Michael Griffith

The fact of the matter is that the previous three presidents--Trump, Obama, Bush--failed us when it came to releasing JFK-assassination records. Biden appears to be following in their footsteps.

It tells me that you're a rabid ideologue who jumps to invalid conclusions based on your ideology. You know that Ken Hughes, whom you've cited repeatedly on the decent interval, is also on the staff of the Miller Center, right? Right? No. You apparently did not know that, or else I doubt you would have made such a sweeping, unfounded attack on the Miller Center. And, FYI, Larry Sabato is a moderate mainstream conservative. But, since you are on the very fringe of the left wing, you automatically view him as unreliable, untrustworthy, extreme, etc., etc. And also just FYI, Sabato has been one of Trump's most strident, most vituperative critics. Just one example: GOP Demands Investigation of Professor for Anti-Trump Tweets (nymag.com) The professor whom the GOP wanted investigated was Sabato, as you'll see if you read the article.

So you're just going to continue to ignore the point? You see, you guys go into automatic attack mode when you find out that a given researcher does not agree with your politics. I, on the other hand, never summarily attack a researcher just because they voted for a different candidate than the one whom I supported. That's one of the big differences between us. Since my ideology is not rabid or extreme, I do not automatically question a researcher's trustworthiness just because they voted for someone for whom I did not vote. Only a rabid partisan would say something like "Mamet is extremely untrustworthy because he supports and praises Trump." That juvenile statement assumes, among other things, that only people who did not vote for Trump can be trusted on the JFK case. That's as bad as if I were to say, "any researcher who voted for Obama or Biden is extremely untrustworthy on the JFK case."

This highlights the fact that the Durham Report should raise alarm bells with all people who care about government misconduct and election integrity, regardless of party, because it shows that government entities worked to sabotage a presidential nominee's campaign and tried to alter the electoral outcome. But, since this effort was done by liberal government elements against Donald Trump, most liberals don't want to admit it happened. I can honestly say that if the shoe were on the other foot, if it had been conservative government elements trying to undermine the Democratic Party's nominee, I would be just as adamant that the guilty parties should be brought to justice.

Oliver Stone's movie JFK had a two-edged-sword effect: It convinced many average people that JFK was killed by a conspiracy, but it made many historians and scholars more hostile to the conspiracy position.

So you can't even admit that your version of the JFK withdrawal is rejected by the vast majority of historians and other Vietnam War scholars? This is why you were only able to cite one fringe amateurish author to support your rejection of Selverstone's new book on the withdrawal, whereas I was able to cite numerous recognized historians/scholars from all across the political spectrum who have praised the book. Are you denying that McNamara said nothing about his "secret debrief" in his memoir? If so, cite the page where he mentions it. It's not there. We both know it. Are you denying that not one of McNamara's worshipful, adoring aides said anything about the secret debrief? Well, then, provide a reference to show that just one of them mentioned it. Your comments and conduct on JFK and Vietnam have seriously damaged your credibility. You have acted like a Flat Earther who is confronted with satellite photos of the round Earth for the first time, and who just can't bring himself to admit that a claim he has cherished and peddled for years is demonstrably false.

You always jump to extreme conclusions, because of your rabid leftist ideology. My point, which you totally avoided, was that I don't automatically consider an author "extremely untrustworthy" just because they supported Obama or Hillary or Biden. I was contrasting my tolerant, open-minded attitude with Lowe's reflexive condemnation of Mamet, which was based solely on Mamet's support and praise of Trump. I did not say one word about the merits of supporting and praising Obama, Hillary, Biden, etc. In case you'd like to know, I think Obama was a better president than George W. Bush. I support a number of things that Obama did, especially the Affordable Care Act and his making most of the Bush tax cuts permanent. I think Obama usually handled himself with class and maturity, unlike Trump. Obama proved he was willing to reach reasonable compromises on some issues. Obama was very pro-veteran. To his great credit, and in contrast to Bush's refusal to do so, Obama pushed through concurrent receipt for disabled veterans, so that they were no longer forced to give up most of their disability pension as an offset for their retiree pay.

Let's not forget Anthony Summers' blockbuster 1980 book Conspiracy, which made it respectable to believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy. The book received praise from important mainstream figures such as Robert MacNeil (of the PBS MacNeil-Lehrer Report), former JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger, former UN ambassador William Atwood, Congressman and former HSCA member Richard Preyer, and former HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, to name a few. Summers' careful, measured scholarship and his avoidance of wild speculation made the book very hard to attack, especially given the praise it received from the likes of MacNeil, Preyer, Blakey, etc. With such heavyweight praise, critics knew they could not credibly dismiss it as another "fringe conspiracy book."

