White House protests...

[Jack White]

White House launches new website to debunk conspiracy theories

Aug 2 2010

THE White House has launched an official bid to shoot down conspiracy theories.

A new website aims to counter claims that the US government have been involved in top-secret plots and sensational cover-ups.

The "Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation" page - posted by the US equivalent of the Foreign Office - insists that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy alone, and that the Pentagon was not hit by a cruise missile on 9/11.

The site also says officials have not covered up the existence of aliens and the moon landings were not faked and filmed in Hollywood.

The internet has led to an explosion of outlandish theories and rumours about the US Government.

But the site says: "Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts and evidence is ignored."

Robin Ramsay, an expert in conspiracy theories and editor of political mag Lobster, said: "It will have about as much effect as a site appealing for sexual abstinence amidst the internet's oceans of porn."

[William Kelly]

White House launches new website to debunk conspiracy theories

Aug 2 2010

THE White House has launched an official bid to shoot down conspiracy theories.

A new website aims to counter claims that the US government have been involved in top-secret plots and sensational cover-ups.

The "Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation" page - posted by the US equivalent of the Foreign Office - insists that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy alone, and that the Pentagon was not hit by a cruise missile on 9/11.

The site also says officials have not covered up the existence of aliens and the moon landings were not faked and filmed in Hollywood.

The internet has led to an explosion of outlandish theories and rumours about the US Government.

But the site says: "Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts and evidence is ignored."

Robin Ramsay, an expert in conspiracy theories and editor of political mag Lobster, said: "It will have about as much effect as a site appealing for sexual abstinence amidst the internet's oceans of porn."

Is there a link to this site?

BK

[David Von Pein]

Here's the link to the America.gov site on conspiracy theories. There doesn't seem to be much there, however. But apparently they're just getting started. I'd love to plug my JFK blogs into this site:

http://www.america.gov/conspiracy_theories.html

Edited August 4, 2010 by David Von Pein

[Ian Kingsbury]

White House launches new website to debunk conspiracy theories

Aug 2 2010

THE White House has launched an official bid to shoot down conspiracy theories.

A new website aims to counter claims that the US government have been involved in top-secret plots and sensational cover-ups.

The "Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation" page - posted by the US equivalent of the Foreign Office - insists that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy alone, and that the Pentagon was not hit by a cruise missile on 9/11.

The site also says officials have not covered up the existence of aliens and the moon landings were not faked and filmed in Hollywood.

The internet has led to an explosion of outlandish theories and rumours about the US Government.

But the site says: "Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts and evidence is ignored."

Robin Ramsay, an expert in conspiracy theories and editor of political mag Lobster, said: "It will have about as much effect as a site appealing for sexual abstinence amidst the internet's oceans of porn."

I wonder if they will also be supplying the proof?. I would imagine the pentagaon to be one the most secure and security minded of places on earth and surveyed by the minute by a myriad of cctv cameras, but as yet no film of the incident apart from the Wiley Coyote excuse with more cuts than a slaughtered pig.I live in a relatively small town in England and last count on my high street 9 cameras in less than a fifth of a mile .Maybe MI5 has a building there we do not know about?.Mind you it has never been hit by a missile so perhaps the cameras are doing thier job.

Edited August 4, 2010 by Ian Kingsbury

[William Kelly]

/http://blogs.america.gov/rumors/

Lee Harvey Oswald, Lone Assassin<LI id=post-111 class=post-single>

— By Todd Leventhal, 21 July 2009

Last week, I did a Web chat on conspiracy theories, in which I was surprised by the number of questions on the Kennedy assassination.

The most comprehensive book on this subject is the 1600-page book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, published in 2007. Bugliosi clearly establishes that Oswald acted alone.

From an early age, Oswald was a bitter, angry loner, ill-suited to working with, much less taking orders, from others. At age 13, he told his school psychiatrist “I dislike everybody.” He quit or was fired from every job he ever held, except a factory job he had in the Soviet Union.

Oswald had extreme political views. He defected to the USSR in 1959, requesting Soviet citizenship “because I am a Communist,” complaining that he “lived in a decadent capitalist society, where the workers are slaves.” He tried to commit suicide when the Soviets denied his request.

Oswald was quickly disillusioned by Soviet communism and returned to the United States in 1962, but still idealized Cuban communism. He was not the type of person likely to want to work for the CIA, KGB, or the Mafia, or whom any of these organizations would want to entrust with the most sensitive mission imaginable.

