Benjamin Cole

Sandy: "Fact is, while it is true I can handle Pat's lies and the bogus claims of people like Tom Gram... I am discovering that certain people are above the law on the forum."---SL This is not the type of comment a moderator should make. In fact, I do not think any member of EF-JFKA should refer to other, earnestly held view-points as "lies." You are a man of very firmly held convictions regarding your politics and interpretations of JFKA events and episodes. That is fine. But you should always remember that--- 1. You may be incorrect or biased. 2. Other participants earnestly believe in their views as well. It is not necessary to speak in a disparaging manner about other earnestly held views. You are likely a very smart guy, but perhaps you are miscast as moderator. Some people should be plaintiffs lawyers and not judges. Different personalities.

KG- That is my take on Sheridan, he was a snake in the grass, and former ONI (is anyone ever "former"?). RFK1 trusted Sheridan, and my memory is Sheridan did some good work on Jimmy Hoffa. But Sheridan was more loyal to ONI than RFK1.

"Oh I have more than an idea. I might well have been involved in it."---MC Well if Trump has secreted to Mar-a-Lago bona fide JFKA docs, and they tell the tale, I am not only holding onto my hat, but on the edge of my seat, with my eyes and ears the size of saucer plates. That will be quite the story, if it pans out. Good luck to you.

In 2007, David Talbot published Brothers: Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. In the book, Talbot expresses the view that RFK1 did not have faith in the Warren Commission, and was pursuing a private, informal investigation into the JFKA. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-may-30-et-talbot30-story.html Talbot told the L.A. Times in in 2007: “This whole area is a rabbit hole, a dark labyrinth, and I was determined not to get lost in it,” Talbot says over coffee at The Times. “I think Vincent Bugliosi got lost in it. My way was to use Bobby Kennedy as a light, and to explore what he thought happened. I think he was looking at the CIA and their secret war on Castro in which they used militant Cuban exiles and mobsters to carry out their dirty work. I think Bobby thought that was the operation that turned its guns against JFK.” As stated, there is a great deal that links the RFK1A and the JFKA. Many have said RFK1 planned, if he got to the White House, to do a serious look-see into the JFKA. This only five years after the event, when nearly all the players were still alive. Could the CIA tolerate that? Is that alone enough explain the motive behind the RFK1A?

file:///Users/benjamncole/Desktop/jfk_29RFK%20-%20pdf.pdf I do not know if you will be able to read this. David Talbot's book, The Brothers, lays out how RFK1 pursued a private investigation into the JFKA. We may all wonder if Walter Sheridan was a snake in the grass.

MC- Do have an idea that Trump was able to obtain some authentic JFKA files, and then took them to Mar-a-Lago? That is a fascinating idea...but I tend to doubt it. How would Trump ever get his hands on the true, authentic JFKA files?