Many anti-Castro Cubans were furious when, in October 1962, they read news stories that JFK had assured Khrushchev that he would not invade Cuba in exchange for the removal of Soviet missiles from the island. I suspect this was when some anti-Castro Cubans and some of their CIA handlers became viscerally and violently anti-Kennedy. And we should keep in mind that some anti-Castro Cubans had Mafia ties.

I find it curious that Ruth Paine studied Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont. Middlebury was not cheap. For many decades, some government agencies have been sending people there for foreign language study, since Middlebury offers a top-notch immersion program. When I was in the Army, I was once slated to attend a Hebrew course at Middlebury in the early '90s, but my trip was cancelled because my unit ran short on training funds. I'd be curious to know how Ruth Paine was able to pay for a Russian course at Middlebury.

A few other facts to keep in mind about the CBS rifle test: -- All the participants were experienced riflemen. One of them was Howard Donahue, who, not surprisingly, shot the best score. -- The riflemen were given the chance to fire practice shots before the test began, a luxury that Oswald would not have had. -- A shot was counted as a "hit" if it landed anywhere in the target silhouette. Many of those "hits" would have caused only minor wounds. -- The CBS riflemen did not fire in the cramped conditions in which the alleged lone gunman fired. They didn't even fire through a half-opened window. -- Several of the experienced riflemen failed to score two hits on any of their attempts. Any truly realistic rifle test would include only military vets who never scored higher than the level of Sharpshooter and who had engaged in minimal target practice over the preceding few years. It would also simulate the cramped conditions of the sixth-floor sniper's nest. The "hits" in a realistic test would only be shots that landed in approximately the same locations that Oswald's two alleged hits supposedly landed.

Wow, that's a great documentary. Very interesting and full of information. Great stuff.

Look, it's very simple: I have never said, and never will say, "John Doe is extremely untrustworthy because he is an Obama supporter [or a Biden or Hillary supporter] and has been quoted as saying Obama did a great job." Such a statement would show me to have a rabid, extreme partisan mindset. Yet, you said that Mamet is "extremely untrustworthy" because he's a Trump supporter and has been quoted as saying Trump did a great job. There are plenty of conservatives who don't buy the lone-gunman theory, but you and many others here act like a person cannot really care about JFK's death and understand its ramifications if they are not liberal. Some of you folks even accuse conservatives of being a manifestation of a Fourth Reich, of being "fascists," "dangerous," etc., etc. You and others keep ignoring the fact that JFK was a centrist Democrat who was fiscally conservative, who advocated a gigantic tax cut for the rich, who privately condemned Halberstam's coverage of the Vietnam War as biased and harmful, who said in June 1963 that "the Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today," who took a decidedly centrist approach to labor unions and declined to accept extreme union demands, who gave military personnel a larger pay hike than Eisenhower gave them, and who said the following about his increases in national defense on the very day he was murdered: In the past 3 years we have increased the defense budget of the United States by over 20 percent; increased the program of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minuteman missile purchase program by more than 75 percent; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60 percent; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased our strategic airlift capability by 75 percent; and increased our special counter-insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Viet-Nam by 600 percent. (Remarks at the Breakfast of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce | The American Presidency Project (ucsb.edu)

You're comparing apples to steak and are avoiding my point. You will never, ever, ever see me question a source's reliability solely because of their political beliefs, whether they be liberal, ultra-liberal, conservative, or ultra-conservative. You will, however, see me question a source's reliability if they have a long history of associating with Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, white supremacists, Communists, and cultists. That's very different from questioning their credibility merely on the basis that they supported Trump or Biden or Hillary or Obama or Romney, etc., which is what you did.

I think that any analysis of the Tippit witnesses has to acknowledge and consider the corrupting, intimidating, and suppressing influence of the DPD and the FBI on the witnesses. The authorities were determined to twist and influence the witness statements to make them fit the Oswald-did-it theory as much as possible. They told Acquilla Clemons to keep her mouth shut about seeing two men involved in the shooting. The FBI refused to take a statement from her with the lame excuse that she had diabetes. The authorities used flimsy excuses to reject Earlene Roberts' matter-of-fact account of a police car stopping in front of the house and tapping its horn just before Oswald left the house.

