Robert Howard Posted December 20, 2008 Share Posted December 20, 2008 (edited) Regarding the Grombach "competing agency," the thread John Dolva added to regarding Lyle Stuart, contained the following information, which is also pertinent to the discussion taking place here....... See below Amoss, Ulius L., 1895-1961. Papers, 1941-1964. 10 boxes; 5 lin. Ft. Amoss was dedicated to a career in espionage. He started with the war work of the International Committee of the YMCA in Greece, then set up an export business, Gramtrade International Corporation, of which he was president from 1936 to 1942. In 1942, the government took over the business when Amoss was ordered to report to the army. While in the Armed Forces, Amoss served as Director of the Balkan Desk for Information, and Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Ninth Air Force, among other positions. After his discharge in 1946, he formed the International Services of Information Foundation, Incorporated (ISI), a non-profit, privately owned and operated intelligence service whose purpose was to collect and disseminate information from overseas countries. He also formed the U.L. Amoss Syndicate in 1948, which in turn invested in other corporations. In 1954**, Amoss discovered the hair restoring product Grecian Formula 16; Amoss sold his stock in the formula in 1957 after discovering it had undesirable side effects. Amoss also wrote articles for magazines and gave numerous speeches promoting ISI. The papers include correspondence, manuscripts, speeches, espionage material, military material, and some printed matter. The manuscripts include material for an unwritten autobiography of Amoss, with the proposed title “Easier Said Than Done.” The link below is very helpful re Amoss, since namebase.org has only two books on Amoss http://books.google.com/books?q=Ulius+Amos...nG=Search+Books On the maryferrell site under the HSCA Files under Loran Hall there is pertinent information in document 124-10217-10070. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=91603 On September 19, 1961 Robert Emmet Johnson advised Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Miami that he had been employed as Foreign Affairs Analyst for Dominican Republic leader Generalissimo Trujillo, who was assassinated May 30, 1961. Johnson had this position from 1956-1960. As of that time, Johnson stated he was employed by the International Service of Information Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, 23 West 23rd St., Baltimore, which he described as an independent intelligence-gathering organization operated by Ulius Amos, a former chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. On March 8, 1963, MM T-1 advised that Roger Rigaud, a leader of the Parti National Haitien (PNH), arrived in Miami on March 7, 1963. He is staying at the residence of Larry de Joseph at Sweetwater, Florida exact address unknown. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=8 Lyle Stuart thread http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=10259&st=0 Lyle Stuart aka Lionel Simon http://www.nara.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/5139/jfksnew.txt In my update of the QJWIN thread, I recently posted information on the arrest of Howard Shulman in Morocco...according to the document I posted he was also a [low-level] member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Edited December 20, 2008 by Robert Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted December 21, 2008 Author Share Posted December 21, 2008 (edited) Hi WilliamYou finished your "New Approach" thread with the statement: "The theory that I advocate is that the assassinations be viewed as part of the continuing Cold War between competing intelligence agencies, and the approach that I think is correct is that the assassination of President Kennedy must be recognized as not only a conspiracy but a coup, and a threat to our national security today." My research has turned a new page into the mysterious operations of a group known as Secret Intelligence. Depending on how you view this group they were either a "contract" intelligence organization or a "deep cover" intelligence organization within the established intelligence community. Members/former members/associates include John J. McCloy, Richard Helms, Demitri de Mohrenschildt (brother of George), Winston Scott. It seems also clear that this group was affilliated with or a competing agency to the NSA and were most likely watching Frank Rowlett, Meridith Gardner and John B. Hurt (all names that can be associated with the assassination of JFK or the investigation of that assassination). We sometimes forget that in 1963 the existence of the National Security Agency was denied by everyone in government yet it existed. It is, therefor, not to far fetched to suggest, as you advocate, that "competing intelligence agencies" existed and continue to exist. As I posted in a previous thread both Allen Dulles and John Grombach (head of SI) would provide testimony in the congressional hearings that would lead to the creation of the CIA. Dulles was constantly bothered by the "competing" agency ran by Grombach and continually tried to undermine its existance (the Dulles biography goes into detail about this). I would agree that this may be a reason that the Gordian Knot of the Kennedy conspiracy remains unresolved.....no one has discovered tha actual beginning or end to the string of information that has been woven into this Knot of unreleased information that may center around the competing intelligence agencies within the US Intelligence community. It is here that I agree with you that a "New Approach" be entered into in the search for knowledge. I might suggest, just as Alexander 'solved" the puzzle of the Gordian Knot by cutting it open with his sword and exposing the interior threads, that we must quit dancing around the exterior of the knot and begin our seach by exposing what is at the core. Those responsible for the result of the events that occured on November 22, 1963 will never be exposed by focusing on that days events, as has been done for the past 45 years. It is my contention and I believe it is what you are suggesting as well, that we must look more closely at the mechanics of how a very small group of people could have planned, manipulated and pulled of the assassination as well as idnetifying their reasons behind their desire to eliminate Kennedy and how the coverup of thier responsibility was accomplished. According to Plutarch for many years people focused on the Gordian Knot by examining the exterior of it from every possible and conceiveable angle. But only the powerful blow of Alexander's sword exposed the interior of the puzzle. Jim Root Thanks Jim, For taking the time to think about and enumerate all that, as it is close, but not yet where I want to go, and as with Charles' objection, needs a little tweeking. It's not that I don't think the evidence at the street level in Dallas will take us there, as much as I would like to tie that street level evidence with the guys at the top, and despite all of their need to know, cut-outs, crafts of intelligence and strict operation al procedures, I think it is possible to, as Robert Howard puts it, connect the dots to a legal as well as moral certainty. Towards that end, I don't think you can look at the assassination in the traditional ways, or fall into the categories or pitfalls that have been laid out ahead of time. Rather than the Lone-Nut, Conspiracy Theorists mode, in which a predetermined suspect or group is blamed and all the evidence supporting this position is brought forth, ignoring exculpitory evidence, the real way to go is to keep an open mind until all the facts are in, and name individual subjects rather than social groupings like Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Oilmen, et al. Instead of targeting a group and going there, following the evidence from Dealey Plaza to where it really goes. Either the assassination was the act of a psycho deranged loner with no political or histoircal connections, or it was a well planned out an executed assassination. In order to get where I want to go you have to approach the subject from a specific perspective, and must break from the traditional Lone Nut-Conspiracy Theorists debate. It is more of an investigative, question posing and answering approach, not to blame any person or group, but to determine, for historical as well as national security reasons, what happened. I think it can be determined whether the assassination was the result of a lone gunman, a murder conspiracy from outside the government (Mob, Cubans, CIA, KGB, Birchers, Oil Barrons, et al) or a coup d'etat, inside job. That can and should be determined, but it needs a Third Force, who are neither Lone Nuters or Conspiracy Theorists, who recognize the implications and imperatives in connecting the dots from Elm and Houston to those responsible for the assassination, regardless of who they are. To begin this approach it is necessary to recognize that it isn't just a debate between Lone Nuters and Conspiracy Theorists, as it is a psych war battle among competing intelligence networks - and there are dozens on the playing field at one time. And it isn't just a debate for historical sake, but its a real life and death game that's still going on today, with many of the same players. The National Security Agency is one, the national syndicate of organized crime is another, while the CIA, FBI, Secret Service (Treasury), ONI, John Birch Society, KGB, Cuban G2, are others who come into play. Your work on the communications intelligence angles cuts to the heart of the matter, using Jim's Alexander's Gordian knot analogy, and connects Dealey Plaza to the origins of the codebreakers/OSS operations during WWII, when many of the networks who are in the game made the transfer from the hot to the Cold War to survive. Of course learning all this history of intelligence operations would have no relevance to what happened at Dealey Plaza if JFK was the victim of a deranged lone nut. BK Edited December 21, 2008 by William Kelly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Drago Posted December 21, 2008 Share Posted December 21, 2008 Players who loved money and power were easy recruits for the plot...read LBJ, Hoover, Dulles, etc.Charles calls them "false sponsors". I call them co-conspirators. Jack Here's the KEY, Jack: We're both right. CD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted December 21, 2008 Share Posted December 21, 2008 (edited) Rather than the Lone-Nut, Conspiracy Theorists mode, in which a predetermined suspect or group is blamed and all the evidence supporting this position is brought forth, ignoring exculpatory evidence, the real way to go is to keep an open mind until all the facts are in, and name individual subjects rather than social groupings like Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Oilmen, et al. Instead of targeting a group and going there, following the evidence from Dealey Plaza to where it really goes. - Bill Kelly Another manner of expressing the same sentiment, is to say conduct a no-holds barred analysis of the crime a de facto "criminal investigation, without the earmarks of a controlled investigation, as I believe the HSCA became when the investigation became controlled by Blakey and Cornwell." I even believe there was some smoke and mirrors regarding the above. The argument that this has already been done by the Warren Commission, Rockefeller Commission, and HSCA rings hollow to those who have analyzed the results of the various investigations and have found a common denominator, as someone phrased it "how to conduct an investigation without really trying” although I find the statement a little extreme I would phrase it as "going through all the legwork and, in effect, doing a good job of investigating up to a point, but leaving the intertwining relationships that put the picture into a cohesive flow of who knew who, what, when and how...practically untouched upon." To those who noticed that the above Committee’s did not include the Church Committee, I would point out that, in my opinion the Church Committee WAS a no holds barred investigation, unfortunately it’s mandate was directed more towards the Castro assassination plots; the JFK Assassination was not it’s specific purpose. Another item I believe has been lost on most researchers, is that for the most part a fatal flaw for those seeking the whole truth regarding the Kennedy Assassination is that whereas the people at the top should not have been deposed until after the HSCA investigation, you will find that it was actually the opposite, many of the big names were deposed in the Church Committee era, when it would have been much more fruitful and logical to have waited until after the HSCA