Give Conspiracy Theories a Rest?

[William Kelly]

Can We Give Those Conspiracy Theories a Rest?

Posted: 01/24/20123:21 pm

DavidMacaray

http://www.huffingto...&comm_ref=false

Some people still believe the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was a political "insidejob," planned and orchestrated by George W. Bush and company to provide the U.S. with grounds for launching a full-scale invasion of Iraq. Our reasons for wanting to invade were (1) to introduce democracy to the Middle East, (2) to provide additional security for Israel, (3) to gain control of Iraqi oil, and (4) to pay back Saddam Hussein for trying to kill Bush's dad.

When you challenge that theory -- when you say it's ludicrous to believe the White House would stage such a thing -- they remind you that political conspiracies have been around since well before the House of Medici. Grow up, they say. But it's not a matter of growing up. The problem with conspiracy theories, especially the big, ambitious ones like this caper, is that they tend to raise more questions than they answer. They ignore the reasonable and plausible, and go straight for the sensational.

One example: If the goal was to get American approval for the invasion of Iraq, why didn't these masterminds at least supply the perpetrators with Iraqi identities? Believe me,if my friends and I had planned something like this, the first thing wewould've done is make sure the terrorists carried Iraqi IDs. And as we allknow, the perps who brought down the towers were Saudis. It seems minor, but itspeaks volumes.

Polls show themajority of Americans still believe theKennedy assassination was a conspiracy. They believe the Warren Report wasbadly flawed (if not a cover-up) and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.But when people insist it was impossible for someone like Oswald -- a confused and emotionally unstable 24-year old ex-marine -- to pull off something ascomplicated as the assassination of a U.S. president, I direct their attention to John Hinckley.

On March 30, 1981 (seventeen years after theKennedy assassination, with presidential security much improved), Hinckley, a timid, 25-year old former mental patient, casually walked up to Ronald Reaganin broad daylight on a busy Washington D.C. street (surrounded by Secret Service agents) and fired six shots at point-blank range, one hitting Reagan in the chest, missing his heart by an inch. So much for the theory that presidential assassinations have to be "complicated."

Consider what would have happened if Hinckley had then turned thegun on himself, leaving us with no clue as to why he did it (remember his obsession with actress Jodie Foster?). We can only imagine the conspiracy theories that would've proliferated as a result. Indeed, Geraldo Rivera would still be on TV today. And pity the fool bold enough to have suggested that this Hinckley dude was just some nutcase who had acted alone, because that explanation would've been dismissed out of hand.

Hard as it is to beat a murder rap by pleading non compos mentis, Hinckley did it. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Think about that. Even though it's been proven to us that a clinically insane man is capable of walking up to a U.S. president on a city street and shooting him, we still can't bring ourselves to accept the notion that Lee Oswald acted alone.

Despite overwhelming evidence implicatingOswald, we still cling to the belief that Kennedy's murder can only be explained by appealing to a shadowy, wildly bizarre conspiracy that involved everyone from the Cubans, to the CIA, to the Mafia, to shady New Orleans businessmen to Lyndon Johnson himself. No wonder Oliver Stone saw the opportunity for a lurid movie.

I'm not suggesting I know more than the average person. Far from it. All I'm saying is that it's clear we don't always need a proportionately grandiose theory to explain a grandiose act. Sometimes momentous things get done by dreary, ordinary people.

If Timothy McVeigh hadn't been caught, we'd still be looking for the guys who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. And it's safe to saythat those guys' profile would be "radical Arab Jihadist," and not "white, 26-year old, homegrown ex-Army."

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author ('It'sNever Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor') was a former union rep. He can bereached at dmacaray@earthlink.net.

Edited January 25, 2012 by William Kelly

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

This is the same writer who wrote the single most vicious piece of garbage I have ever read in my life, which is this article that appeared in Counterpunch last June---

Joe McCarthy's Boy Wonder

Bobby Kennedy Was No Hero

By DAVID MACARAY

June 27, 2011

www.counterpunch.org

http://www.counterpu...ay06272011.html

It’s a mystery why John F. Kennedy is still regarded as the family moderate—cautious, pragmatic, shrewd and calculating—while brother Bobby gets to be portrayed as the impetuous, left-leaning, idealistic humanitarian. It’s a mystery because even a cursory examination of history reveals that that wasn’t Bobby.

For openers, Bobby Kennedy was about as “leftist” as Douglas MacArthur. In truth, he, like his brother John, was a shrieking anti-Communist. The Kennedys were not only Cold Warriors, they were fairly paranoid about it—confusing progressivism with Bolshevism—which is why they believed, ludicrously, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist, and is why they (John as president and Bobby as Attorney General) had King’s telephone tapped.

How much of an anti-Communist was Bobby Kennedy? Consider: During the early 1950s Bobby served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yes, that Joseph McCarthy. His witch-hunting senate committee ruined the careers of scores of Americans through the use of smears and innuendo. It’s a fact. Bobby (“Don’t get mad….get even”) Kennedy was Joe McCarthy’s boy.

It was only after family patriarch, Joe Kennedy, advised his son to jump off the McCarthy bandwagon (alas, “Tail-Gunner Joe” had become an embarrassment, having degenerated into a clownish, alcoholic demagogue) that Bobby sought a new vocation. It was only after Papa Joe urged him to abandon Commie-hunting and focus on another bogy man that Bobby Kennedy decided to make America’s labor unions his next victim.

Obviously, there were many corruption targets to choose from. He could have gone after Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, defense fraud, payola in the record industry, etc., but because Joe Kennedy had no ties, no loyalties, no connections of any kind to the working class—indeed, he held the common working man in contempt—organized labor became Bobby’s new whipping boy. Best to leave those well-groomed gentlemen in the three-piece suits alone, and go after the guys in the watchmen’s caps and mackinaws.

As for Bobby’s celebrated social conscience, that’s another exaggeration. In his award-winning history of the CIA (“Legacy of Ashes”), Tim Weiner reports that it was Bobby himself who spearheaded the plan to murder Fidel Castro. It was Bobby Kennedy who not only initiated the assassination plot, but who—following one ignominious failure after another—flogged the hare-brained operation to keep it going. After all, he was the president’s brother. Who was going to tell him to back off?

All those conspiracies—the exploding cigars, the LSD-laced coffee, the chemical additives to cause Fidel’s beard to fall out (!), bribing trusted Castro associates to poison him, hiring out-of-town Mafia hitmen to murder him outright—those were all sanctioned by Bobby.

Based on documents released via FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), as well as material gleaned from numerous first-person interviews (“Legacy of Ashes” has 150 pages of notes), Weiner made the case that Bobby Kennedy was obsessed with killing Fidel Castro, that he ate, drank and breathed Castro assassination fantasies.

