John Simkin

December 1, 2009

Bill: Thank you for posting this review. Doug sent me a later chapter about LBJ but I am not at liberty to discuss it until the book is published.

December 1, 2009

No luck reaching Taber yet...Van Gosse thought he died ten years ago, but I haven't confirmed that yet. Gibson is somewhere in Europe, I think he's still alive.

A friend has sent me this information on Gibson:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jan/0...uardianreview25

See also Life Magazine (Oct 21, 1957 P10)

Ollie Harrington letter

http://books.google.com/books?id=QFYEAAAAM...;q=&f=false

This is the relevant section:

Ellen Wright died in 2004, at 92. Not long before, a photocopy of Island of Hallucination, more than 500 pages in Wright's typescript, came into my hands, by an unexpected route: it was lent to me by Richard Gibson, whose presence in the novel is thought to have been behind its suppression. Now in his 70s, Gibson, who was born in Los Angeles and raised in Philadelphia, has lived in west London for many years. He talks readily about a colourful past that involves various political affiliations and adventures, disgraces and protestations of innocence. In the early 1960s, he was head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the United States, in which capacity he met Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara on several occasions. When John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Gibson was approached by the CIA for information on Lee Harvey Oswald, who also had links with the FPCC. He is the author of the book African Liberation Movements, and was for a time English-language editor of the Algiers-based magazine Révolution Africaine, run by the French lawyer Jacques Vergès, who later denounced Gibson in the magazine (July-August 1964). Since his Paris days, when he was a regular at the Café Tournon, Gibson has had to fend off suggestions of egregious activity, including spying for the US government, allegations he has consistently denied, sometimes in the law courts and sometimes with a touch of humour. "If I'm CIA, where's my pension?", he once quipped to me.

Of the many things that vexed Wright in Paris in the 1950s - Baldwin's perceived treachery, Smith's snooping, Himes's unfaithfulness - it was the sequence of events that became known as the "Gibson affair" that exercised him most. In 1957, Gibson and Smith, acting in concert, sent a letter to Life magazine criticising French policy in Algeria. Such a gesture could only be seen as foolhardy on the part of an American, provoking the risk of deportation from France. Gibson wrote the letter, but signed it in the name of the newspaper cartoonist Ollie Harrington, a popular figure at the Tournon and one of the few members of the "church" whom Wright did not regard with suspicion or contempt. Wright and Harrington were furious when the letter appeared over the latter's signature in Life (October 21, 1957). Gibson was questioned by French police, and admitted his part in the forgery. He was released without charge but lost his job at Agence France Presse and returned to the US to take up a post with CBS News. Gibson claims he wrote the letter as part of a scheme concocted with Smith, involving a series of communications to various publications, each signed in a false name by a different member of the black community. (His own account of the episode will be published later this year in the journal Modern Fiction Studies.)

A version of the Gibson affair, and the related disagreement between Gibson and Harrington over the lease to a Left Bank apartment which led to a violent fight between the two men, features prominently in Island of Hallucination. There is an unpleasant character in the novel called Mechanical, who reflects certain aspects of Baldwin, notably his homosexuality, which disgusted Wright. At one point, in a nightmare, Fishbelly opens a coffin to find Mechanical dressed as a woman. Other composites display fragmentary resemblances to Smith, Harrington, Gibson himself, and figures more peripheral to the black literary scene in Paris, such as the West Indian writer CLR James, who appears to have been used as the basis for the character called Cato. When I first met Mrs Wright, James was still alive.

November 26, 2009

A man in his late 70s was interviewed on the television the other night. He told the interviewer that he had sex nearly every night. When the surprised young woman asked for clarification he said: "Well, I nearly have sex on Monday night, I nearly have sex on Tuesday night, I nearly have sex on Wednesday night, I nearly...

November 26, 2009

There is virtually nothing on the web on the Spanish Medical Aid Committee that was established by a group of young medical students in London on 8th August 1936. In respect to these brave young men and women I have created a page here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPmedicalaid.htm

November 26, 2009

THE JFK CASE: WHAT INFORMANTS ARE STILL.OUT THERE ???.."
B..

http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-JFK-C...091124-246.html

This is being discussed by the author here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15051

November 26, 2009

Parry's "Jerusalem" performed at the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci by the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg and Deborah Hawksley under the direction of Scott Lawton.

I heard this performed at a local college recently.

Beautiful.

It should be our national anthem. I prefer this version myself.

November 25, 2009

In April 1937 Hank Rubin was approached by a member of the Young Communist League and asked if he wished to join the International Brigades. He added: "I must tell you that the casualties are very high... about 50 percent mortality, and a high percentage of the survivors are wounded." Rubin, who was deeply concerned about the growth of fascism in Nazi Germany, decided to accept the offer.

Hank's father, who was a lifelong Republican, was completely opposed to the idea of him going to Spain. However, as he explained in his autobiography, Spain's Cause Was Mine (1997):

One of the strongest influences operating on me at the time was my relationship with my father. In my middle to late teens I was in a very active and very unpleasant separation struggle. Struggling for my independence, I hated him and wanted to get out of the house. I didn't want to have to accept anything from him or be dependent upon him. Yet, despite all of these antagonisms, I also had a strong sense of family and a deep attachment to my mother.

In so many respects, Dad was a very strong negative role model. His sense of family line and the Rubin name, most particularly his name, was almost an obsession. Since in his mind the succession was only through the male line, his focus was on my carrying on the family name. What he wanted most was for me to join him in his Los Angeles insurance agency, eventually taking over and perpetuating the firm name of Benjamin W Rubin and Associates making it "Benjamin W Rubin and Son." That I had set my scholastic goal on being a doctor was about as much as he could possibly stomach.

He was a lifelong Republican-an affiliation that held no attraction for me, since it represented standpattism, resistance to change, the hopelessness personified by President Hoover, and a heavy tilt toward the rich. But even if I had agreed with his politics in that moment of my active separation struggle, I would have been unable to accept his values. His conservatism and my antipathy to almost anything he stood for pushed me further along the path to the left on which I had already embarked. The way he laid down the law in the house, how he dictated what my mother might or might not do, his unwillingness to accept any of my struggles for identity, were part of what I hated (and still do).

I had nothing but disdain for his hypocrisy of decrying anti-Semitism and then in the next breath railing in a racist way against blacks. I believe that this was my first ideological conflict with him, back when I was only twelve or thirteen. A still-vivid memory is that first time I challenged this contradiction during a dinnertime conversation. He was telling; mother about a business meeting he had had that day at which one of the participants was blaming everything on the Jews. He described how mad he had been and how impotent he felt, because he was trying to sell the man some insurance and felt he could not speak out A moment later, Dad started to talk disparagingly about the blacks in much the same vein that his potential client had attacked Jews.

"Dad, why do you talk about how the Jews are talked about and then talk in the same way about the blacks?" I fearfully asked. "That doesn't make sense to me, and it doesn't seem fair."

"Henry, you don't understand. You just don't know what you are talking about. It's two different things. Blacks are different." Then he snapped, "Mind your manners. And don't you dare be disrespectful to me."

There was no arguing with him. His word in the house was law.

But my movement leftward was also motivated by my search for something to believe in, a system of ethics and morality and a way of life that I could honor. I knew that a society that suffered from wars, unemployment, and poverty as well as racial, religious, and sexual discrimination needed change. But just what that meant or how we might bring that change about was still unknown to me. The image of the United States as a melting pot that would boil down to form a single nation of Americans seemed right to me. The idea of Jewish separateness, centered in a unique country such as Palestine, was just unacceptable. While keenly aware of anti-Semitism in the United States, I did not know or, perhaps, want to know or want to believe how deep-rooted and vicious the practice of anti-Semitism was in other countries, how widespread it was, or even to what degree it existed in my own country.

