2 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Has Trump pressured his MAGA factotums in Congress to release the JFK Records this year?

He successfully pressured Mike Johnson and the MAGA House to kill the bipartisan Senate Border Security bill, so he has that kind of leverage.

And, as I recall, Larry Schnapf was in contact with some members of the MAGA House to legislate the release of the records.

WN-

AFAIK, Trump has not done much more than his usual, which is to bluster. I have not been contact with  Schnapf in months, and I can put an e-mail into him. 

But that seems to me all the more reason to extract, if possible, a vow from candidate Harris to open up the JFKA records. 

I think Harris is going to win. 

Are you of the view the JFKA research community should not raise the issue of opening up the JFA Records Act with Harris? 

Or should the issue be vigorously raised with both candidates, within our meager powers? 

14 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

The United States Government is willing to FIGHT TO THE DEATH to not release THE MOST CRITICAL DOCUMENTS that they have pertaining to the JFK assassination. It looks like we have a CIA friendly judge carrying water for them (and the rest of the government): pretending the NARA was not a successor agency to the ARRB.

I think the files the government really wants to keep secret are the George Johannides files because both he and Lee Harvey Oswald may have been involved in the same program to discredit the pro Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

 

RM-

Agreed...but we also don't know what we don't know. 

The remaining JFKA files, it can be reasonably be deduced, have the "hot stuff" in them.  Ergo, the Biden/Harris Administration permanent snuff job. 

The JFKA/RFK1A research community has shown great skill in analyzing documents, and making deductions (OK, some over-zealousness, but still). 

We don't what is in the remaining JFK docs. We do know the government wants us not to know. 

A reasonable deduction is...

Rather than re-hash the usual anti-Biden/Harris or anti-Trump arguments....

Shouldn't the JFKA research community, or the MFF, try to seize this opportunity to extract an equal promise from candidate Harris? 

Yes, every effort appears futile...but worth a try....

Rather than re-hash the usual anti-Biden/Harris or anti-Trump arguments....

Shouldn't the JFKA research community, or the MFF, try to seize this opportunity to extract an equal promise from candidate Harris? 

Yes, every effort appears futile...but worth a try....

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Ben, we are releasing the manuscript to the publisher in a week, this has been the most heavily edited and cited work I've ever done - to some extent because it strives for balance but beyond that tackles most of the major issues and does so with some in a manner (as I have said before) will be considered 'contrarian'.  (and no Oswald did not shoot JFK, not that contrarian....).

We are also doing considerable work on a large photo section which the publisher has allowed us, but as you can imagine issues of copyright and commercial use make that complex - as does getting the best quality  images for printing.  Some we will have to purchase, others require more work at the national archives.

It will almost certainly be a 2025 book, exactly when I can't say yet.

Hooray!

Whether we have any faith in Trump or not, I suspect there must be something in the records, or they would have been released.

The JFKA/RFK1A research community has shown great ingenuity in analysing and making deductions from JFK records. 

The Biden Administration has devoted a great amount of resources and dubious legal chicanery to its snuff job on the JFK records.

Why?

Thanks for this update.

This is the most important issue before the JFKA/RFK1A research community at this time.

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

That's indeed the track I laid out in Tipping Point, specifically individuals who were CIA assets dating back to the Cuba project of 60/61 but who by 1963 maintained some Agency operational associations while increasingly following their own independent activities...something some of them would continue to do so for years.  

In terms of the Oswald connection, that's as far as I will go without being able to present the total picture that will appear in The Oswald Puzzle.  Trying to address a complex, multi-year subject in bits and pieces is never a good idea.

Well, my eyes and ears are the size of saucer plates, awaiting your next book. Hopefully you publish soon.

