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David Cooper

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    History, especially 20th Century political and intelligence history. Vintage automobiles and bicycles. Good conversations. Learning new things.

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  1. This seems to me to be the implication of John Newman’s understanding of Bruce Solie’s “fake” molehunt and LHO’s whole sojourn in the USSR. If there is direct KGB involvement with LHO, it changes our understanding of the JFKA. (Then, LHO was a witting accomplice to these schemes.) But I am reasonably sure that John Newman is not drawing the conclusion that the KGB was indirectly or directly responsible for the JFKA… If LHO’s defection was faked on several levels, then it raises other questions. When did the KGB learn about the U2? Did they already know what LHO was supposed to reveal? Was LHO’s real mission to deceive Angleton? Was Gary Power’s overflight in direct contravention of Eisenhower’s orders designed to undermine his meeting with Khrushchev? Was the sabotage of his plane a CIA/Dulles plot? Who is fooling who in this game of smoke and mirrors?
  2. If the article by Ward Wilson in Foreign Policy posted by Paul Rigby is correct that the Soviet Union's entrance into the war with Japan was the actual motive for their surrender, it implies that three controversial and costly geopolitical strategic decisions by FDR actually led to the resolution of WWII. 1) Douglas Horne's book, "The McCollum Memorandum" documents the unknown story of FDR's geopolitical understanding of the situation facing the US in 1940-41. The original documentation Horne uncovers argues that FDR realized that the Nazis could not be defeated if the Soviets were not able to fight them. Had the Japanese attacked the Soviets in coordination with the Nazis in 1941, then their military strength would be divided and they would lose. FDR recognized that the Japanese faced a major strategic choice of their own, whether to go north and attack the Soviets or go south and attack the other countries in the Pacific (primarily Dutch East Indies) to assure their supply of oil. By cutting off their oil supply he pushed them to choose the southern Pacific choice. (Horne shows that nothing indicated that FDR suspected they would attack Pearl Harbor (surprise attack holding radio silence across the Pacific) but he knew they would attack our bases in the Philippines and our ships in the Pacific.) 2) FDR made the difficult choice for "unconditional surrender" for the Germans and the Japanese, knowing full well that this would prolong the war and prevent peace parties and moderates from ending the war with some of their previous governments in place. He was well aware that Dulles was negotiating Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff violating his orders about this, and even corresponded with Stalin about this situation on the last day of his life. (FDR intended to bring Dulles and his corporate supporters and bankers to trial for treason after the war, but his death prevented this from happening--see Talbot, "The Devil's Chessboard" and Loftus, "The Secret War Against the Jews"). The choice for "unconditional surrender" was made against Churchill's wishes to insure that Stalin would stay allied to us for the duration of the war (and FDR hoped into the following peace) and not believe we were looking for ways to undermine our alliance with the Soviets. FDR was also aware, and may have instigated, secret negotiations by James Forrestal and Admiral Ellis Zacharias with the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands to quietly find a way to end the war in the Pacific, suggesting that he might have been more open to a different solution in the Pacific after the war in Europe was concluded. This also may indicate that FDR was not sure that the atomic bomb would bring about the results some in our military and government believed it would...FDR's controversial policy was not foolish or unconsidered, but rather, he believed, necessary, in order to bring about a real resolution to the wars in Europe and Japan, end future colonialism, and form a better basis for future peace (Soviet and Chinese support in the United Nations, for example.) In this sense, JFKs policies were a continuation of FDR's policy directions. 3) FDR's greatest success at Yalta was getting Stalin to agree to attack the Japanese soon after the war in Europe ended. If this is what pushed the Japanese to actually surrender, rather than Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then FDR's agreement with Stalin was critical to end the war. Truman made his decision at the urging of James F. Byrnes and some of the top US military advisors. Contrary to FDR, Truman's advisors believed that war with the Soviets was inevitable, maybe even desirable, and wanted to make a point to the Soviets about the bomb. They cynically did not believe that the bomb was necessary to force the surrender of Japan despite what they told Truman. If you are going to call someone immoral then blame Truman's advisors. Truman ultimately learned how he was misled by them and by Dulles and the intelligence people...