The KGB observed Oswald closely while he was in the USSR and concluded that he was a “mediocre, uninteresting, useless man,” in the words of Vladimir Semichastny, who headed the KGB when Oswald lived in the USSR. Semichastny added, “I had always respected the CIA and FBI, and we knew their work and what they were capable of. It was clear that Oswald was not an agent, couldn’t be an agent, for the CIA or FBI,” noting that “Oswald’s actions in Minsk [where he lived in the USSR] were not those of a foreign agent. His primary interest was in attending dances.”

Bugliosi quotes one of Oswald’s friends when he lived in Fort Worth, Texas, George de Mohrenschildt, who wrote:

I never would believe that any government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important … an unstable individual, mixed-up individual, uneducated individual, without background. What government would give him any confidential work? No government would.

In April 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired General Edwin Walker, a fierce anti-Communist. This was an act characteristic of an unstable individual, not that of a government agent. In August 1963, he planned to hijack a plane to Cuba — not a likely activity for a secret U.S. or Soviet government agent or a Mafia hit man. In September 1963, he travelled to Mexico City, visiting both the Cuban and Soviet embassies in an unsuccessful attempt to travel to Cuba, where he apparently hoped to defect — again, not the act of someone secretly working for the United States, USSR, or the Mafia.

Bugliosi also points out that Oswald had no help from any co-conspirators when fleeing after killing President Kennedy. He took a bus and then a cab back to his room in Dallas, and then hid in a movie theater.

Oswald only had a total of $183.87 when he killed President Kennedy. He lived in a tiny (1.5 meters by four meters) room, which he rented for eight dollars per week. Nobody had paid him a lot of money to be an assassin.

Oswald was obsessed with making his mark in history. He told his wife that someday he would be “prime minister” of the United States – a job that has never existed. He was a fool but, tragically, made it into the history books, entirely on his own.

[William Kelly]

/http://blogs.america.gov/rumors/

Lee Harvey Oswald, Lone Assassin<LI id=post-111 class=post-single>

— By Todd Leventhal, 21 July 2009

Last week, I did a Web chat on conspiracy theories, in which I was surprised by the number of questions on the Kennedy assassination.

The most comprehensive book on this subject is the 1600-page book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, published in 2007. Bugliosi clearly establishes that Oswald acted alone.

From an early age, Oswald was a bitter, angry loner, ill-suited to working with, much less taking orders, from others. At age 13, he told his school psychiatrist “I dislike everybody.” He quit or was fired from every job he ever held, except a factory job he had in the Soviet Union.

Oswald had extreme political views. He defected to the USSR in 1959, requesting Soviet citizenship “because I am a Communist,” complaining that he “lived in a decadent capitalist society, where the workers are slaves.” He tried to commit suicide when the Soviets denied his request.

Oswald was quickly disillusioned by Soviet communism and returned to the United States in 1962, but still idealized Cuban communism. He was not the type of person likely to want to work for the CIA, KGB, or the Mafia, or whom any of these organizations would want to entrust with the most sensitive mission imaginable.

The KGB observed Oswald closely while he was in the USSR and concluded that he was a “mediocre, uninteresting, useless man,” in the words of Vladimir Semichastny, who headed the KGB when Oswald lived in the USSR. Semichastny added, “I had always respected the CIA and FBI, and we knew their work and what they were capable of. It was clear that Oswald was not an agent, couldn’t be an agent, for the CIA or FBI,” noting that “Oswald’s actions in Minsk [where he lived in the USSR] were not those of a foreign agent. His primary interest was in attending dances.”

Bugliosi quotes one of Oswald’s friends when he lived in Fort Worth, Texas, George de Mohrenschildt, who wrote:

I never would believe that any government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important … an unstable individual, mixed-up individual, uneducated individual, without background. What government would give him any confidential work? No government would.

In April 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired General Edwin Walker, a fierce anti-Communist. This was an act characteristic of an unstable individual, not that of a government agent. In August 1963, he planned to hijack a plane to Cuba — not a likely activity for a secret U.S. or Soviet government agent or a Mafia hit man. In September 1963, he travelled to Mexico City, visiting both the Cuban and Soviet embassies in an unsuccessful attempt to travel to Cuba, where he apparently hoped to defect — again, not the act of someone secretly working for the United States, USSR, or the Mafia.

Bugliosi also points out that Oswald had no help from any co-conspirators when fleeing after killing President Kennedy. He took a bus and then a cab back to his room in Dallas, and then hid in a movie theater.

