Farewell America

[Randy Downs]

When i first learned that "Farewell America" was banned ("one of the few books not allowed to pass through U.S. Customs" -People's Almanac) -i was stunned. 'We don't ban books', was my first thought. Later on, i called the Customs office to ask if that was true. I was told, yes it is. Being young and nieave i asked them if "Farewell America" was still on the banned book list. At that point, i couldn't get an answer and was repeatedly asked for my name and phone number "so someone could call me back with an answer". Right.

Now i've seen the book in paperback at a regular book shop, as well as here in the Free Book section.

And what i wonder is: what's changed between then and now? It was forbidden to be brought into the country for decades and now it's at my local shop?

Something doesn't jibe. Obviously it's no longer regarded as a threat, and i'd really like to know why?

Has someone died who can no longer be effected by what's said in the book? I mean, this doesn't happen for no reason. Something in the equation has changed.

Doesn't anybody wonder about that?

Regards,

Randy

[Christopher Hall]

When i first learned that "Farewell America" was banned ("one of the few books not allowed to pass through U.S. Customs" -People's Almanac) -i was stunned. 'We don't ban books', was my first thought. Later on, i called the Customs office to ask if that was true. I was told, yes it is. Being young and nieave i asked them if "Farewell America" was still on the banned book list. At that point, i couldn't get an answer and was repeatedly asked for my name and phone number "so someone could call me back with an answer". Right.

Now i've seen the book in paperback at a regular book shop, as well as here in the Free Book section.

And what i wonder is: what's changed between then and now? It was forbidden to be brought into the country for decades and now it's at my local shop?

Something doesn't jibe. Obviously it's no longer regarded as a threat, and i'd really like to know why?

Has someone died who can no longer be effected by what's said in the book? I mean, this doesn't happen for no reason. Something in the equation has changed.

Doesn't anybody wonder about that?

Regards,

Randy

Show me the "banned book list" to which you refer.

Farewell America is apparently out of print, but there are 7 or 8 copies available on Amazon.com.

I know that Canada has a Commission which acts in a censorial capacity, as evidenced by the fact that Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before it this summer in connection with one or two books that he has written.

But, I would like to see the "banned book list".

Edited May 28, 2008 by Christopher Hall

[Greg Parker]

When i first learned that "Farewell America" was banned ("one of the few books not allowed to pass through U.S. Customs" -People's Almanac) -i was stunned. 'We don't ban books', was my first thought. Later on, i called the Customs office to ask if that was true. I was told, yes it is. Being young and nieave i asked them if "Farewell America" was still on the banned book list. At that point, i couldn't get an answer and was repeatedly asked for my name and phone number "so someone could call me back with an answer". Right.

Now i've seen the book in paperback at a regular book shop, as well as here in the Free Book section.

And what i wonder is: what's changed between then and now? It was forbidden to be brought into the country for decades and now it's at my local shop?

Something doesn't jibe. Obviously it's no longer regarded as a threat, and i'd really like to know why?

Has someone died who can no longer be effected by what's said in the book? I mean, this doesn't happen for no reason. Something in the equation has changed.

Doesn't anybody wonder about that?

Regards,

Randy

Show me the "banned book list" to which you refer.

Farewell America is apparently out of print, but there are 7 or 8 copies available on Amazon.com.

I know that Canada has a Commission which acts in a censorial capacity, as evidenced by the fact that Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before it this summer in connection with one or two books that he has written.

But, I would like to see the "banned book list".

Randy and Christopher,

The "ban" on importation, if I recall, was at least ostensibly because of libel fears (the book names names) - and it was not an official ban, but one achieved through various "tricks of the trade". Would Customs act on their own volition, or was this quasi-ban ordered from above? I don't have any answer to that.

Copies still managed to circulate regardless, smuggled down from that bastion of censorship - Canada.

Why it can be published and sold now in the US - I can only guess that perhaps like other crimes, their may be a statute of limitations on libel - and this period has now passed?

Edited May 29, 2008 by Greg Parker

[William Kelly]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

[William Kelly]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

Story by Turner here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewellturner.html

Book downloadable here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Thanks for that Story by Turner, Peter,

He's a real Sam Spade.

BK

[Bernice Moore]

Peter - thanks for the link to the Bill Turner piece.

It's fascinating that "Farewell America" seems to have had the official blessing of both De Gaulle and French intelligence.

