Jump to content
The Education Forum

Recommended Posts

Posted

I have just finished reading Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Tim Weiner. Overall, I found it to be a mediocre book; a sanitized version of the history of the FBI. The best part of the book is the part that covers the formation of the FBI and the very early days of the FBI. The closer the book gets to the present day, the weaker it gets. Weiner did have access to some recently released papers from Hoover that provide an interesting insight into the early days of the FBI.

One interesting thing I did learn from the book was the mutual hatred and rivalry between J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles. From Enemies pages 188-189, "Hoover had made plainly evident his personal and professional contempt for the CIA's chief, Allen Dulles. He deigned to meet with Dulles no more than a half dozen times during the eight years of Eisenhower's presidency. He made sure that his aides reflected his thinking. 'How in the world can I do business with the Bureau?' Dulles had shouted at his FBI liaison in an unguarded moment. 'I try and you keep striking back.'"

Enemies goes on to tell how Hoover felt that the FBI was the rightful head of US intelligence, and he resented the CIA from the start. At the FBI, Hoover had a standing non-cooperation order with the CIA.

The reason I find this interesting in the context of the Coup of '63 has to do with my estimate of the internal hierarchy of the cabal behind the coup. I am of the opinion that LBJ is the prime mover in the coup, and I would rank Allen Dulles as being the second most important person in the coup. I know other people feel that the Dulles/CIA aspects of the coup are stronger than the LBJ/texan side of things. Certainly, LBJ, Hoover and Dulles were all important players in the Coup of '63. But given the animosity between Hoover and Dulles, it seems unlikely that Dulles could have easily brought Hoover into the coup. But LBJ was extremely close to Hoover, and he was well placed to involve Hoover in the coup. A model of the cabal hierarchy with LBJ at the top and both Dulles and Hoover connected to LBJ meshes with the above facts, but Dulles as the lynch-pin of the cabal conflicts with the above facts, so I consider the animosity between Hoover and Dulles to be another supporting piece of evidence for the primacy of LBJ as the prime mover of the coup.

Guest Robert Morrow
Posted (edited)

Lyndon Johnson has more evidence indicting him that any single person in the JFK assassination. When it came time to pick a CIA head post assassination (to replace the Texan that had replaced McCone) LBJ used his very close friend Deke DeLoach of the FBI to vet the candidates. DeLoach told me personally (and I think it may be in his book, too) that he had 2 lunches with Richard Helms and recommended him over another FBI candidate for the top job at CIA.

That tells me in LBJ world, FBI had primacy over CIA.

I think both Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover were involved in the JFK assassination, no matter what they thought of each other- they and LBJ hated Kennedys! It is like Middle Eastern politics: an enemy of my enemy is my friend and in the 1963 era world the Kennedys were enemies with everyone except the masses of the American people.

Edited by Robert Morrow
Posted (edited)

I consider the animosity between Hoover and Dulles to be another supporting piece of evidence for the primacy of LBJ as the prime mover of the coup.

Hello Mark and thank you for posting about the Weiner book.

I personally eliminated Hoover as a suspect fairly early in my own research, while to me Alan Dulles jumps off the page as a likely suspect in nearly every book that mentions him.

The planners of the assassination (of whom Dulles was certainly one), according to my theory, had one big problem: How to neutralize J. Edgar. If they could convince J. Edgar, they could convince the American people.

The choice of Lee Oswald as Patsy solved that problem very nicely, because it was easy to convince Hoover that a commie did it, even though, as Hoover told Johnson on Saturday Nov. 23, "the case [against Lee Oswald] as it stands is not strong enough to obtain a conviction."

Edited by J. Raymond Carroll
Posted (edited)

Mark Gorton: I have just finished reading Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Tim Weiner. Overall, I found it to be a mediocre book; a sanitized version of the history of the FBI. [...] The closer the book gets to the present day, the weaker it gets.

This is my experience with FBI books, such as Ronald Kessler's.

