Vincent Salandria: "Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012"

[Guest Robert Morrow]

[Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer, says that it is obvious that US military intelligence murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. I agree. (I would hasten to add that it is equally obvious that Lyndon Johnson, based on what we know now, was at the epicenter of the JFK assassination. The Kennedys were within days of politically executing the despised and malevolent LBJ.)

Salandria, a common man who is really not that bright - as he will readily tell you - figured this out very early on. So the real issue is the psychological ability of the American people to accept an ugly reality - that John Kennedy was murdered in a high level domestic coup d'etat by the national security state. Multiply that times 100 in the case of the American elites as far as their level of acceptance vs. what it should be if they were honest with themselves. - Robert Morrow]

Here is the web link to COPA: http://politicalassassinations.com/2012/11/1560/

Vincent Salandria:

November 8, 2012

John Judge:

"This thoughtful and provocative piece comes from an early and brilliant Warren Commission critic and lawyer Vincent Salandria, author of False Mystery. He has taken the position for years that the visible facts in the case were transparent from the start, without ever being officially confirmed. In his view, we already know who killed President Kennedy and why, but to admit that to ourselves would lead to an imperative for action with unknown consequences. He continues these themes in this recent piece sent to us for public consumption. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania passed away recently after a long battle with cancer and never recanted his conclusions about the single bullet theory he propounded for the Warren Commission to explain multiple wounds in President Kennedy and John Connally on November 22, 1963." - John Judge

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

We met, shook hands, and seated ourselves at a table. I thanked him for suggesting having lunch with me.

I told him that I viewed his work on the Kennedy assassination as very likely having saved my life. I also wanted him to know that if I had been given his Warren Commission assignment, and if I knew then what I know now about power and politics in our society, I would have done what he did. Of course, as a pacifist peace activist with socialist leanings, such as I was and am, I would never have been selected for Specter’s job with the Warren Commission. Arlen Specter was neither a pacifist nor a peace activist. He was a lawyer. I believe that Specter did not know that after the assassination of President Kennedy he was no longer a citizen of a republic but rather was a subject of the globally most powerful banana republic.

But if I had been chosen for his assignment, i.e. to frame Lee Harvey Oswald as Kennedy’s killer, I would have done what Specter did. As a lawyer I would have had been obligated to serve the best interests of my client, the U.S. government. My assignment would have been to cover up the state crime, the coup. I said that not to do that work and not to steer the society away from the ostensible pilot to kill President Kennedy, which plot had as its central theme a pro-Castro and pro-Soviet origin, would have resulted in terrible political consequences.

I told Specter that the American people could never have accepted my view of the assassination as a covert military-intelligence activity supported by the U.S. establishment – not then, and not now. They would have readily accepted as truth the leftist-plot script that the assassins employed. Even now, most Kennedy assassination critics will not accept my view of a U.S. national security state military-industrial killing. I explained that my very bright and rational wife could and would not completely accept my version of the meaning of the Kennedy assassination.

The U.S. national security state’s killing of Kennedy was cloaked in the Oswald myth. That myth included a supposed U.S. defector to the Soviet Union who headed up a Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and who before the assassination allegedly sought a Cuban passport. Therefore, the myth pointed an accusing finger at Fidel Castro and the Soviets.

If the U.S. public had been convinced that Castro and the Soviets were behind the killing of Kennedy, then the military would have considered the killing an act of war, and a military dictatorship in the U.S. would have probably resulted.

Oswald, a U.S. intelligence agent whose past had been molded by the C.I.A., could have been cast into whatever his intelligence masters chose. If the Oswald myth had completely unraveled and had exposed the joint chiefs to the U.S. public as the criminals behind the coup, they, the joint chiefs, would never have quietly surrendered their newly acquired power. I believe that instead, they would have sought to preserve and exploit their newly acquired status of possessing ultimate power over the U.S. arms budget and foreign policy. I believe that they would have proclaimed a national security emergency and imposed martial law. They would have declared a state of emergency, to a state of war, and would have designated the replacement for President Kennedy as a unitary president. We now have been made to understand that the unitary president is unhampered by constitutional separation of powers and the restraints of the bill of rights. In short, the unitary president is a euphemism for the correct political designation of a dictator.

Specter asked me what I thought was the reason for the assassination. In reply I asked whether he had read the correspondence between President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. He had not. I explained that my reading of the correspondence convinced me that Kennedy and Khrushchev had grown very fond of one another. I saw them as seeking to end the Cold War in the area of military confrontation. They were in my judgment seeking to change the Cold War into a peaceful competition on an economic rather than military basis, testing the relative merits of a free market and command economy. I saw the U.S. military intelligence and its civilian allies as being opposed to ending the Cold War.

I told him that I concluded that there was also a conflict between Kennedy and our military on the issue of escalation in Vietnam. In order to deter the efforts of Kennedy and Khrushchev to accomplish a winding down of the Cold War, the C.I.A, with the approval of the U.S. military, killed Kennedy.

I said that I believed the assassination was committed at the behest of the highest levels of U.S. power. I said that I did not use sophisticated thinking to arrive at my very early conclusion of a U.S. national-security state assassination. I told him that I think like the Italian peasant stock from which I came. We use intuition.

I explained that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot.

Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot. We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth. In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.

