Dr. Gregg Wager

I watched in anticipation for the assassination of Allard Lowenstein in March 1980 which I wrote about in the new Deep Truth Journal: https://afpstore.americanfreepress.net/product/deep-truth-journal-2/ Making it a documentary on homicidal gun and/or sexual violence during 1960-80 puts that era's important political murders in the same category as crimes of passion. Would have liked to see the shooting of Andy Warhol in there, along with the shots at President Ford.

There is indeed a crucial point to make here with the Vickie Adams / Sandra Sykes time interval on the staircase. They not only did not see Oswald running down the stairs but didn't see anyone running down. That would mean that if a shot or two were taken from the sixth floor sniper's nest (perhaps from the Mauser), whoever was shooting had found some place other than the sixth floor to hide or blend in as employees, above the fourth floor where Adams / Sykes entered the staircase. David Reitzes's website attacks a depiction in Oliver Stone's film of "unknown workmen" refurbishing floors, quoting the WC Report, that this work was being done by TSBD employees (Bonnie Ray Williams, Charles Givens, Bill Shelley, Billy Lovelady, and Danny Arce). Carolyn Arnold sees Oswald eating lunch downstairs at 12:25 (Reclaiming Parkland, 98); the Roy Truly / Marrion Baker story (put into question in Reclaiming Parkland, 192ff) would still make it hard for Oswald to race down the stairs; and Shelley and Lovelady were outside, downstairs. I always thought Williams's half-eaten chicken lunch a strange detail, especially if he may have been in the sniper's nest area as late as 10 minutes before the shooting (Reclaiming Parkland, 195f). Which other TSBD employees (unaccounted for downstairs) could have constructed the sniper's nest scene and/or taken shots?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1017987 I have published this book on Smashwords. These are notes from my years as an adjunct professor in composition at SUNY Purchase, and from an article I wrote for the New York Times, "Going the Way of the Victrola."

https://afpstore.americanfreepress.net/product/deep-truth-journal-2-jfk -charlie the-connection/ I have written an article that brings up an old controversy, but perhaps with some new momentum. I sure would like to hear some opinions about the Lowenstein assassination as something other than the work of a lone crazed individual. This would include the string of possible mind-control assassins starting as early as Jack Ruby in 1963, and as late as John Hinkley in 1981, who all use handguns at close range, survive, and claim that they acted alone.

You will find it in Mark Lane's Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK (1991) pages 335-360. Thanks. Actually, for the record, I did read Plausible Denial years ago, about the E. Howard Hunt libel case that Lane litigated. I must have skimmed over the Brief too quickly. Also, glad to see Jim DiEugenio participating here.

A superb start to an incredibly massive but important explanation behind the second half of the 20th-century. Never forget that Mark Lane was hired by Oswald's mother to be his posthumous attorney. The "Brief" Lane finally published would probably have been the court document officially submitted as Oswald's defense attorney (although I admit I haven't read it--I'll be looking for it now). Lane was allowed to "testify" for the Warren Commission and audit the proceedings, but his request to cross-examine witnesses was denied. The references to Frances Stoner Saunders are also extremely important, as this book has certainly opened up a brand new category in my field--musicology. The de-Nazification of West Germany included very successful efforts (especially by the Rockefellers) to make New York City the art center of the world. Nelson Rockefeller's hold on South America (where the OSS was not allowed to go during World War II) helped with recruiting many of America's first classical music stars. Also never forget that Tom Braden represented the "left" in an American television show during the 1980s called "Crossfire," which was a completely manipulative reframing of the political issues during those days. The "right" was represented by usually Robert Novak or Pat Buchanan. Talk about managing the NCL! I'd also like to add that I recently read David Harris's memoir "Dreams Die Hard," mostly for the information there on Allard Lowenstein, who was the 1960s version of an NCL. I even got Harris (a famous 1960s campus radical and the former husband of Joan Baez) to answer an email regarding the way Lowenstein (who used to publically debate William F. Buckley in a left-v.-right format) used to kibbitz Vietnam protesters and those college students participating in the Mississippi vote drives and civil rights programs in the South. Lowenstein was constantly recruiting suitable youngsters for a CIA-run organization called the National Student Association and eventually was by and large responsible for getting rid of Lyndon Johnson by promoting primarily Eugene McCarthy for President in 1968, but also Robert Kennedy. Interesting to think of these efforts in 1968 as a way to divide the Democratic Party, instead of simply to end the Vietnam War. Harris did not believe that Lowenstein could have been knowingly working for the CIA as a sort of manager for the left, even though he famously gave speeches during the Mississippi gatherings denouncing Communism. Lowenstein was confronted many times about his possible involvement with the CIA, but he always denied it. Nonetheless, Lowenstein was also assassinated in 1980 by a lone crazed schizophrenic who had been a former protege, Dennis Sweeney (who is still alive, I believe).

