John Simkin
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Here are some of the people involved in the Poplar Rates Strike:
George Lansbury
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRlansbury.htm
Julia Scurr
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wscurr.htm
John Scurr
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jscurr.htm
Minnie Lansbury
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WlansburyM.htm
Edgar Lansbury
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WlansburyE.htm
Nellie Cressall
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WcresswellN.htm
Susan Lawrence
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In November 1919 the Labour Party had won 39 of the 42 council seats on Poplar Council. In 1921 Poplar had a rateable value of £4m and 86,500 unemployed to support. Whereas other more prosperous councils could call on a rateable value of £15 to support only 4,800 jobless. George Lansbury, the mayor of Poplar, proposed that the Council stop collecting the rates for outside, cross-London bodies. This was agreed and on 31st March 1921, Poplar Council set a rate of 4s 4d instead of 6s 10d. On 29th the councillors were summoned to Court. They were told that they had to pay the rates or go to prison. At one meeting Millie Lansbury, one of the Labour councillors said: "I wish the Government joy in its efforts to get this money from the people of Poplar. Poplar will pay its share of London's rates when Westminster, Kensington, and the City do the same."
On 28th August over 4,000 people held a demonstration at Tower Hill. The banner at the front of the march declared that "Popular Borough Councillors are still determined to go to prison to secure equalisation of rates for the poor Boroughs." The Councillors were arrested on 1st September. Five women Councillors, including Millie Lansbury, Julia Scurr and Susan Lawrence, were sent to Holloway Prison. Twenty-five men, including George Lansbury and John Scurr, went to Brixton Prison. On 21st September, public pressure led the government to release Nellie Cresswell, who was six months pregnant. Julia Scurr reported that the "food was unfit for any human being... fish was given on Friday, they told us, that it was uneatable, in fact, it was in an advanced state of decomposition".
Instead of acting as a deterrent to other minded councils, several Metropolitan Borough Councils announced their attention to follow Poplar's example. The government led by Stanley Baldwin and the London County Council was forced to back down and on 12th October, the Councillors were set free. The Councillors issued a statement that said: "We leave prison as free men and women, pledged only to attend a conference with all parties concerned in the dispute with us about rates... We feel our imprisonment has been well worth while, and none of us would have done otherwise than we did. We have forced public attention on the question of London rates, and have materially assisted in forcing the Government to call Parliament to deal with unemployment."
While in Holloway Prison, Minnie Lansbury developed pneumonia and she died on 1st January 1922. According to Janine Booth she had told friends " that imprisonment had weakened her physically, leaving her body unable to fight off the illness that killed her." Her father-in-law, George Lansbury said: "Minnie, in her 32 years, crammed double that number of years' work compared with what many of us are able to accomplish. Her glory lies in the fact that with all her gifts and talents one thought dominated her whole being night and day: How shall we help the poor, the weak, the fallen, weary and heavy-laden, to help themselves? When, a soldier like Minnie passes on, it only means their presence is withdrawn, their life and work remaining an inspiration and a call to us each to close the ranks and continue our march breast forward."
In the 1923 General Election, John Scurr, Susan Lawrence and George Lansbury were all elected to the House of Commons.The Labour Party won 191 seats. Although the Conservative Party had 258 seats, Herbert Asquith announced that the Liberal Party would not keep the Tories in office. If a Labour Government were ever to be tried in Britain, he declared, "it could hardly be tried under safer conditions".
On 22nd January, 1924 Stanley Baldwin resigned. At midday, Ramsay MacDonald went to Buckingham Palace to be appointed prime minister. MacDonald had not been fully supportive of the Poplar Councillors since he thought that "public doles, Popularism, strikes for increased wages, limitation of output, not only are not Socialism but may mislead the spirit and policy of the Socialist movement." George Lansbury was therefore not offered a post in his Cabinet.
John Wheatley, the new Minister of Health, had been a supporter of the Poplar Councillors. Edgar Lansbury wrote in The New Leader that he was sure that Wheatley would "understand and sympathise with them in this horrible problem of poverty, misery and distress which faces them." Lansbury's assessment was correct and as Janine Booth, the author of Guilty and Proud of It! Poplar's Rebel Councillors and Guardians 1919-25 (2009), has pointed out: "Wheatley agreed to rescind the Poplar order. It was a massive victory for Poplar, whose guardians had lived with the threat of legal action for two years and were finally vindicated."
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Melbourne, Aug 17 (ANI): Singer Erykah Badu has been fined for walking naked in the area where President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
According to myFOXdfw.com, Badu, 39, was sentenced to six months probation and also had to pay a 500-dollar fine.
Badu had shed her clothing on March 13 while recording a music video for her song ‘Window Seat’ at the Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy had been shot, and it ended with her being fatally shot in the head.
Dallas police said many people called to complain about the incident, but only one formal complaint was filed by a parent whose child saw Badu in the buff.
In April, the department officially charged Badu with disorderly conduct.
Badu, a graduate of Booker T Washington arts magnet school in downtown Dallas, has defended herself in the past against accusations that the video disrespected President Kennedy.
“His revolutionary thinking is my inspiration. My performance art has been grossly misinterpreted by many,” the Herald Sun quoted her as having said. (ANI)
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Biographical details can be obtained by typing "Douglas Caddy" into Google.
My biography also appears in Who'sWho in American Law, Who'sWho in America, and Who'sWho in the World.
I am the author of six books, the latest being "Watergate Exposed: A Confidential Informant Tells How The President of the United States And The Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up" by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy,Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven.
Is it available from Amazon?
Will you be willing to discuss the book on the Forum?
The book will be released publicly on September 8, 2010. It will be available at that time as an E-Book on Kindle from Amazon, I-Pad from Apple, and Nook from Barnes&Noble. Copies of an "Unedited Galley Proof" in printed book form will be provided to key media sources, along with a press release, on Sept. 8th. Before the end of the year the book will be available through Amazon in printed book form.
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Biographical details can be obtained by typing "Douglas Caddy" into Google.
My biography also appears in Who'sWho in American Law, Who'sWho in America, and Who'sWho in the World.
I am the author of six books, the latest being "Watergate Exposed: A Confidential Informant Tells How The President of the United States And The Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up" by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy,Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven.
Is it available from Amazon?
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Also, and I ask this in all sincerity, do you accept the findings of the HSCA, that there was a "probable" conspiracy in the Death of John Kennedy?
And, speaking of thinking critically, does that not sound like lawyer speak to cover for any further information that may turn up in the future. And if you do accept their findings, how, then, do you explain the failure of the Justice Department to follow up on such an important matter?
I have also asked him this question on another thread. He failed to answer it and I suppose he will do the same this time. If François Carlier is so determined to accept the view of the status quo, he should be aware that the last time the US government looked at the assassination of JFK, they came to the conclusion that the Warren Commission "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President." The report was also highly critical of the Secret Service: "The Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties. The Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper."
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that "scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy." It added that "on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKassassinationsC.htm
Why are you so keen to accept the conclusion of the Warren Commission when all the evidence suggests that it made a total mess of its attempts to cover-up the assassination of JFK?
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Interesting email I have just received about my page on Paul Helliwell:
"The key figure in the operation was Paul Helliwell. He was transferredto Miami in 1960 to provide business cover for the CIAs Cubanoperations. This is where he meets Ted Shackley and Tom Clines. Afterthe Bay of Pigs he become CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE (page 29, ThePrelude to Terror). Helliwell got some of this money from arms and drugdealing. In this way, Shackley is able to finance unofficial CIAoperations. I believe one of these operations was the assassination ofJFK."
Helliwell began his operations in late 1959. My uncle, Rocky Huffman,had a conversation with my father. Rocky was Chief of Station,responsible for operations of the CIA facility at John Deere Tractors in Iowa prior to that date. My uncle talked about changing his base ofoperations from Miami, which were to be controlled by Shackley toLouisiana or Alabama.
My uncle Rocky (Roscoe J) Huffman was sent to the Soviet Union to look for a manufacturing site for smallpox. He returned late one night andtold us to go to the local CIA doctor in the morning to be immunized. Then he was off again and we never saw him again. Shackley used a bunch of assassins based in Mexico City. They had alldyed their hair black so as to appear Mexican. Daniel Hopsicker has a photo of them, obtained from the widow of Barry Seal, on his website.
There is an additional issue. Though Shackley managed to die before facing justice. His team killed a number of people in Miami at an oldwarehouse site adjoining Homestead Air Force Base. There was a recent coverup of an old crime regarding that in 2008, but no one was fooled. Iwas long ago told this was not where Rocky was killed. I have no idea if that is true or not and I have no DNA from Rocky amongst any of my keepsakes. My father was sent, in April of 1960 to Mexico City to deliver a message in person to the Black 40 in Mexico City. One amongst them was a prominant banker (I don't know his name) and Spanish was his native language.
My father met with them at Four Seasons Restaurant in Mexico City and the banker refused to take the meeting with my father. My father returned to the table with my brother and me confused, then made one more attempt to deliver the message. He was told to meet someone in the plaza in Mexico City the next day at noon under the clock.
When my father, my brother and I went to the meeting, my father suggested I wait on the periphery of the crowd and he and my brother proceeded to the clock. I lost sight of them. Moments later a squad of about twenty caribinieri-dressed men advanced on the crowd from the rear with bayonets fixed on their M1s and opened fire on the crowd. The attack began less than a minute from the time I saw the first soldier. I was shot, but was able to roll to my right into a little cantina. As I did, I dragged a young man with me who was hit in the shoulder.
Helliwell started his black ops at once, even before he arrived in Miami to head up JM Wave. While Rocky and others were debating who was going to lead the operation, Rocky often told my dad that Shackley was the devil himself, meant to kill everyone within the old guard that agreed with limiting CIA dirty tricks operation and bringing the CIA under oversight.
The first two founders of Nugen Hand bank were killed. The third was hired by Leonard Abbess as a director for First National Bank of Miami. Abbess was the second banker for the dirty tricks squad. They developed a banking system which eventually involved Swiss banks and the banks in Lichtenstein. Al qaeda also used this banking system, because Shackley's group brought them onboard. I encountered them at USF Tampa in 1972. Bobby Baer also was shilling for the group, by the way. His goodness doesn't extend backwards forever. Mine does.
Al qaeda/CIA in South Florida had and has free access to chemical andbioweapons and has used them. My family and I, friends, my youngest son's teacher and my college mentor were all attacked between 1984 and 2004. There are all sorts of connections, blurred lines and interconnections at work here. I am quite certain that the wrong person was implicated in Amerithrax because of the sequence of events we experienced in South Florida. The US has unwaveringly maintained that al qaeda attacked symbols of power. Sometimes they attacked individuals like me, and when they did, it would have been important to discern the reasons for these attacks. Our government was not willing to formally or openly investigate and a terrible attack was barely averted by chance as a result when Richard Reid failed to clear customs in Paris.
