W. Niederhut

Kirk, I never vouched for the 2001 quote about Hewitt. I wrote, FWIW- - "For What It's Worth," like the Stephen Stills song. The reason I brought up the subject of Don Hewitt, in the first place, is that I'm curious about the process by which a major mainstream media corporation (CBS) colluded, for decades, in the cover up of a conspiracy to murder a U.S. president-- from Day One! How did that happen? For example, who did Hewitt take his marching orders from at CBS?

So, speaking as a guy who was a teenage Warren Commission Report dupe, it seems fair to say that Don Hewitt and CBS colluded in the long-term cover up of the conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy. Does anyone on the forum disagree with that premise?

Captain Kirk, Don Hewitt can't have it both ways. The man doth protest too much, eh? In your clip, Hewitt says, "I don't know any news man who wouldn't die to report this story (i.e., the obvious conspiracy to murder JFK.) Huh? The guy was the producer of CBS News and 60 Minutes for decades! Why, then, didn't he let his reporters TELL the damned story? Here's my question. Why did Dan Rather lie about the Zapruder film? How and WHY did that happen? Any thoughts?

Salud y pesetas, dude. But, why do I ask? Mainly because of Dan Rather's strange public fib about the Zapruder film in November of 1963. I can't imagine that Dan Rather would have fibbed about something so important unless he had been ordered to do so. So, who gave the order, and why? Hewitt? FWIW, here's a 2001 snippet I found on a Google search. https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Hewitt.html Don Hewitt (CBS) and the JFK Assassination " Hewitt said "I know more about the JFK assassination than anyone here at CBS". Jim, astonished, asked why that was, and Hewitt revealed that CBS had gotten the Zapruder film and appointed staff, including himself, to study the assassination in depth. Jim, still astounded, asked what their conclusion had been, since he never saw it reported anywhere. Hewitt said they had concluded Oswald could not have killed Kennedy acting alone, there had to be another gunman involved. Jim asked why they didn't say that on CBS. Hewitt replied, "Oh, I know what you are thinking -- conspiracy! But we never found any evidence of a connection between Oswald and the other gunman." Thus, the paradigm is insured. "

I noticed that the late CBS News producer Don Hewitt (1922-2009) is in the news today, about a previously undisclosed sex scandal. Has anyone researched or written anything about Don Hewitt's involvement in the CBS News coverage of JFK's assassination? In particular, I have wondered how and why Dan Rather felt compelled to lie about the Zapruder film, which he, apparently, viewed when it was first discovered after the assassination. As I recall, William S. Paley of CBS had a close relationship with Allen Dulles. Did Don Hewitt order Dan Rather to lie about the Zapruder film?

It's encouraging to read that John Barbour supported L.A. Coroner Thomas Noguchi's findings in RFK's autopsy, but who knows?

There seems to be a kind of "cinder block" theory in CIA psy ops-- "the more massive the tome, the more persuasive the thesis." I don't remember where I read the story, (possibly in Sylvia Meagher's book, Accessories After the Fact) but Allen Dulles, apparently, told someone, "Don't worry about all of this Warren Commission Report stuff-- no one is ever going to read it."

Speaking of Gore Vidal, (in the context of this thread about GHWB) Vidal had very high praise for Russ Baker's book, Family of Secrets, calling it "One of the most important books of the past ten years." (Baker's publisher had that Gore Vidal endorsement printed on the front cover of the book.)

Prouty worked closely with Ed Lansdale (at Saigon station and in Washington) for years. In fact, Lansdale was the guy who sent Prouty on a strange trek to Antarctica the week JFK was murdered. Frankly, I trust Prouty's confidence in originally identifying CIA black ops expert, Ed Lansdale, in the Dealey Plaza photos. And it does look like GHWB in the two other photos of Dealey Plaza-- prior to his apprehension in Dealey Plaza for questioning by the DPD on 11/22/63. The photo of GHWB with the juxtaposed frontal portrait of the guy who looks like Harvey Korman seems like a carefully-constructed attempt to convince people that "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" was not photographed in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63. Is that photo from McAdams.edu?

This is the silly juxtaposed portrait I referred to at the top of this thread. The guy on the right is, obviously, not the same guy (GHWB) seen in profile on the left. Not even close. My question. Where did this bogus profile + portrait photo originate?

This forum provides a valuable public service, IMO. I also plan to donate here, and to James DiEugenio's Kennedys and King website this year. P.S. This site is having trouble processing my donation today. Not sure what the glitch is.

