Benjamin Cole

The doctors at Parkland also. 

Curiously, the even the Bethesda autopsy team. Humes, for example, did not believe CE 399 could have struck Connally's wrist. 

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

Jim,

It was kind of eye opening to me to look at Rose Cherami's story against the backdrop of the AGVA (the American Guild of Variety Artists) and what was going on the fall of 1962.

https://books.google.com/books?id=mM71tt8x_9UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

These girls were being run up and down along the circuit, shuttled from town to town.

Steve Thomas

Your post would be enlivened by photographs. 

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael Marcades has done a revised edition of his book about his mother, Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals.

This story is amazing every time I look at it.  To think that Fritz did not think it was important, even though the Louisiana State Police did, makes it even more shocking.

Mike just about proves she was murdered by the way.  The HSCA fumbled that aspect of the story.

Her, Naglell, Odio and the Chicago Plot.  There was a red flight flashing. But not according to the Warren Report.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/the-woman-who-predicted-jfk-s-assassination

Great article on Rose Cheramie. Her story has been pretty much verified, and it is chilling, remarkable. 

Boy, what a commentary. A troubled woman, very down on her luck, afflicted by drugs, easy for her to just keep quiet...but she tells the truth.

In contrast, the combined forces of the official US security establishment, from the FBI, to the CIA, the WC....well, a different story.

As they say, never judge a book by the cover. 

I still sit on the fence on Nagell. All his materials and documents disappear. So tough to confirm he worked for the KGB, or much of what he says. 

As they say, trust but verify. 

 

15 hours ago, Dan Rice said:

Fidel Castro and Charles de Gaulle would be two more.

Dan R-

That's right. One might exclude Castro as having an agenda. 

de Gaulle was the Swiss Cheese president. So many attempts were made on de Gaulle the assassins must have thought they can shoot at him but not hit anything.  de Gaulle's lifetime record is tremendous. 

15 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Vincent Salandria.

David A-

Thanks for your comment. 

Vincent Salandria is a real smartie, but I am excluding people from the JFKA research community. 

11 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

Desmond Fitzgerald and Samuel Halpern.  Per Bill Kelly, "Well Samuel Halpern was an assistant to CIA official Desmond FitzGerald, who was encouraging AMLASH to kill Castro – with a high powered rifle. Halpern and FitzGerald were having lunch together in Geogetown when they learned of the assassination, and as they were leaving FitzGerald remarked that he wondered wheather “his Cubans” – the Pathfinder Cubans trained at JMWAVE, were involved, as they were the ones paid and trained to kill Castro." DAP also wondered out loud if the Cubans trained to kill Castro ended up killing JFK.

Chuck S--Excellent, thank you.

Yes, the number of reasonable, clued-in people who immediately suspected the CIA, such as RFK, is rather shocking. 

10 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

You could say it was just a slur on Israel, his enemies. But, I would hazard a guess that there was shared intelligence between Libya, Egypt and other nations in the region that were on a knife edge with Israel. That may have come from that region and not the US. There are a few threads running on the Israel theory but, for me, its just another reason for the ‘power elite’ to whack him. As JFK surmised himself after reading 7 Days In May; he felt it would take 3 Bay of Pigs style events to make him ripe for a coup in the USA. 
I am happy to say the reasons were financial mostly and strategic. He exceeded his forecast of 3. 

I am interested in compiling a list of well-connected US figures, or on-the-scene professionals (Secret Service, technicians at the autopsy) who thought WC fell down on the job, but not researchers and journalists, though the latter two categories are important. 

Evidently, Vincent P. has compiled such a list. 

 

4 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

This guy went on record stating he thought Israeli’s were behind it over Dimona and the Ben Gurion row. 

Gaddafi, well....not sure he was clued in on the JFKA. 

5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

This kind of depends on the difference between " who did not believe the Warren Omission" and those who knew it was horse dooky.

Just about everybody listed so far Knew.  If you suggest Phillips then probably Morales, Harvey, Dulles and Angleton should be included.  As well as Nagell and more. 

Ron B. 

Thanks for your comment. 

It may be that the Morales, Harvey, Dulles and Angleton believed the WC was "horse dooky," but did they ever say so?

Angleton made the "wilderness of mirrors" comment, but that is vague. 

I have always had reservations about Nagel. Trust but verify as they say. 

BTW, you have heaped calumny on the useful "horse dooky," an excellent fertilizer, by comparing it to the WC. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Vince Palamara has a good list of these in his new book Honest Answers.  Which I am reading right now.

I think its the most complete one I have seen.

James D.--

Thanks. 

I will take a look.