RFK Jr.’s claims received respectful coverage from right-leaning Real Clear Politicsand Greg Gutfeld of Fox News Radio, but has not yet been fact checked by Polifact (which has refuted his claims about the dangers of the Covid vaccine, as has FactCheck.org.) So JFK Facts will examine the historical record. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘Overwhelming’ Evidence? These new files, unearthed by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), do not reveal a CIA plot but they reveal significant new facts not reported by major news organizations and not generally known to the public. The new records show that certain senior undercover CIA officers—including bitter Kennedy enemies —knew far, far more about the president’s accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, than they ever acknowledged to investigators or friendly news organizations. A Pentagon file released in 1997 shows that in mid-1963 the Joint Chiefs conceived and approved false flag operations (code name Operation Northwoods) to deploy “trusted covert operatives” to stage a spectacular attack on a U.S. target and arrange for the blame to fall on Cuba. The goal wax to deceptively advance the policy favored by generals and opposed by JFK: a U.S. invasion. Declassified files also show that Agency assets in a propaganda program (codename AMSPELL) were the first to link Oswald to Castro in the panicky hours after the president was gunned down in broad daylight. The New York Times reported that the AMSPELL case officer stonewalled congressional investigators about his knowledge of Oswald’s Cuban contacts. CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia In addition, the ARRB took sworn testimony from doctors and other personnel involved in JFK’s autopsy, which showed egregious breaches in the photographic record. Photo technician Saundra Spencer and other witnesses established that the photographic record of JFK’s autopsy evidence has been culled of photos showing the president’s fatal wound, and thus cannot be considered reliable. Of course, this does not constitute evidence of a murder conspiracy but it is evidence of a crime—tampering with evidence—begging the question why someone would manipulate the JFK autopsy evidence? One possibility: to conceal evidence of a crime. In its totality, the preponderance of new JFK evidence does not yield “smoking gun” proof of a conspiracy, but it does further undermine the credibility of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that the president was killed by one man alone for no reason. It raises investigative possibilities unknown to the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. All the same, RFK Jr. has overstated his case. The evidence that has come into public view since Oliver Stone’s 1992 “JFK” movie is consistent with a CIA-assisted false-flag operation designed to kill the president and lay the blame on Cuba. The evidence is not overwhelming or definitive. Rather, it is suggestive and incomplete. Subscribe to JFK Facts KGB Disinformation? RFK Jr.s claim on Sean Hannity’s show that “it was my father’s first instinct that the CIA had killed his brother” is accurate. In his biography “RFK in His Times,” Arthur Schlesinger tells the story of RFK’s November 22 meeting with CIA director John McCone almost exactly as RFK Jr. recalls it. This was four years before the KGB disinformation operation alleged by Tim Weiner and others. The possibility of a plot among CIA-supported Cubans against JFK was raised again by the Agency’s Miami station within days of the attack in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. The proof came with the release of a long-secret CIA memo in December 2022. The memo, written by Donald Heath, a deceased undercover officer, shows that, while the White House and FBI assured the public that Oswald had acted alone and there was no evidence to the contrary, CIA officers in south Florida actively pursued suspicions that anti-Castro exiles known to the CIA were involved. These officers were not under the influence of KGB disinformation. Heath wrote that he and his fellow officers developed lists of “persons capable of orchestrating the murder of President Kennedy in order to precipitate and armed conflict between Cuba and USA.” In other words, the CIA men investigated the possibility that Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a Northwoods-style operation to justify a war with Cuba. (The Heath memo belies the oft-stated claim that the recent JFK assassination files do not contain significant information. They do. You can read the Heath Memo here: “1964-65 Miami Station Action to AId USG Investigation of the Murder of John F. Kennedy.) The possibility of CIA involvement was also raised, albeit obliquely, by President Harry Truman within a month of JFK’s assassination. In a column published in the Washington Post on December 22, 1963, Truman called for the abolition of the Agency he had signed into existence in 1947. The CIA had become “an operational and at time policymaking arm of the Government,” the former president wrote. As “a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue” and the “subject of cold war enemy propaganda, the Agency had outlived its usefulness, he argued. Former president Harry Truman in Key West, Florida (Credit: National Archives) While Truman never linked JFK’s assassination to the CIA, his notes in the Truman Library indicate he started writing his piece on December 9, 1963, the day the FBI issued its initial report concluding Oswald acted alone. Truman’s call for CIA abolition was almost certainly motivated by the ambush in Dallas. He was not alone. In April 1967 President Lyndon Johnson told an aide he thought the CIA was involved in JFK”s assassination. In a memo to colleagues, a senior FBI official wrote: Excerpt from an FBI report, April 4, 1967 So the notion that the CIA personnel were complicit in Kennedy’ murder—while encouraged by communist sources—did not originate with the KGB. It first voiced by well-informed Americans who had experience working for or with the CIA. Share ‘Shadowy’ CIA Agent? The National Archives database indicates that some 4,400 assassination-related records still contain redactions, some of them quite extensive. For example the CIA is still censoring more than a page of Arthur Schlesinger’s 1961 memo for JFK on “CIA Reorganization.” As I reported here last November, the CIA has “denied in full” 44 documents—not 44 pages—from the administrative file of George Joannides, undercover officer who ran the AMSPELL program in 1963 when his agents had repeated encounters with Oswald in the summer of 1963. Whether Joannides, who died in 1990, can fairly be described as “shadowy” is a judgment call. He certainly obstructed the House Select Committee on Assassinations, according to G. Robert Blakey, head of the HSCA investigation. CIA officer George Joannides, left, received a CIA medal in 1981 after stonewalling JFK investigators (Credit: CIA) An ARRB staffer who reviewed the Joannides file in 1998 stated that it contained no information about Oswald or the assassination. What the review board didn’t know was the that the file contains extensive still-classified information about the AMSPELL program which publicized Oswald’s pro-Castro activities before and after JFK was killed. Judge John Tunheim, a federal judge who chaired the ARRB from 1994 to 1998, told President Biden in a letter last December that the CIA had “deliberately misled” the board about the Joannides file. “The Joannides file absolutely needs to be released in full,” Tunheim wrote. In response to the JFK Facts story, the CIA issued a statement to favored Washington news organizations claiming The CIA’s denial is technically accurate and wholly misleading. The 44 Joannides documents that the CIA is withholding were not—and are not—part of the JFK Collection at National Archives. Despite Judge Tunheim’s recommendation, the CIA refuses to turn over the 44 documents to the National Archives. In other words, the CIA is holding, and has not disclosed, a set of assassination-related documents related to a CIA covert program that came to involved with Kennedy’s accused killer. I filed a Mandatory Declassification Review request with the CIA for these documents to the CIA in June 2020. Three years later, the Agency has yet to respond. Will the Joannides files confirm or refute RFK Jr’s allegations of CIA involvement in JFK’s assassination? Only full disclosure can answer the question. This is a great article by Jeff Morley. It contains lots of important information. Although I disagree with Morley's opinion that the ARRB materials contain no smoking-gun evidence of conspiracy, this is still a superb article overall. I guess it depends on how one defines "smoking gun." Anyway, great article. Thank you for posting it, Benjamin.

