3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Which is why the shenanigans with an undetermined number of hijackers and hijackings, and four disputed crash sites, are so pesky and troublesome to an organized mind

My mind is unorganized, and I still don't understand 9/11.

6 hours ago, David Andrews said:

We have a president's dead body with bullet wounds in it, but no whole bullets found or definitive wound tracks established.

It's no wonder the much more complicated 9/11 scenarios can't be proven nor debunked.

 

David A.--

My understanding of controlled building implosions is that they require multiple charges on every floor, and associated wiring to time the charges. 

There were 110 floors on each of the WTC big towers, and 57 floors in  #7. 

I have no great insights to the 9/11 disaster.  But when it comes to conspiracies, the smaller the number of participants, the better.  

13 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

How do you explain the pre-arranged, skillfully orchestrated psy op throughout the U.S. and international media that was launched on 11/22/63-- before Oswald was ever charged with a crime?

The deployment of fake Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza, and confiscation of cameras?

The confiscation and scrubbing of evidence-- including JFK's body and the limo?

Henry Luce and C.D. Jackson's purchase and sequestration of the Zapruder film?

The role of known CIA asset and Dallas mayor Earl Cabell in the motorcade and post-assassination public relations?

Aside from the details of the hit, the assassination was, obviously, a complex psy op, orchestrated on a very high level by people involved with the mainstream media.

W-

I handle most of your q's in 

Verily, a great deal of complicity after the fact---Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact-1967 still holds a lot of water. That's how obvious the post-JFKA cover-up was. 

Larry Hancock suggests the reason the post-JFKA cover-up was so obvious, mangled and crude is that there was, in fact, not much in the way of pre-JFKA planning. I defer to Hancock as a default position. 

That said, my take (different perhaps from Hancock's) is LHO was being run by the CIA, and they planned to use a witting LHO in a false-flag fake JFK assassination attempt. Ergo, the biography build on LHO.  

Cuban exiles piggybacked on the false-flag op, and made it real. 

Yes, the WC was a cover-up, and much that the CIA has done since in media, etc. The FBI destroyed and manufactured evidence (CE 399).  

This cover-up has allowed a mythology to build, that the JFKA itself must have been a very sophisticated operation. But a true and dreadnought investigation starting on Nov. 22 might have cracked the case within a few days. 

If LHO had lived, he might eventually have spilled the beans.  

As a basic premise, my take is that successful conspiracies, especially on the supremely explosive topic of assassinating a US president, require fewer, rather than many, participants. 

The versions of the JFKA requiring dozens of malicious and witting participants, high and low across many organization lines....well, for me, they just don't hold water. 

Think small!

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

      Prouty was a Deep State whistle blower who has been the target of a CIA smear campaign for many years-- the same type of disinformation campaign that has been directed at Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. 

      That is why I object to vague, non-specific criticisms of Prouty's observations and commentaries about the CIA, Vietnam, and the JFK assassination-- especially from people who have seen the CIA disinformation on-line but haven't read Prouty's own books and commentaries.

     No one has posted any evidence here debunking Prouty's "hypothesis" that Ed Lansdale was involved on some level in the JFK assassination op.

    Prouty worked with CIA black ops expert Ed Lansdale for many years, and was intimately familiar with Lansdale's appearance and work.

     So, yes, I trust Prouty's identification of his long-time colleague Ed Lansdale in the Dealey Plaza photo.

     That isn't a "loose standard," IMO.  Prouty was a rare, primary source historical witness.

     Also, there were a number of other first hand observations (besides the photo of Lansdale in Dealey Plaza) that led Prouty to suspect that his colleague Ed Lansdale was involved in the Dallas assassination op.

   

"No one has posted any evidence here debunking Prouty's "hypothesis" that Ed Lansdale was involved on some level in the JFK assassination op."--W.

Not to belabor a point, but this comes close to "guilty until proven innocent." 

Here is a book: 

Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy

by John H. Davis, c 1989.

I just read this book, very readable. Free online, Internet Archives. 