  3. An intelligence source, whom I promised would remain nameless, scoffed when I mentioned Skorzeny’s death in 1975 and asked, “You believed that?” He told me that Skorzeny faked his death and funeral in 1975 and actually lived twenty more years into the 1990s. Worth researching the truth of this more.
  4. Further, I admire Fletcher Prouty's courage in coming forward with his revelations about the actions of the "secret team". But I think we need to understand his motives and goals in doing so. We need to ask about what he says and what he does not say in his work. To do so is not to question his motives or to impugn his reputation. I do not believe that the term "limited hangout" is an attack on Prouty's integrity, as I stated in my last post. A limited hangout is the way intelligence people present information when they are uncertain as to what the audience for their information already knows. It challenges us to read more carefully and to observe the clues they leave for us. I do not believe that the choice is either to accept Prouty at face value or to condemn him as a fraud. That is a false choice. The real choice is to try to dig deeper into his account and connect it with the other historical facts and insights we have collectively uncovered over the past decades.
  5. I am confused by the responses to this thread. Is there a doubt that an important faction in the MICC helped finance, rescue, repatriate, and put to use prominent Nazis after the war? Is there a doubt that our intelligence faction helped to preserve stolen Nazi and Japanese gold and other stolen wealth for the secret use of the intelligence services. their wealthy corporate clients and the prominent Nazis after the war? Is it surprising that these same Nazis, with their considerable experience and talents, would not be put to use in the post-war "Cold War" against the Soviets and to further the exploitation of others around the world? Is it surprising that some of the actions we consider heinous and unthinkable that were done in our name, or at least by people working for our government like MK Ultra, LSD tests, assassinations, coup d'etats, drug running, false flag operations, setting up secret operations like Gladio, controlling the media, taking over actions, like the Marshall Plan for just one example, and using them as a cover for nefarious purposes, destroying the reputation of people who oppose this faction, and generally lying about all of their actions? Finally, it is a surprise that the same faction in the MICC, would organize the assassination and posthumous destruction of the reputation of those it considered seriously threatening their plans? These are the same people who recommended defenestration as a good method to get rid of one's enemies in their manual. IMO, no POTUS since Kennedy has seriously challenged this cabal. And they have mastered the art of getting people like us to get caught up in the small details at the expense of the larger issues, as Vincent rightly Salandria pointed out.
  6. I value Fletcher Prouty's written works and interviews. I have learned a lot from them. I think that Jim DiEugenio, Len Osanic and David Ratcliffe have done a great service presenting Prouty's insights--which I believe are valuable regardless of some of his questionable associations. And maybe we need to look more into those as well. However, I agree with Robert that Prouty's works comprise a "limited hangout". Of course it is, as he was an intelligence and counterintelligence specialist. Who was he protecting? Who did he leave out of his account? Prouty was not amoral, like, say, Miles Copeland, and clearly had a conscience and devotion to the United States and its armed forces. From his unique vantage, Prouty posed questions and helped us understand how the secret world functioned. Consider his descriptions of the background to the Bay of Pigs, his description of when he saw Churchill being challenged outside the barrier on his journey to Tehran or describing his long conversations with Ed Lansdale. What was his role in Operation Bloodstone? I think Oliver Stone presented this "limited hangout" approach effectively in JFK when he had Donald Sutherland cautiously hint at things for Garrison to pursue. I don't think this limited hangout approach by intelligence people is unusual. They are trained not to talk too much to people who don't know or understand what they are saying. I certainly don't condemn Prouty for it. When I have interviewed people involved in intelligence, I found that they opened up more when you demonstrated that you uncovered information that showed their previous statements to be incomplete or misleading. They respected you more when you could break through one of their firewalls. If you took what they said at face value and assumed they were revealing the whole truth you lost some of their respect. Layers upon layers upon layers. Prouty was intelligent enough to leave clues in his works that functioned the same way. When you could dig deeper you would see something new. Whether I agree with all of Robert's conclusions or not is not the point here. His important research brings new questions to the table that add to the value of our ongoing discussions and projects. Ultimately, in my opinion, we need to read all of our sources less literally to find the clues they leave for us. I don't post often, but I read the posts regularly and am much happier when the discussion is respectful and open to different considerations, rather than repetitions of the same points and positions, or attempts to halt any discussion of alternative ideas. We are all here for the same purpose: to learn what happened and why--and what it continues to imply for us.
