Maybe nothing new here for real JFKA junkies, but this caught my eye:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83-00156R000300010111-1.pdf

This is an internal CIA memo, regarding a somewhat chummy Saturday meeting with Robert Blakey, then chief counsel of the HSCA.

Blakey basically told the CIA, hey no worries in the pending HSCA report, they were a "minor part of it all" and the headlines would be about organized crime. Blakey had been a mafia-hunter for the federal government, and looked hard at Carlos Marcello.

Later in life Blakey would regret his trust in the CIA, and said he thought Eladio Del Valle, and Herminio Diaz, Cuban exiles, played a role in the JFKA.

Both possible assassins had been CIA assets, and both were dead by 1967---just before New Orleans Attorney James Garrison could interview them. 

Interesting picture and lesson about establishment DC. Blakey was a honorable civil servant...and badly used by the CIA. Even honest people can end up repeating Deep State lies, in our nation's capital. 

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oliver really liked the anthology The JFK Assassination Chokeholds

He did a blurb, gave us a blast out on Twitter and he is going to be on RIchard Syrett's show this Friday night on Coast to Coast with me to talk about the book.

We will also talk about how Shout Factory did not even want to bring out a DVD of JFK Revisited, but amazingly it is still in the top ratings--number six right now-- at Amazon for documentaries after well over a year and a half in release.  I think that success encouraged them to do a remaster of the 1991 feature film JFK. Which looks much better in color resolution now.

Syrett is really well informed on the JFK case.  So it should be good, and it reaches a very wide audience.

With Oliver it should reach even more.

Congratulations to Stone and DiEugenio for literally decades of dedicated work on the JFKA. Hat's off. 

Of course, I hope mention is made on the current state of the JFK Records Act---an Act Stone's work helped bring into creation. 

I can conceive of no valid reason why thousands of documents are being withheld from the public, six decades after the event. 

6 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

“LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons” –  a suppressed documentary narrated by Frank Sesno & aired by the History Channel on June 1, 2003 https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/lbj-vs-kennedys-chasing-demons.html

Add on: See Robert Montenegro's extraordinary bit of research, also available on the EF-JFKA. He just posted.

He also has a well-documented view of the JFKA, with very little LBJ role. 

I also have reservations about his explanation of the JFKA, as involving too many witting, pre-JFKA participants. 

Would any sane person plan a presidential assassination with dozens or hundreds of witting pre-event participants? 

Is that how the CIA x'ed out foreign leaders? They involved hundreds of participants first in the actual plotting, from multiple agencies and backgrounds in the targeted nation, planned for weeks or months on end (possible leaks the whole time), and then x'ed out a foreign leader? 

In addition, all that pre-JFKA coordination is not necessary.

It is ghoulish to note, but a couple of guys with rifles in Dealey Plaza, and likely a diversion at the GK, was sufficient. 

As usual, just IMHO. 

A remarkable ton of research into the JFKA, presented by RM, who is a talented, smart and dedicated JFKA scholar.  

I still have reservations about any explanation of the JFKA that involves a large number of witting, pre-event participants. 

9 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Ben, I believe that John's site has been hacked. I think he's working on it.

Egads. I guess the DC establishment will never rest. 

7 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Ben, I am just curious. How did Eladio Del Valle feel about the Kennedys?

Because I know how LBJ did. Robert Caro describes the LBJ-RFK relationship post 1960 Democratic convention, where RFK had moved heaven and earth attempting to keep LBJ off the 1960 Democratic ticket. Caro:

 QUOTE

John Connally, who during long days of conversation with this author was willing to answer almost any question put to him, no matter how delicate the topic, wouldn't answer when asked what Johnson said about Robert Kennedy. When the author pressed him, he finally said flatly: "I am not going to tell you what he said about him." During the months after the convention, when Johnson was closeted alone back in Texas with an old ally he would sometimes be asked about Robert Kennedy. He would reply with a gesture. Raising his big right hand, he would draw the side of it across the neck in a slowing, slitting movement. Sometimes that gesture would be his only reply; sometimes, as during a meeting with Ed Clark in Austin, he would say, as his hand moved across his neck, "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do." 

UNQUOTE

[Robert Caro, The Passage of Power, p. 140] 

Well, there is not a lot of biographical sketches of Eladio Del Valle and Herminio Diaz, and both were dead by 1967. 

They were Cuban exiles active in the anti-Castro movement, soldiers, so likely they loathed JFK for his perceived betrayal regarding the BoP. 

You are obviously correct that LBJ also loathed the Kennedys. 

As stated, you may be correct in your surmising regarding LBJ. 

My inclination is a JFKA plot must have a very small number of witting, pre-JFKA participants, and likely did not cross organizational lines. 

The JFKA plotters were people who knew each other for a long time, trusted each other as totally committed, could handle hardware, and perhaps even had been in battle together. They may have been so committed that escaping was not a No. 1 concern. Recall when Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the US Congress. 

IMHO, the idea JFKA plotters pooling witting resources among several agencies (FBI, Secret Service, Dallas Police, CIA, others, innumerable people in elites as well) pre-JFKA requires too much suspension of disbelief. 

Post-JFKA complicity became the rule, especially as LHO was tagged as a leftie-loser-loner commie who anti-patriots and Moscow agents wanted to clear. 

But hey, just IMHO. Others have other viewpoints. The EF-JFKA should be a place where all views are treated civilly. 

On 2/13/2024 at 10:43 PM, David Boylan said:

Well worth the time!