 

 

11 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

O'Neill: .... people keep forgetting Mr. Connally, Governor Connally, denied the single-bullet theory one hundred percent. He's an eyewitness. He's right there! People overlook his testimony on that, then say, "Well, the movie shows something else." I don't give a damn about the movie! This is the man who was there. He was the one who was hit. He should know what happened.

When questioned about the single-bullet theory and Arlen Specter, Sibert responded: "What a xxxx. I feel he got his orders from above—how far above I don't know."

[Law - In the Eye of History]

I'm with O'Neill, I don't give a damn about the movie either

Tony K: As far as I can tell, the Z-film entirely vindicates Connally.

1. JFK puts his hands toward his throat ~224

2. Then Connally turns to his right to look at JFK, makes a 180-degree turn in his seat. JFK has slumped to the left, towards Jackie.

3. Connally, unable to see JFK, starts turning around forward, then is struck ~296

4. Then the head shot(s) 313.

That is 17 frames between Connally and the JFK being struck, in a camera that shoots at 18 frames per second. 

Obviously, the single-shot bolt-action rifle cannot answer to the situation.  

Great find on the Sibert quote.

Far from being conspiracy nuts, right from the start, despite extraordinary pressure, there were many high and connected who doubted the WC.

You are right, Sibert falls into this category. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Tony Krome said:

Sibert and O'Neill were anti SBT, so I suppose without the SBT there's a few problems

Tony K--

Thanks for reading and your comment.

On Sibert and O'Neill, do you have a cite?

They said something was fishy, and they thought JFK's head showed signs of surgery prior to arriving in the Bethesda, although they are not surgeons. 

What is curious is the number of very close witnesses who say three separate shots hit JFK, Connally, JFK...and then say LHO did it alone. The three SS men in the follow car to the JFK limo all say that. 

But, that does not add up. A single shot bolt-action rifle cannot accomplish that, in the time allowed. 

 

 

 

Chris B-

 

Thanks for reading and your response. 

Ralph Yarborough is a good one. 

You have a cite on Nixon?

E. Howard Hunt? I know of his late-life confession, but that has been sketchy. 

I am less interested in a Larry King type. He is well-connected (was), but not to the JFKA in particular. 

Of course, Cuban intelligence did their own investigation, and they say it was Hemininio Garcia and Eladio Del Valle. 

 

Hello Everyone:

I am thinking of a very simple idea, that I hope someone did before. If not, I ask help in compiling this list.

It is a simple list, possibly with just brief paragraph each, of the "high" or "connected" people, such as Robert Kennedy, Hale Boggs, Richard Russell, Sherman Cooper, even LBJ, John Connally and his wife, David Atlee Phillips, and so on, who did not really believe the conclusions of the WC. 

I guess we could add Robert Blakely, as he concluded there had been a conspiracy in the JFKA. I heard that Curtis E. LeMay called the JFKA "a CIA job." George Burkley, JFK's doctor.  

The three Secret Service men in the follow car all said three separate bullets struck JFK, then Connally, then JFK, and said so in a Sixth Floor Museum taped session. 

Various people at the JFK autopsy. 

Anyway, that's it. I have seen so many names over the years, but I never cataloged the names, and I wonder if anyone else has. 

 

 

 

 

 

On 5/5/2021 at 12:38 PM, Robin Unger said:

This Nix GIF clearly shows that the limo did NOT stop.

The Limo did however slow to a crawl before it sped off.

I think that's right. I am puzzled why so much time is spent on this issue. I think the driver exhibited a normal human reaction. 

I happen to think there were at least two gunmen in Dealey Plaza that day. 

On 5/6/2021 at 4:44 PM, Paul Rigby said:

You really haven't read any Doug Horne? Really? What do anti-alterationists do with their time? Swap gifs? 

Oh well, let's pretend you haven't. Here's part of his answer. I favour a very different one, which I'll come to in due course, but credit where credit's due, it's excellent and may well be entirely sufficient:

Why Do So Many in the JFK Research Community Resist the Mounting Evidence that the Zapruder Film is an Altered Film?

I do not include here, in this question, those who have written books defending the Zapruder film's authenticity; their obstinacy and closed-mindedness is related to ego, reputation, and to lifelong defense of their established turf. The old orthodoxy always resents the new paradigm that threatens established ways of thinking.

There is a bigger problem within the JFK research community, and it revolves around the following question commonly posed by perplexed members of the old guard, first-generation JFK researchers, to whom the concept of an altered Zapruder film seems dangerous heresy. They usually ask, Why would anyone alter the film, and yet still leave evidence of conspiracy in the film? (By this they usually mean the timing problem in the extant film which makes the single bullet theory impossible; and the head snap of JFK's upper torso and head to the left-rear after frame 313 — which they equate with a shot, or shots, from the right front, and not from the Texas School Book Depository.)

