Benjamin Cole
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Posts posted by Benjamin Cole
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1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:
As to your question, there were a number of high level Admin figures that suspected conspiracy, perhaps even that level of conspiracy - I quote several of them in Tipping Point in terms of concerns and reasons to have them - some with specifics in regard to events they were personally involved in during 1963 that they felt might have related to a conspiracy. In later years they did express their thoughts, some to investigators, and investigations - although not in the public since that Prouty eventually came to do.
I don't think I have repeated any slanderous remarks, the critiques I have made of smaller points have been documented for some time....I don't consider historical research slander.
Certainly he was a whistle blower, no doubt about that....which is why I keep obsessively asking who has been doing the research on the details and scenario he put forth in his whistle blowing?
I've offered my assessments, I've called for someone or some group to actually take up his cause - I'm following my own leads but surely his strongest proponents would be into fleshing out his hypothesis?
I think Larry Hancock takes the necessary, circumspect approach to the JFKA.
We all desire an explanation of the JFKA, both detailed in operation, and larger, in terms of motives.
When I offer an explanation of the JFKA, I state it is speculative. Lower-level anti-Castro Cubans piggybacked on a false-flag operation in Dallas. BTW, there were something like 2,000 guys being trained in the anti-Castro efforts in the early 1960s, and who felt crossed by JFK (due in part to post Bay of Pigs CIA narratives). If literally only one in a thousand of those guys decided to go to Dallas with lethal intent....
In this forum we generally apply a very high bar to "proving" LHO's involvement in the JFKA. He is treated as innocent until proven guilty, and then some.
Then, depending on author, the bar is dropped to the floor on a Lansdale, a Dulles, an LBJ, an Angleton. Dulles went to a CIA Camp Perry facility on Nov. 22, so he is guilty.
Prouty has interesting insights to the Deep State. But reading his account of "Lansdale" smirking with the tramps as he walks by based on a photo....leaves me uneasy. We see the back of someone's head in the photo. This begs the question of why Lansdale would be walking the streets near Dealey Plaza in the aftermath of a planned assassination he orchestrated....
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This is a completely readable and fascinating account of Watergate within the broader context of a national security state. Yes, a little OT in this forum, but germane for insights.
Nixon’s Wars: Secrecy, Watergate, and the CIA
https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1350&context=etd
This is the bachelor's thesis of a fellow named Chris Collins, at Eastern Kentucky University, who thereafter became a squad leader in the US Army, judging from Linked In. That's all I know about him, but he appears to have written in a deep, but non-polemical style.
This is just one of dozens of interesting insights from the thesis:
"The program, called VENONA, was so secret that even President Truman was not fully informed of its existence.19 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley made the decision to keep the program secret 16 Richard Nixon, Six Crises (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 13. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 59. 19 Moynihan, Secrecy, 61-62. 14 from all other government agencies except for the FBI, as an internal FBI memo from October 1949 reveals. It stated that General Bradley would “personally assume the responsibility of advising the President or anyone else in authority if the contents of any of this material so demanded,” but that the FBI should “not handle the material in such a way that [CIA Director] Admiral [Roscoe] Hillenkoetter or anyone else outside the Army Security Agency and the Bureau are aware of the contents of these messages and the activity being conducted.”20 The VENONA intercepts had produced proof of Hiss’s espionage for the Soviet Union (and also Harry D. White’s), but due to the secrecy of the operation, it could not be made public...."
OK, so the Army Security Agency was running intercepts, and keeping results secret from even the CIA, and possibly the President.
Collins' larger observation is the national security state has become so pervasive, that it ends up as influential and playing a role in all sorts of events, such as Watergate, or Iran-Contra and so on.
We tend to think about the CIA a lot in this forum, and we probably should. But there are 17 national intel agencies. John Newman is evidently taking a long look at other military intel. The VENONA project is a reminder that not everything has to run through the CIA, or possibly the NSA, thought it might on paper.
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OK, but here is my point:
If one posits LHO participated in or alone perpetrated the shooting on 11/22, participants on this blog will shred the abundant circumstantial evidence that he was involved.
We reason that no one saw LHO on the stairs down from the Sixth Floor in the aftermath of the shooting, ergo LHO is innocent and so on.
We are to believe that LHO is a totally innocent patsy (although a CIA or military-intel asset) who draws a weapon upon being accosted by officers at the Texas Theater.
(My own take is LHO willingly participated in a false flag fake assassination attempt, but others piggybacked on the op and made it real. My take is speculative, but fits the facts neatly).