 

https://jfkjmn.com/media/?fbclid=IwAR36IwenPIgSI0DoZzzK-1bmT8-7ORv1mR70JxmUrgMbVK5-yHRp-ibpICw

Is this functional? 

19 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

We can agree to disagree on anything. You are a lot more agreeable to disagree with than practically anyone else on this Forum.

When you were at the LBJ School of Public Affairs (in theory you would be learning how to take massive hundred million dollar kickbacks and murder your political opponents), the local students and maybe some professors there were "Ralph Yarborough" Democrats - they probably disliked LBJ because of the Vietnam War and knew he spent most of his career opposing civil rights for blacks and carrying water for rich, corporate Democrats, military contractors and oilmen. A few may even have known he killed JFK.

Back then the local Democratic party had an annual "Ralph Yarborough" dinner. Now I think they call it a "Johnson-Jefferson" party dinner as Johnson has weasled his way into more respectability.

The cover up operation protecting LBJ still runs very strong in Texas and Austin in particular. The elites and media of Dallas are in complete denial about the JFK assassination.

 

RM--"We can agree to disagree on anything. You are a lot more agreeable to disagree with than practically anyone else on this Forum."

Same to you. It is a pleasure to have civil discourse with you, even if we are apart on some aspects of the JFKA. 

BTW, I am not saying you are wrong in your well-constructed arguments. Just that I  lean to my own view of a very small op of witting pre-JFKA participants.

And hey, just IMHO. 

7 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Yes, I would include Cliff Carter in the plot to murder JFK. Longtime LBJ henchman who helped to cover up the 1961 Henry Marshall murder because that was local to his area

As for the MULTIPLE SHOOTERS on TSBD 6th floor. How did they get down. They sure did not go down the stairs because they would have run into someone. Therefore they went down the elevators because they had stopped the elevator on the 6th floor then they when down and went out the back of the TSBD.

Everything for them was so much easier because a plotter D.H. Byrd owned the TSBD. I am sure he had a lieutenant in the plot who made things easy for the JFK shooters (none of whom were Oswald).

You have a very hard time believing that people who just murdered the sitting president could keep their mouths shut. They didn't. Lyndon Johnson told Madeleine Brown that the Fat Cats of Dallas (his friends) and U.S. intelligence bastards (his friends) murdered JFK.

My SPECULATION is the actual shooters of JFK could themselves have been murdered and disposed of at some other time and place. That is a good way to keep them quiet! The psychopaths who murdered JFK and Oswald would have zero problems doing this.

 

 

Well, at least we agree on that---the actual JFKA shooters may have been dead soon enough.

Eladio Del Valle and Herminio Diaz in fact were both dead by 1967. Del Valle murdered on the same day Ferrie "died." Diaz died in a raid on Cuba (or shortly thereafter).

Those are two gunsels I suspect. 

I admire the work you have done. Top-rate. We disagree, but that is what the EF-JFKA is for. 

(PS I wish I had gone to UT B-school and not public administration. But youthful idealism....)

37 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

There is too much that indicts LBJ in the JFK assassination from so many angles. LBJ was in it and he immediately resurrected Lansdale's career and then he sent him to Vietnam 1.5 years later.

Whose says there were "dozens of witting participants?"

LBJ, Ed Clark, D.H. Byrd - they go to Lansdale or a friend of Lansdale in the military. The kill team at Dealey Plaza is maybe 10 people. So you are at 15 people. I am sure there are some other crooked people around LBJ who knew what was going to happen and they have absolutely ZERO reasons to talk now or ever.

1) a pair of shooters on the Grassy Knoll

2) a pair of shooters on Sixth Floor TSBD (none named Oswald)

3) Radio Man/aka Dark Complected Man as a spotter for snipers on the Grassy knoll.

4) The plotter who is telling the Dallas Police Dispatcher to put out an all points bulletin for a a man who is "5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds" - call that man a U.S. intelligence plotter related to Lansdale.

5) Let's add LBJ's Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood in as a plotter. Sen. Ralph Yarborough said LBJ and Youngblood were listening to a radio or walkie talkie turned down low during the motorcade; that had to be JFK assassination-related.

We are at about 20 people in an LBJ led plot to kill JFK. And after that happens with LBJ immediately in control of the federal government, so many more people are ready to cover up the JFK assassination who were not involved in it. The entire FBI under "Seat of Government" Hoover's leadership, the Secret Service, CIA, military - scores of people there ready to cover it up and they were not involved in killing anyone that day.

 

Fair enough. Even 20 is too many for my suspension of disbelief standards, but hey, just IMHO. Probably you would add Clifton Carter to the mix. 

Q: You mention a pair of shooters, TSBD sixth floor. How did they evacuate the building?

7 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Joe, all of that is true. There is indeed a massive blackhole in the mainstream media and academia concerning the MASSIVE corruption and evil of Lyndon Johnson.

But that extends straight into the JFK assassination research community where there are many who completely absolve Lyndon Johnson of participation in the JFK assassination (Lisa Pease comes to mind) when in my *opinion* not only was LBJ "involved" in the JFK assassination, he MICROMANAGED IT just like he did in every other crime or important goal in his life (see Robert Caro for many examples of LBJ's manic drive to destroy his enemies and achieve his goals by any means necessary).

Of course, elements of military and intelligence (and anti-Castro Cubans - see "Radio Man" aka "Dark Complected Man") were involved in murdering JFK, but the grandmaster of them all, the peak of the pyramid, was the diabolical schemer LBJ who knew the Kennedys were working in real time in November of 1963 to gut him (not merely remove Johnson from the 1964 Democratic ticket).

Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy and Evelyn Lincoln all immediately knew LBJ had murdered JFK. In the words of Jackie, hours after JFK's death, "Lyndon Johnson did it."

RM-

If you have strong opinions about LBJ, don't hold back. 

Texas was a one-party state back then. You know what happens in one-party states and cities....inevitable inclusive corruption.  

Thought:

OK, you say Lansdale was the op-man for a LBJ-initiated JFKA. 

But what if...Lansdale decided to act of his own volition?

So Lansdale, who has security clearance, reasoned he could hatch a plot in Dallas with a couple underlings, mercs, exile types. And he does so. He finds out about LHO, and the half-dollar bill needed to make a connection. 

Maybe Lansdale was the type who acted on his own, did not need authorization from higher-ups. Lansdale expected to tell LBJ of his feat (indirectly), and be rewarded, post-JFKA.

In such a scenario, we again come to a very small number of witting pre-JFKA participants. 

IMHO, the prerequisite---a very small number of pre-JFKA witting participants---must be met for any plausible explanation of the JFKA. 

Explanations of the JFKA with dozens of witting participants, observers and say-so'ers pre-JFKA...require too much suspension of disbelief. 

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Thank you. Remember both Lyndon Johnson and D.H. Byrd (LBJ's oil man and military contractor pal) both had deep, deep connections to the military. Peter Dale Scott, alive today, proved in 1971 that D.H. Byrd (who owned the Texas School Book Depository) and investor "merger king" James Ling (a close LBJ pal) bought huge amounts of LTV stock in the weeks before the JFK assassination. LTV was a prominent defense contractor and it's stock price went from  $19/share in 1963 to as high as $169/share in the year 1967 after it had been loaded up with defense contracts for the Vietnam War.

In my mind, the large stock buys in LTV are smoking gun proof of D.H. Byrd's involvement in the JFK assassination.

I have tried to confirm Peter Dale Scott but I cannot find the Value Line Investment Survey for the year 1964 - that is where Scott got that information. The Univ. of Texas school library only goes back to 1969. The North Texas State Library only goes back to 1966 for copies of the Value Line Investment survey.

I need to find 1964 Value Line Investment Survey - that year was called Volume 20, I think. 

RM

 

Side story: I went to the LBJ School of Public Affairs in the late 1970s. I recognize the 512 area code. 

Back then there was an interesting schism in the classes. The Texas natives were very proud of their state...but seemed always to regard Texas politics as crooked or worse, and LBJ as part of that. These were smart kids and profs, who knew the local political scene and lore well. 

People from other parts of the country had high regard for LBJ (I did, for LBJ's civil rights record and because he was a Democrat, who---back then---I thought were the light against the GOP dark).

I actually went to the LBJ Ranch once.

Back then, hard liquor was served on UT Austin campus to anyone over age 18, and girls went topless at Barton Springs. 

You think Texas was conservative? Those Texans knew how to have fun. 

9 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Benjamin Cole - regarding the Covert Action article indicting LBJ for the JFK assassination:

1) I don't think LBJ used Mac Wallace to murder JFK. I think he used Gen. Edward Lansdale who used Operation Mongoose operatives, people out of the CIA's Miami JM Wave station to murder JFK.

2) I think (know) Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA operative and a fake defector to Russia but the man loved and adored JFK and his family (many sources) therefore I do not think he was involved in any plot to murder JFK. I think Oswald was a pre-selected CIA patsy for the JFK assassination, but I think Lansdale and Air Force operatives ran the operation to kill JFK.

[Absolute Proof Lee Harvey Oswald was a *pre-selected patsy* for the JFK assassination: “5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds” https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html  Dallas Police Dispatcher was immediately using Marguerite Oswald’s description of Lee given to Dallas FBI in May, 1960]

3) I seriously doubt Oswald washed his face at his boarding home or at the Texas Theater. At his boarding home Oswald rushed in and rushed out. And remember the Dallas police lied when they immediately said Oswald tested positive for nitrates when really he tested negative for nitrates on his face and positive for nitrates on his hand (Oswald handled cardboard boxes that have nitrates on them naturally). 

4) There are many things I do not believe Judyth Vary Baker on, but I have met her many times and she is so psychologically and maniacally attached to Oswald that I *think* this is the result of her having an affair with him. I think Oswald gave her a green glass which she still has. I think Baker worked with Oswald and knew Oswald and is maniacally attached to him. I would not bet my life on anything Judy says but I think she knew Oswald.

There are many reasons that I know Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK. I use the word "know" and not "believe, think, posit, reason" and that is because I know Lyndon Johnson was a malignantly narcissistic criminal psychopath who was acutely aware the Kennedys were out to utterly destroy him in November, 1963 and not merely "drop" Johnson from the 1964 Democratic ticket. 

LBJ's aides Horace Busby, George Reedy, John Connally have told us that in the fall of 1963 Lyndon Johnson was highly agitated over the Kennedys' attempts to destroy him. Burkett van Kirk and Life Magazine's John Wagenvoord have both confirmed that Robert Kennedy was doing everything he could to slit the throat of LBJ.

Lyndon Johnson was not the kind of man to twiddle his thumbs and just hope or pray that the Kennedys high gear efforts to destroy him in November, 1963 would somehow fail. LBJ was the kind of man to do something violent to stop that.