The answers to this valid question are clear to me: (1) those altering the Zapruder film at Hawkeyeworks on Sunday, November 24, 1963 were extremely pressed for time, and could only do so much in the twelve-to-fourteen hour period available to them; (2) the technology available with which to alter films in 1963 (both the traveling matte, and aerial imaging) had limitations — there was no digital CGI technology at that time — and therefore, I believe the forgers were limited to basic capabilities like blacking out the exit wound in the right-rear of JFK's head; painting a false exit wound on JFK's head on the top and right side of his skull (both of these seem to have been accomplished through aerial imaging — that is, animation cells overlaid in space on top of the projected images of the frames being altered, using a customized optical printer with an animation stand, and a process camera to re-photograph each self-matting, altered frame); and removing exit debris frames, and even the car stop, through step-printing.

In my view, the alterations that were performed were aimed at quickly removing the most egregious evidence of shots from the front (namely, the exit debris leaving the skull toward the left rear, and the gaping exit wound which the Parkland Hospital treatment staff tells us was present in the right-rear of JFK's head). I believe that in their minds, the alterationists of 1963 were racing against the clock — they did not know what kind of investigation, either nationally or in Texas, would transpire, and they were trying to sanitize the film record as quickly as possible before some investigative body demanded to see the film evidence. There was not yet a Warren Commission the weekend following the assassination, and those who planned and executed the lethal crossfire in Dealey Plaza were intent upon removing as much of the evidence of it as possible, as quickly as possible. As I see it, they did not have time for perfection, or the technical ability to ensure perfection, in their sanitization of the Zapruder film. They did an imperfect job, the best they could in about 12-14 hours, which was all the time they had on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at Hawkeyeworks. Besides, there was no technology available in 1963 that could convincingly remove the head-snap from the Zapruder film; you could not animate JFK's entire body without it being readily detectable as a forgery, so the head-snap stayed in the film. (The head snap may even be an inadvertent result — an artifact of apparently rapid motion — caused by the optical removal of several exit debris frames from the film. When projected at normal speed at playback, any scene in a motion picture will appear to speed up if frames have been removed. Those altering the film may have believed it was imperative to remove the exit debris travelling through the air to the rear of President Kennedy, even if that did induce apparent motion in his body which made it appear as though he might have been shot from the front. The forgers may have had no choice, in this instance, but to live with the lesser of two evils. Large amounts of exit debris traveling toward the rear would have been unmistakable proof within the film of a fatal shot from the front; whereas a head snap is something whose causes could be debated endlessly, without any final resolution.)

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/05/douglas-p-horne/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-filmsalteration/

 

Paul Rigby---I tend to Josiah Thompson on this one, but I am open-minded, and Doug Horne is a serious researcher. 

But the buyer of the film was LIFE magazine, operating under Henry Luce. A made man, so to speak. 

Surely, CIA could have asked for a few more days, or even a week, due to "national security reasons" to delay shipping the film to Luce & Co. 

So...was there really a rush? 

1 hour ago, Adam Johnson said:

Here you go Ben,

 

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md176/html/md176_0001a.htm

Verily! Thanks Adam Johnson, and top of the day to you.

3 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

The Belmont memo of the night of 11-22 is the smoking gun that destroys the Warren Report.

And it matches eyewitness evidence, including from Secret Service agents and other witnesses,

of a bullet striking JFK in the right temple. I found the memo in the 1980s and wrote

a lengthy article about it but couldn't get it published. I write about it in detail in INTO THE NIGHTMARE.

"On 28th August, 1964, Belmont received a memo that suggested that the Warren Commission had doubts about the authenticity of the palm print found on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle: "J. Lee Rankin advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm print impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent print impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source." However, Belmont was able to persuade members of the committee to accept the authenticity of the palm print." ----Spartacus

I assume this is not the memo of which you speak, as it is from Aug. 28 1964.

Have you a copy of the the Belmont memo of 11/22/63? 

What did it say? 

 

4 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

i dont think people at the top would have conspired to kill a president. There were many ways to undermine him without resorting to the risky proposition of planning and implementing an assassination. It is one thing to plot the assassination of a foregin leader but the murder of a president was a step way too far. There was no assurance this could have been successfully pulled off. Their professional and personal lives would have been at risk if they failed.

No- the more likely scenario is much more messy . I believe the plot was hatched much lower down the food chain some combination of off-the-book contractors and automonous groups that had been supported by the CIA pulled this off and leadership had to then conspire to cover up their negligence.  Much closer to Iran Contra scenario.

Lawrence S.---That's roughly my take too. 