But then we flip, and if Lansdale or Dulles had a meeting somewhere, or were somewhere on an organizational chart, or were unlikable characters with sordid histories, then they must be guilty. Curtis E. LeMay (a loathsome sort) was at a retreat in Canada, ergo he planned that as a diversion. If he had been at HQ, we would say that proves he had advance knowledge. Angleton hid and destroyed papers, and so he is convicted.
All of the aforementioned and many others have records that are lamentable, to put it mildly. All could have participated in the post-JFKA cover-up, and probably did. We have concrete evidence the CIA lied to the WC and the HSCA.
I posit someone inside the CIA worked levers to have Ruby do what he did.
But who actually ordered the hit on JFK? Very speculative. Larry Hancock and John Newman may be getting somewhere.
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9 hours ago, David Andrews said:
Well, it's not a sentiment, it's 10 years of first-hand experience, without bias or judgment. The work is painful and depleting, more so than factory production work. Regardless the pay, no one I've met in farm work would take it but for necessity.
Look, no one wants to work at all. We would all like $5 million in the bank, and then to "work" producing movies or music, or art, -- It depends on where you feel you're best serving society, wage earning or creating. Even Ayn Rand knew that.
I best serve society by laying on my couch and eating Cheetos.
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47 minutes ago, David Andrews said:
I agree, though I'm using the article to alert people to the book and its author, not the squalor of the reporting, which after all is built on a Louis Armstrong anecdote, because he sells better than Patrice Lumumba. Susan Williams has written a past book, and I think some online pieces, on the Dag Hammarskjold affair:
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Killed-Hammarskjold-Supremacy-Africa/dp/0190231408
I've been dismayed at Salon.com these days. David Talbot is long gone, and they've posted at least two articles calling 9/11 "truthers" (I'm not a fan of that word) the forefathers of QAnon and Trumpism. So it was a surprise to find on today's anniversary-themed home page a link to this fairly capable 2002 article on the 9/11 Israeli "art students" Salon seems to want to remind us that it was once worthy of doubt's benefit:
https://www.salon.com/2002/05/07/students/
To your point about rehab for Detroit or Baltimore: Newsmax was recently punked by a Paul Wolfowitz imposter who insisted on-air that the Afghan war trillions would have been better spent at home. The video clip of the incident is well worth watching:
Finally, I'll be blunt: I worked Food Safety in the produce industry for 10 years, and my experience is that the farm labor jobs taken by many illegals are largely not wanted among American-born Hispanics and Blacks, and are taken by illegals not because they lack standards but because they lack language skills, job skills, and, of course, documentation. They may acquire documentation, but the sad trend is that language and job skill training is not going to trickle down this far. It's no different for los pobrecitos today than when Woody Guthrie was here sticking up for them.
Largely agree, save for the "Americans don't want these jobs" sentiment. Look, no one wants to work at all. We would all like $5 million in the bank, and then to "work" producing movies or music, or art, or joining some worthy charity or starting a foundation, running a boutique or snazzy nightspot, etc. You don't see ex-Mrs Bill Gates driving a taxi as "she wants to work."
I spent 20 years in the furniture-manufacturing business in L.A.
If wages and conditions improve enough, Americans will take any job. In the old days, college students worked hard through summer, one reason there was a summer break.
Declining real wages in America for the bottom half of the labor force is perhaps the biggest issue in America today, followed by exploding housing costs. You read the M$M, and you would think it is Afghanistan, or 9/11, or 1/6.
Real wages and housing costs are about 100,000 times as important as those three topics put together.
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12 hours ago, David Andrews said:
White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, by Susan Williams.
D.A.--
This brings up a quandary for the WaPo-NYT crowd. They are avid globalists, global-security state warriors. But they also cloth themselves daily in the anti-racist mantle.
Yet, the WaPo-NYT crowd never defines US foreign-military policy as racist, or anti-black. Every other aspect of American society reflects structural racism, but not US foreign-military policy.
Somehow spending a few trillion in Iraqistan and not Baltimore-Detroit is OK. In the next 10 years the US will spend $13 trillion on DoD-VA. Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan is described as "big" and so on.
Millions of illegal immigrants (good people largely) vie for jobs against Americans, in the bottom half of the labor pool. Who are those Americans? Personally, I don't care to define people by their color, but if we are obsessed with ID politics then the brutal facts are illegal immigrants dilute the labor pool heavily for American-born Blacks and Hispanics. That is never a talking point at Wapo-NYT.