Like "Were We Controlled?", "Farewell America" is part of a tradition of insider revelations put out through small publishers, under pseudonyms (some of which are relatively easy to uncover), containing information which is explicitly excluded from the contemporary MSM offical view.

Like all information coming from intelligence sources, some of it is top notch, some of it is rubbish, and there's always an agenda. It's critical to try to understand that agenda. However, the existence of an agenda doesn't invalidate the importance of the genuinely good inside information contained in such works.

I'm also reminded of the nearly impossible to obtain "Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?", which appeared shortly after the massacre, and was based in large part on material and access to sources provided by Congressman Leo Ryan's chief aide, Joe Holsinger.

The De Gaulle connection is interesting, as the attempt on his life came from an element in French Intelligence allied with that part of American Intel that pulled-off the Dallas [and other] hits. De Gaulle and the more progressive parts of French Intel got revenge with this book. Many think one of the shooters was a Frenchman operated by US Intel through Harvey. I'd even go so far as to say that the most recent French-U.S. tiff [over Iraq War] was connected to all this down deep. Most people have NO idea what really goes on - only what they read in the synthetic news media - which is, at best, propaganda - at its worst, circus - often both.

************

Peter:

Here is the thread that Randy began on the same subject some time ago......May 2006.....

with a few more interesting replies.........

Farewell America...now it's permissable....

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6940

B.....

Edited May 29, 2008 by Bernice Moore

[William Kelly]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

Story by Turner here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewellturner.html

Book downloadable here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Thanks for that Story by Turner, Peter,

He's a real Sam Spade.

BK

Bill, You are correct that Turner updated the information on the book [with many new strange twists and turns he didn't know at the time of the Ramparts article] in one of his more recent books. I forget which one myself. It is quite an amazing story - another intelligence agency [or group within it] writing publicly and covertly about the assassination of another nation's President by that other country's operatives - including that country's intelligence agency - nominally a 'friendly' intelligence service.

That book would be Rearview Mirror.

http://www.amazon.com/Rearview-Mirror-Look...s/dp/1883955211

It is good to see Bill Turner is on the COPA agenda in LA.

One of my favorite heroes.

As for French Intelligence, there are enough connections to start a thread, if not an investigation.

Some of the arms stolen from the Schulemberger co. by the New Orleans crew, was from OAS, the renegade French Algiers network that tried to assassinate DeGaul.

One OAS leader visited CIA officials in April, 1961, right around the time of the Bay of Pigs.

The French CIA connection in keeping the Commies out of Marsalles ports is the same as the heroin link to SE Asia.

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians,” said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. “It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way.”

[see: The Big Con at Dealey Plaza]

Is Hevve Lemarr a real person? Or an alias?

Is he the archtype of the French Inspector?

Then there's Charles Calthrop - the English school teacher, alias for the professional assassin hired by the OAS to kill DeGaul as portrayed in the book and film The Day of the Jackal. This cold, calculating loner was thwarted by a French Inspector who set up a counter-intelligence operation to stop him. But if Charles Calthrop was just an English school teacher whose identity was stollen and used by the assassin, who was the assassin?

Such a specially trained professional hit man can thwart normal police procedures, but not a specially trained and focused counter-intel unit set up and assigned to locate and neutralizing an assassin or a covert operation.

David Atlee Phillips sets up a similar counterintel unit in his fictional The Carlos Contract, assigned to capture the Carlos the terrorist of Munich fame who is now in a French jail.

While the book is suposidly fiction, there are some characters who mirror real people - Morales, the Big Indian, Jake Esterline, etc., but in the story, as in real life, Carlos obtaind and used the passport of an American student, Glen Gebhard, of Long Island, New York.

I heard Glen's side of the story first, as we were students together in college. Glen lost his passport in Paris, stolen from his hotel room drawer, and had a hell of a time getting another one. A few years later he went back to Europe with the new passport, but in the meantime, Carlos was using his stolen one and the cops knew it. So when he tried to cross the border into France he was detained and violently interrogated until it was apparent that he was not Carlos the Terrorist but American student on a holiday, the real Glen Gebhard.

What's significant is the way the French Inspector goes about setting up his counterinel operation and the way Phillips describes the counter-Carlos squad, there are ways of successful countering and uncovering sophisticated intelligence operations that are designed to be protected.

The clincher to Phillips' fictional Carlos Contract is that Carlos the terrorist was actually on the CIA team set up to capture him. Ha Ha.

Now where's Insperctor Clouseau when we really need him?