finished, instead of before. Although I believe my position on this is a minority view, I totally stick by the assertion. Edited December 21, 2008 by Robert Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Root Posted December 23, 2008 Share Posted December 23, 2008 (edited) Thanks Jim, For taking the time to think about and enumerate all that, as it is close, but not yet where I want to go, and as with Charles' objection, needs a little tweeking. It's not that I don't think the evidence at the street level in Dallas will take us there, as much as I would like to tie that street level evidence with the guys at the top, and despite all of their need to know, cut-outs, crafts of intelligence and strict operation al procedures, I think it is possible to, as Robert Howard puts it, connect the dots to a legal as well as moral certainty. For over 45 years conspiracy researchers have focused on proving conspiracy by finding a second gunman. Two gunmen, by definition, proves conspiracy which has been the primary focus of conspiracy research almost to the exclusion of most other research. This single focus has become the Holy Grail of assassination lore with any suggestion that a single gunman may have accomplished the job being tantamount to a suggestion that separating these Siamese twins would somehow prove that there was no conspiracy. I do not believe that the two assassins theory is particularly needed to prove conspiracy and to the contrary might suggest that the proposition that there were two assassins may well have been the most important element in the coverup of the assassination. On June, 24, 1964, John J. McCloy (in a letter to Lee Rankin) points out the difficulty of proving the single bullet: "the evidence against this is not fully stated and the section on the possibility of shots from the overpass is not well done. In many respect this chapter is the most important chapter in the Reportand it should be the most convincing considering the evidence we have." Did John J. McCloy set the standard for the "traditional way" to view the potential conspiracy research? And in so doing point conspiracy research into a deadend direction that they continue to travel into to this day? Did McCloy, the United States leading master of intelligence, have a reason to focus the direction of conspiracy reasearch away for Lee Harvey Oswald and toward a search for a second gunman? What would McCloy have to gain by mis-directing American thought? Towards that end, I don't think you can look at the assassination in the traditional ways, or fall into the categories or pitfalls that have been laid out ahead of time. Agreed Rather than the Lone-Nut, Conspiracy Theorists mode, in which a predetermined suspect or group is blamed and all the evidence supporting this position is brought forth, ignoring exculpitory evidence, the real way to go is to keep an open mind until all the facts are in, and name individual subjects rather than social groupings like Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Oilmen, et al. Instead of targeting a group and going there, following the evidence from Dealey Plaza to where it really goes. Either the assassination was the act of a psycho deranged loner with no political or histoircal connections, or it was a well planned out an executed assassination. Agreed In order to get where I want to go you have to approach the subject from a specific perspective, and must break from the traditional Lone Nut-Conspiracy Theorists debate. It is more of an investigative, question posing and answering approach, not to blame any person or group, but to determine, for historical as well as national security reasons, what happened. I think it can be determined whether the assassination was the result of a lone gunman, a murder conspiracy from outside the government (Mob, Cubans, CIA, KGB, Birchers, Oil Barrons, et al) or a coup d'etat, inside job. Agreed That can and should be determined, but it needs a Third Force, who are neither Lone Nuters or Conspiracy Theorists, who recognize the implications and imperatives in connecting the dots from Elm and Houston to those responsible for the assassination, regardless of who they are. This is the real key but can, in my opinion, only be accomplished when we set aside our predetermined thoughts on what is needed to prove conspiracy. Well we open our minds to the possibility that the reason that no conspirator has ever been convicted of a crime nor has sufficient proof surfaced that would implicate an identified group of consirators to a level that would be acceptable in a court of law, is because these same conspirators had the ability to misdirect the research of the assassination conspiracy community? Is it too humbling to suggest that the same government that so many believe can manipulate the thoughts of the community as a whole may actually be able to manipulate the conspiracy researchers themselves? To begin this approach it is necessary to recognize that it isn't just a debate between Lone Nuters and Conspiracy Theorists, as it is a psych war battle among competing intelligence networks - and there are dozens on the playing field at one time. And it isn't just a debate for historical sake, but its a real life and death game that's still going on today, with many of the same players. The National Security Agency is one, the national syndicate of organized crime is another, while the CIA, FBI, Secret Service (Treasury), ONI, John Birch Society, KGB, Cuban G2, are others who come into play. Your work on the communications intelligence angles cuts to the heart of the matter, using Jim's Alexander's Gordian knot analogy, and connects Dealey Plaza to the origins of the codebreakers/OSS operations during WWII, when many of the networks who are in the game made the transfer from the hot to the Cold War to survive. My work on the communications intelligence angle is only one of three areas, any one of which can, I believe, prove a coverup (therefore a conspiracy??????). 1) Owalds flight from London to Helsinki. What is stated in the final draft of the Warren Commission Report is a true and factual statement that does nothing but coverup the fact that the amount of money which was spent by Oswald was known and the passenger records for the flight/s that he took were available at the time but withheld from the public. I continue to suggest that it is very possible (and with the work of Antti Hynonen have proven) that Oswald may not have flown directly to Finland and may well have gone to Germany first.....the same destinations that Edwin Walker would have traveled toward.... and could have still been on the same plane that arrived in Helsinki carrying the London passengers. We know that US Ambassador Hickerson wrote a top secret note which provided the information on how to obtain a Russian Visa within 24 hours was sent to the State Department the day before Oswald arrived in Helsinki. We also know that the directions indicated in the Hickerson note were actually followed (by direction or by chance) by Oswald upon his arrivial in Helsinki. Within days of Oswald's arrival in Helsinki we find JohnJ. McCloy involved in a meeting of the US nuclear arms negotiators, where fear is expressed in the role of world opionion forcing the United States into a Limited Test Ban Treaty in Paris that would jepordize the security of the United States, was discussed. It would be the downing of a U-2 spy craft that would scuttle the Paris Summit! 2) FBI Agent Hosty wrote three notes concerning the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination. Two of these notes ended up in the files of Richard Helms and the movements of who had access to these two notes can be identified. The third Hosty note (the one which identified exactly where he worked prior to the planning of the motorcade route) has never been located. Once again we find that John J. McCloy, the man who cracked the Black Tom Case, did not put this third note into evidenciary record! Any third rate attorney that discovered that the government had prior knowledge of where the alledged assassin of the President of the United States was working before the motorcade route was formulated, a route that would put the President within the sites of the alledged assassin, would noit only recognize the importance of that particular piece of evidence but, in a real investigation of a potential conspiracy, would identify every person who had access to that piece of evidence. Instead the CIA has never placed that note on any list of documents that came into their possession prior to the asssassination!! 3) It is the third piece of information which concerns the attempted phone call by Lee Harvey Oswald to someone by the name of John Hurt that again ties Oswald to the top eschelons of US Intelligence. It would be a person named John Hurt that would be providing information directly to John J. McCloy during WWII that was used by McCloy while advising the President/s of the United States on some of the most sensitve decissions of WWII. A person named John Hurt could be identified as a US Intelligence asset and that same person could be tied directly to one Warren Commissioner (McCloy) that would not wish to have that Oswald phone call reported upon within the official assassination record! It is also interesting to note that the two men assigned by the National Security Agency to investigate Oswald for potential intelligence connection (Rowlet and Gardner) could themselves be closely linked to John Hurt as both friends and associates! The three points above are based upon facts that are proveable beyond doubt! While it is speculation to suggest that Walker was on the same plane as Oswald, the fact remains that when Oswald entered the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki he had already purchased First Class Intourist vouchers, as suggested in the Hickerson note written one day prior to Oswald's arrival. Of course learning all this history of intelligence operations would have no relevance to what happened at Dealey Plaza if JFK was the victim of a deranged lone nut. [color="#FF0000"]It is the research into these historical intelligence operations that led me to speculate upon whom Oswald's "cut-out" phone call (person to person collect for a John Hurt from Lee Harvey Oswald) may have gone to. Following this lead further I have uncovered a cache of material which has led to information about a Secret Intelligence (SI) organization created during WWII that involved Richard Helms and Whitney Shepardson (a very close associate/friend of John J. McCloy). Within these documents we find that this group was meeting with Richard Helms, collecting information about Helsinki, Finland, in the months prior to Oswald's entry into Russia via Helsinki. This group is also historically responsible for the begining foundations of the Venona Project, led by Rowlett and Gardner (who would investigate Oswald) which began when a cryptologist by the name of John B. Hurt translated some Japanese intercepts while involve in a program which came under the overall direction of John J. McCloy! Jim Root[/color] Edited December 23, 2008 by Jim Root Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted February 8, 2009 Author Share Posted February 8, 2009 Thanks Jim,For taking the time to think about and enumerate all that, as it is close, but not yet where I want to go, and as with Charles' objection, needs a little tweeking. It's not that I don't think the evidence at the street level in Dallas will take us there, as much as I would like to tie that street level evidence with the guys at the top, and despite all of their need to know, cut-outs, crafts of intelligence and strict operation al procedures, I think it is possible to, as Robert Howard puts it, connect the dots to a legal as well as moral certainty. For over 45 years conspiracy researchers have focused on proving conspiracy by finding a second gunman. Two gunmen, by definition, proves conspiracy which has been the primary focus of conspiracy research almost to the exclusion of most other research. This single focus has become the Holy Grail of assassination lore with any suggestion that a single gunman may have accomplished the job being tantamount to a suggestion that separating these Siamese twins would somehow prove that there was no conspiracy. I do not believe that the two assassins theory is particularly needed to prove conspiracy and to the contrary might suggest that the proposition that there were two assassins may well have been the most important element in the coverup of the assassination. On June, 24, 1964, John J. McCloy (in a letter to Lee Rankin) points out the difficulty of proving the single bullet: "the evidence against this is not fully stated and the section on the possibility of shots from the overpass is not well done. In