I hope that anyone investigating Churchill will consider carefully this anecdote by Fletcher Prouty: http://www.prouty.org/coment11.html Keep in mind, Prouty is simply relating what Stalin (who was probably not reliable) told Roosevelt's son. Prouty has been unfairly maligned. He is a careful scholar and an important eyewitness to many of these events. Good luck with investigating airplane crashes. I hope insight into the recent crashes in America of Mel Carnahan (in 2000) and Paul Wellstone (in 2002) will be of relevance. Best, Dr. Gregg Wager http://www.angelfire.com/music2/greggwager

A lot of JFK researchers might know Joseph Trento’s name from Mark Lane’s PLAUSIBLE DENIAL. I am very glad that I recently decided to sit down and read Trento’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA from cover to cover. Perhaps Trento is great example of how to expose secrets while writing history since he has painstakingly put what might otherwise be insignificant, albeit strange, facts into focus, even though I strongly disagree with at least one of his conclusions. Trento discusses at length his interviews with the mysterious historical figure James Jesus Angleton, perhaps even getting too close to this beguiling and sneaky head of CIA counterintelligence. Trento gives us in depth and intelligent insights into the lives of certain important spies, whose lives and influence had been by and large invisible to the general public: there’s Soviet spy Igor Orlov (whose real name was Alexandr Kopatzky) who ran a art framing shop outside Washington DC; Yakterina Fursetseva, who Trento believes “handled” Lee Harvey Oswald for the KGB; the morbid imprisonment and torture on American soil of Yuri Nosenko; and finally CIA man George Weisz, whose mysterious murder in 1980s remains unsolved. Accounts of these bizarre lives are must-reading for any student of Cold War spying. The great flaw I believe Trento made in the book was getting too close to Angleton, and taking undo stock into Angleton’s version of the JFK assassination: that Oswald was a KGB agent. In Trento’s epilogue, he writes that Angleton’s onetime close friend, Soviet spy Kim Philby, was responsible for spreading rumors on behalf of the KGB that the CIA killed JFK. On page 477, Trento writes: “Angleton was convinced that Philby was behind the propaganda campaign, now confirmed in the Mitrokhin materials, in which the KGB leaked stories that the CIA was behind the [John F.] Kennedy murder.” The “Mitrokhin materials” Trento refers to are papers former KGB employee Vasili Mitrokhin claims are copies of top secret files, which he turned over to British intelligence agents and were published as THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD (Basic Books, 1999). The trouble is, there is no mention in this book whatsoever of such false rumors by Philby, let alone a “confirmation,” let alone anything, that would link the KGB to the JFK assassination. It appears as if Angleton, ever the clever spook, fooled Trento into turning suspicions about the JFK assassination away from the CIA (where such suspicions belong). Perhaps Trento’s otherwise excellent research proves one thing: we all must familiarize ourselves with history and make our own versions and conclusions. He is an important writer.