Lately, the WaPo-NYT-MSM wants to conflate American populism (which is generally anti-globalist) with hillbilly racism, and even the 9/11 event.
I grew up worshipping WaPo-NYT and great journalism. But something has changed.
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2 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:
Of course Bush is, as the only route to liberty for the masses seeking freedom and democracy is civil disobedience, rebellion or revolution. Marx (who I generally dislike) looks to have been right about the end days of Capitalism. You’d end up with oligarchs cannibalising government institutions.
I always say vulgar Marxist diagnosis is right 90% of the time; unfortunately Marxist medicine is poison.
Liz Cheney and George Bush Jr. are the new CNN heroes.
Who does CNN really work for?
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7 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
Or the science.
The 9/11 Truth research is, basically, Newtonian physics.
Hardly a "conspiracy theory."
But remember, a far, far more serious danger to our nation...was the 1/6 scrum.
If what you say is true, one of the authors of the 9/11 demolition, former President Bush Jr., is now likening that event to 1/6. The M$M accepts this analogy.
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50 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:
Coulda, shoulda, woulda!--- Ben what you neglect to mention in the article is that Trump tried to get us out of our military commitments on Nov. 9th, 2020, out of sheer desperacy after he lost the election. At that point he had no power at all and was a lame duck President who no one would follow. The irrefutable facts are that Biden got out of Afghanistsan and did it in the first 8 months of his Presidency and is facing the heat Trump do didn't have the courage to face .
From your article.
When it came down to it, Trump was indecisive. In the view of top officials, he did not seem to want to own the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal.
That's because he's never taken an action he had to be responsible for..
By the spring of 2017, two generals Trump had installed in top positions — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an interagency process run by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster — had begun working on an option to send 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
What President whose really serious about withdrawing troops would put 2 generals as Defense Secretary and National Security Advisor? And he'd actually bragged about it, that he had the 2 toughest guys in the toughest posts! Like he was going to be the tough guy President , and he actually bragged about increasing Defense spending. Obviously he was confused.
There are many stories about how Presidents select certain cabinet members. Some were just from articles that were previously published. Unfortunately Trump doesn't read. He just wasn't prepared to be President.
McMaster was replaced in March 2018 and Trump's third national security adviser, John Bolton, was a notorious advocate for U.S. military interventionism.
Then he hires Bolton , the biggest hawk in Washington! You can't make this stuff up. Do you think subconsciously he just wanted this whole disarmament thing to fail?
Just like people around Nixon ignoring his attempts at martial law. Is it really just another stock "military deep state conspiracy". Sure they didn't want to hear his occasional disarmament rantings amongst his tough talk about things such as seizing the oil from Iraq?He appointed Generals for chrissake!. While in office, he could have truly made his peaceful intentions known to the American people and been consistent, but he didn't. .
Since you always seem to come back to Trump and the raw deal you think he got, It sounds like you had great hopes for him. I would have given him credit had he wound down the war state. If he wanted to reach across the aisle to the Dem doves, he was in a unique position to wind down the war state and also get credit for breaking the R&D stalemate in Washington. I honestly believe that was possible.
Blame the Deep State for the umpteenth time for holding back Trump for something Biden in part accomplished in his first 8 months.But one's character and presence actually matters, and the fundaments just weren't there, and as an executive, the guy just couldn't string anything together.
"But one's character and presence actually matters, and the fundaments just weren't there, and as an executive, the guy just couldn't string anything together."--Kirk
This is largely true.
It is also true the national security state went after him hammer & tong.
Like I said, had the national security state coalesced around Trump early on to bring his anti-globalist views to fruition ( as was their legal obligation), and protect his flanks along the way, he might have succeeded.
Instead we had the Russiagate farce, and lies to the Commander-in-Chief about how many troops were where. For starters.
Interesting parallel from cinema: Captain Quigg (Bogart). He was a terrible captain. But had the staff bolstered Quigg and worked with him, it would have improved outcomes. Instead Fred MacMurray operated to undermine Quigg, worsening matters.
Anyway, the national security and the globalists are bigger than ever. Trump will soon retreat into a lugubrious section of history books.
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11 hours ago, Dennis Berube said:
For those hypotheses referring to a lower level CIA plot….
How does a low level plot manage to get flag staff (and probably even JCS) officers into the autopsy room directing the operation?
How does a low level plot get the intelligence agencies to remove the flash warning on Oswald?
How does a low level plot have at least 1, but possibly 2-3 other similar plots involving different people and involve state department cover up help in the Chicago case?