@Larry Hancock

42 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Nope....wrong angle.  But on the other point, in spring the Army did inquire with the CIA about using Alpha 66 operationally, up until then their interest had simply been intelligence collections, using Alpha 66r links into Cuba but more especially the collection of any Russian weapons that Alpha 66 might collect on missions against Russians inside Cuba (I first wrote about that connection many years ago, in the first edition of SW, after I had stumbled across the Army documents, including their designation of Veciana as a contact and the Army offers to trade explosives for Russian info and weapons.  

By 1963, as the Army was being switching into covert operations role against Cuba by JFK - as was well  underway already in Vietnam per his direction - the Army was investigating that new role and the possibility of using Cuban groups.  The CIA's response was quite negative, characterizing Alpha 66 as quite independent and not controllable.

 

 

LH--

Thanks for the clarification, and my apols. 

My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that you contend that by sometime in 1963 LHO had become a freelancer, or uninvolved with US intel. And that LHO was an earnest Marxist/socialist. 

LHO was involved in the JFKA, though exactly how...likely unwittingly?

Now, it may be coming back to me: You contend it may have been US-intel assets, pretending to be Castro assets, who inveigled LHO into a plot that resulted in the JFKA? 

@Larry Hancock

6 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I do think (some) anti-Castro Cuban radicals (CIA affiliated) played a role on the JFK assassination. I just don't think ANTONIO VECIANA (1928- 2020) was one of them. I met Veciana (age 84) in summer 2013 and I found him to be moderate, open and very credible person. He seemed to know JFK was more right on what to do with Cuba than the crazy anti-Castro Cubans were from the 1960s and 1970s. Veciana was not a crackpot, but that does not mean his book is totally correct. I think John Newman has tried to debunk Veciana on various things in his book.

The Veciana I met in 2013 was not a flamethrower. He was an elderly businessman in his back office at a fishing supply store in Miami. I sat and watched while Scott Kaiser interviewed him on videotape.

The following is my *opinion* on Oswald:

Robert Morrow (8/23/24) on how the FBI-approved TV show I Led Three Lives was what originally recruited Lee Harvey Oswald into counter-intelligence

QUOTE

Lee Harvey Oswald was not recruited by U.S. intelligence at age 15 in 1954. 

Oswald was born on 10/18/1939. As a teen kid he was obsessed with modeling himself on the TV show I Led Three Lives. Every episode of that show was about a government operative (Herbert Philbrick character) infiltrating a communist ring, reporting it to the FBI and breaking it up.

Oswald tried to join the Marines upon his 16th birthday. Probably in October 1955. Rejected.

Oswald DID join the Marines when he turned age 17 on 10/24/56.

On Sept. 11, 1959 Oswald was discharged from the Marines Lee Harvey Oswald - Wikipedia

The recruitment of Oswald would have occurred while he was IN THE MARINES. And because of the CIA's weird and sharp interest in him, particularly James Angleton's counterintelligence unit, I think Oswald was a fake defector into the USSR being run by the CIA.

And if Oswald was CIA, then I *think* he must have also been an operative of Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) as well.

I think somewhere in 1959 while Oswald was in the Marines he was recruited to be a fake defector and of course Oswald accepted because he always wanted to do something like that.

Oswald's interest in doing something like this was cultivated when he was a TEENAGER watching the show I Led Three Lives. Oswald as a teen was already practicing what he would do in real life later. You might say the FBI-approved TV show I Lee Three Lives was the vehicle to recruit Oswald into counter-intelligence and a life of pretending to be a pro-Castro Marxist.

Marguerite Oswald told Jim Marrs that at age 12 Oswald had memorized the Marine Corps Manual. That would be the year 1952 and that fact is extremely important. Oswald wanted to be like his older brothers Robert and Pic who were in the military.

Oswald in 1954 was already dreaming of being a fake commie for his country and just a mere 5 years later in 1959 he was playing that role as a low-level spy for his country as a fake defector to the USSR!

UNQUOTE

 

 

I think John Newman is working on an angle it was US Army intel that perped the JFKA. If so, that might link back to Alpha 66. 

From what I have read, the US Cuban anti-Castro community was laced through with Castro informants and plants. 