It’s also been documented that Bobby Kennedy bullied Lyndon Johnson into continuing the Vietnam war. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin (in “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream”), Bobby insisted to LBJ that President Kennedy would have done everything in his power to keep Southeast Asia from falling to the Communists, and that it was therefore incumbent upon Johnson to honor his dead brother’s legacy by not abandoning the war. He pressured LBJ to remain in Vietnam, arguing that pulling out would be the act of a coward and traitor.

It was only after the Vietnam war had become toxically unpopular and been deemed unwinnable that Bobby, who was now seeking the 1968 presidential nomination, reversed his position and declared himself America’s “peace candidate,” harshly criticizing Johnson for his hawkishness. So much for Bobby’s principles….and so much for Brother John’s “legacy.”

While Bobby Kennedy obviously had some good qualities, it’s a mistake to regard him as heroic—as a combination of Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez and Che Guevara. Bobby was no hero. He was a hardboiled player. If we insist on making comparisons, he was a combination of Lee Atwater, John Gotti and Henry Kissinger.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright, is the author of “It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”. He served 9 terms as president of AWPPW Local 672. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net

-------

It is time we keep an eye out for this guy . He is clearly ready to take the place of Cockburn in lying to the left about JFK , RFK and the assassinations. This article is not cherry picking. It is some term for more selective than cherry picking that has not bee invented yet. Of course there are some facts there but still it is so out of context as to distort history even more than FOX does. Incredible garbage.

He calls attention to his Union creds. Well guess what. In 1968 it was the huge national union leaders who stuck by Humph, but which way were the renegade union LOCALS going? When you have locals defying the machined national leadership ... certain people notice. And in the aberration-- the one national union leader who opposed the Vietnam war-- air traffic control towers notice.

[Ron Ecker]

"Hinckley, a timid, 25-year old former mental patient, casually walked up to Ronald Reaganin broad daylight on a busy Washington D.C. street (surrounded by Secret Service agents) and fired six shots at point-blank range"

Right, Hinckley "walked up" to Reagan and shot him "at point-blank range."

Nathaniel is right. This guy writes garbage, to put it politely.

[Andric Perez]

Ok I am no longer a CT in the JFK case because a HuffPo guy reminded me who shot Reagan.

[Mark Wengler]

You can tell where this guy is coming from. His dislike of the Kennedys is not hidden at all.

[William Kelly]

Conspiracy Theories a Rest?

David Macaray

....Polls show the majority of Americans still believe theKennedy assassination was a conspiracy. They believe the Warren Report was badlyflawed (if not a cover-up) and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Butwhen people insist it was impossible for someone like Oswald -- a confused andemotionally unstable 24-year old ex-marine -- to pull off something as complicatedas the assassination of a U.S. president,I direct their attention to John Hinckley.

On March 30, 1981 (seventeen years after the Kennedy assassination, withpresidential security much improved), Hinckley, a timid, 25-year old formermental patient, casually walked up to Ronald Reagan in broad daylight on a busyWashington D.C. street (surrounded by Secret Service agents) and fired six shotsat point-blank range, one hitting Reagan in the chest, missing his heart by aninch. So much for the theory that presidential assassinations have to be"complicated."

Consider what would have happened if Hinckley hadthen turned the gun on himself, leaving us with no clue as to why he did it(remember his obsession with actress Jodie Foster?). We can only imagine theconspiracy theories that would've proliferated as a result. Indeed, GeraldoRivera would still be on TV today. And pity the fool bold enough to havesuggested that this Hinckley dude was justsome nutcase who had acted alone, because that explanation would've beendismissed out of hand.

Hard as it is to beat a murder rap by pleading non compos mentis, Hinckley didit. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Think about that. Eventhough it's been proven to us that a clinically insane man is capable ofwalking up to a U.S. presidenton a city street and shooting him, we still can't bring ourselves to accept thenotion that Lee Oswald acted alone.

Despite overwhelming evidence implicating Oswald, we still cling to the beliefthat Kennedy's murder can only be explained by appealing to a shadowy, wildlybizarre conspiracy that involved everyone from the Cubans, to the CIA,to the Mafia, to shady New Orleans businessmento Lyndon Johnson himself. No wonder Oliver Stone saw the opportunity for alurid movie.

I'm not suggesting I know more than the average person. Far from it. All I'msaying is that it's clear we don't always need a proportionately grandiosetheory to explain a grandiose act. Sometimes momentous things get done bydreary, ordinary people.

If Timothy McVeigh hadn't been caught, we'd still be looking for the guys whobombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.And it's safe to say that those guys' profile would be "radical ArabJihadist," and not "white, 26-year old, homegrown ex-Army."

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwrightand author ('It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor') was a former unionrep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net.

BILL KELLY NOTES: Macaray apparently didn't take a course in logic, as he jumps from imagined conspiracies to real ones without noting the difference. Oswald was not "confused and emotionally unstable" though he was a 24-year old ex-Marine covert operator. Nor does the evidence overwhelmingly implicate Oswald, or is it necessary to "cling to the belief that Kennedy's murder can only be explained by appealing to a shadowy, wildly bizarre conspiracy involving everyone.

The only thing you have to understand is that if Oswald had anything at all to do with the assassination, the MO - Modus Operandi - of whatever you believe happened at Dealey Plaza was that of a covert intelligence operation that was designed to be plausibly deniable by those responsible for it. And those individuals responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation can be identified and in many respects already have been.

Timothy McVeigh also fits the profile of a covert operative, and not that of a deranged lone nut, and he didn't operate alone, so he's a bad example for a lone-nutter to use.

As for Hinkley, the question isn't whether he was crazy, but whether he was mentally programmed as an MKULTRA subject, and thus not responsible for his actions, but directed by others.

Hinkley & Co. - The Education Forum

"Minds are malleable, but not self-malleable, a conditionpoliticians and PR men use to sinister advantage."

-WilliamS. Burroughs.

After John Hinkley shot President Reagan, he said, "The movie isn't overyet!"

And indeed it isn't. Political assassinations and coup d'etats are the most frequently used methods of changing governments and controlling power, and we shouldn't expect that to change.

Now we hear from Hinkley every few years or so when he exercises his right to seek release from St. Elizabeth's hospital, where he is incarcerated. Hinkley is in a hospital, rather than a prison, because of a quirk in our judicial system that says he is not responsible for his actions. If that is the case,then who is responsible for Hinckley's actions?

After the assassination of President Kennedy the murder of a president was made a Federal, rather than a local crime, so a Federal investigation would take precedence over local police, courts and authorities. Unlike the Hinkley-Reagan affair, the assassination of President Kennedy was successful and the government changed hands, minds and policy, while Hinkley's attempt on Reagan failed and the constitutional powers did not change.