many respect this chapter is the most important chapter in the Reportand it should be the most convincing considering the evidence we have." Did John J. McCloy set the standard for the "traditional way" to view the potential conspiracy research? And in so doing point conspiracy research into a deadend direction that they continue to travel into to this day? Did McCloy, the United States leading master of intelligence, have a reason to focus the direction of conspiracy reasearch away for Lee Harvey Oswald and toward a search for a second gunman? What would McCloy have to gain by mis-directing American thought? Towards that end, I don't think you can look at the assassination in the traditional ways, or fall into the categories or pitfalls that have been laid out ahead of time. Agreed Rather than the Lone-Nut, Conspiracy Theorists mode, in which a predetermined suspect or group is blamed and all the evidence supporting this position is brought forth, ignoring exculpitory evidence, the real way to go is to keep an open mind until all the facts are in, and name individual subjects rather than social groupings like Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Oilmen, et al. Instead of targeting a group and going there, following the evidence from Dealey Plaza to where it really goes. Either the assassination was the act of a psycho deranged loner with no political or histoircal connections, or it was a well planned out an executed assassination. Agreed In order to get where I want to go you have to approach the subject from a specific perspective, and must break from the traditional Lone Nut-Conspiracy Theorists debate. It is more of an investigative, question posing and answering approach, not to blame any person or group, but to determine, for historical as well as national security reasons, what happened. I think it can be determined whether the assassination was the result of a lone gunman, a murder conspiracy from outside the government (Mob, Cubans, CIA, KGB, Birchers, Oil Barrons, et al) or a coup d'etat, inside job. Agreed That can and should be determined, but it needs a Third Force, who are neither Lone Nuters or Conspiracy Theorists, who recognize the implications and imperatives in connecting the dots from Elm and Houston to those responsible for the assassination, regardless of who they are. This is the real key but can, in my opinion, only be accomplished when we set aside our predetermined thoughts on what is needed to prove conspiracy. Well we open our minds to the possibility that the reason that no conspirator has ever been convicted of a crime nor has sufficient proof surfaced that would implicate an identified group of consirators to a level that would be acceptable in a court of law, is because these same conspirators had the ability to misdirect the research of the assassination conspiracy community? Is it too humbling to suggest that the same government that so many believe can manipulate the thoughts of the community as a whole may actually be able to manipulate the conspiracy researchers themselves? To begin this approach it is necessary to recognize that it isn't just a debate between Lone Nuters and Conspiracy Theorists, as it is a psych war battle among competing intelligence networks - and there are dozens on the playing field at one time. And it isn't just a debate for historical sake, but its a real life and death game that's still going on today, with many of the same players. The National Security Agency is one, the national syndicate of organized crime is another, while the CIA, FBI, Secret Service (Treasury), ONI, John Birch Society, KGB, Cuban G2, are others who come into play. Your work on the communications intelligence angles cuts to the heart of the matter, using Jim's Alexander's Gordian knot analogy, and connects Dealey Plaza to the origins of the codebreakers/OSS operations during WWII, when many of the networks who are in the game made the transfer from the hot to the Cold War to survive. My work on the communications intelligence angle is only one of three areas, any one of which can, I believe, prove a coverup (therefore a conspiracy??????). 1) Owalds flight from London to Helsinki. What is stated in the final draft of the Warren Commission Report is a true and factual statement that does nothing but coverup the fact that the amount of money which was spent by Oswald was known and the passenger records for the flight/s that he took were available at the time but withheld from the public. I continue to suggest that it is very possible (and with the work of Antti Hynonen have proven) that Oswald may not have flown directly to Finland and may well have gone to Germany first.....the same destinations that Edwin Walker would have traveled toward.... and could have still been on the same plane that arrived in Helsinki carrying the London passengers. We know that US Ambassador Hickerson wrote a top secret note which provided the information on how to obtain a Russian Visa within 24 hours was sent to the State Department the day before Oswald arrived in Helsinki. We also know that the directions indicated in the Hickerson note were actually followed (by direction or by chance) by Oswald upon his arrivial in Helsinki. Within days of Oswald's arrival in Helsinki we find JohnJ. McCloy involved in a meeting of the US nuclear arms negotiators, where fear is expressed in the role of world opionion forcing the United States into a Limited Test Ban Treaty in Paris that would jepordize the security of the United States, was discussed. It would be the downing of a U-2 spy craft that would scuttle the Paris Summit! 2) FBI Agent Hosty wrote three notes concerning the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination. Two of these notes ended up in the files of Richard Helms and the movements of who had access to these two notes can be identified. The third Hosty note (the one which identified exactly where he worked prior to the planning of the motorcade route) has never been located. Once again we find that John J. McCloy, the man who cracked the Black Tom Case, did not put this third note into evidenciary record! Any third rate attorney that discovered that the government had prior knowledge of where the alledged assassin of the President of the United States was working before the motorcade route was formulated, a route that would put the President within the sites of the alledged assassin, would noit only recognize the importance of that particular piece of evidence but, in a real investigation of a potential conspiracy, would identify every person who had access to that piece of evidence. Instead the CIA has never placed that note on any list of documents that came into their possession prior to the asssassination!! 3) It is the third piece of information which concerns the attempted phone call by Lee Harvey Oswald to someone by the name of John Hurt that again ties Oswald to the top eschelons of US Intelligence. It would be a person named John Hurt that would be providing information directly to John J. McCloy during WWII that was used by McCloy while advising the President/s of the United States on some of the most sensitve decissions of WWII. A person named John Hurt could be identified as a US Intelligence asset and that same person could be tied directly to one Warren Commissioner (McCloy) that would not wish to have that Oswald phone call reported upon within the official assassination record! It is also interesting to note that the two men assigned by the National Security Agency to investigate Oswald for potential intelligence connection (Rowlet and Gardner) could themselves be closely linked to John Hurt as both friends and associates! The three points above are based upon facts that are proveable beyond doubt! While it is speculation to suggest that Walker was on the same plane as Oswald, the fact remains that when Oswald entered the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki he had already purchased First Class Intourist vouchers, as suggested in the Hickerson note written one day prior to Oswald's arrival. Of course learning all this history of intelligence operations would have no relevance to what happened at Dealey Plaza if JFK was the victim of a deranged lone nut. [color="#FF0000"]It is the research into these historical intelligence operations that led me to speculate upon whom Oswald's "cut-out" phone call (person to person collect for a John Hurt from Lee Harvey Oswald) may have gone to. Following this lead further I have uncovered a cache of material which has led to information about a Secret Intelligence (SI) organization created during WWII that involved Richard Helms and Whitney Shepardson (a very close associate/friend of John J. McCloy). Within these documents we find that this group was meeting with Richard Helms, collecting information about Helsinki, Finland, in the months prior to Oswald's entry into Russia via Helsinki. This group is also historically responsible for the begining foundations of the Venona Project, led by Rowlett and Gardner (who would investigate Oswald) which began when a cryptologist by the name of John B. Hurt translated some Japanese intercepts while involve in a program which came under the overall direction of John J. McCloy! Jim Root[/color] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted February 15, 2009 Author Share Posted February 15, 2009 If the assassination of the President at Dealy Plaza was not by a Lone Nut or an outside domestic or foreign conspiracy, but an inside job, a coup, then it was not Benigh but Infectious, and was part of the system and is still affecting us today. Those who claim President Kennedy was killed by a Lone Nut or a conspiracy by the mob or Cubans or mid-level CIA officers, really mean that the assassination was a benign attack, and one we can argue over, debate and play palor games, but not have to really address through the legal system or as a threat to the national security. It's okay. But those who see the assassination as a coup, also realize that the coup isn't over, and those who took over the government then are still pulling strings and covert ops and coups today, and will continue to do so until the assassination is recognized as not-benign, still infectious and must be cleansed. There's a lot of changes being made in the political system today, especially in the way the game's been played in the past, and among them is the perception that political assassinations are accidents that can't be avoided or rectified. The theory that I advocate is that the assassinations be viewed as part of the continuing Cold War between competing intelligence agencies, and the approach that I think is correct is that the assassination of President Kennedy must be recognized as not only a conspiracy but a coup, and a threat to our national security today. "...So, structurally, there is just no plausible way for an “inside job” conspiracy of the JFK assassination or 9/11 type to work. There is simply not enough harmony between the different institutions that would have to be involved, either of a natural sort or the type imposed by force." - Edward Feser - The Trouble with Conspiracy Theories http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_...Issue/coup.html The Assassination of John F. Kennedy as Coup D'Etat by Christopher Sharrett It occurs to me that two lines of discourse currently affect public understanding of the John Kennedy assassination. Both narratives obscure the reality of the assassination as a state crime carried out by the official enforcement apparatus, a coup d'etat. One narrative that informs numerous conspiracy books details a plot to kill Kennedy consisting of some small, marginal grouping, usually including the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans (although at times including pro-Castro Cubans), occasionally with support of one or two "renegade" CIA agents. This narrative, which has been in circulation at least since the 1970s, seems to me to have a particular function in shaping our perception of the assassination and events surrounding it. The second narrative, which is becoming steadily more dominant, acknowledges that there was indeed an official cover-up of the assassination, but that this cover-up was "benign," in the interests of the American people, and spontaneously constructed in order to avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union or Cuba, who were suspected by some in state power of being the real assassins. One recent variation of this narrative argues that this cover-up was put in place largely to protect the public from the consequences of the Kennedy brothers' depraved foreign policy. This narrative also argues that while Oswald was the lone assassin, Castro perhaps influenced him. But the whole affair comes down to the ruthless prosecution of the Cold