Perhaps pro-Castro Cubans infiltrated CIA assets, went rogue, and perped the JFKA. Even that would require a government cover-up. It would look like US assets perped the JFKA, at first blush.  

I think Larry Hancock is working on this angle. 

4 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

With RFK jr endorsing Trump in return for a job in the White House, it would appear that if Trump wins in Nov there is a realistic chance there could be some serious movement in relation to the release of JFK files.

For example, we might get a deeper insight into the Joannides/LHO connection in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. 

The MFF lawsuit could now become irrelevant. 

I appreciate  this post. It is important to keep the issue of the JFK Records Act alive. 

If RFK2 were to become AG under a Trump Presidency...Well, making predictions is hard, especially about the future.

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

I am not buying Oswald's public comments that he was a "Marxist" supporter of Fidel Castro. I am more think he was working with U.S. intelligence and Guy Banister's office to UNDERMINE the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his public persona as a "Marxist" was completely fraudulent. I think Oswald modeled his career as a fake defector in the USSR and a fake Marxist in the USA off of the extremely anti-communist TV show I Led Three Lives, a TV show which teen Oswald was obsessed with.

I would classify Oswald's politics as being "moderate Democrat" by the definitions of 1963. He was more on the Left side of the 1963 Democrats.

Jmho.

 

That may be, that LHO was an earnest CIA/ONI asset, role-playing the leftie. 

There is a school of thought the Kennedy Administration/CIA plan in late 1963 was to insert LHO into Cuba, wherein he would assassinate Castro. 

David Atlee Phillips wrote an unpublished manuscript, that alluded to such a plan. 

https://www.salon.com/2017/07/15/the-man-who-wanted-to-kill-jfk/

The above is interesting commentary from Antonio Veciana. 

I don't have an infallible lie-detector, so I cannot tell if Veciana's book is 100% true. 

Veciana is not a crackpot; he was a bona-fide member of Alpha 66. He has street cred as a Cuban exile and anti-Castro soldier. 

It is plausible Alpha 66 played a role in the JFKA, angered by the BoP op, and the unfulfilled promises of JFK's Dec 1962 Orange Bowl speech, vowing regime change in Havana. 

Titovets, Mohrenschildt, and a guy named Donovan (in the Marines) all regarded LHO as a good, highly intelligent  conversationalist.

Evidently, LHO was a devoted socialist/Marxist, and a supporter of Castro (upon whom the Kennedy Administration devoted a string of overt and covert hostilities, unceasing through the JFK years).

Larry Hancock will explore these issues in his pending book. 

My take: LHO was involved in something 11/22. What  exactly? LHO did go home and get his revolver....

4 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

I knew early on that SDI was a boondoggle after listening

to none other than Edward Teller saying in a radio interview that it wouldn't work

because, very simply, even if it could stop, say, ten missiles, the Soviets

would send 100. And SDI never actually worked. Some people still

don't realize that all it was was a way of funneling vast sums

of taxpayers' money to Reagans' military-industrial complex

supporters in California and elsewhere. Frances Fitzgerald's

book misses this economic point even as she mocks the

scientific flaws of SDI. She traces the crazy concept partly back to

Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN and a movie in which Ronnie played a Secret Service agent.

Reagan tended to fantasize that he had actually been in events depicted in scenes from old movies;

CBS did a hilarious and disturbing review of such claims. So calling it STAR WARS,

initially a term of derision after the juvenile Lucas movie, was apt.

JM-

I may share your skepticism of Reagan and the-then version of SDI.

But there is no denying that Star Wars-type anti-missile systems, as envisioned by Reagan and others, have evolved into success.

Hezbollah has fired literally thousands of missiles into Israel  in recent months, and most are intercepted. 

Iran fired 300 sophisticated projectiles and drones towards Israel's population centers in April with deadly intent, and all but one intercepted. 