Can anyone recommend a good book on the FBI 1990-Present? I'm not sure anyone will be able to.

I'm interested in the FBI and FBI-CIA relations regarding counterterrorism. Any book recommendations will be appreciated, though I'm familiar with books by Peter Lance, Lawrence Wright, Richard Clarke, and Louis Freeh.

Edited by David Andrews
Posted

David, try The Art of Intelligence by Henry Compton, he was CIA liaison to the FBI on counter terrorism and his observations on that are pretty stark. Its only part of the book though

so you might go the library route.

Posted

Raymond,

Although I don't think that J. Edgar Hoover was actively involved in the planning of the shooting part of JFK's assassination, I am quite convinced that he had knowledge of the plot beforehand and was actively involved in plot. Hoover's and the FBI's role in the plot had two big parts, first suppressing pre-assassination warnings about the plot and secondly, running a good fraction of the cover up. I have read of a few examples of the FBI failing to follow up on pre-assassination threats to the life of JFK. I wish I could cite these off the top of my head, but I read things and then I can't remember where I read them. I think some of this is in "JFK and the Unspeakable". But I am sure that bits of this are in a bunch of places.

It is absolutely clear that the FBI orchestrated a good fraction of the initial cover up of the killings. Part of what convinces me that Hoover was in on the plot is the speed with which the FBI swooped in a began covering up the coup. If Hoover had been caught off guard, it is hard to see how the FBI would have been able to push the cover up as quickly as it did. I can see that Hoover would have been happy to pin the killings on a commie, but that would not explain why the FBI would have been actively working to cover up the plot. If Oswald was a legit commie killer, a straight forward investigation would have sufficed.

As it turned out, Oswald had been on the FBI payroll. And this information came out not long after the assassination. Having Oswald on the FBI payroll could have motivated Hoover to want to cover up the truth behind the assassination because he did not want to be embarrassed by having someone associated with his organization kill the president. However, I believe that Oswald's FBI connections were part of the plot. It served the purposed of giving Hoover a cover story for covering up the truth behind the assassination. That way if it became a public scandal that the FBI had covered up the truth about the president's assassination, Hoover had a plausible excuse for the FBI cover up which was less unpleasant than being complicit in the coup d'etat. This use of Oswald is another layer in a really beautifully crafted plot. The designers of the coup had nuances and contingencies planned for so many situations embedded into the fabric of the plot.

However, the FBI being trapped into an accidental cover-up does not mesh with several facts. Again, the multiple failures to pursue credible threats to the life of the president, and also the speed with which the FBI was working on a full cover up. The FBI is a big bureaucratic organization. If they were innocent, the FBI would have been stunned and dazed at first, but the FBI was moving with full force from moment one after the shootings to cover up the assassination.

LBJ and Hoover were extremely close. It would have been very easy for LBJ to bring Hoover into any plot. Hoover hated RFK and JFK. Hoover had enough dirty laundry of his own that retirement (which was on autopilot under JFK) was a real danger to him. And since Hoover was not actively involved in the shooting part of the assassination, he was not taking very much of risk by being involved.

Very little was left to chance in the Coup of '63. The Dallas police were actively involved. The military took care of the autopsy. The FBI ran the cover up. The stakes were too high for too many people for the coup plotters to not have the FBI on board beforehand. The plotters had to worry about RFK and probably a handful of JFK loyalists, but Hoover was well entrenched in the cabal that killed JFK.

Posted

David, If you are interested in recent FBI history. I highly recommend chapter 4, "Louis Freeh and the FBI" in Kevin Ryan's recent book "Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects". The whole book is very, very well researched and footnoted. Kevin Ryan has pulled together information from a wide variety of sources. The chapter on the FBI does a nice job of highlighting the systematic failures within the FBI to stop terrorism before and during Freeh's tenure.

