David Talbot : Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison

[J. Raymond Carroll]

So I'll conclude that in order to give credibility to Sheridan and Bobby Kennedy, David Talbot had to crucify Garrison, yet again. The alternative is too dark.

An alternative interpretation might be be that, in order to give credibility to Garrison, Joan Mellen had to crucify Bobby Kennedy, yet again.

[Robert Howard]

If I could offer an insight, it would be that the underlying emotional feelings not just about Jim Garrison pro or con, but about the failure of our government to adequately address the unanswered questions still remaining about the assassination [see George Joannides lawsuit dismissal].....I believe, contribute to a large amount of frustration, among those of us who don't buy the Oswald did it ALONE, swill that has been emanating since day one.

It might be worth mentioning, another member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee besides Lee Oswald, who provides arguably, a weak link to the Gerald Posner's of the world, regarding the whole issue, of the no-conspiracy element concerning the enigmatic Lee Harvey Oswald. In at least a few books about the assassination, [see Anthony Summers "Not in Your Lifetime" and Lamar Waldron/Thom Hartmann's Ultimate Sacrifice] there is made mention of John Robert Glenn, [not the astronaut, Senator, etc...]

Summer's wrote

"In November 1963 just four days before the Kennedy Assassination, a young American called John Glenn testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His questioning revealed that he had joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in autumn 1962, that he had tried to visit Cuba, at first by traveling through Mexico and that he eventually succeeded. In summer of 1963, at the very time Oswald was becoming active in New Orleans, Glenn did reach Cuba. He outstayed his original visa and then tried to travel on to another citadel of the left, Algeria. The parallels with the Oswald case are numerous. Just as Oswald’s fare home had once been paid by the State Department, so Glenn’s was paid from Europe. Like Oswald, Glenn used a post-office box as a mailing address and subscribed to The Militant. Like Oswald, he had traveled to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in his case supposedly as a guide for an American “travel agency”.

It is a privilege for the Education Forum, to have Joan Mellen and David Talbot with us, and while I will not fan any flames regarding the matter of Jim Garrison, it would be worth pointing out in favor of Jim Garrison, that one arrest he considered making but ultimately didn't was the illustrious Dr. Alton Oschner. Subsequent research over the years, by various individuals especially Ed Haslam [ie Mary's Monkey, and Mary, Ferrie and the Monkey Virus] suggests that Tulane University has arguably, a similar significance to the JMWAVE Station, in Miami] If there was a howl of protest, about charging [the "benignly innocent, lol] Clay Shaw, you can take it from anyone familiar with the significance of cancer research, [the validity or lack thereof of Judith Vary Baker, doesent come into the equation regarding the point I am trying to make] not to mention Oschner's friendship with Clint Murchison and Latin political figures, there would have been a fissure in New Orleans.

As the current events around the world [to those who consider American foreign policy, and how America is percieved by the rest of the world, it hammers home the reality that, along with the ascension of globalism, the contrast between the "liberal democracy" of say, the Trudeau era in Canada compared to the liberalism of Canada today, illustrates that around the world the concept and reality of liberalism has arguably died the death. We see in the United States an effort or at least a desire on the part of the media/government nexus to convey the idea that to be a "liberal" is a disgrace, whereas, the shift to the [far?] right is presented as having no negative connotations.

The big picture is that anyone who is concerned with the fear mongering in Washington, and the portrayal of Democrat's as an alien force [see Ann Coulter] should be very active in restoring some semblance of reality.

If disillusioned Republican's joined the ACLU, as they did in the aftermath of 9-11 maybe there is a specter of hope, on the horizon.....

If not us who? If not now, when?

[Charles Black]

It is of course distasteful to each of us when we must acknowledge the "truth", that even those whom we hold in semi-religious esteem, are plagued with some of the same flaws which are neccessarily inherent in us all.

The acknowledgement that "clean cut" sports or military "heroes" might be capable of cold blooded pre meditated murder.....that a Priest has lustful thoughts and at times may commit criminal deeds....that a seemingly devoted wife and mother can murder her children or husband. These acts and facts can at times cripple us. But they are reality

and not bad dreams.

These are thoughts and acts that are so universally wrong that we at times must do battle with ourselves to accept their fact.

"Most" humans, despite what may be their deeply rooted ethnic or religious training and backgrounds, and even exceptionally high levels of intellect and education, all inherit a "primitivism" which at times propels them to what they themselves consider primitive and selfish behaviour.

