument in an article published by Lobster Magazine in 1983, something Ayton could have easily found in a simple search of the web. [2] “Holland’s” discovery apparently next surfaced when Warren Commission defender, John McAdams, ran it in a 1999 newsgroup post, [3] two years before Holland presented it for the first time. The “proof” Dorril, McAdams and Holland offered that Il Paese Sera was a communist conduit consisted mostly of testimony the CIA’s Richard Helms delivered during a 1961 Senate appearance. [3] As this author has shown, Helms’s sworn assertions during this 1961 Senate appearance are no more credible than the testimony he gave during another Senate hearing that led to his conviction and the page 1 New York Times headline, “Helms Is Fined $2,000 and Given Two-Year Suspended Prison Term--U.S. Judge Rebukes Ex-C.I.A. Head for Misleading (Senate) Panel.” [4] Without offering a shred of proof, Ayton recycles Holland’s dubious claim that, “the (Il Paese Sera) articles were NOT (sic) already in the works long before Shaw’s arrest, as Mellen claims … It was Shaw’s arrest that prompted [il Paese Sera to write] those stories.” How Ayton knows that the articles “were NOT already in the works long before Shaw’s arrest,” he does not say. But had Ayton (or Holland) bothered to contact Il Paese Sera’s editors, they would probably have told him what they have told others: that the six-part series had nothing to do with (and said nothing about) the KGB or the JFK assassination; that they had never heard of Jim Garrison when they assigned the story six months before [which was also six months before Garrison had charged Shaw]; and that they were astonished to see that Shaw might have any connection to the assassination. Finally, echoing Holland, Ayton claims that the Italian articles were Garrison’s sole reason for suspecting the Agency. If they really were the sole source of his seduction, one would have expected some contemporaneous evidence of it. But there is none. As Edward Epstein has pointed out, during his twenty-six-page interview in Playboy Magazine’s October 1967 issue, Garrison’s most comprehensive review of his case that year, the D.A. ticked off eight reasons to suspect the CIA. None of them included Il Paese Sera or the subject of the articles, the still-mysterious Rome World Trade Center, Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC). [5] Nor did he even mention Clay Shaw, although perhaps because of the pending legal wrangle. [6] Moreover, Garrison wrote the foreword to Harold Weisberg’s 1967-published book, entitled “Oswald in New Orleans--Case of Conspiracy with the CIA.” (my emphasis) Despite the perfect opportunity, as with Playboy, Garrison again uttered not a word about Il Paese Sera, Shaw or the CMC. [7] Finally, it is unhelpful for the central role Holland and Ayton have the Rome daily playing that Garrison never once cited or referred to those reports during the Shaw trial. Nor did he even use them as a basis for questioning Shaw. He never asked Shaw, for example, whether he had worked for CMC or for the CIA, both of which were the focus of all six stories. [8] Ayton next rallied to the defense of a former Miami Herald reporter, Donald Bohning, who Mellen had described as “CIA linked.” In response, Ayton quoted from a complaining email from the man: “(I) never took a cent from the CIA,” Bohning apparently wrote, “and was outraged by the implication – along with the terms ‘writer asset’ and ‘utilized’ … Top editors at the [Miami] Herald were well aware – and approved – of my contacts with the CIA during the 1960s.” Tellingly, Ayton omits the most damning portion of Mellen’s account. Even if money never changed hands, and Mellen nowhere suggests it did, Bohning’s relationship with The Agency was far from the routine and casual relationship reporters have with government insiders. As Mellen points out, Bohning was apparently so useful to The Agency it gave him his own, unique cryptonym, “AMCARBON-3.” Bohning “had received his Provisional Covert Security Approval as a CIA confidential informant on 8/21/67,” Mellen wrote, “then Covert Security Approval itself on 11/14/67.” And no less than the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans himself “approved the use of Bohning in the CIA’s Cuban operations.” [9] For those who have forgotten Carl Bernstein’s cautionary tale about the corrosive effect such relationships can have on credible and honest journalism [10], or the New York Times’s Christmas week 1977 mea culpa for having compromised itself and its readers by engaging in similar unhealthy relationships with the CIA, a recent scandal is worth mention. Judy Miller, the recently disgraced New York Times reporter, was such a darling of the Bush Administration and the military that she was granted a security clearance not unlike Bohning’s. [11] Her bogus, prewar scare stories about the imminence of the Iraqi threat that the “leftist” New York Times published on the front page were a boon to the Neocons in the Bush Administration bent on manufacturing consent for war. That Bohning’s higher-ups at the Miami Herald knew and approved of his cozy relationship only compounds the impropriety. At least The New York Times’ “top editors” publicly donned hair shirts and apologized to readers for betraying their trust. And not without reason. Bernstein documented that the problem wasn’t the occasional tainting tie between the rare, lowly stringer and the CIA. It was the myriad, compromising arrangements between The Agency and the