Bob Schieffer, Face The Nation, just called Warren Commission "COMPLETELY DYSFUNCTIONAL"

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Henry Cabot Lodge...believed that a combination of LBJ, CIA and the mafia were involved in the JFK assassination.

You don't think he'd blame his fellow blue bloods, do you?

You know, the guys who told LBJ the crime was solved a few hours after it occurred?

Cliff, maybe you ought to get a copy of Stone's book and actually read it. It is a blockbuster addition to JFK research and it permanently nails the coffin down on LBJ's participation.

Stone from his teenage years was very close to John Davis Lodge, the brother of Henry Cabot.

From Stone's book - literally on page 2:

QUOTE:

Lodge had done Kennedy's dirty work coordinating a campaign with the CIA to assassinate Catholic Vietnamese President Diem. I couldn't resist asking John Lodge about his brother.

"Did you ask your brother who really killed Kennedy?" I said.

His lips spread into a tight grin. "Cabot said it was the Agency boys, some Mafiosi," he looked me in the eye... "and Lyndon."

"Did your brother know in advance," I asked.

Lodge took a sip of his Manhattan. "He knew Kennedy wouldn't be around to fire him. LBJ kept him at his post so he could serve his country."

[Roger Stone, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, p. 2]

UNQUOTE

Basically, Stone is saying Henry Cabot Lodge was an accessory before-the-fact to the murder of John Kennedy, someone with foreknowledge. Maybe Stone would not say it so indelicately, but that is the way I see it.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Robert Morrow

[Cliff Varnell]

Stone from his teenage years was very close to John Davis Lodge, the brother of Henry Cabot.

From Stone's book - literally on page 2:

QUOTE:

Lodge had done Kennedy's dirty work coordinating a campaign with the CIA to assassinate Catholic Vietnamese President Diem.

END QUOTE

Interesting stuff, Robert.

But it wasn't Kennedy's "dirty work" Lodge was doing -- it was fellow blue blood W. Averell Harriman's dirty work. Harriman, along with State Dept #2 George Ball and others, set off the campaign to overthrow Diem with the infamous Cable 243 of August 24, '63.

Cable 243 was bum-rushed past JFK who thought he was signing off on a cable agreed upon at the Cabinet level by all concerned.

Lodge was given the green light to lobby the Vietnamese generals for a Diem overthrow, which was a policy championed by Harriman and his allies in the administration, Ball most significantly.

Robert, who was the highest ranking US administration official on the job on the ground in Washington DC the afternoon of 11/22/63 pulling the levers of power?

Most of the cabinet was in the air over the Pacific.

Bobby Kennedy, the AG, was at home in Virginia making phone calls.

Robert McNamara was at the Pentagon but in his autobiography admitted he didn't find out that JFK was dead until Bobby called him at 2:45pm EST. JFK's death had been announced almost a half hour earlier, but no one at the Pentagon bothered to inform the Secretary of Defense that the C-in-C was dead.

McNamara found out Kennedy was dead 15 minutes before I did, at McKinley Elementary in Petaluma CA.

McNamara, the quintessential Yes-Man, didn't have anyone to say Yes to and did nothing that afternoon.

The only other top officials in DC were the Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare, and the Postmaster General. Suffice to say neither of those positions were anywhere near the real levers of power in DC that afternoon.

In the line of Presidential succession the State Department ranks the highest, so the highest government official at the pinnacle of power in Washington DC was the #2 man at State -- George Ball.

Ball spent the afternoon in his Foggy Bottom office with W. Averell Harriman, State Dept #3.

So the two guys most responsible for putting in motion the overthrow of Diem occupied the highest positions of actual power the afternoon Kennedy was murdered.

I don't see this as a co-incidence.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Cliff Varnell

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I might agree with a lot of your post, especially JFK's acquiescence to the Diem overthrow, which JFK was stunned to find out was an assassination.

But I think in the world of the US National Security hawks who murdered JFK, the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" as Nixon used to call it, rage and anger over Cuba policy had a lot more to do with the JFK assassination than wanting a Vietnam War.

The hawks wanted an invasion and overthrow of Fidel Castro and Cuba, and what LBJ gave them instead was the Vietnam War.

I do not think Harriman or Ball were in any way shape or form involved in the JFK assassination. Apparently, Lodge knew there was a plot in advance and did absolutely nothing.

Is it true that Henry Cabot Lodge in the days before the JFK assassination was making many phone calls from a pay phone in the lobby of his Hawaiian hotel? I heard that at a JFK conference once and it is highly suspicious to me (as opposed to calling from a hotel room that might be wiretapped or which would leave a traceable telephone record).

[Cliff Varnell]

I might agree with a lot of your post, especially JFK's acquiescence to the Diem overthrow, which JFK was stunned to find out was an assassination.

Robert, our disagreements are collegial.

Yes, we see different people pushing the button on Kennedy -- but it's an amiable discussion in my mind.

But I think in the world of the US National Security hawks who murdered JFK, the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" as Nixon used to call it, rage and anger over Cuba policy had a lot more to do with the JFK assassination than wanting a Vietnam War.

The hawks wanted an invasion and overthrow of Fidel Castro and Cuba, and what LBJ gave them instead was the Vietnam War.

They wanted both.

They also wanted to put 60,000 troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail '61-'62 until "Cave with Ave" Harriman negotiated the "neutralization" of Laos.

No. Viet General Giap got a free flow of traffic down the Averell Harriman Highway while the old China Hands organized a take-over of the opium traffic out of the Golden Triangle.

Harriman wanted the neutralization of Laos and the militarization of So Vietnam, requiring the removal of Diem.

The US foreign policy/military establishments wanted the militarization of both Laos and Vietnam in the early days of the JFK adm.

By 1963 Kennedy, Diem and Ho wanted all of Indochina to be "non-aligned."

Who won?

Harriman.

Who stood in the way of Harriman's continued success?

Only Kennedy.

Once he was out of the way Harriman's heavy lifting was done and the Golden Triangle went on a ten-year development plan culminating in the destruction of the Corsican Mafia and a take-over of the world's heroin production, both achieved by 1973.

The American blue bloods who pushed hardest for the Vietnam War won the Vietnam War.

I do not think Harriman or Ball were in any way shape or form involved in the JFK assassination. Apparently, Lodge knew there was a plot in advance and did absolutely nothing.

Makes him an accessory, doesn't it?

Is it true that Henry Cabot Lodge in the days before the JFK assassination was making many phone calls from a pay phone in the lobby of his Hawaiian hotel? I heard that at a JFK conference once and it is highly suspicious to me (as opposed to calling from a hotel room that might be wiretapped or which would leave a traceable telephone record).

The blue bloods were more involved than you think, Robert.

[Cliff Varnell]

The blue bloods were more involved than you think.

Robert, what was the name the AP reporter who quoted McGeorge Bundy admitting that he called in the lone-nut news to Lyndon on AF1?