Greg Wagner

Coincidences is one way to look at it. Another way is to say that the world was fast closing in on him. Fonzi's calling card that day may have been the last straw. FWIW Fonzi believes it was suicide. I go back to the autopsy by Dr. Cuevas. I did a web search to see what I could find out about him. I found nothing that would compare Cuevas to the clown who did the autopsy on Vince Foster without bothering with x-rays (though he initially claimed x-rays were taken) because the machine wasn't working. I found that Cuevas wrote a letter that helped or may help (not clear which) get a man (Paul Scott) released from Death Row for a murder he didn't commit. I also found a post on a forum by a doctor who thinks Cuevas is an American hero. I can't tell for sure if he praises Cuevas so highly because he came in and cleared some medical group of criminality, or whether he came in and covered the criminality up. Here's the post FWIW: From minarcik at gate.net Wed Oct 3 20:54:56 2001 From: minarcik at gate.net (minarcik) Date: Wed Feb 2 11:50:05 2005 Subject: PATHO-L Tribute to a living legend! Message-ID: <3BBBCF7F.86E159F@gate.net> We have, from time to time, on this forum, given praise to former colleagues, and people we have known and admired and used as role models in pathology, most of which were honest gentlemen with integrity. The older I get, the tougher it seems to meet new ones. However, I would like to single out a living legend who some of you may know, and I'll tell you why I am singling out this true giant of a hero. His name is Gabino Cuevas. He has been at Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach Florida for many years. He has been a CAP regional inspector for Florida and the Caribbean, and if you live in Florida, "Gabby" has probably put the pinch on you to go out and inspect a lab every now and then. If he really likes you, you may get a free trip to Puerto Rico. Recently, Gabby stepped into a situation which no New York firefighter would ever be brave enough to step into. He agreed to perform the Pathology peer review for a hospital with a nuclear time fuse, just waiting to go off. In the midst of a 60-agent FBI investigation regarding lab billing issues, a hospital who lost their CAP and JCAHO accreditation, a threatened "billion" (yes, billion) dollar lawsuit regarding pathology cases, more than a dozen lawsuits from its own pathologists and medical staff (including 2 suits from its own MEC), two Sunday prime time exposes by CNN, a front page expose by the Wall Street Journal, and a Board of Trustees which most staff doctors believe will eventually be in prison, Dr. Cuevas charged in like Ghostbusters and made a HUGE difference in the whole bizarre scenario. Our pathologists and medical staff are using the word "hero" on a regular basis to describe him. In this world of lost credibility and lost integrity, Dr. Cuevas, imho, stands as truly the most brave and credible and respectable pathologist I have ever known. He makes Eliot Ness look "Touchable". I hope you all get the chance to meet him someday. Is there a way we can recommend him to the CAP for some kind of an award? Does congress give medals for this kind of thing? All of the CAP politicos and paper pushers and toadies had left us for dead. Gabby gave us back our lives and our self respect. One thing he discovered, after all the baloney we hear and fantasize and rationalize about peer review, is that about 8% of routine pathology signout cases will be disagreed upon by a fair and competent peer pathologist, which he is, but will not result in significantly changed patient management. The percentage of CSD's (Clinically Significant Discrepancies) remains to be be determined, but may well be in the 1-2% range that the Ackerman text refers to. Without trying to sound like a Budweiser commercial, my greatest respect goes to this true American hero! All my colleagues and our entire medical staff agree! John R. Minarcik, MD http://www.mailman.srv.ualberta.ca/piperma...001-October.txt Hi Ron, Interesting article. Certainly being in the middle of all this would cause a degree of strain. And I believe that DeM also received a round of shock treatments, indicating some mental issues if true. Certainly there have been more stable individuals that have committed suicide and perhaps DeM did also. But I think questions do arise because of the convenient timing of the event and because the death image of the Baron and the apparent minimal damage to his head are curious. I know next to nothing about wounds and ballistics, but for a shotgun blast to the head at point-blank range, I guess I would expect to see more damage. I would certainly defer to the opinions of more qualified individulas, such as James and Ryan on that. Greg

Hi James, In reading some information Bruce Campbell Adamson published in "Oswald's Closest Friend: The George DeMohrenschildt Story", I came accross some interesting items: The last person to see DeM alive was a maid in the house. She witnessed him eating lunch (toast and coffee) roughly an hour before he allegedly killed himself. Apparently he didn't want to go on to the next life on an empty stomach. Neither the maid nor the cook heard a shotgun blast. Apparently Adamson has heard the recording of the gunsot that is on the tape. He states that its not very loud and that it sounds like someone slapping a ruler down on a desk. Adamson also claims that several "beeps" can be heard on the tape. He has identified the beeps as coming from the home's security system as people enter and exit. Of course, these could simply be a result of the comings and goings of the staff. The shotgun was a 20-gauge with a 28" double-barrel. Epstein said DeM seemed fine at the end of their interview session and did not appear to be under any stress. The maid in the house stated that old George was acting somewhat "mad" that afternoon however, allegedly muttering the word "pussy" over and over again in reference to a cat that didn't really exist. There was no exit wound, which seems odd at point-blank range. But perhaps someone more educated in such matters can comment on the liklihood of this. Mary Ferrell's granddaughter married George's grandson, Curtis Lee Taylor (now if Curtis were related to Max Taylor, we'd really have something- but alas, he is not). Adamson states that Barry Goldwater and Walter Jenkins belonged to the same 999th Air Force Reserve Squadron. He also claims that Jenkins set up two meetings (4/18/63 and 5/20/63) between DeM and LBJ. Ruth Forbes Paine (Ruth Hyde Paine's mother) lived on the same street as Prescott Bush in 1924. The book is somewhat disorganized and not terribly easy to follow, especially vis-a-vis references and sources. I also don't know anything about the author. Given DeMohrenschildt's ties to George Bush (the then DCI), Oswald, and the Intelligence community, its certainly an ironic coincidence that he committed suicide just as he was being interviewed for a book on Oswald, working on a manuscript for his own book, and about to be called to testify before the HSCA. Yep, sure are a lot of coincidences when it comes to this case.

Hi Mr. Caddy, Thanks for participating and being so willing to answer questions. In an effort to learn about these groups I'm trying to understand how the views expressed by the leaders of the John Birch Society differ from those of the Young Americans for Freedom? I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. Thanks. Greg

Hi Bill, What do you know about Ruth Paine's brother? Is he still alive and practicing in Yellow Springs?

Hi Jim, For those who believe that the assassination was carried out by elements of the CIA and Cuban exiles with support from the Mafia (the alliance that was formed through efforts to kill Castro and take back Cuba), the question then becomes: "Is that where it began and ended? Or was some other group sponsoring the assassination from the shadows?" Focusing the hostility and talents of this group on killing Kennedy after he began to re-think his Cuba policy would have been easy. IF the assassination was a coup and there was sponsorship from within the U.S. government, history has shown that the support of the subject country's military leaders is critical to the successful transfer of power that results from such a coup. That's where Max Taylor would be key. You are correct to call it speculation, as no hard evidence is present to support such a claim. Still, one wonders why the government, still to this day, goes to such great lengths to conceal the truth from the American public. And they don't stop at concealing the facts, they tried to sell the LHO/Lone Nut scenario for years. Then came Blakey's directing the HSCA investigation away from anything pointing to the government and trying to peddle the theory that the Mafia did it. And with no one really buying that either, you have the Waldrons of the world (along with some German movie) trying to sell Castro. Again, no one buys it. Yet these attempts at misdirection, attempts that point anywhere and everywhere EXCEPT the government, continue. Curious. The longer all this secrecy and misdirection goes on, the more I'm convinced that these efforts must be engaged in protecting a very large secret. The success of the cover-up betrays them- the level of power (past and present) wielded by the conspirators in perpetrating the cover-up does not exist in the Mafia or Castro. The book to which you refer is: Taylor, John M. General Maxwell Taylor: The Sword And The Pen. Doubleday, 1989, pgs. 289-91. Of course, this was written by Taylor's son. I would suspect that if Max had any knowledge of or involvement in the assasination, he would not have burdened his family with it. I've always enjoyed reading your intriguing posts Jim and I'm sure the answer is in them, but what do you believe to be the most compelling element that points to the possibility of Taylor's involvement (speculation, of course)?

Hi Tim, I thought your comment was funny, but of course it was because I knew that you were joking. Scary thing is that there are actually people running around in this country who would agree with imprisoning those with whose politics they do not agree. McCarthy's witch hunt is a good example of how fear and ignorance can pervert rational concerns about national security. Certainly very real external threats exist today, but "national security" is also the age old cry of the oppressor and the tyrant. Where many Americans find themselves today is facing these threats to their nation and way of life from external sources, but unable to trust a government (not limited to GB's administration, but certainly perpetuated by it) that has used the cry of "national security" to mask its own crimes for decades- Kennedy's assassination chief among them. Just my two cents...