November 25, 2009

Intelligence about Iraq's programmes of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles was "sporadic and patchy", a senior official told the Iraq war inquiry in London today.

Sir William Ehrman, who was director of national security at the Foreign Office during the build-up to the invasion, said briefings for ministers included major caveats. In April 2000 the picture was described as "limited to chemical weapons"; in May 2001 the knowledge of WMD and ballistic missile programmes was "patchy"; and in March 2002 the intelligence was "sporadic and patchy".

In August 2002 a briefing noted that "we know very little" about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons work since late 1998, and in September 2002 the intelligence "remained limited".

Both foreign secretaries in this period received regular briefings. "I certainly never felt either with Robin Cook or with Jack Straw that they didn't understand the picture that was being given to them on intelligence," he said. Yet Tony Blair told the House of Commons that intelligence about Iraq's programmes of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles was "extensive, detailed and authoritative". It is now known that Blair lied about the evidence being provided by the intelligence services.

Addressing the overall threat posed by Iraq in 2001, the Foreign Office said it was "not top of its list" of countries causing concern because of their stated desire to develop weapons of mass destruction, ranking below Iran, North Korea and Libya.

With sanctions in place against Iraq, the Foreign Office believed Saddam Hussein could not build a nuclear weapon and, even if sanctions were removed, it was estimated it would take him five years to do so.

Yesterday, other officials said Tony Blair's government had known prominent members of the Bush administration wanted to topple Saddam years before the invasion. But the Blair government initially distanced itself from the idea, knowing it would be unlawful. British intelligence dismissed claims by elements in the US administration that the Iraqi leader was linked to Osama bin Laden, the inquiry heard.

The US State Department actually asked the British Foreign Office to argue against the madcap ideas being put forward by NeoCons in the Bush administration.

Sir William Patey, then head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office, said: "We were aware of these drumbeats from Washington and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that part of the spectrum." asked officials at the ministry to draw up an Iraq "options" paper including regime change. "We dismissed it at the time because it had no basis in law," Patey told the inquiry.

Several officials have told the inquiry that this all changed after the 9/11 attacks on the US. After this, Blair went along with the extreme ideas of the NeoCons.

November 25, 2009

Here's an excerpt from the September 1971 trial of Captain Ernest Medina... one of the witnesses for the prosecution was Gerry Hemming (spelled wrong here) who was a "demolition man" who had apparently 'volunteered' for the My Lai mission one day before the attack, and was a participant in the massacre. It appears that he discredited himself (perhaps intentionally) by admitting to excessive wine use and alluding to drugs, when challenged by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. There are other witnesses (for the prosecution) that either perjured themselves, took the "fifth", or otherwise were afraid to testify. It seems to me that Hemming was a 'plant' to discredit the prosecution, pretending to be an eyewitness who would testify against capt. Medina, when in fact he was weakening their case by coming across as unreliable and of questionable stability. His involvement in this infamous war crime is very telling...
"Judge Howard said that he would decide tomorrow whether Mr. Widmer should be ordered to testify. Gerald Heming, a former demolition man and Captain Medina’s command group, said that he saw an officer step from a helicopter at Mylai and warned Captain Medina, “These shootings got to stop.” He said that he thought the officer who dismounted from the helicopter was Col. Oran K. Henderson, then commander of the 11th Brigade, American Division, and now on trial at Fort Meads, Md., for covering up the Mylai slayings.

When the witness insisted that the officer had been wearing a major’s insigne, a gold leaf, Mr. Bailey pointed out that Colonel Henderson was already a colonel at the time of the incident. Mr. Bailey also brought out that Mr. Heming had told an Army investigator that because of the helicopter noise he wasn’t sure that he had heard the conversation between Captain Medina and Colonel “Henderson.”

“Does it mean anything to you when you make a sworn statement?” Mr. Bailey asked. “No,” the witness replied.

Mr. Heming admitted to a taste for wine and said that he had consumed four quarts on the eve of his appearance. “I do that every day,” he said.

“You been blowing a little LSD?” Mr. Bailey asked? “I wish I could,” Mr. Heming said. “Then maybe I could forget the whole thing.”

There were two trial references that mentioned his name, plus a book, although the spelling was off a bit. It sounds so much like him... irreverent, swashbuckling, cocky and colorful. Comes through the page as enjoying the controversy, putting himself in the limelight. The nickname they used for him was "Hotrod", if that's any clue. Claimed to be a 'demolition' man. He was blowing smoke up the prosecutor's butt during the cross-examination. What I found intriguing (and a bit sinister) is that - according to the book - he 'volunteered' for the My Lai mission (a search and destroy task) only the day before. It sure paints a picture that fits his soldier of fortune profile. There were infamous CIA "tiger teams" rumored to be carrying out Project Phoenix executions and grab/snatch operations... maybe he was a participant.

I know several members have carried out research into Gerry Hemming. Does anyone know if he was involved in "My Lai" or "Operation Pheonix"?

November 24, 2009

Robert Skidelsky, The Guardian (23rd November 2009)

The economic downturn has produced an explosion of popular anger against bankers' "greed" and their "obscene" bonuses. This has accompanied a wider critique of "growthmanship" – the pursuit of economic growth or the accumulation of wealth at all costs, regardless of the damage it may do to the earth's environment or to shared values.

John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue in 1930, in his little essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren". Keynes predicted that in 100 years – that is, by 2030 – growth in the developed world would, in effect, have stopped, because people would "have enough" to lead the "good life." Hours of paid work would fall to three a day – a 15-hour week. Human beings would be more like the "lilies of the field, who toil not, neither do they spin."

Keynes's prediction rested on the assumption that, with a 2% annual increase in capital, a 1% increase in productivity, and a stable population, average standards of living would rise eight times on average. This enables us to work out how much Keynes thought was "enough." GDP per head in the United Kingdom in the late 1920s (before the 1929 crash) was roughly £5,200 ($8,700) in today's value. Accordingly, he estimated that a GDP per capita of roughly £40,000 ($66,000) would be "enough" for humans to turn their attention to more agreeable things.

It is not clear why Keynes thought eight times the average British national income per head would be "enough." Most likely he took as his standard of sufficiency the bourgeois rentier income of his day, which was about 10 times that of the average worker.

Eighty years on, the developed world has approached Keynes's goal. In 2007 (ie, pre-crash), the IMF reported that average GDP per head in the United States stood at $47,000, and at $46,000 in the UK. In other words, the UK has had a five-fold increase in living standards since 1930 – despite the falsification of two of Keynes's assumptions: "no major wars" and "no population growth" (in the UK, the population is 33% higher than in 1930).

The reason we have done so well is that annual productivity growth has been higher than Keynes projected: about 1.6% for the UK, and a bit higher for the US. Countries like Germany and Japan have done even better, despite the hugely disruptive effects of war. It is likely that Keynes's "target" of $66,000 will be achieved for most western countries by 2030.

But it is equally unlikely that this achievement will end the insatiable hunt for more money. Let's assume, cautiously, that we are two-thirds of the way towards Keynes's target. We might therefore have expected hours of work to have fallen by about two-thirds. In fact they have fallen by only one-third – and have stopped falling since the 1980s.

This makes it highly improbable that we will reach the three-hour working day by 2030. It is also unlikely that growth will stop – unless nature itself calls a halt. People will continue to trade leisure for higher incomes.