Yes, and it's interesting to think about how our a priori assumptions about reality influence our perceptions of reality. I used to trust the New York Times implicitly, and I used to think Oliver Stone was a "flaky" historian. Now I'm somewhat skeptical about the NYT, on occasion, and I think Oliver Stone is a genius.

Jim, I recently listened to your interview at Who What Why with Jefferson Morley and Russ Baker. It was interesting to hear about how the three of you got interested in the JFK assassination at very different times in history. Russ Baker mentioned that, unlike you, he started seriously questioning the mainstream media narrative about JFK's murder only recently in his life -- while working on his Family of Secrets history of the Bush family. That helped me feel somewhat less naive, because, for most of the past 50 years, I never seriously questioned, or studied, the Warren Commission Report narrative. A few years ago, I saw a new patient in my psychiatric practice who was obsessed with the history of the JFK assassination. His wife was worried that he had been spending all of his time reading "conspiracy theory" books about the JFK assassination. At first, I thought the guy was suffering from a delusional disorder-- what Emil Kraeplin used to call "systematized paranoia." So, I started looking into the literature he mentioned, and I even went back and watched Oliver Stone's JFK movie again. (I had seen the film when it came out in the 90s, but I had the impression that it was "fictional," and that Oliver Stone was a "flake." Probably something I read in the New York Times or Newsweek, etc.) This time, I paid attention. When I read somewhere that "Mr. X" was based on a guy named L. Fletcher Prouty, I read Prouty's book on JFK, the CIA, and Vietnam. It was a shocker for me. There were some on-line articles here and there about Prouty being a loony conspiracy theorist, an "anti-Semite," a Joint Chiefs "errand boy," etc.-- but I was really astonished to read his account of the week JFK was murdered, and the many anomalies regarding security procedures for the motorcade, destruction of evidence, etc. Like many people, including my patient, I started down the rabbit hole of trying to learn more about CIA history, psychological ops, Mockingbird, etc. I began to realize that my patient was NOT delusional at all, but was, understandably, upset and angry about the way the nation had been manipulated, and the escalation of the Vietnam War after 11/22/63. Without saying too much about this private case, I should mention that he had been a student at Kent State when the Ohio National Guard shot those student war protesters, etc. So, that is how I got interested in understanding the vast "untold history" of JFK's murder and the Vietnam War. In a nutshell, I was a teenage Warren Commission Report dupe.

I never really studied the subject in any depth until a few years ago. My concept of the assassination was derived from the mainstream media-- Life magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, Dan Rather/CBS, then the New York Times (after 1975.) I read Don DeLillo's novel, Libra, the year it was published, but, as I recall, I read it with the notion that Oswald was the man who killed JFK.

It's a true story about myself, but I was only joking about writing an autobiographical parody of Litwin's book, I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Freak.

Someone has to play the incredulous wife, who thinks her husband has become a "conspiracy nut." Cate Blanchett? 😬

Folks, I'm thinking about writing a new book entitled, "I Was A Teenage Warren Commission Report Dupe." 🤡 It's the true story of a naive guy who grew up in America in the 1960s and 70s believing that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone nut in the Texas School Book Depository, named Lee Harvey Oswald. This guy actually studied the photos in the 11/29/63 edition of Life magazine when he was a boy, which clearly showed President Kennedy's head moving forward after he was shot from the TSBD by Oswald. And the boy also believed that Jack Ruby shot Oswald because he was morally indignant about President Kennedy being murdered. Then, about 50 years later, the guy finally starts reading some scholarly books about what really happened on 11/22/63, and he realizes that he had been completely duped by the U.S. mainstream media and the Warren Commission Report for half a century. His wife and siblings are shocked when he tries to tell them that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for U.S. intelligence, and was, apparently, a patsy falsely accused of JFK's murder. (The guy even had a junior high school friend named Oswald, who was always regarded in the community as a somewhat sinister weirdo.) The guy becomes somewhat obsessed with the shocking truth about JFK's murder, and the mainstream media illusions that misrepresented the facts during the ensuing 50 years. He starts to question other depictions of American history in the mainstream media-- especially things relating to the Cold War, the CIA, the FBI, and the American military-industrial complex. Then, because there are no 12 Step groups for recovering Warren Commission Report Dupes, he joins the Education Forum-- one of the few communities he can find on-line where many people actually seem to know and discuss what happened on 11/22/63, in great detail... Any suggestions? 😬

Well, he was interviewed on CBC television, by a poorly-informed interviewer.