Oswald only had a total of $183.87 when he killed President Kennedy. He lived in a tiny (1.5 meters by four meters) room, which he rented for eight dollars per week. Nobody had paid him a lot of money to be an assassin.

Oswald was obsessed with making his mark in history. He told his wife that someday he would be “prime minister” of the United States – a job that has never existed. He was a fool but, tragically, made it into the history books, entirely on his own.

[Dean Hagerman]

I'd love to plug my JFK blogs into this site:

[Greg Parker]

A belated response to Todd Leventhal

/http://blogs.america.gov/rumors/

Lee Harvey Oswald, Lone Assassin<LI id=post-111 class=post-single>

— By Todd Leventhal, 21 July 2009

Last week, I did a Web chat on conspiracy theories, in which I was surprised by the number of questions on the Kennedy assassination.

The most comprehensive book on this subject is the 1600-page book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, published in 2007. Bugliosi clearly establishes that Oswald acted alone.

From an early age, Oswald was a bitter, angry loner, ill-suited to working with, much less taking orders, from others. At age 13, he told his school psychiatrist "I dislike everybody." He quit or was fired from every job he ever held, except a factory job he had in the Soviet Union.

Oswald had extreme political views. He defected to the USSR in 1959, requesting Soviet citizenship "because I am a Communist," complaining that he "lived in a decadent capitalist society, where the workers are slaves." He tried to commit suicide when the Soviets denied his request.

Oswald was quickly disillusioned by Soviet communism and returned to the United States in 1962, but still idealized Cuban communism. He was not the type of person likely to want to work for the CIA, KGB, or the Mafia, or whom any of these organizations would want to entrust with the most sensitive mission imaginable.

The KGB observed Oswald closely while he was in the USSR and concluded that he was a "mediocre, uninteresting, useless man," in the words of Vladimir Semichastny, who headed the KGB when Oswald lived in the USSR. Semichastny added, "I had always respected the CIA and FBI, and we knew their work and what they were capable of. It was clear that Oswald was not an agent, couldn't be an agent, for the CIA or FBI," noting that "Oswald's actions in Minsk [where he lived in the USSR] were not those of a foreign agent. His primary interest was in attending dances."

Bugliosi quotes one of Oswald's friends when he lived in Fort Worth, Texas, George de Mohrenschildt, who wrote:

I never would believe that any government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important … an unstable individual, mixed-up individual, uneducated individual, without background. What government would give him any confidential work? No government would.

In April 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired General Edwin Walker, a fierce anti-Communist. This was an act characteristic of an unstable individual, not that of a government agent. In August 1963, he planned to hijack a plane to Cuba — not a likely activity for a secret U.S. or Soviet government agent or a Mafia hit man. In September 1963, he travelled to Mexico City, visiting both the Cuban and Soviet embassies in an unsuccessful attempt to travel to Cuba, where he apparently hoped to defect — again, not the act of someone secretly working for the United States, USSR, or the Mafia.

Bugliosi also points out that Oswald had no help from any co-conspirators when fleeing after killing President Kennedy. He took a bus and then a cab back to his room in Dallas, and then hid in a movie theater.

Oswald only had a total of $183.87 when he killed President Kennedy. He lived in a tiny (1.5 meters by four meters) room, which he rented for eight dollars per week. Nobody had paid him a lot of money to be an assassin.

Oswald was obsessed with making his mark in history. He told his wife that someday he would be "prime minister" of the United States – a job that has never existed. He was a fool but, tragically, made it into the history books, entirely on his own.

[William Kelly]

Wayne Madsen exposed this guy years ago. -

Bush administration’s “Ministry of Truth” attacks American journalists who fail to adhere to the official line

By Wayne Madsen

http://www.mail-archive.com/cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com/msg05936.htmlApr 18, 2005, 22:13After revelations that the Bush White House cleared a gay male prostitute as a daily credentialed member of the White House press corps and that the administration was paying journalistic shills like Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus, and Karen Ryan to pump out pro-Bush propaganda to the media, nothing should come as any surprise when it comes to the Fourth Estate’s buckling under to political pressure from the right-wing regime that rules America.

What is surprising is that, in addition to using the media to concoct favorable propaganda, the Bush administration maintains an office in the State Department that keeps an eye on American and other journalists and does not hesitate to attack them for straying from the party line.