Because we still haven't determined exactly who was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, or the attack on Reagan, we certainly haven't seen the last of political assassinations in our society. We haven't heard the last of John Hinckley, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan B. Sirhan or Mark David Chapman, the seemingly unimportant people who unexpectedly rise from the masses to take a monumental action that makes a mark on history and changes the course of our times.

As Hinkley said, the movie isn't over yet. Hinkley failed in his mission, but created an important case study that helps us understand the on going implications of assassination in our society.

War dawns slowly as a political hot spot becomes unmanageable and a limited conventional war gets out of hand, though we know the crisis is coming, but assassination, as a political incident, happens suddenly and often unexpectedly, except to those who intend it to happen. Since Hinkley shot Reagan, Sadat of Egypt, Aquillo of the Philippines,Ghandi of Inida, and dozens of other world leaders have become victim of assassins. Of all political avenues, assassination is the most likely, but least expected to happen.

"Well, it seems, you know, that there was this…there was this thing I had todo, the moment I had been heading for all my life, like going through that door, as I say, the door to someplace." – Taxi Driver

John Hinkley came crashing through that door on a lazy springtime afternoon in March, 1981, just outside a side door of the Washington Hilton Hotel. It's now nicknamed the Hinkley Hilton since Hinkley jumped out of a crowd of newsmen to shoot President Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, a secret service agent and a security guard.

Hinkley's alleged motive, a psychological, rather than political one, is that he shot the President to impress movie actress Jody Foster. Hinkley had repeatedly seen the movie, "Taxi Driver" in which Foster plays the role of aprostitute protected by a crazed taxi driver who stalks a politician with the intent to kill him, but then kills a pimp and a drug pusher. Rather than being sent to prison, he is declared a hero.

While the facts of Hinkley's life were being investigated and disseminated by the news media shortly after the attack, John Wright of Lansing, Michigan was arrested and charged with threatening the life of then Vice President George Bush. Wright had bragged, "that he could be more famous than Siran Siran or Lee Harvey Oswald."

As news of Hinkley's actions spread through the media, Edward Michael Richardson, Michael Vandewehe and possibly other "copy cat" assassins, as they came to be called, went through the Taxi Driver door on the heels of Hinkley. And like Hinkley and Wright, they found themselves in jail, charged with threatening the life of or attempting to assassinate the President of the United States.

On April 9, 1981, less than two weeks after the shooting at the Hinkley Hilton, Edward Michael Richardson was charged with two counts of threatening the life of the President. The first count stemmed from a letter Richardson wrote and delivered to Jody Foster Yale dormitory, while the second charge related to a letter found in Richardson's hotel room in which he stated that he was going to Washington D.C. "to bring completion to Hinkley's reality." Richardson was arrested in New York City with a loaded pistol while getting on a D.C. bound bus.

From Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, Richardson had spent some time in the military and was once a student of the Reverend Carl MacIntire's Shelton College, a fundamentalist religious school with campuses located in Cape Canaveral, Florida and Cape May, New Jersey.

Within days of Richardson's arrest, the Secret Service charged Michael VandeWehe of Wildwood, New Jersey, with threatening the life of the President. VandeWehe was considered a threat even though he was then incarcerated in the Cape May County jail atthe time. The Secret Service said that he wrote and mailed a letter from thejail that made a "direct threat against the life of the President."

Before Reagan was shot, the Secret Service had commissioned a study by a panelof 27 experts to prepare a report on the methods of predicting violent acts.The Secret Service also compiles files on thousands of citizens that are potential threats to the President, and some 400 individuals are considered a serious enough threat to be kept under periodic surveillance. Neither Hinkley, Wright nor VandeWehe were considered to be a threat to the President before March, 1981.

Hinkley's case also made its mark in the legal journals as a precedent to be cited because of Hinkley's insanity plea, and attempts by the victim'sattorneys to make Hinkley's psychologists responsible for his actions if he was not.

If Hinkley and the copy-cats were acting on psychological impulses, rather thanon political, ideological or mercenary motives, then someone else could be held responsible for their behavior if it can be shown that they were conditioned oracting as an agent of others.

Rather than acting as a deranged lone-nuts on primitive instincts, perhaps one or even some of these assassins were psychologically conditioned or brainwashed by scientists with a more sophisticated motive – and fit the arch typical Manchurian Candidate model.

If Hinkley was conditioned by the film "Taxi Driver," it might not have beenjust be environmental and social circumstances, but rather by design. Usingdrugs, hypnosis and multimedia programming techniques, individual subjects havebeen programmed to kill with a high degree of predictable response, so it is apossibility that deserves further investigation.

THE ANCIENT ORDER OF THE ASSASSINS

The U.S. Government, the military in particular, conducted psychological experiments on human subjects years, decades ago, and today, anyone with the knowledge and the tools could be in the business of privately programming and training assassins and terrorists.

We know coup d'etats and political assassinations occur routinely in third world countries and so-called "Bananna Republics," but our own system of government is equally vulnerable and more likely targeted for such manipulation. Until President Reagan, who survived the attempt on his life in the first weeks of his presidency, none of the previous five presidents actually served out their full two terms, eight years of office, since President Kennedy was assassinated.

Men with pistols, rifles, bombs and even samurai swords have been arrested at the White House gates, where guards have been on the lookout for suicide bombtrucks and remote control kamikaze airplanes.

The Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department, is responsible for the security of the president and thus keeps the files on thousands of people who are potential threats. Some are violent prone suspects, others religious fanatics, ideological demagogs, professional hit men, espionage agents and trained terrorists. Others are just plain nuts.

Their common name – assassins, comes from the Arabic word Hashshishin, which means, "users of hashish," the euphoric drug, but their legend stems from a secret society that began in the 11th century Persiaas a religious order. Their leader, it is said, "carries the death of kings in his hand."

Most of Western civilization first learned the tales of the Assassins from Marco Polo, who passed through Persiain 1273 enroute to China.Polo reported that the Shek of the Assassins lived in a fortified valley between two mountains, which is probably the fabled, impenetrable fortress at Alamut. There the Sheik had a beautiful fruit bearing garden "watered withstreams of wine, milk and honey." Drugged and taken to the hidden garden, young impressionable recruits were courted by dancers, musicians, magicians and beautiful women. They were inebriated in ecstasy, then drugged again and brought before the Sheik. Having experienced paradise, they became slaves to its pleasures, and the Sheik's whim. "Away they went," Polo said, "and did all that they were commanded. Thus it happened that no man escaped when the Sheik of the mountains desired his death."

The role of the order of the Assassins, while they have passed into mythology,is still relevant, not only linguistically, but in regards to a contemporary understanding of assassination as a political weapon in our own society. In the 1000 years the term assassins has been used, assassins are still programmed and conditioned in ways similar to their ancient counterparts, but by much more sophisticated and predictable ways.