AQ Khan was operating his nuclear enterprises within the Miami community through an associate. The first attack on my family (my son) in 1989 was with a bone marrow aspiration punch purchased from him at the advice of Yehuda Abraham, an al qaeda Hasid who dealt in diamonds and death. Ibelieve the anthrax used in that attack was carried to the US from Europe by Jack Abramoff and he obtained it from Marina Nevskaya, one ofthe two director-founders of the FSB. The teacher who carried out that attack has never even been questioned. But within the week that my son recovered, she and her husband were poisoned with anthrax also. Her husband Russell has been falling down for the CIA for years as an attorney. Ruth Whitman Gordon is still a teacher in public school in Miami.
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A group of nine prominent experts, including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine, wrote to The Times last week, calling for a full inquest into the death of Dr. David Kelly. Strangely, the government decided that the inquest should be carried out by Lord Hutton, during his inquiry into the death of David Kelly. Hutton, who since his days in Northern Ireland, was under the control of MI5, spent less than a couple of hours on the death and few relevant witnesses were called. The Hutton report cleared the government of wrongdoing, while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director-general.
The experts in the letter to The Times, described Lord Hutton’s official explanation for the death of the government’s weapons expert seven years ago as “extremely unlikely”. Tom Mangold, the MI5 friendly investigative journalist, was one of the leading proponents of the suicide theory. However, he appeared on BBC 4’s “Today” programme to say that after reading what the experts had to say about the death, he no longer believes in the suicide theory and is also calling for a full inquest. (Mangold now argues that he died of a heart attack while trying to cut his wrist.)
The former Tory leader, Michael Howard, is also calling for a full inquest (Why did he not do so at the time?) It has also emerged on Friday that the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is seriously thinking of ordering a new inquest. As he happens, one of his ministerial colleagues, Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, wrote a book on why he thinks Dr. Kelly was murdered. The Tories clearly see that reopening this case will cause embarrassment to the previous Labour government. However, I fear that they are willing to go along with the cover-up. It reminds me of the House Senate Committee on Assassinations that looked into the assassination of JFK in the late 1970s. It was no longer possible to defend the case that Oswald was the lone gunman. So instead, they brought in G. Robert Blakey to claim that JFK was a victim of the Mafia.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKassassinationsC.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKblakey.htm
I suspect we will get a new inquest and that they will confirm that the ruling elite have decided that it can no longer support the idea of suicide and that Dr. David Kelly died the way Tom Mangold said he did, of a heart attack.
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Hi and apologies for my sustained absence, which was due to various personal factors.
I thought I'd previously started a thread about Dr Kelly (apparently not) whose inquest is now seemingly getting powerful support for re-investigation, the latest addition being Tory Peer, Michael Howard.
On 18th July 2003 Dr. David Kelly was found dead on a wooded hillside near his Oxfordshire home. He had apparently wandered off in despair, alone, then committed suicide by cutting his own wrists, before a national scandal exposed him as a xxxx.
As a weapon's scientist and Government adviser, Kelly had the highest-level security clearance to brief Political VIP's and Intelligence and Military chiefs on various related matters regarding foreign weapon's matters, and accused the Govt of 'sexing up' it's war dossier.
The British Government seemed all-out determined to go to war in Iraq alongside the US (oil?), basing it's case on lies, or misplaced information. The now-infamous "45 minute warning" of a chemical attack capability of Saddam to even strike the UK came from a dubious single source.
Thrashing against our legal system to force it's case for War, the Govt used downright bogus material, and forged documents were used behind the theory that Saddam was shopping for Yellowcake Uranium in Niger. It turned out to be merely trailers for Hydrogen-filled balloons, part of an artillery system sold to Saddam in the 80's by....the British Govt!
One of Kelly's most recent cases had been the discovery, whilst working in Iraq in 1995, of Saddam's dirty bomb. Kelly found the site where Saddam had tested the bomb in 1987, and radiologically-contaminated dust had spread across the desert.
Why then was this crucial evidence omitted from the UK Govt's weapons dossier?
Surely the British Govt didn't actually help Saddam develop this bomb, whilst our 'ally' in the 80's, when MP's were illegally selling arms to Iraq in breach of sanctions??
Many inconsistencies, flying in the face of the subsequent £1.7m Hutton enquiry, are;-
- Several prominent Harley Street doctor's wrote to a newspaper to take issue with the official explanation of how Kelly died. One was John Scurr, expert in vascular surgery, who stated that he "didn't believe that simply cutting an ulnar artery would cause death"
- The first Paramedics to reach Kelly's body did not believe that the small amount of blood at the scene would have led to his death.
- The pathologist who pronounced Kelly dead, later had a change of heart.
- Thames Valley Police, conducting the investigation into Kelly's death, couldn't find any fingerprints on the alledged suicide knife, nor on a nearby water bottle deemed to have been used by the Doctor.
- The Police retrospectively altered their reasons for actually beginning an investigation 9hrs before Kelly was even reported missing.
Could Kelly have been killed (clumsily) by UK Govt-hired assassins? With the collusion of the Police, Coroners, Intelligence Services members and perhaps even senior MP's?
Does our Govt even have people assassinated, as the Russian Govt still clearly does, despite Stella Remington (former MI5 Chief) swearing that that organisation had never done so?
On the morning of June 17th, Kelly had received a number of calls from the MoD that unsettled him. Only 10days before, those same MoD bosses had promised that he wouldn't be held to account over his contact with journalists, but that if it ever came to light this may change.
Since then, Kelly had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, trying to balance honesty with an attempt not to incriminate himself. But a transcript was read out of an interview between Kelly and a BBC journalist, although he himself did not know exactly to what extent.
Kelly denied speaking in the interview, misleading the Parliamentary Committee.
During those July 17th 'phone calls from the MoD, Kelly was asked again about the interview with the BBC, and now he realised that his careful attempt to step through a minefield had blown-up in his face. Most importantly for this usually honest and quiet man of integrity, he would be exposed as a xxxx, something which friends say cut across his grain.
It is this which the officials say Kelly killed himself over, despite close friends and family of the man (who had passed the strictest security clearance, which unstable fantasists do not) say he was cheerful and never would have committed suicide, no matter what adversity he was facing personally or professionally.
Whilst the Government's Hutton enquiry hounded the BBC's Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan out of their jobs (despite themselves still owing the country explanations on many unanswered points)- the protagonists were still in office afterwards-
- John Scarlett, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee was promoted to Chief of MI6
- Geoff Hoon became Chief Whip
- Jack Straw became Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor
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Tony Blair- most ironically, seeing as he took us to War (illegally under Int. Law)- became a Peace Envoy!
I'm vaguely hopeful that a new enquiry- as demanded by top medical experts- will reveal much truth...
A group of nine prominent experts, including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine, wrote to The Times last week, calling for a full inquest into the death of Dr. David Kelly. Strangely, the government decided that the inquest should be carried out by Lord Hutton, during his inquiry into the death of David Kelly. Hutton, who since his days in Northern Ireland, was under the control of MI5, spent less than a couple of hours on the death and few relevant witnesses were called. The Hutton report cleared the government of wrongdoing, while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director-general.
The experts in the letter to The Times, described Lord Hutton’s official explanation for the death of the government’s weapons expert seven years ago as “extremely unlikely”. Tom Mangold, the MI5 friendly investigative journalist, was one of the leading proponents of the suicide theory. However, he appeared on BBC 4’s “Today” programme to say that after reading what the experts had to say about the death, he no longer believes in the suicide theory and is also calling for a full inquest. (Mangold now argues that he died of a heart attack while trying to cut his wrist.)
The former Tory leader, Michael Howard, is also calling for a full inquest (Why did he not do so at the time?) It has also emerged on Friday that the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is seriously thinking of ordering a new inquest. As he happens, one of his ministerial colleagues, Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, wrote a book on why he thinks Dr. Kelly was murdered. The Tories clearly see that reopening this case will cause embarrassment to the previous Labour government. However, I fear that they are willing to go along with the cover-up. It reminds me of the House Senate Committee on Assassinations that looked into the assassination of JFK in the late 1970s. It was no longer possible to defend the case that Oswald was the lone gunman. So instead, they brought in G. Robert Blakey to claim that JFK was a victim of the Mafia.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKassassinationsC.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKblakey.htm
I suspect we will get a new inquest and that they will confirm that the ruling elite have decided that it can no longer support the idea of suicide and that Dr. David Kelly died the way Tom Mangold said he did, of a heart attack.
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A group of nine prominent experts, including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Bion, a professor of intensive care medicine, wrote to The Times last week, calling for a full inquest into the death of Dr. David Kelly. Strangely, the government decided that the inquest should be carried out by Lord Hutton, during his inquiry into the death of David Kelly. Hutton, who since his days in Northern Ireland, was under the control of MI5, spent less than a couple of hours on the death and few relevant witnesses were called. The Hutton report cleared the government of wrongdoing, while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director-general.
The experts in the letter to The Times, described Lord Hutton’s official explanation for the death of the government’s weapons expert seven years ago as “extremely unlikely”. Tom Mangold, the MI5 friendly investigative journalist, was one of the leading proponents of the suicide theory. However, he appeared on BBC 4’s “Today” programme to say that after reading what the experts had to say about the death, he no longer believes in the suicide theory and is also calling for a full inquest. (Mangold now argues that he died of a heart attack while trying to cut his wrist.)
The former Tory leader, Michael Howard, is also calling for a full inquest (Why did he not do so at the time?) It has also emerged on Friday that the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is seriously thinking of ordering a new inquest. As he happens, one of his ministerial colleagues, Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, wrote a book on why he thinks Dr. Kelly was murdered. The Tories clearly see that reopening this case will cause embarrassment to the previous Labour government. However, I fear that they are willing to go along with the cover-up. It reminds me of the House Senate Committee on Assassinations that looked into the assassination of JFK in the late 1970s. It was no longer possible to defend the case that Oswald was the lone gunman. So instead, they brought in G. Robert Blakey to claim that JFK was a victim of the Mafia.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKassassinationsC.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKblakey.htm
I suspect we will get a new inquest and that they will confirm that the ruling elite have decided that it can no longer support the idea of suicide and that Dr. David Kelly died the way Tom Mangold said he did, of a heart attack.
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Peter,
I know that this came from SPARTACUS, but who or what is the original source? Thanks.
From right here on Spartacus:
In 1963 Kennedy asked Lansdale to concentrate on the situation in Vietnam. However, it was not long before Lansdale was in conflict with General Maxwell Taylor, who was the military representative to the president. Taylor took the view that the war could be won by military power. He argued in the summer of 1963 that 40,000 US troops could clean up the Vietminh threat in Vietnam and another 120,000 would be sufficient to cope with any possible North Vietnamese or Chinese intervention.
Lansdale disagreed with this viewpoint. He had spent years studying the way Mao Zedong had taken power in China. He often quoted Mao of telling his guerrillas: “Buy and sell fairly. Return everything borrowed. Indemnify everything damaged. Do not bathe in view of women. Do not rob personal belongings of captives.” The purpose of such rules, according to Mao, was to create a good relationship between the army and its people. This was a strategy that had been adopted by the National Liberation Front. Lansdale believed that the US Army should adopt a similar approach. As Cecil B. Currey, the author of Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American pointed out: “Lansdale was a dedicated anticommunist, conservative in his thoughts. Many people of like persuasion were neither as willing to study their enemy nor as open to adopting communist ideas to use a countervailing force. If for no other reason, the fact makes Lansdale stand out in bold relief to the majority of fellow military men who struggled on behalf of America in those intense years of the cold war.”