To show how much censorship exists in America today, this journalist would have likely never known about the existence of a one-man office in the State Department that acts to debunk and attack anything the Bush administration deems is false. Thanks to a recent report by veteran America watcher and journalist Jyri Raivio in Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, it can now be reported in the United States that the State Department uses taxpayers’ money to attack American journalists who refuse to parrot the Bush administration’s disinformation and propaganda.

The head of the State Department’s “Counter Mis-Information ‘Team’” is Todd Leventhal, a long-time neoconservative propaganda operative who once worked for the U.S. Information Agency’s (USIA) Bureau of Information to counter Soviet and other disinformation with his own Brand X of American disinformation. Raivio reports that Leventhal was part of the Bush administration’s effort to convince the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction {WMD). Leventhal also contends in the Helsingin Sanomat report that any suggestion that false WMD intelligence was cooked up by the Bush administration is merely a conspiracy theory and that the faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMD was merely a huge “mistake.”

It should not have come as any surprise that I was singled out by Leventhal for an attack over a story written for Online Journal about the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the involvement in the assassination’s planning of two neoconservative Bush administration officials—namely, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl C. Rove—with whom Leventhal is ideologically aligned. Leventhal’s operation is part of the State Department’s International Information Programs Bureau, now headed by former Bush White House Communications Director and long time gal pal Karen Hughes.

Leventhal’s barb appears at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Apr/01-220547.html and states, “self-described investigative journalist Wayne Madsen claimed that the Hariri assassination was ‘authorized’ by the United States because Mr. Hariri was known to adamantly oppose the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of Lebanon.”

Leventhal continues, “These claims are false. U.S. policy has expressly forbidden assassination since 1976, when President Ford signed Executive Order 11905. The prohibition against assassination was reaffirmed by President Carter and President Reagan, the latter in Executive Order 12333, which remains in force. Executive Order 12333 states, ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination’ . . . Moreover, the U.S. military has confirmed that it has no plans for an air base in Lebanon.

“Mr. Madsen has made unreliable claims in the past. On October 20, 2004, he claimed that, in order to win reelection, the Bush administration ‘has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran’s top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country.’ Needless to say, no such events occurred.”

Leventhal is obviously concerned that on numerous occasions this journalist’s articles are picked up by media outlets around the world, including papers in Pakistan, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt and serve to debunk the cacophony of propaganda emanating from Washington and its embassies abroad. Leventhal citing two Executive Orders that prohibit assassinations is laughable in light of recent well-documented disclosures that U.S. interrogators killed at least one Iraqi general in custody. Since September 11, 2001, and adoption of George Tenet’s Worldwide Attack Matrix—a carte blanche for political assassinations around the world—both Executive Orders cited by Leventhal are not worth the paper they are printed on.

As to the “October Surprise” story about a pre-election attack on Iran, I stand by my sources—which, since the original article’s appearance—have multiplied in number. In fact, I will stand my sources—including crew aboard the USS John F. Kennedy, then on station in the Persian Gulf—against Leventhal’s trite disinformation machine. Similarly, the sources on the Hariri assassination and the plans for the U.S. air base are well connected and trusted. The firm promised the air base construction contract by the Pentagon, Jacobs Engineering, is a major player in U.S. military and intelligence projects The company was started by the late Dr. Joseph Jacobs, a Lebanese-American who served on the advisory board of the Rand Corporation’s Center for Middle East Public Policy. The co-chair of that group during Jacobs’s tenure was none other than Frank Carlucci, the chairman emeritus of The Carlyle Group—an organization that has criminal conspiracy written all over it.

Perhaps, if Leventhal and his neocon friends used such trusted sources as the many I have developed over some twenty years, rather than using deluded and alcoholic disinformation scoundrels like Iraq’s “Curveball,” this country would not be in the mess it is in today in Iraq and the entire Middle East. As a matter of fact, foreign ministries around the world could use their own Ministries of Truth for the sole purpose of wading through all the disinformation pumped out by the Bush administration: Iraq's WMD, Saddam's links to al Qaeda, Iraq's shopping for yellowcake uranium in Niger, and the many other lies and distortions.

First of all, some housekeeping is in order. Leventhal refers to this journalist as “self described.” True, I use the term “investigative journalist” in tag lines. However, it is not “self described” that my articles have been cited by Project Censored, famed author Gore Vidal, keen investigative journalist Greg Palast, and newspapers from Austria to Zimbabwe. In addition, it was not self-aggrandizement that resulted in my investigative book on genocide in Africa being cited in a French government counter-terrorism judicial investigation, a UN War Crimes Tribunal, U.S. House of Representatives testimony, and respected periodicals in Africa and Europe.