What would we say if someone made one, some, or all of the following statements? "Iran's mullahs are great leaders for their country." "Kim Jon Un is a great leader for his country." "Bashar Assad is a great leader for his country." We would wonder about the person's grip on reality, and rightfully so. No, I haven't been following this thread. I'm surprised it's still going. I hope the reason for this is that people have been piling on with condemnations of Stone's embarrassing statement.

What "sci fi about Prouty" would that be? The fact that he spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference held by the IHR? The fact that in a private letter he expressed concern about Jewish sergeants running military targeting computers? The fact that he recommended that people read the anti-Semitic rag The Spotlight? The fact that he wrote a friendly and supportive letter to the editor of the IHR's journal? The fact that he endorsed the IHR's goals in that letter to the editor? The fact that he appeared on Liberty Lobby's radio show 10 times in four years, a show that routinely hosted Holocaust deniers and white supremacists? The fact that he publicly praised Carto and Marcellus? The fact that he spoke at a Liberty Lobby convention and blamed the Israelis for high oil prices? The fact that he said "I'm no authority in that area" when asked about Carto's Holocaust denial? The fact that he had a book published by the IHR's publishing arm? The fact that he zealously defended the Scientology cult and its criminal founder? The fact that he seriously entertained nutcase theories such as the fringe theories that Churchill had FDR poisoned and that the Secret Team killed Princess Diana? The fact that he back-peddled on numerous key claims he'd been making for years when he was gently and respectfully interviewed by the ARRB? Do you just not understand that any book or article that approvingly cites Prouty is going to be rejected by the vast majority of educated people as soon as they learn about Prouty's numerous false claims, his defense of Scientology and Ron Hubbard, and his long-term connections with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers? I'll tell you what: If the CIA had an office to cover-up the conspiracy in the JFK case, that office would be thrilled with pro-conspiracy books and articles that relied on Prouty as a source. They would say, "Wow, the conspiracy theorists are doing our job for us! This is just too easy!"