How does a low level plot get the secret service to illegally take the Presidents body at gunpoint?
How does a low level plot get a civilian Dulles into a CIA facility that weekend doing god knows what?
There are many more of these types of things, but without veering too deep… if the “official” narrative of this case and the 3 others like it at the same timeframe is to lie about the circumstances 50+ years later, a logical supposition would be that the forces with the most control over public information flow would be in some way responsible. Considering those forces are also the same forces with access to the alphabet agencies, I see this discussion as possibly intriguing, but ultimately limited in usefulness. If we can never get access to the critical information that would definitively answer these questions, we can never 100% know where the plot started and ended. Even if we could track it concretely to Dulles, you will never know if David Rockefeller asked him to do it in some way or not. Does anyone think the Bilderbergers were upset about the murder?
In terms of history, viewing the 60’s assassinations as separate events is a shallow analysis that misses a big forest that is too important in understanding the modern world. In my opinion of course.
Dennis B-
You ask tough questions.
My answer is, there was a lot of complicity but after the fact.
The CIA simply could not have the true story revealed, that even low-level CIA assets had done the JFKA.
Or that the CIA set up a false flag op to conduct a fake but unsuccessful assassination of the President, that somehow became real.
After the fact, the "we must avoid a nuclear war" meme took hold, as did "only lefty-loser-commies would defend LHO, or plant other stories" meme. Mark Lane was treated like dirt, and could not even get his work published in the US.
The FBI build the case, including fabricating evidence, against LHO "for the national good," and the WC tagged along.
Everybody felt the pressure. Kenneth O'Donnell worked for JFK, was a JFK loyalist, and rode in the car behind JFK on No. 22.
O'Donnell told the Warren Commission that the shooting had come from the rear. He later told his friend, Tip O'Neill, that he had been under pressure from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to say this. In fact, he believed that the gunfire had come from in front of the motorcade. O'Donnell commented: "I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family." This story was backed up by David F. Powers, who was sitting next to O'Donnell in the motorcade.
I tend to favor JFKA explanations that involve a very limited number of participants, as in five or less.
Some explanations have pre-JFKA participation by dozens, across organizational lines, including Secret Service, Joint Chiefs, CIA, Army intel, Dallas Police Department, and FBI.
This suggests that the world's premier spy agency (CIA) had involved itself in a plan with dozens of participants, in several "leaky" agencies, to assassinate the US President.
Well, maybe. But the odds get longer and longer against such a plan, the more pre-JFKA participants are involved.
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4 hours ago, Anthony Thorne said:
Beyond his work in maybe a hundred different think tanks (CSIS being a key one for him), James Woolsey has spent decades helpfully putting his name to endless reports and blue ribbon commissions urging more weapon sales for the Pentagon. So when Woolsey puts his name to a book on the JFK assassination, you’re really getting the Cold War hawk perspective unfiltered.
Here is something to remember: There must be hundreds, maybe more than a thousand, thinks tanks, centers, foundations, academic organizations, media outlets, congressional committees, federal agencies all devoted to globalism.
Is there even one "anti-globalist' think tank out there? If you know of one, tell me, and I will subscribe to whatever publications they produce.
I do not mean "anti-globalist" in the sense of being xenophobic. I like people, anybody. I mean in the sense that the US should mind its own business, quarter troops on US soil for defense of homeland, and trade relations should benefit the American middle-employee class. I cannot think of a single organization devoted to such ideals.
Trump talked some along these lines, and was quickly annihilated. Trump was also loathsome for many other reasons, and good riddance. But he was annihilated for his anti-globalism.
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5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
Ben,
Trump has now flip flopped 180 degrees on ending the war in Afghanistan-- blaming Biden for the war's end.
But it's hardly the first time that we've watched watched Donald flip flop on issues involving the "Deep State."
He flip flopped on releasing the JFK assassination records.
Also, during his 2016 Republican primary debates with Jeb Bush, Trump declared, "When I'm President, the American people are going to find out who really destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11."
But, as POTUS, Trump never uttered a word on that subject.
And, for the past 20 years, the U.S. mainstream media has never uttered a word about the Project for a New American Century.
The Project For a New American Century
You misunderstand the point of what I am saying.
Just as Nixon was loathsome, so was Trump.
But, Axios reports that had the global security state supported and worked with Trump to get out of Afghanistan, the US would have been out under the Trump watch. And from Syria.