Many connections between LHO, Ruby and Marcello, lots of documented bad blood between the Marcellos and Kennedys, and of course Mafia in bed with the CIA. Many eyewitnesses saw someone who looked liked LHO meeting with so-and-so, thus indicating a connection.

David Ferrie was spending weekends at Marcello's manse before Nov. 22. That is sort of strange. 

What in the heck could the oddball eccentric gay Ferrie have in common with rich mobster Marcello?

No one has debunked that Marcello was the animating force behind the JFKA.

Was Marcello the animating force? 

I doubt it. But I can't debunk it either. 

On 9/7/2021 at 12:56 AM, Richard Booth said:

And who would have spotted and recruited Mr. Phillips? 

Angleton. He planted the "virus" to ensure post-assassination cover-up and I think surely he picked who would head up the operational compartments. Phillips was a perfect choice: proven track record of victory (PB/SUCCESS) and known hatred for John Kennedy. 

Ultimately I pretty much agree with what you wrote here. I just put Angleton up near the top in the hierarchy. 

OK, this is speculation, but here goes: 

DA Phillips concocts a false-flag but failed assassination attempt plan on the JFK, to be blamed on the leftie-loner-loser-commie LHO. 

Phillips cannot just do this, but needs tacit approval, unwritten etc., from above. He gets it. 

But then Angleton, or someone, plants a couple of very angry guys (Cubans) on Phillips false-flag team. Maybe even with no instructions, but a sense of what might happen. 

Ergo, LHO cooperates, expects to escape Dealey Plaza with help, but figures out JFK was shot for real and he is the de facto patsy, and goes AWOL. 

Even Phillips does not know what really happened. 

Maybe only the two guys know what really happened at the JFKA.

The CIA concludes they have to eliminate LHO, but need plausible deniability, and hire the Mob. The CIA then spends decades scrubbing records and inventing false narratives, and, btw, destroying Garrison. Wrecking Richard Sprague, etc. 

That's my story I am sticking with it. 

Best of luck, Pat. You are a top researcher, devoted to finding real facts, and letting the chips fall where they may. 

7 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

  1)   Ed Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63, as Prouty observed 30 years ago.  John Newman and David Lifton also found some ex post facto evidence indicating that Lansdale was in Texas in November of 1963, following his "retirement" from the CIA/USAF to pursue "fun and games."  Prouty pointed out years ago that Lansdale's comment about "fun and games" after his retirement was a code word for special ops.

  2)   Lansdale was a black ops favorite of Allen Dulles and Cabell-- based on his history with the CIA in the Phillippines and at Saigon Station.

     And let's cut through the forum denial about CIA involvement in the U.S. mainstream and social media.  Prouty has been smeared by government propagandists and "cognitive infiltrators" for years because he blew the whistle on people involved in JFK's assassination.

Why was General Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza?
Those who knew him, say this man is Ed Lansdale. Photo taken Nov. 22, 1963.

 

 

 

W-

I am on board that large parts of the M$M are CIA apparatchiks. At CNN they dispense with the charade, and just hire ex-CIA'ers directly and put them on the air. 

I also believe more than one gun was used to shoot at JFK and JBC that day, based upon research on primary materials. 

But really, you are convinced, beyond reasonable doubt, that the photo in question is Lansdale? 

Prouty implies the two Dallas police are fakes and in on the gag, by the "casual" way they are holding their weapons. Not much to go on, and yet that implies yet two more people who have information regarding the JFKA, and who have to be trusted to keep quiet. 

The "Lansdale" in the picture---he would walk around Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of an presidential assassination he plotted? With cameras blinking everywhere? That is spycraft?  "Lansdale" doesn't even doff a fedora (still worn back then) and sunglasses? A little brazen, no? 

If the three tramps were truly involved in the JFKA, and the two Dallas "cops" in on the gag, why parade the trio in public as suspects? Why not squeeze the three men into a car near the railroad cars-tracks and send them on their way? 

Other probable participants in the JFKA simply melted onto the crowds, such as the phoney "Secret Service agent" accosted by Dallas police officer Joe Smith and Dallas Sheriff Seymour Weitzman.

Why parade tramps around in public? In ordinary civilian clothing, the "tramps" could have simply walked away from the scene, melted into the crowds. 