Keynes minimised the obstacles to his goal. He recognised that there are two kinds of needs, absolute and relative, and that the latter may be insatiable. But he underestimated the weight of relative needs, especially as societies got richer, and, of course, the power of advertising to create new wants, and thus induce people to work in order to earn the money to satisfy them. As long as consumption is conspicuous and competitive, there will continue to be fresh reasons to work.

Keynes did not entirely ignore the social character of work. "It will remain reasonable," he wrote, "to be economically purposive for others after it has ceased to be reasonable for oneself." The wealthy had a duty to help the poor. Keynes was probably not thinking of the developing world (most of which had hardly started to develop in 1930). But the goal of global poverty reduction has imposed a burden of extra work on people in rich countries, both through the commitment to foreign aid and, more importantly, through globalisation, which increases job insecurity and, particularly for the less skilled, holds down wages.

Moreover, Keynes did not really confront the problem of what most people would do when they no longer needed to work. He writes: "It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional economy." But, since most of the rich – "those who have an independent income but no associations or duties or ties" have "failed disastrously" to live the "good life," why should those who are currently poor do any better?

Here I think Keynes comes closest to answering the question of why his "enough" will not, in fact, be enough. The accumulation of wealth, which should be a means to the "good life," becomes an end in itself because it destroys many of the things that make life worth living. Beyond a certain point – which most of the world is still far from having reached – the accumulation of wealth offers only substitute pleasures for the real losses to human relations that it exacts.

Finding the means to nourish the fading "associations or duties or ties" that are so essential for individuals to flourish is the unsolved problem of the developed world, and it is looming for the billions who have just stepped on to the growth ladder. George Orwell put it well: "All progress is seen to be a frantic struggle towards an objective which you hope and pray will never be reached."

November 24, 2009

Ed Pilkington, The Guardian (23rd November 2009)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/2...sh-conspiracist

Neil Sankey has spent his life investigating organised crimes. As a former British police officer with almost 20 years experience, he was seconded to elite units of Scotland Yard through most of the 1970s and now runs his own private detective agency in California.

Over the years he has been involved in some big investigations. As part of the Special Branch and Bomb Squad he monitored British leftwing groups and the IRA, and in America his clients have included several big car companies.

Sankey is pursuing what he believes to be fraud on a gigantic scale — a conspiracy, no less, to infiltrate and destroy the free world by putting a foreign imposter into the White House.

Sankey is a member of the fringe alliance known widely as the Birthers (he dislikes the expression, considering it pejorative). Together with other activists, he seeks to prove that Barack Obama is not a true American and is therefore ineligible to be president.

Over the past year Sankey has been at the centre of some of the most aggressive efforts by the Birthers to unseat the president. At the end of last year he tried to block Obama's inauguration by contacting all 538 electoral college representatives who formally elect the president. More recently, he has carried out his own probe into Obama's personal identification history which has revealed, he believes, a suspicious multiplicity of social security numbers.

Sankey says his fascination began with the realisation "that this man wasn't what he said he was. He wasn't an ordinary Democrat — he was far more extreme than that." So about a year ago he began reading blogs and websites that claimed to expose Obama's foreign roots, his spurious Hawaiian birth certificate and the $2m White House cover-up that has prevented the public finding out about the plot.

His travels put him in touch with Orly Taitz, one of the most energetic and flamboyant of the Birther leaders. Of Moldovan extraction, she emigrated via Israel to California where she works as a dentist and lawyer. She has filed numerous legal suits around the country on behalf of serving US military personnel attempting to prevent their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on the grounds that they should not be taking orders from an illegally serving commander-in-chief.

Sankey's journey from having worked in some of the most elite police units in Britain to taking part in a movement dedicated to the pursuit of a paranoid conspiracy theory may seem bizarre. But he insists it has been a natural progression. He joined the Hampshire force in 1961, and was seconded as a detective sergeant to Scotland Yard where he developed a specialism tracking leftwing political groups and the IRA.

"We created an operation into what we called revolutionary criminality — monitoring leftwing bookshops and extremist literature, following the leftist fringe and the Marxist links of the IRA."

In 1980 he moved to California, set up his agency, and became a naturalised American in 1985.

Sankey contends that his police experience in England now informs his fight against Obama. "It's quite obvious to me — America is heading towards a socialised state just as has happened in Europe. Socialised medicine, everyone on the dole, and when everything collapses you tip the scales into Marxism."

He also believes his training in Scotland Yard is now reaping benefits for the Birthers. The same techniques he used to analyse the IRA's associations he is now applying to Obama. Most recently, he carried out an exhaustive search of databases that he claims threw up 140 different identification numbers and addresses for "Barack Obama". He admits the findings prove nothing — there is nothing to link the entries to the president — but he believes it raises further doubts that need investigating.

Taitz says Sankey's UK police expertise has been invaluable. "He has had superb training. I have the greatest respect for Scotland Yard."

The Birther movement is not a unique phenomenon within US politics. Bill Clinton was accused by conspiracy theorists of having murdered his friend and White House legal adviser Vince Foster; George Bush had to contend with the Truthers who believe he was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

But the Birthers are unlike previous movements in that they are focused on who Obama is rather than what he does.

"There is no other president who has had his citizenship questioned in this way," says Patricia Turner, an expert in folklore at the University of California, Davis. Turner says that the popular Birther theories that Obama has used fake Hawaiian documents to disguise the fact he was born in Kenya or Indonesia are retellings of an old story. "This is just a proxy for old-fashioned racism. They are driven by hostility towards anything they see as foreign or exotic."

Although the Birthers are on the fringe of American politics, they are part of a wider surge of rightwing anger towards Obama's perceived socialist policies that is sweeping the country.

As such they can command considerable support. An internet petition demanding an official inquiry into Obama's origins has been signed by almost 500,000; critics say the number is inflated by multiple clicks.

Like any virulent conspiracy theory, that of Obama's birth has proved immune to the intervention of fact. When Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii was digitally scanned for all to see, it was denounced as a forgery. The birth notices printed by two Hawaii newspapers announcing his birth in August 1961 were similarly dismissed.

Dozens of legal actions have been brought before the courts by Taitz and other Birther leaders, and so far every one has been thrown out. Last month a federal judge dismissed Taitz's lawsuit seeking to challenge the chain of military command up to Obama as commander-in-chief. In a devastating ruling, the judge accused Taitz of trying to "emasculate the military" in a way that would "leave this country defenceless".

None of these setbacks have dissuaded Sankey. He says accusations of racism are smears that he has come to expect. "The objection is not Obama's colour but his politics. I like him as a person, I just wish he was genuine."

November 24, 2009

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian (23rd November 2009)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/no...n-no10-cover-up

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's "appalling" failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a "full and insightful" account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence has emerged about how Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was "disarmament, not regime change". Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only "very small numbers" of officials.

The documents, leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, are "post-operational reports" and "lessons learned" papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. They refer to a "rushed" operation that caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the postwar period.

One commander said the government "missed a golden opportunity" to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: "It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves". One, describing the supply chain, added: "I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert".

Some troops were deployed in civilian flights to countries neighbouring Iraq with their equipment "brought in by hand baggage". Items considered dangerous, including penknives and nail scissors, were confiscated from them.

Interviewed for the postwar report drawn up by the MoD, Brigadier Bill Moore, commander of 19 Brigade, was asked: "Did you receive the correct level of advice for the nation-building you faced?" He replied: "We got absolutely no advice whatsoever. The lack of advice from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], the Home Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] was appalling."

The "lessons learned" report stated: "Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle". However, many of the failures recounted in leaked documents and given in evidence to Commons committees, notably relating to equipment, were repeated in Afghanistan as inquests have shown.