Interesting review of a book on LHO's programming...or lack of it.... Weeber on Pacepa, 'Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination' Ion Mikai Pacepa. Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination. Lanham: Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 2007. 416 pp. $28.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-56663-761-9. Reviewed by Stan Weeber (McNeese State University) Published on H-1960s (October, 2009) Commissioned by Jessica Kovler A New Paradigmatic Work on the JFK Assassination Given the thousands of books, research reports, and articles that have been written about the tragic events of November 22, 1963, today’s reader has every right to ask this question: do we really need another book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Two expensive federal investigations produced two summary reports and a combined thirty-eight volumes of evidence; at least four books have already promised “definitive” answers to the assassination’s mysteries; one book “closed” the case; and others, by the massive weight of their bound volumes, suggested that final solutions had been found to the unanswered questions surrounding Kennedy’s death.[1] For a book to stand out in this sea of scholarship, the author must bring specialized skills or backgrounds to the table, which enables the writer to provide strikingly new insights into the Kennedy case, or to reinterpret old evidence in provocative fresh ways. Ion Mikai Pacepa’s book delivers these essentials in a way that exceeds expectation. Programmed to Kill, simply put, is a new paradigmatic work on the assassination of President Kennedy. It has the potential to become a revolution in terms of how we perceive the assassination, the questions we ask, and the kinds of solutions we seek as academic work on one of history’s darkest days moves forward. Lieutenant General Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to defect from the Soviet Bloc. He spent fifteen years of his previous life at the top of a Communist intelligence effort designed to cast the blame for Kennedy’s death on forces within the United States. He is the only investigator of the assassination who had direct knowledge of the KGB’s ties to Lee Harvey Oswald. Pacepa contends that the Soviet PGU (the first chief directorate of the KGB) recruited Oswald in 1957 while he was serving as a marine in Japan. Brought back to Moscow in 1959 to be debriefed and readied for a new intelligence assignment in Europe, Oswald provided information that enabled the Soviets to shoot down an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, 1960. With prodding from the Soviets, Oswald was persuaded to leave Japan to return to the United States on a temporary mission to assassinate President Kennedy, whom Nikita Khrushchev had come to despise. Oswald was taken over by the PGU component for assassination abroad (the Thirteenth Department), given a Russian wife, and sent back to the United States in June 1962. The Thirteenth Department also dispatched Oswald’s case officer, Valery Kostikov, as a diplomat to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, to be available for secret meetings with Oswald. At the time, Mexico was the most desirable place for contact with the Soviet Bloc’s important agents in the United States. Pacepa documents that Oswald and case officer Kostikov met there at least once, and probably twice. In the fall of 1962, after a public trial in West Germany accused Khrushchev of personally ordering two political killings there, all foreign assassinations throughout the Soviet Bloc were called off. Oswald proved obstinate and determined to kill Kennedy despite the PGU’s frantic efforts to deprogram him, including at least two direct and clear orders to stand-down and abort his mission. Oswald then stubbornly proceeded on his own--as a lone gunman--believing that afterward he could return to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. To demonstrate his readiness for such a heroic ask, he took a shot at the right-wing American Army General Edwin Walker, narrowly missing him. With Oswald’s noncompliance, contingency plans were engaged for silencing him should he commit the unthinkable. Two days after he did just that, without PGU help or blessing, Oswald himself was killed by Jack Ruby, as arranged by the PGU with Cuban intelligence help. When Ruby was about to be released from jail in 1967, the PGU apparently had him killed by cancer--causing irradiation. The search for a new paradigm in any field begins with anomalies that prior research could not satisfactorily explain. There are scores of such anomalies that are newly explained in this book; let me cite but one as an example. Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in September and October 1963 has been shrouded in controversy for years. The Warren Commission’s narrative stated that Oswald was seeking a transit visa to Cuba, but was refused when the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City would not immediately approve a visa to the Soviet Union, a prerequisite for the prized Cuban visa. Pacepa notes that a first draft of Oswald’s letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC dated November 9, 1963, indicated that he had met with his case officer “Comrade Kostikov” in Mexico City. Thus, his true purpose in going there was to meet with his Thirteenth Department case officer. Significantly, records later showed that Oswald’s letter, after arriving at the embassy, was signed off by Vitaly Gerasimov, a PGU officer assigned under diplomatic cover in the United States, whose signature appears on most of Oswald’s correspondence with the Soviet Embassy in Washington. New paradigms are by nature not yet perfect; they need further investigation to actualize their potential as models to guide research for a period of time. I can foresee at least one area where such elaborative research is needed. Pacepa gives fairly short consideration to Oswald’s “Historic Diary,” basically writing it off as a trail of disinformation whose purpose was to cover Oswald’s tracks in Russia with a timeline that snugly fits Russia’s cover story about Oswald’s time spent there. But Pacepa does not read far enough: in the diary, there is also a statement of Oswald’s political philosophy, one that combines the best aspects of capitalism and communism, and is revolutionary and unprecedented. In it, Oswald foresaw a great confrontation between the superpowers, and after that, a chance to rebuild the world based on the new utopia he had constructed. Seeing the arc of Kennedy’s (and Khrushchev’s) rhetoric leading toward détente in the fall of 1963, might Oswald have killed Kennedy to spark the great nuclear confrontation that the Cuban Missile Crisis did not produce?[2] This personal and political motive to assassinate Kennedy might have prevailed over the KGB’s orders for Oswald to draw back and abort. Interestingly and in spite of the book’s title, Pacepa presents no evidence that Oswald was a behaviorally programmed “Manchurian Candidate” sent to kill Kennedy. Oswald received only the routine and usual ideological indoctrination needed for any of the agents in the Thirteenth Department. Despite this, the fictitious idea of a scientifically programmed Oswald would have fit well with the real narrative Pacepa writes; the programming of the disgruntled American GI might have been so good that the assassin could not be stopped. When successful, a new paradigm essentially connects the dots of the evidence in an extraordinary way to paint a new picture. Pacepa exceeds all prior expectations in this regard. His appendix entitled “Connecting the Dots” provides a timeline of Oswald’s life along with Pacepa’s parenthetical commentary showing how his book has illuminated the facts of the Kennedy case. This allows the reader to compare what the author has contributed alongside what is already known; in the process, the reader can compare Pacepa’s thesis with their own pet theory. Programmed to Kill is a superb new paradigmatic work on the death of President Kennedy. Over time, Pacepa’s portrait of what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, may evolve into a revolutionary new lens for perceiving the event and its aftermath. From the most casual reader to the serious student preparing his or her own magnum opus, this book is a “must read” for everyone interested in the assassination of President Kennedy. Notes [1]. President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Warren Report: Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York: Associated Press , 1964); and U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Assassination, Final Report of the Select Committee on Assassination, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979). [2]. See Leland M. Griffin, “When Dreams Collide: Rhetorical Trajectories in the Assassination of President Kennedy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 20, no. 2 (1984): 111-131. Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=25348 Citation: Stan Weeber. Review of Pacepa, Ion Mikai, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination. H-1960s, H-Net Reviews. October, 2009. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25348 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