Although he is basically a one-man show (he does have a full-time assistant and one part-timer), Leventhal does not seem to produce much for his work at the State Department. Leventhal was actually laid off by the State Department in 1996 after his Cold War-era counter-disinformation office was disestablished, but he was rehired in October 2003 after the White House decided to resurrect its propaganda effort under the rubric of "strategic influence operations." Leventhal’s attacks are narrowly focused on particular stories, sources, and journalists. His web site has an explanation of how to spot disinformation—Leventhal contends that most conspiracy theories are rarely true and that they are spread by ideological extremists, that is liberals, because right-wingers like Leventhal would never be willing to address right-wing extremism (such as Fox News, the National Review, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page) in the media. Leventhal’s dismissing conspiracies as often untrue will, nevertheless, come as a great shock to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, which has put away many a criminal based on violation of criminal conspiracy laws.

Another one of Leventhal’s government-funded attack pieces flays ex-U.S. soldier Nadim Abou Rabeh, an Iraqi war veteran who had taken part in Saddam Hussein’s capture. Leventhal pillories Rabeh for suggesting Saddam’s capture in a “spider hole” was faked. Leventhal also calls fanciful reports that the United States used mustard gas in the siege of Fallujah, contends that the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces in Iraq is safe, and derides it as a “conspiracy theory” that the United States helped create Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda via its support of the Afghan mujaheddin through Saudi and Pakistani facilitators.

In addition, Leventhal criticizes reports that the United States could have done more to warn Indian Ocean nations of the tsunami event last December. Astonishingly, Leventhal claims that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii did not possess the capability to figure out that the 9.0 magnitude earthquake would produce a devastating tsunami. Leventhal also criticized by name Canadian journalist Michel Chossudovsky, who first reported on the failure of America to adequately warn Asian and African nations of the impending disaster.

Having never heard of Mr. Leventhal, I decided to do a bit of checking on him as only a “self described investigative journalist” can do.

First, there is Leventhal’s association with apartheid South Africa’s infamous “Project Babushka.” According to a July 16, 1995 story in Newsday, during the 1980s, South Africa’s military established a dummy front called the International Freedom Foundation (IFF). The IFF was an influence-peddling organization used to counter critics of the apartheid regime and buy off right-wing American politicians to campaign against economic and military sanctions against the apartheid regime.

According to former South African top spy Craig Williamson, IFF and Project Babushka enrolled such right-wing Republicans as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, Henry Kissinger, California Republican Representative Robert Dornan, Indiana Republican Representative Dan Burton, Illinois Republican Representative Phil Crane, and right-wing GOP kook Alan Keyes. Helms even served as chairman of the editorial advisory board for the IFF’s publication branch—a group that pumped out all sorts of propaganda claiming that the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela were Communists.

Helping to run the IFF’s Washington, DC, office at 200 G Street, SE (and next door to the right-wing Free Congress Foundation) was none other than Jack Abramoff, who is now embroiled in a series of kickback and payola allegations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Abramoff, a former Hollywood movie producer, helped the IFF to produce the movie “Red Scorpion,” a film about an anti-Communist African guerrilla leader battling Marxist forces with the assistance of South African military advisers. Of course, the film was a propaganda piece aimed at extolling Angolan anti-Communist UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, who was fighting Angola’s Marxist government with the overt assistance of South Africa and the covert (and illegal) assistance of the Reagan-Bush administration. As late as 1990 and after Mandela’s release from prison, the IFF was running anti-ANC and Mandela ads in American newspapers.

Abramoff's involvement in Reagan era propaganda coincided with the appointment of longtime Reagan chum, Charles Z. Wick, as the head of the USIA. Wick, also a former movie producer, was most remembered for his famous Hollywood epic, "Snow White and The Three Stooges."

One of the senior South African intelligence agents who used IFF cover was Wim Booyse. When Booyse visited Washington in1987 to attend IFF seminars, which were no more than covers for South African intelligence operations, he said he received specialized disinformation training from an expert at the U.S. Information Agency. And who was this expert on official government lying and distortion of the truth? Well, according to Booyse, it was none other than Todd Leventhal.