Although it should be noted that serious JFKA researcher John Newman posits the CIA had an operational interest in LHO back to 1959, and then was biography-building LHO for a year in front of the JFKA. 

This biography-building would have been beyond the ken of Cuban exiles, the Mob, etc., and had to have been directed by higher-ups in CIA. No sign Lansdale was involved. 

My guess is David Atlee Phillips was hatching a false-flag fake JFKA, with LHO as the willing patsy.

The plan leaked and someone piggy-backed on the plan, perhaps Eladio Del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia. 

I suspect the post-JFKA cover-up included CIA higher-ups, and indeed included the effective hiring of the Mob (Jack Ruby) to make sure LHO did not talk. 

Anyway, that's my best guess. 

As usual, I posit any serious conspiracy to assassinate a US president would have had a very limited number of participants. 

6 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

It's David Kaiser.

W. Tracy P--Thanks for reading, and I will tap your services as a proofreader in the future! 

There is film for free now on YouTube, the 2013 effort by Irish author and movie-maker Shane O'Sullivan, entitled "Killing Oswald."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0M22fUKzk&t=3093s

So you guys need some fresh meat to tear into, and here is a film review:

 

Killing Oswald

In the range of films and literature made about the JFKA, the film Killing Oswald (2013) by Shane O’Sullivan is not bad, but seriously stumbles in presentation, content and tone. Slickly and even cleverly made by documentary standards, one could have wished the effort went the extra mile, or found better advisers. But at least Killing Oswald it is not in the Lone Nutters abyss, and for small favors we can be thankful.

Despite some strengths, Killing Oswald starts off on its left foot, presenting the otherwise highly intelligent author and historian David Kaiser as a knowledgeable JFKA authority figure. 

“Otherwise,” because for reasons that baffle, Kaiser in 2008 authored The Road to Dallas, a book that posits the Mob somehow hoodwinked Lee Harvey Oswald into shooting the president, all by himself. 

And indeed, early in Killing Oswald “the Mob did it” angle gets a lot a credence, as related by Kaiser, who cites Robert Blakey, the chief counsel (19767-8) of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. 

Blakey was a veteran mob-hunter who suspected the Mob in the JFKA, and said so during his days at the HSCA. It should be noted in his later years Blakey realized he had been bamboozled by the CIA, and publicly said so (to his credit).  

After Killing Oswald stumbles out of the gate, then the jockey fall off the horse: Almost breezily, Kaiser dismisses the substantial work of Mark Lane and Oliver Stone as a pair who seize on on “any discrepancy in the evidence as proof of a conspiracy and cover-up.”

Kaiser then sanctimoniously places himself and other sensible people as between recondite extremists on the JFKA who are either 1) conspiracy-addled or 2) lone-nutter freaks. 

Egads.  

Lane’s book and film Rush to Judgement (1967) stands tall to this day on the merits, and moreover, Lane trudged cross-country with clunky camera equipment and old-fashioned celluloid to record for posterity, in their own words, what actual witnesses had to say about the JFKA. In Rush to Judgement, one can watch an actual witness such as railroad-worker Sam Holland, and take the measure of the man. Lane’s work was not mere cinematography, it was history, and provides unvarnished testimony.

No one doubts Josiah “Tink” Thompson, but imagine how much stronger the effect would be if Thompson had filmed Parkland personal director O.P. Wright that the bullet found near a hospital gurney on Nov. 22, and later presented as CE-399, the very bullet that passed through JFK and then Connally, was not the slug O.P Wright had held in his hand on Nov. 22. 

And Oliver Stone may have taken some artistic license with the JFKA in his film, but his contributions again tower, and have led to The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which has helped pry documents from the federal government’s grasp that illuminate not only the JFKA but that period of history. 

Kaiser should pay contrite homage to Lane and Stone, not peevishly snipe. Why Killing Oswald starts with Kaiser leading the way is unfathomable. 

Kaiser is unabashed however, and digs his hole deeper by subscribing to the extremely dubious “single bullet” theory of the JFKA.

But as the Zapruder film rather clearly shows, Governor John Connally reacts to a separate gunshot from the one that apparently struck JFK in the neck. (To me, this is the most simple and indisputable evidence of more than one gunman).

Between Connally’s reaction to being struck by a bullet, and the subsequent fatal shot to Kennedy (frames ~290 to 313), is a little more than one second, or not enough time to have been executed by a single-shot bolt-action rifle. That’s just for beginners, among many other reasons why there were at least two guns in Dealey Plaza that day. 

Of course, JFK also appears to have been violently bashed to his left and back in the shooting, as if he received a blow from the direction of the Grassy Knoll. 