Lansdale also argued against the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem. He told Robert McNamara that: “There's a constitution in place… Please don't destroy that when you're trying to change the government. Remember there's a vice president (Nguyen Ngoc Tho) who's been elected and is now holding office. If anything happens to the president, he should replace him. Try to keep something sustained.”
It was these views that got him removed from office.
Good question , Greg. I believe that we know a lot more than is detailed here. But John Simkin is very objective and careful about what he writes about a man.
Peter,
I don't doubt John Simkin. But, I didn't know who wrote the piece. So, is John Simkin the source, then? I'm sorry if I'm asking a question whose answer might be a "given" -- but I don't know who wrote the original information that you posted. Are you saying John wrote it--or is it just something that was written on Spartacus? Thanks--
I wrote it but as you can see I am quoting the words of Cecil B. Currey, the author of Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American. There is no doubt that JFK took notice of what Lansdale had to say on foreign policy and brought him in to run Operation Mongoose.
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i]
JFK's enemies--including the people who killed him-- have done all they could to muddy the waters about the true circumstances of his death but also about who he actually was.
This sums it up totally. To muddy the waters about who he actually was gives left wing gatekeepers like Chomsky the power to say that there was no conspiracy because JFK was just another pol who was not doing anything to cause the powers that be TO kill him. Understanding who Kennedy was answers the question of why he was killed.
Before I saw Jim Di's words, that JFK had to SAY certain things in order to get elected, I was about to make the same point. His experience in World War Two had a profound affect on him and this experience set him apart totally from the true Cold Warriors.
Dawn
Are you accusing me of trying to "muddy the waters"? I think it is very important to see JFK as he really was, rather than what we wanted him to be.
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Members might be interested in the Loran Hall Photo-Archive:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/1AAhall.htm
You can find other debates on Hall here:
Loran E. Hall and the Road to Dallas
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12778
Loran E. Hall Interview
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10428
Loran Hall and Silvia Odio
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Loran Eugene Hall wasa mercenary who joined the rebels led by Fidel Castro. Hall fell out with Castro and in 1959 he spent several months in prison. On his release he moved to the United States and along with Gerry P. Hemming was a member of the anti-Castro group, Interpen (Intercontinental Penetration Force). Hall also joined Hemming, Frank Sturgis and David Ferrie in the International Anti-Communist Brigade.
In an interview he gave to the Select House Committee on Assassinations Hall admitted that "I was a radical right wing. I was a reactionary... almost every meeting that I ever went to I heard somebody plotting or talking about somebody should blow Kennedy's head off."
In 1962 Hall and Hemming met John Rousselot, a congressman with ties to the John Birch Society. Rousselot gave Hall and Hemming the name of Robert Morris, a Dallas attorney and former counsel to the Senate Internal Security Committee. Morris put the two men into contact with Lester Logue, who provided them with money. It is believed that this money originally came from Haroldson L. Hunt. Hall later told HSCA investigators that he participated in several raids on shipping around Cuba in February and March 1963 and was wounded in the leg.
In April 1963 Gerry P. Hemming introduced Hall to John Martino. A few days later Hall met Santo Trafficante, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli at a Miami Beach hotel. Hall later reported that Giancana gave Eddie Bayo $15,000 as a down payment for a raid on Cuba. Bayo claimed that two officers in the Red Army based in Cuba wanted to defect to the United States. Bayo added that these men wanted to pass on details about atomic warheads and missiles that were still in Cuba despite the agreement that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Bayo's story was eventually taken up by several members of the anti-Castro community. William Pawley became convinced that it was vitally important to help get these Soviet officers out of Cuba. To help this happen he contacted James Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.
Pawley also contacted Ted Shackley, head of the CIA's JM WAVE station in Miami. Shackley decided to help Pawley organize what became known as Operation Tilt. He also assigned Rip Robertson to help with the operation. David Sanchez Morales, another CIA agent, also became involved in this attempt to bring out these two Soviet officers.
In June, 1963, a small group, including Eddie Bayo, John Martino, William Pawley, Rip Robertson and Richard Billings, a journalist working for Life Magazine, secretly arrived in Cuba. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to find these Soviet officers and they were forced to return to Miami. Bayo remained behind and it was rumoured that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press. Larry Hancock, argues in his book, Someone Would Have Talked, that there were uncorroborated reports that Bayo did return and was seen in Florida in the months following Operation Tilt. John Martino later told Gerry P. Hemming that the assassination of Fidel Castro was the real object of the Bayo-Pawley operation.
When interviewed by the Select House Committee on Assassinations Hall admitted that he carried out missions against Cuba on behalf of the CIA with Rip Robertson in 1963.
Hall did not take part in the Bayo-Pawley raid as he became involved in a project to overthrow the government of Haiti. According to the author of The Road to Dallas, the invasion of Haiti involved John Martino, Irving Davidson, Roland Masferrer and Carlos Marcello. Kaiser also speculates that the "involvement of both Martino and Davidson suggests that while Masferrer reportedly hoped to establish an anti-Castro base in Haiti after overthrowing Duvalier, mob interests were looking forward to building some new casinos there."
Hall re-established contact with Santo Trafficante in Florida in 1963. In his book, The Road to Dallas, the historian, David Kaiser claims: "Loran Hall had been involved in many discussions of assassination plots against Castro - including one failed attempt known as the Bayo-Pawley raid in the previous June - and had also heard a good deal of talk about assassinating President Kennedy."
During this time Hall travelled with William Seymour and Lawrence Howard. Michael Rohde, a lawyer who met them during this period, described Hall and Seymour as "two extremely dangerous, committed individuals."
On 25th September, 1963, a Cuban exile, Silvia Odio had a visit from three men who claimed they were from New Orleans. Two of the men, Leopoldo and Angelo, said they were members of the Junta Revolucionaria. The third man, Leon, was introduced as an American sympathizer who was willing to take part in the assassination of Fidel Castro. After she told them that she was unwilling to get involved in any criminal activity, the three men left.
Silvia Odio discovered after the assassination of John F. Kennedy that Leon was Lee Harvey Oswald. Odio gave evidence to the Warren Commission and one of its lawyers commented: "Silvia Odio was checked out thoroughly... The evidence is unanimously favorable... Odio is the most significant witness linking Oswald to the anti-Castro Cubans."
On 16th September, 1964, FBI agent Leon Brown interviewed Loran Hall on behalf of the Warren Commission. Brown claims that Hall admitted that he, Lawrence Howard and William Seymour made a visit to a woman who could have been Silvia Odio. However, when Hall was re-interviewed on 20th September and was shown a photograph of Odio, he claimed she was not the woman he met in New Orleans.
The FBI interviewed Silvia Odio again on 1st October, 1964. They showed her photographs of Loran Hall, William Seymour, Lawrence Howard and Celio Castro Alga. She claimed that " none of these individuals were identical with the three persons... who had come to her apartment in Dallas in the last week of September, 1963." Her sister, Annie Odio, who was also in the apartment at the time, also stated that "none of the photographs appeared similar to the three individuals in her recollection."
The author, Anthony Summers, suggests that the visit had "been a deliberate ploy to link Junta Revolucionaria, a left-wing exile group, with the assassination". Hall later gave evidence before the Select House Committee on Assassinations and denied he had told the FBI that he had visited Odio on 25th September, 1963.
In 1975 Harry Dean claimed he had been an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1962 he infiltrated the John Birch Society. He later reported that General Edwin Walker and John Rousselot had hired two gunman, Hall, and Eladio del Valle, to kill President John F. Kennedy. However, Dean was unable to provide any evidence to back up his claim.
Hall denied that he been involved in the assassination. However, in an interview he gave to the Dallas Morning News (17th September, 1978), he was approached by right-wing activists working with CIA operatives, who wanted him to join the conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. According to Hall, he refused the contract.
In an interview with Alan J. Weberman in April 1977, about Gerry P. Hemming, Hall stated that "Hemming is a CIA punk, OK? I've known the SOB for fourteen years. He turned his own goddam crews in so he wouldn't have to go to Cuba. He's fingered me on my own goddam deals and caused me to get arrested... Hey. man. Right as it stands now, there's only two of us left alive - that's me and Santos Trafficante. And as far as I'm concerned we're both going to stay alive - because I ain't gonna say xxxx."
Loran Hall died in Newton, Kansas, in April 1995.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhallL.htm
Tree Frog has just come up with this newspaper article he found in the archives:
The Dallas Morning News - Wednesday, September 13, 1989
Author: Lee Hancock, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News: THE
A methamphetamine ring based in Mesquite was set up by a CIA operative to funnel money to the Nicaraguan contras, one of the alleged participants has testified in federal court.
The testimony came during a hearing in Tulsa, where Loran Eugene Hall Jr. appeared Monday to plead guilty to drug charges.
He told the court that his father, Loran Eugene Hall Sr. of Mesquite, was a CIA agent who recruited him and others to manufacture speed to raise money for the contras, said Jack Morgan, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment Tuesday on Mr. Hall's case.
"We do not generally acknowledge the employment of either covert or overt employees,' said Mark Mansfield, an official at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va. "I would add that the agency does not sanction violation of U.S. law.'
A federal drug conspiracy indictment handed down in Tulsa in July names Loran Eugene Hall Sr., 59; his daughter, Barbara Ann Marteney, 34, of Mesquite; and his sons, Michael Stephen Hall, 36, of Burns, Kan., and Loran Eugene Hall Jr., 34, of Derby, Kan.; and two other Kansas residents. The indictment charges that the elder Mr. Hall led the ring, which manufactured methamphetamine between October 1987 and February 1989.
Loran Hall Jr. and Michael Hall pleaded guilty Monday. Their father and sister remain at large.
Court documents indicate the ring was broken when Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics investigators and Mesquite police trailed Loran Hall Jr. after he purchased glassware and chemicals at a Grand Prairie chemical store.
Mr. Hall and another man were arrested in Noble County, Okla., as they were carrying those items and several high-caliber firearms to Kansas in a stolen truck, according to the indictment.
Federal investigators and Oklahoma state narcotics agents believe the ring repeatedly bought chemicals in Dallas and Oklahoma to manufacture speed, Mr. Morgan said.
Investigators believe the elder Mr. Hall served as the group's "cook,' setting up labs in Scurry, Texas, Balch Springs and Burns, Kan.
Mr. Morgan said investigators probably never will determine the truth of claims that the group had ties to the CIA.
But Mr. Morgan, a Mesquite police investigator and defense attorneys representing Hall family members all said there was evidence suggesting that Loran Hall Sr. worked for the CIA in some capacity.
