Rob Couteau

Jim, I had been wondering about the same thing myself: Would he somehow turn against the Democrats; and is this why some of them didn't appear eager to pressure him to testify? But now that his manuscript is circulating, how do you think that would play out? Would he want to contradict himself?

Now that is an interesting turn of events.

Yes, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. And may we all keep the faith in the quest for truth in honor of that great man, JFK. As they say in France, "bon courage."

Thanks!

Byrd hunting elephants; Ferrie hunting ducks!

Ron, Would be interesting to make a list of all those significant figures who had made conveniently made travel plans to be "somewhere else" on the day JFK was killed - such as Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, and C. Douglass Dillon.

Vince, Did you ever find out anything else about Chuck Robertson - was he actually Secret Service; and when did he actually die?

Intriguing passage - thanks, Joe.

Video of the rally - what a great team they make: https://ktla.com/2019/12/21/bernie-sanders-rallies-in-venice-alongside-rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-drawing-thousands-of-supporters/

Joe, I have your book on hand - could you direct me to the page number or chapter in which this is covered? Thanks.

Ron, Glad to see you posted this. I too grew very suspicious of this character after reading Devil's Chessboard. Would like to learn more about him. These intriguing facts culled from wiki: "U.S. Ambassador to France (1953–1957) ....Dillon began his education at Pine Lodge School in Lakehurst, New Jersey which he attended at the same time as three of the Rockefeller brothers, Nelson, Laurance, and John ....Dillon had been active in Republican politics since 1934. He worked for John Foster Dulles in Thomas E. Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign. In 1951 he organized the New Jersey effort to secure the 1952 Republican nomination for Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was also a major contributor to Eisenhower's general election campaign in 1952....A close friend of John D. Rockefeller III, he was chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1972 to 1975. He also served alongside John Rockefeller on the 1973 Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs, and under Nelson Rockefeller in the Rockefeller Commission to investigate CIA activities (along with Ronald Reagan)." (We all know what a whitewash that was.) "He had been president of Harvard Board of Overseers, chairman of the Brookings Institution, and vice chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations." Also, as noted in Devil's Chessboard, he was a close associate of Allen Dulles.

I think Joe is referring to this incident: "Plagiarism row topples Pulitzer judge. The US historian Doris Goodwin admits to borrowing passages from other authors, but critics reject her claim that it was all an accident": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/06/internationaleducationnews.humanities

Ha! I hereby forbid myself from making anymore 3 a.m. bleary-eyed posts. Thanks for catching that Jim.

Ha - I was just going to add: "As David mentioned, Puzo was known to be a gambler, so maybe if he spent less time and money at the race track, or wherever he lost his dough, things might have been different." ("I could have been a contender"?) I don't recall him mentioning the debts to Larry King, and since King rarely does any homework he wouldn't have known to ask him about that.

Jim, That is correct. Puzo even took a creative-writing course with Brom Weber at the New School, and one of the other students in his class was Jack Kerouac. (This is chronicled in the Kerouac biography "Memory Babe," by Gerald Nicosia). Puzo's initial goal was to achieve recognition as a serious, literary novelist. I saw an interview with Puzo, post-"Godfather" (I believe with Larry King) in which he said that he was so exhausted from trying to make it as a serious writer and failing economically that he decided to try to write something for money, hence "The Godfather." He bemoaned the fact that he was unable to afford a vacation for most of his life or to properly support his family until then, so he purposely switched gears. "The Godfather" is clearly and without doubt a piece of pulp or "commercial fiction," and it was fashioned like that intentionally.

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Really interesting about Novel and Playboy. Jim, I would love to see you do a presentation using the same simple, trimmed down, visual format on JFK's foreign policy one day.

Really enjoyed reading this. And the clear, simple presentation combined with important new info makes it ideal for both advanced researchers as well as beginners.

Netflix just saved the historic Paris Theatre, which was about to close in NY: https://deadline.com/2019/11/paris-theatre-longerm-lease-netflix-marriage-story-the-irishman-robert-solow-1202794519/

Wow. Thanks for posting this Jim. My fav follow-up tweet, from @modmondays"Absolutely telling that Tulsi is the only candidate this century that understands WTF was going on in the last half of the last century. It is an absolute joke that she even has to share the stage tonight with these other buffoons and fakes." I should add that I also admire Bernie. But there sure is a lot of fakery on that stage and plenty of reason to get worked up about it. At this point I'll be glad just to see Trump defeated, even by the local dog catcher. But Tulsi is reminding us about something that too many have forgotton. Something about honorable goals and leadership.

So true. I recall reading - either in "Secret Agenda," "Spooks," or in Colodny's work - that the storage room where the tapes were stacked was so insecure that certain taped were temporarily removed and played at select parties in Washington DC at that time. To much drunken laughter. They could easily have been copied. Also agree with Ron that those pretentiously perched glasses of Dean's are really ridiculous.

Great interview - thank you, Joseph. Particularly liked the way you called the assassination a "contemporary issue." So true.

Now Warren's defending the shelling of hospitals and schools? Horrific. Sounding more and more like Hillary each day. Next she'll be citing Henry Kissinger as her mentor. This is a Dark Age for the Democratic Party. Years from now, I believe that folks will look back on Tulsi's stand and realize how much in the vanguard she really was. No wonder they are afraid of her.

A more or less analogous term was first coined in Turkey: derin devlet, meaning the “state within the state," describing a phenomenon going back to the Ottoman Empire. In a footnote to his essay "Donald J. Trump and The Deep State," Peter Dale Scott writes: "I believe the first to apply the Turkish term 'deep state' (derin deret) to U.S. politics was the Swedish writer Ola Tunander (Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007], x, 244, 270, 384). https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/02/06/donald-j-trump-deep-state-part-1/

Misanthropy is a cultured man's healthy reaction to the present state of affairs. A highly underrated emotion. The Bleecker Street Cinema was a godsend. What decades did you hang around there? And the Village Gate, another cultural treasure, down the block at the corner of Thompson, is now a Chase bank. That kind of says it all.