Both Dealey Plaza photos appear to show GHWB-- the "independent Houston oil man" who was in Dallas on 11/22/63. There is at least one photo-shopped variation on-line which purports to cast doubt on GHWB's presence in front of the TSBD. It's, frankly, lame-- a still of GHWB's profile with a juxtaposed portrait of a guy who looks sort of like Harvey Korman. Try a site search for "George Bush."

What Litwin seems to be engaged in is "Swift Boat Vetting" the scholarly JFK Assassination research literature. And, like the Swift Boat Vet propagandists, he is using a simple negative sound byte-- "I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Freak," etc." -- implying that the accurate, scholarly "Conspiracy Theories" about JFK's murder are ridiculous. How can anyone respond effectively to a "Swift Boat Vet" marketing campaign? How about a simple, honest sound-byte like, "FRED LITWIN IS THE LATEST WARREN COMMISSION REPORT-PROMOTING FRAUDSTER?" Of course, for a counter- Swift Boat Vet campaign, the involvement of the mainstream media is crucial. Yet, the MSM is, precisely, where Litwin is conducting his Swift Boat Vetting of the research on JFK's murder.

And the Caligula-esque murder of LBJ's sister... 😮 Excellent point about the dramatic difference between the JFK and LBJ PR in our mainstream media during the past half century. And the guy who ushered Medicare through Congress is only commemorated in the MSM by stories about the Chappaquiddick accident.

Speaking of Litwin and Jim Garrison, I have not read Litwin's book, (nor do I plan to) but I did watch the CBC video interview of Litwin posted by David Von Pain - 15 minutes of my life that I'll never get back again. I noticed that the clueless CBC interviewer referred to Oliver Stone's film, JFK, as "fictional," and did the standard MSM eye roll while mentioning that Oliver Stone was "strange," or something to that effect. This was in the context of Litwin claiming, with a straight face, that the urbane, philanthropic Clay Shaw had been unfairly persecuted and slandered by Garrison because he was gay, etc. I felt my blood pressure rising as I listened to Litwin's scurrilous nonsense. I know a number of fairly educated, intelligent people who still do the Oliver Stone eye roll, when the subject arises -- and I, myself, used to mistakenly think that Oliver Stone was a flaky pseudo-historian. (It was probably a sound-byte that I read in the New York Times over the years.) The MSM has uncanny power to mislead the public about these issues over the long term. And, once these erroneous sound-bytes are repeated -- especially in "reputable" MSM sources-- they become fixed in the public consciousness. How can people who know the truth counter this pervasive disinformation -- especially when they are labeled as "conspiracy theorists" by the MSM?

Fascinating. Yet another psy ops expert (and CIA asset) directly linked to the JFK assassination, and the false MSM narratives about Oswald. These U.S. psy ops guys, (C.D. Jackson, Edward Lansdale, Butler, Meyer, Joannides) like Joseph Goebbels and the Soviet propagandists, were experts in the propaganda techniques ("public relations") of Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays. And one aspect of their psy ops methodology was to immediately control the narrative after the catastrophic event-- false flag, assassination, etc.

Mr. Von Pein, I am a physician, (Harvard Medical School '83) and I have studied the original medical reports from the Parkland ER. JFK, clearly, had a right frontal entry wound that blew a fragment of his right occipital skull backward, behind the limo-- consistent with the Zapruder film. My understanding is that the physician who conducted the Bethesda autopsy was not even a forensic pathologist, and was quite reluctant to sign off on the substandard "autopsy" that may well have been conducted on a surgically altered cranium. As for Fred Litwin, I will stand by my original comments about his utterly appalling interview on CBC television. He made several blatantly false statements. I would give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute his errors to ignorance, but I don't believe that he is ignorant. P.S. This is my last comment to you. I do not wish to converse with you, going forward.

The CBC interview of Fred Litwin (posted by David Von Pein) is utterly appalling. How did this dishonest, erroneous nonsense get televised in Canada? Did the CBC interviewer really not know that Richard Helms admitted under oath that Clay Shaw was, in fact, a CIA asset? That Shaw was, in fact, guilty of perjury? And what is Litwin's nonsense about two pathologists employed by the Kennedy family claiming that autopsy findings supported the Lone Nut in the TSBD narrative of the Warren Commission? Someone needs to contact the Chairperson at CBC, Michael Goldbloom, and let him know that Fred Litwin is a bald-faced xxxx.