Nothing about this makes sense. 

If we applied such loose standards to LHO as are applied in the Lansdale Hypothesis, we would have LHO convicted and hung on the JFKA in two minutes. 

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Matt,

    This is a non sequitur. 

     I assume that we can all agree that Prouty was, in fact, a first hand participant observer of events within the Pentagon and the JFK administration in 1963 -- not some latter day "conspiracy theorist."

     So, my questions (above) are really about the specificity of Larry's criticisms, if any, of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's observations and theories about the CIA, Vietnam, Lansdale, and the JFK assassination.

     Given the obvious history of orchestrated, on-line disinformation about Prouty during the past thirty years, impugning his reputation on vague, non-specific  grounds is less than appropriate.

     Wouldn't you agree?

 

Below:  Allen Dulles, General Ed Lansdale, Gen Charles Cabell, and Nathan Twining

 

 

   

W.--

Larry H. is more than capable of presenting his arguments, so I am not here to defend him, although I hope we do not lose his participation in this forum as he will weary of explaining and then re-explaining his position.

Yes, Prouty has been bad-mouthed online, probably by people with an agenda.

On the other hand, is there any evidence to support his scenario below, or is it speculation? 

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."

OK, in this forum the evidence against LHO in the JFKA is parsed, debated and often refuted, often for good reason. But at least LHO is a person, who was in the TSBD on the day of the JFKA. What role that LHO played in the JFKA can be discussed, debated, parsed. 

But sheesh, we don't even have evidence or names to debate against the mysterious "hit men" from Greece. Or, in other scenarios, hit men associated with anti-Gaullists in France. At least with the anti-Gaullists we have the name Lucien Sarti, or possibly Jean Rene Marie Souetre, or Michel Victor Mertz. Mertz (or somebody) was supposedly deported from Dallas area in the aftermath of the JFKA, although the story is murky.

In conclusion, what Prouty offers on stuff he knows about is very good, and informative.  When it comes to the JFKA, what he is offers strikes me as speculation.

If you applied the same strict standards to Prouty's explanations of the JFKA  that you apply to the Lone Nut theory....you would say Prouty's explanations do not hold water, as there is no vessel to begin with. Prouty's amorphous JFKA explanation may be true, but how to begin to verify? 

Even a reasonable suspicion is not an explanation or a conviction. 

1 hour ago, Dennis Berube said:

Benjamin, the case for Hiss being a traitor is thin at best and VENONA certainly proves nothing. For starters, the original VENONA papers do not exist and no one ever was able to verify who "Ales" was including a 20 year hunt by the FBI. VENONA cable 1579 mentions the name Hiss in this context. "...has reported [gobbledygook] from the State Department by the name of HISS." Considering that Hiss was of course known to the Soviet Services as he actually held an official government position, this is a long way from proof of anything. The idea that a double agent would be referred to by his actual name or even "Ales" is a bit ridiculous and combined with no originals, is worthless.

Russian general Vitaly Pavlov, who was head of KGB foreign intel in 1940 and working there the whole time this episode was going on, said "All of this is pure fabrication" in regards to Hiss and Hopkins. And it was. In my opinion, when you couple the Hiss/Hopkins/White saga with what happened to Wallace (by the Democratic party bosses), it seems rather clear that the deep state forces hated the psychological and political progress of the New Deal Democratic party.

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. 

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....

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. 

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. 

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. 

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:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pranksters-trick-newsmax-into-interviewing-fake-paul-wolfowitz-twice-and-the-impersonator-didnt-even-try-to-sound-like-him/ar-AAOlxO0?li=BBnb7Kz

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. 

12 hours ago, David Andrews said:

White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, by Susan Williams.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/12/louis-armstrong-and-the-spy-how-the-cia-used-him-as-a-trojan-horse-in-congo

 

 

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. 

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? 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.  

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

https://www.911review.com/motive/pnac.html

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.

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. 

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? 

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.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2021/911-conspiracy-theories/?itid=sf_undefined_opinions

https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-afghanistan-5717012a-d55d-4819-a79f-805d5eb3c6e2.html

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. 

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.