Roger Odisio

You were there, Kirk, as was I. It's difficult to believe you don't know what I mean by a seismic shift in politics from the 60s. The JFKA was quickly followed by the political murders of Malcolm, King, Bobby, Fred Hampton that were designed to decimate left opposition to the ascendant war mongers. There has been a steady stream of wars since. There is now a uniparty consensus in Washington for war and trillion dollar "defense" budgets, when you include the cost of "intelligence". Name a politician today who opposes that. Name a national politician today who can be called antiwar. Name anyone who could give JFK's peace speech or even dare contemplate out loud ways to achieve peace, as JFK was trying to work out with the SU. While explaining there was little reason to hate and fear the Russians, but instead it was necessary to work with them, while acknowledging our differences. "We all breathe the same air." Where is that guy today? I'm just scratching the surface. This is a very different country in a lot of ways from what it was like when Kennedy was murdered. His murder is one of the reasons why.

Sandy: As for the relevant part, I've already covered most of it in my prior post. To that I'll add that the administrative staff likes the policy because it solves a lot of problems. I said your policy of prohibiting discussion of what you call contemporary politics makes no sense when there are better options, and it hurts the core purpose of the forum. You seem to think contemporary politics as a category can be treated separately from politics itself; as if the former doesn't sprout from the latter. Contrary to what you say, you ignored that point; you haven't even tried to claim the policy makes sense, or is the best way to handles the problems yousee. Instead you say the staff "likes the policy" because it solves a lot of problems. What problems? If the problems to which you refer are the possibility of unruly discussions, clearly your solution of banning the topic entirely instead of dealing directly with the cause of the disruptions is the wrong one. The obvious and important effects of the JFKA on politics since the murder, right up to today, is an important topic that should not be lost because of the policy. For example, it has played a central role in my understanding of what happened and why. If we're talking about "likes", I don't like that fact that your policy is hindering me from learning more about the contemporary effects of the murder. Of which there are many that play out through the political system. Sandy: As Mark Knight is fond of saying, the Education Forum is not a democracy. (If you want to have a democratically controlled forum, I suggest you create one.) But if you wish, PM your petition to Mark Knight, Ron Bulman, and myself. RO: I assume Mark means that the mods don't have to pay attention to what other members think about what they are doing, let alone offer explanations. Hmmm. How is that different from a dictatorship by troika? Or is it? I have already laid out why I think your policy is not only wrong but damages core values of the forum. I assume Mark and Ron are reading this; there is no need for a separate petition. I would hope you, Mark, and Ron would respond to those points, starting with why you think it is a good idea to shut off all discussion of the effects of the JFKA on contemporary political life. You never get tired of repeating this irrelevancy, do you? I'm talking about a discussion of the effect of the JFKA on current politics, not simply politics itself. Which belongs here. It's of course fine if you want to add it to the politics forum as well.

Ben: We are unable to discuss much in the current context as there some participants who are rabid partisans and evidently unable to conduct civil discourse. RO: I understand you are repeating what you think the forum policy is. And I think your description is accurate. That's my understanding of what Sandy has said when I questioned the policy. But the policy is makes no sense, even on its own terms. For example, we have a topic, relevant and important. But we can't discuss it because some people are unable to "conduct a civil discourse". about it There are disruptions. So we ban the topic. Either delete it, move it to another forum (where presumably people are more civil?) or penalize the people who brought it up. Rather than dealing with the individuals causing the problem so the topic can be discussed!! Not only does that not make sense, it seriously harms the very purpose of the forum, which is to discuss all relevant aspects of the murder to better understand what happened. Ben: PS I recently posted about the media treatment of RFK2's explanation of the JFKA, and that post was deleted. So it goes. I consider media treatment of explanations of the JFKA---always dubbed "conspiracy theories"---as important to this forum. RO: This is an example of what I'm talking about. Junior's explanation of his uncle's murder has gathered attention to it and is clearly relevant here. Remember when he began his campaign, he gave a speech that focused on his uncle's "peace speech" as a model of the kind of president he wanted to be. In that speech, JFK publicly rejected the Pax Americana approach to foreign policy that has been adopted by every president and both political parties since the murder. JFK had issued a direct challenge to his killers and I think he did it knowing the risk. To anyone, mod or not, who thinks the speech had nothing to do with the murder, I would be happy to listen to your reasons.