Not one of our "heroes", has throughout recorded history, been any different.

We are, and they have all been, "flawed".....but this does not diminish what were their good works.

Charles Black

[Joan Mellen]

Ms. Mellen, does it occur to you that Ramsey Clark's contention here seems so unlikely as to not even make good sense?

Ramsey Clark's surprise at finding those documents outlining RFK's plans with Edward Lansdale to assassinate Fidel Castro was genuine. Given that other evidence; the letters of Lansdale; the minutes of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; and yes, the shock evinced by Sam Halpern when he discovered the same thing, suggests that Clark was not lying. Why would he lie about such a thing anyway?

If you had been present with me at his office, you would have seen that Clark presented this fact to me, not as prepared disinformation, thinking I was looking for evidence against Bobby Kennedy, but as something that occurred that had shocked him.

Nor was Bobby Kennedy the subject of our discussion; Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw were our focus. Clark was very frank about how he had told the press that Shaw had been "cleared" after having been briefed that morning by Cartha DeLoach.

A good research topic might be to explore how John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Bobby were very different in their approaches to government, justice and the law. As I attempt to share with the forum people what my research uncovered, it occurs to me that Bobby's methods were not those of his brother, an idea I had never formulated, but which makes sense to me now.

Bobby resembled the Dad more than his brother, Jack.

And I'm writing not to "crucify" Bobby (he did that for himself), and the word of course suggests, again!, that he is to be spoken of in religious terms, but to study, beyond partisanship, what the Kennedy administration stood for, and what it accomplished. Bobby's attempt to destroy Garrison's work was shameful, and so extreme, that he must have had a good and highly personal reason to send his attack dog down to New Orleans to do his worst. The White Paper that Sheridan produced, a shoddy job as critics at the time noted, had been planned as the vehicle through which Sheridan would destroy Garrison's case. He had only to get as many Garrison witnesses as he could to come on television and repudiate Garrison. Many would not.

I'd appreciate hearing some views on whether the Hoffa conviction should have been overturned, given the illegal means by which it was obtained, and whether, indeed, the end justifies the means.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Ms. Mellen, does it occur to you that Ramsey Clark's contention here seems so unlikely as to not even make good sense?

Ramsey Clark's surprise at finding those documents outlining RFK's plans with Edward Lansdale to assassinate Fidel Castro was genuine.

Where did Clark find these documents, and where are these documents now?

Did Clark offer any kind of plausible explanation for his decision to conceal these crucial documents from the Church Committee, thereby causing the Committee to issue a false report to the American people?

Given that other evidence; the letters of Lansdale;

the minutes of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board;

Can you please tell us how and where these two items of evidence can be accessed?

[Edward Haslam]

I would like to point out something that I have not seen discussed in the conversation about Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison. Sheridan was supposedly working as an NBC reporter and had come to New Orleans to investigate Garrison and his JFK claim. The first point is that the local NBC affiliate was WDSU-TV owned by Edgar Stern who also owned WDSU radio. Well, WDSU was the TV station that sent out the camera to film Oswald passing out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and WDSU was the radio station that broadcasted the Oswald debate. Does that sound like an objective editorial environment to you?

[Michael Hogan]

I would like to point out something that I have not seen discussed in the conversation about Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison. Sheridan was supposedly working as an NBC reporter and had come to New Orleans to investigate Garrison and his JFK claim. The first point is that the local NBC affiliate was WDSU-TV owned by Edgar Stern who also owned WDSU radio. Well, WDSU was the TV station that sent out the camera to film Oswald passing out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and WDSU was the radio station that broadcasted the Oswald debate. Does that sound like an objective editorial environment to you?

As Dr. Jerry Rose would say... INCA Dinka Doo.

I just finished reading Dr. Mary's Monkey. Very well written. Frightening stuff.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Well, WDSU was the TV station that sent out the camera to film Oswald passing out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and WDSU was the radio station that broadcasted the Oswald debate.

So therefore Mr. Oswald was a resourceful FPCC campaigner who used WDSU as his megaphone?

Edited June 3, 2007 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Pat Speer]

Ms. Mellen, does it occur to you that Ramsey Clark's contention here seems so unlikely as to not even make good sense?

Ramsey Clark's surprise at finding those documents outlining RFK's plans with Edward Lansdale to assassinate Fidel Castro was genuine. Given that other evidence; the letters of Lansdale; the minutes of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; and yes, the shock evinced by Sam Halpern when he discovered the same thing, suggests that Clark was not lying. Why would he lie about such a thing anyway?