BK

BK

[Randy Downs]

Okay, where do i start?

Well there is no official "list" to show you, in fact experience has shown me that the fact the U.S. bans books is a furtive one. I didn't want to believe it either. Every now and then, a local library will have "banned book week" and they trot out the old chestnuts like "Huck Finn", etc. Personally i think that's a dog and pony show, to divert us all from exactly this right here.

If you want to know why a book is banned i suggest you do the same thing i did and call the U.S. Customs office (i called the Los Angeles office). They were adimit about NOT giving me a banned list (apparently they are/were the only part of the government that didn't have computers and therefore couldn't simply call up the information -which i expressed to the lady) but were much more interested in finding out who i was.

I don't know if Customs acted on their own, i'm fairly certain they wouldn't admit that to me over the phone anyway; however i was told that it is (was?) indeed "official U.S. Customs policy" -that phrase i remember- to confiscate certain books. (Really? Send me a list, i want to read them)

When i asked: why? I was given a vague answer which was essentially: books that say bad things about the government. Nothing about laws regarding libel or obscenity. (Hmmm, how about books that certain elements/people in the government don't want you to see lest you get ideas in your head? Or is that exactly what she said?) I don't remember word for word a conversation that took place 20 years ago, i do remember the substance.

Yes, i know books were smuggled in and available through various means. I'm not exploring the book; i'm exploring the differences between something verboten not all that long ago, and verboten no longer. Something in the equation has changed.

Oh! I think the answer just occured to me. What do we have now, that we didn't have back when i was talking to Customs? The internet. It's kind of pointless to tell a person "you can't read this here" when one can hopefully go online and see it.

So, that would be the change in the equation. I was thinking it was a power-structure thing, not technology.

Regards,

Randy

Edited May 29, 2008 by Randy Downs

[Randy Downs]

Peter - thanks for the link to the Bill Turner piece.

It's fascinating that "Farewell America" seems to have had the official blessing of both De Gaulle and French intelligence.

Like "Were We Controlled?", "Farewell America" is part of a tradition of insider revelations put out through small publishers, under pseudonyms (some of which are relatively easy to uncover), containing information which is explicitly excluded from the contemporary MSM offical view.

Like all information coming from intelligence sources, some of it is top notch, some of it is rubbish, and there's always an agenda. It's critical to try to understand that agenda. However, the existence of an agenda doesn't invalidate the importance of the genuinely good inside information contained in such works.

I'm also reminded of the nearly impossible to obtain "Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?", which appeared shortly after the massacre, and was based in large part on material and access to sources provided by Congressman Leo Ryan's chief aide, Joe Holsinger.

Jonestown was totally hincky, do we have a thread on that here? Jan, i must see this book!

[Christopher Hall]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

Story by Turner here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewellturner.html

Book downloadable here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Thanks for that Story by Turner, Peter,

He's a real Sam Spade.

BK

Bill, You are correct that Turner updated the information on the book [with many new strange twists and turns he didn't know at the time of the Ramparts article] in one of his more recent books. I forget which one myself. It is quite an amazing story - another intelligence agency [or group within it] writing publicly and covertly about the assassination of another nation's President by that other country's operatives - including that country's intelligence agency - nominally a 'friendly' intelligence service.

That book would be Rearview Mirror.

http://www.amazon.com/Rearview-Mirror-Look...s/dp/1883955211

It is good to see Bill Turner is on the COPA agenda in LA.

One of my favorite heroes.

As for French Intelligence, there are enough connections to start a thread, if not an investigation.

Some of the arms stolen from the Schulemberger co. by the New Orleans crew, was from OAS, the renegade French Algiers network that tried to assassinate DeGaul.

One OAS leader visited CIA officials in April, 1961, right around the time of the Bay of Pigs.

The French CIA connection in keeping the Commies out of Marsalles ports is the same as the heroin link to SE Asia.

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians,” said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. “It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way.”

[see: The Big Con at Dealey Plaza]

Is Hevve Lemarr a real person? Or an alias?

Is he the archtype of the French Inspector?

Then there's Charles Calthrop - the English school teacher, alias for the professional assassin hired by the OAS to kill DeGaul as portrayed in the book and film The Day of the Jackal. This cold, calculating loner was thwarted by a French Inspector who set up a counter-intelligence operation to stop him. But if Charles Calthrop was just an English school teacher whose identity was stollen and used by the assassin, who was the assassin?