I think they're called the No Label Party, Paul, and they are clearly a bunch of fake "centrists", of which actually there is no such thing. Take any issue and ask yourself what is the "centrist" position, i.e., in between left and right. What is the centrist position on the Israeli genocide? Or the defense budget and the use of war as foreign policy? Or the Trump tax cuts? Centrist is a name given them by a compliant media to try to take advantage of the penchant for most people to avoid "extremes". But basically a Washington centrist is someone who prefers the status quo. Now that you've responded in this thread, do you have anything to say about the mods' policy of of prohibiting discussion of contemporary politics as it relates to, or is the result of, the JFKA?

Sandy: It is a forum policy that contemporary politics cannot be discussed on the JFKA Debate forum. It is not my policy. I merely enforce the policy. RO: This is the heart of the matter. If you are enforcing the policy as a mod, it becomes your policy to defend. Not some unnamed person who devised it in the past. Otherwise, to whom do members take their concerns about the policy. People like myself, e.g., who think the policy not only makes no sense, but injures the very fabric of legitimate discussion. With the job of being a mod comes the responsibility to consider the merits of a policy when it is challenged. Not take refuge in the claim of that's not my job. The policy of prohibiting discussion of contemporary politics, as opposed to past politics, is based on an arbitrary distinction that is fundamentally flawed. The contemporary politics we see now has been shaped by the politics of the past. It's not some separate entity to be considered in isolation. And a study of that shaping helps illuminate the events of the past. The JFK killers replaced Kennedy's rejection of a Pax Americana by embracing the very policy he abhorred. And every president since has in large measure followed suit. That's what I meant by my "straight line" comment from the Dulles brothers to contemporary policy makers. Find me a major politician, or political party, today that can be called antiwar. Contrast that with what it was like in 60s. To claim this seismic shift is not one result of the JFKA, and therefore sheds no light on the murder itself, simply can't be defended. Can it? If you disagree, fine, let's have that discussion. What is not acceptable is a policy that prohibits any discussion at all of contemporary politics as it relates to, or is the result of, the JFKA. I formally request you dispense with the policy of prohibiting contemporary political discussion as it relates to the JFKA. Have I sent this petition to the wrong person or place? If so, please advise who has the responsibility to consider it.

Ben: What's the evidence of things going quickly downhill (whatever you mean by that), when someone brings up, as Robert and I did, the murder's effect on current politics? I've been lurking here for more than a decade and a member for almost two years and haven't seen this. Sandy has often made this claim but he is short on specifics. You say you can see why Sandy banished "some commentary". Can you respond specifically to the warning I was given? Do you agree with that? Sandy has been silent. Robert's point is that the murder created a seismic shift in US politics that we can clearly see the effects of today. Is that controversial? If so, would you or Sandy like to debate that point? Do either of you think that shift is unimportant? Do you or Sandy think a debate on that point might be more beneficial than attempting to censor it?

Robert: While at the SAME TIME, Lyndon Johnson was telling everyone he could BEHIND THE SCENES that JFK had been killed by a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY. And within a week, LBJ was telling this to Earl Warren as well, saying millions will die in a NUCLEAR WAR if we don't cover this thing up. This was a deflection. LBJ did not want any public talk of "conspiracy" because ... he had just "conspired" to murder JFK. RO: These two points are contradictory, Robert. Johnson was raising the specter of a commie conspiracy with Warren soon after the murder in order to convince Warren he was needed to head the WC. The point for Warren to understand was that the public must be reassured that Oswald did it or all hell would break loose. That was to be Warren's main job. Johnson needed reassurance that Warren was willing to do that. Johnson had carefully assembled the guys he could trust to frame Oswald. Including his co-conspirator Allen Dulles, who was to make sure the CIA was kept out of it. Johnson had already stopped investigations in Texas and the Congress in order to centralize everything in the WC where the outcome could be controlled. As to the claim that Johnson was telling everyone he could that the commies did it, the question you must ask is, why would he do that? If he was really trying to convince people of that, was he willing to risk war with the SU as the logical outcome of his claim? He knew there were many groups, not just generals, who would eagerly snap up the idea of a war with the SU. The answer is clearly no. He knew that Kennedy had rejected out of hand the proposal of the generals for a preemptive strike on the SU early in his administration when intelligence was saying the US had a clear weapon superiority. That superiority apparently was gone by the fall of '63. The idea of MAD (mutually assured destruction) was taking hold. Less that a decade later Nixon signed the ABM treaty with the SU based on the idea that MAD was the real deterrent to nuclear war, not missile defense systems. Those systems in fact made war more likely if some fool thought a preemptive strike could work. Again, Johnson was evil but not crazy enough to want a war with the SU. One reason he so readily agreed to the Vietnam war was get the generals off his back about confronting the SU. In those days the SU was unlikely to intervene in Vietnam, which was China's bailiwick. Johnson was a master manipulator. In the early days after the murder did he mention he thought the murder was a commie conspirator? Yeah, probably. For what reason in each case we will probably never know, nor is it worthwhile to spend time trying to figure out. One thing is clear, those statements were not made with the aim of inciting a war. He had chased the presidency for too long to have it go up in smoke with a nuclear war. Ironically that happened anyway, slowly, with the disaster that was Vietnam.