It is not the LBJ - Mac Wallace angle that got rid of JFK; it is the LBJ-Texas power brokers-military-CIA angle that got rid of John Kennedy. The people who actually shot JFK were probably enraged over Cuba policy, but the people at the top of the pyramid of the JFK assassination were LBJ and his Texas power brokers and they had "money and power" reasons. They made a lot of money with LBJ in the White House just as they had been making money on him for decades.

My favorite web link to give out on the JFK assassination is this one which helps to explain motive:

LBJ top aide Horace Busby: Lyndon Johnson was acutely aware  by Nov. 4, 1963 that the Kennedys had sent a SWAT team of over **FORTY** national reporters to Texas to utterly destroy him https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/lyndon-johnson-was-acutely-aware-by-nov.html  I wonder how LBJ would have reacted?

Horace Busby was a man extremely close to LBJ since 1948 and although Busby does not mention the name "Kennedys" in his book, anyone with an IQ over 60 can figure out what he is talking about: the Kennedys were out to gut LBJ in November of 1963 and Johnson was wildly agitated about it.

 

Longtime LBJ aide and friend Horace Busby describes Lyndon Johnson, on Friday, Nov. 8 in Brussels, Belgian being extremely concerned about the nature of his potential “exit line” from the Kennedy Administration

 

QUOTE

 

          As we passed the darkness of an ancient cathedral, he stopped abruptly, pushed his hat far back on his head, and turned toward me.

          “Buzz,” he said, “I’ve had a good run of it. I’ve done a lot more and come a lot farther than anybody who came from where I come ever had any right to expect.” Agent Kivett had approached closely, checking whether some assistance might be needed. The vice president turned and glowered until he moved on out of earshot, then Lyndon Johnson leaned in very close, until his face almost touched mine, and his clenched fists began pumping up and down.

          “If they want me to go, all they have to do is say so and I’ll be gone in five minutes.” His voice fell to a hoarse and confidential whisper. “I don’t care about that, it’s their business. What I do care about, my friend, is one thing.” He stopped and stood erect, turning to look in all directions. The street and the sidewalk were empty except for the two of us and Jerry Kivett, now half a block away. The vice president leaned in close again. Lips set tight, he spoke firmly. “I care about the exit line.”

 

UNQUOTE

 

[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 134-135]

 

 

 

RM-

You may be correct, it was LBJ and the Texas crowd that perped the JFKA, and used Lansdale's mechanics for the job. 

It is hard to prove a negative---that is, I cannot prove your conclusions are wrong. 

As I say, you have assembled a solid story. I congratulate you on your solid understanding of the events of 11/22/63. 

Perhaps the LBJ team piggybacked on a "legitimate" CIA false flag op, already planned for Dallas.

It would be nice if the Biden Administration lifted its blackout on the JFK Records, and we might gain deeper insights into the JFKA. 

On 2/29/2024 at 10:36 AM, Robert Morrow said:

The person who told me that Lyndon Johnson and Walter Jenkins both had a "Q clearance" (nuclear-related matters) was an LBJ aide named James C.C. Williams who worked for LBJ from 1957 until 1961.

Here is his Find-a-Grave James C. C. Williams (1935-2016) - Find a Grave Memorial

James C.C. Williams also told me he was a homosexual and that after Walter Jenkins was arrested for sodomy in fall, 1964, Williams told me he thought HIS PHONE was wiretapped for the next 3 years.

James "Jim" Williams told me that every day after work LBJ would not go home but would go to hang out with his secretary/mistress Mary Margaret Wiley (who later married Jack Valenti).

I interviewed Jim Williams around 2011 (he died in 2016). I was referred to him by his friend Houston Allred who is the son of former 1930's Texas Governor Sam Allred (who was a mentor and supporter of LBJ when he first ran for Congress in Spring, 1937 special election.

Jim Williams told me he did not know why LBJ helped to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act - whether he cared about the issue or was it pure politics to make him more politically palatable to liberals. Most civil right activists considered that bill to be near worthless garbage.

 

RM--

OK, I read the Covert Action article, and it is very well researched, and written. I give it an "A." 

Some quibbles

1. The Mac Wallace fingerprints in the TSBD are very controversial. You can actually find the print yourself online and look, and try to get a clear copy. I did this years ago and I recall thinking, "Well, I would not vote guilty if I sat on jury on that evidence." Joan Mellon dismisses the print. Evidently, the fingerprint expert is not certified. 

2. LHO cheek nitrate test. It was negative, but he may have fired only one shot, and the building may have been exhaling at the time, meaning LHO received a low dose. LHO may have washed his face at his rooming house or the Texas Theater. In addition, perspiration can erase nitrates, and LHO was running around. Lastly, the test was administered "too late," that is, past the number of hours when such tests are considered viable. 

LHO was also (I suspect) trained in spy work. He may have put saran wrap or paper on his cheek before firing.  

3. I do not believe LHO was Judyth Baker's boyfriend. I suspect she is a fraud. 

My bottom-line problem with the article is we get all the motives, and suspicious events and activities...and no real evidence of the actual perps and methods. 

I could not sit on a jury and convict LBJ on the evidence presented in the article. I would say, "This article is great, and makes LBJ a suspect."

A guy named John Davis wrote a book in 1989, blaming Carlo Marcello for the JFKA, and he assembled a lot of motives and suspicious events. Same result.