Such a specially trained professional hit man can thwart normal police procedures, but not a specially trained and focused counter-intel unit set up and assigned to locate and neutralizing an assassin or a covert operation.

David Atlee Phillips sets up a similar counterintel unit in his fictional The Carlos Contract, assigned to capture the Carlos the terrorist of Munich fame who is now in a French jail.

While the book is suposidly fiction, there are some characters who mirror real people - Morales, the Big Indian, Jake Esterline, etc., but in the story, as in real life, Carlos obtaind and used the passport of an American student, Glen Gebhard, of Long Island, New York.

I heard Glen's side of the story first, as we were students together in college. Glen lost his passport in Paris, stolen from his hotel room drawer, and had a hell of a time getting another one. A few years later he went back to Europe with the new passport, but in the meantime, Carlos was using his stolen one and the cops knew it. So when he tried to cross the border into France he was detained and violently interrogated until it was apparent that he was not Carlos the Terrorist but American student on a holiday, the real Glen Gebhard.

What's significant is the way the French Inspector goes about setting up his counterinel operation and the way Phillips describes the counter-Carlos squad, there are ways of successful countering and uncovering sophisticated intelligence operations that are designed to be protected.

The clincher to Phillips' fictional Carlos Contract is that Carlos the terrorist was actually on the CIA team set up to capture him. Ha Ha.

Now where's Insperctor Clouseau when we really need him?

BK

BK

Thanks for the Amazon link to Rearview Mirror, Bill.

Am I correct that it is nonfiction and that DAP's novel is, of course, fictional?

Or is Rearview Mirror also a novel?

If it is nonfiction, I will go ahead and buy and read it.

Farewell America also looks interesting, but it is around $40 on Amazon.

Randy-

I don't doubt what went on between you and the Customs office, but I was never aware of a banned book list, which would, for example, prohibit Borders from ordering a controversial book published in another country.

The Internet does a nice job of rendering a lot of censorship meaningless, except, in Canada, for example, where its infamous Human Rights Commission enforces (via hearings and proceedings) Canada's hate speech penal codes.

I believe that one or more Canadian bloggers have also recently been harangued by the Canada Human Rights Commission.

I remember, from growing up in the 60s and 70s, allegations and rumours of book banning (e.g. Abbie Hoffman's seminal treatise of larcenious life on the lamb, Steal This Book, which, of course, was a treasured part of my personal library), but I am unaware of any statutes which regulate the importation of books.

BTW, the statute of limitations of libel in most instances is either 6 months or 1 year, depending on the jurisdiction in which the publication takes place.

But, even then, the remedy is a suit for damages and not government censorship.

Chris

[Randy Downs]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

Story by Turner here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewellturner.html

Book downloadable here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Thanks for that Story by Turner, Peter,

He's a real Sam Spade.

BK

Bill, You are correct that Turner updated the information on the book [with many new strange twists and turns he didn't know at the time of the Ramparts article] in one of his more recent books. I forget which one myself. It is quite an amazing story - another intelligence agency [or group within it] writing publicly and covertly about the assassination of another nation's President by that other country's operatives - including that country's intelligence agency - nominally a 'friendly' intelligence service.

That book would be Rearview Mirror.

http://www.amazon.com/Rearview-Mirror-Look...s/dp/1883955211

It is good to see Bill Turner is on the COPA agenda in LA.

One of my favorite heroes.

As for French Intelligence, there are enough connections to start a thread, if not an investigation.

Some of the arms stolen from the Schulemberger co. by the New Orleans crew, was from OAS, the renegade French Algiers network that tried to assassinate DeGaul.

One OAS leader visited CIA officials in April, 1961, right around the time of the Bay of Pigs.

The French CIA connection in keeping the Commies out of Marsalles ports is the same as the heroin link to SE Asia.

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians,” said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. “It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way.”

[see: The Big Con at Dealey Plaza]

Is Hevve Lemarr a real person? Or an alias?

Is he the archtype of the French Inspector?

Then there's Charles Calthrop - the English school teacher, alias for the professional assassin hired by the OAS to kill DeGaul as portrayed in the book and film The Day of the Jackal. This cold, calculating loner was thwarted by a French Inspector who set up a counter-intelligence operation to stop him. But if Charles Calthrop was just an English school teacher whose identity was stollen and used by the assassin, who was the assassin?