I just finished reading "Another Nineteen", and I now consider it to be the best book written to date on the black op we know as 9/11. Kevin Ryan's understanding of deep politics and the deep state is as good as any I have read. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the recent functioning of the deep state, even if they are not particularly interested in 9/11. Ryan does an amazing job tracking the careers and networks of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Carlucci, Armitage, Freeh, Tenet, Clark, and a host of others. I can only imagine how much time went into compiling the information in this book. I learned more about Dick Cheney in 10 pages of this book than I had in 400 pages of previous reading I had done.

I also recommend (although not as highly), "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism", by Trevor Aaronson. The title of the book says what it is about, and the book is mostly about the low level implementation of a fake war on terror. But none the less, it is well worth reading. After reading how the FBI is so desperate to find terrorists that they create their own, it makes their "oops we missed the Boston bombers" story hard to believe.

And David thanks for asking for book recommendations about the recent FBI. Given the recent horrible cover-ups perpetrated by the FBI, I have been looking into the same topic myself.

And thanks Larry, I will get the book you recommended.

Guest Robert Morrow
Posted (edited)

Was Hoover involved in the plot to murder John Kennedy. Yes - he knew about it, was aware of it, supported it. Jhmo, military intelligence/CIA did the actual killing. Even if Hoover was somehow *not* involved in the plot to kill JFK, he became an *immediate* accessory after the fact to the murder of JFK.

Jmho, again - LBJ was at the epicenter of the murder of JFK. Again, he most likely delegated the details to military intelligence and CIA both. If LBJ was in it, then Hoover was in it - neighbors for 19 years 1943-1961; Hoover used to brag that he helped to raise the Johnson girls; Hoover babysat them; their houses were 3 houses down and across the street - 57 physical yards away.

LBJ and Hoover both very close to Texas oil executives who in turn had immaculate connections to radicals in military (LeMay) and intelligence. For example Charles Cabell, fired from the CIA by JFK, went back to work at the Pentagon, then he went around DC calling JFK a "traitor." That would be Air Force general Charles Cabell, Air Force General Curtis Lemay & Air Force General Edward Lansdale, who was identified at Dealey Plaza by 2 of his peers. Gen. Charles Cabell - whose brother Earle Cabell was the mayor of Dallas.

JFK researcher John Judge will tell you Gen. Curtis LeMay murdered JFK. I will tell you Lyndon Johnson did it. We are both very likely right. LeMay in his oral history for the LBJ Library described the Kennedys a "arrogant," "vindictive," "ruthless," with [low] moral standards and "cockroaches" who deserved to be stomped on LBJ, who in his mind had been mistreated by the Kennedys. LeMay was also fully aware of the "get rid of LBJ" program of the Kennedys being enacted in fall, 1963.

LeMay - close to H.L. Hunt and Col. D.H. Byrd - both inner circle LBJ supporters.

Jmho again - anyone who tells you the JFK assassination was not a Dallas centric or a Texas centric plot with the shot callers not coming from the political/business elite of Texas (specifically Dallas, TX) is just absolutely nuts. Again, my opinion.

Edited by Robert Morrow
Posted (edited)

Thanks, Mark.

Robert Morrow: Imho again - anyone who tells you the JFK assassination was not a Dallas centric or a Texas centric plot with the shot callers not coming from the political/business elite of Texas (specifically Dallas, TX) is just absolutely nuts. Again, my opinion.

Robert, seriously - could anyone who is not a lone nut assassinate an American president without the consent of the elite citizenship? How would one accomplish that without being destroyed oneself? How would even a small cabal survive that?

Edited by David Andrews
Posted

Raymond,

Although I don't think that J. Edgar Hoover was actively involved in the planning of the shooting part of JFK's assassination, I am quite convinced that he had knowledge of the plot beforehand and was actively involved in plot.

Well I guess we will have to agree to disagree on Hoover's role.

As it turned out, Oswald had been on the FBI payroll.

As I recall, assistant DA William Alexander admitted that he started this false rumor to embarrass the FBI.

LBJ and Hoover were extremely close.

This is true, but you cannot prove guilt just by association.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...