There is in EF-JFKA forum a group of people who blame WWII German Nazis for the JFKA, who came to the US under CIA aegis after WWII. Even dismissing a certain "datebook," those guys were certainly dangerous---as were vengeful Cuban exiles, with battlefield experience.

My best guess is the number of people involved in the JFKA was very small, less than the number of fingers on an old woodworker's hand. Some were soon dead. None may be alive today. 

Post-JFKA...a lot of complicity to prevent the truth from coming out. 

On 3/1/2024 at 3:42 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Thanks for this thread, Ben. I wasn't a member of the forum when you started it so this is my first  chance to respond.

 

Yes, the murder was unquestionably compartmentalized. Yes, in a murder of this magnitude and consequence there had to be a small group who planned and carried it out.  With a coverup in place before the murder including a patsy to blame.

 

But your initial conclusion that some "low-level Cuban CIA assets" murdered JFK (and presumably planned the murder), without CIA authorization (or presumed even knowledge) is off the mark.  To begin with, such a group was not capable of the detailed planning the murder required. 

 

More than that, the murder was about political power in Washington. There were of course passions involved but thinking of it as some kind of revenge killing only leads you astray. It was much more important than that.

 

The murder changed the results of the '60 election (JFK defeated Johnson for the Dem nomination) and produced a president in Johnson who was much more amenable to the interests of the killers.  A question to ponder: If Kennedy had stuck with his original plan to pick Sen Symington as VP, who became a vocal critic of the Vietnam war, would the murder have happened?

 

The aftermath tells an even more compelling story. Once it was successfully pulled off, the murder precipitated a swath of political murders the rest of the decade.  By most of the same people.  All were designed to destroy the remnants of left opposition to the killers' plans. You can focus on the Cubans, or mafia as the planners only by ignoring this fact and treating the murder in isolation (as is so often done).

 

The murder produced endless wars since.  In his peace speech Kennedy said he was against a Pax Americana enforced by American weapons of war.  That's exactly the policy his killers wanted.  He had made clear in public he was a direct threat to them. That policy under different names (the latest being the "rules based order" in which the US makes and enforces the rules) has been in place since he was murdered, verifying the killers' success..  

 

Can you imagine any president since Kennedy giving his "peace speech"?  In fact we have reached a point where there are no national antiwar politicians in the US to speak of.  The war mongers are now clearly in charge.

 

The identity of the planners is now even clearer than when Salandria gave his "False Mystery" speech 25 years ago, pointing to the "top echelons" of Kennedy's own government.  Consider his characterization of the calls made by the WH situation Room the afternoon of the murder to the two planes with officials coming back to DC.

 

Bundy was speaking for the killers and telling those who were in Dallas to forget what they think they saw.  The murder had been "committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment", he said they were told. To me, that means, in part, that the killers themselves were going to investigate the murder and mete out the punishment.

 

The plot was designed and run by Allen Dulles and Lyndon Johnson and whoever they needed to assist them in various aspects of plan. Like picking Oswald as the patsy, e.g. (Note: Salandria once said he could find no proof of Johnson's involvement and I'm not sure he ever did. Nobody's perfect).

 

Note to Cliff: turn in your student ID for the Salandria school.  Your naming of those 5 clowns as the planners and 5 others running the coverup means you have flunked the final exam. 

 

Dulles and Johnson were both Washington powers. Probably the two most powerful at the time, each with tentacles all over town.  They could keep what they were doing secret, but they knew what everyone else was doing--an important source of Washington power.  Dulles knew about Kennedy's back channel discussions with Krushchev and Castro, which became an important reason for the murder, e.g. 

 

The case for Dulles's involvement is well known and accepted by many. The Dulles brothers ran foreign policy under Eisenhower.  Their views were clear. You were either with the US or the commies. No neutrality.  And if you weren't with us there would be hell to pay. That policy was anathema to Kennedy.  He stood in the way of it as a basic policy, not just their wanting a war in Vietnam.

 

There may have been some Wall Street financial elites that Dulles needed an OK from, killing a president being so socially disruptive. That would not have been a problem.

 

As president in charge of investigating the murder, Johnson would have the fate of the killers in his hands.  He was indispensable to the plan working.  There is a sense in which the Dulles gang knew how much Johnson wanted to be president, and expected he would run the coverup to protect them while allowing them the policies they wanted.  But in a murder of this magnitude and consequence you can't go on expectations alone.  You have to be sure.  Besides, Johnson had to be comfortable with the cover up plan he would be running. Johnson's input was necessary to the plan.

 

Logic, and an examination of Johnson's actions that weekend, dictate that conclusion as I have argued elsewhere.

 

That Dulles and Johnson devised and ran the plan seems obvious to me.  But perversely this very obviousness seems to have caused many researches to look elsewhere in search of something new.  To go down many rabbit holes that lead nowhere. For 60 years now. 

 

Maybe your thread will help focus more people on the important questions: who did it and why. 

 

RO--

Thanks for your comments. 

I have always left open the possibility that the Cuban exiles/mercs had been leaked info from higher up, such as a password, or dollar-bill half, that would make LHO trust them. 

If a CIA higher-up was involved, then one could posit that the higher CIA officer was a cat's paw for the powerful vested interests, and so on, that is the Vincent Salandria, Peter Dale Scott narrative. 

BTW, not that it matters, I have viewed globalist US foreign-military-trade policy as largely representing increasing powerful global corporations, ever since WWII, and sometimes before.  The Disney, BlackRock, WalMart, GMs, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, NBA, NBC-Universal, Morgan Stanley crowd. This goes all the way back to Smedley Butler days. They dominate the Democratic Party, btw. 