"He has a long history of involvement with the CIA attempts to overthrow (Cuban President Fidel) Castro,' Mr. Morgan said. "He was involved in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1961, he got arrested with a truckload of guns in Texas, and he was transporting them from California to Florida for that invasion.'
His name also has surfaced in congressional investigations of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The elder Mr. Hall was described in a 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations report as a onetime resident of Cuba with ties to anti-Castro groups in the United States and organized crime in both countries.
And, Mr. Morgan said, his name is the subject of a chapter in the book Coup d'etat in America, which speculates about CIA involvement in a plot to kill President Kennedy. The chapter, titled " Loran Hall and the Free Cuba Committees,' details allegations of CIA financing and orchestration of a plot by anti-Castro groups to kill President Kennedy.
"In the last few years, he supposedly was involved with CIA attempts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government,' Mr. Morgan said.
Loran Eugene Hall Jr. has told investigators that his father was a 17-year CIA employee most recently involved in running guns to Central America, Mr. Morgan said.
The son also has told investigators about incidents in which helicopters appeared at his father's Kansas farm bearing men who carried automatic weapons and answered to military titles such as colonel and major, Mr. Morgan said.
Jim Heflet, a Tulsa attorney representing the younger Mr. Hall, said that his client still believes the operation was a CIA front.
"It may be true. There's quite an extensive history on his father's CIA involvement,' Mr. Heflet said. "My client told me that a lot of his dad's involvement -- specifically in the Kennedy assassination -- has been sealed up, and we never may find out what it was.'
Mr. Morgan said federal officials believe the elder Mr. Hall may be hiding in Kansas, Honduras or Costa Rica.
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One of the definitions of "inchohate" is "lacking structure, order, or organization."
As currently laid out, this thread is inchohate.
In early June (2010), Jim Fetzer posted a memo I had written, expressing my own surprise (and, yes, amazement) at his involvement in Websites that I believed were promulgating an anti-Semitic message--specifically, that Israel, and certain specific American Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.
The thread grew and grew (and sometimes wandered all over the place, including such matters as whether or not I owed Fetzer money, etc etc) but at least the beginning was there. And there was some logical connection between one point and the next.
And, I might add, the thread had thousands and thousands of views, as people saw for themselves how Fetzer responded to criticism, and just what his beliefs really were.
I had written a critique, Fetzer replied, and matters proceeded from there.
But now, everything has changed, and there is no logical connection between the title of this thread, and its content. Apparently, the editors have come along and--attempting to remove what they deemed to be irrelevant material--have shifted many of the posts and sub-arguments to other threads.
But in doing so, they have lost the internal logic of the entire thread.
What this thread was really all about was whether or not a person who held the bizarre beliefs of Professor Fetzer (in the area of 9/11, and whether or not we went to the moon, etc.) could be a credible spokesman for the JFK research movement. That was the connection, the nexus, but now all that is gone.
What has happened, because of editing, is that the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.
Somehow, the original posting of mine --addressing Fetzer's credibility-- and Fetzer's original objections (defending his credibility, and opposing my arguments) have been completely lopped off.
So now what do we have? A real mess. The beginning of what was a serious matter has vanished, so there is no logical antecedent to what the fuss was all about, yet the title remains!
Just consider how this thread now starts--and with a post (from John Dolva) that is repeated at the top of every page, a post in which Dolva was responding to what I had written: "Jim [Fetzer] shows his true colours. I'm not surprised at all except for the fact that he has finally done so. I wont be surprised by what's to come."
Anyone reading this thread has to ask: what the heck is Mr. Dolva talking about? And the reason for the puzzlement is that my entire original critique (of Fetzer) is gone.
Let me repeat what I have just said: What remains is a title bearing my name ("Lifton Attacks Fetzer over 9/11 and Israeli complicity") but completely gone is my original post (i.e., my so-called "attack"). The result is so muddled that its not even clear what the (original) fuss was all about.
I think the moderators and editors should reexamine this matter, rethink their edits, and--at least to some extent--press the "reset" button (as they say).
Either restore my original critique of Fetzer's antics, or (if that is not going to be done) then please remove my name from this thread.
If this thread is to bear the title "Lifton attacks fetzer over 9/11 and Israeli complicity", then at least leave my original critique. If, for any reason, the original critique is not deemed relevant, then please remove my name entirely from the title of this thread.
And what about Josiah Thompson's posts, defending my position, and the impropriety of Fetzer posting records of cancelled checks. His posts--which surely took time to compose and write--are now left out there hanging in cyberspace, with no logical connection to what (once) preceded it.
Please editors:
As currently edited, the content of this thread bears little, if any, relationship to the the title. So the result is a mish-mash which is completely illogical--and, as I said in my opening sentence, this thread, as currently structured, is "inchohate."
I do request that, if my original critique is to be deleted, then the title be changed.
If those reading this thread want to debate matters concerning the Six Day War, the attack on the Liberty, the legitimacy of Israel, the Palestinians, etc etc--by all means do so, those are all issues worthy of discussion; but then take my name off the title. I think that is a reasonable request.
And by the way: as currently structured, this thread has little to do with the Kennedy assassination--and isn't that what this discussion group is all about? (or was supposed to be all about?)
Thank you.
DSL
David, you make a series of good points. I am not sure if it is possible to restore the posts that have been deleted. Maybe Evan can answer that question. If not, would the best way forward be to delete this thread and for you to start another?
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The point of what I wrote above is to show that Kennedy was speaking about a new and original approach to foreign policy as far back as the mid fifties.
To understand what JFK was doing in the White House, and what got him killed, you have to understand where those ideas came from. And why they were so different than, not just the Establishment's, but also many in his own Cabinet. It is why JFK often had to go around his Cabinet to get his desired results e.g. using Galbraith and McNamara on VIetnam, using RFK on the Missile Crisis, using Attwood on the negotiations with Castro for detente.
I do not see the relevance of JFK’s criticism of British and French foreign policy in the 1950s. It is not unusual for American politicians to be opposed to British and French imperialism. In fact, it is a mainstream politics. The difficulty is to be against American imperialism. I would be much more impressed if you could find a speech by JFK attacking the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. President Dwight Eisenhower justified it at the time by saying Guatemala was a "communist dictatorship... that had established... an outpost on this continent to the detriment of all the American nations". (Interestingly, it was the first successful operation that David Atlee Phillips was involved in and was used as a model to use against Fidel Castro).
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKarbenz.htm
You rightly say: “What Kennedy positioned himself as in 1960 is not a reliable barometer for the same reason as his ambiguous comments on Vietnam are not to be taken at face value in 1963. Why? Because he knew he had to say certain things to get re-elected in order to do the things he really wanted to do.”
I also accept that Kennedy’s foreign policy is distinctly different from that of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower between 1945 and 1960. This is covered in some detail in David Kaiser’s book, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War. Kaiser explains that while Kennedy was always strongly anti-communist, he disagreed with the way Truman and Eisenhower dealt with the problem.
David Kaiser, argues that Eisenhower’s policies “called for a military response to Communist aggression almost anywhere that it might occur”. Kaiser provides evidence that this strategy was “adopted by the State and Defence Departments in 1954-1956 and approved secretly by President Eisenhower.” (1)
According to one historian: “The CIA had learned a lesson from the Guatemalan revolution in the early 1950s, when a nationalist government expropriated the land and the public service enterprises of U.S. monopolies to the benefit of the peasants and the population in general. This experience gave rise to a program of infiltrating agents into countries convulsed by communist ideas.” (2)
In the final months of his administration, Eisenhower was mainly concerned with trying to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. He was also worried about events in Laos and Vietnam. However, Kaiser convincingly argues that Kennedy subtly changed foreign policy after he gained office. “Ironically, while Eisenhower’s supposedly cautious approach in foreign policy had frequently been contrasted with his successors’ apparent aggressiveness, Kennedy actually spent much of his term resisting policies developed and approved under Eisenhower, both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. He also had to deal with the legacy of the Eisenhower administration’s disastrous attempts to create a pro-Western rather than a neutral government in Laos – a policy he quickly reversed, thereby avoiding the need for American military intervention there.” (3)
Kaiser admits that he the Kennedy administration did increase the number of American military personnel in South Vietnam from 600 in 1960 to 17,500 in 1963. However, although he sincerely wanted to help the South Vietnamese government cope with the Viet Cong he rejected war as a way to do so. Kennedy’s view of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia was expressed clearly at his first ever press conference. When asked about Laos he expressed his intentions to help create “a peaceful country – an independent country not dominated by either side but concerned with the life of the people within the country.” (4) This was a marked departure from Eisenhower’s policy of supporting anti-communist military dictatorships in Southeast Asia and the Americas.
This analysis of Kennedy’s foreign policy is supported by two of his most important aides, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers. In their book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, they describe how on 19th January, 1960, Eisenhower briefed Kennedy on “various important items of unfinished business”. This included news about “the rebel force that was being trained by the CIA in Guatemala to invade Cuba.” O’Donnell and Powers claimed that: “Eisenhower urged him to keep on supporting this plan to overthrow Castro. But Eisenhower talked mostly about Laos, which he then regarded as the most dangerous trouble spot in Southeast Asia. He mentioned South Vietnam only as one of the nations that would fall into the hands of the Communists if the United States failed to maintain the anti-Communist regime in Laos.” Kennedy was shocked by what Eisenhower told him. He later told his two aides: “There he sat, telling me to get ready to put ground forces into Asia, the thing he himself had been carefully avoiding for the last eight years.” (5)
According to David Kaiser, it was not only the CIA and the Pentagon who wanted him to send troops to Laos and Vietnam. Members of his own administration, including Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Alexis Johnson, McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow and Roswell Gilpatric, were also strongly in favour of Eisenhower’s policy of “intervention in remote areas backed by nuclear weapons”. (6)
Kennedy continued with his policy of trying to develop “independent” Third World countries. In September, 1962, Souvanna Phouma became head of a new coalition government in Laos. This included the appointment of the left-leaning Quinim Pholsema as Foreign Minister. However, Kennedy found it impossible to persuade Ngo Dinh Diem to broaden his government in South Vietnam.
The problem for Kennedy was that he did not have a consistent foreign policy. This is the point that James W. Douglass makes so well in JFK and the Unspeakable. Within days of making his American University speech, he is giving the go-ahead to the CIA to overthrow Castro.
As Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in an interview with Anthony Summers in 1978: “In 1963… the CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba - an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence - which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded - it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy.... I think the CIA must have known about this initiative. They must certainly have realized that Bill Attwood and the Cuban representative to the U.N. were doing more than exchanging daiquiri recipes…They had all the wires tapped at the Cuban delegation to the United Nations….Undoubtedly if word leaked of President Kennedy’s efforts, that might have been exactly the kind of thing to trigger some explosion of fanatical violence. It seems to me a possibility not to be excluded.” (7)
That “fanatical violence” was the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
(1) David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2)
(2) Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-62: The Cuba Project, 2004 (page 12)
(3) David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2)
(4) Howard W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences, 1965 (page 25)
(5) Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 281-282)
(6) David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 50)
(7) Anthony Summers, Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy, 1980 (page 307)
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I disagree with the thesis that JFK was a Cold Warrior who was altered by the Missile Crisis. That idea is also a flaw in the Douglass book. The record will simply not support that. Especailly in Vietnam and Congo. Neither will a study of Kennedy's powerful speeches against French colonialism on the floor of the Senate. The best book on Kennedy's evolving foreign policy is Mahoney's JFK: Ordeal in Africa. I used it to write the following:
Nice work this. I know you put a lot of thought and effort into it. I also appreciate all you do to keep the forum afloat...but, I do not agree that JFK was a Cold Warrior, nor do I believe he was elected based on such a perception. Moreover, the Cuban Missile Crisis had absolutely nothing to do with his predisposition against war, except perhaps to confirm that of which he was already convinced.