I don't think that's right, Robert. Johnson raised the idea of a war with the SU to bully Warren into heading the WC to frame Oswald. One of the small reasons he so readily agreed to the the Vietnam war, besides disagreeing with JFK's plan to pull out, was to give the war mongers something to get them off his back about a war with the SU. Which he wanted no part of. He was evil but not that kind of crazy. After Bobby, Sorenson was the closest aide to JFK in the administration. Johnson had a problem with all of the close aides selling them the Oswald story. But I doubt if he used the treat of a war with the SU to get them to go along. It would not have worked with them and he knew it.

Robert Montenegro said: Every indicator is that a cataclysmic, tidal-shift in liberal social-politics took place, on a global scale, almost immediately after the murder of President Kennedy, that almost exclusively favored the extreme fascist elements of humanity. I said: This is the key to understanding the murder, which is too often ignored as it is considered in isolation. Once the killers saw how easy it was to get away with--with their control of information and ability to sell a scenario blatantly contradicted by easily known facts--they unleashed a torrent of murders designed to decimate the left opposition. You can draw a straight line between the Dulles brothers, Cheney and Rumsfeld, to the current neocon ignoramuses currently running the White House. The good news is the "rules based order", where the US makes and enforces the rules, created by, and a prime object of, the murder, is disintegrating before our eyes. This is why understanding the murder is so important today. To which Robert replied: Amen, couldn’t agree more. RO: I chose my words carefully. I said the tidal-shift (Robert's word) in politics that immediately followed, and was the result of, the JFK murder was *the key* to understanding who did it and why. Not *a* key to understanding the murder, but *the* key. All too often researchers that try to grapple with the central questions, who, why, treat the murder in isolation. Robert's statement was a welcome redirection to the *fact* that the JFKA was just the beginning of a rampage of murders that followed that were designed to decimate left opposition to the killers. Political murders, all. Kennedy publicly rejected a "Pax Americana enforced by American weapons of war" his killers wanted. His murder directly paved the way for them to get their way. And for the "rules based order" (the current name for Pax Americana) enforced by American weapons of war to be put in place on a bipartisan basis ever since. It has been the policy regardless of which party occupies the White House. History can't be changed. What's important about a study of the past is what it can tell us about the present and future. Is there any other reason to study the JFKA other than as a basis for changing what we have today that resulted from the murder? I concluded a study of Robert's tidal-shift is essential to understanding what happened 60 years ago that led to where we are today. Today, I woke up to the following message from Sandy Larsen. "You have been issued penalty points for posting contemporary anti-politician or anti-political-party comments." I had to acknowledge the warning before i could post again. Sandy has said before that contemporary politics has nothing to do with the JFKA. He's entitled to his personal opinion. But he is wrong. The JFKA couldn't be more relevant to our current political situation. That is what Robert was saying, to which I was adding some thoughts in agreement. The very wording of Sandy's warning claiming my note was anti-politician or anti-political party misunderstands what I was saying. I don't know the limits, if there are any, to Sandy's power as a mod. But surely he is *not* entitled to enforce his opinion about the irrelevance of contemporary politics on other members by trying to limit what we can say in analyzing the murder. Which brings me to a note to other members. For months Sandy has been removing threads and penalizing people for discussing what he terms irrelevant politics, without pushback. It's no wonder he thinks he has been doing the right thing. It's time for others to speak up or forever hold your silence.