Left/Right: -5.13 Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.82

Just some thoughts and speculation on this: An interesting line of thought Tim. Given Ruby's statement and post assassination demeanor, I see three possibilities: 1. Ruby had no idea that anything related to an assassination or a phony, staged "attempt" was going to take place. Maybe by "fireworks" he simply meant the motorcade, the crowds of people, etc. Maybe by "fireworks", he just meant the general hoopla surrounding JFK's motorcade. If this was the case, then I would speculate that his reaction to the assassination (visibly shaken) was probably genuine. The big problem I see with this one is his specific reference to Dealey Plaza (although the way it's bracketed in the quotation makes it difficult to know just how specific that reference to DP was). If by "fireworks" Ruby simply meant all of the hoopla surrounding the motorcade, the reference to DP seems too specific, as the motorcade traveled through downtown Dallas prior to arriving in DP. One could have viewed the "fireworks" anywhere along that route if Ruby's "fireworks" reference was really that general. I think here is where knowing some context, along the actual words that came out of Jack Ruby's mouth would be helpful. Is that info available? To whom was he speaking? Who is the original source of this info? I do have a copy of Larry's book, could you direct me to the appropriate page? 2. Ruby knew that JKF was going to be assassinated in Dealey Plaza. His remark about seeing the "fireworks" suggests this. Again context; do we know who he said this to and what his exact words were? His immediate reaction to the murder could still have been genuine when he saw that it had actually happened and happened in such graphic fashion. Or his reaction was feigned in order to help conceal the fact that he had foreknowledge of what had just happened. It seems unlikely to me that the plotters would have provided such information to Jack Ruby unless he was actually part of the plot to kill JFK. Having said that, I suppose that given Ruby's mob ties and their potential involvement (at an operational/support level, not a strategic one, IMO), he could have been assigned to perform in a support role. Julianne Mercer's testimony supports this, as does the allegation that Ruby visited HL Hunt’s office the day before the assassination (Hunt being some who allegedly had foreknowledge of the events in DP and an untampered with copy of the Z film on the evening of 11/22. I know the Z film allegation comes from various Hunt household employees, but I cannot recall who claims to have seen Ruby at Hunt’s office on 11/21.). The claim that Ruby was in the offices of the Dallas Morning News at the time of the assassination seem to shoot holes (no pun intended) in Mercer’s account. In Seth Kantor’s book on Ruby, he’s specific and names two or three people that had interaction with Ruby and verify that he was there. So, is Julianne Mercer mistaken? Does a timeline work where Mercer could have seen him In DP before he heads over to the DMN? IMO, if Ruby knew, then he was probably involved. Any thoughts on Ruby’s movements/whereabouts/timeline on 11/23? 3. Ruby knew of a phony, staged "attempt" on Kennedy's life that would take place in Dealey Plaza and this is reflected in the "fireworks" remark. His being "visibly shaken" after the shooting coming as the result of the realization that something had gone horribly wrong. This is certainly an intriguing idea. Are we suggesting/speculating that there could have been an actual fake attempt on JFK’s like in order to convince him that he needed to take his security more seriously? In order to gain public support for efforts against Castro? And that such a plan was somehow infiltrated by the real perps and “turned?” I don’t know if I buy that. Who in an official capacity would actually OK a staged assassination attempt against their President? That would have sounded pretty crazy at the time. And awful risky. What if the DPD or the SS actually shot someone during such a caper? This scenario is just a little too far out for me. Not saying it’s impossible, but who would have been stupid enough to authorize this? Or are we speculating that the fake assassination attempt was a story cooked up by the real plotters, perhaps purporting to be (or perhaps actually being for that matter) U.S. Government officials/agents in order to enlist the services of certain individuals (like Ruby?) who may have thought that they were doing a service to their country (until the real bullets started flying, that is)? I don’t know. It’s very intriguing, but when I try to piece it all together, I just don’t see the plotters needing to do it. They could hire professional killers/teams, there were plenty of powerful people/groups that wanted Kennedy dead and would have cooperated willingly (Cubans, Agency, Mafia, Suite 8F types, JBS, Hunt, Murchison, all the usual suspects), and it’s pretty obvious that there could be sufficient leverage applied to low level support personnel like a Jack Ruby that no fake assassination story would have been necessary. I guess I’m more inclined to believe scenario #1 or #2. In choosing between those two, I’d like to know more about Ruby’s “fireworks” statement (To whom was it said? Exact words? Etc.). How credible is the story about Ruby being at HL Hunt’s office on 11/21? Can Mercer’s account and the account of Ruby being at the DMN at the time of the shooting both be correct? Just rambling and speculating here. Interested in your thoughts or any corrections to the above.

Sounds great! Can't wait...

Hi Tim- Thanks for the info, I shall look it up. Although it does contain some errors (and perhaps a few "stretches") as you, Ron, and Larry have pointed out, it nonetheless seems pretty thorough (even to the point of including some "urban legend" items). I do find the chronological format helpful. Exploring the events in a linear fashion, seeing how certain events paralleled each other, is a new perspective for me. I think we touched on this issue before somewhere about how even though certain publications have problems, there may be some elements that are still valuable or enlightening. You don't want to be suckered by poor research or an agenda, but you also don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thanks to all for your responses and photos. Much appreciated.

What an Orwellian, BS statement. Try getting a copy of a single one of the commission staff interviews referenced in the 9/11 Commission Report footnotes. All those interviews, from the top brass down to the lowliest WTC janitor, are secret. Why? The Warren Commission and HSCA, for all their faults, published volumes of depositions, testimony, statements, and interview reports for the benefit of the public and researchers. The 9/11 Commission published a 567-page paperback, and what exactly was said to the commission in all interviews outside the public hearings is none of the public's business. And the 9/11 Commission has the gall to say that too much secrecy is bad for us? Ron <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi Ron- It doesn't seem to be getting any better over time either. Quite the opposite. The sad fact is that so many Americans just accept it, or worse, don't even know. That is, they don't even know what they don't know.

Not very surprising. Amount of data stamped ‘secret’ ballooned in 2004 Monday, September 05, 2005 Michael J . Sniffen ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — The government is withholding more information than ever from the public and expanding on ways to shroud data. Last year, federal agencies spent a record $148 creating and storing secrets for each $1 spent declassifying old secrets, a coalition of watchdog groups says. That’s a $28 jump from 2003, when $120 was spent to keep secrets for every $1 spent revealing them. In the late 1990s, the ratio was $15-$17 a year to $1, according to the secrecy report card released Saturday by the organization OpenTheGovernment.org. Overall, the government spent $7.2 billion in 2004 stamping 15.6 million documents "top secret," "secret" or "confidential." That almost doubled the 8.6 million new documents classified as recently as 2001. Last year, the number of pages declassified declined for the fourth straight year to 28.4 million. In 2001, 100 million pages were declassified; the record was 204 million pages in 1997. These figures cover 41 federal agencies, excluding the CIA, whose classification totals are secret. "These numbers show we are going in the wrong direction," said Rick Blum, author of the report and director of the coalition of consumer, environmental, labor, journalism and library groups. The report also noted the growing use of secret searches, court secrecy, closed meetings by government advisory groups and patents kept from public view. "The 9/11 Commission pointed out that too much secrecy can make us less safe from terrorists, and the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina shows the public needs to know what could happen in their communities and what the response plans are," said Blum. He said a new law outside the classification system shrouds "sensitive homeland security information" about infrastructure vulnerabilities and plans. "Public engagement in helping fight terrorism or addressing public-health risks is the biggest single advantage American society has," Blum said. The numbers do not solely reflect overclassification, said J. William Leonard, director of the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office, which monitors classification. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, "many agencies have gone to 24/7 operations, others have increased their intelligence product, and the military is fighting two wars. You can’t do that without producing more classified, and unclassified, information." Leonard said classification costs rise as agencies share secrets electronically. Yet, he said, "the great lesson of 9/11 is that improper hoarding of information can cost lives and harm national security." The report identified 50 new restrictions in laws, regulations or "mere assertions by government officials" that keep unclassified information from the public. Some are needed to protect privacy or trade secrets, the report said, but "such unchecked secrecy threatens accountability in government." These include labels like "limited official use," "critical infrastructure information" and "operations security protected." "The volume and impact of these pseudo-classifications is growing," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House national security subcommittee, and "inhibits the free flow of critical information." Leonard said, "No one individual in government can identify all the controlled, unclassified (markings), let alone describe their rules." Blum said he was encouraged by emergence in the last year of "a vocal chorus pushing back against secrecy." He cited a bipartisan bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act and efforts like the Sunshine in Government Initiative.