  7. I had a class where the teacher asked us to write an essay arguing whether persuasion was more effective than coercion or vice versa. Once we finished and turned in our essays he assigned us to write an essay taking the opposite point of view. Today, knowing what I have learned in the half century since then, I would argue that blackmail is far more compelling than persuasion--see the cases of Angleton, Nixon, etc. Roy Cohn & J. Edgar Hoover certainly were practitioners as well. Cynthia Chung's recent book, "The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set" has very good information about this, as well as Whitney Webb's recent books--as Anthony Thorne mentioned. I particularly found the first volume, "One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1" to be a great source of background information--long before Jeffrey Epstein got into this game. Was JFK blackmailed into accepting LBJ as his running mate as some accounts have suggested? Did FDR blackmail Hoover into compliance with his policies? FYI, in "The Secret War Against the Jews", Loftus and Aarons have a different take on the true story of Israel's attack on the USS Liberty, based on their high-level intelligence sources, that presents a far more plausible explanation for what happened than most of the other discussions of this topic.
  8. An alternative understanding of Angleton’s relationship with the early Zionists and Israel is in the book by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, “The Secret War Against the Jews”. Loftus and Aarons have high level connections with the intelligence world, and reveal that Angleton, Dulles and some others were discovered and blackmailed by the Zionists (later were organized into Mossad) for their work in Italy at the end of the War working with the Vatican helping smuggle wealth and war criminals out of Germany. Angleton was not a true friend to Israel in their account. This explains some of his puzzling actions.
  9. Without Kruschev as his negotiating partner, JFK would not have had much success. Kruschev had to take similar risks against hardliners in his government to make his concessions in the negotiations.
  10. Like many arguments presented in forums and public venues today, the two sides are having two separate discussions and are not motivated to truly address the other’s points. If either side only read one more source, these contributors seem to say, they would, somehow and suddenly, change their minds and see it according to the opposite point of view. Michael wants to prove, it seems to me, two points. 1) That the North Vietnamese government was very brutal as it consolidated its power over decades after the US withdrawal and the fall of the South Vietmamese government. 2) That our military was closer to success than most people knew, and that with a little more public support by Americans and their government, the South Vietnamese/USA coalition could have prevailed. As to point #1, of course they were brutal. That is what happens in these situations. Once the power is consolidated the level of brutality may reduce. When you open the box of war terrible things come out. It is similar to the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both cases the escalation of war, by us, led to enormous numbers of people, especially non-combatants, killed. It led to chaos and created opportunities for the brutal to vie for power. The brutality cannot be limited to one side only, and in the case of North Vietnam actually can subside, and this seems to me be to be Jim DiEugenio’s counterpoint. Jim presents a case that the whole war, as escalated under Johnson and Nixon, opened up a situation which resulted in the deaths of many millions all over what we used to call Indochina—and, importantly, had this escalation been avoided then these millions of deaths may not have occurred. The fear that the escalation would provoke horrible things is what I, and many others, believed—and we acted upon that belief, when we organized protests in 1971 against the widened bombing campaign in Cambodia by Nixon and Kissinger. We believed that the US government was acting against both American’s interests and principles by conducting the war this way. In retrospect and after years of study, I now see the situation in the US differently. I realize that the protest movement in the US was successful in halting the US involvement in Indochina in large part because parts of the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex were running a secret war, and did not seek or want public approval, funding or even understanding for what they were doing. We were successful because wars, in a country founded on our principles, cannot be fought in secret. If you look at the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C. you see a list of Americans who were killed in the war. It is a very powerful memorial and helps us to appreciate the sacrifice we made of so many American