If you had been present with me at his office, you would have seen that Clark presented this fact to me, not as prepared disinformation, thinking I was looking for evidence against Bobby Kennedy, but as something that occurred that had shocked him.

Nor was Bobby Kennedy the subject of our discussion; Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw were our focus. Clark was very frank about how he had told the press that Shaw had been "cleared" after having been briefed that morning by Cartha DeLoach.

A good research topic might be to explore how John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Bobby were very different in their approaches to government, justice and the law. As I attempt to share with the forum people what my research uncovered, it had occurs to me that Bobby's methods were not those of his brother, an idea I had never formulated, but which makes sense to me now.

Bobby resembled the Dad more than his brother, Jack.

And I'm writing not to "crucify" Bobby (he did that for himself), and the word of course suggests, again!, that he is to be spoken of in religious terms, but to study, beyond partisanship, what the Kennedy administration stood for, and what it accomplished. Bobby's attempt to destroy Garrison's work was shameful, and so extreme, that he must have had a good and highly personal reason to send his attack dog down to New Orleans to do his worst. The White Paper that Sheridan produced, a shoddy job as critics at the time noted, had been planned as the vehicle through which Sheridan would destroy Garrison's case. He had only to get as many Garrison witnesses as he could to come on television and repudiate Garrison. Many would not.

I'd appreciate hearing some views on whether the Hoffa conviction should have been overturned, given the illegal means by which it was obtained, and whether, indeed, the end justifies the means.

Ms. Mellen, I don't doubt that Clark said what he said. But I agree with Daniel Dunn that the odds of this being true are extremely slim.

I do have another question about Clark. While you had him within reach did you ask him any questions about the medical evidence? Did you ask him why he brought the autopsy doctors together in January 67--after Life and the Saturday Evening Post had called for a new investigation--and had the doctors re-interpret the medical evidence to support the WC's conclusions? It is an historical fact that he told LBJ he'd got the doctors "signed up" and that the report he had them sign--which all the doctors would later deny writing--changed the interpretation of the autopsy photos, and told blatant lies about the back wound's location. (This is demonstrated in part 3 of my video series on Youtube and at patspeer.com.) It is also a fact that Mr. Clark withheld the release of a secret and equally disingenuous report on the Kennedy medical evidence for almost a year, and released it to coincide with the beginning of the Shaw trial, to disrupt Garrison's case. Did you ask him about these actions, and if so, what did he have to say for himself? The thought occurs that he threw the "Bobby left his papers in the desk" story at you to throw you off course and keep you from asking about his own actions as AG..

[David Talbot]

I must reply to Joan on Ramsey Clark -- I just saw her comments on this. I too interviewed Ramsey Clark, Joan. And yes he told me what he apparently told you as well -- that after he took over as Atty General, he came across memos in RFK's files which raised the possibility of assassinating Castro. But Clark also told me this: the source of these memos was Ed Lansdale, head of Operation Mongoose. And, most important, according to Clark, there was no indication that Bobby had approved these plots. In fact, Clark told me, he believed that Bobby never did. Here is what Clark told me:

"The [Kennedys] were willing to consider it [the Castro assassination], but they didn’t follow through on it. They didn’t order it, as a serious and major (which it would be if they ordered it) project. And that’s based just on logic. I have no knowledge. If Bob wanted to do something, he usually got it done, you know? He was, if nothing, a doer."

If there was any solid proof that Bobby was behind the plots against Castro, anti-Kennedy propagandists in the CIA like Sam Halpern would have produced it years ago. And in fact, Halpern's boss, Dick Helms, was forced to admit under oath before the Church Committee that the CIA had carried out the plots without RFK's approval. They just "assumed" Bobby would have approved, Helms lamely testified.

Bobby Kennedy thought he shut down the CIA/Mafia plots against Castro after the agency informed him of them in May 1962. But, as we now know, these plots preceeded the Kennedys and continued after Dallas.

The CIA was operating out of the control of the country's democratic mechanisms, I think we can all agree. I firmly believe that the Kennedys were kept in the dark about much of the agency's more sinister activities, including the assassination plots against Castro.

Edited June 22, 2007 by David Talbot

[Charles Drago]

As is the case today, operators at the deep political level in the early 1960s chose for their primary target of opportunity the historical record.