Below is an AP story that appeared in today's Columbus Dispatch. Those who suggest that many of the citizens who remained to ride out the storm did so by choice, and are therefore somehow less deserving of assistance, may find this piece interesting. Families too poor to flee, data show Hard-hit areas often were minority neighborhoods Monday, September 05, 2005 Frank Bass ASSOCIATED PRESS People living in the path of Hurricane Katrina’s worst devastation were twice as likely as most Americans to be poor and without a car — factors that might help explain why so many couldn’t evacuate as the storm approached. An Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census data shows that the residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average. "Let them know we’re not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It’s not our fault that we didn’t have cars to leave," Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans’ convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9. Money and transportation — two keys to surviving a natural disaster — were inaccessible for many who got left behind in the Gulf region’s worst squalor. "It’s a different equation for poor people," explained Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian. "There’s a certain ease of transportation and funds that the middle class in this country takes for granted." Catina Miller, a 32-year-old grocery deli worker who lived in the 9 th Ward, a poverty-stricken New Orleans enclave created in the 1870s by immigrants who were too poor to find higher ground, said she certainly would have liked to have left the city before the hurricane hit. "But where can you go if you don’t have a car?" she asked. "Not everyone can just pick up and take off." Jack Harrald, director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University in Washington, said emergency planners have known for years that the poverty and lack of transportation in New Orleans would be a significant problem, but the government spent more time and money preparing itself — rather than communities — for disaster. "All issues were known," said Harrald, whose institute had been scheduling a series of emergency planning community meetings through a partnership with the University of New Orleans. "But it was still a work in progress. . . . There’s enough blame to go around for everybody." The AP analysis showed: • Median household income in the most devastated neighborhood was $32,000, or $10,000 less than the national average. • Two in 10 households in the disaster area had no car, compared with 1 in 10 in nationwide. • Nearly 25 percent of those living in the hardest-hit areas were below the poverty line, about double the national average. About 4.5 percent in the disaster area received public assistance; nationwide, the number was about 3.5 percent. • About 60 percent of the 700,000 people in the three dozen neighborhoods were minority. Nationwide, about 1 in 3 Americans is a racial minority. • One in 200 American households doesn’t have adequate plumbing. One in 100 households in the most affected areas didn’t have decent plumbing, which, according to the census, includes running hot and cold water, a shower or bath and an indoor toilet. • Nationwide, about 7 percent of households with children are headed by a single mother. In the three dozen neighborhoods, 12 percent were single-mother households. "It’s the same people who don’t have the wherewithal to get out of Dodge," explained National Guard Lt. Col. Connie McNabb, who was running a medical unit at the besieged convention center in New Orleans. The disparities were even more glaring in large, urban areas. One of the worst-hit neighborhoods in the heart of New Orleans, for example, had a median household income of less than $7,500. "I didn’t have much in there," said Deanna Harris, a 57-year-old unemployed New Orleans resident, "but it was mine. "Now, this is what I’ve got," she said, patting a plastic bag. The victims of Mississippi have much the same story. In one Pascagoula neighborhood, where 30 percent of residents are minorities, more than 20 percent live in poverty. "There’s not a lot of interest in this issue, except when there’s something dramatic," said Carter, the South Carolina historian. "By and large, the poor are simply out of sight, out of mind."

Thanks James, Ron and Nic. I'm guessing he's referring to Altgens, but who knows. It seems, as pointed out by Ron (and Larry on another thread), that Mr. Wood's chronology is not a very good source of credible info. I appreciate the photos and the clarity.

Thanks James... you always come through.

Hi Larry- Thanks for sharing your research and providing some clarity on this one.

I just started reading James Fetzer's Murder in Dealey Plaza, which is a compilation of work from a number of authors, along with Fetzer's own analysis. One of the pieces is taken from Ira David Wood III's as yet unpublished JFK Assassination Chronology, which Fetzer says is over 400 pages long. I've found a few references in this piece that are new to me, and fascinating. Problem is, since this is an excerpt from another book, there are no sources cited for this chronology piece. Does anyone have a photo or any info on Jim Hicks? pg. 48: 12:32pm: "Jim Hicks, an eyewitness in Dealey Plaza, walks toward the knoll as the motorcade's press bus speeds by on its way to Parkland hospital. Photographs of Hicks, taken from the rear, show something in his back pocket resembling a radio with an antenna. (Hicks will later tell New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that he was the radio coordinator for the assassination team. Shortly after admitting this to Garrison, Hicks is beaten up, kidnapped, and taken to an Air Force mental institution in Oklahoma, where he will be incarcerated until 1988. A few days after his release, Hicks will be murdered in Oklahoma.) It will later be suggested that Jim Hicks is possibly the man photographed in the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico by the CIA. He is identified incorrectly as Oswald in those photographs." I had never heard this story before. Since no sources are cited in this excerpt, and since I've never seen a photo of Hicks, it's pretty tough to evaluate. Does this guy look anything like the guy in the bogus Mexico City "LHO" photos? It would be interesting to see a comparison between the bogus CIA "LHO" photos, Hicks, and Saul (Sague?). I would welcome any feedback on this idea of Jim Hicks alleged involvement.

I just started reading James Fetzer's Murder in Dealey Plaza, which is a compilation of work from a number of authors, along with Fetzer's own analysis. One of the pieces is taken from Ira David Wood III's as yet unpublished JFK Assassination Chronology, which Fetzer says is over 400 pages long. I've found a few references in this piece that are new to me, and fascinating. Problem is, since this is an excerpt from another book, there are no sources cited for this chronology piece. pg. 32: "12:29pm: In the motorcade's Vice Presidential limousine, Lyndon Johnson is later described as having his ear up against a small walkie-talkie held over the back seat, listening to the device which is turned low. (This description comes fron Sen. Ralph Yarborough who is riding with Johnson.) I've never heard this claim of Yarborough's before. Is anyone familiar with this walkie-talkie device? Maybe there's a perfectly good explanation for it? Hard to believe Yarborough would make it up out of the blue. Is there anything to substantiate, refute, or explain this? It's hard to believe he'd be so bold as to be listening to radio traffic between the teams (if he knew), but it does seem odd and quite coincidental. pg. 32: "12:29pm: Lyndon Johnson's Secret Service detail is already "on the alert." Photographic evidence reveals that the left side rear door to Johnson's Secret Service back-up car is already being held open- the agents inside seem poised for immediate action." Does anyone know what photo the author is referring to? It's hard to evaluate just how sinister (or not) this is without seeing the photo he refers to. Could be nothing. But he makes it sound like they appear to be in a highly agitated mode just prior to the shots. Again, I'm not supporting this idea at this point, but I would like to see the photo for myself. Thanks for any input.

That's trickle-down economics (TDE) for you. The problem is that very little ever trickles down. TDE is an economic system where wealthy individuals and corporations basically have carte blanche to do as they will, the argument being that if the rich get richer, it will benefit society as a whole thereby raising everyone's standard of living: "If the horse has better hay to eat, the birds will eat better" (it being understood that birds eat manure). If the rich do well, benefits will "trickle down" to the rest. Lower taxes on high income or capital gains will benefit most of the population, etc. It is, like most economic theory, brilliant and invaluable in explaining the forces that drive markets, build societies, and create wealth that propels the upward surge of living standards for everyone. Trouble is, like all economic models, it only works that way in theory. Economic models don't get along with real societies very well, as implementation of said models never quite works as well in the real world as it does in the vacuum of academia. One of the big problems with the thinking of supply-siders like the current occupant of our White House is that their TDE vision, as implemented via the fiscal and monetary policies of their administrations, fails to account for the unethical and immoral actions of so many (not all) at the top of the food chain. Does anyone seriously believe that they allow any more to trickle down than absolutely necessary? Much of the additional benefit TDE provides to a society is offset by the damage companies do to the environment (there are 3 gross examples of this just in the State of Ohio) and the political systems (which they have taken control of and corrupted). Providing value to society as a whole through TDE assumes a degree of ethical behavior by the decision makers who run things. I trust that I don't need to start going through the enormous list of unethical, immoral, and illegal activities of so many American business leaders. Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Wal-Mart, Adelphia and so on are simply the high profile ones. There are dozens more. And these are only the ones that we know about. I’m all for people attaining wealth and being successful. I don’t begrudge the rich for being rich and there are certainly wealthy people and companies that are wonderful, ethical members of our community- but they are certainly in the minority. I'm not anti-business and I believe in capitalism and free markets, but the fact is that greed wins out over ethics all the time. This requires a government and a media that keeps business honest. That sets appropriate boundaries and enforces them. That protects those who cannot protect themselves. That works for what is best for the nation as a whole- this includes the working class and the poor. Unfortunately, the U.S. Government and the Media no longer work for the People. They work for Corporate America. As John said, it's every man for himself. BTW, where is all that Christian morality that is so close to Mr. Bush’s heart and that was so helpful in getting him elected? Where are those values now? They are certainly not doing much to help those in New Orleans. But then again, the people that ended up stranded and in need probably didn’t vote for him.