Such a specially trained professional hit man can thwart normal police procedures, but not a specially trained and focused counter-intel unit set up and assigned to locate and neutralizing an assassin or a covert operation.

David Atlee Phillips sets up a similar counterintel unit in his fictional The Carlos Contract, assigned to capture the Carlos the terrorist of Munich fame who is now in a French jail.

While the book is suposidly fiction, there are some characters who mirror real people - Morales, the Big Indian, Jake Esterline, etc., but in the story, as in real life, Carlos obtaind and used the passport of an American student, Glen Gebhard, of Long Island, New York.

I heard Glen's side of the story first, as we were students together in college. Glen lost his passport in Paris, stolen from his hotel room drawer, and had a hell of a time getting another one. A few years later he went back to Europe with the new passport, but in the meantime, Carlos was using his stolen one and the cops knew it. So when he tried to cross the border into France he was detained and violently interrogated until it was apparent that he was not Carlos the Terrorist but American student on a holiday, the real Glen Gebhard.

What's significant is the way the French Inspector goes about setting up his counterinel operation and the way Phillips describes the counter-Carlos squad, there are ways of successful countering and uncovering sophisticated intelligence operations that are designed to be protected.

The clincher to Phillips' fictional Carlos Contract is that Carlos the terrorist was actually on the CIA team set up to capture him. Ha Ha.

Now where's Insperctor Clouseau when we really need him?

BK

BK

Thanks for the Amazon link to Rearview Mirror, Bill.

Am I correct that it is nonfiction and that DAP's novel is, of course, fictional?

Or is Rearview Mirror also a novel?

If it is nonfiction, I will go ahead and buy and read it.

Farewell America also looks interesting, but it is around $40 on Amazon.

Randy-

I don't doubt what went on between you and the Customs office, but I was never aware of a banned book list, which would, for example, prohibit Borders from ordering a controversial book published in another country.

The Internet does a nice job of rendering a lot of censorship meaningless, except, in Canada, for example, where its infamous Human Rights Commission enforces (via hearings and proceedings) Canada's hate speech penal codes.

I believe that one or more Canadian bloggers have also recently been harangued by the Canada Human Rights Commission.

I remember, from growing up in the 60s and 70s, allegations and rumours of book banning (e.g. Abbie Hoffman's seminal treatise of larcenious life on the lamb, Steal This Book, which, of course, was a treasured part of my personal library), but I am unaware of any statutes which regulate the importation of books.

BTW, the statute of limitations of libel in most instances is either 6 months or 1 year, depending on the jurisdiction in which the publication takes place.

But, even then, the remedy is a suit for damages and not government censorship.

Chris

Chris,

Check your local bookstores, or used bookstores. I was so amazed to see Farewell America in paperback -on sale as a closeout item- that i bought it even though i have the original. But that was around 2 years ago, so i'd go with the used bookstores. You can definitely get it for less than $40. Try Alibris (online).

No, Turner's book isn't a novel. I was just looking for that one myself. I don't know if you guys have this system, but if a book isn't in your local library you can request an Inter Library Loan; so my library looks for this book from every other library system in the country, they borrow the book from them and then i get the book.

I must confess to my ignorance about what goes on in Canada -other than that they don't threaten to nuke Iran or, oh if i get started on this i'll just go off on a rant. I remember a scene in the movie of "Steal This Book" where he's trying to get a bookstore owner to carry his book, and the owner's refusing saying: The title is 'Steal This Book' and people are going to steal it instead of buy it. I thought that was amusing.

Oh, speaking of censorship and lawsuit. We did have a book here "The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror" by David Hoffman. A book the government doesn't want us reading as they filed a suit against Hoffman (i forget on what exact grounds, but it was nothing based on merit) and they won. But instead of fines or penalties, the judge ordered every copy of this book to be burned.

A good old-fashioned book burning; good times, good times.

Regards,

Randy

Edited May 29, 2008 by Randy Downs

[Christopher Hall]

I don't know that Fairwell America was banned in USA, but I do know it was first published in Lichenstein, a very small country sandwiched between France and Belgium, because there are no libel laws enforced there.

James Hepburn, the name used for an author, when the book was actually written by French intelligence agents, though I don't know the deep background there.

I think Bill Turner somehow got tangled up with those guys and relates the story in one of his books.

BK

Story by Turner here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewellturner.html

Book downloadable here:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Thanks for that Story by Turner, Peter,

He's a real Sam Spade.