War by the Kennedys, often against the sober counsel of others within state power. The small-scale conspiracy model indeed dates to the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate period, when state power suffered one of many profound legitimation crises. The cover-ups of the assassinations of the 1960s had already unraveled; an issue for many who wished to relegitimate the state was the most efficient way to acknowledge the public's skepticism, and in so doing reconstruct the state's authority and credibility. The small-scale cabal is most efficient at the task, even as it defies reason. It offers a conspiracy that addresses many concerns, at least for those people who do not wish to look at the particulars of the assassination, its historical moment, and its context within similar acts known to history. The exposure of a conspiracy of the Mafia and some Cubans would have only further legitimated the state, since it offered a conspiracy that is an unfortunate, arcane aberration unrepresentative of true state interests. The CIA agents involved are described as "renegade" and "rogue elephants" for the same reasons. These agents are portrayed not as functionaries of the state, not as representatives of policy interests held by others in authority, but as loners working out of personal, pathological impulse or overzealous ideology. This is often suggested to be the case in the matter of David Atlee Phillips --- whose involvement in the assassination has been incontrovertibly demonstrated by Gaeton Fonzi --- even when we know that Phillips, the renegade, was given a major promotion within the executive ranks of the CIA. Another function of this form of narrative is the erasure of the historical moment and the presentation of the Kennedy period as ideologically seamless. The historical record tells us that the period leading up to the assassination was filled with conflict within the halls of state. This conflict was actually reflected in contemporary press accounts of the period. One account is Harry S.Truman's Washington Post article, published exactly one month after the assassination (and not mentioned by anyone since) in which Truman expressed profound concern about the CIA's violation of its initial mandate. Another piece is Arthur Krock's Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times article, published just over a month before the assassination, detailing an "intra-administration war" directed at Kennedy from the CIA. These articles articulate real, material conditions of the Kennedy Administration that any reasonable person must examine if interested in motivations within the state to remove Kennedy from office. Kennedy himself spoke to the importance of these matters. After reading the novel Seven Days in May in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy confided to his friend Red Fay that after one or two more such episodes (and we know about the Missile Crisis --- about which more in a moment --- the Test Ban Treaty, and the American University speech), he could be perceived as weak and "soft on Communism" by others in state authority, and a coup d'etat was conceivable.1 Kennedy encouraged director John Frankenheimer to film the novel in order to further sensitize the public to the political dynamics of the period. Many critics argue that the leading and intimidation of witnesses during the investigation by governmental authorities may merely reflect the typical bullying by Hoover's FBI. But much of the investigation, and certainly its presentation to the public, was accomplished not by crude bullies but by sophisticated, erudite men learned and respectful of the law. Many critics also suggest that emotionalism and the panic of the moment could have motivated the prompt removal of Kennedy's body from the jurisdiction of the murder. Did emotionalism also motivate the removal and reconstruction of the presidential limousine, and subsequent destruction of forensic evidence? Did the panic of that afternoon motivate continued obfuscation about the smallest details of the assassination even thirty years after the crime? The other prevalent narrative of the assassination, which argues that the lone nut scenario is valid and the cover-up benign, contains at its center the notion that the cover-up teaches us nothing except the essential benevolence of the state. Certainly the cover-up tells us nothing sinister about state policy assumptions. Some critics suggest that the full motivation of the cover-up is obscure, and is a topic for rumination. I would argue to the contrary that we could today, as we could the day of the crime, know precisely what motivated the cover-up, although there is an on-going effort to complicate the important political utility of this aspect of the crime. Because the cover-up today stands exposed, there has been an effort to present it as benign (so described by James Hosty in the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy), constructed --- in the best interests of the American people --- to prevent a nuclear war and to protect certain agencies and individuals (including the Kennedy family) from embarrassment. One phase of this narrative is represented in Gus Russo's Live by the Sword. The moralistic biblical admonition of this book's title offers its thesis: Kennedy got what he deserved. Russo's conception of the Kennedy brothers portrays them as the ultimate Cold Warriors, with RFK the instigator of plots against Fidel Castro that LBJ wanted to hide in the aftermath of the assassination in order to prevent a war with the Soviet Union. According to this narrative, LBJ believed that "Castro killed Kennedy in retaliation," an idea that has long had currency in the mass media. But this discourse ignores a large part of the historical record. Marvin Watson, a Johnson staffer, told the Washington Post in 1977 that Johnson "thought there was a plot in connection with the assassination," and that "the CIA had had something to do with the plot."2 On the matter of RFK being the guilt-ridden instigator of the Castro plots, anguished that he had caused his brother's death due to his anti-Castro obsessions, we should note that Robert Kennedy exploded in front of assistants Peter Edelman and Adam Walinsky after he read the Jack Anderson column that put into play the idea of RFK as craftsman of the Castro assassination plots. RFK complained "I didn't start itÖI stopped it. I found out that some people were going to try an attempt on Castro's life and turned it off."3 A recent Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary on the Kennedy assassination includes taped remarks by RFK speaking very derisively of CIA covert operations specialist William Harvey. RFK termed Harvey's ideas "half-assed" and potentially very damaging to the United States 4. Recently declassified CIA documents about its use of hoodlums to penetrate the Cuban Revolution and assassinate its leaders demonstrate that the Agency didn't brief RFK. 5 Gus Russo perpetuates the claim that RFK was convinced that Castro killed his brother, ignoring evidence that RFK contacted Jim Garrison (since RFK took seriously the notion of a domestic plot), and that he was concerned with the possibility that the CIA may have had involvement in the assassination 6. Throughout Russo's book and similar contemporary narratives, the impression is conveyed that the Castro assassination plots and Operation Mongoose were strictly Kennedy inventions (this overlooks the origins of anti-Castro projects before Kennedy was elected), and at all times under their control. In 1961 John Kennedy had a conversation with New York Times journalist Tad Szulc, during which Kennedy asked Szulc's counsel about the moral and political implications of attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro. Szulc said he thought such a plan would be disastrous. Kennedy agreed, but said that he was "under extreme pressure" (Szulc felt the pressure was coming from intelligence officials) to okay such a plan. Szulc left the meeting with the impression that the Kennedy brothers were firmly opposed to assassination politics. As Arthur Schlesinger has noted, if Kennedy was in the process of creating a covert operation against Castro, he would hardly have discussed this issue with a New York Times columnist.7 On the matter of Operation Mongoose, the "boom and bang" that the Kennedys created in the wake of the Bag of Pigs seems largely to have been a means of protecting their credibility with the right. Gen. Edward Lansdale, who commanded Mongoose, "complained not long afterward that there had actually been no high-level decision for follow-on military intervention."8 It strikes me that the function of many current renderings of the Kennedy years is to remove from our view the ideological conflicts and contradictions of the Kennedy period. We are shown everyone from the Joint Chiefs to Allen Dulles to William Harvey to David Ferrie in lockstep behind the Kennedy brothers. This thinking has been touted by a few sectors of the left, who suggest that since the Kennedy brothers were members of the ruling class, no one in their number would want to kill them. This thinking does a huge public disservice, since it prevents a nuanced understanding of an important phase of the Cold War, and of the internal strife within the state that overtook people such as John Kennedy. My own research into the Kennedy assassination has never been motivated by a desire to lionize John Kennedy. Kennedy was clearly a player in the Cold War, but a large part of the historical record shows that his was one of the very few centrist, essentially cooptative positions toward the socialist bloc at a time when virtually all sectors of state power were calling for massive incursions into the colonial domain picked up by the U.S. from its enemies and allies after World War II. A surprising amount of the historical record, much of which tends to ignore the assassination, shows that at the time of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Kennedy demonstrated that he would stand up to the belligerent advice from his closest aides."9 While Kennedy suggested a policy of restraint, Gen. Thomas Powers, commander of the Strategic Air Command, had other ideas: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win."10 During the Missile Crisis, Powers raised the readiness of SAC to DEFCON-2, one step away from war, without JFK's authorization.11 After one meeting with the Joint Chiefs during the Berlin crisis, Kennedy left the room fuming, stating "These people are crazy."12 Throughout Kennedy's term in office his relationship with the military was extraordinarily strained, and "the generals and admirals did not think much of Kennedy's ideas, either."13 About Gen. Curtis LeMay, Chief of the Air Force, Kennedy remarked after one of his many walkouts on LeMay: "I don't want that man near me again."14 After feeling misled at the time of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy stated "...Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work."15 And while Russo and other current narratives have it that Allen Dulles and the CIA entranced Kennedy, the full record shows something much more complex. While Kennedy was indeed enamored of James Bond novels and the world of espionage and counterinsurgency, after the Bay of Pigs betrayal Kennedy said: "I've got to do something about those CIA bastards."16 An important book on the internecine battles that confronted Kennedy contains the following illuminating passage: Pacing his office later, alone with his friend Red Fay, the President said: "I sat there all day and all these fellas all saying 'This is gonna work, and this won't go,' saying 'Sure, this whole thing will work out.' Now, in retrospect, I know damn well that they didn't have any intention of giving me the straight word on this thing. They just thought that if we got involved in this thing, that I would have to say 'Go ahead, you can throw all your forces in the thing, and just move into Cuba' ... Well, from now on it's John Kennedy that makes the decisions as to whether or not we are going to do these things."17 New scholarship is also useful in countering the revisionism that has Kennedy the architect of the Vietnam invasion. In a book on Vietnam, Francis X. Winters notes that while Kennedy approved of the coup against Diem, he was taken aback by his assassination. Kennedy's ultimate intent was to install a new, reformist government that would gain legitimacy with the public, co-opt the socialist agenda, and allow the government of Vietnam to do its own policing. In contrast, the Johnson Administration regarded the reformist strategy as "do-gooder" and opted instead for direct military intervention.18 Recently released tape recordings (presented on CBS News) show Kennedy disturbed by the murder of Diem, perhaps less for moral reasons than out of concern that the strategy behind the coup was already producing results opposite of what was intended. On the matter of the assassination cover-up being put in place not out of official guilt but out of a desire to prevent a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, I would have thought by now that this risible notion was long since put to rest. One recent book shows that not only were the Soviets appalled by the events of Dallas (this was known to U.S. state authority rather quickly), they were informed by an emissary of the Kennedy family that the Kennedys felt JFK to have been the victim of a rightist coup.19 Gaeton Fonzi's account of the Phillips affair and the HSCA non-investigation of the CIA contains much instructive material. As he recounts in his book The Last Investigation, the Congress knew that Phillips perjured himself on a number of important points in his testimony before the HSCA, yet chose not to recommend prosecution of Phillips. A recent book on the HSCA by one of its staff lawyers does not deal with this moment, although it offers yet another muddled, small-scale conspiracy narrative not associated with the political economy of the postwar American power structure. At the time the Congress became interested in reopening the assassination inquiry, Clare Boothe Luce, widow of Time-Life magnate Henry Luce and former lover of Allen Dulles, gave out a good deal of malarkey (about Cubans no less) to investigators designed to send them on a wild goose chase. The Luce nonsense --- Clare was an official in an organization of retired CIA officers --- is especially instructive as we see it within the context of the overall cover-up's service to the national security state. In 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote an article for Rolling Stone in which he described virtually all of the major media as essentially handmaidens of the CIA and the rest of the state apparatus.20 A three-part article in the New York Times this same year did Bernstein one better by noting the ways by which the CIA used the media to discredit critics of the Warren Report.21 This activity continued long after fears of Soviet missiles flying at the U.S. had been abetted, long after the deaths of Johnson and RFK, long after a concern for Kennedy privacy had faded from the governmental agenda, as JFK was steadily portrayed as a profligate degenerate --- unworthy of serious study --- by these same media. Let me make it country simple. The evidence in the assassination of John Kennedy was taken control of and represented to the public by those sectors of state and private power that despised Kennedy and his policies, and who saw them as representative of a long-term trend within the state to avoid the direct military interventionism that would be a great boon to many components of American capital. It is true that Mafia types and various exile groupings appear within the assassination scenario. These same groups appear within Watergate and Iran/Contra. Does appreciating the presence of these groups go very far in aiding our understanding of these events as state crimes, in fact as crimes against the Constitution and the people of the U.S. carried out by state authority? Does the presence of these groups make these crimes other than state crimes? More important, would the American media and much of officialdom continue to attempt to bolster the various official narratives as a favor to the Mafia and some Cuban exiles? Would they do this to prevent a member of the Kennedy clan, or Allen Dulles or J. Edgar Hoover, from being "embarrassed"? Would they do this to prevent hostile relations with other lands, even years after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Many critics suggest that data long in the hands of researchers, such as the Joseph Milteer tapes, point to the source of the plot within crazed rightist groupings. Did not the federal authorities have access to these tapes many years ago? Were they attempting to assist a southern racist group by hiding Milteer's connections to the assassination? I suggest that these provocative tapes, which have been ensconced in the public imagination as symbols of the plot, were another small attempt to divert public attention from the state's implication in the assassination. I would hope that eventually we would have no more talk of Shadow Governments and Cabals. The invisible government discussed by various researchers is no more invisible than our political-economic system. This system is synonymous with the postwar national security state. Kennedy was killed when he became a flashpoint for a debate that began immediately with the creation of this state. The Great Depression brought U.S. capitalism to its knees; this terrible economic collapse was halted only by the wartime military build-up. The collapse threatened an immediate return after the war, and was prevented by the government's hooking the economy to military production. The public was forced to subsidize the biggest military expansion in history as corporations began to depend on public revenue for their survival. Many within state power saw the potential problems of the new "Pentagon system." Senator Arthur Vandenberg told President Harry Truman: "You are going to have to scare the hell out of the public" in order for them to accept a huge increase in taxes, and an economic system that would give extraordinary authority to the military and the intelligence agencies, who soon became essentially lobbyists for sectors of capital involved in military production. Indeed, fear became the currency of the national security state. Although the Soviet Union suffered twenty-seven million dead in World War II, with most of its major cities and industrial plants destroyed, the American public coughed up billions of dollars to support the U.S. "free enterprise" system and its expansionist aims, as public programs soon went begging. Cold War propaganda gave legitimacy to the national security state, although debate raged on within state and private power against the backdrop of the sleepy fifties.22 Many felt that the creation of the "garrison state" would bring about an enormous deficit and weaken us in relation to our Western capitalist rivals. Kennedy was not the first victim of the fierce internecine battles that began almost immediately with the creation of the national security state. Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal became a victim in 1949 of what was referred to as "the revolt of the admirals." As each sector of the military fought over their share of public revenues, with the Joint Chiefs "at each other's throat" in a climate of unbridled avarice, Forrestal attempted at least to inject a note of civility as the military sensed its unprecedented authority. Forrestal was eventually "ground down by the bickering and backstabbing in the Pentagon." He was "under constant attack from the admirals and generals he supposedly commanded." The national security state's lapdogs in the press, including Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, ridiculed Forrestal, terming him a "xxxx and a coward."23 Forrestal suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually committed suicide. Like many in the previous administration, Eisenhower faced problems in reigning in the national security state. Long before he spoke of the "military-industrial complex," Eisenhower warned America and the world "humanity was hanging from a cross of iron." He stated that every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired," represented "a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."24 Into this arena entered John Kennedy, at first arguing that the U.S. faced a bogus "missile gap" in its competition with the Soviets, but soon arguing against the plans of the Joint Chiefs and the CIA for massive military incursions into Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. The body of John Kennedy, and all evidence related to his murder, was commandeered and represented to the public by the military and the intelligence agencies. After the assassination, Cuba was placed on the back burner (under a terrible economic blackmail), as the state undertook a massive incursion into Southeast Asia that was a major boondoggle for corporate America. This incursion proved ultimately disastrous both to America's economy and its credibility with its own people and those of the world. In the administrations of the 1970s, the temptation toward such severe military adventure was avoided. During the Reagan years, the state began testing the waters of public opinion as it propagandized this public with new Cold War rhetoric. The Reagan crowd undertook murderous counterinsurgency against socialist movements in Central America --- but with a huge military strikeforce waiting in the wings. Again, the other side of the imperialist table --- the side that demanded an immediate financial payoff from overwhelming military contracts --- began to show its clout. The Reagan/Bush years saw the shift within the state toward massive military intervention, first on the small scale blitzkrieg level (Libya, Grenada, Panama), then larger adventures (the Gulf War) with the advance of the new Rambo mindset within the American public. Over these many years, intelligence satraps in the heavily corporatized "liberal" (can there be a bigger red herring than public acquiescence to this notion?) mass media, have lauded these adventures as they continue to present the official stories of the assassination. They are the same people and organizations who advocate for the new supranational corporate state that guarantees the immiseration of millions. There is nothing arcane about the murder of John F. Kennedy. It is no more cabalistic than the political-economic system we have come to accept. Calling the assassination a coup d'etat does not necessitate the notion that the plot was overwhelmingly massive, or that everyone within the state agreed that Kennedy should be dismissed. On the contrary, there is rarely uniform consensus within state or private power about any policy issue. But this does not mean that the crime is any less a function of ruling authority. We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense --- obviously there was no imposition of martial law, no prolonged period of bloodletting (discounting murdered witnesses and such). Such a blow against the public would have been intolerable in a major Western democracy after European fascism, and the issue in any event was not about suppressing a popular movement (here we can refer to the effect of the Martin Luther King and Black Panther assassinations on the civil rights movements), but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high. Only if we choose to shed our denial about the assassination's historical context --- and refuse to immerse ourselves in further endless ruminations about oddball plotters and Dealey Plaza minutiae --- can we come to terms with the assassination's meaning to our present circumstances, its relationship to the murderous path of the state as it continues to enforce the greed of the few. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted April 5, 2009 Share Posted April 5, 2009 (edited) If the assassination of the President at Dealy Plaza was not by a Lone Nut or an outside domestic or foreign conspiracy, but an inside job, a coup, then it was not Benigh but Infectious, and was part of the system and is still affecting us today. Those who claim President Kennedy was killed by a Lone Nut or a conspiracy by the mob or Cubans or mid-level CIA officers, really mean that the assassination was a benign attack, and one we can argue over, debate and play palor games, but not have to really address through the legal system or as a threat to the national security. It's okay. But those who see the assassination as a coup, also realize that the coup isn't over, and those who took over the government then are still pulling strings and covert ops and coups today, and will continue to do so until the assassination is recognized as not-benign, still infectious and must be cleansed. There's a lot of changes being made in the political system today, especially in the way the game's been played in the past, and among them is the perception that political assassinations are accidents that can't be avoided or rectified. The theory that I advocate is that the assassinations be viewed as part of the continuing Cold War between competing intelligence agencies, and the approach that I think is correct is that the assassination of President Kennedy must be recognized as not only a conspiracy but a coup, and a threat to our national security today. "...So, structurally, there is just no plausible way for an “inside job” conspiracy of the JFK assassination or 9/11 type to work. There is simply not enough harmony between the different institutions that would have to be involved, either of a natural sort or the type imposed by force." - Edward Feser - The Trouble with Conspiracy Theories http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_...Issue/coup.html The Assassination of John F. Kennedy as Coup D'Etat by Christopher Sharrett It occurs to me that two lines of discourse currently affect public understanding of the John Kennedy assassination. Both narratives obscure the reality of the assassination as a state crime carried out by the official enforcement apparatus, a coup d'etat. One narrative that informs numerous conspiracy books details a plot to kill Kennedy consisting of some small, marginal grouping, usually including the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans (although at times including pro-Castro Cubans), occasionally with support of one or two "renegade" CIA agents. This narrative, which has been in circulation at least since the 1970s, seems to me to have a particular function in shaping our perception of the assassination and events surrounding it. The second narrative, which is becoming steadily more dominant, acknowledges that there was indeed an official cover-up of the assassination, but that this cover-up was "benign," in the interests of the American people, and spontaneously constructed in order to avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union or Cuba, who were suspected by some in state power of being the real assassins. One recent variation of this narrative argues that this cover-up was put in place largely to protect the public from the consequences of the Kennedy brothers' depraved foreign policy. This narrative also argues that while Oswald was the lone assassin, Castro perhaps influenced him. But the whole affair comes down to the ruthless prosecution of the Cold War by the Kennedys, often against the sober counsel of others within state power. The small-scale conspiracy model indeed dates to the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate period, when state power suffered one of many profound legitimation crises. The cover-ups of the assassinations of the 1960s had already unraveled; an issue for many who wished to relegitimate the state was the most efficient way to acknowledge the public's skepticism, and in so doing reconstruct the state's authority and credibility. The small-scale cabal is most efficient at the task, even as it defies reason. It offers a conspiracy that addresses many concerns, at least for those people who do not wish to look at the particulars of the assassination, its historical moment, and its context within similar acts known to history. The exposure of a conspiracy of the Mafia and some Cubans would have only further legitimated the state, since it offered a conspiracy that is an unfortunate, arcane aberration unrepresentative of true state interests. The CIA agents involved are described as "renegade" and "rogue elephants" for the same reasons. These agents are portrayed not as functionaries of the state, not as representatives of policy interests held by others in authority, but as loners working out of personal, pathological impulse or overzealous ideology. This is often suggested to be the case in the matter of David Atlee Phillips --- whose involvement in the assassination has been incontrovertibly demonstrated by Gaeton Fonzi --- even when we know that Phillips, the renegade, was given a major promotion within the executive ranks of the CIA. Another function of this form of narrative is the erasure of the historical moment and the presentation of the Kennedy period as ideologically seamless. The historical record tells us that the period leading up to the assassination was filled with conflict within the halls of state. This conflict was actually reflected in contemporary press accounts of the period. One account is Harry S.Truman's Washington Post article, published exactly one month after the assassination (and not mentioned by anyone since) in which Truman expressed profound concern about the CIA's violation of its initial mandate. Another piece is Arthur Krock's Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times article, published just over a month before the assassination, detailing an "intra-administration war" directed at Kennedy from the CIA. These articles articulate real, material conditions of the Kennedy Administration that any reasonable person must examine if interested in motivations within the state to remove Kennedy from office. Kennedy himself spoke to the importance of these matters. After reading the novel Seven Days in May in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy confided to his friend Red Fay that after one or two more such episodes (and we know about the Missile Crisis --- about which more in a moment --- the Test Ban Treaty, and the American University speech), he could be perceived as weak and "soft on Communism" by others in state authority, and a coup d'etat was conceivable.1 Kennedy encouraged director John Frankenheimer to film the novel in order to further sensitize the public to the political dynamics of the period. Many critics argue that the leading and intimidation of witnesses during the investigation by governmental authorities may merely reflect the typical bullying by Hoover's FBI. But much of the investigation, and certainly its presentation to the public, was accomplished not by crude bullies but by sophisticated, erudite men learned and respectful of the law. Many critics also suggest that emotionalism and the panic of the moment could have motivated the prompt removal of Kennedy's body from the jurisdiction of the murder. Did emotionalism also motivate the removal and reconstruction of the presidential limousine, and subsequent destruction of forensic evidence? Did the panic of that afternoon motivate continued obfuscation about the smallest details of the assassination even thirty years after the crime? The other prevalent narrative of the assassination, which argues that the lone nut scenario is valid and the cover-up benign, contains at its center the notion that the cover-up teaches us nothing except the essential benevolence of the state. Certainly the cover-up tells us nothing sinister about state policy assumptions. Some critics suggest that the full motivation of the cover-up is obscure, and is a topic for rumination. I would argue to the contrary that we could today, as we could the day of the crime, know precisely what motivated the cover-up, although there is an on-going effort to complicate the important political utility of this aspect of the crime. Because the cover-up today stands exposed, there has been an effort to present it as benign (so described by James Hosty in the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy), constructed --- in the best interests of the American people --- to prevent a nuclear war and to protect certain agencies and individuals (including the Kennedy family) from embarrassment. One phase of this narrative is represented in Gus Russo's Live by the Sword. The moralistic biblical admonition of this book's title offers its thesis: Kennedy got what he deserved. Russo's conception of the Kennedy brothers portrays them as the ultimate Cold Warriors, with RFK the instigator of plots against Fidel Castro that LBJ wanted to hide in the aftermath of the assassination in order to prevent a war with the Soviet Union. According to this narrative, LBJ believed that "Castro killed Kennedy in retaliation," an idea that has long had currency in the mass media. But this discourse ignores a large part of the historical record. Marvin Watson, a Johnson staffer, told the Washington Post in 1977 that Johnson "thought there was a plot in connection with the assassination," and that "the CIA had had something to do with the plot."2 On the matter of RFK being the guilt-ridden instigator of the Castro plots, anguished that he had caused his brother's death due to his anti-Castro obsessions, we should note that Robert Kennedy exploded in front of assistants Peter Edelman and Adam Walinsky after he read the Jack Anderson column that put into play the idea of RFK as craftsman of the Castro assassination plots. RFK complained "I didn't start itÖI stopped it. I found out that some people were going to try an attempt on Castro's life and turned it off."3 A recent Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary on the Kennedy assassination includes taped remarks by RFK speaking very derisively of CIA covert operations specialist William Harvey. RFK termed Harvey's ideas "half-assed" and potentially very damaging to the United States 4. Recently declassified CIA documents about its use of hoodlums to penetrate the Cuban Revolution and assassinate its leaders demonstrate that the Agency didn't brief RFK. 5 Gus Russo perpetuates the claim that RFK was convinced that Castro killed his brother, ignoring evidence that RFK contacted Jim Garrison (since RFK took seriously the notion of a domestic plot), and that he was concerned with the possibility that the CIA may have had involvement in the assassination 6. Throughout Russo's book and similar contemporary narratives, the impression is conveyed that the Castro assassination plots and Operation Mongoose were strictly Kennedy inventions (this overlooks the origins of anti-Castro projects before Kennedy was elected), and at all times under their control. In 1961 John Kennedy had a conversation with New York Times journalist Tad Szulc, during which Kennedy asked Szulc's counsel about the moral and political implications of attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro. Szulc said he thought such a plan would be disastrous. Kennedy agreed, but said that he was "under extreme pressure" (Szulc felt the pressure was coming from intelligence officials) to okay such a plan. Szulc left the meeting with the impression that the Kennedy brothers were firmly opposed to assassination politics. As Arthur Schlesinger has noted, if Kennedy was in the process of creating a covert operation against Castro, he would hardly have discussed this issue with a New York Times columnist.7 On the matter of Operation Mongoose, the "boom and bang" that the Kennedys created in the wake of the Bag of Pigs seems largely to have been a means of protecting their credibility with the right. Gen. Edward Lansdale, who commanded Mongoose, "complained not long afterward that there had actually been no high-level decision for follow-on military intervention."8 It strikes me that the function of many current renderings of the Kennedy years is to remove from our view the ideological conflicts and contradictions of the Kennedy period. We are shown everyone from the Joint Chiefs to Allen Dulles to William Harvey to David Ferrie in lockstep behind the Kennedy brothers. This thinking has been touted by a few sectors of the left, who suggest that since the Kennedy brothers were members of the ruling class, no one in their number would want to kill them. This thinking does a huge public disservice, since it prevents a nuanced understanding of an important phase of the Cold War, and of the internal strife within the state that overtook people such as John Kennedy. My own research into the Kennedy assassination has never been motivated by a desire to lionize John Kennedy. Kennedy was clearly a player in the Cold War, but a large part of the historical record shows that his was one of the very few centrist, essentially cooptative positions toward the socialist bloc at a time when virtually all sectors of state power were calling for massive incursions into the colonial domain picked up by the U.S. from its enemies and allies after World War II. A surprising amount of the historical record, much of which tends to ignore the assassination, shows that at the time of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Kennedy demonstrated that he would stand up to the belligerent advice from his closest aides."9 While Kennedy suggested a policy of restraint, Gen. Thomas Powers, commander of the Strategic Air Command, had other ideas: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win."10 During the Missile Crisis, Powers raised the readiness of SAC to DEFCON-2, one step away from war, without JFK's authorization.11 After one meeting with the Joint Chiefs during the Berlin crisis, Kennedy left the room fuming, stating "These people are crazy."12 Throughout Kennedy's term in office his relationship with the military was extraordinarily strained, and "the generals and admirals did not think much of Kennedy's ideas, either."13 About Gen. Curtis LeMay, Chief of the Air Force, Kennedy remarked after one of his many walkouts on LeMay: "I don't want that man near me again."14 After feeling misled at the time of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy stated "...Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work."15 And while Russo and other current narratives have it that Allen Dulles and the CIA entranced Kennedy, the full record shows something much more complex. While Kennedy was indeed enamored of James Bond novels and the world of espionage and counterinsurgency, after the Bay of Pigs betrayal Kennedy said: "I've got to do something about those CIA bastards."16 An important book on the internecine battles that confronted Kennedy contains the following illuminating passage: Pacing his office later, alone with his friend Red Fay, the President said: "I sat there all day and all these fellas all saying 'This is gonna work, and this won't go,' saying 'Sure, this whole thing will work out.' Now, in retrospect, I know damn well that they didn't have any intention of giving me the straight word on this thing. They just thought that if we got involved in this thing, that I would have to say 'Go ahead, you can throw all your forces in the thing, and just move into Cuba' ... Well, from now on it's John Kennedy that makes the decisions as to whether or not we are going to do these things."17 New scholarship is also useful in countering the revisionism that has Kennedy the architect of the Vietnam invasion. In a book on Vietnam, Francis X. Winters notes that while Kennedy approved of the coup against Diem, he was taken aback by his assassination. Kennedy's ultimate intent was to install a new, reformist government that would gain legitimacy with the public, co-opt the socialist agenda, and allow the government of Vietnam to do its own policing. In contrast, the Johnson Administration regarded the reformist strategy as "do-gooder" and opted instead for direct military intervention.18 Recently released tape recordings (presented on CBS News) show Kennedy disturbed by the murder of Diem, perhaps less for moral reasons than out of concern that the strategy behind the coup was already producing results opposite of what was intended. On the matter of the assassination cover-up being put in place not out of official guilt but out of a desire to prevent a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, I would have thought by now that this risible notion was long since put to rest. One recent book shows that not only were the Soviets appalled by the events of Dallas (this was known to U.S. state authority rather quickly), they were informed by an emissary of the Kennedy family that the Kennedys felt JFK to have been the victim of a rightist coup.19 Gaeton Fonzi's account of the Phillips affair and the HSCA non-investigation of the CIA contains much instructive material. As he recounts in his book The Last Investigation, the Congress knew that Phillips perjured himself on a number of important points in his testimony before the HSCA, yet chose not to recommend prosecution of Phillips. A recent book on the HSCA by one of its staff lawyers does not deal with this moment, although it offers yet another muddled, small-scale conspiracy narrative not associated with the political economy of the postwar American power structure. At the time the Congress became interested in reopening the assassination inquiry, Clare Boothe Luce, widow of Time-Life magnate Henry Luce and former lover of Allen Dulles, gave out a good deal of malarkey (about Cubans no less) to investigators designed to send them on a wild goose chase. The Luce nonsense --- Clare was an official in an organization of retired CIA officers --- is especially instructive as we see it within the context of the overall cover-up's service to the national security state. In 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote an article for Rolling Stone in which he described virtually all of the major media as essentially handmaidens of the CIA and the rest of the state apparatus.20 A three-part article in the New York Times this same year did Bernstein one better by noting the ways by which the CIA used the media to discredit critics of the Warren Report.21 This activity continued long after fears of Soviet missiles flying at the U.S. had been abetted, long after the deaths of Johnson and RFK, long after a concern for Kennedy privacy had faded from the governmental agenda, as JFK was steadily portrayed as a profligate degenerate --- unworthy of serious study --- by these same media. Let me make it country simple. The evidence in the assassination of John Kennedy was taken control of and represented to the public by those sectors of state and private power that despised Kennedy and his policies, and who saw them as representative of a long-term trend within the state to avoid the direct military interventionism that would be a great boon to many components of American capital. It is true that Mafia types and various exile groupings appear within the assassination scenario. These same groups appear within Watergate and Iran/Contra. Does appreciating the presence of these groups go very far in aiding our understanding of these events as state crimes, in fact as crimes against the Constitution and the people of the U.S. carried out by state authority? Does the presence of these groups make these crimes other than state crimes? More important, would the American media and much of officialdom continue to attempt to bolster the various official narratives as a favor to the Mafia and some Cuban exiles? Would they do this to prevent a member of the Kennedy clan, or Allen Dulles or J. Edgar Hoover, from being "embarrassed"? Would they do this to prevent hostile relations with other lands, even years after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Many critics suggest that data long in the hands of researchers, such as the Joseph Milteer tapes, point to the source of the plot within crazed rightist groupings. Did not the federal authorities have access to these tapes many years ago? Were they attempting to assist a southern racist group by hiding Milteer's connections to the assassination? I suggest that these provocative tapes, which have been ensconced in the public imagination as symbols of the plot, were another small attempt to divert public attention from the state's implication in the assassination. I would hope that eventually we would have no more talk of Shadow Governments and Cabals. The invisible government discussed by various researchers is no more invisible than our political-economic system. This system is synonymous with the postwar national security state. Kennedy was killed when he became a flashpoint for a debate that began immediately with the creation of this state. The Great Depression brought U.S. capitalism to its knees; this terrible economic collapse was halted only by the wartime military build-up. The collapse threatened an immediate return after the war, and was prevented by the government's hooking the economy to military production. The public was forced to subsidize the biggest military expansion in history as corporations began to depend on public revenue for their survival. Many within state power saw the potential problems of the new "Pentagon system." Senator Arthur Vandenberg told President Harry Truman: "You are going to have to scare the hell out of the public" in order for them to accept a huge increase in taxes, and an economic system that would give extraordinary authority to the military and the intelligence agencies, who soon became essentially lobbyists for sectors of capital involved in military production. Indeed, fear became the currency of the national security state. Although the Soviet Union suffered twenty-seven million dead in World War II, with most of its major cities and industrial plants destroyed, the American public coughed up billions of dollars to support the U.S. "free enterprise" system and its expansionist aims, as public programs soon went begging. Cold War propaganda gave legitimacy to the national security state, although debate raged on within state and private power against the backdrop of the sleepy fifties.22 Many felt that the creation of the "garrison state" would bring about an enormous deficit and weaken us in relation to our Western capitalist rivals. Kennedy was not the first victim of the fierce internecine battles that began almost immediately with the creation of the national security state. Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal became a victim in 1949 of what was referred to as "the revolt of the admirals." As each sector of the military fought over their share of public revenues, with the Joint Chiefs "at each other's throat" in a climate of unbridled avarice, Forrestal attempted at least to inject a note of civility as the military sensed its unprecedented authority. Forrestal was eventually "ground down by the bickering and backstabbing in the Pentagon." He was "under constant attack from the admirals and generals he supposedly commanded." The national security state's lapdogs in the press, including Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, ridiculed Forrestal, terming him a "xxxx and a coward."23 Forrestal suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually committed suicide. Like many in the previous administration, Eisenhower faced problems in reigning in the national security state. Long before he spoke of the "military-industrial complex," Eisenhower warned America and the world "humanity was hanging from a cross of iron." He stated that every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired," represented "a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."24 Into this arena entered John Kennedy, at first arguing that the U.S. faced a bogus "missile gap" in its competition with the Soviets, but soon arguing against the plans of the Joint Chiefs and the CIA for massive military incursions into Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. The body of John Kennedy, and all evidence related to his murder, was commandeered and represented to the public by the military and the intelligence agencies. After the assassination, Cuba was placed on the back burner (under a terrible economic blackmail), as the state undertook a massive incursion into Southeast Asia that was a major boondoggle for corporate America. This incursion proved ultimately disastrous both to America's economy and its credibility with its own people and those of the world. In the administrations of the 1970s, the temptation toward such severe military adventure was avoided. During the Reagan years, the state began testing the waters of public opinion as it propagandized this public with new Cold War rhetoric. The Reagan crowd undertook murderous counterinsurgency against socialist movements in Central America --- but with a huge military strikeforce waiting in the wings. Again, the other side of the imperialist table --- the side that demanded an immediate financial payoff from overwhelming military contracts --- began to show its clout. The Reagan/Bush years saw the shift within the state toward massive military intervention, first on the small scale blitzkrieg level (Libya, Grenada, Panama), then larger adventures (the Gulf War) with the advance of the new Rambo mindset within the American public. Over these many years, intelligence satraps in the heavily corporatized "liberal" (can there be a bigger red herring than public acquiescence to this notion?) mass media, have lauded these adventures as they continue to present the official stories of the assassination. They are the same people and organizations who advocate for the new supranational corporate state that guarantees the immiseration of millions. There is nothing arcane about the murder of John F. Kennedy. It is no more cabalistic than the political-economic system we have come to accept. Calling the assassination a coup d'etat does not necessitate the notion that the plot was overwhelmingly massive, or that everyone within the state agreed that Kennedy should be dismissed. On the contrary, there is rarely uniform consensus within state or private power about any policy issue. But this does not mean that the crime is any less a function of ruling authority. We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense --- obviously there was no imposition of martial law, no prolonged period of bloodletting (discounting murdered witnesses and such). Such a blow against the public would have been intolerable in a major Western democracy after European fascism, and the issue in any event was not about suppressing a popular movement (here we can refer to the effect of the Martin Luther King and Black Panther assassinations on the civil rights movements), but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high. Only if we choose to shed our denial about the assassination's historical context --- and refuse to immerse ourselves in further endless ruminations about