As the victim of an assassin President Lincoln became the last casualty of the Civil War. In 1900 Theodore Roosevelt assumed power when President McKinley was shot and killed by a "glassy-eyed anarchist." Assassins sparked Word War I by killing Archduke Ferdinand as he rode in a motorcade, and the Reichstag fire that herald Hilter's rise to power was allegedly started by a "lone-nut." French Admiral Darlin was assassinated by a British trained assassin in North Africa, while Hitler was the target of a failed assassination-coupattempt in 1944. After the war Leon Trotsky was targeted, stalked and eventually assassinated in Mexico Cityby Soviet agents.

The assassination of President Kennedy precipitated two decades of political unrest that included the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and the wounding of Presidential candidate George Wallace, all by assassins who fit the archtypical assassin prototype – James Earl Ray, SiranSiran and Arthur Bremmer. Richard Nixon's handpicked successor, Michigan congressman Gerald Ford, served on the Warren Commission inquiry into President Kennedy's assassination before assuming that office himself. As President he dodged bullets from two attacks, one from Sara Jane Moore, and FBI informant,and the other from Squeaky Frome, one of Charles Manson's disciples.

Assassins in the United Stateshave not confined themselves to presidents and presidential contenders, but have also killed Union officials, foreign diplomats, journalists and culturalfigures. United Mine Workers union president Tony Boyle was convicted of ordering the murder of his union rival Jock Yablonski, Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley turned states' evidence in admitting his participation with renegade Cubans in the Dupont Circle bombing assassination of former Chilean ambassador Leitter in downtown Washington D.C., and one-time fan, Mark David Chapman shot and killed former Beatle John Lennon.

By March, 1981 America and the world had been numbed by the accustomed ring of the assassin's gun when Hinkley opened fire on the President's entourage. Had he been successful, Hinkley would have made George Bush president of the United States with the flick of his finger andaltering the course of history. The possibility that Hinkley was programmed orconditioned to shoot the President may have been privately evaluated, but has not been analyzed in a public forum.

STATE-OF-THE-ART ASSASSINS

The U.S. government has learned much about the psychological makeup of assassins, not by studying the profiles of subjects, but by attempting to create them. The state-of-the-art of conditioning assassins has advanced considerably since the days of the Hashshishin and the garden fortress at Alamut.

From 1949 until 1974 the U.S. CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense conducted sophisticated mind and behavior control research, using students, agents, soldiers and prisoners as human guinea pigs in a number of experiments that used drugs, hypnosis, audio-visional and electronic programming techniques.

One such project, called ARTICHOKE, began using drugs for investigating interrogation techniques, which stemmed from attempts to understand brainwashing procedures used on American prisoners of war by the Chinese in North Korea. Eventually the program became directed towards finding "whether a person could be secretly induced to commitan assassination against his will."

One CIA contract agent, Jessica Wilcox (akaCandy Jones), a model and radio personality, was programmed to commit suicideby her CIA psychiatrist (See: "Candy Jones,"by Donald Bain, Playboy Press).

Although both the CIA and the military claim their research ended in 1974, there are indications that the mind control programs merely became "operational" when the "experimental" stage ended, and techniques for programming assassins were secretly blended in with the normal routine of clandestine and military affairs.

The discovery of a CIA handbook in Central America that gave guidelines on developing criminals as agents to eliminate selected government officials is evidence of this, along with the fact that it was used in Vietnam,supports the contention that the U.S.government uses assassination as a tool of foreign policy.

OSLO NATO CONFERENCE & THE NAVY NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL LAB

In the summer of 1975, a year after the government claimed it halted such research, Dr. Irwin Sarason organized a conference in Oslo, Norway for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which addressed the topic of "TheDimensions of Stress and Anxiety."

Dr. Sarason had produced a film which showed the success of school students whoasked questions, and presented the film to a group of juvenile delinquents, whole arned how to ask questions and showed marked improvement in their studies.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research offered to fund Sarason's work, provided it was classified, so it could be used by the Navy psychiatric lab in San Diego, California, where "spys were being trained to resist interrogation."

Peter Watson, a former psychologist and a reporter for the London Sunday Timesattended the Oslo conference and participated in a seminar conducted by U.S.Navy Lt. Commander Thomas Narut, a psychologist then assigned to the U.S. NavyRegional Medical Center in Naples, Italy.

Lt. Commander Narut gave a talk on "The Use of Symbolic Models and VerbalI intervention in Inducing and Reducing Stress." He claimed his work involved teaching "combat readiness units" to cope with the stress of killing.

After his general discourse, Watson talked privately with Narut, who told the London Times correspondent that he had done his doctoral dissertation on whether certain films provoke anxiety. Narut said that he studied whether forcing men to do irrelevant tasks while watching violent films made them cope better with anxiety associated with violence.

Narut also told Watson that the U.S. Navy programmed assassins on an assembly line basis, and that he personally worked with men whom he referred to as "hitmen and assassins," who were involved in commando type operations and placed in U.S. embassies abroad. These men, Narut told Watson, were on call to kills elected victims when necessary. The U.S. Marine Corps, which is in charge of protecting embassies abroad, comes under the Department of Navy, and much of the advanced training for the Marines takes place at its bases in San Diego, California.

Narut said that drugs and hypnosis were no longer necessary, and that such conditioning was accomplished by a standardized behavior modification processcalled audio-visual desensitation. Subjects were desensitized to mayhem and carnage by viewing films of people being injured and killed in different ways, with mild bloodshed being succeeded by progressively violent scenes. They became acclimated to the brutality and eventually dissociated their feelings from the violence.

Narut was quoted as saying the best killers were classified as having"passive-aggressive" personalities, or men "with strong drives that were usually kept under tight control." These types he said, "were usually calm, but from time to time would exhibit outbursts of temper during which they could literally kill without remorse." Men with these "qualities" could be identified through psychological testing, using the Minnesota Multi-Phasic PersonalityInventory test, which is used in schools, businesses and corporations, as wellas the military, and can measure hostility, depression and psychopathy.

After subjects with the right psychological qualities were selected andrecruited they were sent either to the Naples Medical Center or the Navy Neuropsychological Lab in San Diego, California, where according to Narut, they were audio-visually desensitized by being strapped into a chair with their headclamped in such a way that they couldn't look away from the screen and their eyelids prevented from closing.

After Watson's story about the conversation with Narut was published in the London Sunday Times, Narut called a press conference to say that he had been talking only in "theoretical" and not "practical" terms.