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted – that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert parliament and the UN that Blair was already determined to go to war.

The documents add: "In Whitehall, the internal operational security regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved [in Iraq invasion preparations] constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until Dec 23 2002."

Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that "from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation".

Documents leaked in 2005 show that, almost a year before the invasion, Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the "desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.

Chilcot says he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations if they were justified. But he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence.

November 24, 2009

http://heraldnet.com/article/20091122/NEWS...29916/-1/news01

Kennedy’s assassination remains a puzzling memory

By Julie Muhlstein

Herald Columnist

You either remember or you don’t.

I do. Mrs. Komp, my fourth-grade teacher at Spokane’s Jefferson Elementary School, walked us to the cafeteria. A radio was on. Teachers were crying. They sent us home early.

Similar memories are shared by an entire generation of Americans, kids of the 1960s.

Gary Clark remembers, too. No kid, he was a 21-year-old airman at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Mont., on Nov. 22, 1963.

“That day,” as Clark calls it, left the 67-year-old Marysville man with a memory no one else shares. Clark said he was ordered, in his country’s dark hour, to pass along news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to others where he worked for the 24th North American Air Defense Command, known as NORAD.

Last week, Clark described his Air Force job as an interceptor director technician. He worked in a Semi-Automatic Ground Environment building on the base, where huge computers were used to track aircraft.

The Cold War system, split into sectors around the United States, aimed to counter the Soviet threat by intercepting any enemy bombers. “We were constantly on guard. Anybody who was going to fly down from Canada was not going to make it,” he said. “We practiced all the time.”

In the “blue room” where Clark worked, in tandem with an officer, unidentified planes showed up as dots on a huge screen. Those planes were nearly always American commercial airliners, off course in a jet stream.

Workers in the football-field sized building could send messages that resulted in F-101 interceptor jets taking off from the base to get a look at whatever plane the system detected. “We’d push a button, and within a couple minutes you could hear planes start to roll down the runway,” said Clark, whose Air Force discharge papers show he served from February of 1962 until January of 1966.

On Nov. 22, 1963, a Friday, Clark said the room’s quiet was disturbed by the different-sounding ring of a call from NORAD headquarters. He said he watched as a senior director and his staff, seated at a raised dais, listened and verified the phone message using a cryptographic process.

What happened next, he said he’ll never forget: An officer he recalled as Maj. Van Quill “looked around the room and spotted me sitting by myself.”

The officer, he said, called him crisply by name — “Airman Clark report” — and told Clark he was about to learn something very important, and that he was to go around the room and inform everyone else of what he had heard.

Clark said he can still hear those words, “President Kennedy has been assassinated,” and that Van Quill also told him “assassins” had fired from an overpass. Also, Clark said, the officer told him the U.S. government did not believe the killing was an attack by any foreign country.

In delivering the message, Clark said he was met with various reactions — hostility, shock and disbelief.

With his order completed, Clark said he reported back to the major, who suggested he sit down for coffee in a break room. There, a TV was tuned to a game show, Clark said, and civilian workers were eating. It wasn’t until several minutes later, he said, that a news bulletin came on TV reporting the president had been shot — there was no news yet that Kennedy had died.

“I always found it interesting that NORAD knew President Kennedy was dead almost immediately, and that it took 15 to 20 minutes or more for the news to react to it,” Clark said. “That day lingers in my mind as if it happened this morning.”

After leaving the Air Force, Clark returned to his native California. He earned an education degree at what is now San Jose State University, and worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs before retirement.

For 46 years, he said he has puzzled over the words “assassins” and “overpass” in that stark message. Neither fit the official explanation of what happened in Dallas that day. Yet Clark doubts that either NORAD nor the major, who had flown B-24 bombers in World War II, would be careless or make errors with such fateful news.

“There are so many theories about the Kennedy assassination,” Clark said. “I only know what Major Van Quill told me. And to this day, I believe him.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.

November 24, 2009

While in Dallas for COPA, I decided to check out the 6th Floor Museum's store to see if its book selection had improved since I was last there in 2004.
To my pleasant surprise it had. It appears that its selection has improved.

It had several books which propose a conspiracy:

JFK: the Book of the Film

Real Answers by Gary Cornwell

The Zapruder Film by David Wrone

It had two others which if I recall suggested as much:

Brothers by David Talbot

Sons and Brothers by Richard Mahoney

It also had a few books which, while leaning towards a single-assassin scenario, are informative to interested parties of all stripes:

Pictures of the Pain and That Day in Dallas by Richard Trask

No More Silence by Larry Sneed

And then of course there was Reclaiming History, Four Days in November, First Day Evidence, Mrs. Paine's Garage, the DVD to some of the History and Discovery Channel programs, the DVD to Oswald's Ghost, etc...

So...there's still a bias, but it's a lot better than it used to be...

Do they sell Larry Hancock's "Someone Would Have Talked?"

No. If I recall, I pushed Mack to carry Larry's book several years ago. He said that Lancer had never solicited him to carry the book or some such thing. The store carries two items--First Day Evidence and a 4oth anniversary DVD of WFAA footage--that I had tried to purchase in the past through Amazon, but had found unavailable. Neither of these items has a national distributor. It's clear the museum buys these titles directly from the author and/or producer. So why not buy from Lancer? There's no excuse. Unless, as Mack claimed, Lancer never solicited the buyer on Larry's book.

Email from Gary Mack:

John,

If authors/publishers don't submit one or two review copies to the Museum, they are not considered. Simple as that. The Museum has carried pro and anti-conspiracy titles for years, which is something I insisted upon when hired in 1994. Titles on both sides are accepted or rejected based upon criteria developed by the Museum. Not all titles are listed on the Museum's website and the store does not carry out-of-print or used items.

Gary Mack

November 24, 2009

With threads titled "Walter Jenkins" and "Nancy Carole Taylor" displayed on this forum's front page in the last 12 hours, I was inspired to do a little digging; resulting in 3 items I found interesting enough to post for your reactions.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/25/us/fred-...-s-scandal.html
Fred B. Black, 80; Lobbyist Was Part Of 1960's Scandal

By BRUCE LAMBERT

Published: Monday, January 25, 1993

Fred B. Black Jr., an aerospace lobbyist who became ensnared in a political scandal in the early 1960's, died Friday at a nursing home in Wheaton, Md. He was 80 and lived in Bethesda, Md.

He died of heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Black was widely known in Washington as a friend of politicians in his role as a consultant for military contractors in the post-World War II arms and space races.

His downfall stemmed from his secret partnership with Robert G. Baker in the Serv-U Corporation, a vending machine business. Mr. Baker was Secretary of the Senate and a longtime aide to Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1963 a rival vending company's lawsuit against Serv-U disclosed the Baker-Black partnership. That prompted a Senate investigation into Mr. Baker's dealings with a lobbyist, and both men were also prosecuted on charges of income tax evasion.

In 1964, Mr. Black was convicted of evading $91,000 in taxes and sentenced to up to four years in prison. The conviction was later overturned, and Mr. Black was acquitted in a second trial.

In 1982, he was prosecuted on charges involving a scheme to launder more than $1 million in Colombian cocaine money. He served seven years in prison.

Mr. Black was born in Webb City, Mo., and grew up in nearby Carterville. He went to Washington as an acquaintance of Harry S. Truman, then a Senator from Missouri.

His marriage to the former Nina Lunn ended in divorce. He is survived by....