This is a long piece written by Kermit L. Hall. Hall was the Dean of the College of Humanities, the Executive Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of History and Law at The Ohio State University (my alma mater), and was nominated by the OAH to serve on the Assassination Records Review Board. The article is dated and lengthy, but contains some interesting stuff (although his section on "The Virulence of the National Appetite for Bogus Revelation" is a misinformed, thinly-veiled shot at people like us). Hall is no longer at OSU and, coincidentally enough, was Army Intelligence in the 1960's. The Kennedy Assassination in the Age of Open Secrets Kermit L. Hall Copyright © Organization of American Historians See also Anna K. Nelson, "JFK Assassination Records Review Board Releases Top Secret Records", OAH Newsletter, 26 (February). Introduction No event in twentieth-century American history has generated such persistent notions of conspiracy as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More than 400 books have been published on the subject; a major newsletter provides a continuing flow of new theories about the assassination; and a national organization, the Coalition on Political Assassinations, meets annually to debate the murder. Oliver Stone elevated the idea of conspiracy to epic proportions in the film JFK. That movie claims, among other things, that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone; instead, he was part of a plot hatched by the Central Intelligence Agency in collaboration with organized crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and various other elements of the American government. The Kennedy assassination presents us with an intriguing question: How, in a democracy, can we promote the openness necessary to conduct our public affairs while maintaining a level of secrecy appropriate to conduct those affairs successfully? As historians we believe that gaining access to secret documents is vital; as a citizen we worry about the cost to our security of broken confidences. As Justice Robert Jackson once observed, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The Business of Secrecy Today, keeping information secret has become a huge industry in Washington. According to official estimates, in 1994 the government took 6.3 million classification actions, creating an estimated 19 million pages of information that only selected government officials can see. More than 32,000 government workers are employed full time to determine what should be secret, what level of secrecy the material should have, and whether the documents should be classified. There are hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents held by the government; indeed, the precise number has gone beyond the ability of the government to count. The problem of what to do with classified documents is strangling some government agencies. Take, for example, the Department of Energy. For more than 50 years the department followed a scheme of classification that might best be called 'classified at birth.' Any document generated was presumed secret until proved otherwise. The department itself and its civilian contractors, have literally lost track of what needs to be kept quiet. Even more fundamental, what is genuinely in need of protection--the design of weapons and such--is lost in an ocean of documents no longer worthy of classified status, if they ever were. The Clinton administration attempted in April 1995 to break this classification log jam. The President issued an executive order aimed at opening government's oldest secrets to public view in order to reduce the number of documents made secret and shorten the number of years they remain classified. How well the new system will work remains to be seen. Presidents come and presidents go, but the security bureaucracy lives on. Not only do the intelligence agencies grumble about having to make public that which is most precious to them, but they plausibly argue that such declassification is costly and time consuming, especially in a time of diminished resources. In the case of the assassination of President Kennedy and its subsequent investigations, these issues--accountability, openness, and the need to protect national security interests--have become particularly thorny. The Warren Commission The Warren Commission and its report stand at the center of almost all Kennedy conspiracy theories and the debate about what Americans should and should not know about their government's intelligence activities. One year after the assassination, seven sober-minded Americans headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren issued their report, which initially received strong support. Before it was released only 29 percent of the public, according to polling data, believed that Oswald alone was responsible; following its release a year later, in 1964, that number increased to 87 percent; two years later, in 1966, only 36 percent of Americans indicated they believed the report. By the time JFK opened in the movie houses of America, public confidence in the Commission's report had sunk even further, with about 70 percent of Americans concluding that Oswald did not act alone. The movie, therefore, tapped a deep well-spring of distrust of the investigation rather than, as is sometimes implied, fostering it. Events between 1964 and 1992 did much to undermine the trust in the Warren Commission Report. An assassination research community quickly appeared that raised troubling questions about the report and propagated theories of conspiracy. Books entitled White Wash, Contract on America, Conspiracy, and Rush to Judgment eroded the credibility of the Commission's findings as did the political killings of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Under such circumstances, the Warren Commission's report would have been subjected to reevaluation even if it had been done perfectly. And, of course, it was not. The Warren Commission, as Max Holland reminds us, labored at the height of the Cold War. As a result, the Commissioners adopted a strategy that depended on implicit public trust. The Cold War environment combined with other circumstances to handicap the Warren Commission and eventually erode that public trust in five significant ways. First, the Commission had access to an enormous amount of information that was not otherwise available to the American press and public. This information was secret, top secret, and beyond, much of it compartmentalized cryptologic and signals intelligence material dealing with the Soviet Union, Cuba, or other foreign governments, such as The Peoples Republic of China. Because of the enormous paranoia generated by the Cold War and the requirement to maintain tight secrecy around the sources and the methods used to collect this information, the Commission could not argue its case fully to the American people. Its inability to do so meant that when the research community asserted that the government itself had been implicated in the deed, the evidence that the Commission had used to discount such a possibility was available only to the government charged by some critics with having abetted the crime. The costs of secrecy was uncertainty, an uncertainty that turned to cynicism, much of it based on theories about the assassination that gained legitimacy simply because they could not be tested against the appropriate evidence. Second, while the Commission had access to high quality intelligence information, it did not receive everything. The CIA, the FBI, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy failed to reveal information that would have helped to identify a motive for a conspiracy. Three members of the Commission--Richard Russell, Allen Dulles, and John J. McCloy--were fully conversant with national security issues and the sources and methods used by the intelligence services. The success of the Commission depended, in part, on the ability of these three members to raise the right questions. They seem not to have done so. The Commission, for example, never discovered the existence of Operation Mongoose, a covert scheme concocted by JFK, his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro with the help of organized crime. When these plans reached the public several years later, critics of the Warren Commission had a field day. The Commission's conclusion that a foreign government lacked a sufficient motive to murder the president now crumbled. Indeed, the Commission looked silly and, even worse, culpable, since its critics could plausibly assert that its distinguished members should have guessed at such a possibility. Ironically, as recently disclosed documents indicate, the CIA deployed its network of contacts throughout the world to persuade the press and media that the Warren Commission--with which it had been less than forthcoming--had done its job well. Third, President Lyndon Johnson in appointing the Commission had one goal--to check rumors that the assassination was a Communist plot. Johnson, appropriately enough, feared that Kennedy's murder could precipitate World War Three. Oswald's time in the Soviet Union and his trip to Mexico City to visit the Soviet Embassy only weeks before the murder pointed to communist intrigue. Such concerns were amplified because Oswald had identified himself with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization openly supportive of Castro and sharply critical of Kennedy's Cuba policy. As a result, the Commission was under enormous pressure to produce an answer that discounted foreign influence. Fourth, as the science of forensic analysis has progressed over the past three decades, questions have inevitably arisen about the Warren Commission's conclusions involving the president's body, the weapon allegedly used by Oswald, the number and sequencing of the shots fired at the president, and the condition of the so-called magic bullet that passed through the President and Governor John Connoly with a minimum amount of damage. We know now that the autopsy performed on the president was problematic, both in technique and organization. Yet the Commission relied on it. On other matters the application of new forms of analysis has been generally supportive of the Commission's findings, although it now appears that the sequencing of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza was somewhat different from that described by the Commission. Yet even when the latest techniques corroborate the Commission's findings, the result has not been greater confidence in those findings, but a belief, instead, that the Commission got it wrong instead of almost getting it right. Fifth, the Warren Commission report-- all 888 pages of it -- was the work of lawyers, who not only dominated the Commission but also its staff, the true authors of the report. The final document reads like a brief for the idea that Oswald committed the crime rather than a dispassionate analysis of all of the possibilities involved in the murder, some of which the Commission itself had no knowledge. The report was a mound of facts that obscured the issue of Oswald's motivation and portrayed him as a sullen, dysfunctional, and troubled loner. In so doing, the Commission left open the opportunity for subsequent critics to complain that Oswald was a patsy who did not act alone. The report began to sink shortly after its release. Researchers used the massive details assembled by the Commission to challenge its assumptions and findings. The veil of secrecy thrown over the intelligence sources, however, prevented the commissioners and their defenders from rebutting their detractors. The Commission's Cold-War induced commitment to secrecy inextricably linked its seven members to the intelligence community, and when that community subsequently came under attack the Commission's reputation suffered as well. Other Investigations of the Assassination Between 1964 and 1979 the American intelligence services were subjected to unparalleled scrutiny, much of it fueled by the CIA's and FBI's ties to the Watergate debacle and revelations of domestic political surveillance by both agencies and the military intelligence services. There were four other federal investigations that in dealing with these issues also treated the Kennedy assassination. In the mid-1970s the Rockefeller Commission, the Pike Committee, and the Church Committee issued reports that touched on matters relating to the assassination and provided, most spectacularly, information about Operation Mongoose, plans by the CIA to destabilize the Cuban government, murder Castro and other leaders of hostile foreign nations, and rely on organized crime to assist with both. The most powerful of the post-Warren Commission inquiries was the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that in 1976 reopened the investigation seemingly closed a dozen years earlier. The committee, chaired by Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio, explored several controversial areas of Kennedy's assassination and those of Robert Kennedy and Reverend King. The HSCA suffered from its own limitations, but its conclusions, which now seem themselves under question, held that a conspiracy to kill the President could not be ruled out, a finding that challenged the Warren Commission directly. The HSCA exhausted its funds before it could complete its tasks, leaving behind mounds of records, including those dealing with organized crime, that it had subpoenaed but been unable to process. Today these materials are one of the chief objects of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The Assassination Records Review Board The findings of these investigations inspired Oliver Stone's 1991 movie. Without endorsing the movie's sensational conclusions, many members of Congress decided that Washington's refusal to release classified information about the assassination promoted an unhealthy level of distrust in government. As a result, Congress in 1992 passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which mandated the creation of the five-person Review Board. The act orders all federal agencies to assess whether they possess records relating to the assassination. All records deemed by an agency as not suitable for immediate release are subject to evaluation by the Board. All records identified as relating to the assassination must be opened by 2017, with the exception of records certified for continued postponement by the President. The act defines several categories of information for which disclosure may be postponed, including national security, intelligence gathering, personal privacy, and presidential security. To postpone the disclosure of material, however, the Board must be persuaded that there is "clear and convincing evidence" of some harm that outweighs the public's interest, since the act declares a "presumption of immediate disclosure" of all assassination records. Congress intended for the Board to oversee the opening to the public of a substantial amount of material -- perhaps in the millions of pages. To that end, Congress clothed the Board with broad subpena and other powers. The Board is without precedent in American history, with powers that reach far beyond, for example, the Freedom of Information Act. The Board's only task is to make the public record of one epic historical event as complete as possible. While the Board's mission is clear, in executing the law it confronts daily the powerful tensions generated by the competing claims of openness on the one hand and secrecy on the other. To choose is to lead, and the Board, in attempting to break new ground in the area of public disclosure, confronts some profound choices. Those choices have to be informed, moreover, by a shrewd assessment of the public's right to know, the public's need to have secrets vital to our national security protected, and the intelligence services' duty to safeguard those secrets and the sources and methods that produce them. The most difficult choices before the Board involve the disposition of parts or all of classified intelligence documents. Remember, if an agency of the federal government wants to open materials, it is not the Board's duty to stop it. Rather, the Board's most important task is to decide what should not be opened immediately, doing so in light of the act's powerful admonition that there be clear and convincing evidence in favor of postponement. In simplest terms, the Board has to decide whether materials, if opened, would reveal: First, the existence of an intelligence agent who currently requires protection; Second, an intelligence source or method currently being utilized or reasonably expected to be utilized, the disclosure of which would interfere with the conduct of intelligence activities; and Third, any other matter currently relating to the military defense, intelligence operations, or the conduct of foreign affairs, the disclosure of which would demonstrably impair national security. The act provides other grounds for postponement. These include exposure of an informant to a substantial risk of harm; exposure of a person to an unwarranted invasion of privacy; the possibility of compromising a relationship between a United States government agent and a confidential source; and the revelation of a security procedure utilized to protect the president. Progress Some fifteen months ago, the JFK Board released to the public the first of more than 2,300 documents that have subsequently been made available. The release was historic. For the first time, a group of five private citizens told the federal government that previously secret information had to be made public. Since then the Board has brought directly into public light a wide range of materials dealing with the assassination. The precedents set by the Board in its decisions to release these documents have resulted in federal agencies, such as the CIA and the FBI, releasing documents rather than seeking to postpone records in whole or in part. Under the terms of the JFK Act, moreover, literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documents have been placed in the Kennedy Assassination Collection at the National Archives. While the documents released so far do not include any "smoking guns," they do provide important new information about events leading to and following the assassination. For example, they include the following: --A top secret 1964 FBI document in which Director J. Edgar Hoover informed J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel to the Warren Commission, about Fidel Castro's efforts to duplicate the events in Dallas to learn if, in fact, it was possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have committed the crime. Castro concluded that it was not. As interesting, the document makes clear that the U.S. government had sources sufficiently well placed in Cuba to make this assessment in the first place. --Another 1964 FBI document that details the analysis done by the KGB's American operations of the assassination. The document reveals the extent to which the American intelligence services had penetrated the KGB in this country and underscores the fact that the Russian intelligence service believed that President Lyndon Johnson had likely masterminded the operation. --A cable sent from the Director of the CIA on November 23, 1963, only hours after the murder of the President, seeking information about a surveillance operation conducted in Mexico City, most notably whether tapes and transcripts of Oswald speaking with Soviet and Cuban officials existed. The Board has also released a related document that raises anew the debate about whether tapes of those conversations were sent to Washington in the wake of the assassination. --The Lopez Report, compiled in 1978 by Edwin Lopez, a senior staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has been released with few redactions. It contains extensive information about intelligence operations in Mexico at the time of the assassination and answers several outstanding questions about Oswald's actions while he was there. The Board has essentially completed review of the CIA's Oswald 201 File. These records constitute the core collection of CIA records that previously have been identified as assassination records. The Board has conducted a word-by-word review of each of the postponements to documents in this collection requested by the CIA and in only a handful of instances did the Board decide to sustain them. The Board has also conducted a similar review of FBI records. There, however, the process has been slower and the propensity of the Bureau to appeal Board decisions far greater. Until mid-December, 1996, the FBI had brought more than 43 pending appeals before President Clinton. However, shortly before the Bureau announced the spying activities of Earl Edwin Pitts, it withdrew most of these appeals and indicated that it was reevaluating the others. The Bureau originally claimed that the release of these documents would have undermined its ability to recruit and maintain a network of informants and operatives, that their methods of operation would be compromised, and that, in any case, the public's interest in these materials as assassination records was offset by the public's need to be confident that the FBI could keep its secrets. The Board is now turning its attention to several other areas. It has begun the daunting task of unraveling all of the records left by the HSCA. Among the most important records in the HSCA collection are those relating to the role of organized crime in the assassination, a matter that has shadowed the Kennedy assassination for the past quarter century. Moreover, the HSCA staff gathered a larger amount of material than it was able to analyze completely. All of these materials have value not just in helping us understand the assassination, but also the investigations that followed it. The Board has also begun review of the CIA's so-called Sequestered (or Segregated) Collection. This collection comprises approximately 300,000 pages of records that the HSCA requested access to during its investigation. It is known as the "sequestered collection" because, at the end of the HSCA's investigation, its General Counsel, G. Robert Blakey, negotiated a deal with the CIA which required it to maintain the records that the HSCA had requested in a special collection for thirty years. The Sequestered Collection clearly has value for understanding the assassination. It contains, for example, materials relating to organized crime figures, Cuban exile activities, the investigation conducted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, and a range of other issues that stirred the HSCA's investigatory fancy. Of the last of these, some have relevance to the assassination, others clearly do not. Yet they are all related to the assassination, and therefore assassination records, because the HSCA, an entity of the federal government investigating the Kennedy murder, requested them. Doing the word-by-word analysis required of these documents will consume a considerable amount of the Board's time, energy, and resources. These materials also raise, perhaps even more than was the case with the Oswald 201 file, issues of great sensitivity to the CIA in particular and the intelligence community in general. Sifting quickly through the wheat and chaff of these records is essential if the Board is to complete the review of them by the time its commission expires in October, 1997. As important, the Board hopes to have time to work with the CIA and the FBI to explore other records relating to counterintelligence and related activities directed at various foreign and domestic groups not included in the main collections. So, far, for example, the Board has encountered few records involving James Angleton, one of the CIA's legendary figures. The Board, however, concluded early on that it had to address the core collections, since they were of high interest to researchers. Nonetheless, the recent discovery of a large collection of materials dealing with the assassination assembled by Russell Holmes, who worked as a file manager for the CIA, prompts some members of the Board to believe that there are still other documents collections in the Agency that deserve close scrutiny. The JFK Act also directs the Board to attempt to secure records relating to the assassination that are held by foreign governments. In November, 1996, a Board delegation visited KGB headquarters in Minsk, Belarus, in an effort to identify and then secure copies of documents relating to Oswald's time there. The author Norman Mailer relied on KGB surveillance materials to compile Oswald's Tale, an analysis of the character and behavior of Lee Harvey Oswald. The records Mailer used, however, have not been made available to the public and their authenticity as a result will remain in doubt until they are subjected to scrutiny. The KGB showed the Board six volumes of materials that it had gathered on Oswald and indicated its interest in negotiating an agreement to make copies of them available. In Moscow, the Board secured a promise of cooperation from the director of the archives of the Foreign Ministry to explore their records holdings. The Ministry also gave the Board five documents as examples of the kinds of materials it holds. Finally, the Board has initiated contacts with representatives of the Cuban government in the hope of winning its cooperation. The Board also remains locked in a legal battle with New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr. Following a public hearing in New Orleans in the summer of 1995, the Board received a large box of materials containing the grand jury proceedings in the case brought by Jim Garrison against Clay Shaw. That proceeding, of course, forms the background for Oliver Stone's movie. The Board has yet to examine and determine the fate of these documents as well as others from Connick's office which are now being reviewed by the federal courts in Louisiana. The Board, however, has gained access to an extensive set of materials from the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission that will soon be added to the JFK Collection. Finally, the Board has secured new photographic evidence and medical testimony related to the assassination. With the cooperation of CBS News, it has made public previously unseen out-takes from a television cameraman the day of the assassination. In addition, the Board also released film taken by Dave Powers, a trusted Kennedy aide, made during the trip to Dallas. Powers' camera ran out of film only minutes before the shooting in Dealey Plaza. The Board has taken a number of depositions under oath from various medical personnel, including some of the attending physicians, involved in the autopsy conducted on President Kennedy. Those depositions will be open to researchers in the next several months once processing is completed. The Virulence of the National Appetite for Bogus Revelation H. L. Mencken once ridiculed "the virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation." Little has changed since Mencken's time. The Review Board is a unique and, in many ways, unprecedented institution in American history to deal precisely with the problem Mencken identified. Never before has a group of private citizens been given the opportunity to bring some order to the record of one great historical event. The Board, we should remember, is not charged with answering the question of who murdered President Kennedy. It is not running an investigation; it is, instead, seeking to disclose documents in an age of open secrets, an age in which we have come to embrace the idea that openness is to be preferred and that accountability is the touchstone for public confidence in government. Full disclosure is more desirable than partial, and the more we know about what government has done, is doing, and plans to do, the more secure we will be in our liberties. Yet the intelligence community charged with making the case for secrecy often does so as a matter of routine rooted in tradition. Secrecy in a democracy deserves better, since it cannot be an end in itself and certainly cannot be justified simply to obscure the intelligence services that generate much of it in the first place. Such an approach is ultimately self-defeating, both for our clandestine services and for the government they serve. What Americans require is a greater sense that they can trust their government to protect the secrets that are genuinely important. The government's persistent inability to distinguish between what is vital and what is peripheral lies at the heart of the debate about openness and secrecy in government, the historical verdict on the Kennedy assassination, and the legitimacy of our intelligence services in an admittedly dangerous world. The Board is essential because it is able to make the case for openness, and at the same time accept the importance of secrets in a democracy and, in so doing, be able to protect what is truly valuable and, thereby, in the public interest.