higher-ups in outfits such as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The L. A. Times, etc. that really took the bark out of our press watchdogs. This is not to say Bohning was corrupt, but that Mellen’s concern is well founded. Ayton puts Holland in service of downplaying the links Mellen details between Clay Shaw and The Agency. “In reality, Clay Shaw had simply been one of thousands of businessmen who had once been a source for the CIA through its Domestic Contact Service … Shaw was a Kennedy supporter (and a) decorated war veteran.” Here, flag-waving is substituted for dealing with Mellen’s great spadework on this interesting question. Ayton does not dispute that, as Mellen reported, Shaw had been cleared by the Agency for project “QKENCHAT (which) authorized trusted CIA personnel for clearance to recruit or enlist ‘civilians,’ people not officially with the Agency, to discuss ‘projects, activities and possible relationships.’” [p. 133] If Ayton is right that Shaw’s arrangement was unexceptional, and that “thousands” of other American businessmen had similarly been empowered by the CIA to “recruit or enlist ‘civilians,’” there is no record of it. Moreover, the CIA called QKENCHANT an “operational project,” not an intelligence-gathering project. And Shaw’s records were kept in The Agency’s “operational files,” not with the “innocent” Domestic Contact files that housed the routine debriefings of ‘simple’ returning American businessmen. Ironically, Ayton ignores what even Max Holland has acknowledged: Shaw lied under oath in denying his association with the CIA. “Have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?” Shaw’s own defense attorney F. Irvin Dymond asked him. “No, I have not,” replied Shaw.” [11] Against the interests of his own Agency, CIA director, Richard Helms, put the lie to that. Holland relates that Shaw had had an [at least] eight-year relationship with the CIA, sending The Agency information on 33 separate occasions that the CIA invariably graded as “of value” and “reliable.” [12] One might have expected that, if only for political reasons, a Warren Commission loyalist bent on diverting suspicion from the CIA and focusing it instead on Garrison would have avoided citing Holland’s essay, “The Lie That Linked the CIA to the Kennedy Assassination.” For that poorly conceived, anti-Garrison tirade was published by the CIA itself after his fellows at The Nation Magazine, where Holland works as a contributing editor, rejected the paper from their magazine. [13] To undermine the important revelations of Thomas Edward Beckham, a House Select Committee witness Mellen features, Ayton describes him as a “semi-literate,” implying that the memory of a poor reader could be safely ignored. During a visit to New Orleans, Mellen interviewed former House Select Committee investigator, L. J. Delsa, a murder investigator with more than 30 years experience working variously as a federal, state or local official. In an interview on December 7, 2005, Delsa opined that, on the basis of his personal knowledge, he believed that Beckham was a credible witness. Similar problems mar the rest of Ayton’s review. But at the end of the day, still standing are Mellen’s demolitions of the myths that the CIA played no part in JFK’s demise and that Oswald was a loner. And she has established quite convincingly that Clay Shaw’s International Trade Mart in New Orleans was a hornet’s nest of activity undoubtedly related to The Agency in ways known only to those with access to still-sealed files. With what we’ve already learned from declassified files, it’s no mystery why the government has remained so passionate about maintaining secrecy concerning JFK’s demise. For it is information that has been painfully extracted from once-secret files over the past 41 years that has steadily eroded the fables upon which the Warren Commission built its case. Mellen’s book has completed a demolition that Ayton’s valiant efforts can’t hope to stave off. It’s past time he understood that. For when keepers of the flickering flame have to resort to Agency-abetted disquisitions to defend The Agency’s innocence, the gig is up and it’s time to sent up a white flag. Gary L. Aguilar, San Francisco [1] The proposition, “Was Garrison Duped by the KGB?” was the subject of our debate held during a conference hosted by the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, September 18, 2004 at the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel. Holland was to have defended that proposition but did not. He chose instead to argue that Jim Garrison had “lied” when he said in his book, “On the Trail of the Assassins,” that he’d not heard of the Il Paese Sera articles until after the Clay Shaw trial. While Holland established that Garrison had indeed seen the Il Paese Sera articles before trial, he was less convincing that Garrison’s inaccurate statement was really a lie rather than a mistake. As noted in the text, Garrison never used any of the material in the articles during the trial, and his book was published 21 years after he’d seen them. [2] Steve Dorril, Permindex: The International Trade in Disinformation. Lobster: the journal of parapolitics, intelligence and State Research, #3, 1983. On-line at: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/lobster.htm [Had Ayton but google-searched the obvious words, “Il Paese Sera, CMC,” the second “hit” would have taken him directly to this article.] [3] See: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/siss.txt In its