In a 1996 letter to The Washington Post, representing himself as an official of the USIA, Leventhal attacked former USIA official Alvin Snyder, who exposed U.S. government propaganda and lies in his excellent book on Reagan administration information warfare, Warriors of Disinformation. Leventhal dismisses Snyder’s claims in a previous Post op-ed piece that the Reagan administration faked results of Star Wars tests, that the Soviets actually did mistake the downed Korean Air Lines 007 for a U.S. espionage aircraft, and that the U.S. engaged in blatant propaganda in Chile to support the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

In 1995, Leventhal attacked documentary producer Allan Francovich for his film, The Maltese Double Cross, which provided evidence that Iran and Syria, rather than Libya, were behind the downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Francovich, who later died while being questioned by U.S. customs and immigration agents at Houston’s international airport, determined that the PanAm bombing was the result of a botched U.S. intelligence operation involving drugs and hostages in Lebanon. Leventhal’s smears against Francovich resulted in the latter’s May 12, 1995 letter to Britain’s Guardian newspaper in which Leventhal’s job as Program Officer for Countering Disinformation and Misinformation for the USIA is described as “Orwellian.”

In 1994, Leventhal took on the Los Angeles Times over its story about the kidnapping of poor children from poverty-ravished Latin American barrios for the purpose of organ harvesting.

Leventhal’s small propaganda operation at the State Department is remarkably similar to an aggressive media operation that scans newspapers, television, and radio for stories critical of Israel. CAMERA, or the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, identifies and targets Israeli, American, and other journalists who question or provide alternatives to Israeli government propaganda.

In what is frightening and amusing at the same time, Leventhal makes an offer to those who have questions about the news stories they are reading: “If you wish, ask us. We can’t respond to all requests for information, but if a request is reasonable and we have the time, we will do our best to provide accurate, authoritative information.” The State Department's website provides Leventhal's phone number for those who wish to have him interpret the news for them: 202-203-7492. Just another friendly service from your taxpayer-funded Ministry of Truth!

Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist (described by others as such) and a nationally distributed columnist. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1333.shtml

[David Von Pein]

He [Todd Leventhal] uses Bugliosi's book in his portrait of Oswald. Doesn't he know that VB didn't even write that part? Fred Haines did.

Bull. It looks like DiEugenio is "making stuff up" (again). What a surprise!

To hear Jim tell it, Fred Haines wrote the ENTIRE Oswald biography chapter in Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History". But such a claim regarding Haines is total nonsense.

Yes, Haines helped write portions of the Oswald bio chapter and Chapter #1 ("Four Days In November"), and Fred helped Vince with the narrative style of writing that exists in both of those extensive chapters of the book. But Haines certainly was not responsible for the whole Oswald bio chapter.

Quoting from "RH":

"The other person [besides Dale Myers] who played a writing role, though a smaller one, was Fred Haines. .... Fred's fine hand has survived in several places of the 'Lee Harvey Oswald' and 'Four Days in November' sections." -- Vince Bugliosi; Page 1515 of "Reclaiming History"

It sounds like DiEugenio has possibly been listening to too much of David Lifton's "ghostwriting" crappola, which is a rumor that Lifton started about Bugliosi's book on the May 24, 2007, Black Op Radio show -- and it's a stupid rumor that was very quickly debunked as pure nonsense by both Patricia Lambert and Vince Bugliosi's secretary (Rosemary Newton) in early July of 2007, as I discuss at length in the blog entry linked below:

Debunking David Lifton's Ghostwriting Allegation

Edited August 5, 2010 by David Von Pein
Strong language removed

[William Kelly]

Ghost writers are important for so-called writers like Bugliosi - who actually can't and doesn't "write" but rather talks into a machine and then pays someone to type it out for him.

Not unlike another former prosecutor Bob Tannenbaum, the HSCA attorney whose fictionalized accounts of his experiences made him a popular pulp fiction author, until he had a falling out with his first ghost writer and learned that not all ghost writers are the same.

While Lampert's book on Garrison and New Orleans is trash, she is one of the few who actually mentions the Secret Service Agent In Charge of the New Orleans office John W. Rice.

I thought Pat Lampert was pals with Lfton. Wouldn't she know and tell Lifton, or did the Bug make her sign a confidentiality agreement?

I know the Bug's longtime New York literary agent, Peter Miller, who was instrumental in putting the deal together with Hanks and HBO. Peter Miller's father was the leader of the house band at Skinny D'Amato's 500 Club in Atlantic City, where Deano and Jerry got together and Frank and the Rat Pack performed regularly, for free, for their pal Skinny.

As for Todd Leventhal, the State Department Minister of Misinformation, when he says Oswald acted alone, NOW THAT's DISINFORMATION, the origin of which is a government intelligence agent.