This is a long piece written by Kermit L. Hall. Hall was the Dean of the College of Humanities, the Executive Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of History and Law at The Ohio State University (my alma mater), and was nominated by the OAH to serve on the Assassination Records Review Board. The article is dated and lengthy, but contains some interesting stuff (although his section on "The Virulence of the National Appetite for Bogus Revelation" is a misinformed, thinly-veiled shot at people like us). Hall is no longer at OSU and, coincidentally enough, was Army Intelligence in the 1960's. The Kennedy Assassination in the Age of Open Secrets Kermit L. Hall Copyright © Organization of American Historians See also Anna K. Nelson, "JFK Assassination Records Review Board Releases Top Secret Records", OAH Newsletter, 26 (February). Introduction No event in twentieth-century American history has generated such persistent notions of conspiracy as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More than 400 books have been published on the subject; a major newsletter provides a continuing flow of new theories about the assassination; and a national organization, the Coalition on Political Assassinations, meets annually to debate the murder. Oliver Stone elevated the idea of conspiracy to epic proportions in the film JFK. That movie claims, among other things, that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone; instead, he was part of a plot hatched by the Central Intelligence Agency in collaboration with organized crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and various other elements of the American government. The Kennedy assassination presents us with an intriguing question: How, in a democracy, can we promote the openness necessary to conduct our public affairs while maintaining a level of secrecy appropriate to conduct those affairs successfully? As historians we believe that gaining access to secret documents is vital; as a citizen we worry about the cost to our security of broken confidences. As Justice Robert Jackson once observed, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The Business of Secrecy Today, keeping information secret has become a huge industry in Washington. According to official estimates, in 1994 the government took 6.3 million classification actions, creating an estimated 19 million pages of information that only selected government officials can see. More than 32,000 government workers are employed full time to determine what should be secret, what level of secrecy the material should have, and whether the documents should be classified. There are hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents held by the government; indeed, the precise number has gone beyond the ability of the government to count. The problem of what to do with classified documents is strangling some government agencies. Take, for example, the Department of Energy. For more than 50 years the department followed a scheme of classification that might best be called 'classified at birth.' Any document generated was presumed secret until proved otherwise. The department itself and its civilian contractors, have literally lost track of what needs to be kept quiet. Even more fundamental, what is genuinely in need of protection--the design of weapons and such--is lost in an ocean of documents no longer worthy of classified status, if they ever were. The Clinton administration attempted in April 1995 to break this classification log jam. The President issued an executive order aimed at opening government's oldest secrets to public view in order to reduce the number of documents made secret and shorten the number of years they remain classified. How well the new system will work remains to be seen. Presidents come and presidents go, but the security bureaucracy lives on. Not only do the intelligence agencies grumble about having to make public that which is most precious to them, but they plausibly argue that such declassification is costly and time consuming, especially in a time of diminished resources. In the case of the assassination of President Kennedy and its subsequent investigations, these issues--accountability, openness, and the need to protect national security interests--have become particularly thorny. The Warren Commission The Warren Commission and its report stand at the center of almost all Kennedy conspiracy theories and the debate about what Americans should and should not know about their government's intelligence activities. One year after the assassination, seven sober-minded Americans headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren issued their report, which initially received strong support. Before it was released only 29 percent of the public, according to polling data, believed that Oswald alone was responsible; following its release a year later, in 1964, that number increased to 87 percent; two years later, in 1966, only 36 percent of Americans indicated they believed the report. By the time JFK opened in the movie houses of America, public confidence in the Commission's report had sunk even further, with about 70 percent of Americans concluding that Oswald did not act alone. The movie, therefore, tapped a deep well-spring of distrust of the investigation rather than, as is sometimes implied, fostering it. Events between 1964 and 1992 did much to undermine the trust in the Warren Commission Report. An assassination research community quickly appeared that raised troubling questions about the report and propagated theories of conspiracy. Books entitled White Wash, Contract on America, Conspiracy, and Rush to Judgment eroded the credibility of the Commission's findings as did the political killings of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Under such circumstances, the Warren Commission's report would have been subjected to reevaluation even if it had been done perfectly. And, of course, it was not. The Warren Commission, as Max Holland reminds us, labored at the height of the Cold War. As a result, the Commissioners adopted a strategy that depended on implicit public trust. The Cold War environment combined with other circumstances to handicap the Warren Commission and eventually erode that public trust in five significant ways. First, the Commission had access to an enormous amount of information that was not otherwise available to the American press and public. This information was secret, top secret, and beyond, much of it compartmentalized cryptologic and signals intelligence material dealing with the Soviet Union, Cuba, or other foreign governments, such as The Peoples Republic of China. Because of the enormous paranoia generated by the Cold War and the requirement to maintain tight secrecy around the sources and the methods used to collect this information, the Commission could not argue its case fully to the American people. Its inability to do so meant that when the research community asserted that the government itself had been implicated in the deed, the evidence that the Commission had used to discount such a possibility was available only to the government charged by some critics with having abetted the crime. The costs of secrecy was uncertainty, an uncertainty that turned to cynicism, much of it based on theories about the assassination that gained legitimacy simply because they could not be tested against the appropriate evidence. Second, while the Commission had access to high quality intelligence information, it did not receive everything. The CIA, the FBI, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy failed to reveal information that would have helped to identify a motive for a conspiracy. Three members of the Commission--Richard Russell, Allen Dulles, and John J. McCloy--were fully conversant with national security issues and the sources and methods used by the intelligence services. The success of the Commission depended, in part, on the ability of these three members to raise the right questions. They seem not to have done so. The Commission, for example, never discovered the existence of Operation Mongoose, a covert scheme concocted by JFK, his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro with the help of organized crime. When these plans reached the public several years later, critics of the Warren Commission had a field day. The Commission's conclusion that a foreign government lacked a sufficient motive to murder the president now crumbled. Indeed, the Commission looked silly and, even worse, culpable, since its critics could plausibly assert that its distinguished members should have guessed at such a possibility. Ironically, as recently disclosed documents indicate, the CIA deployed its network of contacts throughout the world to persuade the press and media that the Warren Commission--with which it had been less than forthcoming--had done its job well. Third, President Lyndon Johnson in appointing the Commission had one goal--to check rumors that the assassination was a Communist plot. Johnson, appropriately enough, feared that Kennedy's murder could precipitate World War Three. Oswald's time in the Soviet Union and his trip to Mexico City to visit the Soviet Embassy only weeks before the murder pointed to communist intrigue. Such concerns were amplified because Oswald had identified himself with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization openly supportive of Castro and sharply critical of Kennedy's Cuba policy. As a result, the Commission was under enormous pressure to produce an answer that discounted foreign influence. Fourth, as the science of forensic analysis has progressed over the past three decades, questions have inevitably arisen about the Warren Commission's conclusions involving the president's body, the weapon allegedly used by Oswald, the number and sequencing of the shots fired at the president, and the condition of the so-called magic bullet that passed through the President and Governor John Connoly with a minimum amount of damage. We know now that the autopsy performed on the president was problematic, both in technique and organization. Yet the Commission relied on it. On other matters the application of new forms of analysis has been generally supportive of the Commission's findings, although it now appears that the sequencing of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza was somewhat different from that described by the Commission. Yet even when the latest techniques corroborate the Commission's findings, the result has not been greater confidence in those findings, but a belief, instead, that the Commission got it wrong instead of almost getting it right. Fifth, the Warren Commission report-- all 888 pages of it -- was the work of lawyers, who not only dominated the Commission but also its staff, the true authors of the report. The final document reads like a brief for the idea that Oswald committed the crime rather than a dispassionate analysis of all of the possibilities involved in the murder, some of which the Commission itself had no knowledge. The report was a mound of facts that obscured the issue of Oswald's motivation and portrayed him as a sullen, dysfunctional, and troubled loner. In so doing, the Commission left open the opportunity for subsequent critics to complain that Oswald was a patsy who did not act alone. The report began to sink shortly after its release. Researchers used the massive details assembled by the Commission to challenge its assumptions and findings. The veil of secrecy thrown over the intelligence sources, however, prevented the commissioners and their defenders from rebutting their detractors. The Commission's Cold-War induced commitment to secrecy inextricably linked its seven members to the intelligence community, and when that community subsequently came under attack the Commission's reputation suffered as well. Other Investigations of the Assassination Between 1964 and 1979 the American intelligence services were subjected to unparalleled scrutiny, much of it fueled by the CIA's and FBI's ties to the Watergate debacle and revelations of domestic political surveillance by both agencies and the military intelligence services. There were four other federal investigations that in dealing with these issues also treated the Kennedy assassination. In the mid-1970s the Rockefeller Commission, the Pike Committee, and the Church Committee issued reports that touched on matters relating to the assassination and provided, most spectacularly, information about Operation Mongoose, plans by the CIA to destabilize the Cuban government, murder Castro and other leaders of hostile foreign nations, and rely on organized crime to assist with both. The most powerful of the post-Warren Commission inquiries was the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that in 1976 reopened the investigation seemingly closed a dozen years earlier. The committee, chaired by Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio, explored several controversial areas of Kennedy's assassination and those of Robert Kennedy and Reverend King. The HSCA suffered from its own limitations, but its conclusions, which now seem themselves under question, held that a conspiracy to kill the President could not be ruled out, a finding that challenged the Warren Commission directly. The HSCA exhausted its funds before it could complete its tasks, leaving behind mounds of records, including those dealing with organized crime, that it had subpoenaed but been unable to process. Today these materials are one of the chief objects of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. The Assassination Records Review Board The findings of these investigations inspired Oliver Stone's 1991 movie. Without endorsing the movie's sensational conclusions, many members of Congress decided that Washington's refusal to release classified information about the assassination promoted an unhealthy level of distrust in government. As a result, Congress in 1992 passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which mandated the creation of the five-person Review Board. The act orders all federal agencies to assess whether they possess records relating to the assassination. All records deemed by an agency as not suitable for immediate release are subject to evaluation by the Board. All records identified as relating to the assassination must be opened by 2017, with the exception of records certified for continued postponement by the President. The act defines several categories of information for which disclosure