lives. But nothing on that memorial gives anyone the slightest sense of what these Americans were fighting for, or the purpose for which they gave their last full measure of devotion. It is a monolith to pointless death. So we shift to Michael’s point #2. Could our military have been close to success on the battlefield as a result of better targeting of our massive bombing? Maybe. But we did not know this then and could not have acted upon it. The consequences of running secret wars undermined the military’s potential successes. I remember the horror of people reacting to what American soldiers did at My Lai when the story was reported. I do not believe we know the all the facts to this day, and do not believe that the story was as one-sided as it was presented in the press. But it does not matter. At the time, this type of action by our side could not be justified to the American people and only led to more effective protest and more opposition to the war. World War II is often called the “last good war” because we generally had an idea of what we were fighting for. It may have been a simplistic idea, and of course there were many aspects of the war that were secret, but there was a concerted attempt to make a public case as to why we needed to be to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who were fighting had thus far so nobly advanced. Doug Horne’s book, “The McCollum Memorandum: A Story of Washington, D.C. in 1940-41” reveals the long-term consequences of running wars, or actually geo-political strategic decisions, in secret. Roosevelt saw, Horne demonstrates, the potential consequences for the US if the poopoo attack on the Soviet Union was successful. He saw that if the Japanese joined the Nazis and attacked the Soviets from the East, then Hitler’s gamble may well have succeeded. The effect of the fall of the Soviet Union would have put the allies, especially the US and Britain, in serious jeopardy. Roosevelt was well-informed that the Japanese faced a choice at that moment: to attack the Soviets or to move south and attack the Dutch East Indies to secure their oil and resources. By cutting off the Japanese oil and his other actions, Roosevelt forced them to choose the southern choice. That may have ultimately led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Roosevelt may or may not have fully anticipated, but the alternative was far worse. In retrospect, I believe Roosevelt’s actions were right. Yet, and this is my point, Roosevelt could not have made that case in public to the American people. It had to be made in secret, and that has led to decades of speculations about what Roosevelt knew and if his actions were traitorous. Under the circumstances, perhaps these sometimes quite wild speculations could not have been avoided. One of the greatest virtues of the JFKA research community is that, for those who want it, the research opens up an informed discussion about the secret history of the 20th century and allows us to see what has been done in our name—even if these actions were mostly to serve global corporations rather than Americans. It allows us to see that JFK was the last president to take a serious and honest ‘America First’ approach in the world by understanding that we cannot stand for our principles and have the kind of life we want if we foster injustice, corruption, exploitation and secret dominance of and by our country and others around the world.
  11. My name is David Cooper. I have been interested in the assassination of JFK since 11/22/63. My mother was a professor of political science and conversations about current events occupied every dinner conversation. We both watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Oswald on live television. I remember when she work me up very early one morning in 1968 to tell me RKF was shot in California. My interest in the JFKA was rekindled when I was in college in 1975 and I heard a presentation by Mark Lane. It was the first time I saw the Zapruder film. Since then, like many of you, I have made a point to study details about what actually happened and its growing ramifications on our lives ever since. I am a historian. I have a business restoring pre-WWII and early post-war European cars. My restoration work not only requires me to research the methods, materials, context, milieu and construction of early 20th century technology, but also has led me to unexpected discoveries about the provenance and history of the owners of these special automobiles. For example, a remarkable women owner of one of the cars was deeply involved with British and American intelligence history before, during and after WWII. I find myself drawn to the dusty corners of events, and to dig out connections between say, for example, Operation Paperclip and the JFKA. I have been following various discussions on the Education Forum for a long time and am glad to finally join.
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