This is delusional echo-chamber material. Yes, the documentary evidence is overwhelming, but that evidence decidedly refutes the Stone-Newman-Prouty unconditional-withdrawal myth. "McNamara admitted it"??? Really? You sure about that? Nowhere in his memoir did McNamara claim that JFK was determined to abandon South Vietnam after the election regardless of the consequences. No such statement appears therein. He stopped well short of making such a claim. If you're referring to McNamara's so-called "secret debrief," isn't it odd and revealing that he said nothing about it in his memoir? Not one word. Humm? And not one of his adoring aides appeared to know anything about it, not even John McNaughton (not even in his personal diary, which surfaced a few years ago--zippo, nada, nothing). Yes, certainly, JFK had a withdrawal plan, but you and a few others simply refuse to acknowledge the undeniable fact that the plan was conditional, that it depended on the situation on the ground. Furthermore, as even Galbraith has admitted, JFK's plan called for continuing aid to South Vietnam after the situation on the ground permitted the withdrawal of American forces. This is a far cry from the Stone-Newman-Prouty myth that JFK was unalterably going to abandon South Vietnam after the election regardless of the consequences. And let's just be clear about one key fact: The Stone-Newman-Prouty unconditional-withdrawal theory is a fringe view that is rejected by the vast majority of historians and Vietnam War scholars from all across the political spectrum. This is not conservative vs. liberal. This is broad consensus vs. fringe. This is overwhelming majority vs. microscopic minority.

Your comment shows that you are another person in this forum who allows your rabid left-wing partisan politics to dominate your thinking on the JFK case. You folks seem to use the JFK case merely as a vehicle to peddle your political views, and who says or implies that no one can truly care about JFK's death if they don't agree with your politics. Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, one of the most successful pro-conspiracy books ever published, was an ardent Trump supporter. Are you now going to suggest that we should all burn our copies of Crossfire? Half the country thinks that Trump did a good job. However, very few people agree with Oliver Stone's recent embarrassing claim that Putin is a "great leader" for Russia.

Why do we need another thread on this topic?

I agree that the Durham report is important, devastating, and damning. However, in case you don't already know, this forum is dominated by liberals, many of whom are extremely liberal. The liberal MSM is already in full denial mode about the report's devastating disclosures regarding government misconduct toward Trump and the fabrication of the Russia-collusion myth. All this being said, I must confess that I don't see how the Durham report relates to the JFKA in any way. Yes, it's true that the moderators allow people to repeatedly peddle the 9/11 Truther garbage, to engage in shameful bashing of Israel, to champion the anti-Semitic fraud Fletcher Prouty, and to float such bizarre theories as the idea that the Secret Team murdered John Lennon, but, hey, it's their forum and they are free to do what they want.

No, you're the one who's in a cult. "Right-wingers"??? Even most liberal historians reject the myth that you and a few others here insist on peddling. Do you know who Ed Moise is? Do you know who Stanley Karnow was? You guys keep pretending that this is a conservative vs. liberal issue, when it is actually a broad consensus vs. fringe issue. Only a tiny fringe of authors still argue that JFK was going to abandon South Vietnam after the election. Like a dog with a favorite bone that has long since rotted, you guys just cannot let go of this long-debunked myth, no matter how much damage it continues to do to the case for conspiracy. Anti-conspiracy authors from all across the political spectrum pounced on this myth as a way to discredit Stone's movie JFK, and yet you guys still continue to hand them this ammo over and over and over again. Even with the release of Selverstone's magnificent book The Kennedy Withdrawal, which proves from the White House tapes that JFK was determined to win the war, you guys still won't face reality. Scholars from both sides of the spectrum have praised Selverstone's book, but a tiny handful of fringe authors refuse to face reality and continue to attack it. There comes a point when facts must overrule pet theories, no matter how many years you have spent peddling those theories, and no matter how emotionally attached you are to them. What Michael Tracey was able to do will be repeated ad nauseum until you folks finally gather up enough objectivity to acknowledge the facts on this issue and stop peddling the Stone-Newman-Prouty unconditional-withdrawal myth. It would also help greatly if you and your friends would stop citing such a disreputable, irrational, anti-Semitic fraud as Fletcher Prouty.

You might want to explain why you think this is important.

You know this is false. My main sources on Prouty are ultra-liberal journalist Chip Berlet, the ADL, and Prouty's own writings, actions, and interviews. I have never once used John McAdams as a source on Prouty, even though, sad to say, most of McAdams' criticisms of Prouty are valid. It is mind boggling that you continue to defend Prouty after all we now know about him. If a lone-gunman theorist said and did half the zany and disreputable things that Prouty said and did, you would not hesitate to use those things against him, and you would be entirely justified in doing so. But because you are wed to Prouty's wild theories, you refuse to face reality about him.