may be postponed, including national security, intelligence gathering, personal privacy, and presidential security. To postpone the disclosure of material, however, the Board must be persuaded that there is "clear and convincing evidence" of some harm that outweighs the public's interest, since the act declares a "presumption of immediate disclosure" of all assassination records. Congress intended for the Board to oversee the opening to the public of a substantial amount of material -- perhaps in the millions of pages. To that end, Congress clothed the Board with broad subpena and other powers. The Board is without precedent in American history, with powers that reach far beyond, for example, the Freedom of Information Act. The Board's only task is to make the public record of one epic historical event as complete as possible. While the Board's mission is clear, in executing the law it confronts daily the powerful tensions generated by the competing claims of openness on the one hand and secrecy on the other. To choose is to lead, and the Board, in attempting to break new ground in the area of public disclosure, confronts some profound choices. Those choices have to be informed, moreover, by a shrewd assessment of the public's right to know, the public's need to have secrets vital to our national security protected, and the intelligence services' duty to safeguard those secrets and the sources and methods that produce them. The most difficult choices before the Board involve the disposition of parts or all of classified intelligence documents. Remember, if an agency of the federal government wants to open materials, it is not the Board's duty to stop it. Rather, the Board's most important task is to decide what should not be opened immediately, doing so in light of the act's powerful admonition that there be clear and convincing evidence in favor of postponement. In simplest terms, the Board has to decide whether materials, if opened, would reveal: First, the existence of an intelligence agent who currently requires protection; Second, an intelligence source or method currently being utilized or reasonably expected to be utilized, the disclosure of which would interfere with the conduct of intelligence activities; and Third, any other matter currently relating to the military defense, intelligence operations, or the conduct of foreign affairs, the disclosure of which would demonstrably impair national security. The act provides other grounds for postponement. These include exposure of an informant to a substantial risk of harm; exposure of a person to an unwarranted invasion of privacy; the possibility of compromising a relationship between a United States government agent and a confidential source; and the revelation of a security procedure utilized to protect the president. Progress Some fifteen months ago, the JFK Board released to the public the first of more than 2,300 documents that have subsequently been made available. The release was historic. For the first time, a group of five private citizens told the federal government that previously secret information had to be made public. Since then the Board has brought directly into public light a wide range of materials dealing with the assassination. The precedents set by the Board in its decisions to release these documents have resulted in federal agencies, such as the CIA and the FBI, releasing documents rather than seeking to postpone records in whole or in part. Under the terms of the JFK Act, moreover, literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documents have been placed in the Kennedy Assassination Collection at the National Archives. While the documents released so far do not include any "smoking guns," they do provide important new information about events leading to and following the assassination. For example, they include the following: --A top secret 1964 FBI document in which Director J. Edgar Hoover informed J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel to the Warren Commission, about Fidel Castro's efforts to duplicate the events in Dallas to learn if, in fact, it was possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have committed the crime. Castro concluded that it was not. As interesting, the document makes clear that the U.S. government had sources sufficiently well placed in Cuba to make this assessment in the first place. --Another 1964 FBI document that details the analysis done by the KGB's American operations of the assassination. The document reveals the extent to which the American intelligence services had penetrated the KGB in this country and underscores the fact that the Russian intelligence service believed that President Lyndon Johnson had likely masterminded the operation. --A cable sent from the Director of the CIA on November 23, 1963, only hours after the murder of the President, seeking information about a surveillance operation conducted in Mexico City, most notably whether tapes and transcripts of Oswald speaking with Soviet and Cuban officials existed. The Board has also released a related document that raises anew the debate about whether tapes of those conversations were sent to Washington in the wake of the assassination. --The Lopez Report, compiled in 1978 by Edwin Lopez, a senior staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has been released with few redactions. It contains extensive information about intelligence operations in Mexico at the time of the assassination and answers several outstanding questions about Oswald's actions while he was there. The Board has essentially completed review of the CIA's Oswald 201 File. These records constitute the core collection of CIA records that previously have been identified as assassination records. The Board has conducted a word-by-word review of each of the postponements to documents in this collection requested by the CIA and in only a handful of instances did the Board decide to sustain them. The Board has also conducted a similar review of FBI records. There, however, the process has been slower and the propensity of the Bureau to appeal Board decisions far greater. Until mid-December, 1996, the FBI had brought more than 43 pending appeals before President Clinton. However, shortly before the Bureau announced the spying activities of Earl Edwin Pitts, it withdrew most of these appeals and indicated that it was reevaluating the others. The Bureau originally claimed that the release of these documents would have undermined its ability to recruit and maintain a network of informants and operatives, that their methods of operation would be compromised, and that, in any case, the public's interest in these materials as assassination records was offset by the public's need to be confident that the FBI could keep its secrets. The Board is now turning its attention to several other areas. It has begun the daunting task of unraveling all of the records left by the HSCA. Among the most important records in the HSCA collection are those relating to the role of organized crime in the assassination, a matter that has shadowed the Kennedy assassination for the past quarter century. Moreover, the HSCA staff gathered a larger amount of material than it was able to analyze completely. All of these materials have value not just in helping us understand the assassination, but also the investigations that followed it. The Board has also begun review of the CIA's so-called Sequestered (or Segregated) Collection. This collection comprises approximately 300,000 pages of records that the HSCA requested access to during its investigation. It is known as the "sequestered collection" because, at the end of the HSCA's investigation, its General Counsel, G. Robert Blakey, negotiated a deal with the CIA which required it to maintain the records that the HSCA had requested in a special collection for thirty years. The Sequestered Collection clearly has value for understanding the assassination. It contains, for example, materials relating to organized crime figures, Cuban exile activities, the investigation conducted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, and a range of other issues that stirred the HSCA's investigatory fancy. Of the last of these, some have relevance to the assassination, others clearly do not. Yet they are all related to the assassination, and therefore assassination records, because the HSCA, an entity of the federal government investigating the Kennedy murder, requested them. Doing the word-by-word analysis required of these documents will consume a considerable amount of the Board's time, energy, and resources. These materials also raise, perhaps even more than was the case with the Oswald 201 file, issues of great sensitivity to the CIA in particular and the intelligence community in general. Sifting quickly through the wheat and chaff of these records is essential if the Board is to complete the review of them by the time its commission expires in October, 1997. As important, the Board hopes to have time to work with the CIA and the FBI to explore other records relating to counterintelligence and related activities directed at various foreign and domestic groups not included in the main collections. So, far, for example, the Board has encountered few records involving James Angleton, one of the CIA's legendary figures. The Board, however, concluded early on that it had to address the core collections, since they were of high interest to researchers. Nonetheless, the recent discovery of a large collection of materials dealing with the assassination assembled by Russell Holmes, who worked as a file manager for the CIA, prompts some members of the Board to believe that there are still other documents collections in the Agency that deserve close scrutiny. The JFK Act also directs the Board to attempt to secure records relating to the assassination that are held by foreign governments. In November, 1996, a Board delegation visited KGB headquarters in Minsk, Belarus, in an effort to identify and then secure copies of documents relating to Oswald's time there. The author Norman Mailer relied on KGB surveillance materials to compile Oswald's Tale, an analysis of the character and behavior of Lee Harvey Oswald. The records Mailer used, however, have not been made available to the public and their authenticity as a result will remain in doubt until they are subjected to scrutiny. The KGB showed the Board six volumes of materials that it had gathered on Oswald and indicated its interest in negotiating an agreement to make copies of them available. In Moscow, the Board secured a promise of cooperation from the director of the archives of the Foreign Ministry to explore their records holdings. The Ministry also gave the Board five documents as examples of the kinds of materials it holds. Finally, the Board has initiated contacts with representatives of the Cuban government in the hope of winning its cooperation. The Board also remains locked in a legal battle with New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr. Following a public hearing in New Orleans in the summer of 1995, the Board received a large box of materials containing the grand jury proceedings in the case brought by Jim Garrison against Clay Shaw. That proceeding, of course, forms the background for Oliver Stone's movie. The Board has yet to examine and determine the fate of these documents as well as others from Connick's office which are now being reviewed by the federal courts in Louisiana. The Board, however, has gained access to an extensive set of materials from the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission that will soon be added to the JFK Collection. Finally, the Board has secured new photographic evidence and medical testimony related to the assassination. With the cooperation of CBS News, it has made public previously unseen out-takes from a television cameraman the day of the assassination. In addition, the Board also released film taken by Dave Powers, a trusted Kennedy aide, made during the trip to Dallas. Powers' camera ran out of film only minutes before the shooting in Dealey Plaza. The Board has taken a number of depositions under oath from various medical personnel, including some of the attending physicians, involved in the autopsy conducted on President Kennedy. Those depositions will be open to researchers in the next several months once processing is completed. The Virulence of the National Appetite for Bogus Revelation H. L. Mencken once ridiculed "the virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation." Little has changed since Mencken's time. The Review Board is a unique and, in many ways, unprecedented institution in American history to deal precisely with the problem Mencken identified. Never before has a group of private citizens been given the opportunity to bring some order to the record of one great historical event. The Board, we should remember, is not charged with answering the question of who murdered President Kennedy. It is not running an investigation; it is, instead, seeking to disclose documents in an age of open secrets, an age in which we have come to embrace the idea that openness is to be preferred and that accountability is the touchstone for public confidence in government. Full disclosure is more desirable than partial, and the more we know about what government has done, is doing, and plans to do, the more secure we will be in our liberties. Yet the intelligence community charged with making the case for secrecy often does so as a matter of routine rooted in tradition. Secrecy in a democracy deserves better, since it cannot be an end in itself and certainly cannot be justified simply to obscure the intelligence services that generate much of it in the first place. Such an approach is ultimately self-defeating, both for our clandestine services and for the government they serve. What Americans require is a greater sense that they can trust their government to protect the secrets that are genuinely important. The government's persistent inability to distinguish between what is vital and what is peripheral lies at the heart of the debate about openness and secrecy in government, the historical verdict on the Kennedy assassination, and the legitimacy of our intelligence services in an admittedly dangerous world. The Board is essential because it is able to make the case for openness, and at the same time accept the importance of secrets in a democracy and, in so doing, be able to protect what is truly valuable and, thereby, in the public interest.