Beyond that, the connections between LHO and the Mob are sketchy as best, and involve LHO’s uncle-by-marriage Charles “Dutz” Murrett. Evidently Murrett operated in the world of New Orleans boxing and gambling, and was mobbed up. So what? This is the flimsiest sort of guilt-by-association. 

Kaiser essentially posits that LHO mother’s sister married a mobbed-up fellow, and that means LHO was mobbed up and the Mob did it? 

If we could choose our relatives….

In vast contrast, thanks to the work of long-time and serious JFK researcher John Newman and others, it is clear the CIA and other intel agencies had an operational interest in LHO that extended back as far as 1959. 

To be sure, Killing Oswald recovers its footing a bit when the documentary interviews Newman, who relates in several segments the CIA’s sustained interest in LHO.

Indeed, Newman goes so far as to say elements within the CIA were biography-building LHO with dread purpose before the JFK assassination for many months, perhaps for even a year. 

Newman, shockingly, then all but says elements in the CIA planned the JFKA, and manipulated the events that defined LHO, such as leaf-letting in New Orleans, his radio appearances, and the LHO visits to the Cuban and Russian embassies Mexico City.  

(My own suspicion is the CIA, and CIA Chief of Western Operations David Atlee Phillips, planned a false-flag fake assassination attempt on JFK, with LHO as the participant shooter who misses. The plan was piggybacked on by other elements, CIA assets, who implemented the plan but in earnest, with a ready-made patsy in LHO. Likely, then CIA higher-ups authorized the Mob to bring in Dallas mobster Jack Ruby to provide the title to Killing Oswald, in exchange for favors not known.) 

Viewers Adrift

The intelligent-but-uninformed viewer of Killing Oswald is thus left stranded, not sure if the initial “Mob did it, tricked Oswald into being patsy” version holds water, or whether it was the CIA that planned and then executed the JFK hit, or some other narrative. 

Adding to foggy schizophrenia, late in Killing Oswald, Kaiser fleetingly introduces the character John Martino, an anti-Castro militant who has sketchy Mob and CIA links. But how Martino ties into LHO is left a blank. Martino made claims that he was involved in a visit of LHO to Cuba shortly before the JFKA, but the assertion floats in the air, unverified in any way, and indeed seems unlikely. Martino also said he had a tertiary support role in the actual assassination. 

Again, the Killing Oswald viewer is left adrift, like a diner at an uncertain buffet without a menu, and where the restauranteur has great flair but no conviction in his fare. 

Dead Ends

There are some dead ends in Killing Oswald, such as the interviews of Dick Russell, who relates the strange tale of Richard Nagel, the Korean War hero who once worked in military intel, suffered brain injuries and also seems to have become consumed by inner devils. Russell is a tremendous and earnest author, but Nagel has never really panned out, and in the context of Killing Oswald, his story just clouds the waters. Too much of the Nagel story relies on Nagel’s word.

The ever-murky Silvio Odio episode is revived, in which she claims that LHO and two men visited her in October, 1963, about the time LHO was in Mexico City. Yes, if true that means LHO was impersonated in Mexico City since he could not be in two places at the same time, and also that LHO had pals in the anti-Castro movement. 

But there is plenty of indisputable evidence of LHO involved with anti-Castro people in New Orleans, and Odio’s claim may be one of mistaken identity. 

The Nagel and Odio stories are not verifiable, and not necessary to the construction of a compelling JFKA narrative. 

The Cloying Oswald Actor

In addition, Killing Oswald relies on too many re-enactments, in which an actor plays the Oswald character, who sometimes reads from letters, diary entries, political treatises, and so on. Some scenes, such as Oswald at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, are also re-enacted. 

The character Oswald quickly becomes cloying in these scenes, especially in what are effectively soliloquies. 

Killing Oswald does not indicate that many of these LHO writings may have been intended for official consumption, such as letters home from Russia, or indeed may have been part of a biography-building program. 

Moreover, like many young people LHO may have been wandering for his political bearings, so to speak. We all know former liberals who become libertarians, and vice versa. Ultimately, LHO’s writings are largely inconsequential, but unfortunately, within the context of Killing Oswald, they suggest LHO was a true-blue communist who one day acted on his urges. 

Another failing is Killing Oswald’s treatment of the pot-shot taken at General Edwin Walker in Dallas in April, 1963. The documentary more or less takes at face value the cover story that LHO did it, and intended lethality. 

A worthy moment in Killing Oswald are the old newsreels of the window sill that deflected the shot as it entered Walker’s home; as seen in Killing Oswald, the sill is struck on the underside. Indeed, the window sill deflected the shot downwards, per DPD reports.