Wayne Madisen is also connected, as the muckraking investigative reporter is a former Navy and officer of the National Security Agency, but since he now is independent, what he writes is not disinformation, but an accurate portrait of Leventhal, the former Voice of America agent.

I wonder if Leventhal knew the guy who worked for VOA, whose son lived in the house where they threw the party where Oswald met the Paines and Volkmar Schmidt?

Bill Kelly

[David Von Pein]

Lifton's information seemed quite solid.

Anyone who uses David "Body Alteration" Lifton as a reliable source for ANYTHING has

a serious problem, IMO.

But, YMMV.

Edited August 6, 2010 by David Von Pein

[William Kelly]

A belated response to Todd Leventhal

/http://blogs.america.gov/rumors/

Lee Harvey Oswald, Lone Assassin<LI id=post-111 class=post-single>

— By Todd Leventhal, 21 July 2009

Last week, I did a Web chat on conspiracy theories, in which I was surprised by the number of questions on the Kennedy assassination.

The most comprehensive book on this subject is the 1600-page book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, published in 2007. Bugliosi clearly establishes that Oswald acted alone.

From an early age, Oswald was a bitter, angry loner, ill-suited to working with, much less taking orders, from others. At age 13, he told his school psychiatrist "I dislike everybody." He quit or was fired from every job he ever held, except a factory job he had in the Soviet Union.

Oswald had extreme political views. He defected to the USSR in 1959, requesting Soviet citizenship "because I am a Communist," complaining that he "lived in a decadent capitalist society, where the workers are slaves." He tried to commit suicide when the Soviets denied his request.

Oswald was quickly disillusioned by Soviet communism and returned to the United States in 1962, but still idealized Cuban communism. He was not the type of person likely to want to work for the CIA, KGB, or the Mafia, or whom any of these organizations would want to entrust with the most sensitive mission imaginable.

The KGB observed Oswald closely while he was in the USSR and concluded that he was a "mediocre, uninteresting, useless man," in the words of Vladimir Semichastny, who headed the KGB when Oswald lived in the USSR. Semichastny added, "I had always respected the CIA and FBI, and we knew their work and what they were capable of. It was clear that Oswald was not an agent, couldn't be an agent, for the CIA or FBI," noting that "Oswald's actions in Minsk [where he lived in the USSR] were not those of a foreign agent. His primary interest was in attending dances."

Bugliosi quotes one of Oswald's friends when he lived in Fort Worth, Texas, George de Mohrenschildt, who wrote:

I never would believe that any government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important … an unstable individual, mixed-up individual, uneducated individual, without background. What government would give him any confidential work? No government would.

In April 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired General Edwin Walker, a fierce anti-Communist. This was an act characteristic of an unstable individual, not that of a government agent. In August 1963, he planned to hijack a plane to Cuba — not a likely activity for a secret U.S. or Soviet government agent or a Mafia hit man. In September 1963, he travelled to Mexico City, visiting both the Cuban and Soviet embassies in an unsuccessful attempt to travel to Cuba, where he apparently hoped to defect — again, not the act of someone secretly working for the United States, USSR, or the Mafia.

Bugliosi also points out that Oswald had no help from any co-conspirators when fleeing after killing President Kennedy. He took a bus and then a cab back to his room in Dallas, and then hid in a movie theater.

Oswald only had a total of $183.87 when he killed President Kennedy. He lived in a tiny (1.5 meters by four meters) room, which he rented for eight dollars per week. Nobody had paid him a lot of money to be an assassin.

Oswald was obsessed with making his mark in history. He told his wife that someday he would be "prime minister" of the United States – a job that has never existed. He was a fool but, tragically, made it into the history books, entirely on his own.

He made the following blog on Bugliosi's Recaliming History in May, 2008.

My comments are interspersed throughout.

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http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/jfk-f1/abelated-response-to-todd-leventhal-s-praise-of-reclaiming-history-t55.htm#bottom

“Lee Harvey Oswald was famously uncooperative. For a time in grade school, he refused to salute the American flag.”