I am not sure Vietnam was ever that important to the globalists, so there is a bit of misfit there. Sen Richard Russell himself was mystified how the topic one day was Cuba, and next day it was Vietnam. 

And there is still the possibility, perhaps even likelihood, that the JFKA was just a CIA-Miami Station revenge killing for what happened at the BoP, and that is what has been covered up. 

Interesting topic. 

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Did you watch Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV like me BC?

I no longer remember if it was live, or I saw a newsreel at night. I think the latter. 

30 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

If we never know "who exactly" did JFK ( and RFK and MLK ) one thing "I will know" and take to my grave:

It was a conspiracy.

I watched Jack Ruby blast a hole into Lee Harvey Oswald's guts "live" on national news TV the morning of 11,24,1963.

From that second in time to this one...I knew in my soul that there was no way Oswald could have been gunned down right inside the DPD building with 70+ highest security minded in DPD history armed police personnel all around without someone on the inside allowing it to happen. 

That killing was clearly way beyond simple security negligence. The DPD lost the most important ( and most threatened ) criminal suspect in American history ... again right inside their own building?

Ruby's impossible access to do what he did in that scenario is the most obvious proof that Oswald was allowed to be assassinated.  I can read 1,000 JFKA conspiracy theory books ...and all of them combined will never be more convincing than what I witnessed that November 24, Sunday morning. I trusted my gut instincts ( even at 12 years old ) that much and I still do at 72.

 

 

JB-

That was a powerful moment. And Ruby was a far more complicated character than an affable nightclub operator. 

For me, it was watching Gov. Connally get pushed forward by a blow at Z295 and JFK get struck a Z313. That is less than one second. 

From a lone gunman armed with a single-shot bolt-action rifle? 

And ye...we still can't seem to get to the actual bottom of the case. I have my favored  explanation and the next guy has his. 

25 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

I am glad to help you out, Ben. Lyndon Johnson had very deep CIA, military and military contractor ties. Everything he did was "pay to play." LBJ wanted SUITCASES full of money to get something done, not merely envelops of money. His net worth in 1963-1964 was $250 million in 2024 dollars. Johnson spent years just flat out stealing from the U.S. Government for his own benefit. Two of LBJ's closest friends were big time military contractors D.H. Byrd (who owned the Texas School Book Depository) and George Brown of Brown & Root - KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton by 1963.

In my *opinion* LBJ and his Texas power broker pals D.H. Byrd and Ed Clark (and God knows who else - long time friend and military contractor pal George Brown?) used their military connections to murder JFK. I have Gen. Edward Lansdale in the plot up to his eyeballs; LBJ immediately resurrected Lansdale's career and sent him to Vietnam in 1965.

LBJ also very close friends with his mentor Georgia Senator Richard Russell and Virginia's Sen. Harry Byrd, both of whom played big roled in military affairs as did LBJ.

Author Deborah Davis:

           "The Graham salons were also, at times, purely social events. Katharine wrote her mother about one of these in the early fifties. The dinner had been given for John Stembler, a college friend of Phil's with whom he still kept in touch, and his wife Kate, who were in town from Atlanta. Katharine noted to Agnes that the occasion gave her an opportunity to repay sixteen obligations, so she hadn't minded the large group. The party included quite an assortment of people, from both journalism and government: Crosby Boyd, Philip Perlman, the U.S. solicitor general; George Neese Clark, the U.S. treasurer, who the next day sent Lally and Donny dollar bills that she had signed; the Drew Pearsons; the Frank Wisners; G. Frederick Reinhardt, from the Office of Eastern European Affairs at the State Department ; and his wife. Also present were Benjamin Bradlee, a young reporter at the Post whom Phil thought highly of, and his wife, Jean. Jean was a cousin of Senator Leverett Saltonstall, the former governor of Massachusetts, who had been appointed to the Senate in 1944 to fill the vacancy created when Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., joined the army. He was one of a very small and secret group of congressmen and senators who met informally to oversee the CIA, a group that included Richard Russell, Harry Byrd, and Lyndon Johnson, an opportunistic young senator from Texas whom Phil Graham was bothering about civil rights."

 [Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, p. 141] 

Lyndon Johnson and his deep, deep CIA/military connections. LBJ was their "go to guy" in Congress for enormous amounts of funding.

 

Lyndon Johnson, since the early 1950's, was one of a handful of senators/congressmen giving congressional oversight over the newly created CIA.

Also, Lyndon Johnson and his aide Walter Jenkins had "Q clearance" for atomic and nuclear material related matters. That was the highest clearance given at that time and it was the equivalent of what President Eisenhower himself had. In other words, LBJ and Walter Jenkins had access to *everything* relating to nuclear/atomic matters. My source for this was someone who worked for Lyndon Johnson (not privileged to say who, yet).

Q clearance: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Q_clearance

Additionally, during the 1950's, there was no more powerful figure in Congress who was an advocate for CIA/military spending than Lyndon Johnson. By the late 1950's, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was wielding power in Washington, DC that was not much less than President Dwight Eisenhower.

Lyndon Johnson during these times was establishing deep CIA/military ties that paid off in spades for him during the JFK assassination. Here is a passage that illustrates LBJ's associations at the highest levels with CIA/military. LBJ was their congressional "go to guy" for enormous amounts of money including black budget intelligence funding.