HINKLEY'S MOVIE

"You see, I had this plan to make myself somebody at last, a celebrity. To go down in history. Had this plan I was working on, though, in the meantime, I needed to stay as real with myself as I could. Because when you think of allthose other guys, Oswald, Booth and Arty Bremer, the lot, if it's one thing about them marks them out as real losers is they got a little unrealsometimes…" – Taxi Driver

There has been much discussion on the effects the media has on people and whether it can instigate action, but the question shouldn't be whether or notthe film "Taxi Driver" had a mental impact on John Hinkley, but whether the conditioning was coincidental or deliberate. Are Hinkley, Richardson and VandeWehe really "lone-nuts" acting on their own perverted psychological motives, or were they deliberately programmed by the government, military, the CIA or some sinister psychologists who specializes in such behavior modification?

John Hinkley's father was a wealthy oil man from Dallas, Texas, where Hinkley grew up and went to school. Hinkley bought his gun at a shop on Elm Street, not far from the Dealey Plaza intersection where President Kennedy was ambushed.

Hinkley's family moved to Evergreen, Colorado, where they were living in March,1981. John W. Hinkley Sr. owned Vanderbilt Oil Company, and was active in a number of religious and charitable organizations, although he has more recentlybeen devoting his time to promoting a foundation for mental health research.

Although Hinkley's main problem seemed to simplyl be finding direction in his life, his parents recognized some mental disturbance in him, and Hinkley saw no less than three doctors about his mental condition in the year before the shooting. In Lubock, Texas, Hinkley saw a Dr. Rosen, who prescribed ananti-depressant called Serentil, and valium, a tranquilizer.

Hinkley also saw Dr. John Hooper, who gave him biofeedback treatments. His father is also quoted as saying, "I made arrangements with a psychologist by the name of Durrell Benjamin, our company psychologist, to see John."

This doctor told Hinkley's father that, "John was immature and that we neededto work out a long-range plan to make John self sufficient." Hinkley wanted to attend a writer's school at Yale, and Benjamin recommended that he do so. Yale is where Jody Foster was attending school at the time.

They had Hinkley draw up a written agreement – contract that read: "I will receive the sum of $3,000 in checks, taken from my stock,…to last from September 17 to February 1st…and I do pledge to try to make the coming weeks andmonths as productive as possible. It is now or never. Thanks for the money and one more chance. John Hinkley, Jr." The next day he left for New Haven,Connecticut and Yale, but he never enrolled in the writer's school.

"I worked so hard for it. Swallowed pill after pill, wrote all nightlong,…making calculations and learned to make myself comfortable to the feel of these guns." – Taxi Driver

Hinkley had seen a number of films with Jody Foster in them, some repeatedly,and in the month of August that year, he saw some on television. According to one report, "It was his feeling that the movies had been put no TV to excite him into action."

Returning to his parent's home in Colorado briefly, Hinkley went back toLubbock, Texas where he purchased some weapons, the same caliber pistols bought by "Travis," the hero of "Taxi Driver," who he emulated. From Texas Hinkley went to Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, and then to Dayton, Ohio, where he stalked then President Carter, who was making a campaign stop. Hinkley then went back to New Haven to see Jody Foster, then went to New York city where he sought out young prostitutes.

Traveling to Lincoln, Nebraska, Hinkley contacted one of the leading activists in the American Nazi party, and fraternized with rightwing military types,before going to Nashville, Tenn., where Carter was campaigning. Picked up atthe Nashville airport where his guns had registered on a metal detector, Hinkley was arrested with unregistered weapons in a city where the President was visiting, yet he was never considered a threat to the President and placedon the "watch" list, as thousands of other Americans routinely are "redflagged."

After paying a fine Hinkley went back to New Haven where he checked into theColony Inn Hotel before moving to the Sheraton Park Plaza, never in need ofmoney. Returing to Texas, Hinkley purchased two more handguns and then traveledto New Haven, Washington and Colorado, where he saw Evergreen psychologist Dr.John Hooper.

In an effort to make Hinkley relax, Hooper prescribed a series of biofeedback treatments. According to an account in Rolling Stone Magazine, "He was givenearphones similar to those he wore in the nearby pistol range when he was practicing shooting at human silhouettes. An electrode was attached to his forehead. But while he was supposed to be relaxing, he was actually fantasizing about assassination and Jody Foster." Dr. Hooper however, said at the time he had never even heard of Jody Foster.

Towards the end of 1980 Hinkley went to Washington D.C. where he was on December 8, when Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon. Hinkley then began stalking Ronald Reagan, and posed for pictures in front of the Ford Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated.

After seeing Dr. Hooper again in January, 1981, Hinkley went to New Hampshirein February, then to D.C. where he got a room at the Capitol Hill Quality Innand visited the offices of Sen. Edward Kennedy, but Kennedy wasn't in. He then visited the White House before going to New York where he planned to commit suicide at the Dakota, where Lennon was killed.

Returning to Colorado once again, on February 19th he left his parents a note saying, "Dear Mom and Dad; Your prodigal son has left again to exorcise some more demons."

In New Haven, Conn. Hinkley stalked Jody Foster, delivered her a note, and then traveled to New York, from where he called home at 4:30 a.m. on March 6th. Hinkley's fathercontacted Dr. Hooper, who advised him to give his son $100 and say goodbye. A friend of Hinkley's father gave him the money to fly home, and on Saturday, March 7, Hinkley's father picked him up at the Denver airport.

Staying at the Golden Hours Motel in Lakewood for a week, Hinkley moved to the Motel 6 in Lakewood rather than stay at home. He registered under the name of "Travis," like his"Taxi Driver" hero. On March 25th his mother drove him to the airport and put him on a plane to Hollywood, California, where he stayed for less than a day. After four days on a bus, Hinkley arrived in New Haven, via D.C., then went back to D.C. and got a room at the Park Central Hotel, less than two blocksfrom the White House. There he watched TV, ate fast foods and read a Washington Star newspaper that contained the President's itinerary.

After writing a letter Hinkley picked up a John Lennon button, which he put into his left coat pocket, then put his .22 in his right pocket and proceeded to the Hilton Hotel where the President was making an appearance.

As Hinkley was shooting the president, quite by coincidence, his brother Scott Hinkley was at the White House with his good friend, the son of Vice President George Bush. Bush's daughter reportedly arranged dates for Scott Hinkley, and Ms. Maureen Bush, a niece of George Bush, is said to have been photographed at a Nazi rally with John Hinkley. The ironies were compounded however, when Michael Richardson was arrested in New York.

In the two weeks after Hinkley's attack on Reagan, the Secret Service investigated over 300 threats against the life of the President, and Richardson was the most interesting of the copy-cat assassins.

MICHAEL RICHARDSON

From Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, Richardson was arrested on April 7, 1981 at the New York City bus terminal with a loaded .32 cal. Pistonl. He had been in New Haven,where he left a note in his hotel room saying he was leaving for Washington"to bring completion to Hinkley's reality."