Does Bugliosi tell you that Lee’s brother, with whom he was living, worked for the Port Security Unit during this period of Lee’s life and that the Port Security Unit’s sole reason for being was to root out subversive elements on the waterfront? In doing so, they used a network of informants. Lee’s actions in class, as did his FPCC antics later in life, had the hallmarks of provocations. Check your history on court cases involving failure to salute the flag. In one of the more famous cases, Felix Frankfurter wrote, “that the school district’s interest in creating national unity was enough to allow them to require students to salute the flag”. According to Frankfurter, the nation needed loyalty and the unity of all the people. Since saluting the flag was a primary means of achieving this legitimate goal, an issue of national importance was at stake. In short, the issue was taken far more seriously than it appears to have been taken with Lee. Did Bugliosi bother to look into any of these precedent cases? No. He did not. The very fact that this failure to salute did not even trigger a back-ground check on Lee or his family to ascertain the genesis of his apparent lack of loyalty is odd to say the least. Added to that is the fact that Lee started saluting the flag again straight after his brother left the Port Security Unit.

“When his high school football coach told him to jog around the field with other players, he refused, saying “This is a free country, and I don’t have to do it.” Oswald was a surly loner, ill-suited to working with, much less taking orders, from others.”

This is just cherry picking the evidence. People like Roy Truly, who gave him his job at the Texas School Book Depository, testified that Oswald was polite, always called him “sir” and did his job well with a minimum of supervision. Maybe Bugliosi believes this was a clever ruse by Oswald so as to be able to keep his job long enough in the hope that one day a presidential motorcade would pass by and he could make his mark on history? I mean, any ludicrous notion is preferable to humanizing the Lone Nut, correct?

“Bugliosi also points out that Oswald had no help from co-conspirators when attempting to escape, taking a bus and then a cab back to his room.”

Which belies the fact that Oswald denied the bus/cab scenario and that a witness saw him get into a car driven by a dark-complected individual. The police initially took this seriously and advised the media they were looking for the car and the driver. It was only after orders to drop proposed conspiracy charges came through did the police find a bus ticket. Are you even vaguely aware of how “lucky” Dallas Police have been over many decades in “finding” evidence just when they needed to? The bus/cab witnesses by the way, would have to go down as among the worst “prosecution” witnesses in history. Try and read their testimonies and maintain any confidence in the police “getaway” theory.

“Oswald only had a total of $183.87 to his name when he killed President Kennedy. He lived in a tiny (1.5 meters by four meters) room, which he rented for eight dollars per week. Nobody had paid him big bucks to be a hit man".

That’s good economic sense. Anyone who did pay him big bucks for such a service would have been sorely disappointed.

As for his living conditions, again you and Bugliosi ignore history – in this case, the history of deep cover agents. Many lived in as big a state of penury as Oswald – if not more so. Even cops go under cover, living in dives and blending in with those they are targeting. I am not saying this was necessarily the case with Oswald, but to not even consider the possibility is avoidance of an area that may point in directions you’d rather not contemplate.

“But there’s a natural tendency to suspect conspiracy when a powerful official is killed and this case looked suspicious.”

And sometimes conspiracies do exist – even egads! when it looks suspiciously like there may have been one!

“Oswald had defected to Russia for three years,”

That is historically inaccurate. Oswald never defected.

“tried to travel to Cuba,”

And could have if he had really wanted to, as e.g. a volunteer cane cutter through the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.

“and was killed by Jack Ruby two days after the assassination, in what looked superficially like a gangland slaying to silence him. But Ruby had acted alone and impulsively. He had been within three feet of Oswald on the evening of the assassination, while armed, but had made no effort to kill him, as a conspirator would have.”

For someone who doesn’t believe in conspiracies, you sure profess to know a lot about the behavior of conspirators! Oswald was only killed after he indicated to the head of the Secret Service that he would be willing to talk once he obtained legal representation. Oswald was supposed to have been protected by a tight four man guard around him. Captain Fritz, who organized and ordered that formation, took the front position for himself – then once in the basement, broke the formation by getting well ahead of the prisoner, which in turn opened up the target for Ruby. Fritz of course, was in a position to overhear that statement by Oswald, and to organize Ruby to be ready and available for a “go” signal the entire weekend.

" (Ruby frequently hung around police headquarters and routinely carried a gun for protection.)”

Yes. But that says nothing of what happened.

“There’s much more fascinating information in Bugliosi’s extraordinarily well-researched book.”

If I had the time, I’d go through the book and explain all of the missed opportunities, the lack of appropriate research, and the cherry picked and distorted evidence.

The Obama administration, more than any other, has the opportunity to instigate a new, and finally, honest and unfettered investigation into the assassinations of the 1960s. That it chooses to categorize all theories as equally kooky is disappointing to say the vey least.

Thanks for this Greg, BK

[William Kelly]

I'm not done with Todd Leventhal yet.

BK