But instead the global security state undermined Trump, and planted endless stories against him in the compliant media. And we have reached a point of institutionalized insanity that when a US president say he want to get troops out of Country X, he is painted as a lunatic or wildly irresponsible. See Biden at present.
Here is the point: Hopefully, Trump is gone. The global security state persists. What the global security state did against Trump should be recognized---they will do the same thing against any President who crosses them. See Biden at present.
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23 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:
Benjamin, over the years we have been unable to cope with Amazon's rules about the Kindle version so even if one person objected to its quality they would take it down, we might get it back up with a new version then the same thing would happen again....sorry, its been frustrating to say the least.
While I can't offer you the details and substantiation that is in the book about Martino's connections to Morales (which went on after the assassination) or some of the other points that are in the book, I can offer you this synopsis of what his son saw - which took some years to get him to put on paper, saying it was all uncomfortable for him would be an understatement. Perhaps it will help some:
http://www.larry-hancock.com/documents/chapter 01/Events59-63.pdf
Yes, I have now read the piece. Certainly interesting, although some expressions like "they are going to kill him" might just refer to politics, vicious op-eds and ads, hostile crowds, thrown eggs, that sort of thing.
Actually, Morales playing a role in the JFKA fits with my idea that the JFKA was planned and executed on a lower level, even by CIA assets, but that the CIA and others had to spend the the next decades burying the truth, and that was "our own guys did it." This also raises the unseemly specter that the CIA worked levers to have Ruby do what he did.
One still has to explain the CIA biography build of LHO, and what LHO was doing in the TSBD. That is not something Morales could pull off. And as I have said, to make LHO the patsy you have to make sure he is not down on the street waving hello at JFK.
I will send you a PM also.
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13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
This was really one of the most painful books I have read in a while. And considering the rubbish churned out by Abrams and Shaw, that is saying something.
The Ruskies and the Cubans killed Kennedy? And Castro was play acting with Jean Daniel?
In the entire book I do not recall one reference to the ARRB. Or Joannides and AMSPELL.
The only value in this pile of trash is it shows just how badly the CIA wants to bring back the Cold War. And to forget what JFK was trying for in his Peace Speech. Its a true disgrace of a book. It essentially spits on all the good work that had been done due to the ARRB. And it shows how those Russian intel defectors knew what the CIA and MI 6 wanted, and were all too eager to give them in return for cash and escape from a crumbling Russia.
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/operation-dragon
Oh, egads. And the timing of this "book" suggests it yet another effort to essentially undercut the idea that full release of the records under the JFK Act is necessary.
And what is it with the Daily Beast? They are publishing Max Holland?
Why not just post the CIA escutcheon on the Daily Beast website?
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12 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
Notice that the M$M is attacking so-called "conspiracy theories" about 9/11-- even comparing them to Trump's Big Lie-- without mentioning the accurate scientific analyses of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. *
Apparently, Newtonian physics is part of a kooky 9/11 conspiracy theory.
And we are assured by the Washington Post and New York Times that these censored scientific analyses of the WTC demolitions have been "debunked." What a relief.
It is interesting what is attains gospel status both in the M$M, and then also in the political tribes and offshoots. And then what is ridiculed.
The above link suggests Trump in fact tried to pull US troops out of several regions, and was simply overruled by the Pentagon-"Deep State," and no one in the media gave a hoot. This was not a story to gain traction.
Really, the above link is not about whether you like Trump or not, or think he staged a coup attempt on Jan. 6, or how bad his hairdo was. Trump was mercurial, and not steady.
What this is really about a US President giving a legal order, and the military wing of executive branch not carrying out the order.
Decades ago, Nixon ordered the CIA to give him the Bay of Pigs files. They never did. I am not fan of Nixon, but do you prefer a government in which the military-intel services unilaterally decide what orders they will follow?
But Trump is a no go in the M$M media and triggers loss of bowel control for self-styled social justice warriors. But---Trump was right on getting troops out of the Mideast, right on the Wuhan lab, right on the need for border security, right on the CCP-China trade issue.
All of that was "wrong" in the lights of US elites-media, who want access to cheap labor at home and abroad and a global military.
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1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:
Benjamin, I'd have to refer you all the way back to SWHT talked for a detailed exposition on Martino, and why I take him seriously....including not only the two initially anonymous reports submitted to the HSCA by his close friends but alswo based on my own extensive inquiries with his son (you will find his story and observations on my web site). That plus his key role instigating and actually participating in the TILT / Pawley mission into Cuba which was under the operational oversight of Robertson and Morales.