Yet the shot, fired from perhaps 30 yards away, missed the seated Walker on the high side, so much so that Walker told the DPD he initially was unaware he had been shot at, and thought a firecracker had been tossed into the house by local youths. 

Here the Harvard historian Kaiser outdoes himself, first by revealing he does not like to read primary materials like DPD reports, and then by musing if only LHO had shown the lack of resolve on Nov. 22 that he had shown in targeting Walker in April, history would be different. 

The far more likely explanation, that LHO was on a CIA-sponsored biography-building mission in his missed pot-shot at Walker, had assistance at the scene, and that LHO missed intentionally, does not seem to dawn on Kaiser, or the Killing Oswald filmmakers.   

Other missing elements

A single documentary cannot capture everything about the JFKA, and so we might forgive that Killing Oswald does not examine the lengthy and persistent cover-up of the JFKA, exemplified by such issues at the ersatz CE 399, the “magic bullet” now debunked, and almost certainly introduced into the evidentiary record by the FBI. 

Nevertheless, if the JFKA had been a Mob or Cuban-revenge hit, or just a nut-job assassination, there would be little stopping the federal government from a solid investigation. 

Instead, we got the Warren Commission and media complicity, the purpose of which was to obfuscate and pacify. This elementary truth was not addressed by Killing Oswald, and yet the cover-up is an excellent indicator of a foul, underlying truth. 

Even the feeble under-financed HSCA investigation, bungled by Chief Counsel Blakey, concluded there had been a conspiracy to assassinate JFK—and yet HSCA staffers bitterly complained about the lack of CIA cooperation.

By simple deduction, the CIA and federal government have something to hide. Given that deduction, then Mob, or Cuban-revengers, or lone-nut JFKA scenarios lose traction. 

Bright Spots

Killing Oswald does have many bright spots, including clips of LHO’s erstwhile friend, the ever-mysterious George De Mohrenschildt, gifted with a vague, deep Teutonic-Eastern European accent reeking of intrigue. De Mohrenschildt steals the show with his line that the establishment says a lunatic shot JFK, then a lunatic shot the lunatic LHO, and that the New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, conducting a 1968 investigation into the JFKA, is lunatic too. “It is extremely insulting for the United States, this assumption that there are so many lunatics here,” says De Mohrenschildt.

The old black-and-white clips of President Kennedy, particularly in small interview settings, are painful to watch, so thoughtful, well-spoken, intelligent and measured is the president. What has happened to the nation that could find a JFK in 1960, but now finds a Trump, and Bush Jr. or a Biden? 

Anti-Castro warrior and CIA-asset Antonio Veciana is introduced, and makes his claim that he met LHO in the company of Maurice Bishop, aka David Atlee Phillips, in Dallas in September 1963.

A curiosity of Killing Oswald is researcher Newman identifies Phillips as the likely CIA higher-up handling LHO. But today Newman darkly suggests Veciana’s relations with Phillips are at least partly falsified, and the infamous LHO-Phillips-Veciana meeting never happened. 

Joan Mellon makes a few appearances in Killing Oswald, to lesser effect but always fun to watch, but she gets ensnarled in a confusing story about an Angelo Murgado (Kennedy) that does not move Killing Oswald forward. Mellon would have been far better deployed in explaining how the CIA gut-knifed Garrison while stabbing him in the back with planted agents on his staff—all with media complicity. 

A section on how the CIA, Washington establishment and a complicit media torpedoed Richard Sprague, the first HSCA counsel, would have been worthy as well. 

And of course, what is a JFKA documentary without James DiEugenio? Killing Oswald needed narrative assistance and guidance, and DiEugenio, with his encyclopedic knowledge, could have provided it.

It says something about the genre that with all of the flaws mentioned above (and many more, but this review is too long already), Killing Oswald is still one of the better treatments of the JFKA on film, and fun to watch.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

51 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I think that’s the beauty of what you have suggested and the potential cover of other such false flag events is that you turn around and say it was a security drill or something similar if such a plot becomes known by the public. 

9/11 & 7/7 both have anti terror drills running at the same time as real terror attacks. Startling coincidences perhaps. 
 

With Lansdale, and the JFKA, you need a logistical planner, we perhaps think of Angleton or Dulles but, it can be the newly retired Lansdale. It might do to think of him as CIA instead of military first and foremost, Prouty described it that way. No way for us to tell I guess. Some think it’s Phillips. 

Do you think there is any merit in the lost that E. Howard Hunt left, or was that just muddying the waters? 

Yeah, E. Howard Hunt. That guy told William Buckley that he (Hunt) would have murdered columnist Jack Anderson if the order had come down from the Nixon White House.  Murder a newspaperman? Not even a spy? 