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=OakRA...caine&hl=en

http://books.google.com/books?q=Hessler%2C...nG=Search+Books
Tax evasion, drug trafficking, and money laundering as they involve ...‎ - Page 196

....This needs to be stopped," said US District Judge Thomas F. Ho- gan as he sentenced William G. Hessler,

48, who pleaded guilty last month to not reporting to the Internal Revenue Service a $450000 cash deposit

that prosecutors said represented the proceeds of a cocaine distribution ring that smuggled the drug from Columbia and sold it in the United States.....

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&...nge=1989%2C2009

Drug Convictions Upheld

- Washington Post - ProQuest Archiver - Apr 14, 1988

[Fred B. Black Jr.] was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $25000. ... Fred B. Black Jr. and three other men who were part of the largest cocaine ...

http://openjurist.org/846/f2d/1384

846 F2d 1384 United States v. C Tarantino

....Fred B. BLACK, Jr., Appellant.

UNITED STATES of America

As Amended April 12, 1988.

....1. Burns

22

Strickland was introduced to Burns by Black, Tr. 123-29, with whom Burns had had numerous prior dealings. Tr. 5391-93. At their first meeting in Miami, Burns asked Strickland if he was in town to buy cocaine. An extensive discussion of the cocaine trade ensued. Burns stated that he had confidence in Strickland because of their mutual friendship with Black....

.....Burns introduced Strickland to Armando Marulanda, a major Colombian importer. Marulanda offered to sell Strickland ten kilos of cocaine on credit, with a $2,000 per kilo commission to Burns. Marulanda's extension of credit to Strickland was a turning point in Strickland's cocaine trade. Never before had he been able to obtain such large quantities on consignment. Tr. 182-91. Burns thus was essential to the expansion and success of the conspiracy, and he benefitted directly by receiving commissions on each sale by Marulanda to Strickland.

24

Burns apprised Black of these transactions. Tr. 323-34. Strickland's purchases from Marulanda and Marcos Cadavid, an associate of Marulanda's, escalated over the course of the next months, which increased Burns' commissions. Tr. 197-213.

25

Soon after the first transaction, Strickland introduced his partner and co-conspirator, Steve Kupits, to Burns. Strickland stated that he and Kupits were distributing the cocaine "in different parts of the country." Burns responded: "Fine, no problem." Tr. 195-96. Burns knew of and endorsed the nationwide scope of the conspiracy.

26

Burns also was directly involved with the other conspirators. When Ribera, one of Strickland's distributors, took over Strickland's customers in the D.C. area while Strickland took an extended "vacation," Burns dealt directly with Ribera. Under Strickland's prodding, Burns "fronted" cocaine to Ribera, i.e., gave him cocaine on consignment. Burns also supplied Ribera with a courier to transport cocaine to the conspiracy's distributors in California. Tr. 1769-72, 1791. Burns himself directly provided the California conspirators with three kilos of cocaine. Tr. 2223-25. Burns also dealt with the Texas conspirators working with Kupits. Tr. 272-75. There was even evidence linking Burns to Tarantino's plan to launder money by investing it in a Haitian casino, Tr. 472, and Black's plan to launder money through investments in a New Jersey casino (the "Gateway Project"). Tr. 353-55.

....27

....2. Black

30

Strickland met Black after Black indirectly received a $13,000 loan from Strickland. At their first meeting, Strickland informed Black that he was a marijuana dealer, upon which Black suggested that Strickland meet Burns (who later proved to be a major cocaine broker). Tr. 128. Black urged Strickland to transform the loan into an investment in Black's Gateway Project, and to increase the amount of the investment to $70,000. Black also stated he could help Strickland "clean up" his money, that is to say, to disguise its illegal source. Tr. 129-30. Strickland soon invested a total of $140,000 in the Gateway Project, all of it in cash. Tr. 5025-26. Later, Black asked Strickland to "come out of retirement" to generate an additional $800,000, and a further cash payment by Strickland of $500,000 followed shortly. Tr. 362-69.

31

Black claims that he was unaware of the illicit source of Strickland's funds. Brief for Black at 24-28. The jury was entitled to infer, however, that Black was well aware that Strickland's investment represented his cocaine profits: according to Strickland's testimony, (1) Black knew from the first that Strickland was involved in the drug trade; (2) Black introduced Strickland to Burns, a major cocaine broker; (3) Black knew of the developing relationship between Strickland and Burns (Black told Strickland he had heard from Burns that "things are going well with you two" (Tr. 323-24)); (4) Black touted the Gateway Project as a good way for Strickland to "clean up" his money (Tr. 129-30); (5) Strickland provided huge sums of cash to Black (Tr. 362-69), a fact that should have at least aroused suspicion (cf. United States v. Nicholson, 677 F.2d 706, 709 (9th Cir.1982), holding that large cash transactions without documentation, combined with refusal to describe investment, established sufficient circumstantial evidence to infer conspiracy); and (6) Black twice arranged for attorneys to represent conspirators arrested on cocaine charges (Tr. 668-69, 672).

32

Black was also involved in a series of financial transactions that the jury was entitled to conclude were "washes." Black offered to issue a check for cash provided by Strickland in order to permit Strickland to show a legitimate source of income. Black twice issued a Dunbar Corporation check for $3,000 in exchange for $3,000 cash (proceeds of cocaine sales) provided by Strickland. Tr. 338-43. Black also washed $60,000 to permit the financing of a land development project of Strickland, Kupits, and Maddux. Tr. 343-48.

33

Two final pieces of evidence are decisive in establishing Black's involvement in the conspiracy, if credited by the jury. First, in 1980, Black asked Strickland if he was still dealing in drugs. Strickland said he was not, because of a capital shortage. Black offered to arrange the necessary financing. Tr. 426-28. Second, in 1981, Black asked Strickland whether the Texas federal grand jury's investigation centered on the land development plan only, or if it also concerned the drug network. Because of the two $60,000 washes he provided in connection with that project, he feared he might be indicted. Tr. 397-403....

....3. Tarantino

...Tarantino's second level of involvement was his role in attempting to launder the proceeds of the conspiracy's cocaine sales. Strickland first met Tarantino in connection with Black's casino project (the Gateway Project; see supra at 1395). At first, Strickland concealed from Tarantino the source of the funds he was investing in the Gateway Project. But when Tarantino met Strickland in Las Vegas in 1980, he told Strickland he was aware that Strickland and Burns had been selling drugs. He thanked Strickland for his help in supporting the Gateway Project, and later advised him to make further investments in the casino. Tr. 437-38, 1208, 375-76. At a subsequent meeting in New Jersey concerning the Gateway Project, Tarantino introduced Strickland to Croughn as a man who could "sell a lot of coke." Tr. 438-40. Tarantino at least knew of, and arguably urged and facilitated Strickland's investment in the Gateway venture. Given Tarantino's knowledge of the nature of Strickland's business, he also would have known that Strickland's investments in Gateway were made to clean up his money. Tarantino knew of and condoned this aspect of the conspiracy's goals.

41

Tarantino managed a separate casino project in Haiti. He encouraged Strickland to invest in this project as well and credited the proceeds of Strickland's sales to Croughn to the Haitian project. Tr. 470, 475-77. Strickland invested $300,000 in the Haitian project, thinking it a good laundering device. Tr. 470-71.

42

Tarantino was familiar with other major players in the conspiracy. He knew Black through the Gateway Project. Tr. 434-36. He was acquainted with Bell, and was working with him on a separate investment project. Tr. 538-538A. Tarantino and Kohn, the conspiracy's bookkeeper, also had extensive discussions concerning the Haitian and other potential investment projects. Tr. 521, 3302-10....