As to his coming forward, he certainly did not and never expected what little he did say to become public, nor did his wife or his family who had both kept certain of his actions suggesting foreknowledge even from the HSCA - until after his wife's death.
What I can say is that for me his credibility was enhanced by the fact that never even in private did he overplay his own role, which he described strictly as a courier, having only been given some very general remarks in regard to Oswald being a patsy and not an active participant.
What I have resolved for myself is that the only contact he had within the CIA was David Morales, and that went as far back as his time in Cuba. Otherwise he was angry with basically everyone he felt had abandoned him in Cuba, especially the American embassy staff there. In that regard we have extended insights into his own extreme anti-Castro views in both his book and his record.
As to his post-assassination efforts to blame a conspiracy on Castro, those were entirely in sync with what the DRE was doing as well as some of his associates such as Sturgis - basically all trying to put into play what had been in the plan to point towards Castro but which fell apart with Oswald's arrest.
But all that is superficial, just a part of what I go into in SWHT and really only refer to in Tipping Point.
LH-
I live overseas now and getting paper copies of books very difficult. But I will attempt to to re-read SWHT anyway, by hook or crook.
Thanks again for all the serious work you have done on the JFKA.
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39 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:
First off, in regard to an operational use of Oswald I present a "scenario" for that in Tipping Point -- in that scenario I propose that he was already being operationally used in at least two and very possibly three ways by CIA officers in SAS and at JMWAVE beginning by August. Those have nothing to do with any earlier use by ONI, CIA or FBI. The reason he could be used in multiple ways at the same time is because he already had a public image created during the summer in New Orleans and that was sufficient for the propaganda operation which began at that time using both the DRE as an outlet and beginning an expansion of that using various aggressive anti-Castro right wing outlets such as INCA and others that I name in the book. You can even trace that via their news letters and the "Oswald recording/record" that was created for that purpose.
Beyond propaganda SAS was integrating his identity into a counter intelligence operation targeting Cuban embassy staff both in Mexico City and New Orleans and we can come up with the names involved in that as well. The operations themselves have been documented for some time, with probably the most detailed exposition by Bill Simpich.
Following that It was easy enough for certain CIA officers and DRE military wing people to use Oswald's legend and identity in an action that was intended to trigger action against the Castro regime....the attack in Dallas. We could actually call that a "false flag" operation that worked right up to the point that Oswald was taken into custody....just as Martino described. And some of the likely people involved in trying to make that false flag happen were indeed in Dallas....the details for that scenario will be offered relatively soon in the Red Bird leads paper David Boylan and I are wrapping up now.
Well, I will have to go back and re-read the excellent Tipping Point again. For some reason I am dubious about Martino, but I forget why.
It may be because first he was a state asset trying to blame Castro for the JFKA, and then he partially revealed the "real" plan which did not involve anyone by name in the CIA. And no clear discussions about how the CIA and others played an obfuscating role post-JFKA----and this may be the most important point.
In other words, perhaps Martino was always in PR for the CIA, and that's about it.
People who say they played a tangential role in the still-mysterious JFKA are always off-putting on some level (think E Howard Hunt) or that they have super-duper secret inside info, but are keeping it locked away (Richard Nagell).
But that does not detract from the excellent and sustained work of Larry Hancock.
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13 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:
I suppose I should be clear as to my view since it was mentioned above. At this point in time all I've really seen that would describe the Lansdale view of a conspiracy and the attack in Dallas is Lansdale's letter to Garrison. I've not seen any researcher do a detailed paper or book exploring that hypothesis, citing sources, naming specific people and dates and relating in detail about how it all translated to the attack in Dallas and what followed.
When I see that I would be able to evaluate it and probably offer an opinion. As it stands his letter simply is not sufficient basis for me to even have an opinion - even though I spent an extended period of time years ago on Lansdale and found nothing "operational" myself. Which just means I didn't find it so I would say those who accept his hypothesis should have been working for years now to flesh it out with details and publish that research in some form.
I've also seen the premise that Lansdale was running a false flag operation - so that would mean he was a good guy who got had, not a bad conspirator? The thing is I have seen no detail on that either, so somebody needs to do some homework there and write up something that can be evaluated. From my own perspective I can't see who would turn to Lansdale to run that sort of thing in the fall of 1963. Who would trust his skills, where would he get the contacts, who was actually involved in the false flag operation, what is its chronology.
Basically I've reached the point where I expect that tossing out a few names and floating a scenario needs to be followed up by some real research - which raises the question of why Lansdale himself didn't do that since he claimed to have some starting point facts?