Israel, and possibly Great Britain and the US, are on the cusp of developing laser defensive anti-missile systems. 

This does not mean I subscribe to anti-Semitic crackpot tropes of "Jewish space lasers" pointed at earth. 

This article strikes me as the usual anti-Semitic crackpot fare. 

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I can.

Kennedy did not create the CMC Ben and Kevin.

And the installation was not about Cuba.  At least that is not what JFK thought.

The installation in Cuba consisted of about 60 medium and long range ICBM's in 5 missile regiments. The long range ones could fly about 2400 miles.

There were 28 nuclear  bombers.

There were 7 nuclear bearing submarines.

Just the  submarines carried 1 megaton warheads.  Which was 5 times the power of the Nagasaki bomb.

So in other words, the Russians could now hit about 100 cities in the continental US.  This was a very potent first strike.  One that would have killed tens of millions.

In addition, there was a wing of the the current MIG, plus  a 45,000 motorized infantry, many missile defense systems, and the coup de grace, tactical nukes.

These were of 2 varieties, a short range one of about 25 miles, and a long range one of about 80 miles.  These would have incinerated any invasion force crossing over from Florida.

These were not for defensive purposes.  This was a first strike that was being protected by layers of supplementary missiles, aircraft, and thousands of Soviet advisors. But beyond that it had all been done in secret.  Without the U2, they might never have been discovered. And then the Russian foreign minister lied to Kennedy about it right in the Oval Office.  That one shocked him.  If one listens to the tapes, and reads the introduction to the book, since Nikita K was always trying to stampede JFK about Berlin, Kennedy clearly thought that this was what it was about.  It was not about an invasion, because the size and scope of this force would be like killing a fly with a howitzer.

No, Kennedy thought this was going to be used to blackmail him over Berlin. And he says it more than once.  And JFK was not going to allow that because to him that would roll up the Atlantic Alliance.

For the record, Kennedy had two perfect opportunities to invade Cuba and he did not.  If Nixon had been president during the Bay of Pigs, Cuba would be a colony of the USA today.  And Johnson thought Kennedy's reaction to the CMC was way too mild. He can barely hide his disdain.

Sorry to break up your paddle ball game.

JD--

Thanks for your comments. 

I am still troubled that, even under the Kennedy Administration, the US conducted the unsuccessful regime-change BoP op, many other hostile and belligerent ops against Cuba, and also planned a large-scale, 261,000-troop invasion of the Cuba (I am trying to find out if Castro was aware of these large-scale invasion plans). 

Cuba, having decolonized itself from Americans capitalists under Castro (an autocratic communist who I dislike) then faced reasonable fears of re-colonization, under the Kennedy Administration. 

Cuba, relatively small, could not defend itself with conventional forces. 

Read the JFK Orange Bowl speech below if you have doubts about where JFK stood on Cuba. JFK vowed to install to the BoP brigade in Havana, and supplant Castro. JFK vowed another regime-change op in Cuba, even after the CMC!

Maybe Castro took these vows to heart.  

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-miami-the-presentation-the-flag-the-cuban-invasion-brigade

How can we have doubts about what JFK wanted to do in Havana? 

My take: JFK could have avoided the whole CMC if early on his presidency he made plain and clear to all there would no hostile actions towards Cuba, a sovereign nation. JFK should have never approved the BoP op, and he should have suffocated Cuba invasion plans in the crib. 

Castro, for his part, should not have agreed to more than a small number of nuclear weapons in Cuba, enough for a deterrence. 

Neither JFK, Castro, or Khruschev played this very well, IMHO. 

Yes, Nixon, Curtis E. LeMay, any number of other public figures were worse than JFK on what they proposed during the CMC. There were hawks laced through the Kennedy Administration. 

LBJ, not JFK, got us into Vietnam big-time (although JFK put 15,000 troops there). 

But egads, JFK effected and promised and vowed regime-change ops for Havana repeatedly. How was Castro supposed to respond? 