BK

Bill, You are correct that Turner updated the information on the book [with many new strange twists and turns he didn't know at the time of the Ramparts article] in one of his more recent books. I forget which one myself. It is quite an amazing story - another intelligence agency [or group within it] writing publicly and covertly about the assassination of another nation's President by that other country's operatives - including that country's intelligence agency - nominally a 'friendly' intelligence service.

That book would be Rearview Mirror.

http://www.amazon.com/Rearview-Mirror-Look...s/dp/1883955211

It is good to see Bill Turner is on the COPA agenda in LA.

One of my favorite heroes.

As for French Intelligence, there are enough connections to start a thread, if not an investigation.

Some of the arms stolen from the Schulemberger co. by the New Orleans crew, was from OAS, the renegade French Algiers network that tried to assassinate DeGaul.

One OAS leader visited CIA officials in April, 1961, right around the time of the Bay of Pigs.

The French CIA connection in keeping the Commies out of Marsalles ports is the same as the heroin link to SE Asia.

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians,” said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. “It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way.”

[see: The Big Con at Dealey Plaza]

Is Hevve Lemarr a real person? Or an alias?

Is he the archtype of the French Inspector?

Then there's Charles Calthrop - the English school teacher, alias for the professional assassin hired by the OAS to kill DeGaul as portrayed in the book and film The Day of the Jackal. This cold, calculating loner was thwarted by a French Inspector who set up a counter-intelligence operation to stop him. But if Charles Calthrop was just an English school teacher whose identity was stollen and used by the assassin, who was the assassin?

Such a specially trained professional hit man can thwart normal police procedures, but not a specially trained and focused counter-intel unit set up and assigned to locate and neutralizing an assassin or a covert operation.

David Atlee Phillips sets up a similar counterintel unit in his fictional The Carlos Contract, assigned to capture the Carlos the terrorist of Munich fame who is now in a French jail.

While the book is suposidly fiction, there are some characters who mirror real people - Morales, the Big Indian, Jake Esterline, etc., but in the story, as in real life, Carlos obtaind and used the passport of an American student, Glen Gebhard, of Long Island, New York.

I heard Glen's side of the story first, as we were students together in college. Glen lost his passport in Paris, stolen from his hotel room drawer, and had a hell of a time getting another one. A few years later he went back to Europe with the new passport, but in the meantime, Carlos was using his stolen one and the cops knew it. So when he tried to cross the border into France he was detained and violently interrogated until it was apparent that he was not Carlos the Terrorist but American student on a holiday, the real Glen Gebhard.

What's significant is the way the French Inspector goes about setting up his counterinel operation and the way Phillips describes the counter-Carlos squad, there are ways of successful countering and uncovering sophisticated intelligence operations that are designed to be protected.

The clincher to Phillips' fictional Carlos Contract is that Carlos the terrorist was actually on the CIA team set up to capture him. Ha Ha.

Now where's Insperctor Clouseau when we really need him?

BK

BK

Thanks for the Amazon link to Rearview Mirror, Bill.

Am I correct that it is nonfiction and that DAP's novel is, of course, fictional?

Or is Rearview Mirror also a novel?

If it is nonfiction, I will go ahead and buy and read it.

Farewell America also looks interesting, but it is around $40 on Amazon.

Randy-

I don't doubt what went on between you and the Customs office, but I was never aware of a banned book list, which would, for example, prohibit Borders from ordering a controversial book published in another country.

The Internet does a nice job of rendering a lot of censorship meaningless, except, in Canada, for example, where its infamous Human Rights Commission enforces (via hearings and proceedings) Canada's hate speech penal codes.

I believe that one or more Canadian bloggers have also recently been harangued by the Canada Human Rights Commission.

I remember, from growing up in the 60s and 70s, allegations and rumours of book banning (e.g. Abbie Hoffman's seminal treatise of larcenious life on the lamb, Steal This Book, which, of course, was a treasured part of my personal library), but I am unaware of any statutes which regulate the importation of books.

BTW, the statute of limitations of libel in most instances is either 6 months or 1 year, depending on the jurisdiction in which the publication takes place.

But, even then, the remedy is a suit for damages and not government censorship.

Chris

Chris,

Check your local bookstores, or used bookstores. I was so amazed to see Farewell America in paperback -on sale as a closeout item- that i bought it even though i have the original. But that was around 2 years ago, so i'd go with the used bookstores. You can definitely get it for less than $40. Try Alibris (online).