I have read both Jim Marrs’s CROSSFIRE and RULE BY SECRECY. In fact, I finished the latter recently and even remember sending Marrs a message about it. Marrs is an extraordinary writer and his books have a grassroots quality to them, which are stylistically a wonderful change of pace from typical journalistic or history books. I sometimes find his mind is more open than mine about certain things, especially in his RULE BY SECRECY book. I wrote my doctoral dissertation about composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, a topic which required that I study and evaluate UFO theories and the theories of Erich van Däniken. No one can deny the mysteries presented by such things, but it is quite a leap to say that either camps of thinking are proof of extraterrestrial visitations. Marrs’s study of the Priory of Sion is especially worthwhile, not to mention timely now that his movie THE DA VINCI CODE is out. Whether you believe the Priory of Sion theories or not, it is one of the worst atrocities a historian can commit to omit such things from history, even if they are untrue. I personally believe that the Priory of Sion was a viscous hoax by right-wing minded Europeans trying to restore the French monarchy by proving the Merovingian Dynasty was directly descended from Jesus Christ. That may discredit its historical validity per se, but not the historical validity of how such a hoax changed people’s minds and influenced their politics. There is a danger that mixing UFO and Erich van Däniken theories with the theories of JFK’s assassination contaminates that which has been proven scientifically or are downright immutable facts (such as coroner Cyril Wecht’s conclusions about the “pristine bullet”; or even the entire premise of this forum, as stated eloquently by John Simkin, that the HSCA investigation revealed that there probably was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, which should have trumped once and for all the conclusions of the Warren Commission, and which continues to be ignored by the mainstream press). Nonetheless, it is important to take note of people’s suspicions and how they motivate certain things in history.

America now has the oldest democratic system in the world, although the case could be made that this system broke down long ago, especially if you believe that John F. Kennedy may have been killed in a coup d'etat. If you mean by "best" a system where democracy is in its truest form, that becomes a very subjective question. I lived in Germany for five years and believe that their democracy has a much truer representation of the various types of people there than American democracy, which tends to be more cosmetic and corrupt. The German press is also much more intelligent and proves that literacy and the ability to analyze complex situations becomes an important factor on how useful the average citizen's vote becomes. On the other hand, I found the justice system in Germany to be very lethargic and backwards, compared to the still remarkable accomplishment of the justice system in America. My wife is Korean and I have visited South Korea several times and learned more about its history. It is interesting to note that although America has recognized South Korea as one of its closest allies since World War II, it was run by a dictator up until the 1970s. Then again, the economic boom that South Korea went through in the 1980s brought with it great political and social reforms up to the present day. Americans used to brag that you could awe a Russian citizen by just taking them to an American super market. I was equally awed by visiting a South Korean super market, the likes of which simply don't exist in America, with fork lifts driving down the aisles, numerous employees at large display cases giving out free samples of food, or just the general bustle of the place. In the midst of our lingering Cold War zeal, one should never forget that Communism was intended as a democratic system of government that would be truer than all other types of democracies in Europe and the Americas. In practice, small things can create great tyrannies. In America, there has been an effort since the Reagan years to blame government for taking away personal freedoms. The problem with this perception is that in principle America has a democratic government and the more power you take from it, the more you might allow tyranny and undemocratic power to reign. In the end, I am unable to answer the question. If you are indeed looking for the truest form of democracy practiced in today's world, I would need more resources to make an accurate study, and, I suspect, the answer might even be a tiny country like Costa Rica or Iceland. I certainly wouldn't want to turn your question into a cheap form of patriotism by naming America, my country, the greatest democracy ever. Keep in mind that Hitler's Germany sprang from a democracy. The people can always vote to take away their right to vote, putting a dictator into power. That makes judging how a democracy functions a very difficult task.

I would be hard pressed to imagine a democratic system without proportional representation. I suppose its possible, but I would most likely answer your question, yes, it is an important ingredient.

In terms of the body count, which admittedly ought not to be the standard, there were 58,000 American lives and 2 million Asian lives lost in the Vietnam conflict. We should be reverent to the Vietnam loss and tragedy, although your question asks if Iraq could become another costly conflict like this. That is one way to criticize what is going on in Iraq today, although it might be more helpful to weigh the similarities and differences. For example, Lyndon Johnson was highly criticized for getting $1 billion to his Texan friends, Brown and Root, to dredge the Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Today, Brown and Root is owned by Halliburton, the company that Vice-President Dick Cheney served as Chairman and CEO of between 1995 and 2000 and which is largely responsible for obtaining tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq. There is also the perception that the Vietnam conflict really began in 1945, when America started arming Ho Chi Minh's Army, the political leader which we would eventually call our enemy. Likewise in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was our ally throughout the 1980s and the infamous "weapons of mass destruction" that we are supposed to be looking for today were, at least in the form of nerve gas, supplied to Saddam by the United States. On the other hand, the Vietcong were receiving support from the Soviet Union, while the so-called "insurgents" in Iraq do not have such support from a superpower. Also different is the official status of the conflicts: Vietnam was a "police action" without a declaration of war, while the "Iraq War" is the first time America has ever openly called such a conflict a "war" since World War II. There is also the erroneous view that the events of 9/11 led to the Iraq War. There were always ways to explain American presence in Vietnam from the Cold War and the Domino Principle, not to mention the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident, but never anything quite as dramatic or wrongly exploited as an attack on American soil.