Specter uniformly maintained a courteous, serious and respectful demeanor, as did I. He asked me whether I had talked to Mark Lane frequently. I told him that I had spoken to him, and that I had spoken to essentially every assassination critic then active. I described meeting Mark Lane at a dinner in Philadelphia at a lawyer’s home. The dinner was in 1964. I could not recall the name of the lawyer host. I related that Spencer Coxe, the Executive leader of the Philadelphia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, was also present.

At that dinner I informed Lane that I was interested in Oswald as a likely U.S. intelligence agent provocateur. Lane was not interested in the concept of Oswald as a possible U.S. intelligence asset. Specter asked me what Lane believed regarding the assassination. I said that at that time he believed there was a plot, but he did not name who the plotters were and did not discuss what he thought the reason was for the killing. I did say that later, Lane got a jury to decide for Lane’s client who had said that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas on the date of the Kennedy assassination. Lane’s client had been sued for libel. He described the case in his 1991 book Plausible Denial.

In 1964, after his work with the Warren Commission was completed, Specter had been honored for this association at a meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He asked me what I remembered about that event. I told him that I attended with my copy of the Warren Report and directed some questions at him regarding the shots, trajectories and wounds in the Kennedy assassination. After the meeting some of my colleagues at the bar asked me to write an article. That night I did so. I sent the article to Theodore Vorhees, the Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and asked him to have it published. He sent it back and asked me to tone it down. I did so. He got it published in The Legal Intelligencer.

Specter recalled that in our confrontation I had accused him of corruption. He said that he had asked me at that time whether I would change the charge to incompetency. I had refused. I told him that I could not change it to incompetency because I knew then from his public record, as I know now, that he was not incompetent. My charge was reiterated in the Legal Intelligencer article, which described the Warren Commission’s work as speculation conforming to none of the evidence. I said the Warren Report did not have the slightest credibility, committing errors of logic and being contrary to the laws of physics and geometry.

Specter, during our 2012 lunch, asked me whether I thought that the Warren Commission was a set up. I answered that probably not all of the Commissioners knew it was a set up, but that Dulles and Warren knew. I also told him that I thought that McGeorge Bundy was privy to the plot. Specter did not respond to this.

I explained that I did not discuss with friends my view of the assassination and my conception of how controlled our society is. I said that I did not discuss with my friends matters such as we were discussing because people are just not ready to accept my view of the assassination and the tight control over our society. I said that I had nothing to offer to people in terms of solutions to the mess we are in. I related how last year, when I had a blood condition and thought I was going to die, my big regret was the mess of a society we were bequeathing to our children.

Specter commented: “Washington is in chaos.” I told him that I was deeply concerned about whether we are going to bomb Iran. Specter said, “We are not going to bomb Iran.”

I offered an example of how out of control the society is. I pointed out that he had been against escalation in Afghanistan. While Obama was supposed to be meditating over whether or not to escalate the U.S. forces there, Generals McChrystal and Petraeus were speaking to the press telling the world that we were going to escalate. These statements by the generals were made while Vice President Biden was speaking publicly against escalation. I said that I thought McChrystal and Petraeus should have been court martialed for violating the chain of command. I then said that I don’t think Obama any longer has power over the military, despite the ostensible constitutional chain of command.

I told Specter that I knew there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy notwithstanding his single-bullet theory because the holes in the custom-made shirt and suit jacket of Kennedy could not have ridden up in such a fashion to explain how a shot from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository Building, hitting Kennedy at a downward angle of roughly 17 degrees, and hitting no bone, could have exited from his necktie knot. I told him that Commission Exhibit 399 was a plant.

I admitted that I had coached Gaeton Fonzi before his interview with him on the questions that he should ask Specter. Specter asked me where Fonzi is. I told him that he lives in Florida, and that he is sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Specter said he was a good reporter. I told Specter that Fonzi was a great investigative reporter.

I told Specter that my very smart wife does not accept my political thinking regarding the nature of the power in control of the country and the world. Specter asked me about my wife. I told him that she is Jewish. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College. She studied at the University of Chicago and accomplished all but the dissertation in Russian Literature there. She owns and manages 41 apartments around Rittenhouse Square. Her father was a fellow traveler. He was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He retained Abe Fortas as his lawyer. The hearing was cancelled. He was a philanthropist who financed the Youth Ruth Wing of the Jerusalem Museum and a college and high school in Israel.

I suggested to Specter that he was selected to perform the hardest assignment of the Warren Commission because he was a Jew. The government could have selected a right WASP lawyer for the job. I said that I had received less criticism for my work on the assassination than he had received for his work on the Commission and as Senator. He related how in Bucks County in a speaking engagement a man had risen and shouted at him that he should resign because he was too Jewish. I told him that I thought that he was a good Senator. He replied that being a Senator was a good and interesting job.

So how is it that Arlen Specter’s work on the Warren Commission saved my life? If I had been successful in arousing public opposition to the National Security State, whom I viewed at the President’s true killers, then the National Security State, possessing supreme power after its successful coup, would have liquidated any effective dissent. In 1966, after a public forum on the Warren Commission’s evidence, I was advised by Brandeis Professor Jacob Cohen that I would have to be killed. I viewed Professor Cohen as speaking for the assassins.

The Warren Report quieted the public. And as it developed, I was completely ineffective. There was no need to dispose of me. So, I consider my life was saved by the effectiveness of Arlen Specter’s work and the ineffectiveness of my own.

As we were leaving the Oyster House I gave Specter a copy of James W. Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable. I said it was the best book on the assassination, and that it was dedicated to a friend of mine and me.