8 hours ago, Kevin Balch said:

No contradiction between a low footprint operation and foreign instigation.

The Cuban exile community was pretty heavily infiltrated by Castro who probably knew what was going on almost as soon as it happened.

Could have actually been instigated by Castro infiltrators recruiting anti-Castro types into the plot. The planning is often convoluted to obfuscate the origins. The actual killing has to be simple to assure success. The coverup depends on how successful the execution was.

The Lincoln assassination was originally a plot to kidnap Lincoln to negotiate an end to the war. Somewhere along the line it morphed into an assassination of Lincoln, Seward and Johnson - all the most moderate members of the administration with regard to reincorporating the Confederate states back into the Union. Which would have greatly diminished the power of the Radical Republicans.

IMHO The subsequent siamese-twin RFK1A and the Scott Enyart photo heists suggest intel-state involvement in the JFKA, as well as the post-JFKA cover-up. 

But hey, a forum is to see different points of view, and thanks for posting yours. 

6 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Here is one thing I know for sure, Lyndon Johnson adopted a much more disagreeable tact with Cuba than the one that JFK and William Atwood were about to work on. That was the whole point of JFK sending a leftist journalist Jean Daniel to have a chat with Castro.

When LBJ says the Kennedys were running "Murder Inc." down in the Carribean, I just have to laugh. LBJ was running Murder Inc. in Texas (Sam Smithwick 1952, freeing Mac Wallace off of a murder conviction also 1952, murdering Henry Marshall 1961, killing JFK 1963).

I do know in 2013 I met high level inner circle anti-Castro Cuban and I asked him in summer, 2013, what did you think about Lyndon Johnson and his answer was "He was a very nice man." I take that to mean that LBJ was doing something behind the scenes to mess with Castro.

This man also told us that George Herbert Walker Bush was very plugged in with the anti-Castro Cubans and back then (early 60s)  Bush had given them all "Phantom rings" - remember the Phantom ring from the comic strip "The Phantom?" The Phantom - Wikipedia . The Phantom had a skull ring like this: Phantom Skull Ring for sale | eBay

In this man's house I met the INFAMOUS Luis Posada Carriles, then age 85. Posada drove over to this old anti-Castro Cuban's house and he looked nothing like the photo at Wiki - Luis Posada Carriles - Wikipedia  He was proud then at age 85 to be hated still by Castro (who later died in 2016). Posada in 1976 blew up a Cuban airliner that had 73 Cuban nationals on it. So he is what is called a "terrorist."

The old Cuban who I talked with said he wished he had never gotten involved in politics in anti-Castro activities; he had lost so much (his land, his home, his successful business back in Cuba). Instead, he said, he wished that he had stayed in Cuba, kept his mouth shut, and not come out publicly as an enemy of Fidel Castro. 

These old men, in 2013, many of them in their 80s, were still mad as hell at Castro and were game to be plotting to kill Castro. Even at that age.

Thanks for commenting. 

We are on different pages on this one, but that is what a forum is for. 

6 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

"Hearsay" is completely acceptable in the search for historical truth. More than that, it is extremely valuable. The search for historical truth has absolutely nothing to do with what is admissible in a criminal court trial. The caveat is that it is often a good idea to try to "confirm" the original hearsay.

I will give you a good example of some informative history. Commander Dave Lewis, who I interviewed multiple times as the very end of his life, said that just a few days after Israel's savage attack on the USS Liberty Admiral Geis went to see Lewis while he was in the ship hospital. Admiral Geis then said I am going to tell you something but please never repeat it until after I am dead: we tried to send rescue planes to the USS Liberty but President Lyndon Johnson personally got on the military phone and said "Turn the planes back! I don't give a damn if the ship sinks and everyone dies! I will not embarrass MY ally (meaning Israel)."

That is HEARSAY. Dave Lewis did not hear Lyndon Johnson say that. Rather Dave Lewis SAID that Admiral Geis SAID that Lyndon Johnson SAID "I don't give a damn if the ship sinks, I will not embarrass MY ally."