There is no way that John Kennedy would have been elected in 1960 if he had not presented himself as Cold War warrior. In fact, in his campaign, he attempted to position himself to the right of Nixon and the Republican Party on foreign policy.
As Richard D. Mahoney points out in Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, during the campaign, Kennedy used Cuba as an illustration of Republican weakness against communism. In campaign speeches Kennedy would charge that the threat of communism was now only ninety miles from our shore. (1)
This disturbed some of his advisers. In his autobiography Harris Wofford argues that during the 1960 campaign, Kennedy seemed to relish taking rhetorical shots at Castro and competing with Republicans over who would take the strongest action against the new Cuban regime. Wofford was most disturbed when Kennedy issued a statement calling for the United States to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro. Kennedy then went onto say that thus far these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from our Government. (2)
Richard Helms admits that the leadership of the CIA favoured Kennedy over Nixon. He admits that it was possible that CIA Director Allen Dulles leaked information to the Kennedy team via Stuart Symington, which allowed the Democrats to blame the Eisenhower administration for the famous missile gap that is, permitting the Soviets to outdo the United States in the production of long-range missiles. (3)
It has been argued that hardliners in the CIA were more impressed with Kennedy than they were with Nixon during the 1960 Presidential campaign. Richard Bissell commented in his book, Reflections of a Cold War Warrior (1996): The inauguration of John F. Kennedy provided the prospect of a new beginning for the nation. His vision and message and the vigor with which he undertook his responsibilities created high expectations. While his hard-line rhetoric was inspiring, it also served to raise the stakes in Americas global confrontation with the Soviets. (4)
Robert Kennedy admitted in an interview with John Bartlow Martin on 1st March 1964, that John Kennedy agreed with the Bay of Pigs invasion. He argues that of his senior advisers, the only person who was strongly against it was Arthur Schlesinger. (5)
JFK privately vowed after the Bay of Pigs failure, that he would splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. While it is true that Richard Bissell and Allen Dulles did lose their jobs over the failed invasion, JFK did not change his policy towards Castro. As David Corn has pointed out: The Kennedy brothers, particularly Robert, the Attorney General, would soon be back knocking on the Agencys door, demanding something be done about Castro. (6). In fact, JFK recruited, that well-known Cold War hardliner, Brigadier General Edward Lansdale to come up with a strategy for the removal of Castros government.
Lansdales biographer, Cecil B. Currey, argues: It is odd that Kennedy, distrustful of the CIA in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, still sought out Lansdale a former CIA agent to help organize his next Cuban endeavour. (7) Robert Kennedy argues in his interview with John Bartlow Martin that the reason JFK was angry with the CIA was not because it was immoral but because it had been an amateur operation. That is why he suggested to JFK that Lansdale should take this on. He argued: I thought hed (Lansdale) done so well in the Philippines and was impressed with him, so I got the President to assign him. (8)
Harris Wofford supports this view. After the failure of the Bay of Pigs he hoped JFK would change direction. Instead, he lashed out at Chester Bowles for allegedly leaking to the press his opposition to the Cuban invasion. It was important to JFK that he continued to be seen as a Cold War Warrior. As Wofford points out, after the Bay of Pigs: John and Robert Kennedy committed themselves to counter-insurgency, covert action, and increased military effort as the way to counteract the Cuban defeat and to win in Vietnam. (9)
I disagree with the thesis that JFK was a Cold Warrior who was altered by the Missile Crisis. That idea is also a flaw in the Douglass book. The record will simply not support that.
This is a major disagreement that you have with James Douglass as it is central to his thesis about JFKs foreign policy. As he points out: Only nine days after his American University address, Kennedy had ratified a CIA program contradicting it. Kennedys regression can be understood in the political context of the time. He was, after all, an American politician, and the Cold War was far from over. For the remaining five months of his life, John Kennedy continued a policy of sabotage against Cuba that he may have seen as a bone thrown to his barking CIA and military advisers but was in any case a crime against international law. It was also a violation of the international trust that he and Nikita Khrushchev had envisioned and increasingly fostered since the missile crisis. Right up to his death, Kennedy remained in some ways a Cold Warrior, in conflict with his own soaring vision in the American University address. (10)
(1) Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, 1999 (page 58)
(2) Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, 1980 (page 342)
(3) Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 2003 (page 11)
(4) Richard Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 1996 (page 163)
(5) Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988 (page 242)
(6) David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusades, 1994 (page 70)
(7) Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American, 1988 (page 240)
(8) Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988 (page 378)
(9) Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, 1980 (page 342)
(10) James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, (page 66-67)
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Crystal Eastman is one of my favourite characters in history. She was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, on 25th June, 1881. Both her parents, Samuel Eastman and Annis Ford, were church ministers. Her brother, Max Eastman, who later became an excellent journalist, was born two years later. He later wrote: "She was beautiful and socially disarming, and yet inwardly a mighty girl, as we named her in the bosom of the family... The qualities in Crystal that I most rejoiced in were her ruthless sincerity and logic; the inexhaustible fountain of understanding love that made these qualities bearable; a supervening humor.. a gift of entering into the problems of other people as though she had no problems of her own - a veritable genius for friendship and wise counsel; and withal a passionate joy in the adventure of living her own life."
In 1889 her mother was one of the first women to be ordained as a minister. Crystal recalled: "When my mother preached we hated to miss it. There was never a moment of anxiety or concern; she had that secret of perfect platform ease which takes all strain out of the audience. Her voice was music; she spoke simply, without effort, almost without gestures, standing very still. And what she said seemed to come straight from her heart to yours. Her sermons grew out other own moral and spiritual struggles. For she had a stormy, troubled soul, capable of black cruelty and then again of the deepest generosities. She was humble, honest, striving, always beginning again to try to be good."
Crystal graduated from Vassar College in 1903. She also obtained a degree in sociology at Columbia University (1904) and at New York City University Law School (1907). Claude McKay met her during this period: "The moment I saw her and heard her voice I liked Crystal Eastman. I think she was the most beautiful white woman I ever knew. She was of the heavy or solid type of female, and her beauty was not so much other features... but in her magnificent presence. Her form was something after the pattern of a splendid draft horse and she had a way of holding her head like a large bird poised m a listening attitude."
Eastman settled in Greenwich Village and joined a community of feminists that included Inez Milholland, Mary Heaton Vorse, Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Madeleine Doty, and Ida Rauth. In 1907 Paul U. Kellogg, editor of the social work magazine, Charities and the Commons, hired her to investigate labour conditions for the Russell Sage Foundation's Pittsburgh Survey. Over the next year Eastman carried out the first in-depth sociological investigation of industrial accidents ever undertaken. Other members of the team included Lewis Hine, Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, John R. Commons, John A. Fitch and Joseph Stella.
In June 1909 Charles E. Hughes, the Governor of New York, appointed Eastman to become the first woman member of the Employer's Liability Commission. In this role she drafted New York State's first worker's compensation law and in 1910 she published her book Work Accidents and the Law.
Eastman married Wallace Benedict in 1911. The couple moved to Milwaukee but the marriage was not a success and ended in divorce. Eastman reputation as a political campaigner grew and in 1913 she became investigating attorney for the U.S.Commission on Industrial Relations. Later that year Eastman was a delegate to the Seventh Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest. During the conference Eastman met Aletta Jacobs (Holland), Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (England) and Rosika Schwimmer (Hungary).
In 1913 Eastman joined with Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Mabel Vernon, Olympia Brown, Mary Ritter Beard, Belle LaFollette, Doris Stevens, Helen Keller, Maria Montessori and Dorothy Day to form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) and attempted to introduce the militant methods used by the Women's Social and Political Union in Britain. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily picketing of the White House. Over the next couple of years the police arrested nearly 500 women for loitering and 168 were jailed for "obstructing traffic".
As a pacifist Eastman was a strong opponent of the First World War. Soon after the outbreak of the conflict Eastman, Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Paul U. Kellogg and Oswald Garrison Villard established the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM). Wald became the AUAM's president and Eastman its executive director. Over the next couple of years the AUAM lobbied against America's possible involvement in the war. It also campaigned against conscription, the arms trade and American imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.
On the 10th January, 1915, Eastman joined over 3,000 women at a meeting in the ballroom of the New Willard Hotel in Washington and formed the Woman's Peace Party. Jane Addams was elected chairman and other women involved in the organization included Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, Anna Howard Shaw, Belle La Follette, Fanny Garrison Villard, Emily Balch, Jeanette Rankin, Lillian Wald, Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott, Mary Heaton Vorse, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Carrie Chapman Catt, Freda Kirchwey, Emily Bach, and Sophonisba Breckinridge.
In 1916, Eastman married British poet and fellow anti-war activist, Walter Fuller. In the same year, she invited her friend Roger Baldwin to run the American Union Against Militarism office while she took a brief leave to give birth to her first child. The following year Eastman joined Baldwin, Norman Thomas, Albert DeSilver and Clarence Darrow to establish the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB).
Crystal worked with her brother, Max Eastman, on the radical journal The Masses. After it was closed down by the authorities because of its opposition to American involvement in the First World War, they joined with Art Young and Floyd Dell to establish the The Liberator. In the first edition it was stated: "The Liberator will be owned and published by its editors, who will be free in its pages to say what they truly think. It will fight in the struggle of labor. It will fight for the ownership and control of industry by the workers, and will present vivid and accurate news of the labor and socialist movements in all parts of the world." The journal published information about socialist movements throughout the world and was the first to break the news that the Allies had invaded Russia.
After the war Woodrow Wilson appointed A. Mitchell Palmer as his attorney general. Worried by the revolution that had taken place in Russia, Palmer became convinced that Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government. Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.
A. Mitchell Palmer claimed that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government. On 7th November, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested in what became known as the Palmer Raids. Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects were held without trial for a long time. The vast majority were eventually released but Emma Goldman and 247 other people, were deported to Russia.
In January, 1920, another 6,000 were arrested and held without trial. Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects, many of them members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), continued to be held without trial. When Palmer announced that the communist revolution was likely to take place on 1st May, mass panic took place. In New York, five elected Socialists were expelled from the legislature.
Concerned by these events Eastman joined with Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Lillian Wald, Felix Frankfurter, Oswald Garrison Villard, Paul Kellogg, Clarence Darrow, John Dewey, Charles Beard, Abraham Muste, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Upton Sinclair to form the American Civil Liberties Union (ACTU).