Specter was smiling broadly as we left. I told him that he had a great smile, but that he did not sport it often in public. I asked him whether he was in good health. He said he was, and seemed optimistic about his well-being. I don’t know whether he was then aware of his illness. In dealing with his protracted struggle against very serious afflictions he displayed remarkable fight and courage.

Knowing what I know now, and being then, as now, committed to historical truth, I would have not changed my earliest statement that the Kennedy assassination was a crime of the U.S. warfare state. But I would not have endeavored to rally people to confront as I did the assassins. I know now that the U.S. public never did want to accept the U.S. warfare state as the criminal institutional structure that it is. I know now, that even if the U.S. public ever was ready to accept the true historical meaning of the Kennedy assassination, that there are and have been no institutional structures open to them with which they could hope to countervail successfully the Kennedy killers, the enormous power of the U.S. empire and its warfare state.

I know that my efforts to convince people to oppose Kennedy’s assassins were feckless. But was the effort of a small community of people to establish the historical truth of the Kennedy assassination valueless? I think not. I feel that historical truth is the polestar which guides humankind when we grope for an accurate diagnosis of a crisis. Without historical truth, an accurate diagnosis of the nature and cause of crisis, we would have no direction on how to move to solve societal disease.

Knowing what I know now, would I change my harsh criticisms of Arlen Specter? Yes, I would. Specter was a superior lawyer who enlisted his services to the U.S. government. The Warren Commission Report, through its lies, served to calm the U.S. public in a period of great crisis. If any serious domestic or foreign effort had been made to counter the coup, the weaponry commanded by the state criminals would have resulted in catastrophic loss of life. Therefore, in my judgment of Arlen Specter I defer to the wisdom of Sophocles, who said: “Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; but where truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably is pardonable.”

Edited November 22, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[Ian Kingsbury]

Those who let it happen or prevent the truth being discovered are as

Guilty as the shooters.

Now the guilt is shared by 75 % of the population it's not apathy

It's frustration. Just look where the recent child abuse case has gone

Nowhere near the guilty .and those that let that happen are as guilty

As the a users. Bad things happen when good men do nothing

And it continues today.

[Dawn Meredith]

Bob:

Is this for real?

SPecter agreed to meet with VInce and talk about this matter?

Bob:

Is this for real?

SPecter agreed to meet with VInce and talk about this matter?

Jim: Yes this is for real. VInce sent it to me. I am curious as to how Bob got it. I sent it to a few people but I also wanted to know that to do so was ok...likely won't hear back til Monday.

Dawn

ps Robert, VInce is exceptionally bright.

[Mike Rago]

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

...

We met, shook hands, and seated ourselves at a table. I thanked him for suggesting having lunch with me.

...

Specter asked me what I thought was the reason for the assassination.

...

Specter uniformly maintained a courteous, serious and respectful demeanor, as did I. He asked me whether I had talked to Mark Lane frequently.

...

Specter recalled that in our confrontation I had accused him of corruption. He said that he had asked me at that time whether I would change the charge to incompetency. I had refused.

...

Specter, during our 2012 lunch, asked me whether I thought that the Warren Commission was a set up. I answered that probably not all of the Commissioners knew it was a set up, but that Dulles and Warren knew. I also told him that I thought that McGeorge Bundy was privy to the plot. Specter did not respond to this.

...

Specter commented: “Washington is in chaos.” I told him that I was deeply concerned about whether we are going to bomb Iran. Specter said, “We are not going to bomb Iran.”

Specter asked me where Fonzi is. I told him that he lives in Florida, and that he is sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Specter said he was a good reporter. I told Specter that Fonzi was a great investigative reporter.

. Specter asked me about my wife. I told him that she is Jewish.

...

He related how in Bucks County in a speaking engagement a man had risen and shouted at him that he should resign because he was too Jewish. I told him that I thought that he was a good Senator. He replied that being a Senator was a good and interesting job.

...

Specter was smiling broadly as we left. I told him that he had a great smile, but that he did not sport it often in public.

...

This article is definitely about Vince Salandria. I have removed all the places where Vince is talking about Vince. The above is what is left.

Edited November 22, 2012 by Mike Rago

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Note to Rago: The very fact that Arlen Specter would call up Vincent Salandria and sit down for a lecture on the JFK assassination speaks volumes.

Salandria's reply to my characterizing him as "not that bright" (11/22/12)

"Dear Robert,

I take issue with your statement that I am "not that bright." Rather I would submit that I am not at all bright.

Cordially,

Vince"

(Salandria's point is this: it is obvious that the national security state murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. The only thing in question is the psychological ability of people (and especially the elites) to accept it.)

[Cliff Varnell]

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

...

We met, shook hands, and seated ourselves at a table. I thanked him for suggesting having lunch with me.

...

Specter asked me what I thought was the reason for the assassination.

...

Specter uniformly maintained a courteous, serious and respectful demeanor, as did I. He asked me whether I had talked to Mark Lane frequently.

...

Specter recalled that in our confrontation I had accused him of corruption. He said that he had asked me at that time whether I would change the charge to incompetency. I had refused.

...

Specter, during our 2012 lunch, asked me whether I thought that the Warren Commission was a set up. I answered that probably not all of the Commissioners knew it was a set up, but that Dulles and Warren knew. I also told him that I thought that McGeorge Bundy was privy to the plot. Specter did not respond to this.