A paper trail (within high levels of government) to RFK vis a vis anti-Castro assassination plots would suffice to occlude the record for future generations of historians.

Why bother? Because the forces behind the murders of the Kennedys and other world-historic crimes before and after are institutional (as opposed to personal).

Thus, preservation of the species trumps all other considerations.

How ... biological!

Charles

[Edward Haslam]

David, I have a few questions about your thoughtful post about what the Kennedy's knew and/or approved of.

Bobby Kennedy thought he shut down the CIA/Mafia plots against Castro after the agency informed him of them in May 1962.

Did Bobby authorize the raid on the McClaney camp in the Summer of 1963? The raid was over a year after the May 1962 date you mention above. Did Bobby tolerate the camp for a year? Or was he unable to take action against them until someone penetrated the operation and located the camp for him in the summer of 1963?

I firmly believe that the Kennedys were kept in the dark about much of the agency's more sinister activities, including the assassination plots against Castro.

Due to millions of dollars of "unvouchered expeditures" at the CIA, the Kennedy's knew they had a control problem at the CIA. And due to the problems between the Kennedy's and J. Edgar Hoover, they could not rely on the FBI to provide information on the CIA's deep-cover projects, as they might have under "normal" circumstances. Do you think that the Kennedy's used their personal money and influence to recruit "off the books" assets to spy on illegal CIA/Mafia operations?

From your above comment about the Kennedy's being "in the dark", am I correct in assuming that you do not think that Bobby was aware of the kill-Castro bio-weapon project that was being run out of David Ferrie's apartment?

Ed Haslam

www.DrMarysMonkey.com

www.TheMonkeyVirus.com

[Joan Mellen]

Just as the evidence is overwhelming that Bobby Kennedy sent Walter Sheridan down to New Orleans to discredit Jim Garrison and with his "White Paper" destroy the Garrison investigation into the murder of President Kennedy, so the documents are no less strong that Bobby enlisted Edward Lansdale in his plots against Castro. Sheridan NEVER acted on his own; Lansdale revealed Bobby's plots behind his back to J. Edgar Hoover. There is no possible truth to the defensive explanation that Lansdale was acting on his own....I realize that Bobby's application for sainthood must be protected at all cost...but this is absurd. Ramsey Clark never told me that Bobby had authored the document: what he told me was that he found documentation of mutual plots between Lansdale and Bobby. It comes to the same thing.... The truth will out, one hopes.

[Don Jeffries]

Joan,

I'm not suggesting RFK was a saint, but imho he and his brother were far more honest and principled than most politicians. My one question to you is; what evidence is there regarding RFK's supposed knowledge of the plots against Castro that doesn't originate from the CIA?

[Joan Mellen]

Letter to Time Magazine (unpublished):

I applaud TIME magazine's courage in re-examining the issue of the murder of President John F. Kennedy (July 2). It has long been overdue that the mainstream media reconsider this unresolved, horrendous crime. As the author of "A Farewell to Justice" (2005), a work that examines whether there was a government conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy, however, I was taken aback by the appearance of the disingenuous, fictional essay by David Talbot, which is guilty of its own concealment and obscuring of well-established evidence.

Far from the facts demonstrating that Bobby Kennedy planned to re-open the issue of his brother's death, my research revealed to me that Robert F. Kennedy declared in public appearances from 1964 to the year of his death, 1968, that he believed that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone and was guilty. Bobby did everything in his power to prevent any investigation of his brother's death, and that included making X-rays and autopsy photographs available to official investigators.

Research has revealed his purpose: Bobby remained silent because he had something dark to hide. This underlies why no member of the Kennedy family, and no associates of the President, not the late Arthur Schlesinger, not Theodore Sorensen, not Richard Goodwin, or many others, including the next generation of Kennedys, would even discuss the issue for forty years and more.

A White House Memorandum declassified as one of the CIA's "Family Jewels," and available at George Washington University's National Security Archive, discloses a conversation in which President Gerald Ford was told by his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, how Richard Helms had confirmed for him that "Robert Kennedy managed personally the operation on the assassination of Castro."

Helms revealed only half of the truth. The CIA was engaged in separate plots against Castro, working on its own. Bobby, who had enlisted free-wheeling General Edward Lansdale, fresh from Vietnam, sought with his own recruits to organize a different set of plots designed to do away with Castro. A roaming Attorney General, Bobby had an office at CIA headquarters at Langley, running his Cuban operations, even as CIA officers like Helms, as Helms later revealed, somewhat gleefully, concealed from him their own activities.