"Our duel realities merged into a single vision," wrote Richardson,and indeed their trails had previously crossed. Unlike Hinkley, Richardson had briefly served in the military. He was trained at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas,from January 4 to March 31, 1977, and received an early honorable discharge after three months of basic training, but the reasons for his discharge were not disclosed. At his arrangement in New York however, U.S. Attorney John Martin said Richardson stabbed someone during his brief military stint.

After attending Delaware Community College in Pennsylvaniain 1979, Richardson started schoolat the Rev. Carl MacIntire's fundamentalist bible school, Shelton College, near Coca Beach, Florida. He also reportedly went to Cape May, New Jersey, where he spent the summer at MacIntire's school there, earning extra money by helping to paint Macintire's Christian Admiral Hotel on the beach. After two semesters, Richardson left Shelton and moved to Lakewood, Colorado, where he move in with his two sisters in December1980.

Hinkley's parents lived in Evergreen, Colorado,near Lakewood, and Hinkley had stayed at the Golden Hours motel in Lakewoodin March 1981.

Richardson left Coloradoin mid-March, Hinkley on March 25. In a letter mailed from Grand Junction, Colorado on March 25,and received by the Evangelist Magazine the day Reagan was shot, someone warned, or mysteriously predicted that Reagan would be shot and the country "turned to the left."

Richardson's family attorney, Joseph F. Moore, Jr. said that the connections were only "cosmic," and not evidence of conspiracy. No one however, inquired as to whether Richardson underwent any psychiatric treatment while in Colorado, or looked into whether or not Hinkley's doctors, particularly Dr. Hooper, also treated Richardson.

Besides their joint fixation with Jody Foster and guns, and their "cosmic" Lakewood, Colorado connections, Hinkley and Richardson were both affiliated with evangelical ministries. Richardson, astudent of the Rev. Carl MacIntire, pastor of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, N.J. and Cape May,and president of Shelton College,was the founder of the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC).

MacIntire was also a close, personal friend of J. Edgar Hover, who shared MacIntire's fanatic anti-communist fervor. MacIntire has frequently condemned the competing World Council of Christian Churches (WCCC), which includes parishes from Communist countries. MacIntire's radio show, the 20th Century Reformation Hour, was broadcast behind the Iron Curtain and called for a Christian crusade against communism.

John Hinkley's father, who sponsored a philanthropic foundation that ran a Denversoup kitchen for the poor and homeless, and where his son sometimes dined, wasalso on the board of directors of World Vision, and ran the World Vision centerin Denver.

Both MacIntire's ICCC and Hinkley's World Vision are members of the ecumenical federation called the Evangelical Foreign Missions Assocation (EFMA) of Evanston, Illinois.One of the main functions of both ICCC and World Vision, which has its headquarters in Redwood Valley, California, is to operate refugee camps,especially refugee camps that attend to those who have fled communist countries.

According to John Judge, in the June-July issue of The Continuing Inquiry magazine, "World Vision is an evangelical, anti-communist missionary operation that works around the globe…and administers refugee camps in Ghana (where the Jonestown massacre occurred), and at Sabra and Shatilla camps in Lebanon where the Isralie massacre occurred." Judge says that World Vision also operated along the Honduran border where CIA mercenaries fought Nicaraguan Sandinistas and El Salvadorian revolutionaries and that Alpha 66 and Omega 7 anti-Castro Cubans terrorists were hired to run some of the camps. One such camp also employed Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman, who worked at the Haitian refugee camp at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas.

The CIA first began interviewing refugeesfrom communist countries in East Europe in the late1940s and early 1950s as part of Reinhard Gehlen's Operation Wriger, and the practice continued through the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and religious organizations like the ICCC andWorld Vision. Providing food and shelter in exchange for intelligence information is only the basis for the cooperation, and CIA evaluation of the refugee intelligence indicated that children were the mostreliable of sources. Some of the foreign missionaries not only accepted moneyand assistance in exchange for intelligence information, but provided access toselect refugees so they could be recruited and trained as assets, operativesand agents.

It is purely speculative whether or not Chapman, Hinkley or Richardson were targeted, recruited, trained or conditioned because of their association with these ministries, but the possibility is there.

Besides these associations, there is Hinkley's bizarre association with the Islamic Guerilla Army (IGA). On December 16, 1981, Jack Anderson reported, "…Hinkley is widely believed to have acted out a crazy desire to impress actress Jody Foster. It's an explanation that has gained credence by its very absurdity…But there is a possibility that Hinkley became associated with some Iranian terrorists who call themselves the Islamic Guerrilla Army (IGA)…In January 1981 an informant told the FBI and Secret Service that the IGA planned to assassinate Reagan sometime between Mid-March and early April, and that one of the assassination teams had the code name of 'Hicks' – a student who had been arrested in Nashville in October for illegal possession of firearms…Another informant, a government undercover agent, identified Hinkley as the man he saw at the Denverairport in 1979 with leaders of the Earth Liberation Movement (ELM), a communist backed group with ties to the IGA."

John Hinkley's father said that, "(Conspiracy) is one of the first things we looked at. The government looked into it and didn't find anything. There's absolutely no truth, no substance to conspiracy. John is very ill; he is a sickperson. He did this for a vary pathetic reason."

MICHALE VANDEWEHE

Like Richardson, Michael VandeWehe also served in the military, where something strange happened to him. VandeWehe was charged with threatening the life of the president after Hinkley's attack on Reagan even though he was already incarcerated in the Cape May County jail at Cape May Court House, New Jersey.

Born in Cooperstown, New York, VandeWehe grew up in the Chelsea section of Atlantic City. Hisbrother Richard died in a motorcycle accident in 1975 while stationed in Okinawaas a Marine. Michael joined the Marines in 1978. His father noted, "He felt he had to take his brother's place."

After basic training Michael was transferred to Iceland,where he was stationed for two years. But something happened there that forced him to be sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, where he was treated in the psychiatric wing in May, 1980.

As for his stay in Iceland, his father said, "Something happened there, but we're not sure what." Released from the hospital in June of 1980, VandeWehe was discharged from the Service and returned to his parents home in Wildwood, New Jersey. Not permitted to move in with his parents, who stayed at the Sandman Towers senior citizen complex, named after former Congressman Charles Sandman, Michael got a room at a localboarding house.

When he missed a rent payment, he was locked out of his room and his belongings confiscated by his landlord. Arrested for burglary, theft and criminal mischief for taking merchandise from a burnt out Wildwood bar, VandeWehe was releasedand then rearrested and charged with aggravated assault for striking his landlord, who attempted to prevent him from removing his clothes from his room.

"You can't take a young boy like this right from the hospital and put him outon the street," his father said at the time. A week after Hinkley shot Reagan, VandeWehe wrote a letter from the Crest Haven jail that the Secret Service said, "made a direct threat against the life of the President."