...

Specter commented: “Washington is in chaos.” I told him that I was deeply concerned about whether we are going to bomb Iran. Specter said, “We are not going to bomb Iran.”

Specter asked me where Fonzi is. I told him that he lives in Florida, and that he is sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Specter said he was a good reporter. I told Specter that Fonzi was a great investigative reporter.

. Specter asked me about my wife. I told him that she is Jewish.

...

He related how in Bucks County in a speaking engagement a man had risen and shouted at him that he should resign because he was too Jewish. I told him that I thought that he was a good Senator. He replied that being a Senator was a good and interesting job.

...

Specter was smiling broadly as we left. I told him that he had a great smile, but that he did not sport it often in public.

...

This article is definitely about Vince Salandria. I have removed all the places where Vince is talking about Vince. The above is what is left.

This is part you insist on ignoring, emphasis added. You and about 75% of the JFK assassination reasearch community, near as I can tell...

I told Specter that I knew there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy notwithstanding his single-bullet theory because the holes in the custom-made shirt and suit jacket of Kennedy could not have ridden up in such a fashion to explain how a shot from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository Building, hitting Kennedy at a downward angle of roughly 17 degrees, and hitting no bone, could have exited from his necktie knot.

[Cliff Varnell]

This is arguably the best, most significant, finest (etc.) short essay on the subject. Period. Out of all the millions of words written on the JFK assassination it doesn't get any better than this, imo.

And yet...what, less than a half dozen responses? Mike Rago dissed Vince Salandria and it went unanswered for how long?

I detect garlic before vampires. Vince advances the prima facie case -- the clothing evidence of the T3 back wound. He rubbed Specter's nose in it, just as Gaeton Fonzi did in '66.

But according to Pat Speer, "most serious researchers" regard Vince and Gaeton as incorrect on the subject. Even Jim DiEugenio has referred to the clothing evidence as "model T" -- he apparently never includes it in his cases for conspiracy.

The garlic is in bold. Blood burgundy, of course.

[snip]

Here is the web link to COPA: http://politicalassassinations.com/2012/11/1560/

Vincent Salandria:

November 8, 2012

John Judge:

"This thoughtful and provocative piece comes from an early and brilliant Warren Commission critic and lawyer Vincent Salandria, author of False Mystery. He has taken the position for years that the visible facts in the case were transparent from the start, without ever being officially confirmed. In his view, we already know who killed President Kennedy and why, but to admit that to ourselves would lead to an imperative for action with unknown consequences. He continues these themes in this recent piece sent to us for public consumption. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania passed away recently after a long battle with cancer and never recanted his conclusions about the single bullet theory he propounded for the Warren Commission to explain multiple wounds in President Kennedy and John Connally on November 22, 1963." - John Judge

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

We met, shook hands, and seated ourselves at a table. I thanked him for suggesting having lunch with me.

I told him that I viewed his work on the Kennedy assassination as very likely having saved my life. I also wanted him to know that if I had been given his Warren Commission assignment, and if I knew then what I know now about power and politics in our society, I would have done what he did. Of course, as a pacifist peace activist with socialist leanings, such as I was and am, I would never have been selected for Specter’s job with the Warren Commission. Arlen Specter was neither a pacifist nor a peace activist. He was a lawyer. I believe that Specter did not know that after the assassination of President Kennedy he was no longer a citizen of a republic but rather was a subject of the globally most powerful banana republic.

But if I had been chosen for his assignment, i.e. to frame Lee Harvey Oswald as Kennedy’s killer, I would have done what Specter did. As a lawyer I would have had been obligated to serve the best interests of my client, the U.S. government. My assignment would have been to cover up the state crime, the coup. I said that not to do that work and not to steer the society away from the ostensible pilot to kill President Kennedy, which plot had as its central theme a pro-Castro and pro-Soviet origin, would have resulted in terrible political consequences.

I told Specter that the American people could never have accepted my view of the assassination as a covert military-intelligence activity supported by the U.S. establishment – not then, and not now. They would have readily accepted as truth the leftist-plot script that the assassins employed. Even now, most Kennedy assassination critics will not accept my view of a U.S. national security state military-industrial killing. I explained that my very bright and rational wife could and would not completely accept my version of the meaning of the Kennedy assassination.

The U.S. national security state’s killing of Kennedy was cloaked in the Oswald myth. That myth included a supposed U.S. defector to the Soviet Union who headed up a Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and who before the assassination allegedly sought a Cuban passport. Therefore, the myth pointed an accusing finger at Fidel Castro and the Soviets.

If the U.S. public had been convinced that Castro and the Soviets were behind the killing of Kennedy, then the military would have considered the killing an act of war, and a military dictatorship in the U.S. would have probably resulted.

Oswald, a U.S. intelligence agent whose past had been molded by the C.I.A., could have been cast into whatever his intelligence masters chose. If the Oswald myth had completely unraveled and had exposed the joint chiefs to the U.S. public as the criminals behind the coup, they, the joint chiefs, would never have quietly surrendered their newly acquired power. I believe that instead, they would have sought to preserve and exploit their newly acquired status of possessing ultimate power over the U.S. arms budget and foreign policy. I believe that they would have proclaimed a national security emergency and imposed martial law. They would have declared a state of emergency, to a state of war, and would have designated the replacement for President Kennedy as a unitary president. We now have been made to understand that the unitary president is unhampered by constitutional separation of powers and the restraints of the bill of rights. In short, the unitary president is a euphemism for the correct political designation of a dictator.