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/03/us/willi...conviction.html
William Bittman, 69; Won Hoffa Conviction

By DAVID STOUT

Published: Saturday, March 3, 2001

William O. Bittman, who won a conviction against the Teamsters leader James R. Hoffa as a young federal prosecutor and became one of Washington's best-known lawyers, died on Thursday at his home in Potomac, Md. He was 69.

The cause was cancer of the esophagus, said his son Robert J. Bittman, who was a deputy to the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

William Bittman was a 32-year-old assistant attorney general when he prosecuted Mr. Hoffa on fraud and conspiracy charges in 1964, and the case helped to propel Mr. Bittman into the front rank of Washington lawyers.

Mr. Bittman also secured a conviction of Robert G. Baker, the onetime Senate aide, on tax charges. After Mr. Bittman became a defense lawyer, he represented the Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt and won an acquittal of Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan....

.... In any event, Mr. Donovan was vindicated.

But the case that made Mr. Bittman's career was the one against Mr. Hoffa, and he was surprised when he got it.

The charges against Mr. Hoffa and six other defendants -- that they had arranged millions in fraudulent loans from the union's pension fund and diverted some of it for their own use -- were based on five years of research by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The documents filled 50 filing cases in the United States attorney's office in Chicago, where the trial was held.

Five days after the trial began, the chief prosecutor became seriously ill and had to withdraw. Mr. Bittman replaced him and had to immerse himself in a sea of information. Twelve weeks and 120 witnesses later he was victorious, winning praise from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. (Mr. Hoffa, who had also been convicted in a separate jury-tampering case, was sentenced to five years for pension fraud.)

Early in 1967, Mr. Bittman won a conviction of Bobby Baker, the former secretary to Senate Democrats who was accused of using his connections to bilk savings and loan executives out of $100,000 and of conspiring with associates to avoid taxes.

Mr. Bittman's role as the first defense counsel for Mr. Hunt, one of the Watergate defendants, threatened his career for a time. Prosecutors accused him of wrongly concealing a copy of a memorandum written by Mr. Hunt to White House aides, reminding them of a supposed commitment to provide money and eventual pardons to low-level Watergate suspects in return for silence about the role of more prominent figures.

Mr. Bittman said that he had copied the memorandum for his own protection and that he believed it to be protected by the lawyer-client relationship. After a review, prosecutors said they had insufficient grounds to proceed against him....

....Mr. Bittman changed law firms after representing E. Howard Hunt. He had been a partner since 1974 in Pierson, Ball & Dowd, which merged with the Washington firm of Reed Smith in 1989.

Mr. Bittman's prosecution of Bobby Baker had a lasting effect, Robert Bittman recalled. Mr. Baker's lawyer was Edward Bennett Williams, who had represented many high-profile defendants and did not lose often.

After losing the Baker case, Mr. Williams was decidedly cool to Mr. Bittman, Robert Bittman recalled yesterday. This made for some awkwardness, since Mr. Williams happened to live across the street from the Bittmans at the time.

''My dad didn't dislike Ed Williams,'' Robert Bittman said. ''Ed Williams disliked my dad.''

Tom, thank you very much for posting this. I have added this information to my web page on Black.

November 24, 2009

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/the-...ed-reading-list
Link to books on the JFK assassination as recommended by Jim Marrs, John Barbour and Kenn Thomas

I am surprised that Larry Hancock's book, Someone Would Have Talked, is not included on the list.

By the way, the author of "Deep Politics" is Peter Dale Scott.

November 24, 2009

While in Dallas for COPA, I decided to check out the 6th Floor Museum's store to see if its book selection had improved since I was last there in 2004.
To my pleasant surprise it had. It appears that its selection has improved.

It had several books which propose a conspiracy:

JFK: the Book of the Film

Real Answers by Gary Cornwell

The Zapruder Film by David Wrone

It had two others which if I recall suggested as much:

Brothers by David Talbot

Sons and Brothers by Richard Mahoney

It also had a few books which, while leaning towards a single-assassin scenario, are informative to interested parties of all stripes:

Pictures of the Pain and That Day in Dallas by Richard Trask

No More Silence by Larry Sneed

And then of course there was Reclaiming History, Four Days in November, First Day Evidence, Mrs. Paine's Garage, the DVD to some of the History and Discovery Channel programs, the DVD to Oswald's Ghost, etc...

So...there's still a bias, but it's a lot better than it used to be...

Do they sell Larry Hancock's "Someone Would Have Talked?"

November 23, 2009

In 1945 Clement Attlee, appointed Ellen Wilkinson as Minister of Education, the first woman in British history to hold the post. Wilkinson's plans to increase the school-leaving age to sixteen had to be abandoned when the government decided that the measure would be too expensive. However, she did managed to persuade Parliament to pass the 1946 School Milk Act that gave free milk to all British schoolchildren.

Ellen Wilkinson, depressed by her failure to bring in all the reforms she believed necessary, took an overdose of barbiturates and died on 6th February, 1947.

Can one imagine a politician today taking such action?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwilkinson.htm

November 21, 2009

Investigations: A Senator's Insurance, Time Magazine (5th March, 1965)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,839285,00.html

Did Walter Jenkins know of any arrangements whereby Don B. Reynolds, a business sidekick of Bobby Baker's, bought $1,208 in advertising on Lady Bird Johnson's Austin TV station in return for selling two $100,000 insurance policies on Lyndon Johnson's life?

The answer, in a sworn affidavit, was a flat no - but that was back on Dec. 16, 1963, when Jenkins was a top White House aide. Last week Jenkins answered again - and this time his no was a lot less than flat. He had meant on that other occasion that he had not known "of the specifics for the purchase of advertising." But "I did know Mr. Reynolds planned to purchase advertising time, and I have never asserted the contrary."

"No Secret." As before, Jenkins did not appear in person before the Senate Rules Committee, which is investigating the Bobby Baker case. He left the White House last October, after being arrested on a morals charge, and his lawyer and two psychiatrists testified that his appearance before the committee would cause such a strain as to endanger his health. Instead, Jenkins replied on paper, but under oath, to 40 written questions from the committee.

In late 1956 or early 1957, Jenkins recalled, he was treasurer of the LBJ Co., which owned the television station, and "I was seeking an insurance company from which insurance on the life of the then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson might be purchased. I made no secret of this search, and I'm confident that Robert G. Baker knew of it, either from me or indirectly. Mr. Baker told me that he knew Don Reynolds, who represented a company which was beginning to specialize in insurance for former heart attack patients. Mr. Baker did not tell me that he had any interest in Mr. Reynolds' business."

Baker arranged a meeting between Jenkins and Reynolds, and Jenkins later talked to Baker several times about the proposed insurance. But then Jenkins "received word from the LBJ Co. that it would not be necessary to pursue the matter further because a local agent in Austin had become interested in selling the policies and that he not only had been an advertiser on the radio and television stations for many years, but also had always related the amount of his advertising to the amount of his business done with the station." This local agent, it turned out, was Huff Baines, a cousin of Lyndon Johnson's.

Meeting the Competition. Jenkins "communicated this information to Mr. Reynolds," and presumably was pleased to hear "that Mr. Reynolds wished very much to sell the policies and would also like to purchase advertising time in the event he sold them." Jenkins studied Reynolds' "offer to meet the competition," and "it was decided to accept the Reynolds offer."

Jenkins insisted that at no time did he "pressure" Reynolds to buy the television time. But in any event, he certainly got the idea across.

November 21, 2009

There is a very interesting article called Bobby's High Life in Time Magazine on 6th November, 1963. This is far more detailed to the articles that appeared after the assassination of JFK and the Senate Rules Committee report.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,896999,00.html

Out of the hearing room and into the arms of waiting newsmen stepped Arizona's Democratic Senator Carl Hayden, a member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. "No comment," grumbled Hayden. Next out was Nebraska's Republican Senator Carl Curtis. "I can't tell you a thing," said he.