In his 1998 oral history for the CIA, available at the National Archives, CIA officer Sam Halpern confirmed that Bobby Kennedy had developed his own plans for the murder of Castro. Halpern recounts his discovery that Bobby sent a CIA operative named Charlie Ford, alias Rocky Fiscalini, to Canada to recruit Mafia assassins for the purpose. Halpern was astonished, given Bobby's much-publicized efforts to battle the Mafia, but he checked out his information, and it was so.

Ramsey Clark confirmed for me that he personally had seen memos Lansdale prepared at Bobby's suggestion elucidating methods by which Castro could be dispatched. Like Halpern, with whom he had little in common politically, Clark was flabergasted. (Lansdale was not discreet about what he was up to either: at a meeting of President Kennedy's "Special Group - Augmented" in August 1962 he talked about the "elimination of leaders").

I discuss in "A Farewell to Justice" another example of Kennedy plots to murder Castro. This one was recounted to me by F. Lee Bailey, who has first hand knowledge of both Kennedy brothers being present in the Oval Office as Office of Naval Intelligence operative Guy Johnson introduced to them a Navy commander the Kennedys then enlisted to recruit a sniper to enter Cuba for the purpose of assassinating Fidel Castro.

As for Walter Sheridan, the man Bobby would supposedly ask to investigate his brother's death, as soon - in breathtaking hubris - as Bobby became president, Sheridan was the mastermind of Bobby's "Get Hoffa" squad. He wire tapped conversations between Hoffa and his lawyer. He defied the law by paying such witnesses as Edward Grady Partin, who admitted on the stand that he was being paid, angrily pointing out that they still owed him money! Sheridan blackmailed and bribed others and so obstructed justice that when the Hoffa conviction came for review before the U.S. Supreme Court, an appalled Chief Justice Earl Warren voted to throw it out.

Better that a guilty man go free, if he is guilty, than that the principle of due process be eviscerated. Maybe the argument that the ends justify the means worked in Joseph Stalin's Russia, but it does not in a democratic society. The obsession with illegal wire tapping by Kennedy and Sheridan was legendary. As we oppose George W. Bush's insistence upon National Security Agency illegal domestic surveillance of citizens, it is well to come unburdened by sacred cows from the past.

An earlier example of how Bobby and the man Mr. Talbot calls, affectionately, "Walt," played fast and loose with the system of justice had Walter Sheridan assist Bobby in arranging that Otto Otepka, a high level officer in the State Department Office of Security, be removed from his post. The reason, I was able to establish, was that Mr. Otepka was about to investigate a list of defectors to the Soviet Union that included - Lee Harvey Oswald, "tourist." Bobby Kennedy concealed a history of protecting Oswald and seeing that he was not investigated, not in Dallas in April 1963 when shots were fired at General Walker, and not later.

In 1967, Bobby Kennedy, now a U.S. Senator, dispatched Sheridan to New Orleans, for the purpose of ensuring that Bobby's plots to assassinate Fidel Castro would never emerge during the Garrison investigation. Bobby's "trusted aide," (Sheridan's actual title was "confidential assistant"), admitted openly that he was sent to New Orleans to "discredit" and "destroy" Garrison. He acknowledged to people in New Orleans whom he enlisted to help him that it was Bobby who sent him.

Sheridan went on to attempt to bribe and blackmail Garrison witnesses. Garrison indicted him, only for Sheridan to flee the jurisdiction. Higher authority protected him.

I established that Bobby Kennedy knew about Oswald, that Oswald's anti-Castro activities were known to Bobby months before the assassination of his brother, and that Oswald was even among those anti-Castro activists Bobby's people were attempting to enlist in assassination schemes against Castro. It is this fact that Bobby was trying desperately to conceal; this was why he did not, as Attorney General or as a United States Senator, act to investigate publicly the death of his brother. He had too much to hide, and his presidential ambitions were at stake.

Do you think "any of our people were involved?" Bobby demanded of his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz immediately after the assassination of his brother. Obviously he meant Oswald. Mankiewicz told me he had thought then: "Did you think there might be?"

Mr. Talbot would do well to withdraw the applications for sainthood he files for both Robert Kennedy and Walter Sheridan and reconsider his highly specious thesis. As a biographer, I am well aware of the temptation to hagiography, glorifying one's subject. A re-examination of those terrible times, however, is too important to the Republic at this perilous moment.

Another cover-up is not what we need.