Specter asked me what I thought was the reason for the assassination. In reply I asked whether he had read the correspondence between President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. He had not. I explained that my reading of the correspondence convinced me that Kennedy and Khrushchev had grown very fond of one another. I saw them as seeking to end the Cold War in the area of military confrontation. They were in my judgment seeking to change the Cold War into a peaceful competition on an economic rather than military basis, testing the relative merits of a free market and command economy. I saw the U.S. military intelligence and its civilian allies as being opposed to ending the Cold War.

I told him that I concluded that there was also a conflict between Kennedy and our military on the issue of escalation in Vietnam. In order to deter the efforts of Kennedy and Khrushchev to accomplish a winding down of the Cold War, the C.I.A, with the approval of the U.S. military, killed Kennedy.

I said that I believed the assassination was committed at the behest of the highest levels of U.S. power. I said that I did not use sophisticated thinking to arrive at my very early conclusion of a U.S. national-security state assassination. I told him that I think like the Italian peasant stock from which I came. We use intuition.

I explained that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot.

Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot. We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth. In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.

Specter uniformly maintained a courteous, serious and respectful demeanor, as did I. He asked me whether I had talked to Mark Lane frequently. I told him that I had spoken to him, and that I had spoken to essentially every assassination critic then active. I described meeting Mark Lane at a dinner in Philadelphia at a lawyer’s home. The dinner was in 1964. I could not recall the name of the lawyer host. I related that Spencer Coxe, the Executive leader of the Philadelphia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, was also present.

At that dinner I informed Lane that I was interested in Oswald as a likely U.S. intelligence agent provocateur. Lane was not interested in the concept of Oswald as a possible U.S. intelligence asset. Specter asked me what Lane believed regarding the assassination. I said that at that time he believed there was a plot, but he did not name who the plotters were and did not discuss what he thought the reason was for the killing. I did say that later, Lane got a jury to decide for Lane’s client who had said that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas on the date of the Kennedy assassination. Lane’s client had been sued for libel. He described the case in his 1991 book Plausible Denial.

In 1964, after his work with the Warren Commission was completed, Specter had been honored for this association at a meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He asked me what I remembered about that event. I told him that I attended with my copy of the Warren Report and directed some questions at him regarding the shots, trajectories and wounds in the Kennedy assassination. After the meeting some of my colleagues at the bar asked me to write an article. That night I did so. I sent the article to Theodore Vorhees, the Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and asked him to have it published. He sent it back and asked me to tone it down. I did so. He got it published in The Legal Intelligencer.

Specter recalled that in our confrontation I had accused him of corruption. He said that he had asked me at that time whether I would change the charge to incompetency. I had refused. I told him that I could not change it to incompetency because I knew then from his public record, as I know now, that he was not incompetent. My charge was reiterated in the Legal Intelligencer article, which described the Warren Commission’s work as speculation conforming to none of the evidence. I said the Warren Report did not have the slightest credibility, committing errors of logic and being contrary to the laws of physics and geometry.

Specter, during our 2012 lunch, asked me whether I thought that the Warren Commission was a set up. I answered that probably not all of the Commissioners knew it was a set up, but that Dulles and Warren knew. I also told him that I thought that McGeorge Bundy was privy to the plot. Specter did not respond to this.

I explained that I did not discuss with friends my view of the assassination and my conception of how controlled our society is. I said that I did not discuss with my friends matters such as we were discussing because people are just not ready to accept my view of the assassination and the tight control over our society. I said that I had nothing to offer to people in terms of solutions to the mess we are in. I related how last year, when I had a blood condition and thought I was going to die, my big regret was the mess of a society we were bequeathing to our children.

Specter commented: “Washington is in chaos.” I told him that I was deeply concerned about whether we are going to bomb Iran. Specter said, “We are not going to bomb Iran.”

I offered an example of how out of control the society is. I pointed out that he had been against escalation in Afghanistan. While Obama was supposed to be meditating over whether or not to escalate the U.S. forces there, Generals McChrystal and Petraeus were speaking to the press telling the world that we were going to escalate. These statements by the generals were made while Vice President Biden was speaking publicly against escalation. I said that I thought McChrystal and Petraeus should have been court martialed for violating the chain of command. I then said that I don’t think Obama any longer has power over the military, despite the ostensible constitutional chain of command.

I told Specter that I knew there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy notwithstanding his single-bullet theory because the holes in the custom-made shirt and suit jacket of Kennedy could not have ridden up in such a fashion to explain how a shot from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository Building, hitting Kennedy at a downward angle of roughly 17 degrees, and hitting no bone, could have exited from his necktie knot. I told him that Commission Exhibit 399 was a plant.

I admitted that I had coached Gaeton Fonzi before his interview with him on the questions that he should ask Specter. Specter asked me where Fonzi is. I told him that he lives in Florida, and that he is sick with Hodgkin’s disease. Specter said he was a good reporter. I told Specter that Fonzi was a great investigative reporter.

I told Specter that my very smart wife does not accept my political thinking regarding the nature of the power in control of the country and the world. Specter asked me about my wife. I told him that she is Jewish. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College. She studied at the University of Chicago and accomplished all but the dissertation in Russian Literature there. She owns and manages 41 apartments around Rittenhouse Square. Her father was a fellow traveler. He was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He retained Abe Fortas as his lawyer. The hearing was cancelled. He was a philanthropist who financed the Youth Ruth Wing of the Jerusalem Museum and a college and high school in Israel.

