Steve Jaffe

Joe: I'm just getting used to this forum format. I was wondering what "quote" means
below your comments with the plus sign in front of it.

In any event, I don't have any general comments on the assassination of President John Kennedy
other than, as a journalist, I hope history will record the truth and not bury the lead. I hope that Oswald
will one day be relegated to his rightful place as "scapegoat" and "patsy" and the real assassins will be
put in the books as they should be. 

As for me, I'll try to finish my book as soon as possible and make my modest contribution to the history
of this, as yet, unspeakable crime. There are so many really courageous investigators, researchers, authors
and filmmakers who have devoted so much time and blood sweat and tears to this. I want them to get the
respect of historians. And I want Garrison to get the respect he deserves. I believe he gave his life for justice
in this case.

I was at home getting ready for a class a film class at UCLA after breakfast. 

22 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Any comment's  on On The Trail of the Assassins by Garrison, Farewell to Justice by Joan Mellen or Destiny Betrayed by Jim Di Eugenio?

Garrison's book, Mellen's book and Di Eugenio's book are all extremely accurate on the facts, valuable and informative. 

3 hours ago, Don Jeffries said:

Steve Jaffe,

It's great to see you posting here. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates having someone with your history contributing on this forum. 

I'm intrigued by your comments about Rob Reiner. I assume you must have an insider's knowledge, because I've never heard any comments regarding the assassination from Reiner. So he knows there was a conspiracy? 

 

He does indeed. Reiner is a courageous filmmaker, a meticulous researcher and he knows a lot about the conspiracy which resulted in the assassination of President Kennedy. You might follow him on Twitter as he is a frequent contributor there, though, as one might expect, he is constantly distracted about the abuses of power in our government today. I suppose we should be grateful that there will never be another J. Edgar Hoover. 

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Steve:

I remember that flyer you put together for Executive Action.  I thought it was quite good.  And the thing is, I actually was intrigued by the references and looked some of them up and they were accurate.

Its amazing that film got made at all.  But if I recall correctly, Lancaster and Robert Ryan were both pretty liberal guys all their lives.  And was not Ed Lewis the producer for Kirk Douglas on some of his films, like Spartacus?  So that gave you some torque.

Its really something about those NE stories.  Millions of people get to see the headlines every week at the supermarket.  When is the one about the John Hurt call coming out?

Jim -- Edward Lewis was a great producer with real politics. Among his classic films were Spartacus, Missing, Lonely Are the Brave,  and Seven Days in May, as well as Executive Action. And as "Technical Adviser" I had the honor of working for months with Dalton Trumbo on the script. What a special time that was. 

And yes, the NE stories are reaching millions of people. The one about John Hurt call came out about three weeks ago. I'll send it to you. Thanks for the mention of the EA newspaper. Wasn't easy to do without any staff. However, Mary Ferrell, no less, helped me with the annotation. What a mind she had. - SJ

On 11/6/2017 at 12:30 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Neither of the films were about JFK.

Kennedy still has a pull over the public, as we saw from that blitz from about October 20 to the 26th.  There must have been about 30 video segments on the case and the documents.

There are still newspaper stories and in fact it was on the cover of the National Enquirer last week.

That was an important story, not for the story itself, which was based on the alleged McCone/Rowley document--which I think is a fake--but because the editor of the rag is a good friend of Trump's.  And he actually gave Trump credit for that declassification.   This should tell us something. Namely that either Trump, or his close friends, think they can use the JFK case to win favor with the public.

If that is true, then we have a shoehorn with which we can work with.  And we should do so.  I am going to be doing Coast to Coast in a couple of weeks, so I am going to ask the listeners to fax and email and phone the White House and tell Trump we want the documents with no deletions, no missing pages, no illegible pages and no pages completed whited out.  Which is what is happening in defiance of the law.  And the jerk off MSM is not reporting on this.  And I do not believe they are not aware of it.

Contrary to the idiot box, and contrary to what some people are saying within the community, there is some really interesting stuff in these documents.  The fact that they are covered up eliminates the possibility that we can know what else is there.  And that is the ultimate triumph of the bad guys.