CDJackson, publisher of Life, was a long time CIA asset. Life was fronting for the CIA when it bought the full rights to the Zapruder film. Obviously the CIA couldn't buy the film. Life was hiding the film under instructions from the CIA.

LBJ vs Dulles as the mastermind of the plan is an argument without substance. Both were essential to the plan's success. Each had a different part to do. As President LBJ had the fate of the others in his hands. A plan to cover up the murder and blame someone else had to be in place before any shots were fired. Johnson would be running that. Johnson wanted Kennedy dead as much as Dulles did. And he knew that others felt the same way. He was not going to let someone else plan the coverup and bind him to it when he became president. One example of this was the question of whether to use the murder as a pretext to attack Cuba. Johnson want no part of that at the beginning of his presidency. It's likely he made that clear to the others before the murder. We know it became public knowledge quickly after Kennedy was killed. Central to the cover up was the idea that no investigation of what happened would be permitted, since what actually happened did not fit the Oswald story they had decided to go with. To begin with, that means no legit autopsy. Snatching the body from Dr. Rose at Parkland and Johnson ordering it to be brought to AF1 was an early indication of the coverup plan already at work. Appointing 7 great Americans as figureheads to the WC, including, brazenly, co-conspirator Dulles, to ensure no investigation would happen and Oswald would be fingered, was another early step. I get a kick out of people who believe the recorded conversation between Johnson and (who was it, Joe Alsop?) where LBJ has to be convinced to appoint such a commission. The idea was Washington logical. He had that in mind, or something similar, when planning the coverup. The call was more LBJ play acting to divert attention form that fact that a (fake) commission was his idea. The Dulles gang had access to a world wide roster of professional killers. It turns out the creation and demise of the CIA's ZR Rifle program bookended the murder. Started in '62, ended in '64. Dulles didn't need Johnson, or Mac Wallace, for that part of the plan. Dulles did, however, spend the weekend of the murder at the CIA hideaway in Virginia, helping to get the coverup off the ground. A remaining, essential, part of the coverup was that Oswald had to be killed before he could talk to a lawyer. That was Dulles's job. Johnson could not be doing that from the White House and there is no record I am aware of of the calls Dulles made that weekend. Dulles and Johnson worked together. Each was essential to the murder plan