 [George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance: U.S. Intelligence’s Manipulation of Religious Groups and Individuals in Two World Wars and the Cold War and the Sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald, p.215]

 QUOTE

           When Senator Lyndon B. Johnson became chair of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Science, the Texas powerbroker had been able to wear two significant military/intelligence hats, chairing both the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee and Aeronautical and Space Science. In 1959 and then in 1960 during Senate hearings called "Missiles, Space, and Other Major Defense Matters," Johnson gave a splendid "I'm shocked" response to testimony from the Bureau of the Budget, the Joint Chiefs, and from a raft of "military experts." Even Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense cooperated with Senator Johnson in establishing the fictional but crucial "missile gap." A typical LBJ topic- how big was his "missile" opposed to anyone else's- had been established (despite its military fiction), and, given LBJ's enthusiastic support, it became a major political argument in the JFK/LBJ presidential campaign, an issue often mistakenly attributed to John F. Kennedy himself.

 LBJ, the Bureau of the Budget, and Funding the CIA and the Pentagon

           Having for several years tanked in every encounter with the Pentagon, the Bureau of the Budget took another dive during the 1960 LBJ Senate hearings as the Bureau wore the somber colors of Eisenhower's "administrative failures." Senator Johnson was able to generate "a litany of military requests" that became, in fact, a Defense Department "shopping list." Throughout the Eisenhower Administration, Senator Johnson was the crucial ally of the military/intelligence coalition as it collected its funding from inside the Pentagon budget, especially after the heavily publicized threats of Soviet space and missile programs. The softest entry for the U.S. intelligence's black budget operations then became the hot areas of "air" and "space," specifically through the U.S. Air Force's programs in research and development, and then through NASA, hence Johnson's 1959-1960 Senatorial pressure on the Eisenhower White House that was topped by his 1960 Senate hearings.

          What followed were the "research and analysis" contracts (with their significance intelligence dimensions) for aircraft and space companies and think tank/development corporations funded by the Pentagon, all of them ostensibly working for the Air Force and the U.S. "aerospace" program. For LBJ and Texas, following his collaboration with the USAF, aerospace research and development (both in the government and business), the Budget Bureau, and with covert intelligence operations hidden inside persistent Pentagon funding appeals, the payoff was staggering: "As President, [LBJ] .... helped engineer the greatest Pentagon raid on the [U.S.] treasury since World War II. Among other results was a gigantic defense-industry boom for his home state, Texas."

          Johnson had elected to join the Budget Bureau/Pentagon/black budget intelligence team in the early 1950's, collecting Senatorial power and privilege; then as Vice President he acquired more potency for U.S. space and missile programs, the only areas that really mattered to him and Texas, until he "rode the tiger of military [and covert intelligence] spending into the White House ...[and] it rode him out."

 UNQUOTE

 [George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance: U.S. Intelligence’s Manipulation of Religious Groups and Individuals in Two World Wars and the Cold War and the Sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald, p.215]

 

 

You have certainly brought up a lot of background on LBJ that fleshes out the picture of who he was. 

I will read the Covert Magazine article and report back here. 

I guess it goes w/o saying, it is reprehensible that the current president has overseen a snuff job on the JFK Records, that might illuminate LBJ's role in the JFKA. 

On 2/27/2024 at 9:41 PM, Robert Morrow said:

You left out LBJ. No way. In my *opinion* Lyndon Johnson MICROMANAGED THE JFK ASSASSINATION like he micromanaged every other crime in his life or project that was important to him.

The Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson were at war and LBJ was acutely aware that the Kennedys were out to utterly destroy him and not merely remove him from the 1964 Democratic ticket. I suggest reading Jeremy Kuzmarov's scholarly take on the JFK assassination: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/11/22/60-years-after-jfks-death-it-is-more-and-more-apparent-that-kennedy-was-a-victim-of-a-palace-coup-spearheaded-by-vice-president-lyndon-b-johnson/

 

RM-

I will surely read the Covert Magazine article. 

Thanks for posting. 

What I find about all "so-and-so directed the JFKA" angles is they present 100 reasons why Mr So-and-So had motives, and that Mr. So  knew people who were capable of the JFKA. Then...the trail fades. 

The best leads, IMHO, go back to the Miami station of the CIA, and related mercs, and Cuban exiles, US military operatives, and anyone connected to the Bay of Pigs. 

Larry Hancock did a lot of serious work regarding people who forecast the JFKA, and they all were linked back to the Miami/Bay of Pigs people. Of course, JFK was the target of an assassination plot in Miami. 

And even Larry Hancock says he has not nailed down the JFKA. 

The thing of it is, LBJ did not seem well-connected into the CIA. He was a big domestic guy in his years in DC. 

It is true, Veep LBJ was being briefed on Vietnam, and John Newman says LBJ was actually getting a truer story on Vietnam than JFK. 

It is a fascinating bit of history that had the JFKA not happened, and the LIFE mag story on LBJ printed, he likely would have been bumped off the ticket. Maybe worse. 

LBJ had motives up the wazoo. 

But the BoP people not only had motives, but a burning desire for (an imagined) revenge. And they knew how to handle hardware. 

Again I will read the Covert Magazine article. But, as usual, I suspect a very small actual pre-JFKA plot. Like maybe three people. 

You can disagree with Gil Jesus, and that is fine. We all have points of view.

But Gil Jesus is doing what a defense counsel (embedded with the WC) should have done in 1963-4: Examine evidence with a gimlet, skeptical eye. 

Sometimes I disagree with Jesus (rarely). So what? He is doing the right thing, a review of the evidence. 