Although VandeWehe's home in Wildwood is only a few miles from the Rev. Carl MacIntire's Christian Admiral Hotel and Shelton College in Cape May, there does not appear to be any known association between VandeWehe and MacIntire or Richardson and their proximity seems only a coincidence. Much like the Lakewood, Colorado proximity between Hinkley and Richardson.

What is interesting however, is the last chapter of the book "The Parallax View," a novel about a reporter who investigates and penetrates a private network of programmed assassins for hire. Although the screenplay of the movie based on the book, which stars Warren Beaty, was altered to provide for a different ending, the suspense novel ends on the two mile long coastal road that runs between VandeWehe's Wildwood and Cape May, where MacInire and Richardson were at the Christian Admiral.

Also unlike the movie, in which a commission concludes there was no conspiracyin a political assassination, the book ends with a suspicious local policeman investigating an automobile accident, and concluding it is a murder.

"The movie isn't over yet" – John Hinkley, Jr.

Edited January 26, 2012 by William Kelly

[Paul Trejo]

Can We Give Those Conspiracy Theories a Rest?

Well, Bill, I'm one of those guys who believes in exactly one conspiracy theory - I believe that Oswald had accomplices. Yet I also tend to agree with Macaray that finding conspiracy everywhere is like the John Birchers in the 1960's finding communists everywhere.

Of course it's possible for a single individual to walk up to a President and shoot him at point blank range. John Wilkes Booth did so with Abraham Lincoln. In fact, most Presidential assassinations were exactly of that nature. The assassins did not care so much about being caught -- unless they were insane like Hinckley, they were proud of their political act, and they gave their reasons. For example, Booth, after shooting Lincoln at point blank range in a theater, jumped onto the stage to deliver his short speech on his motives - Sic Semper Tyrannis (so always to tyrants)! There were scores of eye-witnesses to the shooter in the act.

The JFK assassination is a different matter altogether. The President was shot by at least two hidden assailants. That's a-typical. There were no eye-witnesses of the shooter in the act. The cover-story put up to frame Oswald was put up skillfully and far too quickly. Arctic newspapers had a full bio of Oswald and a conviction of his guilt before he was even charged.

We cannot compare the case of Oswald with the case of any other Presidential assailant, unfortunately. The half-century of flailing for an answer - as exhausting as that has been - must go forward. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren promised that the full Oswald files would be released in 75 years. The wait is so frustrating.

Since it is clear to human reason that Oswald had accomplices, and since Hoover and the Warren Commission quickly moved to insist that Oswald had no accomplices, reasonable people must conclude that Hoover and the Warren Commission knew who the accomplices were. That is precisely why Hoover and the Warren Commission acted to protect them; they knew exactly who they were, and they moved to grant them a full pardon - for 75 years.

If Hoover and the Warren Commission knew who they were, and acted to protect them, then it is a fair guess that they weren't among the Left Wing. Almost certainly, then, the conspirators in the JFK assassination were among the Right-wing.

Now, if we were living in 1963, perhaps in Dallas, and we were to suspect the Right-wing leaders of complicity in such a plot, who would we name?

What Right-wing gentlemen were most outspoken about their views - insisting on radio, public arenas, newspapers and television to promote them? We find H.L. Hunt, of course, and General Edwin Walker, and also Billy James Hargis. There is also former General Charles Willoughby. All these men were also segregationists - sympathetic to the KKK, members of the JBS and the Minutemen. If we lived in Dallas in 1963 - these are precisely the men we would name.

I suggest that we start here to resolve this mystery. In another 25 years perhaps the Federal Government will make good on its word and release the Oswald files. But that is no reason for the rest of us to give up the most exciting murder mystery of the 20th century.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo, MA

Edited January 27, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"It’s also been documented that Bobby Kennedy bullied Lyndon Johnson into continuing the Vietnam war. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin (in “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream”), Bobby insisted to LBJ that President Kennedy would have done everything in his power to keep Southeast Asia from falling to the Communists, and that it was therefore incumbent upon Johnson to honor his dead brother’s legacy"--

Does anyone know WHICH PART OF Kearns Goodwin's book this hack is referring to? I looked in the book at a bookstore and couldn't find it. I really want to see what she types and compare it to how this guy represents it. This guy needs to be called out. He is doing a lot of damage, IMO.

[Guest Robert Morrow]

"It’s also been documented that Bobby Kennedy bullied Lyndon Johnson into continuing the Vietnam war. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin (in “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream”), Bobby insisted to LBJ that President Kennedy would have done everything in his power to keep Southeast Asia from falling to the Communists, and that it was therefore incumbent upon Johnson to honor his dead brother’s legacy"--

Does anyone know WHICH PART OF Kearns Goodwin's book this hack is referring to? I looked in the book at a bookstore and couldn't find it. I really want to see what she types and compare it to how this guy represents it. This guy needs to be called out. He is doing a lot of damage, IMO.

Remember that Robert Kennedy, post JFK assassination, was more concerned with A) his own political career B.) giving Lyndon Johnson hell than he was with telling the truth about what John Kennedy actually stood for.

With that in mind read this: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/vietnam.htm

I have Doris Kearns Goodwin's book "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream." LBJ's conflict with Robert Kennedy is mentioned on pp 199-201. I am not seeing RFK mentioned as riding LBJ on the issue of Vietnam (quick skim ...) Maybe this author read it somewhere else. LBJ is mentioned as being highly resentful of the media attention RFK was getting.

One more thing about Doris Kearns - she has all but admitted that she was having sex with Lyndon Johnson. Read a very revealing Sally Quinn article (8/24/75, "A Tale of Hearts and Minds") in the Wash Post in 1974. Kearns Goodwin has admitted that LBJ used to 1) crawl into bed with her 2) pressed her very hard for sex the first year she met him (1967-68) and 3) asked to *marry* Doris. I am completely serious about all of that. I really wish Doris would tell *everything* she knows about Johnson; I think she is holding back some of the most discrediting stuff about him - although she pretty much admits the man was crazy.

Doris met LBJ in 1967 when she was age 23 and LBJ was age 58. Have you ever heard that rumor that some women are obsessed/infatuated with powerful men? It's true.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[Ron Ecker]

LBJ is mentioned as being highly resentful of the media attention RFK was getting.

I remember reading a source somewhere that quoted Johnson as saying (after he had announced he would not run for reelection) that he didn't know who would be the next president, but "it won't be a Kennedy." But I've never been able to relocate the source or find any other source for the quote.

[John Simkin]

This is the same writer who wrote the single most vicious piece of garbage I have ever read in my life, which is this article that appeared in Counterpunch last June---

Joe McCarthy's Boy Wonder

Bobby Kennedy Was No Hero

By DAVID MACARAY

June 27, 2011

www.counterpunch.org

http://www.counterpu...ay06272011.html

It’s a mystery why John F. Kennedy is still regarded as the family moderate—cautious, pragmatic, shrewd and calculating—while brother Bobby gets to be portrayed as the impetuous, left-leaning, idealistic humanitarian. It’s a mystery because even a cursory examination of history reveals that that wasn’t Bobby.