Thanks for this thread, Ben. I wasn't a member of the forum when you started it so this is my first chance to respond. Yes, the murder was unquestionably compartmentalized. Yes, in a murder of this magnitude and consequence there had to be a small group who planned and carried it out. With a coverup in place before the murder including a patsy to blame. But your initial conclusion that some "low-level Cuban CIA assets" murdered JFK (and presumably planned the murder), without CIA authorization (or presumed even knowledge) is off the mark. To begin with, such a group was not capable of the detailed planning the murder required. More than that, the murder was about political power in Washington. There were of course passions involved but thinking of it as some kind of revenge killing only leads you astray. It was much more important than that. The murder changed the results of the '60 election (JFK defeated Johnson for the Dem nomination) and produced a president in Johnson who was much more amenable to the interests of the killers. A question to ponder: If Kennedy had stuck with his original plan to pick Sen Symington as VP, who became a vocal critic of the Vietnam war, would the murder have happened? The aftermath tells an even more compelling story. Once it was successfully pulled off, the murder precipitated a swath of political murders the rest of the decade. By most of the same people. All were designed to destroy the remnants of left opposition to the killers' plans. You can focus on the Cubans, or mafia as the planners only by ignoring this fact and treating the murder in isolation (as is so often done). The murder produced endless wars since. In his peace speech Kennedy said he was against a Pax Americana enforced by American weapons of war. That's exactly the policy his killers wanted. He had made clear in public he was a direct threat to them. That policy under different names (the latest being the "rules based order" in which the US makes and enforces the rules) has been in place since he was murdered, verifying the killers' success.. Can you imagine any president since Kennedy giving his "peace speech"? In fact we have reached a point where there are no national antiwar politicians in the US to speak of. The war mongers are now clearly in charge. The identity of the planners is now even clearer than when Salandria gave his "False Mystery" speech 25 years ago, pointing to the "top echelons" of Kennedy's own government. Consider his characterization of the calls made by the WH situation Room the afternoon of the murder to the two planes with officials coming back to DC. Bundy was speaking for the killers and telling those who were in Dallas to forget what they think they saw. The murder had been "committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment", he said they were told. To me, that means, in part, that the killers themselves were going to investigate the murder and mete out the punishment. The plot was designed and run by Allen Dulles and Lyndon Johnson and whoever they needed to assist them in various aspects of plan. Like picking Oswald as the patsy, e.g. (Note: Salandria once said he could find no proof of Johnson's involvement and I'm not sure he ever did. Nobody's perfect). Note to Cliff: turn in your student ID for the Salandria school. Your naming of those 5 clowns as the planners and 5 others running the coverup means you have flunked the final exam. Dulles and Johnson were both Washington powers. Probably the two most powerful at the time, each with tentacles all over town. They could keep what they were doing secret, but they knew what everyone else was doing--an important source of Washington power. Dulles knew about Kennedy's back channel discussions with Krushchev and Castro, which became an important reason for the murder, e.g. The case for Dulles's involvement is well known and accepted by many. The Dulles brothers ran foreign policy under Eisenhower. Their views were clear. You were either with the US or the commies. No neutrality. And if you weren't with us there would be hell to pay. That policy was anathema to Kennedy. He stood in the way of it as a basic policy, not just their wanting a war in Vietnam. There may have been some Wall Street financial elites that Dulles needed an OK from, killing a president being so socially disruptive. That would not have been a problem. As president in charge of investigating the murder, Johnson would have the fate of the killers in his hands. He was indispensable to the plan working. There is a sense in which the Dulles gang knew how much Johnson wanted to be president, and expected he would run the coverup to protect them while allowing them the policies they wanted. But in a murder of this magnitude and consequence you can't go on expectations alone. You have to be sure. Besides, Johnson had to be comfortable with the cover up plan he would be running. Johnson's input was necessary to the plan. Logic, and an examination of Johnson's actions that weekend, dictate that conclusion as I have argued elsewhere. That Dulles and Johnson devised and ran the plan seems obvious to me. But perversely this very obviousness seems to have caused many researches to look elsewhere in search of something new. To go down many rabbit holes that lead nowhere. For 60 years now. Maybe your thread will help focus more people on the important questions: who did it and why.

Fanciful theory, very thinly supported. It can't withstand even cursory scrutiny. Johnson's alleged question, were the missiles flying yet, was typical LBJ playacting for the record. He knew he wasn't supposed to at the point know what happened. This was his way putting his ignorance, and innocence, into the record. Had the ICBMs been flying, in both directions, he would have already known about it. We're supposed to rely on Hosty for the claim that immediately after the murder the generals insubordinately sent planes to strike Cuba? Then these generals, not the CIA, informed the WH Situation Room that intelligence showed that Cuba and the SU were behind the murder. But Harriman saved the day (was he even in the Situation Room at the time?). He told the generals their "intelligence" was wrong. Kennedy was murdered by a lone assassin. (How did he or Bundy, who we know was there, know this at that time unless they were involved in the murder plan?) Then Harriman, not Bundy's subordinate, radioed Johnson on AF1 that Kennedy was murdered by a lone assassin already in custody. As I said, that message was not intended for Johnson, but to the WH staff on both planes coming back to DC. The murder has already been solved. Don't interfere. It's interesting that you assert that both Bundy and Harriman "understood the severe consequences of a strike on Cuba" after just arguing that Johnson did not. He was not afraid to attack Cuba after the murder, you said, in response to my claim that everyone involved in the plan would have known Johnson was not going to attack Cuba and risk a nuclear war with the SU.