I am amazed at the lack of federal assistance. Maybe I'm being naive, or maybe I don't fully understand the problem, but it seems like a leader (GWB or anyone else) would mobilze the military to assist our citizens. There is no entity on earth more equipped, more capable of going in there with boats, amphibious vehicles, troops, trucks, helicopters, bulldozers, engineers, heavy equipment, etc. in massive numbers and getting things done. I mean, the military has NO trouble setting up shop on the other side of the globe and conducting massive operations, but we can't do anything significant to help our own citizens? What a sign of the times. It's interesting that, although I put most of the responsibility for this on GWB, I don't hear any democrats speaking out either. Sad, strange, disturbing, and embarrassing. For all the politics and nastiness that goes on between the right and the left here, you'd think that something like this would appeal to leaders on both sides of the aisle on a human level. We seem to have plenty of "leaders" when its time to raise money, campaign, or attack the other party. If there was ever a time someone needed to step up and lead, it's now. But all we get are boxes of food, fly overs, and bold statements. And silence. Tragic and embarrassing. Hopefully, that changes soon.

In case anyone is interested, it looks like this program will deal with Hale Boggs' plane crash. The History Channel Saturday, September 3, 2005 8pm-9pm -- Alaska's Bermuda Triangle There's something about Alaska that the tourist bureau doesn't want you to know. In Alaska, people, planes, and ships disappear. Suddenly, inexplicably, and permanently! Natives say that shape-shifting spirits kidnap lost travelers. Scientists tell of giant crevasses that swallow the unwary. Others tell of conspiracies to wreck aircraft. We take a detailed look at the 1972 incident that confounded the US military, when an airplane carrying two Congressmen vanished between Anchorage and Juneau.