 

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. He represents the 9th district in Shelby and Tipton Counties, including the city of Memphis. (Credit: Greg Nash)

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee has renewed his call for the release of the remaining withheld files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The website of Rep. Cohen, the lone Democrat in the Volunteer State’s congressional delegation, announced the letter in a press release on Friday, Feb. 23. Noting the enduring public interest in the mystery surrounding JFK’s death, he cited the popularity of recent hit podcast “Who Killed JFK?,” hosted by filmmaker Rob Reiner and news personality Soledad O’Brien, as well as the sensational revelation of former Secret Service Agent Paul Landis that he found a bullet in the presidential limousine at Parkland Hospital (albeit, Rep. Cohen says erroneously that it was on the floor of the car).

Rep. Cohen is among the most activist members of Congress on the issue of full disclosure in the JFK files. In November 2017, his office issued a statement noting that, in postponing release of the remaining files in the JFK Collection at the National Archives, President Donald Trump had “failed to comply” with the JFK Records Act, which was passed unanimously by Congress in 1992 and set a deadline for release of Oct. 26, 2017.

Together with other members of the House, Cohen addressed several letters of appeal on the subject, several co-signed with other members of Congress, including:

• In October 2021, to President Biden, noting “that the majority of Americans, across demographic groups, do not believe the official narrative.”

• In November 2021, to President Biden, saying it was “unacceptable to use the pandemic as a reason to further delay the release of these documents.”

• In March 2022, seeking a meeting with “the appropriate Executive Branch official with knowledge and relevant information of the decision to postpone the release of the remaining records.”

• In October 2022, to the chairman of the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), noting that continuing secrecy had “furthered public skepticism regarding the facts of the assassination, with nearly 61 percent of Americans in 2017 believing there to have been a conspiracy in President Kennedy’s murder.”

Excerpt from a letter to President Biden, co-signed by Representatives Steve Cohen, Anna Eshoo, Jim McGovern, Sara Jacobs, and Joe Neguse, on Oct. 7, 2021.

In November 2022, Cohen became one of the first guests interviewed on the JFK Facts Podcast, and the following month, he publicly expressed disappointment that the most recent declassification of documents – on Dec. 15, 2022 – was only “partial.”

His most recent statement notes that “many Americans have become distrustful of the federal government” and draws a link between this distrust and continued secrecy over JFK’s murder. He has also opined that the ongoing policy of concealment has contributed to the rise of irresponsible conspiracy theories in American political discourse.

Quoting late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Rep. Cohen writes:

President Kennedy’s assassination has always been the subject of conspiracy theories. The governmental secrecy and recent delay in the release of the documents only perpetuates this type of thinking. If the papers demonstrate different circumstances or additional actors were involved, so be it. If the documents support the Warren Commission’s findings or further support the work of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so be it. If they implicate or embarrass the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any other governmental agency, the public has a right to know. After 60 years, it is time to quash the conspiracy theories and demonstrate the federal government’s accountability to the people.

Congressman Cohen serves on the House Judiciary Committee, one of six committees to have been sent H. R. 637 – the Justice for Kennedy Act – in January 2023. The bill calls for immediate release of all assassination related files held by six federal agencies (including the Internal Revenue Service) within 30 days of passage. Introduced by a Republican, David Schweikert of Arizona, H. R. 637 has so far received no co-sponsorship offers from any House members on the Democratic side of the aisle.

On 2/22/2024 at 1:39 AM, Tony Rose said:

Reading through this 5-month old stuff:

Bullet wounds will close up behind the bullet. I have seen it with my own eyes. A small caliber bullet (or small shot from a shotgun) can enter the body and lead observers -- close, less than a foot away -- to believe that the bullet hadn't even entered the body, but only left a bruise. I vas dere, Chahlie.

Yes, but that is not exactly my question.

Have experienced forensic pathologists ever seen a bullet path that they knew passed through the body, but when they probed it, they could not get the probe to follow the path? 

That is what is said to have happened with JFK's body, although we know the autopsy was  conducted by unexperienced people, certainly in comparison to working experts.  

A soldier on a battlefield, firing a single-shot bolt action rifle "at an enemy position" might indeed fire rapidly. Along with his fellow soldiers, he might be directing fire at a location perhaps 50 feet wide, or maybe even laying down "suppression" fire. 

Firing a single-shot bolt-action rifle at a moving target---that, JFK in a traveling limo---is a different matter. One must fire, work the bolt---and then carefully re-aim. 

JFK's assassin was firing at a moving target. 

In addition, my read on the Z film, is Gov. Connally is struck about Z-295 and JFK at Z-312. That is one second apart. 

That is not enough time for the both shots to have been fired by a lone gunman armed with a single-shot bolt action rifle. 

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42271329/jfk-assassination-cia-documents-released/

I missed this one, just saw it today, and we should give credit to those few journalists who actually do a good job in the JFK Records Act. 

Not a lot of meat to it, but at least a recognition the American public had been duped. 

"On Thursday, the National Archives released what they say are the last documents in their possession related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This was trumpeted as the final fulfillment of the president's order to come clean. Except, as we all have come to know over several decades, that doesn't mean we know everything or that we have all the information the U.S. government has about the assassination."

8 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Well worth the time!

 

https://jfkjmn.com/media/?fbclid=IwAR36IwenPIgSI0DoZzzK-1bmT8-7ORv1mR70JxmUrgMbVK5-yHRp-ibpICw

Thanks David