The remaining members of the nine-man committee were equally uncommunicative about what they had found out so far in their investigation of Bobby Gene Baker, 35, who last month precipitously resigned from his $19,600-a-year position as Secretary for the Senate Majority. Indeed, not even Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams, who appeared before the committee as a witness against Baker, would say what was going on.

Why this sudden affliction of senatorial lockjaw? The answer seemed obvious: Baker is involved in a scandal of major proportions, and the Senate plainly feared that some of its own members are in it with him. Yet the Senate's self-protective silence had an unintended effect, creating a climate in which talk and speculation flourished with tales of illicit sex, influence peddling and fast-buck financial deals.

One subject of considerable curiosity was Carole Tyler, 24, a shapely (5 ft. 6 in., 35-26-35) Tennessee girl who won the title of "Miss Loudon County" before she turned up in Washington in 1959. Three years later she was Baker's private secretary at $8,000 a year. Chain-smoking, martini-drinking, party-loving Carole also became a favorite in Baker's high-flying circle of acquaintances.

Last December Carole took up housekeeping in a cooperative townhouse at 308 N Street S.W., just a short ride from the Capitol. It was a well-furnished apartment, with prints on the walls, silk draperies in the bedrooms, lavender carpeting in the bathrooms. The parties there were lively. The twist was danced both inside the house and on the patio outside; the convivial drinking and animated chatter lasted long into the night. Some nearby residents noted that visitors appeared in the daytime as well as the evening. "A lot of people used to come through the back gate," recalls one neighbor. "That struck us as strange. Most of our guests come through the front door."

Carole shared the house for a time with another girl, Mary Alice Martin, a secretary in the office of Florida's Democratic Senator George Smathers. But neither girl owned the heavily trafficked house they lived in. The owner was Bobby Baker, who bought it for $28,000 on a down payment of $1,600. On the FHA forms that he signed, Baker listed both girls as the tenants of the house, said that Carole was his "cousin." She resigned from her job as a Senate employee at the same time Baker did, and has not since been available to inquiring newsmen.

Investigators were also sifting through stories that concerned several call girls who operated in this rarefied atmosphere. Among these was a young German woman who was asked to leave the U.S. after FBI agents showed her dossier to other interested authorities. She was Ellen Rometsch, 27, a sometime fashion model and wife of a West German army sergeant who was assigned to his country's military mission in Washington. An ambitious, name-dropping, heavily made-up mother of a five-year-old boy, Elly was a fixture at Washington parties. In September, five weeks after the Rometsches were shipped back to West Germany, her husband Rolf, 25, divorced her on the ground of "conduct contrary to matrimonial rules." Last week, while Elly hid out on her parents' farm near Wuppertal, Rolf spoke ruefully of his Washington experience, said that he "had no idea what was going on behind my back. It's a case of a woman who falls for the temptation of a sweet life her husband can't afford."

One repository of the sweet life was the Quorum Club, located in a three-room suite at the Carroll Arms Hotel, just across the street from the new Senate Office Building. Elly is remembered as a hostess there.

Bobby Baker was a leading light of the "Q Club." He helped organize it, was a charter member and served on the board of governors. The club, so its charter says, is a place for the pursuit of "literary purposes and promotion of social intercourse." Actually it was open to anyone with a literate bankroll: initiation fee, $100; yearly dues, $50. Among the 197 members are many lobbyists and several governmental figures, including Democratic Senators Frank Church of Idaho, Daniel Brewster of Maryland, J. Howard Edmondson of Oklahoma and Harrison Williams of New Jersey. Among Republican members are two Congressmen, Montana's James Battin and Ohio's William Ayres.

Many members were quick to point out that the club is a handy place to dine ("My wife is fond of the steak and sandwiches," said Bill Ayres) as well as a convenient spot for cocktails. Decorated to the male taste, the club's dimly lit interior sports prints and paintings of women with imposing façades, leather-topped card tables, a well-stocked bar, a piano and, most convenient of all, a buzzer that is wired to the Capitol so that any Senator present can be easily summoned to cast his vote on an impending issue.

The Q Club was a useful spot for meeting influential people in business and politics. Such people, in turn, were useful to Bobby Baker in his breathless pursuit of a buck. It was, by any standard, a successful pursuit, for Baker's net worth rose to something around $2,000,000. That income, presumably, enabled Baker and his wife Dorothy, who has an $11,000-a-year job with a Senate committee, to move recently into a $125,000 house near the home of Bobby's friend and longtime Senate sponsor, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, in Washington's Spring Valley section.

Though he was well liked by many people, Bobby unquestionably left behind him a roiling trough of bitter enemies. One man who thinks that Bobby did him dirt is an old friend named Ralph Hill, president of Capitol Vending Co. Hill is suing Baker for $300,000. He claims that through Bobby he got a contract for the vending-machine concession at Melpar Inc., a Virginia electronics firm. Hill charges that Baker thereafter demanded a monthly cut from Hill in return for his good will.

Hill claims that for 16 months he appeared regularly at Baker's Capitol office with envelopes containing cash - $5,600 all told. Last March the Serv-U Corp. - a competing vending-machine firm, of which Baker's law partner Ernest Tucker is board chairman - moved to buy Capitol Vending's outstanding stock. Hill resisted, and Baker warned him that he would see to it that Melpar canceled Capitol Vending's contract. Sure enough, in August 1963, Melpar said it would.

Baker's dealings with the Novak family of Washington started out pretty well. Builder Alfred Novak and his wife were friendly with the Bakers. Early in 1960, Novak agreed to lay out $12,000 so that Baker could cash in on a good stock tip. They agreed to share fifty-fifty in the profits. And they did just that. The investment brought in $75,321, and Baker got his 50% - $37,660 - without having invested a cent of his own money.

It was with the Novak family that Baker launched a $1,200,000 motel, the Carousel, in Ocean City, Md. For the Novaks the experience was a painful one. Baker, who initially invested $290,000, borrowed on promissory notes from the Serv-U Corp., began campaigning for more money from the Novaks; he wanted to build a restaurant addition to the motel, then a nightclub. The Novaks could not afford the extra investment, sold some of their shares to Baker. The Novaks were disillusioned in their partner, and Novak became deeply depressed. Five months before the Carousel opened for business, he died at 44 of a heart attack. Says Gertrude Novak of Baker's handling of financial matters: "We felt we were being pushed up against the wall."

In any event, the Carousel, billed as a "high-style hideaway for the advise and consent set," opened with a merry party. Two hundred Washington big shots traveled to the event in chartered buses. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were there, and Entrepreneur Baker was all over the place.

Baker also had a variety of other financial interests. Apart from his law firm, he was an agent for the Go Travel agency of Washington and invested in a Howard Johnson's motel in North Carolina. But he did not restrict himself solely to million-dollar enterprises. On at least one occasion, he showed an interest in the money problems of his Senate page boys. Young Boyd Richie was a $403-a-month telephone page in Baker's office. Richie, a 17-year-old Texan, roomed with another page, Walter J. Stewart, and paid Stewart $50 a month rent. Stewart, it seems, was on temporary military duty and so was not on the Senate payroll. One day he told Richie to give him an additional $50 a month - on orders of Bobby Baker.