I surmise there is a lot of sick braggadocio around the JFKA, with creeps-R-us saying they had a hand in it. Who knows? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BTW, I am not here to say Lansdale was a nice guy. Only that he wanted to pursue the Vietnam War in a much more low-key manner. But the guy would authorize assassinations, and pushing human beings out of helicopters. 

My view is the US should have never gotten involved in any way in Vietnam. 

33 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I have heard Prouty make the case that some generals and military high-brass would appear as Army, Air Force or Navy but, the salary would be paid by the CIA. If Lansdale was paid by the CIA, he always would be CIA, regardless if he appears to be doing anything else, they are paying the wages. 
 

it’s always difficult to judge as what is said in one moment may change a moment later. I have listened to Lansdale being interviewed after retirement and I did wonder how much was being said for posterity. 

It’s interesting hearing him talk on Vietnam:

Because Lansdale appears to be retired, does that make him less of a suspect? Wasn’t he in Texas at the time? How was the alibi verified?! As you can probably tell, I am pro Prouty and find him credible but, perhaps my faith is misplaced. 
 

Well, John Newman says he is working on it. It really seems LHO was a CIA asset. I guess you could posit the CIA brought in the muscle from the military side. Seems dangerous to do...chances of a leak. 

I think anyone in CIA planning the assassination of the US President would operate with but a very tight handful of men, not invite bunches of dudes from the military.  But, as I said, I think the CIA planned a false-flag fake JFKA, and even that was a very tight operation, with two or three in the need-to-know circle. 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

        In light of the recent forum discussions about Ed Lansdale's relationship with Allen Dulles, and his "black ops" success in establishing the Magsaysay regime in the Philippines and the Diem regime in South Vietnam, should we review Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's "Lansdale Hypothesis" about the JFK assassination op in more detail?

        Mr. X's theories about the JFK assassination were an important scene in Oliver Stone's JFK film, and Mr. X (Prouty) outlined them in some detail in his March 6, 1990 letter to Jim Garrison.*  Did Prouty come closer than anyone to formulating an accurate theory about the organization of the JFK assassination op (and the related psy op in which Oswald was quickly labeled as the culprit in the mainstream media) with his "Lansdale Hypothesis?"   (I'm taking the liberty of labeling the last part of Prouty's March 6, 1990 Garrison letter, "The Lansdale Hypothesis" for the sake of argument.)

* Here's a Spartacus link to Prouty's letter to Garrison letter.  (Footnote #3)

https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDlansdale.htm

"...I have heard him (Lansdale) brag about capturing random Vietnamese and putting them in a Helicopter. Then they would work on them to make them "confess" to being Viet Minh. When they would not, they would toss them out of the chopper, one after the other, until the last ones talked. This was Ed's idea of fun...as related to me many times. Then Dulles, Adm. Radford and Cardinal Spellman set up Ngo Dinh Diem. He and his brother, Nhu, became Lansdale proteges.

At about 1957 Lansdale was brought back to Washington and assigned to Air Force Headquarters in a Plans office near mine. He was a fish out of water. He didn't know Air Force people and Air Force ways. After about six months of that, Dulles got the Office of Special Operations under General Erskine to ask for Lansdale to work for the Secretary of Defense. Erskine was man enough to control him.

By 1960 Erskine had me head the Air Force shop there. He had an Army shop and a Navy shop and we were responsible for all CIA relationships as well as for the National Security Agency. Ed was still out of his element because he did not know the services; but the CIA sent work his way.

Then in the Fall of 1960 something happened that fired him up. Kennedy was elected over Nixon. Right away Lansdale figured out what he was going to do with the new President. Overnight he left for Saigon to see Diem and to set up a deal that would make him, Lansdale, Ambassador to Vietnam. He had me buy a "Father of his Country" gift for Diem...$700.00.

I can't repeat all of this but you should get a copy of the Gravel edition, 5 Vol.'s, of the Pentagon Papers and read it. The Lansdale accounts are quite good and reasonably accurate.

Ed came back just before the Inauguration and was brought into the White House for a long presentation to Kennedy about Vietnam. Kennedy was taken by it and promised he would have Lansdale back in Vietnam "in a high office". Ed told us in OSO he had the Ambassadorship sewed up. He lived for that job.

He had not reckoned with some of JFK's inner staff, George Ball, etc. Finally the whole thing turned around and month by month Lansdale's star sank over the horizon. Erskine retired and his whole shop was scattered. The Navy men went back to the navy as did the Army folks. Gen Wheeler in the JCS asked to have me assigned to the Joint Staff. This wiped out the whole Erskine (Office of Special Operations) office. It was comical. There was Lansdale up there all by himself with no office and no one else. He boiled and he blamed it on Kennedy for not giving him the "promised" Ambassadorship to let him "save" Vietnam.