That is not admissible in a criminal court trial but it damn sure is in the search for historical truth!!

One just has to determine whether one considers Dave Lewis and Admiral Geis credible on the transmission of this highly toxic LBJ anecdote.

Commander Dave Lewis, who was the head of the NSA unit on the USS Liberty, started publicly telling this anecdote in the year 1987; Geis had died a few years before.

Then a funny thing happened in 2007, the Chicago Tribune wrote a story on the USS Liberty and they interviewed a former sailor named Tony Hart.

New revelations in attack on American spy ship – Chicago Tribune 

["New revelations in attack on American spy ship," Chicago Tribune, 2007 (updated in 2021):

QUOTE

J.Q. “Tony” Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America’s carrier battle group, to bring the jets home.

When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that “President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”

McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has “absolutely no recollection of what I did that day,” except that “I have a memory that I didn’t know at the time what was going on.”

The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel’s claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis’ explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed.

Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson’s intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was “inconceivable” that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

The attack “couldn’t be anything else but deliberate,” the NSA’s director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress.

“I don’t think you’ll find many people at NSA who believe it was accidental,” Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, said in an interview.

“I just always assumed that the Israeli pilots knew what they were doing,” said Harold Saunders, then a member of the National Security Council staff and later assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

UNQUOTE

Now what Tony Hart said does not precisely match what Dave Lewis/Admiral Geis account of that LBJ said, but putting those words in McNamara's mouth is pretty darn close to what Admiral Geis said about what dyspeptic Lyndon Johnson said.

The original account of this story came from Dave Lewis recounting a hearsay anecdote and in my never humble opinion in 2007 Tony Hart, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, confirmed the story. 

 

 

 

 

You have your views, and I have mine. 

The following CIA document was top secret, and thus likely an earnest assessment, not pandering to any political biases.

This seems about right to me:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001359216.pdf

32 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

I doubt that anyone used in the JFK assassination was ever used in another covert op, especially in the US. If there was any “clean up squad” these guys would be the first targets. Would you want someone with their knowledge to be caught and interrogated?

Most likely foreign operatives that would not look out of place in the US in 1963 and had good familiarity with US. The stage hands were likely domestic but the performers were a visiting cast.

Maybe an outsider like the Edward Fox character in Day of the Jackal who knew after the big job that he could never work again.

KB-

You may be right. 

But I wonder if the JFKA was all that sophisticated of an op. 

Remember, the JFKA was never really investigated, which gave the act an air of mystery and intrigue. Indeed, far from being investigated, the JFKA was covered up. 

If the JFKA was perped by rogue elements of the JMWave station of the CIA, or CIA asset Cuban exiles--which would still necessitate a cover-up--their plans might have been somewhat work-a-day, given that many exiles had actual military and combat experience. 

I suspect LHO had two co-conspirators, and they left the scene, which was easy enough to do. LHO never talked and was soon dead. 

The two others? Who knows. They might have died in raids on Cuba, or perhaps murdered as was Eladio Del Valle, in 1967. 

1 hour ago, Kevin Balch said:

Yes, although I believe the idea was proposed by the Soviets.

This would be a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but then the Monroe Doctrine was not international law.

The CMC was a response to US Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey to reinforce US/NATO credibility in the wake of Sputnik. The US at the time (late 1957) did not have an operational ICBM and the shorter range Jupiter was deployed closer to the USSR to fill in the gap. There were a few years of tortuous negotiations with NATO members states for approval and the Jupiter had some development problems so the missiles were not actually deployed in Turkey until 1961, after the Eisenhower administration segued into the Kennedy administration. By that time, the US had an operational ICBM (Atlas) as well as the Polaris which was launched from submarines so the Jupiters were obsolete.

Consideration was given to cancelling deployment of the Jupiters but after the BoP and the less than successful Vienna Summit, it was again decided that US credibility needed to be reinforced.