Obviously I have my own hypothesis on the conspiracy and participants, and at this point have "operationalized" it in considerable detail in Tipping Point - with sources, motive, means, people, movements, roles etc. To reach an opinion on the Lansdale hypothesis I need to see comparable body of work - as I hope to see in the Newman hypothesis, the Alberelli hypothesis etc.
For context though, for those who would like some counterpoint to Prouty's views about Diem and the American entry into Viet Nam, I would recommend some more contemporary works: Cold War Mandarin by Seth Jacops is exceptional as is Michael Swanson's Why The Vietnam War.
I have to agree with Larry H. here, and in a small way I have been guilty as charged.
My "plausible scenario" of a very small false flag op gone wrong mentions some real names---David Atlee Phillips, Eladio Del Valle and Hermininio Diaz---but I can prove nothing about them being in Dallas that day. (Witness Amos Lee Euins contemporarily ID'ed a gunman who looked like Eladio, in that he was bald, but that hardly cinches the deal. Antonio Veciana claimed to met LHO in the company of Phillips, and who knows if true?).
That is the problem with these speculative scenarios. They are all possible. Dulles, Lansdale, or LBJ, or Marcello, or lower-level Cubans.
I worry that John Newman is going to do a version of looking for keys at night under the light pole, as many of us do. That is, Newman is researching in Operation Gladio or something like that and will see clues, and then add them up.
But we do not see the clues we do not see. The keys may be in the dark somewhere.
One thing seems true, and that is the CIA was biography-building on LHO. That suggests CIA had an operational interest in LHO, and planned to use him somehow. My guess is a false flag op, Operation Northwoods style, to possibly trigger a war with Cuba. A false-flag but failed JFKA.
But mine is just a guess. Lansdale? Maybe. Dulles? Maybe. LBJ? Maybe.
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2 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:
At what point in his turn back was he hit? . He never turns all the way back so then the question is where did the shot come from that took the path it did through him?
My best guess is ~Z 296.
https://www.assassinationresearch.com/v2n2/zfilm/zframe290.html
The above website allows you to look at one frame at a time. Somewhat blurry copy, unfortunately.
It seems very likely the bullet did come above and behind, based on the testimony of Robert Shaw, who I think is very credible.
An oddity about the JBC shooting may not be the back, but rather his wrist. The doctors say the bullet entered the dorsal or non-palm side of the wrist. It is almost impossible for a normal human to hold the dorsal side of the wrist/palm so that it faces the chest. The volar or palm side, yes.
Dr. Robert Shaw said it was possible another bullet entirely had entered and exited Connally's wrist.
This may seem like a stretch, since there were only three audible shots, at least inside the limo. But occupants of the limo said bullets were entering the cab as if from automatic weapons fire, or in flurries. This suggests perhaps an additional automatic rifle with a silencer was used that day.
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2 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:
I was verifying the diagram before I posted and read that Shaw disagreed with the diagram in his WC testimony. He did not personally make the diagram. The article claimed he lowered the nipple AND the exit wound. But although he lowered the nipple he said the wound was in the right place, he just had to lower the nipple to reflect its position relative to the exit wound.(see below)
WC CE680
Yes, interesting chart. This is consistent with what is seen on the Z film, that JBC turns around to see what has happened to JFK, but after JFK has been shot through the neck. JBC does a near 180 in his seat, and looks over his own right shoulder to try to see JFK. But JFK has slumped to JFK's left (towards Jackie). JBC begins to turn to try to look over his own left shoulder, when struck. His torso is "leaning back" when struck, thus explaining the relatively steep 28 degree angle.
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24 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:
Based on this Ed Barker CBS interview of Gerald Hill which seems to be from Nov. 22, 1963 (?), http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/SGTHILL1.pdf, Hill says Poe's two shells were already in the cigarette package held by Poe when he came on the scene and that Hill never took the shells out or handled them. Therefore Hill could not have read the 38 AUTO marking on the bottom of the shell, as his source of information for saying they were automatic. Since the bullet taken from Tippit's body and tested by the FBI that night showed it was .38 Special (as did the three later ones examined months later), Hill's statement (in keeping with other howlers of Hill on matters of fact, not all sinister) seems a very inadequate basis upon which to assume there were automatic bullets fired by the Tippit gunman. Hill's statement that an automatic was used "from the shells" seems well explained not as based upon holding the shells and looking at a marking 38 AUTO underneath (which never happened), but rather from a misunderstanding based on reasoning from the shells having been ejected at all, and/or Callaway authoritatively saying the "pistol up" position observed of the gunman had looked from a distance like a reloading of an automatic. The automatic seems to be a red herring, founded on nothing substantial.