MC- I rather suspect Trump was unable to get his hands on authentic JFKA files. He was only the elected President and Commander in Chief. He was not able to see the files he wanted---just like President Nixon was not.

MC- Thanks for your comments. I think not very many people take on faith what Stone or Sturgis says. Dicey characters. What I find remarkable about the Sturgis interview c. 1977, is how much it contradicted the then-accepted WaPo/standard narratives...and how much of the Sturgis definition of Watergate came later to be assented to. As for Stone, he is Stone. A gadfly, a carnival character. If he could sell snake oil, he would sell snake oil. He may sincerely believe LBJ is behind the JFKA, a lot of people do. My take is the intel-state will depose Presidents they do not like, and have done so four times in the postwar era. And five, in a way, if you count the RFK1A.

I hope an effort is made to diversify the moderator team, so that the full range of the political spectrum is represented, barring overt hate groups (unfortunately now embedded into the fringes of both major political parties). You can see from comments made on this thread that staunch partisanship, and related rank biases and petty rancor, are alive and well. Good luck to what I hope is a totally new, refreshed and relative unbiased moderator team. No one is perfect, but we can do better.

RO-- Thnks for your collegial comments. Yes...you are right, you have put your finger on it. I have the sentiment that Sirhan was/is guilty of attempted murder. But add on: Also a murder that he knew would subvert democratic processes. The American public would be thwarted in voting for RFK1. We do not get to choose our candidates, it would narrowed down by an assassin. That is not an insubstantial charge.

Excellent review by JD. So, Kilgallen's Ruby/JFKA manuscripts disappear, the way the Enyart photos of the RFK1A disappear. BTW, oldies know that back then reporters collected paper notes in large manilla folders, sometimes accordion-style folders. How could a large clump of papers disappear?

JC-- For sure, there may have gunsels at more than one location at the Ambassador. But maybe it had been agreed that Cesar would attempt to steer RFK1 through the pantry.

Well, maybe not. But anyone can turn over a new leaf....

JD-- Thanks for posting this reminder of one of the great crimes of our time---the snuff job on the JFK Records Act. Surely, this is one issue everyone in the EF-JFKA can agree upon. There is no excuse for suffocating the records now. But, as pointed out in the excellent article by Mark Adamczyk, there is no penalty for what has happened to the JFK Records Act. Perhaps what Trump and Carlson say is true: The remaining records would indeed illuminate the CIA's role in the JFKA, and who knows?---maybe possibly in the RFK1A too.

Lisa Pease wrote the book on the topic, which is recommended. I disagree with Pease on a few issues and events, but hey, her book is the Bible from which we can converse.

TBH, I have mixed feelings about this one. To be sure, I suspect Cesar shot RFK1. That does not exonerate Sirhan. It may be he shot at RFK1 to the best of his ability. To exonerate Sirhan, one must strongly suspect he was not responsible for his actions. But Sirhan told told David Frost in 1989, recorded and filmed, that he shot RFK1 due to the Senator's support for Israel. That was consistent with what Sirhan had written in his notebook. Others say Sirhan was programmed. This gets into a very speculative area. I wonder if Sirhan was manipulated, more than programmed. Others determined Sirhan would agree to shoot the Senator and prepped him to do it. But Sirhan wanted to shoot RFK1. As stated, for me the RFK1A, the second shooter, and the cover-up that followed, is an important clue to the truth behind the JFKA. Who could do a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation? That answer seems to again point back to the US intel state. I will grant that Sirhan probably does not know of the plot that enveloped him. He likely thought he was acting alone.