For three months, Richie dutifully forked over the extra money, but the more he thought about it the angrier he became. It happened that Richie was dating Lucy Baines Johnson, L.B.J.'s 15-year-old daughter. So one evening when he came to call for Lucy, Richie confronted the Vice President in his den and told him what was going on. Next day Lyndon informed the boy that he need not continue the payoff and would be permitted to live rent-free for three months at Stewart's place to make up for his losses. Baker himself admitted that "some of Boyd Richie's money had been deferred. After all, he was just a teen-ager and making a good salary."

Another good Senate friend of Baker's was Oklahoma's millionaire Democrat Robert S. Kerr (Kerr-McGee Oil Industries Inc.). Before he died last January, Kerr was one of the Senate's most powerful members. At one point, Baker got a $275,000 mortgage on Serv-U Corp. from Oklahoma City's Fidelity National Bank, of which the Kerr family owns 12%.

A couple of weeks ago, Baker journeyed to Oklahoma City to see Kerr-McGee's President Dean A. McGee and the late Senator's son, Robert Jr. He said he wanted to find proof of the fact that Senator Kerr had once handed him $40,000 as a gift, told McGee that the Senator had said, "I want you to have the money. Be sure and report it on your income tax." But both McGee and young Kerr denied that the Senator had given Baker any money, insisted that there were no records of any gift. "I think I would know it if Dad had given him $40,000," says Kerr. Adds McGee: "There's only one person who really knows, and that's the Senator, and he's dead. Baker seemed to be concerned about it. He gave me the impression it was a problem."

Obviously, a lot of deep-digging investigating remained to be done before the scandalous skeins of Bobby Baker's high life could be untangled and strung back together in a definitive way. But it was just as certain that the U.S. Senate was doing itself no service by its closed-door, clam-mouthed handling of the case. For the way things were going, instead of only a handful of members suffering embarrassment or worse, the Senate and almost all its members were being subjected to suspicion.

November 21, 2009

Doug Horne worked on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in Washington, DC for the final 3 years of the Review Board's 4-year lifespan, from August 1995 through September 1998. He was hired as a Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team, and was later promoted to the position of Chief Analyst for Military Records (i.e., the Head of the Military Records Team).

Doug's book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board will be published next month. He has agreed to discuss the book on the forum.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhomeD.htm

November 20, 2009

They did a full body Cat scan on me today and marked me for the radiation. The physicist has to examine it so they know what angle to put the radiation on me, so as not to get my lungs or heart. Radiation starts Monday or Tuesday. I have to have 33 sessions. The place is real nice and the employees very nice. It's only 5 minutes away from me. So I will be driving myself. My sister-in-law doesn't think I'll be able to do it. I'll be in touch.
Kathy C

As someone who drove my wife for regular trips of radiotherapy, I agree with your sister-in-law. Do you have anyone to take you to the hospital?

November 20, 2009

Thank you for posting this article Peter.

John/Peter:
My study of My Lai tells me that it was part of CIA's "Phoenix" program, and these young, inexperienced and undisciplined soldiers of C company were used by their intelligence handlers to terrorize (and massacre) a village of women, children and old men.....

Interestingly, one of the My Lai soldiers who testified on Calley's boss's behalf (Capt Medina) was none other than our own Gerald Hemming. My Lai was a Phoenix operation... I wonder if Morales and friends - true forces of evil - had a hand in the war crime?

Gene

Gene, have you published this study anywhere?

Fascinating information about Gerry Hemming.

November 19, 2009

Oops! Link not working

I think you will find it works now:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/epis...n-4469/Overview

November 19, 2009

I thought members would be interested in reading all the articles on the testimony of Don B. Reynolds:

Investigations: Bobby's Busyness, Time Magazine (31st December, 1964)

The Senate committee investigation of the affairs of former Senate Majority Secretary Bobby Gene Baker has hardly set a scorching pace. But last week the committee did release closed-door testimony taken earlier this month from Don B. Reynolds, a Maryland insurance man and longtime Baker business associate. It made Bobby out to be a busy, busy boy - from dabbling in abortion to procuring gifts for Lyndon Baines Johnson.

"If Anyone Should Know . . ." Reynolds testified that he had made Bobby a nominal officer of his insurance brokerage, over ten years had paid Baker some $15,000 for putting him in touch with the right people. When other, non-insurable problems came up, Baker was still a good man to know. Once, said Reynolds, a client called him for help in getting an abortion for a friend. Reynolds got in touch with Bobby, who gave him a Capitol number for his concerned client to call. Whether the abortion was actually performed, Reynolds did not know. But, he said, "Some time later, 'Mrs. X' [the client] called and thanked me." Why, asked Committee Counsel Lennox McLendon, had Reynolds turned to Baker for advice about an abortion? Replied Reynolds: "I felt if anyone should know, he should, sir."

Baker also steered Reynolds to Lyndon Johnson. That was in 1957, only two years after Senate Majority Leader Johnson had suffered a heart attack. The Senator was having trouble finding an insurance company that would give him life insurance. Reynolds went looking on Johnson's behalf, talked to three companies, and finally found that the Manhattan Life Insurance Co. would write the policy. Manhattan issued a first policy of $50,000, and shortly afterward, when it had covered part of its risk through a reinsurance company, issued another policy of $50,000 for Johnson.

Out of Gratitude. In the course of those negotiations, Reynolds said, it was suggested to him by Walter Jenkins, then and now a top Johnson aide, that he buy advertising time on Lady Bird Johnson's radio-TV station in Austin. Reynolds said he bought $1,208 worth of advertising on the station.

"Did you buy this advertising time to advertise your insurance business?" asked Nebraska's Republican Senator Carl T. Curtis.

Reynolds: No, sir.

Curtis: Why did you buy it?

Reynolds: Because it was expected of me, sir.

Curtis: Who conveyed that thought to you?

Reynolds: Mr. Walter Jenkins.

Reynolds testified that in 1959 Bobby Baker suggested that Reynolds might further show his gratitude by giving a stereo phonograph to the Johnson family. Again Reynolds went along. "I supplied Bobby with a catalogue," said Reynolds, "and he said he had taken it out for Mrs. Johnson to make a selection." Reynolds told the committee that he purchased a set and had it installed in Johnson's home at a cost of $588. Did Johnson know, asked West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, that the stereo was a gift from Reynolds? Replied Reynolds: "The invoice delivered to Johnson's home showed that the charges were to be sent to Don Reynolds." It was two years later, said Reynolds, that Johnson purchased another $100,000 in life insurance through him (for a total of $200,000).

In answer to all this, White House Aide Jenkins swore in an affidavit that he had no knowledge "of any arrangement by which Reynolds purchased time on the TV station." Press Secretary Pierre Salinger said that the President had assumed the stereo to be a gift from "a longtime employee," not Reynolds. And President Johnson, in the course of an impromptu press conference, brought up the matter himself. Said he: "The Baker family gave us a stereo set. We used it for a period, and we had exchanged gifts before. He was an employee of the public and had no business pending before me and was asking for nothing, and so far as I know expected nothing in return, any more than I did when I had presented him with gifts." With that, Johnson cut off questions and left the press conference.

A Difference. Republicans, understandably, had a field day with the Reynolds testimony. G.O.P. National Chairman William Miller called the stereo gift "an atrocious thing and a travesty of justice." Said Delaware's Republican Senator John J. Williams: "I see no difference in the acceptance of an expensive stereo and in the acceptance of a mink or vicuna coat, a deep freeze or an Oriental rug."

There was, in fact, a difference. On the basis of the record so far, neither Johnson nor Baker was guilty of using his public office for private gain. In the Reynolds deal, Johnson got what he wanted: some personal life insurance. Reynolds also got what he wanted: his insurance commissions.

Still, the Baker probe was just getting started, and Washington was alive with reports that the names of Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson would be even more closely connected.