For openers, Bobby Kennedy was about as “leftist” as Douglas MacArthur. In truth, he, like his brother John, was a shrieking anti-Communist. The Kennedys were not only Cold Warriors, they were fairly paranoid about it—confusing progressivism with Bolshevism—which is why they believed, ludicrously, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist, and is why they (John as president and Bobby as Attorney General) had King’s telephone tapped.

This is of course true until the Cuban Missile Crisis. The problem of people like David Macaray is that they never consider the way that this event changed the way the Kennedys saw the world.

[William Kelly]

LBJ is mentioned as being highly resentful of the media attention RFK was getting.

I remember reading a source somewhere that quoted Johnson as saying (after he had announced he would not run for reelection) that he didn't know who would be the next president, but "it won't be a Kennedy." But I've never been able to relocate the source or find any other source for the quote.

Let me know if you find it Ron.

BK

[Guest Robert Morrow]

LBJ is mentioned as being highly resentful of the media attention RFK was getting.

I remember reading a source somewhere that quoted Johnson as saying (after he had announced he would not run for reelection) that he didn't know who would be the next president, but "it won't be a Kennedy." But I've never been able to relocate the source or find any other source for the quote.

Let me know if you find it Ron.

BK

Immediately after he pulled out of the race on 3/31/68, Lyndon Johnson was secretly and actively promoting the candidacy of Republican NELSON ROCKEFELLER for President. I think all had to do with the JFK assassination cover up. I think that both LBJ and Nelson Rockefeller were involved in the JFK assassination. LBJ wanted someone who could continue the cover up, which would entail beating Robert Kennedy, a common enemy to both LBJ and the Rockefellers.

Nelson Rockefeller, after losing to Goldwater in the 1964 GOP primaries, did NOT support Goldwater in the general election. I think it is because Nelson Rockefeller and LBJ were both involved in the JFK assassination and the Rockefellers knew LBJ would carry their water while in office as well as continue the cover up.

In his book Vantage Point, Johnson says that he appointed Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy to the Warren Commission because RFK told him to. That is very revealing: RFK was long dead when Johnson said that; LBJ was a pathological xxxx and so we can conclude that Allen Dulles and McCloy (who by the way was close friends with Clint Murchison, Sr. a key LBJ supporter) to orchestrate the cover up on the Warren Commission, taking the football from LBJ's friend J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI.

From Robert Dallek’s book Flawed Giant, pp. 544-545]

Lyndon Johnson’s deep alliance with CIA and Eastern Establishment

“Johnson’s choice as his successor was New York’s Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The two men had a high regard for each other. Johnson saw Rockefeller as a sensible moderate who, in Lady Bird’s words, “was a good human being, a person who was for the disadvantaged, who was a man of compassion, with a capable and effective mind, and capable of being effective, getting things done.” He also believed that Rockefeller was the one man who could beat Bobby Kennedy, no small asset in Johnson’s mind.

Rockefeller reciprocated Johnson’s feelings. He saw the President as “a great statesman and great American patriot.” Rockefeller said later: “He was a tremendous guy.” They and their wives enjoyed a warm personal relationship. Nelson recalled how frank his wife Happy could be with Lyndon, telling him at the ranch not to drive so fast or drink too much. “She was successful in getting him to slow down, which I don’t think most people were.” …

Toward the end of April [1968], Johnson invited the Rockefellers to the White House for dinner, where he urged the governor to declare for the Republican nomination. “He was very friendly about ’68, and very supportive of me for ’68,” Rockefeller said. Johnson also told him he would never campaign against him. Happy Rockefeller remembered how during that evening Johnson urged Rockefeller to run. “He did want Nelson to be President,” she said. Johnson encouraged others to back Rockefeller as well. On April 7, after Irwin Miller, a prominent member of “Republicans for Johnson” in 1964 had asked whether the president would object to his chairing a Draft Rockefeller Committee, LBJ have Miller “a full speed go-ahead.”

Rockefeller did not need much prodding. On April 10, following a brief conversation with Johnson at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where they attended Archbishop Terence Cooke’s installation, Rockefeller announced his “availability” for the Republican nomination. On April 30, after the White House evening, Rockefeller declared himself a candidate for the presidency.” [p. 545, A Flawed Giant, Robert Dallek]

From Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition 1998 p. 638-639]:

“The Role of deep-cover CIA officer, Trenton Parker, has been described in earlier pages, and his function in the CIA's counter-intelligence unit, Pegasus. Parker had stated to me earlier that a CIA faction was responsible for the murder of JFK … During an August 21, 1993, conversation, in response to my questions, Parker said that his Pegasus group had tape recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy. I asked him, "What group were these tapes identifying?" Parker replied: "Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, JOHNSON of Texas, GEORGE BUSH, and J. Edgar Hoover." I asked, "What was the nature of the conversation on these tapes?"

I don't have the tapes now, because all the tape recordings were turned over to [Congressman] Larry McDonald. But I listened to the tape recordings and there were conversations between Rockefeller, [J. Edgar] Hoover, where [Nelson] Rockefeller asks, "Are we going to have any problems?" And he said, "No, we aren't going to have any problems. I checked with Dulles. If they do their job we'll do our job." There are a whole bunch of tapes, because Hoover didn't realize that his phone has been tapped. Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, p. 638-639]:

As Jim DiEugenio likes to point out, David Rockefeller and John Kennedy spent 3 years (1961-1963) fighting over domestic policy. Nelson Rockefeller, like Johnson, was a hawk on Vietnam:

Nelson Rockefeller tells JFK to use TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS

against North Vietnam in 1961!

[James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 321-322]

“John Kennedy was turning. The key to understanding Kennedy's presidency, his assassination, and our survival as a species through the Cuban Missile Crisis is that Kennedy was turning towards peace. The signs of his turning are the seeds of his assassination.

Marcus Ruskin worked in the Kennedy Administration as an assistant to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Not long after the Bay of Pigs, Raskin witnessed an incident in the Oval Office that tipped him off to Kennedy's deep aversion to the use of nuclear weapons.

During the president's meeting with a delegation of governors, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, expressing his irritation at the guerilla tactics of the Viet Cong, said "Why don't we use tactical nuclear weapons against them?"

Raskin, watching Kennedy closely, was in a position to see what happened next. The president's hand began to shake uncontrollably.

JFK said simply, "You know we're not going to do that."

But it was the sudden shaking hand that alerted Raskin to Kennedy's profound uneasiness with nuclear weapons, a mark of conscience that would later turn into a commitment to disarmament"

[James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 321-322]

Edited January 28, 2012 by Robert Morrow