RO- I too am mystified that somehow the RFK1A topic is now being divorced from the EF-JFKA, when for decades anyone who posted of the RFK1A was accepted into the mainbar. IMHO, the two topics are twinned, and have always been treated as twin topics. The true perps behind the JFKA and the RFK1A may be the same people--that is, quoting Mickey Spillane, "not who pulled the trigger, but who paid for the bullets." IMHO, it may be time for a fresh start, new moderation.

DH-- Ditto on Pat Speer. I might disagree with Pat Speer on gunshot residue on LHO cheek. So what? Speer has done serious work. We might disagree on a particular issue. Big deal. Maybe I am wrong. My 2 cents on IMHOs: We should, all of us, try for collegial conversation. One way to disagree is to say something like, "Well, we are on different pages on this one. My take is....." In the EF-JFKA, most points of debate...well, there really is not one side that is "wrong." Sure, if I insist JFK was shot on 11.23.... In any event, sometimes forums just need a breath of fresh air, a new team, so old hard feelings are released. IMHO, a fresh moderation team at EF-JFKA is in order.

RM- Thanks for posting. Yes, Stone thought LBJ was behind the JFKA. I think I read Stone's book way back when. As stated, something tells me the RFK1A and the JFKA are linked...the first mandated the second. We are on different pages on this one. But that is what the EF-JFKA is for, to see and appreciate other viewpoints.

I like Matt. I think he is an earnest and deeply intelligent JFKA'er. Matt does wear his politics on his sleeve, and would have to bend over backwards to accommodate people with different points of view than his. Roger Odisio perhaps is another candidate. It is odd that there were lengthy and extended threads on the RFK1A in the EF-JFKA mainbar (Eastabrooks, Dr Brown etc.) until I started do do some original research on the topic, and a few posts. Then the RFK1A topics were moved off the mainbar. Hitherto, the RFK1A has always been considered part and parcel of the EF-JFKA for abundant and obvious reasons. Examples like that raise questions about the need for fresh moderation.

RM- Thanks for your question. As stated, Sturgis said the Watergate event was part of a plot to unseat Nixon, as Nixon had been demanding files pertaining to the JFKA. That is my reason for posting here. As for Sturgis' credibility...very dicey.

MA- I have not e-mailed James Gordon, and I never have. I am not a MAGA supporter, or even Trump supporter, or even a Republican, despite the many, many statements made by others that I am. BTW, within EF-JFKA, MAGA supporters should treated in the same gracious, collegial and civil manner that Biden supporters, or RFK1 supporters, or independents, should receive. The EF-JFKA, and its participants should try to be inclusive., and not stigmatize those with other perspectives. We are on different pages on this issue of the need for fresh moderators, and that is fine. IMHO, with emotions so ragged, then probably a fresh start, and new moderation, is needed.

Probably time for a fresh start, a new set of moderators, if any can be found. I do not criticize anybody. I am concerned that strong political and personal biases have crept into the EF-JFKA picture. The EF-JFKA should accept the full range of the political spectrum (excepting overt hate speech), and the EF-JFKA should discourage personal diatribes. The EF-JFKA, and its participants, should be tolerant of various views of the JFKA, and the RFK1A. No need for personal sniping. Try a comment such as, "Well, we are on different pages on this one," or something to that effect. Every effort should be made to encourage collegial conversation. Unfortunately, even moderators have occasionally sunk to personal insults, when one participant did not agree with their points of view. A housecleaning would allow a fresh start, under some solid guidelines regarding political biases (which we all have) and personal insults.

Interesting. I am certainly open to the idea that the political assassinations of the 1960s were linked, in the sense the true animating impulse came from the US intel state. There may have been the use of cat's paws or cut-outs. For me, the most direct follow-on assassination to the JFKA would be the RFK1A, for the aforementioned reasons---the intel state had to do a snuff job on any potential intrepid JFKA investigation, and had to prevent US foreign-military policy into RFK1's hands. I assent to your sentiments that ugly racial/religious bigotry has no place in the EF-JFKA. With your last name I guess you have seen your share of ugly bigotry, though you are a Catholic, also a very good group of people. I have long admired the Catholic pursuit of charity, which I witnessed in many Los Angeles area organizations during my five decades in that city. The Catholics (at least of Los Angeles) are also outstanding in the sense they welcome everyone into their churches and facilities, seemingly without the slightest blush of racism or ethnocentricity.