War should always be the last resort. Unfortunately, we have not arrived at a moment in history where we can do away with the option of war. Keep in mind that there is also the option of removing an "unpleasant political leader" without the use of military action, which in America has resulted in the CIA stepping in covertly to even kill a political leader. Certainly the standard for such things should be higher than merely "unpleasant." If a political leader is responsible for acts of genocide, breaking international law, or using his or her own military action to these ends, then the type of war that involves occupying another country and removing its leader is appropriate. Then again, one country does not have the means to police the world and attack every time an atrocity is committed.

When a government declares that there is a separation of church and state, not to mention freedom of religion, then by definition it should not pass any laws on the grounds that it violates a religious teaching.

The question is loaded, since you are putting everyone into a pot and considering their circumstances equally. Using the term "wage earner" (which is what I think you mean) also implies that everyone in this pot is earning some sort of wage, which is not true. The richest people derive wealth from investments and speculations, and the poor are usually either unemployed or earn something which could not be considered a regular wage. That being said, there are many other moral questions to consider, for example, is it moral for people to live in poverty or is it moral to make someone work more than 8 hours a day without earning a living wage or anything they could even call a regular wage. To specifically answer your question, I have a difficult time believing that anyone earning a winfall of money, even in a so-called "free" economic system, really has a moral "right" to that money. You might believe he or she should keep that money, but that is not a moral issue.

Skeptical Democrat One of the reasons I joined the Education Forum was its excellent researchers of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. No other event in the 20th-century symbolizes the demise of American democracy than this murder. Even more than about unethical military or intelligence operations, this event also teaches us how modern media perpetuates a lie, despite compelling evidence, and controls its consumers by entertaining them, selling them products, and masterfully suggesting to them what should be their political ideology at the beginning of the 21st-century. Those of us with an inkling for truth, not to mention a hope that some day democracy might be restored, are constantly on the watch for the lie, especially when it concerns political ideology. We recognize how the skillful pundits and shills of television spin. We are also vigilant, for example, when something called "the Libertarian Party" sparks the imagination of young thinkers as a sort of modern-day anarchy ("in the tradition of the 19th-century Social Revolution," says Milton Friedman), when in actuality it is an invention of the powerful American oil barons, including the Rockefeller family, among others, and their think tank for schemes to subvert democracy in their favor, the University of Chicago. The wealthy rule over their acquisitions and want to do so without the fear of a Justice Department enforcing human rights. Today's popular "anti-government" sentiments are actually well-designed but deceptive anti-democracy sentiments, helping those who ruthlessly hold power to subvert the efforts of the less powerful trying to exercise their rights. If we want to preserve human rights and real freedoms, we should use our common sense, reflecting on situations where a group of people try to make a decision together, and not let bullies prevail.

I'll extend a vote to Pythagoras. We couldn't have gotten very far in a civilization without that equation of his. He is also said to be the first to measure musical intervals with ratios.

Americans will always have their penchant for baseball (my favorite teams was the Oakland A's of 1972-4), not to mention our football. The most excited I have been about a sports event were the three boxing matches between Mohammad Ali and Joe Frazer.

And with all this talk about Bobby Darin, let's not forget the team of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

"The problem with history is that it takes time." --Gertrude Stein

I'm glad to see so many of you joined for the same reason I did: the excellent forum on the JFK assassination. If informed people can meet this way and try to piece together what really happened, perhaps we'll have a more viable version of history to pass on to our children. It certainly says something about the Internet that educators and scholars can exchange ideas about important topics without the politics, vanity, and lethargy of what have become the traditional ways of "getting published." I've always liked Rudolf Augstein's quote about the JFK assassination. He was the editor of the great German magazine DER SPIEGEL and died in 2002. He said, "The assassination of JFK is the most important political assassination since Julius Caesar."