oddball plotters and Dealey Plaza minutiae --- can we come to terms with the assassination's meaning to our present circumstances, its relationship to the murderous path of the state as it continues to enforce the greed of the few. I am becoming a little frustrated on the Forum regarding postings that are ignored, see my look into the alleged 1962 assassination attempt against JFK or the fact that Albert Osborne was operating in Montreal at the same time as Ramon Mercader circa 1939 in which adjacent to this location was McGill University, which Nadine Bestougeff an ostensible CIA informant had used D.R. Pevouchine of McGill as a reference to the YWCA, [she had arrived in U.S. from Paris 8/22/63. Went directly to Mexico. Arrived in Houston, TX., 9/8/63. Lived at Houston YWCA until 11/11/63.] See Thread Oswald In Mexico City Nevertheless, regarding this thread, another discovery along the lines of interest in Grombach, McCormack and individuals under the radar so to speak is a book entitled Failed Illusions By Charles Gati See See http://books.google.com/books?id=iqc59NE5y...ntcover&dq= My interest in this book has to do with US Intelligence activities regarding the CIA's involvement in the 1956 failed uprising of Hungary, Colonel Grombach is mentioned in this book a bit, and another book deals with intangibles associated with the same, said book is A Short Course In The Secret War by Christopher Felix.....According to Charles Gati, the author of that book listed as Christopher Felix is actually a pseudonym for James McCargar....There is, on pages 168-169 of The Secret War a fascinating bit of minutae? It concerns the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments of the House of Representatives on the National Security Act of 1947.... All I can add is that according to the portion cited..."there were six witnesses before the Committee: Lt. General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Director of the CIG, Allen W. Dulles speaking as a civilian, Peter Vischer former Secretary, Joint Intelligence Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brig. General Hayes Kroner, former Deputy G-2 of the War Department and Chief of the Military Intelligence Service; Col. John V. Grombach, Director, Secret Intelligence Branch of the War Department General Staff; and Rear-Admiral Thomas Inglis, Chief of Naval Intelligence." It turns out that the continuation of the existence of the Secret Intelligence Branch arguably, was unknown even to the CIA, until 1951; this according to an interview of Col. Grombach in late 1981 conducted by Professor Charles Gati of Union College and Columbia University. As a final thought, it may be an article of interest that President Eisenhower was more distrustful of the Pentagon than the CIA, and perhaps more important that both of the Bundy brother's William and McGeorge, were both Army G-2 earlier in their illustrious careers. Regarding lack of interests in my posts, maybe John will let me start a "Robert's Corner" on the Forum, where my boring posts will not be forced on others.....lol http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...15&start=15 Edited April 5, 2009 by Robert Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathleen Collins Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 As most eloquently put by Prof. Rhan and Priscilla Johnson McMillan, this scenario sqarely blames the murder of the President on a series of apprently inconsequential actions - that led to the assassination - as indication that the death of Kennedy was something of a social accident totally unrelated to the political and historical situation of the day and today. According to PJM, conspiracy theorists contrive the conspiracies to give meaning to what really was only the act of a psychotic madman. I thought Priscilla Johnson McMillan was CIA. Her book, Marina and Lee is used as a doorstop. Kathy C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted April 6, 2009 Author Share Posted April 6, 2009 Kathleen, You are correct in your assumption that Priscilla Johnson McMillan was CIA, or closely affiliated with that agency, as her New York neighbor was Cord Meyer, Jr., who had something to do with her recruitment. Her father also played a role. She was also working for NANA - the North American Newspaper Alliance when she interviewed Oswald in Moscow. NANA was an international news service owned by Ivor Bryce and Ernest Cuneo (both OSS), and employed Ian Fleming as well as Inga Avid, Ernest Hemingway and other literary spies. And Robert, though few may respond, be asured that your posts are read and acted on. I especially liked: Robert: "It turns out that the continuation of the existence of the Secret Intelligence Branch arguably, was unknown even to the CIA, until 1951; this according to an interview of Col. Grombach in late 1981 conducted by Professor Charles Gati of Union College and Columbia University." I'd like to read that interview with Grombach. And I also have learned that Columbia University (Law school?) also conducted an oral history project very early on - 1964, interviewing many witnesses. I'd like to know what's become of those interviews? Bill Kelly bkjfk3@Yahoo.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Jeffries Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Thanks for posting Christopher Sharrett's piece, Bill. Penn Jones first published some of his writing back in The Continuing Inquiry. I've always been impressed by what he has to say. Do you know when this was written? More importantly, what is Sharrett doing now? It would be great to have a voice like his on this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted April 6, 2009 Author Share Posted April 6, 2009 Thanks for posting Christopher Sharrett's piece, Bill. Penn Jones first published some of his writing back in The Continuing Inquiry. I've always been impressed by what he has to say. Do you know when this was written? More importantly, what is Sharrett doing now? It would be great to have a voice like his on this forum. Hey Don, Chris Sharrett is a professor at Seton Hall College in New Jersey. He was a member of the "Committee of Correspondence" that included Vince Salandria, Gaeton Fonzi, et al. Here's some links to some of his JFK stuff and what he's up to now. BK <A href="http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/9-11Sharrett/bio.html">'>http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/9-11Sharrett/bio.html">http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/9-11Sharrett/bio.html Christopher Sharrett Christopher Sharrett is Professor of Communication and Film Studies at Seton Hall University. He has published in Cineaste, Framework, Senses of Cinema, Film International, Kinoeye, Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, Cineaction, Persistence of Vision, and numerous anthologies, including Cinema and Modernity, The End of Cinema as We Know It, Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, The New American Cinema, The Dread of Difference: Essay on the Horror Film, Japanese Horror Cinema, and other collections. He is editor of Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media and co-editor with Barry Keith Grant of Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film (revised edition). His most recent book is a monograph on the 1950s TV western, The Rifleman (Wayne State University Press). He is currently writing a book about the neoconservative politics of contemporary Hollywood cinema. In the 1970s and 80s, he was a researcher/activist focusing on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. He lobbied for the creation of the 1976-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. Congress. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/9-11Sharrett/index.html http://books.google.com/books?id=JapfjNaB5...snum=1#PPT10,M1 http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/history/wc_pe...iews_Simon.html http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_...pen_letter.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Feemster Posted April 15, 2009 Share Posted April 15, 2009 Hi Bill, I'm still on the ground in and around Dealy Plaza because I believe in order to ever have a grand jury indicte someone we first have to have the might of the public behind us. Look what was accomplished after O.Stone's " JFK " came out. The public has to be convinced that Oswald didn't do it. This is the first and foremost fact that has to be ingested by John Q. Small bites, tidbits laid out in a bread crumb trail to lead the masses to the realization that " something ain't right ". That's how I come to be a member of this forum and proved to myself by reading yours, and Roberts and Lee's and Jacks and most of the other senior member's comments and lessons, that I really didn't know #@%$ about the assassination of John Kennedy or the ramifications, thereof. I think it is very important to expose the little guys on the ground wearing the " black hats " because they will lead us by association to the big guys wearing " black hats " in the beltway and in the highrise buildings of New York and other cities and most likely in other countries, too! The public sees in black and white. There must come a revelation , a new and fantastic discovery. Our cause must be sold to the public just like the Warren Report was and continues to be. And not to the " baby boomers ". Their time has past. We, as a group, have our pensions and retirements facing us. Wars are fought by the young! Well, I got that off my chest, lol ! jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted November 18, 2009 Author Share Posted November 18, 2009 ANYBODY WHO HAS TO LOOK AT THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF A LONE NUT OR A CONSPIRACY THEORISTS IS TOO SIMPLE MINDED TO SEE THE TRUTH ANYWAY. Craig L. : LOL!...so where does that place YOU Bill? Those who believe Oswald was the lone nut assassin and those who believe in a conspiracy and try to pin the blame on the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, or anybody, comprise most of those who take an interest in this case. There is a third approach however, one that I advocate, is one that views the assassination of the President as the result of a war between competing intelligence agencies, both foreign and domestic. This third approach also seeks to develop information further, seeking truth, and to push the case through the American legal system, which requires those who follow it to keep an open mind, and to look for evidence of crimes related to the assassination that can be introduced into a court of law, a grand jury, or presented before a Congressional hearing. The primary goal is to obtain new, sworn testimony of witnesses, and the development of evidence so that as much new information can be obtained. That can be obtained during a Congressional oversight hearings on the JFK Act, or a special federal grand jury. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathleen Collins Posted November 19, 2009 Share Posted November 19, 2009 Of course this characterization, which was commonly held in 1963, was one of the two major factors that led to the selection of Dallas as the killing zone (the other, of course, relates to the efforts to include LBJ as a False Sponsor of the assassination and thus enhance control of his presidency and protect the true Sponsors). I agree with the above statement. Yes, Johnson gained the most from all involved, but I don't think he "ordered" the assassination. But he knew it was going to occur and helped cover it up to the Cuban Exiles' dismay. In The Men Who Killed Kennedy, I think it's part 9, called "The Guilty Men," which can now be seen on youtube, the finger is pointed directly at Johnson. He was involved in the murders of other people and Mac Wallace, his good friend and old school chum, a convicted murderer, left a fingerprint on a box in the TSBD. So it's very incriminating, but I still believe there were more powerful forces involved in Kennedy's death. But Johnson knew Kennedy was going to get it. He said as much to his girlfriend Madeleine Brown, the mother of his son, the night before. What divurges is -- Was Kennedy killed in the hope that Americans would blame Castro and get him ousted? Remember the arrogance of the one particular Cuban Exile, holding his arm up in the street for the shooters to commence shooting. The fact that you can do that in a country not your own. Or was Kennedy killed because the powers that be disliked the man's politics and performed a coup d'etat, with Johnson and his Warren Commission claiming Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed the President, as they didn't want war with Cuba or Russia? Kathy C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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