Then with the failure of the Bay of Pigs, caused by that phone call to cancel the air strikes by McGeorge Bundy, the military was given the job of reconstituting some sort of Anti-Castro operation. It was headed by an Army Colonel; but somehow Lansdale (most likely CIA influence) got put into the plans for Operation Mongoose...to get Castro...ostensibly.

The Lansdale Hypothesis

The U.S. Army has a think-tank at American University. It was called "Operation Camelot". This is where the "Camelot" concept came from. It was anti-JFK's Vietnam strategy. The men running it were Lansdale types, Special Forces background. "Camelot" was King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table: not JFK...then.

Through 1962 and 1963 Mongoose and "Camelot" became strong and silent organizations dedicated to countering JFK. Mongoose had access to the CIA's best "hit men" in the business and a lot of "strike" capability. Lansdale had many old friends in the media business such as Joe Alsop, Henry Luce among others. With this background and with his poisoned motivation I am positive that he got collateral orders to manage the Dallas event under the guise of "getting" Castro. It is so simple at that level. A nod from the right place, source immaterial, and the job's done.

The "hit" is the easy part. The "escape" must be quick and professional. The cover-up and the scenario are the big jobs. They more than anything else prove the Lansdale mastery.

Lansdale was a master writer and planner. He was a great "scenario" guy. I still have a lot of his personally typed material in my files. I am certain that he was behind the elaborate plan and mostly the intricate and enduring cover-up. Given a little help from friends at PEPSICO he could easily have gotten Nixon into Dallas, for "orientation': and LBJ in the cavalcade at the same time, contrary to Secret Service policy.

He knew the "Protection" units and the "Secret Service", who was needed and who wasn't. Those were routine calls for him, and they would have believed him. Cabell could handle the police.

The "hit men" were from CIA overseas sources, for instance, from the "Camp near Athena, Greece. They are trained, stateless, and ready to go at any time. They ask no questions: speak to no one. They are simply told what to do, when and where. Then they are told how they will be removed and protected. After all, they work for the U.S. Government. The "Tramps" were actors doing the job of cover-up. The hit men are just pros. They do the job for the CIA anywhere. They are impersonal. They get paid. They get protected, and they have enough experience to "blackmail" anyone, if anyone ever turns on them...just like Drug agents. The job was clean, quick and neat. No ripples."

 

      

Well....

We have John Newman who says the CIA was developing and building the LHO biography for a year before the JFKA, as part of the plan for the JFKA. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0M22fUKzk&t=3088s

Newman is surprisingly blunt in the film above (Killing Oswald, 2013).

So, not sure how Lansdale works with the CIA, from which he was separated at that point. 

Curiously, Landale appears to have been "against" the war effort in Vietnam. 

From Spartacus:

 

"Lansdale also argued against the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem. He told Robert McNamara that: "There's a constitution in place… Please don't destroy that when you're trying to change the government. Remember there's a vice president (Nguyen Ngoc Tho) who's been elected and is now holding office. If anything happens to the president, he should replace him. Try to keep something sustained."

It was these views that got him removed from office. The pressure to remove Lansdale came from General Curtis LeMay and General Victor Krulak and other senior members of the military. As a result it was decided to abolish his post as assistant to the secretary of defence. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for counter-insurgency work and became consultant to the the Food for Peace programme.

Lansdale continued to argue against Lyndon Johnson's decision to try and use military power to win the Vietnam War. When General William Westmoreland argued that: "We're going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush… because we're smarter, we have greater mobility and fire-power, we have more endurance and more to fight for… And we've got more guts." Lansdale replied: "All actions in the war should be devised to attract and then make firm the allegiance of the people." He added "we label our fight as helping the Vietnamese maintain their freedom" but when "we bomb their villages, with horrendous collateral damage in terms of both civilian property and lives… it might well provoke a man of good will to ask, just what freedom of what Vietnamese are we helping to maintain?"

Lansdale quoted Robert Taber (The War of the Flea😞 "There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert. Where these means cannot, for whatever reason, be used, the war is lost." Lansdale thought this was the situation in Vietnam and wrote to a friend that if the solution was to "kill every last person in the enemy ranks" then he was "not only morally opposed" to this strategy but knew it was "humanly impossible".

Lansdale added "No idea can be bombed or beaten to death. Military action alone is never enough." He pointed out that since 1945 the Vietminh had been willing to fight against the strength of both France and the United States in order to ensure success of their own. "Without a better idea, rebels will eventually win, for ideas are defeated only by better ideas."