The ACTU's main concern was to defend the civil rights that were guaranteed in state and federal constitutions. This included:
(1) First Amendment rights: These include freedom of speech, association and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, including the strict separation between church and state.
(2) Equal protection of the law: The right to equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, physical handicap, or other such classification.
(3) Due process of law: The right to be treated fairly when facing criminal charges or other serious accusations that can result in such penalties as loss of employment, exclusion from school, denial of housing, or cut-off of benefits.
(4) The right of privacy and autonomy which cannot be penetrated by the government or by other institutions, like employers, with substantial influence over the individual's rights.
In December 1920, Crystal Eastman wrote in The Liberator: "Many feminists are socialists, many are communists, not a few are active leaders in these movements. But the true feminist, no matter how far to the left she may be in the revolutionary movement, sees the woman's battle as distinct in its objects and different in its methods from the workers' battle for industrial freedom. She knows, of course, that the vast majority of women as well as men are without property, and are of necessity bread and butter slaves under a system of society which allows the very sources of life to be privately owned by a few, and she counts herself a loyal soldier in the working-class army that is marching to overthrow that system. But as a feminist she also knows that the whole of woman's slavery is not summed up in the profit system, nor her complete emancipation assured by the downfall of capitalism.
In 1922 The Liberator was taken over by Robert Minor and the Communist Party. Eastman now wrote for The Nation and Equal Rights, a journal established by Alice Paul. Blacklisted for her left-wing political opinions and unable to find work, Eastman and her husband Walter Fuller moved to London. While in England she worked fot the Daily Herald and Time and Tide, a feminist journal established by Lady Margaret Rhondda. She also took part in the campaign to get votes for women on the same terms as men.
Walter Fuller died of a stroke in September 1927. Eastman returned home but was in poor health and died of a brain hemorrhage on 8th July, 1928. An obituary by Freda Kirchwey in The Nation pointed out that: "In her short life Crystal Eastman brushed against many other lives, and wherever she moved she carried with her the breath of courage and a contagious belief in the coming triumph of freedom and decent human relations. These were her religion. Her strength, her beauty, her vitality and enthusiasm, her rich and compelling personality - these she threw with reckless vigor into every cause that promised a finer life to the world." As another friend wrote at the time: "She was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be."
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http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/08/11/1020378?sac=Home
Q: Is Secret Service agent Clint Hill still alive? He was the agent who jumped on the rear of President Kennedy's car in Dallas and pushed Mrs. Kennedy back down into the seat. Is he getting a pension from the Secret Service? Did he ever get over his feelings of guilt for not saving President Kennedy's life? - R.P., Fayetteville
A: Hill, who was born in 1932, is still alive at the age of 78.
He received a citation from Jackie Kennedy just days after her husband's funeral for "extraordinary courage and heroic effort in the face of maximum danger."
Hill climbed aboard the presidential limousine after the president had been shot and shielded Mrs. Kennedy until the car reached the hospital. He is the last surviving passenger of that vehicle.
Hill retired from the Secret Service in 1975. He was 43. We don't know if he received a pension.
Shortly after that retirement, Hill was interviewed by Mike Wallace of CBS. In his 2005 memoir, "Between You and Me," Wallace wrote that he had "never interviewed a more tormented man."
Hill said he felt guilty because if he had turned in a different direction after hearing the first shot, or reacted a few tenths of a second faster, that he might have reached the president in time to shield him from the subsequent shots and take them himself, possibly saving the president.
"I'll live with that to my grave," Hill told Wallace.
Wallace wrote that Hill "broke down" during the interview and that he retired because of depression.
The veteran newsman also wrote that he contacted Hill in the fall of 2003 about interviewing him again for coverage to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination.
Hill declined, but "he assured me he was fine and that the misery he'd gone through was now behind him," Wallace wrote. "He had finally managed to put his demons to rest, and he no longer blamed himself for the death of John F. Kennedy." - G.P.
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John, the ongoing battle you describe is not as one-sided as depicted, IMO.
You might want to throw in something about the assassination of McKinley by an anarchist, and how this brought a "progressive" like Roosevelt to power. You might also want to add that Roosevelt's pragmatic progressive policies possibly saved capitalism from itself.
McKinley was, as I recall, a full-blown capitalist, who believed capitalism was God's will, etc...
Of course, I am not suggesting every assassination is part of a right-wing conspiracy. Leon Czolgosz was definitely a lone assassin. Interestingly, three months before the death of McKinley, Abraham Isaak, a leading figure of the anarchist movement, became convinced that Czolgosz was a spy and issued a warning about him in his journal, the Free Society. At this time, most American anarchists, were followers of Peter Kropotkin, who was an advocate of non-violence.
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Rome 1960: Making Sporting History: The modern Olympic movement was inspired by the classical world. But, says Richard Bosworth, when the Italian capital hosted the Games 50 years ago, the organisers had to offer an image of the city that also took account of its Christian, Renaissance and Fascist pasts.
The Woman in White: A Novel for Hysterical Times: Wilkie Collins haunting mystery of false identity and female instability reflected one of the lunacy panics of the age. Sarah Wise looks at three events that inspired The Woman in White.
Rome: The Lure of the Orient: At the height of the Roman Empire, hundreds of merchant ships left Egypt every year to voyage through the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean, exchanging the produce of the Mediterranean for exotic eastern commodities. Raoul McLaughlin traces their pioneering journeys.
Kim Philby: Living a Lie: Almost everything written about and by Kim Philby is wrong, claims Boris Volodarsky. The Soviet spy and his KGB masters sought to exaggerate his successes against the West, beginning with the fictions that surround Philbys first mission during the Spanish Civil War.
Chatham House and the Lessons of History: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, celebrates its 90th birthday this summer. Roger Morgan looks at the organisations original aims and its pioneering role in the study of contemporary history.
Wyclif: Medieval Pacifist: During the Anglo-French conflicts that characterised the 14th century, the Oxford theologian John Wyclif challenged the un-Christian pursuit of war and wealth. Yet, just like anti-war protesters today, Wyclif had little influence on Parliament or the king, writes Rory Cox.
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What I have been slowly researching, with Judyth's help, as time permits, is the financing of INCA and who the players involved were. Just working up the background of each of these individuals is an education in itself. It furnishes a context for the philosophical mindset of the plotters for a decade prior to hit. The actual details of the shooting, in my opinion, is worthless from an historical standpoint without having an understanding of this context.
I agree that this kind of work is very important and much neglected. I cannot understand why people spend so much time researching the actual shooting when it is clear that JFK was a victim of a conspiracy. The important point is who was behind the conspiracy.
Has Judyth been of much help over the financing of INCA. Has she come up with information that was not available from other sources?
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Much was made of the fact that John Wilkes Booth had visited Johnson's house on the day of the assassination and left his card with the message: "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home?" Some people claimed that Booth was trying to undermine Johnson in his future role as president by implying he was involved in the plot. However, as his critics pointed out, this was unnecessary as it was Booth's plan to have Johnson killed by George Atzerodt at the same time that Abraham Lincoln was being assassinated......
The people who paid for the assassination have never been identified. What we do know is that the man who replaced Lincoln as president, Andrew Johnson (yes, another Johnson from the Deep South). The reasons why they had been appointed as vice-president, were also very similar. There is no way Lincoln would have been assassinated if Hannibal Hamlin had remained vice-president.
This is quite a post, John, with much to digest. I just want to make a brief comment, and I preface it by admitting that it is years since I gave any study to the Lincoln assassination.
I think you are correct in arguing that Lincoln's assassination would not have happened without Andrew Johnson as Vice-President. And it MAY be true that Booth himself planned to have Johnson killed also, but I have serious doubts that the actual masterminds intended that. I strongly suspect that the "plan" to kill Johnson was a ruse, intended to fail (easily accomplished if Johnson was forewarned), but to serve the function of deflecting suspicion from Johnson, the man who had most to gain from Lincoln's murder.
I agree with you about the plan to kill Johnson was a ruse. At the same time I do not think either Johnson was actually involved in the plot to assassinate Lincoln/Kennedy. Their important role was in the cover-up and in the implementation of policies favoured by the ruling elite.
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When JFK was killed in November 1963 I did not really question the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin. Of course, like most people, I became highly suspicious when Jack Ruby killed Oswald a few days later. However, I just assumed that Oswald had been killed because of what he knew and that he was part of a conspiracy. I did not really question the fact that Oswald had been part of this conspiracy.
At the time, I had just become very interested in politics. The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the reasons why I had become concerned about world issues. I felt that JFK had taken us to the verge of nuclear oblivion. My view of JFK was that he was just another Cold War warrior and that his assassination was just another example of America’s violent society.
My views on the assassination did not change for the next 35 years. In 1997 I started by Spartacus Educational website. At first I concentrated on British political history. However, by 1998 I had moved into 19th and 20th century US history. Eventually, I decided to create a page on John Kennedy. The more research I did, the more I discovered that JFK was not the politician I thought he was. While it was true that he became president as a Cold War warrior. He was changed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. He realized just how close he came to destroying the world. The released documents now show that JFK was using Lisa Howard and Jean Daniel to carry out secret negotiations with Castro’s government.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhowardL2.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdanielJ.htm
What was so amazing about this was that JFK was trying to keep these negotiations secret from the CIA. This was an unsuccessful strategy as the CIA had bugged the United Nations building where the negotiations were taking place. As David Kaiser pointed out in his very important book, American Tragedy, JFK was the first president since the Second World War to deviate from the US foreign policy established by Harry Truman (Kaiser makes the point that Lyndon Johnson was quick to return to this foreign policy as soon as he gained office).
I also discovered that JFK was also changing direction with his domestic policy.
In October, 1960, he said that he appreciated "the value and importance of the oil-depletion allowance. I realize its purpose and value... The oil-depletion allowance has served us well." The reason JFK said this was that he was after the support of the oil industry in Texas.
However, two years later, Kennedy decided to take on the oil industry. On 16th October, 1962, Kennedy was able to persuade Congress to pass an act that removed the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad. While this law applied to industry as a whole, it especially affected the oil companies. It was estimated that as a result of this legislation, wealthy oilmen saw a fall in their earnings on foreign investment from 30 per cent to 15 per cent.