I suggested to Specter that he was selected to perform the hardest assignment of the Warren Commission because he was a Jew. The government could have selected a right WASP lawyer for the job. I said that I had received less criticism for my work on the assassination than he had received for his work on the Commission and as Senator. He related how in Bucks County in a speaking engagement a man had risen and shouted at him that he should resign because he was too Jewish. I told him that I thought that he was a good Senator. He replied that being a Senator was a good and interesting job.

So how is it that Arlen Specter’s work on the Warren Commission saved my life? If I had been successful in arousing public opposition to the National Security State, whom I viewed at the President’s true killers, then the National Security State, possessing supreme power after its successful coup, would have liquidated any effective dissent. In 1966, after a public forum on the Warren Commission’s evidence, I was advised by Brandeis Professor Jacob Cohen that I would have to be killed. I viewed Professor Cohen as speaking for the assassins.

The Warren Report quieted the public. And as it developed, I was completely ineffective. There was no need to dispose of me. So, I consider my life was saved by the effectiveness of Arlen Specter’s work and the ineffectiveness of my own.

As we were leaving the Oyster House I gave Specter a copy of James W. Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable. I said it was the best book on the assassination, and that it was dedicated to a friend of mine and me.

Specter was smiling broadly as we left. I told him that he had a great smile, but that he did not sport it often in public. I asked him whether he was in good health. He said he was, and seemed optimistic about his well-being. I don’t know whether he was then aware of his illness. In dealing with his protracted struggle against very serious afflictions he displayed remarkable fight and courage.

Knowing what I know now, and being then, as now, committed to historical truth, I would have not changed my earliest statement that the Kennedy assassination was a crime of the U.S. warfare state. But I would not have endeavored to rally people to confront as I did the assassins. I know now that the U.S. public never did want to accept the U.S. warfare state as the criminal institutional structure that it is. I know now, that even if the U.S. public ever was ready to accept the true historical meaning of the Kennedy assassination, that there are and have been no institutional structures open to them with which they could hope to countervail successfully the Kennedy killers, the enormous power of the U.S. empire and its warfare state.

I know that my efforts to convince people to oppose Kennedy’s assassins were feckless. But was the effort of a small community of people to establish the historical truth of the Kennedy assassination valueless? I think not. I feel that historical truth is the polestar which guides humankind when we grope for an accurate diagnosis of a crisis. Without historical truth, an accurate diagnosis of the nature and cause of crisis, we would have no direction on how to move to solve societal disease.

Knowing what I know now, would I change my harsh criticisms of Arlen Specter? Yes, I would. Specter was a superior lawyer who enlisted his services to the U.S. government. The Warren Commission Report, through its lies, served to calm the U.S. public in a period of great crisis. If any serious domestic or foreign effort had been made to counter the coup, the weaponry commanded by the state criminals would have resulted in catastrophic loss of life. Therefore, in my judgment of Arlen Specter I defer to the wisdom of Sophocles, who said: “Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; but where truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably is pardonable.”

There is no such impediment to telling the truth now. The only thing that stands to tremendous ruin is a lot of self-congratulatory JFK assassination research (acoustics evidence, NAA, head wound locations, to name a few) rendered moot by the prima facie case, JFK's T3 back wound.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Cliff Varnell

[Mike Rago]

I did sort of address this in this post. Could the difference between the chalk mark and the pointer location be how much the jacket rode up over the shirt?

http://educationforu...09

BTW, I agree that the back wound is extremely important, but for different reasons than you.

The back wound and throat wound taken together amount to nothing more than a flesh wound. No vital organs were hit, no major blood vessels were cut, no bones were hit. If that was the only wound sustained that day, the president, most likely, would have made a complete recovery.

That wound indicates to me that it was caused by a single bullet. How unlikely is it that that two bullets would strike the president and each of them only causes a flesh wound?

And then we add to that that we have two wounds (back wound and throat wound) and only one bullet. (CE399) which looks exactly like we might expect a bullet that caused those kind of wounds to look.

And finally, we have the photographic evidence, the zfilm, which shows that at the very moment that JFK is reacting to a wound to his throat Connally is reacting to something on his left side(his hat flap).

All of the evidence is consistent with a single bullet which passed through the presidents back, came out his throat, at very slow velocity, and struck Connally on his left side.

CE-399 was a problem for Arlen Specter. That bullet caused Arlen Specter to show his hand.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Mike Rago

[Cliff Varnell]

I did sort of address this in this post. Could the difference between the chalk mark and the pointer location be how much the jacket rode up over the shirt?

http://educationforu...09

[voice in the back of my head..."don't do this...don't go there with this guy"...sigh...]

Okay, Mike. Let's take a look at what you wrote in the post you cite:

While googling I came across this very good article on the bunching of JFK's jacket. It occurred to me that what we might be seeing in this obvious difference between the chalk mark and the pointer is the difference between where the bullet hole actually exists in the jacket and the actual bullet hole in JFK's back. The difference caused by the bunching of the jacket.

I am not saying I agree with the trajectory that Specter is presenting regards the bullet striking Connally on his right side as indicated in the photo. I am just presenting this as an explanation of the difference between the chalk mark on the jacket and the pointer location.

http://mcadams.posc....du/bunched3.htm

What you came across, Mike, is a work of unvarnished academic fraud.