Sorenson was writing what he understood to be Kennedy's reaction to the generals' proposal, Keven. And what he describes clearly was Kennedy's reaction. In the '61 meeting the generals argued for a preemptive strike on the SU because the US had nuclear superiority. They expected that superiority to have largely been largely gone by the fall of '63. But, Sorenson says, that meeting confirmed to Kennedy what he already knew: nuclear war was so devastating that neither side could "win" and so a preemptive strike was no longer an option, if it ever was. The idea that a nuclear war was unwinnable was not confined to Kennedy at the time; it was so obvious it soon became conventional wisdom. In 1972 Nixon signed the ABM treaty with the SU that severely restricted the deployment of ABM defense systems. Those systems weren't very good, but the main reason for the treaty was that nuclear war was understood to be unwinnable. That was the real deterrent to starting one. Defense systems actually could encourage someone to try. (Side note: Bush II pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002 but that just shows what a moron he was.) A decade later Reagan and Gorbachev, in a one on one meeting, agreed to get rid of all nukes. But their staffs, you know the people really making the decisions, would have none of it. How, then,could you justify what has become trillion dollar defense budgets? There is a current UN resolution signed by many countries that would simply ban nuclear weapons. But, this being the UN, it was no chance of being fully ratified or enforced.

I didn't say when Johnson killed the plan to blame the murder on Castro. I said the important planners had to know Johnson was never going to risk a war with the SU right at the beginning of his presidency. It's clear Johnson made that known soon after the murder. How he handled the problem (it was a problem for him) before the murder, i.e, to what extent, if any, he made his intentions known to others, was a matter of strategy for Johnson. What were the anti Castro zealots going to do, murder him too? It's also not clear that those for whom going after Castro and the SU was a main reason to murder Kennedy would have listened to Johnson anyway, no matter what he said before the murder. That the desire to get rid of Castro didn't go away simply because Johnson did not use the murder as an excuse, proves nothing. Whether pushed by Angleton, Phillips or anyone else. In your previous message you characterized Allen Dulles as part of a rogue CIA faction. That's a use of the word rogue of which I am unfamiliar. Dulles was never rogue. He still ran important aspects of the agency from his home in Georgetown after Kennedy fired him. He was still viewed as the "old man", i.e., the leader of the main staff. He took over the CIA's hideaway in Virginia that weekend to help orchestrate the cover up. When Johnson was looking for someone to put on the WC to keep the CIA out of the investigation he of course chose Dulles. McCone replaced him but he was kept out of the loop of the important stuff. He spent 2 hours with Bobby the afternoon of the murder (because Kennedy immediately suspected the CIA) and probably the main thing Kennedy learned was how out of touch McCone was with the CIA's activities that could have led to the murder of his brother.

SL: We know it wasn't a fringe group... it was the CIA. We know that because only the CIA could have placed Oswald in the TSBD, where he needed to be. And only the CIA could have pulled off the Mexico City charade, which David Phillips certainly had a hand in. The rogue group at the CIA who did the Mexico City charade also placed Oswald at the TSBD, so you can't just blow them off. If you can't explain them, then there's a flaw in your theory. RO: When I refer to the CIA doing something I mean its leadership. Not some rogue group at the agency. In 1963 that meant Allen Dulles along with whoever he chose to help him with a particular job. That was the point of Peter Dale Scott's story about "the old man" taking care of the Kennedy problem. Dulles was respected and revered at the agency. Imo, nothing would have happened about the murder without his knowledge, approval, and likely personal participation. Reading The Devil's Chessboard gives you a sense of that besides Scott's story. SL: But it WAS fully implemented. It was still going on even after the Warren report was published. And neither Angleton or David Phillips ever gave up on it! RO: Johnson killed implementation of the plan to blame the murder on Cuba. It doesn't matter what Angleton or Phillips or anyone else wanted or continued to do to agitate for it after the murder.