Jim, et al: You are so right. I'm one of the few people writing many of those stories for the National Enquirer (as they are the only publication with that kind of readership size that will publish my words and not edit them without my permission). I've done six or seven and am doing another one now. They often get the cover and have tremendous reception. I haven't been criticized once for getting my articles published in the NE. Ironically, many serious researchers don't read the NE articles. "LBJ," the film, which I saw several times, was extremely important and a real gift to those of us who care. Certainly it was flawed but, as you said, it wasn't about JFK. It took guts for an A-list filmmaker like Rob Reiner to do all that work. Reiner is, at present, other than Stone, the only major director with worldwide respect, who is dedicated to the truth on the JFK assassination as is Stone who made his "JFK" and brought the subject back to a MSM intense debate. It woke up some of those still being paid to support the WR. Even got the Congress to act. Watch for Reiner to do something major in the future. "Mark Felt" was important.  It all helps us. The media was forced to cover the NA document dump in October '17 though they had little to work with and even less to say of any merit. I've been reading the docs until my eyes burn. But what did we expect. The point is that thanks to Reiner, Stone,  and John Barbour's documentaries, we are getting traction. As a professional pr person, the more information that gets out in films and documentaries, the broader the audience is for books of substance, like yours. Serious researchers and authors, journalists and news producers, must continue to support each other and work to accomplish a common goal. The truth. See LBJ and notice Reiner's attention to detail. He will be heard from again. As for the topics of the articles I've written for the N Enquirer, there's much more behind them. I will put that in my book. I assure you the use of the McCone-Rowley memo was not done without years of research. I sought and received strong confirmation that it is not a fake. I just couldn't put it all in there. As for the NE references to Trump, the owner's friendship with him, all I can say is that we're living in more difficult times than ever. If, in 1967, you would have ever told me that I'd be pulling for the FBI and CIA today (as the agents today are totally different than in '60-64 and know what Garrison meant by "in the looking glass,") I'd have never believed it. We must work with what we have. 

On 11/11/2017 at 4:37 PM, Roger DeLaria said:

I got this from my local library earlier this year. It was well done and entertaining, but King took a Oswald lone nut stance, so as far as the assassination goes, it was worthless.

I've always liked Executive Action, pretty good for it's time, even now I think.

Roger,

As one of the producers/packagers of "Executive Action", I thank you for that. Your statement, "...for it's time," is an important observation. We had no way of making a film with major distribution unless we could convince the "suits" that our film was a fantasy, totally fictional, a "what if?",kind of story. And even with that argument, it took as strong a producer as Edward Lewis (check his credits at IMDB), to get it done. It didn't hurt that we got Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Will Geer as stars. Once we had the film shot, I created a marketing campaign for the film. I suggested to producer Lewis that we publish a newspaper and hand it out to all the people who attended the film. The theme of the newspaper was, "what if the newspaper published after the assassination had TRUE stories in it?" Then, after budget concerns, it was decided that we'd hand it out to those who saw the film on the first day only. I think I was able to keep one and have seen a few of these newspapers on Ebay. I took every scene -- broke it down in terms of what evidence we had to support the central theme of the scene and added photographs. I then used citation from the WC and we made it possible for anyone to go to a library, get the 26 volumes out and look up the documents. Other than photos I had taken myself, for Garrison, who was my boss at the time, or interviews I had conducted (such as one with N. J. Daniels, an off duty DPD on 11/24/63 who was at the ramp entrance when Ruby entered), the evidence was accessible to anyone who wanted it. That film grossed approximately five times what it cost to make. I was at a dinner at a friend a year later and Lancaster came up to me and thanked me profusely. He had taken a percentage instead of a salary in order to help us with the budget. He ended up making over $1.5M as his fee. Thanks for calling attention to "Executive Action." It was nearly impossible to make it in 1973. Stone had similar problems years later and overcame them with his own clout and all those stars in the cast. You will see him discuss that in a future documentary on the topic that my long time partner, Mark Lane and I produced. No distribution deal yet.

If anyone wants to reach me you can find my email address at www.SteveJaffePR.com. 

Terry: I tried to reach you by email to say that I hope I'm not too elderly. I can be reached fairly easily. There's a website under my business name with a phone number and email address. Thanks for your interest and kind words. I believe I'm the only member of Garrison's staff who gave an interview to the Sixth Floor Museum archives though that doesn't have much content. I've written a series of articles recently , published in what might not be regarded as the MSM, and am working on a book I'd like to think I can finish before I expire. Best, Steve J.