On 17th January, 1963, President Kennedy presented his proposals for tax reform. This included relieving the tax burdens of low-income and elderly citizens. Kennedy also claimed he wanted to remove special privileges and loopholes. He even said he wanted to do away with the oil depletion allowance. It is estimated that the proposed removal of the oil depletion allowance would result in a loss of around $300 million a year to Texas oilmen. It is very interesting that at 2.10 pm, on 23rd November, 1963, Johnson phones George Smathers, who is on the Senate committee discussing JFK tax proposals. They discussed possible strategies to undermine JFK’s proposals. However, Smathers warns LBJ that Hubert Humphrey had told the committee that if they do this: “They (the Republicans) are going to try to make the new President look immediately like he is an old Texas oilman." Despite this warning, LBJ got his way and JFK’s oil depletion tax reforms were dropped.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoildepletion.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjohnsonLB.htm
It is clear that in November, 1963, America’s ruling elite had a serious problem. They had a president who had been elected as a cold war warrior and a man who had promised not to make substantive tax or social reforms. (JFK had sent Robert Kennedy to talk to senior Democratic politicians in the Deep South in 1960 in order to convince them that he had no intention to instigate any serious social reforms, including civil rights.) After the successful conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis he was extremely popular and it appeared that with Barry Goldwater as the Republican front-runner, JFK was also fairly certain to win the 1964 Presidential Election. Those who had made their fortunes from the military-industrial-intelligence-oil complex, must have been very concerned by these political developments.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyJ.htm
When I discovered the real situation in November 1963, I was willing to believe that there had indeed been a conspiracy to remove JFK from power. It was at this point that I read a few books about the assassination of JFK. The most significant information that I got from these books was that the government, starting with the Warren Commission, were engaged in a cover-up. This cover-up can be traced back to LBJ, Hoover, the FBI and the CIA. This does not mean that the people involved in the cover-up were also responsible for the assassination. However, it is clear, that the president and government agencies did not want the people responsible for the assassination to be identified.
I believe the Kennedy Assassination is part of a world-wide conspiracy that began in the 18th century. This was the century when political activists first began to promote the idea of democracy. Probably the most significant event was the publication of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man in 1791.
The British ruling elite were outraged by Paine's book and it was immediately banned. Paine was charged with seditious libel but he escaped to France before he could be arrested. Paine announced that he did not wish to make a profit from The Rights of Man and anyone had the right to reprint his book. It was printed in cheap editions so that it could achieve a working class readership. Although the book was banned, during the next two years over 200,000 people in Britain managed to buy a copy. One person who read the book was the shoemaker, Thomas Hardy. In 1792 Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society. The aim of the organisation was to achieve the vote for all adult males (it was a few years before it was argued that women should be given the same rights as men).
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRpaine.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhardy.htm
Paine’s ideas spread throughout Europe (he came close to being executed in France) and the United States, where his pamphlet, Common Sense (1776) attacked the British Monarchy and argued for American independence. During the war with the British, Tom Paine wrote articles and pamphlets on the superiority of republican democracy over monarchical government and served with Washington's armies.
However, Paine’s “Rights of Man” went far further than “Common Sense”. It questioned the whole idea of a country being ruled by an elite. As Paine pointed out:
What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but the whole community. The romantic and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens.
We have heard The Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable is the hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling. It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every quality, good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. In reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience. In short we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession.
Since the publication of “Rights of Man”, every country in the world has been involved in the struggle for power between the ruling elite and the masses. Although the ruling elite have suffered the occasional reverse, they have always been able to fight back and re-establish control. Most of this is done quietly behind the scenes, but sometimes, in times of crisis, acts of extreme violence, take place. The assassination of JFK was one such example. So also, was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlincoln.htm
In this case, the government accepted that Lincoln had been the victim of a conspiracy. On 29th June, 1865 Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being involved in the conspiracy with John Wilkes Booth to murder Lincoln. Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt and Herold were hanged at Washington Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865.
However, these were only minions involved in the plot. The people who paid for the assassination have never been identified. What we do know is that the man who replaced Lincoln as president, Andrew Johnson (yes, another Johnson from the Deep South). The reasons why they had been appointed as vice-president, were also very similar. There is no way Lincoln would have been assassinated if Hannibal Hamlin had remained vice-president.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhamlinH.htm
Once in power, Andrew Johnson began to undermine the move towards democracy made by Lincoln. President Johnson became increasingly hostile to the work of General Oliver Howard and the Freeman's Bureau. Established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865, the bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed, the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves.
In early 1866 Lyman Trumbull introduced proposals to extend the powers of the Freeman's Bureau. When this measure was passed by Congress it was vetoed by Johnson. However, the Radical Republicans were able to gain the support of moderate members of the Republican Party and Johnson's objections were overridden by Congress.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASradical.htm
In April 1866, Johnson also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill that was designed to protect freed slaves from Southern Black Codes (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations). On 6th April, Johnson's veto was overridden in the Senate by 33 to 15.
Johnson told Thomas C. Fletcher, the governor of Missouri: "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men." His views on racial equality was clearly defined in a letter to Benjamin B. French, the commissioner of public buildings: "Everyone would, and must admit, that the white race was superior to the black, and that while we ought to do our best to bring them up to our present level, that, in doing so, we should, at the same time raise our own intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races would be the same."
In June, 1866, the Radical Republicans managed to persuade Congress to pass the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In 1867 members of Radical Republicans such as Benjamin Loan, James Ashley and Benjamin Butler, began claiming in Congress that Johnson had been involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln. Butler asked the question: "Who it was that could profit by assassination (of Lincoln) who could not profit by capture and abduction? He followed this with: "Who it was expected by the conspirators would succeed to Lincoln, if the knife made a vacancy?" He also implied that Johnson had been involved in tampering with the diary of John Wilkes Booth. "Who spoliated that book? Who suppressed that evidence?"
Much was made of the fact that John Wilkes Booth had visited Johnson's house on the day of the assassination and left his card with the message: "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home?" Some people claimed that Booth was trying to undermine Johnson in his future role as president by implying he was involved in the plot. However, as his critics pointed out, this was unnecessary as it was Booth's plan to have Johnson killed by George Atzerodt at the same time that Abraham Lincoln was being assassinated.
On 7th January, 1867, James Ashley charged Johnson with the "usurpation of power and violation of law by corruptly using the appointing, pardoning, and veto powers, by disposing corruptly of the property of the United States, and by interfering in elections." Congress responded by referring Ashley's resolution to the Judiciary Committee.
At the beginning of the 40th Congress Benjamin Wade became the new presiding officer of the Senate. As Johnson did not have a vice-president this meant that Wade was now the legal successor to the president. This was highly significant as attempts to impeach the president had already began.
Johnson continued to undermine the Reconstruction Acts. This included the removal of two of the most radical military governors. Daniel Sickles (the Carolinas) and Philip Sheridan (Louisiana and Texas) were sacked and replaced with Edward Canby and Winfield Hancock.
In November, 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 that Johnson be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report written by George H. Williams contained a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting from the illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress, denying the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On 30th March, 1868, Johnson's impeachment trial began. Johnson was the first president of the United States to be impeached. The trial, held in the Senate in March, was presided over by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. Johnson was defended by his former Attotney General, Henry Stanbury, and William M. Evarts. One of Johnson's fiercest critics, Thaddeus Stevens was mortally ill, but he was determined to take part in the proceedings and was carried to the Senate in a chair.
Charles Sumner, another long-time opponent of Johnson led the attack. He argued that: "This is one of the last great battles with slavery. Driven from the legislative chambers, driven from the field of war, this monstrous power has found a refuge in the executive mansion, where, in utter disregard of the Constitution and laws, it seeks to exercise its ancient, far-reaching sway. All this is very plain. Nobody can question it. Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of the tyrannical slave power. In him it lives again. He is the lineal successor of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis; and he gathers about him the same supporters."
Although a large number of senators believed that Johnson was guilty of the charges, they disliked the idea of Benjamin Wade becoming the next president. Wade, who believed in women's suffrage and trade union rights, was considered by many members of the Republican Party as being an extreme radical. James Garfield warned that Wade was "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent elements in the Republican Party."
Others Republicans such as James Grimes argued that Johnson had less than a year left in office and that they were willing to vote against impeachment if Johnson was willing to provide some guarantees that he would not continue to interfere with Reconstruction.
When the vote was taken all members of the Democratic Party voted against impeachment. So also did those Republicans such as Lyman Trumbull, William Fessenden and James Grimes, who disliked the idea of Benjamin Wade becoming president. The result was 35 to 19, one vote short of the required two-thirds majority for conviction. The editor of The Detroit Post wrote that "Andrew Johnson is innocent because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor."
On 25th July, 1868 Johnson vetoed the decision by Congress to extend the activities of the Freeman's Bureau for another year. Johnson continued to issue pardons for people who had participated in the rebellion. By the end of his period in office he gave 13,350 pardons, including one for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjohnsonA.htm
The assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy were the most dramatic examples of how democracy has been undermined in the United States. However, there are many other examples of how the ruling elite have destroyed threats to their power. They have done this via various agencies. For example, the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.
At first the main objective of white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm
The KU Klux Klan was also used against the Industrial Workers of the World. They were responsible for the lynching in the Deep South of several organizers of the IWW.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAiww.htm
The Pinkerton Detective Agency was another organization used against those attempting to make America a more democratic society. In 1875, one of its agents, James McParland, infiltrated the secret organization, the Molly Maguires. McParland's evidence in court resulted in the execution of twenty of its members.
In the 1880s the ruling elite was concerned about the growth of the International Working Men's Association. On 3rd May, the IWPA in Chicago held a rally outside the McCormick Harvester Works, where 1,400 workers were on strike. They were joined by 6,000 lumber-shovers, who had also withdrawn their labour. While August Spies, one of the leaders of the IWPA was making a speech, the police arrived and opened-fire on the crowd, killing four of the workers.
The following day August Spies, published a leaflet calling for a mass protest at Haymarket Square that evening. On 4th May, over 3,000 people turned up at the Haymarket meeting. Speeches were made by August Spies, Albert Parsons and Samuel Fielden. At 10 a.m. Captain John Bonfield and 180 policemen arrived on the scene. Bonfield was telling the crowd to "disperse immediately and peaceably" when someone threw a bomb into the police ranks from one of the alleys that led into the square. It exploded killing eight men and wounding sixty-seven others. The police then immediately attacked the crowd. A number of people were killed (the exact number was never disclosed) and over 200 were badly injured.
Several people identified Rudolph Schnaubelt as the man who threw the bomb. He was arrested but was later released without charge. It was later claimed that Schnaubelt was an agent provocateur in the pay of the authorities. After the release of Schnaubelt, the police arrested Samuel Fielden, an Englishman, and six German immigrants, August Spies, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab. The police also sought Albert Parsons, the leader of the International Working Peoples Association in Chicago, but he went into hiding and was able to avoid capture. However, on the morning of the trial, Parsons arrived in court to standby his comrades.
There were plenty of witnesses who were able to prove that none of the eight men threw the bomb. The authorities therefore decided to charge them with conspiracy to commit murder. The prosecution case was that these men had made speeches and written articles that had encouraged the unnamed man at the Haymarket to throw the bomb at the police.
The jury was chosen by a special bailiff instead of being selected at random. One of those picked was a relative of one of the police victims. Julius Grinnell, the State's Attorney, told the jury: "Convict these men make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions."
At the trial it emerged that Andrew Johnson, a detective from the Pinkerton Agency, had infiltrated the group and had been collecting evidence about the men. Johnson claimed that at anarchist meetings these men had talked about using violence. Reporters who had also attended International Working Peoples Association meetings also testified that the defendants had talked about using force to "overthrow the system".