I think the evidence shells came from Oswald's revolver but the bullets in Tippit's body came from a different .38 Special which produced the four shells originally found. Those shells originally found were marked by Poe, also by Barnes, and turned in, but substitutions of shells fired from Oswald's revolver occurred sometime between Sat Nov 23 and Wed Nov 27, with imitation attempts of replacement officers' markings, not perfectly done. The FBI lab accurately found what it found based on what was submitted to them by the Dallas Crime Lab. Later Poe could not find his marks not because he did not mark but because the marks which he did write he could not find on the evidence shells. Barnes also marked originally and could not recognize his own marks for sure and guessed. Neither Dhority nor Doughty testified under oath to the WC identifying their marks to specific shells that they marked either. Somehow the shells that went from the officers, with their markings, into the Dallas Police department Crime Lab on Fri Nov 22 were not the same shells that were submitted from that Crime Lab on Thu Nov 28 to the FBI for forensic examination.
It has also been noted how odd it is, under the common narrative, that Oswald would eject shells at the scene openly which could easily be traced to his revolver, then not ditch the revolver but have it found on his person at the Texas Theatre. But disidentifying the killer of Tippit from Oswald renders this sensible at both ends. The killer manually ejected shells (necessary in order to reload to prepare for the next killing) close to the scene because it did not matter that the shells would be found; they could be traced to the firearm not to him, and he did not plan to remain in Dallas or keep the firearm in his possession after his work was done. He executed Tippit, first mission accomplished, then reloaded and headed to the Texas Theatre to execute Oswald, after which the murder weapon, untraceable via serial number to him and wiped clean of prints, would have been abandoned the moment its purpose had been fulfilled. The second execution, of Oswald--with that vehicle with engine running out back of the Texas Theatre with no identifiable driver in sight noticed by police when they arrived--did not happen however due to the accident of the Brewer and Postal phone call and rapid police response, though that failure on Friday was remedied on Sunday.
Greg D. Thanks for you clarifying comments.
"The FBI lab accurately found what it found based on what was submitted to them by the Dallas Crime Lab."--GD
Are you sure the switch did not happen inside the FBI? That is, DPD sent the "real" shells to the FBI, and inside the FBI someone did a switch?
I ask this due to the history of CE 399.
thanks
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3 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:
Just saw a diagram recently made by Shaw and it had the bullet traveling at a 28 degree downward angle. connally must have been leaning back about 16 degrees if the trajectory was straight.
Thanks for this post. Are you able to reproduce the diagram of the 28-degree angle?
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7 hours ago, Matt Allison said:
I believe a "starter pistol" from that era, like those used at track meets, would have also presented the exact same effects: sound of gun firing, sight of smoke, and smell of gunpowder.
That's right. I hadn't thought of that. Also, theatrical pistols make noise and smoke, but issue only wads of paper.
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There is lots and lots of reasons to not accept that JBC was struck by the same bullet that passed through JFK's neck.
Remember, JBC said, "I was knocked over, just doubled over by the force of the bullet. It went in my back and came out my chest about 2 inches below and the left of my right nipple. The force of the bullet drove my body over almost double and when I looked, immediately I could see I was just drenched with blood. (1 HSCA 42)"
But as JBC emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign he is bolt upright. He then turns around to look for JFK, and makes a 180-degree turn in his seat. Maybe there was a lapel flap, maybe not. It does not seem germane.
The Z-film, and JBC's testimony, and that of his wife all line up.
The upshot is that was not enough time between the shot that struck JBC, and then the head shot to JFK, to have been accomplished by a lone single-shot bolt action rifle. Ergo, two guns. Ergo, conspiracy.
For my part, I suspect two guns behind JFK, and diversionary noise and smoke (possibly from a snub nose .38) from the Grassy Knoll. Possible use of semi-automatic weapons with silencers and frangible bullets.
The National Security State
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Dennis B.-
Thanks for your comment.
I am no expert on the Hiss affair and I will defer to you. Perhaps the author, Chris Collins, is in error in this matter.
But in the larger picture. Collins paints a grim picture of a ubiquitous national security state, and that the mere existence of a such a large apparatus is problematic.
As a "buff," I have been reading about the national security state since the 1960s, and I found his thesis is worthwhile read, even if I "knew most of the stuff" going in. His perspective is insightful.