entirety, John McAdams’s newsgroup post read as follows: From - Fri Oct 15 12:22:19 1999 From: 6489mcadamsj@vms.csd.mu.edu (John McAdams) Newsgroups: alt.assassination.jfk Approved: jmcadams@execpc.com Subject: IL PAESE SERA and Communist disinformation Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:19:56 GMT Message-ID: <38075e84.4563189@mcadams.posc.mu.edu> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 NNTP-Posting-Host: 134.48.30.18 Lines: 79 Path: mcadams.posc.mu.edu!134.48.30.18 From "Communist Forgeries," a Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee hearing on 2 June 61, testimony of Richard Helms, pp. 2-4: <Quote on> In recent days we have seen an excellent example of how the Communists use the false news story. In late April rumors began to circulate in Europe, rumors charging that the Algerian-based generals who had plotted the overthrow of President De Gaulle had enjoyed support from NATO, the Pentagon, or CIA. Although this fable could have been started by supporters of General Challe, it bears all the earmarks of having been invented within the bloc. In Western Europe this lie was first printed on the 23rd of April by a Rome daily called Il Paese. Senator KEATING: Is Il Paese a Communist paper? Mr. HELMS: It is not a Communist paper, as such. We believe it to be a crypto-Communist paper but it is not like Unita, the large Communist daily in Rome. It purports to be an independent newspaper, but obviously it serves Communist ends. The story charged -- "It is not by chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by Allen Dulles of having participated in the plot of the four 'ultra' generals * * * Franco, Salazar, Allen Dulles are the figures who hide themselves behind the pronunciamentos of the 'ultras'; they are the pillars of an international conspiracy that, basing itself on the Iberian dictatorships, on the residue of the most fierce and blind colonialism, on the intrigues of the C.I.A. * * * reacts furiously to the advance of progress and democracy * * *." We found it interesting that Il Paese was the starting point for a lie that the Soviets spread around the world. This paper and its evening edition, Paese Sera, belong to a small group of journals published in the free world but used as outlets for disguised Soviet propaganda. These newspapers consistently release and replay anti-American, anti-Western, pro-Soviet bloc stories, distorted or wholly false. Mario Malloni, director of both Il Paese and Paese Sera, has been a member of the World Peace Council since 1958. The World Peace Council is a bloc-directed Communist front. On the next day Pravda published in Moscow a long article about the generals' revolt. Senator KEATING: May I interrupt there? Did Pravda pick it up as purportedly from Il Paese? Did they quote the other paper, the Italian paper, as the source of that information? Mr. HELMS: Pravda did not cite Il Paese. But instead of having this originate in Moscow, where everybody would pinpoint it, they planted the story first in Italy and picked it up from Italy and this is the way it actually went out in point of time [sic]. <Quote off> This is important context for understanding the PAESE SERA articles that linked Clay Shaw (correctly) to CMC/Permindex, and connected CMC/Permindex (falsely) to support for the OAS attempts against De Gaulle, various fascist and Nazi forces, etc. The PAESE SERA stories were quickly picked up and repeated by leftist journals in France, Moscow, and Canada. This by no means proves that the CMC/PERMINDEX stuff was a KGB disinformation operation. The left-wing journalists at the paper would have been happy to smear what they considered to be the "forces of capitalist imperialism" without any direct orders from Moscow. Indeed, Helms is only *inferring* that the earlier story about anti-De Gaulle generals was a KGB operation. But this episode does put the 1967 articles on Shaw/Permindex into context. The articles were, in one way or another, motivated by a communist ideological agenda. .John [4] * Anthony Marro. Helms Is Fined $2,000 and Given Two-Year Suspended Prison Term--U.S. Judge Rebukes Ex-C.I.A. Head for Misleading Panel. New York Times, 11/5/77, p.1. * See also: Gary Aguilar. Max Holland Rescues the Warren Commission and The Nation. Probe Magazine, Sept-Oct. 2000 (vol. 7 No.6) On-line at: http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr900-holland.html#_edn151 * See also Richard Helms’ obituary, on-line at: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/23/national/main526654.shtml+Helms+Is+Fined+">http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:VPzZ_xFFRh4J:www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/23/national/main526654.shtml+Helms+Is+Fined+%242,000+and+Given+Two-Year+Suspended+Prison+Term&hl=en&client=firefox-a [5] In: The Assassination Chronicles--Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend by Edward J. Epstein. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 250--263. [6] Playboy interview of Jim Garrison is on-line at: http://www.jfklancer.com/Garrison2.html, ff [7] Harold Weisberg. Oswald in New Orleans--Case of Conspiracy with the C.I.A. New York: Canyon Books, 1967, p. 7--14.] [8] See the text supported by footnotes 138 to 146 in the essay, “Max Holland Rescues the Warren Commission and the Nation” by Gary L. Aguilar. Probe Magazine, Sept-Oct. 2000 (vol. 7 No.6) On-line at: http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr900-holland.html#_edn151 [9] Joan Mellen. A Farewell to Justice. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005, p. 253. [10] Carl Bernstein. The CIA and the Media. Rolling Stone Magazine, 10/20/77. Excerpts available on line at: http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/media/ciamedia.htm [11] William E. Jackson, Jr.. The Mystery of Judy Miller's 'Security Clearance' Deepens. Editor & Publisher, 10/26/05. On-line at: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1001390654 [12] Max Holland. The Lie that Linked the CIA to the Kennedy Assassination. On-line at the CIA’s website at: http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/fall_winter.../article02.html [13] On condition I not disclose his identity, a former editor at The Nation told me that Holland’s CIA-published article had been rejected by Holland’s fellow editors. I asked Holland about the rejection in person at a Washington, D.C. JFK conference on November 19 2005. “Politics,” he said, explained the rejection.

As part of the E-HELP project I have just completed my first video documentary. I am convinced it would make a really good classroom activity. What I did was to make a 20 minute video on the life of my mother. The first half of the video is made up of my mother talking about her life (she was born in 1914). Her voice appears over photographs of her and her family. I have also used photographs of where she lived (Hackney, London) and of important events she witnessed such as the Blitz. The final part of the video is film of her reflecting on her life today. I used a Sony Handycam. I edited the movie using Windows Movie Maker. A great peice of software that is both powerful and easy to use. I am sure the activity will work really well with students. It raises all the important issues concerning interpretations of the past. I found out a great deal about my mother that I did not know before. In fact it was a very emotional experience. Especially when my mother talked about the death of my father and her own impending death (she is 91 and in poor health). Making a video like this involves a dialogue between the subject and the creator. A kind of negotiated interpretation of the past. This does not only concern the way that the subject responds to questions but about the selection of the photographs, which in themselves also trigger particularly memories. It raises important issues about what actually happened in the past. Especially about how people interpret these events, both then and now. I believe that this would make a fantastic activity for students. Especially if they make the film about their grandparents or great grandparents. There is even an argument that they should make a video about their parents as part of developing communication skills. Planning, filming and editing the video takes a great deal of time. It works out at several hours for every one minute of completed video. Even so, I know that it would have been much better if I doubled the time I spent on the project. In fact, if I had the energy, I would like to do it all over again. As Paul Valery once said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

This is just another example of Tim Gratz's right-wing extremist views. The idea that the Democratic Party is left-wing is ridiculous. One of the problems in America is that the only two political parties with any chance of governing are on the right. The same is true of the UK. That is why it is so difficult to persuade people to vote in elections. When this happens, democracy ceases to function. The last honest Republican president was Dwight Eisenhower. Here is an extract from his last speech as president. (17th January, 1961) Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen... Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. It should be remembered that in the original draft he wrote the "military-industrial-congressional complex". He was pressurized into removing the word "congressional". Who was the head of this group in Congress? Who was the man who organized these government contracts for companies like Brown & Root (Halliburton), Betchel-McCone, Bell Helicopters, etc.? Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Great posting. One of the problems about an exam driven school system is what happens to those who have to play the role of failures. Why should they go along with this charade? As Paul Willis pointed out in Learning How to Labour, once students realize what is going on, the meaning of school changes. Their major objective is now to “have a laugh”. These students become difficult to control. The idea of getting a grade E at GCSE is fairly meaningless. Their exam results are only a means of letting people know what they can’t do. This has always been a problem for teachers. I am of an age who remembers what it was like to teach CSE history. As Andy has pointed out, over the years, attempts have been made to provide non-academic examination courses based on vocational skills. Geography teachers have embraced this idea and every year thousands of students do courses in “Tourism”. They are persuaded to believe that this will enable them to get managerial posts in the industry. This is of course a lie. The people who do those jobs will have academic qualifications. True, many of those with vocational qualifications in Tourism will find themselves working in the industry. However, it will have nothing to do with their qualifications. In fact, it will have everything to do with their lack of qualifications. They will be doing jobs like cleaning hotel rooms and serving at tables.