All the men were found guilty: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty. Whereas Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On 10th November, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel mounted the gallows. As the noose was placed around his neck, Spies shouted out: "There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhaymarket.htm
The Pinkerton Detective Agency was also involved in setting up leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, for the murder of Frank R. Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, in 1905. Steunenberg was much hated by the trade union movement after using federal troops to help break strikes during his period of office. Over a thousand trade unionists and their supporters were rounded up and kept in stockades without trial.
James McParland, a detective working for Pinkerton, helped Harry Orchard to write a confession that he had been a contract killer for the WFM, assuring him this would help him get a reduced sentence for the crime. In his statement, Orchard named William Hayward (secretary-treasurer of WFM) and Charles Moyer (president of WFM). He also claimed that a union member from Caldwell, George Pettibone, had also been involved in the plot. These three men were arrested and were charged with the murder of Steunenberg.
Charles Darrow, a man who specialized in defending trade union leaders, was employed to defend Hayward, Moyer and Pettibone. During the three month trial, the prosecutor was unable to present any information against Hayward, Moyer and Pettibone except for the testimony of Orchard and were all acquitted.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhaywood.htm
Between 1901 and 1912 membership of the Socialist Party of America grew from 13,000 to 118,000 and its journal Appeal to Reason was selling 500,000 copies a week. This provided a great platform for Eugene Debs and his running-mate, Emil Seidel, in the 1912 Presidential Election. During the campaign Debs explained why people should vote for him: "You must either vote for or against your own material interests as a wealth producer; there is no political purgatory in this nation of ours, despite the desperate efforts of so-called Progressive capitalist politicians to establish one. Socialism alone represents the material heaven of plenty for those who toil and the Socialist Party alone offers the political means for attaining that heaven of economic plenty which the toil of the workers of the world provides in unceasing and measureless flow. Capitalism represents the material hell of want and pinching poverty of degradation and prostitution for those who toil and in which you now exist, and each and every political party, other than the Socialist Party, stands for the perpetuation of the economic hell of capitalism. For the first time in all history you who toil possess the power to peacefully better your own condition. The little slip of paper which you hold in your hand on election day is more potent than all the armies of all the kings of earth."
Debs and Seidel won 901,551 votes (6.0%). This was the most impressive showing of any socialist candidate in the history of the United States. In some states the vote was much higher: Oklahoma (16.6), Nevada (16.5), Montana (13.6), Washington (12.9), California (12.2) and Idaho (11.5).
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdebs.htm
Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party were strong opponents of the First World War. He argued that the conflict had been caused by the imperialist competitive system. In an article in September 1915 he wrote: "I am not opposed to all war, nor am I opposed to fighting under all circumstances, and any declaration to the contrary would disqualify me as a revolutionist. When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war. It matters not to me whether this war be offensive or defensive, or what other lying excuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to it, and I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war."
The combination of militant trade unionism and opposition to the First World War caused panic amongst the ruling-class of America. The IWW, that opposed the war became a major target of repression. Joe Hill, one of IWW's leading organisers, was set-up for the murder of John Morrison in Salt Lake City. He was executed by firing-squad on 19th November, 1915.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhillJ.htm
Another leader of the IWW, Frank Little, organize workers in the metal mines of Montana. This included leading a strike of miners working for the Anaconda Company. In the early hours of 1st August, 1917, six masked men broke into Little's hotel room in Butte. He was beaten up, tied by the rope to a car, and dragged out of town, where he was lynched. A note: "First and last warning" was pinned to his chest. No serious attempt was made by the police to catch Little's murderers. It is not known if he was killed for his anti-war views or his trade union activities. Later, Dashiel Hammett, who was a Pinkerton agent in Montana, later claimed the agency was involved in the lynching.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlittleF.htm
Between 1914 and 1917 Eugene Debs made several speeches explaining why he believed the United States should not join the war. After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, several party members were arrested for violating the Espionage Act. After making a speech in Canton, Ohio, on 16th June, 1918, criticizing the legislation, Debs was arrested and sentenced to ten years in Atlanta Penitentiary.
The Espionage Act prescribed a $10,000 fine and 20 years' imprisonment for interfering with the recruiting of troops or the disclosure of information dealing with national defence. Additional penalties were included for the refusal to perform military duty. Over the next few months around 900 went to prison under the Espionage Act.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWespionage.htm
Criticised as unconstitutional, the act resulted in the imprisonment of many of the anti-war movement. This included the arrest of left-wing political figures such as Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman.
On 23rd August six members of the Frayhayt, a group of Jewish anarchists based in New York were arrested. Charged under the Espionage Act, the group were accused of publishing articles in the Der Shturm that undermined the American war effort. This included criticizing the United States government for invading Russia after the Bolshevik government signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.
One of the group, Jacob Schwartz, was so badly beaten by the police when he was arrested that he died soon afterwards. Mollie Steimer was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Three of the men, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Abrahams received twenty years.
Over 450 conscientious objectors were imprisoned as a result of this legislation including Rose Pastor Stokes who was sentenced to ten years in prison for saying, in a letter to the Kansas City Star, that "no government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people while the government is for the profiteers." Soon afterwards Kate Richards O'Hare was sentenced to five years for making an anti-war speech in North Dakota.
The socialist journal, The Masses was prosecuted in 1918 under the Espionage Act. It was claimed by the authorities that articles by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman and cartoons by Art Young, Boardman Robinson and H. J. Glintenkamp had undermined the war effort. The legal action that followed forced the journal to cease publication.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTmasses.htm
In 1919 Woodrow Wilson appointed A. Mitchell Palmer as his attorney general. Soon after taking office, a government list of 62 people believed to hold "dangerous, destructive and anarchistic sentiments" was leaked to the press. This list included the names of Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Oswald Garrison Villard and Charles Beard. It was also revealed that these people had been under government surveillance for many years.
Worried by the revolution that had taken place in Russia, Palmer became convinced that Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government. His view was reinforced by the discovery of thirty-eight bombs sent to leading politicians and the Italian anarchist who blew himself up outside Palmer's Washington home. Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.
A. Mitchell Palmer claimed that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government. On 7th November, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested. Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects were held without trial for a long time. The vast majority were eventually released but Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Mollie Steimer, and 245 other people, were deported to Russia.
In January, 1920, another 6,000 were arrested and held without trial. These raids took place in several cities and became known as the Palmer Raids. Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects, many of them members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), continued to be held without trial. When Palmer announced that the communist revolution was likely to take place on 1st May, mass panic took place. In New York, five elected Socialists were expelled from the legislature.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAredscare.htm
The persecution of people who questioned the right of the ruling elite to control the United States was highly successful and the left never recovered from this, leaving the two main political parties, Democrat and Republican, to share the administration of the country. However, they were only the “public face” of the real rulers.
The situation remained fairly stable until the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. This resulted in a revival in Ku Klux Klan organizations. The most of important of these was the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led by Robert Shelton. In the Deep South considerable pressure was put on blacks by klansmen not to vote. An example of this was the state of Mississippi. By 1960, 42% of the population were black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population.
On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAC16.htm
A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.
It would seem that in October, 1963, those who threatened the status quo could not get justice. However, we now know that the ruling elite were very concerned about losing their power. The following month saw the assassination of JFK. This was followed by the assassinations of other political leaders that posed a threat to the ruling elite: Malcolm X (21st February, 1965), Martin Luther King (4th April, 1968), Robert Kennedy (6th June, 1968), and Fred Hampton (4th December, 1969).
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkingML.htm
Former FBI Agent Says Oswald Didn't Kill Kennedy
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Thank you for that. Have you heard of him before?
AKRON, Ohio - A retired FBI Agent from Summit County is making claims regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that go beyond conspiracy theories.
Don Adams speaks clearly and concisely when describing the events of November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was killed, and he doesn't waiver from his position that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
"It is a fact," says Adams, and he says he has the FBI documents to prove it.
At his home in Akron, Ohio, Adams is surrounded by thousands of reports and records from the National Archives and Records Administration. His name appears on many of the papers, but he says other reports have been doctored, or are missing, "Everything I had done is gone. It's all gone," Adams said.
The Army veteran joined the FBI after serving in the Korean war. He trained in Washington, D.C., and Quantico, Virginia, and was assigned to an FBI field office in Thomasville, Georgia.
One of Adams first assignments was investigating an extreme right radical, with connections to the States Rights Party and KKK named Joseph Adams Milteer. "He was reportedly one of most violent men in the country," said Adams.
One week after completing the investigation, President Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas.
Agent Adams located Milteer in Quintan, Georgia on November 27, 1963, but according to Adams, the Senior Agent in charge would not allow a proper interrogation.
"I said, 'Boss wait a minute, we have an opportunity to elicit tremendous information from him' and he replied '5 questions and nothing more'."
Years later, while searching the archives Adams learned that Milteer had threatened to kill President Kennedy November 9, 1963, just weeks before the assassination, and that FBI agents had allegedly lied about his whereabouts immediately following threat.
In a tape recording Adams played for Fox 8 News, Milteer tells an informant the best way to get the president, "is from an office building with a high powered rifle."
The informant asks if they are really going to kill President Kennedy and on the tape recording Milteer responds, "Oh yes. It's in the works."
Adams wonders why the FBI and Secret Service permitted the President to travel to Dallas with that knowledge.
"[They] should have stopped the President from traveling instantly." said Adams.
And an FBI record states that after the assassination, "a jubilant" Milteer bragged to the informant, "You thought I was kidding when I said he would be killed from a window with a high powered rifle."
Adams questions why Milteer appears in a photograph near President Kennedy's limousine before the shooting, but was never mentioned in the Warren Commission Report.
Adams suspects Milteer was definitely involved in President Kennedy's death, but he says Oswald absolutely was not.
In 1964 Adams was transferred to Dallas, Texas. He watched the now famous Zapruder film and chased leads connected to Kennedy's death.
The Warren Commission report said three bullets were fired from behind the president, but Adams claims there were clearly 11 shots fired, including a frontal shot that struck President Kennedy's neck.
Adams claims that he mentioned his findings to Senior FBI Agents, and was told by one unnamed agent, "Don be careful what you say and how you say it."
Adams says witnesses at the Book Depository saw Oswald in the break room drinking a Coke at the exact time of the shooting.
According to Adams, even if Oswald was on the building's sixth floor, Adams informed Senior FBI Agents that Oswald could not have possibly fired three shots in seven-and-a-half seconds, from a bolt action rifle so precisely while looking through a scope. Adams alleges he was again warned to keep quiet.
"I said, 'I'm gonna tell you right now guys, no way in the world he fire those shots' and boy I was really cautioned then." said Adams.
Adams has hundreds of other facts and papers that he says prove the Warren Commission's report was erronious.
The 80-year-old is currently putting the papers into a book and he has also produced a documentary style DVD, which is being sold on his website.
Adams says he is not seeking fame and fortune, rather truth and justice. He wants another commission established to re-investigate what really happened in Dallas before all of the agents and witnesses are gone.
"When we die off, no one will talk about these things." said Adams, "I hope the truth gets told whatever it is."
His website is:
http://adamsjfk.com/