Here's what John Hunt wrote in his self-congratulatory piece, "The Case for a Bunched Jacket":

"The limits of space, combined with the clear and convincing photographic evidence yet to come, obviate the need to elaborate on all of the eyewitness testimony. This testimony is both contradictory and subject to interpretation. Further, my research indicates that the difference between the impact point of a "smoothly oriented" jacket shot and a "bunched up" jacket shot is little more than two inches. The reader is invited to contact me via e-mail if he or she is curious as to how I arrived at the aforementioned figure. That essay, explaining in detail my methodology, is not yet finished."

So in 1999 John Hunt published a piece claiming to be a "case" for a particular conclusion but the actual case explaining in detail his methodology wasn't finished.

He never presented a case for why JFK's clothing was bunched up multiple inches. Hunt doesn't have a case.

The event is physically impossible. It is physically impossible to bunch-up tucked-in custom-made dress shirts multiple inches with casual body movement.

That's Salandria's point. Fonzi proved it when he confronted Specter with it in '66.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

All of the evidence is consistent with a single bullet which passed through the presidents back, came out his throat, at very slow velocity, and struck Connally on his left side.

Wow. The bullet holes in the clothes are several inches below the throat wound and Mike Rago pretends that this hard, concrete physical evidence simply does not exist.

Like "most serious researchers," evidently. Right, Pat?

[David Lifton]

[Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer, says that it is obvious that US military intelligence murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. I agree. (I would hasten to add that it is equally obvious that Lyndon Johnson, based on what we know now, was at the epicenter of the JFK assassination. The Kennedys were within days of politically executing the despised and malevolent LBJ.)

Salandria, a common man who is really not that bright - as he will readily tell you - figured this out very early on. So the real issue is the psychological ability of the American people to accept an ugly reality - that John Kennedy was murdered in a high level domestic coup d'etat by the national security state. Multiply that times 100 in the case of the American elites as far as their level of acceptance vs. what it should be if they were honest with themselves. - Robert Morrow]

Here is the web link to COPA: http://politicalassassinations.com/2012/11/1560/

Vincent Salandria:

November 8, 2012

John Judge:

"This thoughtful and provocative piece comes from an early and brilliant Warren Commission critic and lawyer Vincent Salandria, author of False Mystery. He has taken the position for years that the visible facts in the case were transparent from the start, without ever being officially confirmed. In his view, we already know who killed President Kennedy and why, but to admit that to ourselves would lead to an imperative for action with unknown consequences. He continues these themes in this recent piece sent to us for public consumption. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania passed away recently after a long battle with cancer and never recanted his conclusions about the single bullet theory he propounded for the Warren Commission to explain multiple wounds in President Kennedy and John Connally on November 22, 1963." - John Judge

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

[snipped . . to save space. . see earlier on this thread for the entire text]

The mark of a good interviewer is to let the subject talk. And talk some more. .And more. The problem with this piece, it seems to me, is that it is 95% Vince Salandria expounding his views (to Arlen Specter, and, via this piece, to us) but only 5% Arlen Specter.

I know what Vincent Salandria thinks--he is one of te earliest people I ever read on the JFK assassination. But I sure would like to have had a better picture, a far clearer picture, of what Specter thinks.

But this reads like "What I told Arlen Specter at Lunch One Day". I'd have much preferred a better balance--a much better balance--of what Specter said at that lunch (if he said much of anything) than what is written here.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but I'm left with the impression that Specter was humoring Salandria, but really didn't say much of anything, at all.

DSL

Edited November 26, 2012 by David Lifton

[Guest Robert Morrow]

The very fact that Arlen Specter would call up Vincent Salandria and sit down for a lecture on the JFK assassination speaks volumes in and of ifself.

Salandria's reply to my characterizing him as "not that bright" (11/22/12)

"Dear Robert,

I take issue with your statement that I am "not that bright." Rather I would submit that I am not at all bright.

Cordially,

Vince"

(Salandria's point is this: it is obvious that the national security state murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. The only thing in question is the psychological ability of people (and especially the elites) to accept it.)

[Cliff Varnell]

[Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer, says that it is obvious that US military intelligence murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. I agree. (I would hasten to add that it is equally obvious that Lyndon Johnson, based on what we know now, was at the epicenter of the JFK assassination. The Kennedys were within days of politically executing the despised and malevolent LBJ.)

Salandria, a common man who is really not that bright - as he will readily tell you - figured this out very early on. So the real issue is the psychological ability of the American people to accept an ugly reality - that John Kennedy was murdered in a high level domestic coup d'etat by the national security state. Multiply that times 100 in the case of the American elites as far as their level of acceptance vs. what it should be if they were honest with themselves. - Robert Morrow]

Here is the web link to COPA: http://politicalassassinations.com/2012/11/1560/

Vincent Salandria:

November 8, 2012

John Judge:

"This thoughtful and provocative piece comes from an early and brilliant Warren Commission critic and lawyer Vincent Salandria, author of False Mystery. He has taken the position for years that the visible facts in the case were transparent from the start, without ever being officially confirmed. In his view, we already know who killed President Kennedy and why, but to admit that to ourselves would lead to an imperative for action with unknown consequences. He continues these themes in this recent piece sent to us for public consumption. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania passed away recently after a long battle with cancer and never recanted his conclusions about the single bullet theory he propounded for the Warren Commission to explain multiple wounds in President Kennedy and John Connally on November 22, 1963." - John Judge

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria

On January 4, 2012 at 11:25 a.m. I arrived at the Oyster House restaurant in Philadelphia for a meeting with former U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. He had called me a week or so earlier and suggested we have lunch.