Khrushchev considered the Jupiters to be a first-strike weapon because they were liquid fueled (which took hours) and would be sitting ducks unless they were launched at the outset. Plus the short flight times would give little warning. He was also likely concerned about the command and control of the weapons given that Turkey was a long time antagonist of Russia.

Resolving the CMC was achieved by secretly agreeing to remove the missiles. Concerns about disrupting the unity of the NATO alliance and upsetting the Turks delayed the decision on pursuing this approach which was considered very early on in the CMC, allowing the crisis to escalate to dangerous levels.

So not only was the NATO alliance a cause of the CMC, it also delayed its resolution. NATO is a war-promoting organization as we’ve seen in the Balkans and now in Russia-Ukraine. The American voter is too damned dumb to realize this. I wish the Europeans would tell us to Kiss Off but if sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines didn’t do it (notice the complete lack of interest about what the investigations concluded?) it’s not likely.

KB-

Thank you for your collegial comments, even if we disagree, as we do about the present situation between NATO and Russia. 

But back to early 1960s. It is troubling to ponder, even under the Kennedy Administration, the US was persistently staging hostile actions against Cuba, including the BoP, but other actions too numerous to detail, and was devising plans (1962) for a large-scale invasion. 

Cuba, whatever we feel about the communist dictatorship, certainly had reasons to fear an invasion, and re-colonization by the US capitalist class. So they sought a deterrent, and that was the missiles. 

In this scenario, the Kennedy Administration actually caused the CMC, first by displaying open bellicosity towards Cuba and perping the actual attempt at invasion and regime-change at the BoP. No wonder Cuba wanted a deterrent.

Secondly, the Kennedy Administration then unilaterally decided Cuba, a sovereign nation, had no right to arm itself with missiles (about the only deterrent that would be effective). 

This view of the CMC is different.

JFK might have shown great judgement once the CMC unfolded. But it was the Kennedy Administration that created the crisis in the first place---first by trying to invade Cuba and other regime-change ops, and then by unilaterally declaring if Cuba did not rid itself of the missiles then a nuclear war would result. The Kennedy Administration is the uncomfortable picture of bully, chastened only when Cuba got its missiles. 

Well, interesting what one comes across when reading primary materials. 

18 hours ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

Lee Harvey Oswald sure was one odd LONE NUT, one that :

- was handing out leaflets in a crowdy street, talking, making fun, all of that in front of a TV camera

- was on TV, giving interviews, debating

- was on the radio, ibidem

- gave a speech in a school, interacted with the people there

- visited family members, was interested in his ancesters

- goes in debate at a Walker meeting

- went to social gatherings, were he would talk with people about politics, or just have a chat with a Japanese musician, etc

- in Russia we see him attending dances, talking to just about everybody, he had some friends at the factory he worked, went on a hunting trip, wanted to have a relation, etc

- and a lot more

Now if people think he was guilty, ok, their opinion, but calling him a lone nut is just beyond crazy talk IMO

True lone nuts in general don't interact, or they live isolated, like in a cabin in the mountains...

Usually have no family life, or don't try to have one

JC-

There is a danger in ever placing too much faith in a government investigation, or indeed what, say, a book author says.

The adversarial process, or that which happens in a fair courtroom, may not be perfect, but it is one method to at least approach the truth.

The WC was, as noted by many, was a posthumous prosecution with no defense counsel present. No one cross-examined witnesses, brought in new witnesses, brought in new evidence, or offered other narratives regarding LHO and the JFKA.

Add on: Hearsay evidence was admissible.  This toxic brew has defined all too many government or congressional "investigations." And books, as well. Book authors do not take well to alternating chapters written by an opposing scribe! 

So, was LHO a leftie, loner, loser?

Larry Hancock is working up a biography on LHO, which promises to be the deepest, most comprehensive look yet. 