No, Turner's book isn't a novel. I was just looking for that one myself. I don't know if you guys have this system, but if a book isn't in your local library you can request an Inter Library Loan; so my library looks for this book from every other library system in the country, they borrow the book from them and then i get the book.

I must confess to my ignorance about what goes on in Canada -other than that they don't threaten to nuke Iran or, oh if i get started on this i'll just go off on a rant. I remember a scene in the movie of "Steal This Book" where he's trying to get a bookstore owner to carry his book, and the owner's refusing saying: The title is 'Steal This Book' and people are going to steal it instead of buy it. I thought that was amusing.

Oh, speaking of censorship and lawsuit. We did have a book here "The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror" by David Hoffman. A book the government doesn't want us reading as they filed a suit against Hoffman (i forget on what exact grounds, but it was nothing based on merit) and they won. But instead of fines or penalties, the judge ordered every copy of this book to be burned.

A good old-fashioned book burning; good times, good times.

Regards,

Randy

Thanks for the info on Farewell America.

I will buy it, either in a bookstore or on Amazon.

When I was young, Steal this Book was, appropriately, displayed under glass.

But it was only available in the local head shop and not in any bookstores (at least that I could find it in).

In what country do you live?

In our country, I don't believe that books are per se banned, but the Patriot Act lets the government know what you are reading.

Chris

[Randy Downs]

Peter, that's really a scary story. What's the title, do you think Last Hurrah would have it? It sounds, from your tale, that they got the book before distribution. Luckily, Hoffman's book had seen some distribution ere it was destroyed. Don't know if you can buy one (another arm and leg) i found it at the library, then learned about it's history.

Chris, i live in the U.S. Where we have secret concentration camps (hundreds) set up and ready to go. This is a large part of why i think martial law will take place. It's not just that the laws are in place -suspending the constitution, suspending freedom of travel, keeping the president in power for the (indefinite) duration. It's that the system itself is in place and ready to go. The secret towns (camps) exist, why have them unless you plan on using them? Military exercises have (secretly) been taking place for years, across various states -to get the soldiers 'familiar' with the idea of rounding up or fighting against their own fellow citizens. How many people are aware of the national i.d. card that was signed into law a few years back? It's a modification of your driver's license, for the first year it only applies to the elderly and the disabled: people who are on social security, if you don't comply then your stipend is cut off. As with any herd, the weak and the old are targeted first; when the 2nd year kicks in, this applies to everyone. If you don't comply, you don't have access to your bank account. Of course, all in the interests of identity theft, added security, ad nauseaum.

It's a scary place over here Chris; personally i don't understand why people still think about elections, impeachment, protections of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. We've already seen that aren't real elections anymore, and emperor Bush has stated that the Geneva Conventions don't apply, the Rules of War don't apply, the use of banned weapons doesn't apply, nothing the U.N. says applies; and once the finger of the State gets pointed at you, (or all of us) the Constitution itself nor the Bill of Rights no longer applies to us here.

Regards,

Randy

[Chris Lightbown]

This thread about Farewell America prompts me to ask members something that has long bothered me and it is this: I’ve read on a previous thread – sorry, didn’t keep a note of which, but from memory it was in 2006 – that in his book Post Mortem, the late Harold Weisberg gave Farewell America an absolute lashing. His quote, which I did keep a note of was:

Indeed, there is reasonable ground for suspecting that some of the most disreputable works were designed to kill interest. One is an extravagant work of unprecedented libel, meticulous in its pseudo-scholarship, expertly written and edited, put together in an operation so vast and costly that I have traced those engaged in it to eight different countries. There is no doubt that those connected with intelligence operations of the United States and France at the very least were behind Farewell America and a movie of the same title, the aborting of which I was able to help in a small way. It was the book to end the credibility of all books on assassinations.

Incredibly, its excesses fascinate the intelligent but unthinking marginal paranoids among those genuinely concerned about these assassinations, even though the book itself cannot survive consideration of its content.

Can somebody explain what on earth was Weisberg’s problem with Farewell America? It wasn’t banned in the UK - I readily got a copy from Amazon some time ago – and would urge members to download a copy from the link Peter Lemkin has kindly provided, above.

In my opinion, Farewell America not only provides a context and overview to the assassination - and isn’t exactly timid in naming the guilty men – but agrees with many of the points Weisberg constantly made. Indeed, it thoroughly substantiates them.

So WHAT exactly was Weisberg complaining about?