Hi Jim- It seems to me that JFK brought Taylor in because he did not trust his "Generals" and he needed someone he did trust to advise him in military and Cold War matters. Do you think Kennedy eventually came to distrust Taylor as well, lumping him in with the rest of his military advisors? Or do you see Taylor as separate from the rest of Kennedy's JCS and military brass? Did Max drink the Kool-Aid that guys like Curt LeMay were serving? Or did Taylor remain an independent thinker and lone wolf?

I located a copy of the following July 1961 Time article on Max Taylor: http://www.ndu.edu/library/taylor/mdt-0119.pdf It presents Taylor as the consummate soldier. A professional with a strong sense of duty and strong convictions about America’s military and how it needed to be positioned to deal with the communist threat. Both John and Bobby seemed to have the utmost respect for Taylor. They trusted his judgment, and moreover they him. Taylor was essentially brought into the mix because JFK had lost confidence in the advice of his Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and other military and intelligence advisors in the post Bay of Pigs (BOP) world. My knowledge of Max Taylor is not thorough by any stretch, but I have done a little reading about him. Viewing the attached article, I sensed a duality about the man that is interesting (I’ll get to that below), especially in the context of this case. Taylor certainly was in the middle of it all- I mean right smack in the belly of the beast- sandwiched between the President Kennedy, Bobby, Allen Dulles and the CIA, Admiral Arleigh Burke and the Navy, Vietnam, the JCS, McNamara, and Cuba. The article says of Taylor: “Fast emerging as the strong man of the White House staff, Taylor is in fact President Kennedy’s chief of staff in the basic task of plotting U.S. Cold War strategy.” It would appear that Taylor, outside of Bobby, was perhaps JFK’s most trusted advisor. The military men, the JCS, didn’t like Max one bit (it’s in the article), and they certainly must have resented the fact that Kennedy brought him in. On the one hand, we have Max Taylor, the consummate professional soldier. Trusted by the Kennedy brothers. A man of principal and duty. Disciplined, with respect for his superiors and the chain of command. A career soldier who would follow orders, regardless of his personal views. But on the other hand, Max Taylor had very strong views on how the U.S. should fight communism and how the military should be positioned to do it. He quit the military in frustration and wrote The Uncertain Trumpet. I cannot see how a man with such clear convictions about the military and communism could have tolerated Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (see the article James posted above). So, given this duality (at least, that’s the way I perceive it), who was Max Taylor from 1961 – 1963? Was he: Max: The Good Guy Max Taylor was introspective and a loner. But above all else he was a soldier. He was loyal. He was JFK’s trusted advisor brought in to sift through the crap Kennedy felt that his JCS and Intelligence were feeding him. Taylor was not part of the military or intelligence circle of trust. Certainly if the military brass or any high level players were involved, or even had knowledge of the plot, Taylor would have been kept out of the loop. Or… Max: The (potential) Bad Guy I think it’s likely that Taylor would have detested Kennedy’s perceived “softness” on communism (although history would later prove that JFK acted wisely with regard to the USSR, Cuba, and Vietnam). See the article and Taylor’s The Uncertain Trumpet. He could have, once he saw things from the inside, come to the conclusion that Kennedy was dangerous (back-channel talks, Exner, Rometsch, Mary Meyer and the LSD, Jacobsen’s injections, the above mentioned “placation” of the communists, test ban treaty, NSAM 263, etc.). A West Point man, the consummate soldier. A guy who was at Normandy and fought gallantly in Europe. It would be very interesting to know what he thought of JFK. And of course you have to wonder about a guy who spent all that time around a right-wing nut job like Edwin Walker. So, I pose the question: Which guy was he? It appears he was both. Another interesting perspective I gained after reading this article: The JCS and the CIA were being squeezed from all sides. They were being effectively shut out of the loop post BOP. It's difficult to believe that they'd take that lying down. Kennedy simply did not trust them. Taylor was brought in to filter the BS that they were feeding him re: Vietnam and Cuba, and to advise Kennedy on Cold War strategy and operations. Taylor told Kennedy that the CIA’s role in paramilitary ops should be shut down, possibly leading to NSAM 55. McNamara was working very hard to enforce civilian control over the Pentagon. Mongoose was being run by the Attorney General (how crazy does that really sound?!). Kennedy was doing his own negotiating with Castro and Khrushchev via the back channel (which must’ve scared the hell of the Pentagon and the intelligence people). I don’t know if they “did it”, but the military and the intelligence community certainly had plenty of motive that they could have easily, in their minds, wrapped up in a big fuzzy American flag and called an act of “patriotism.” Sorry for the rambling post. Just thinking out loud, really. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.