@Larry Hancock

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

I don't know the full significance or truth of the following, but here is a data point:

Frank Sturgis, aka Frank Fiorini, who also claimed to have shot JFK, was set up in charge of 3,000 Cuban exiles in 1965, according to Julion Constanzo

             Author Scott Kaiser says LBJ personally appointed Constanzo #1 and Frank Sturgis #2 as leaders of this anti-Castro Cuban exile group.

             “A CIA report published information acquired in Miami in mid-July 1965, concerning the continuing involvement of Isadore Irving Davidson in the recruitment of Cuba exiles to go to the Dominican Republic as part of the Organization of American States (OAS) Force, and the plans of Cuban exiles hoping to recover Cuban exile Julio Aton Constanzo Palau, Davidson was acting on “orders from President Lyndon Johnson” and Johnson had asked Constanzo to increase the number of Cubans to as many as possible.       

            Constanzo claimed he was working with President Johnson, and that he appointed Frank Fiorini in charge of about 3,000 men, and their goal was to set up a “Government in Exile.”

 [Scott Kaiser, Edwin Kaiser’s Covert Life: and His Little Black Book Linking Cuba, Watergate & the JFK Assassination, p. 39]

 

RM-

Thanks for posting.  

Frank Sturgis/Fiorini was an interesting fellow, and indisputably part of the Watergate burglary team, which was possibly part of a CIA regime-change op. 

Like so many figures in the JFKA/RFK1A/Watergate miasma, hard to tell the truth about him, or when he is telling the truth. 

My take is that anti-Cuba ops stopped, and the war in Vietnam re-started (in spades), on Nov. 22. 

I will post some material shortly. Maybe we agree, maybe not. That is what a forum is for. 

Here is a question I have never seen asked in JFK circles;

Did the sovereign nation of Cuba, c. 1962,  have the right to install missiles on its own land? 

Many in the JFKA research community admire JFK's foreign policies, in which JFK tended to lean in favor of the colonized, as opposed to the colonizers. I agree with this aspect of JFK's legacy. 

Cuba was, of course, a Spanish colony from 1492 to 1898, when the US bested Spain, and Cuba operated for four years under the "occupational authority" of the US.  

The US in 1902 somewhat withdrew:

"Following the defeat of Spain in 1898, the United States remained in Cuba as an occupying power until the Republic of Cuba was formally installed on May 19, 1902. On May 20, 1902, the United States relinquished its occupation authority over Cuba, but claimed a continuing right to intervene in Cuba."

https://history.state.gov/countries/cuba#:~:text=Following the defeat of Spain,right to intervene in Cuba.

Of course, Cuba could be said (and the US left-wing has said) to have operated as colony for US capital interests form 1902 to 1961. Then came along the Castro-led revolution, which became a communist government-dictatorship.

But still, in brief, for whatever flaws he had, Castro could be said to have decolonized Cuba (and has remained a hero in some left-wing circles ever since, along with Che Guevara, for doing exactly that). 

OK. So the US helped mount the BoP invasion in 1961 (a regime change op, to put it mildly) and through to October 1962, the Kennedy Administration was developing plans for a large-scale invasion of Cuba. No way of knowing if Cuba was aware of these plans. See:

U.S. planned a 261,000-troop invasion force of Cuba, newly released documents show

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I think Gen. Edward Lansdale used angry Operation Mongoose operatives (angry over Cuban policy) as part of the actual field team to kill JFK. But these men, the shooters, were not at the top of the pyramid of the JFK assassination.

In my "opinion" the peak of the pyramid was Lyndon Johnson.

LBJ did not shut down anti-Castro operations. I had one top anti-Castro Cuban tell me in summer, 2013 that LBJ "was a very nice man" and what that means is he let them continue operations against Castro.

It was not until Richard Nixon came into the presidency in January, 1969 that the anti-Castro Cubans operations were shut down by the U.S. government.

I will make a post soon that LBJ pretty much shut down anti-Castro operations. Stay tuned.