According to Homer McMahon, "Bill Smith" the "SS agent", who returned the film from HW, picked the frames to include in the second set of boards. The job of picking frames and making up the boards continued after McMahon left early Monday morning. In the 90s McMahon said some of the frames he worked on were no longer included in the extant boards he saw, and some were added after he left. Life/CIA then kept the altered original film hidden for almost 12 years. The second set of boards are now at NARA. This opens up several possibilities for when alterations were done. Those who did the alterations were not confined to the roughly 12 hour period the film was at HW. It seems clear that three copies were made of the altered film at HW to replace the three copies Zapruder had made when he had the film developed. Two of the original copies went to the CIA and SS. There was no problem switching them once the film had been altered. Zapruder kept the original third copy when he gave the original film to Life/CIA on Saturday. The plan was to give the original back to Zapruder in a few days in exchange for his copy, when Life had finished their work on publishing some stills in their magazine. That changed when it make clear the work at HW wasn't sufficient to eliminate the incriminating parts of the film. Life/CIA cancelled the original deal on Sunday, and gave Zapruder another $100,000 to keep the original (out of sight) indefinitely. It seems likely that Life/CIA also gave Zapruder the copy of the altered film and took back his copy that was made from the original. $150,000 in 1963 dollars buys a lot of cooperation. The extra $100,000 was paid to Zapruder in 4 annual installments. Zapruder died just2 years after the payments ended. Zapruder's copy of the original and Brugioni's boards were the last vestiges of the original film. Brugioni's boards were destroyed in the 70s when authorities started sniffing around the murder again and Brugioni mentioned he still had his boards in his safe.

Everyone knows there was a faction that wanted to blame Cuba for the murder and confront the SU. As president, Johnson was never going to allow that. He had lusted after the presidency his whole adult life. He was not going to see it go up in smoke like that. The SU was serious about protecting Castro. You say the plotters in your scenario "hoped" Johnson would do what they wanted after the murder. That's a clear indication they were a fringe group, not members of the inner circle of planners. The plan was of such enormity it had to be concrete, not based on a hope. All the work to establish Oswald as a commie allied with Cuba was a contingency, not fully implemented in the end. But it had its uses for the killers. It created a bunch of rabbit holes for researchers to pursue, diverting them from the central questions: who did it if not Oswald, and why? In short your line of inquiry has little or nothing to do with my understanding of what happened.

RO: No, Sandy, I'm afraid you don't get what I'm saying. It's well known that many groups wanted to get rid of Kennedy. To name a few: the "intelligence services", the military, disgruntled Cubans, the Mafia, the banks, Wall Street, the oil companies. But killing Kennedy and making sure they got him was such an enormous and dangerous task, the main players who were serious eventually coalesced around one plan. Peter Dale Scott has told the story of going to a dinner party as a young man in the early 60s. People around the table were loudly criticizing Kennedy. Until one guy got up and said "The old man will take care of it." That ended the conversation. Scott thought he was saying Kennedy's father would straighten him out. Later he came to understand the guy was referring to Allen Dulles, known at the time as the old man at the CIA. Who was still running parts of the CIA after Kennedy fired him. Allen Dulles and the war machine wanted to run cold war foreign policy. Lyndon Johnson, with some exceptions, was largely indifferent to that but wanted to be president. They had different goals. But those goals were clearly complementary, not *opposing* ones. They and their cohorts worked together in the successful plot. . They were two centers of Washington power, and each was necessary for the plan's success. Each expected to get enough of what they wanted out of Kennedy's death to go ahead with the plan.

What happened to the three first gen copies made from the original after the film was altered is only a small mystery. One copy originally went to the CIA and one to the SS. There was no problem with them when new copies were made of the altered Z film at Hawkeye Works. Zapruder kept the third copy when he gave the original to Life in the initial deal. He was supposed to give his copy to Life in exchange for the original a few days later, after Life had prepared the stills it was publishing. When Life cancelled the original deal on Sunday, they struck a new, much more lucrative, deal with Zapruder to keep the original (then altered) film indefinitely. They had another copy made from the altered film to replace the copy Zapruder had from the original film. Make up your own speculation as to how that conversation went. $150,000 in '63 dollars buys a lot of cooperation. Zapruder died at the age of 65, just 2 years after the annual payments stopped.

The decisions about what to do with the Z film that weekend were made separately but in a logical sequence. First try to alter the film to conceal the damaging information it showed. If that failed, as it did, they could either hide the film for as long as they could get away with (almost 12 years as it turned out), or destroy it. The film was already known as the essential record of the murder (Chris explains that in fact it was that), and Life magazine was to publish stills from it in a few days. I don't think they ever seriously considered destroying it. They were too smart for that. By altering instead of destroying it, they were left with a film that could masquerade as the original, instead of having to explain what happened to it. What remained was the boards Brugioni made from the original that weekend. Brugioni had kept them in a safe for more than a decade. Once authorities started sniffing around the murder again in the mid 70s and Brugioni mentioned he still had his boards, he was ordered to get rid of them. Which he did.