[snipped . . to save space. . see earlier on this thread for the entire text]

The mark of a good interviewer is to let the subject talk. And talk some more. .And more. The problem with this piece, it seems to me, is that it is 95% Vince Salandria expounding his views (to Arlen Specter, and, via this piece, to us) but only 5% Arlen Specter.

I know what Vincent Salandria thinks--he is one of te earliest people I ever read on the JFK assassination. But I sure would like to have had a better picture, a far clearer picture, of what Specter thinks.

But this reads like "What I told Arlen Specter at Lunch One Day". I'd have much preferred a better balance--a much better balance--of what Specter said at that lunch (if he said much of anything) than what is written here.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but I'm left with the impression that Specter was humoring Salandria, but really didn't say much of anything, at all.

DSL

What could Specter possibly say? Seriously...Gaeton Fonzi punked him in '66 and Specter knows it. He didn't have anything to say then, and he had nothing to say in 2012.

When something is blatantly obvious -- what is there to say?

[Michael Hogan]

The mark of a good interviewer is to let the subject talk. And talk some more. .And more. The problem with this piece, it seems to me, is that it is 95% Vince Salandria expounding his views (to Arlen Specter, and, via this piece, to us) but only 5% Arlen Specter.

I know what Vincent Salandria thinks--he is one of the earliest people I ever read on the JFK assassination. But I sure would like to have had a better picture, a far clearer picture, of what Specter thinks.

But this reads like "What I told Arlen Specter at Lunch One Day". I'd have much preferred a better balance--a much better balance--of what Specter said at that lunch (if he said much of anything) than what is written here....

I agree.

Salandria's notes do not indicate even the slightest amount of curiosity as to why Specter would invite him to lunch.

It was Specter that called Salandria. Surely he must have offered some sort of a reason for the invitation and if not,

I can't imagine Salandria not asking him when they met for oysters.

Salandria encountered Specter at a Philadelphia Bar Association meeting on October 22, 1964. A few days later

Salandria published his now famous dissenting view of the Warren Report's ballistic findings in Philadelphia's

daily law journal, The Legal Intelligencer.

Anyone that has studied this case carefully knows of Salandria and his views. They haven't changed much over the years.

I found Mr. Salandria's notes on the meeting to be incomplete, frustrating and, ultimately, extremely unsatisfying.

What prompted Arlen Specter to call him half a century after the Warren Report?

Disclosure: I have always regarded Vince Salandria's views on conspiracy and President Kennedy's murder with a large measure of respect.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Michael Hogan

[Cliff Varnell]

The mark of a good interviewer is to let the subject talk. And talk some more. .And more. The problem with this piece, it seems to me, is that it is 95% Vince Salandria expounding his views (to Arlen Specter, and, via this piece, to us) but only 5% Arlen Specter.

I know what Vincent Salandria thinks--he is one of the earliest people I ever read on the JFK assassination. But I sure would like to have had a better picture, a far clearer picture, of what Specter thinks.

But this reads like "What I told Arlen Specter at Lunch One Day". I'd have much preferred a better balance--a much better balance--of what Specter said at that lunch (if he said much of anything) than what is written here....

I agree.

Salandria's notes do not indicate even the slightest amount of curiosity as to why Specter would invite him to lunch.

Given the nature of the questions Specter asked -- it looks to me like he wanted to meet Salandria so he could ask questions about Salandria's views of the Kennedy assassination.

Maybe his conscience bothered him as he sensed the end of his life nearing, and he sought a measure of absolution.

And right off the bat, Salandria absolved him of the corruption charges he'd leveled at Specter in '64. Specter wasn't corrupt -- he did the job he was hired to do by his client, the US government.

Perhaps that's why Specter was grinning broadly at the end of his interview of Salandria.

It was Specter that called Salandria. Surely he must have offered some sort of a reason for the invitation and if not,

I can't imagine Salandria not asking him when they met for oysters.

Salandria encountered Specter at a Philadelphia Bar Association meeting on October 22, 1964. A few days later

Salandria published his now famous dissenting view of the Warren Report's ballistic findings in Philadelphia's

daily law journal, The Legal Intelligencer.

Anyone that has studied this case carefully knows of Salandria and his views. They haven't changed much over the years.

His view of Specter has certainly changed. From corrupt tool to effective representative of his client's interests.

And, of course, anytime I see the prima facie case presented, it's a thrill...

I found Mr. Salandria's notes on the meeting to be incomplete, frustrating and, ultimately, extremely unsatisfying.

What prompted Arlen Specter to call him half a century after the Warren Report?

Looks to me like a student-teacher conference. The student, Specter, asked questions of the teacher, who expounded with his fine honed argument.

Specter only chimed in when he had a solid opinion -- like calling Gaeton Fonzi a good reporter. I read this is an admission that Fonzi was right, the clothing holes are too low for the SBT -- but history will absolve Arlen Specter because he was only doing an effective job for his client.

Pretty good day for Arlen, I'd say.

Disclosure: I have always regarded Vince Salandria's views on conspiracy and President Kennedy's murder with a large measure of respect.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Cliff Varnell