The very first book that I bought when I was seven years old (because the cover art by Roy G. Krenkel Jr. was so cool) is a rather obscure science-fiction novel called Planet of Peril by Otis Adelbert Kline (if you do a google search on that name, you'll find he is indeed obscure, but respected nonetheless by science-fiction enthusiasts). I finally got around to giving it a good, thorough read when I was about 12 years old: a fantastic tale of a scientist named Robert Grandon and his adventures on Venus and time travel. There were several teen books that I was interested enough to check out of the library and read thoroughly, including Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and several of the Jerry West series called The Happy Hollisters. I wasn't bit that hard by the science fiction bug, but did manage in those early years (12 to 13) to feverishly read and re-read several times both Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes. The first real piece of adult literature that knocked my socks off was James Dickey's Deliverance, which I read about age 14, although admittedly, the haunting images from the John Boorman movie were also a big part of the obsession. Another earth-shattering movie-book combo at that time, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, occurred after seeing Peter Brook's 1963 black-and-white movie on television. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey was also a hot item. Believe it or not, I took on the task of reading all of Shakespeare's plays while still in high school, and even acted in a student production of "Midsummer Night's Dream", which is really the only one of the 37 that I ever memorized. I finished them all by college. I read many books in college but, honestly, the ones that really changed me (in order of influence) were: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; James Joyce Ulysses; Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. After college, I re-read Mario Puzo's The Godfather with interest (and many other Mafia books) and recently discovered Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel García Márquez and Henry Green.

My name is Gregg Wager and I contribute regularly as a music critic to the Sacramento News & Review. I have taught music composition at Korean National University for the Arts in Seoul, South Korea, and at SUNY Purchase for six years. I also self-published an English version of my doctoral disseration, Symbolism as a Compositional Method in the Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. My past career as a music critic goes includes articles for the New York Times, the New York Observer, Newsday, Relix Magazine, and the Doors Collectors Magazine. For seven years (1985-91) I contributed regularly to the Los Angeles Times with over 250 publications. http://www.angelfire.com/music2/greggwager

Besides Posner and McAdams, there is a fellow named Dave Reitzes who has spent a lot of time debunking the Oliver Stone movie at http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu.html. I spent an afternoon going through his points and it's hard to imagine what his motives are.

This is my first post here after reading most of the excellent information at www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk. I just had some thoughts about Johnny Roselli that I thought I'd pass on. I know he has been at the center of many theories. One of my favorite books on the mob is Ovid Demaris's The Last Mafioso about Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno, who was a good friend of Roselli's and describes him vividly. When Fratianno asked Roselli about the Kennedy assassination, Roselli denied being involved and even said the Mafia would never hire an unreliable thug like Jack Ruby to do something as precise as political assassination. Roselli did, however, admit to being part of Operation Mongoose, that is, he was approached by the C.I.A. to help kill Castro. He gave Fratianno the impression that as far as business went, he was getting richer by simply taking the C.I.A.'s money and dragging his feet than he would if he actually ever "hit" Castro. I've always wondered why, with a budget of $13 million and over 400 C.I.A. agents employed to it, Operation Mongoose was a failure. All those agents plus the Mafia couldn't kill one lousy vain dictator who even today still gives four-hour outdoor speeches. Besides all this, there is the question of style. I remember some early theories actually having Roselli firing at Kennedy with a pistol. The Mafia didn't normally kill people with snipers and rifles. As for the death of Roselli himself, it was gruesome enough to expect that someone in organized crime must have done it. That was one figure in the list of possible Kennedy assassination witnesses and conspirators who was murdered without the possibility of deeming it a suicide or natural causes. More importantly, he died in what at least appeared to be a wave of mob violence (July/August 1976) that included the murder of Sam Giancana (19 June 1975) in Illinois. Roselli and Fratianno both were very shaken up about "Moony's" death and considered it the end of an era.