Can we possibly AGREE....

[Paul Brancato]

Cliff - very convincing.

[Ron Ecker]

It could be a real gem of information if a researcher could interview anyone who worked at the Pentagon at the time of the assassination.

We know for a fact that Curtis LeMay did not attend any JCS meeting that day with German officials. Did Maxwell Taylor? Did such a meeting even occur or was it some kind of cover story?

While he was still living, I tried by letter to ask Victor Krulak, who was at the Pentagon on 11/22/63, what he remembered about that day. But his son replied to me that his elderly father was in no mental condition to answer such questions. So much for that.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Ron Ecker

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff - very convincing.

Thank you, Paul.

Ave Harriman & the Rockefellers were supra-national forces -- sovereign, their identity as "American" strictly incidental.

Global entities with a tentacle in every pie.

[Michael Walton]

From reading what General Taylor's son wrote about him and his emotional response, I can't help but think that the General must have really struggled over the circumstances surrounding Kennedy's death. From reading the Wikipedia article on General Taylor, I come away believing that he was loyal to both Kennedy brothers. (One of Robert Kennedy's sons is named after the General.) My gut feeling is that he was out of the loop on the assassination. But I believe that he knew after it happened that it was orchestrated by those around him. What a predicament that put him in... having to go along with a cover story he knew was a lie, and having to continue working with those who were behind the killing.

I've always thought that the "Lansdale" walking past the tramps in Dealey Plaza looks as much like Taylor (if not moreso) than Lansdale.

Taylor also wore a large ring on the fourth finger of his left hand.

Just sayin'.

Ron - don't know if you're aware but the guy walking in Dallas with his back to the camera was wearing glasses and they don't appear to be sunglasses either.

[Ron Ecker]

Ron - don't know if you're aware but the guy walking in Dallas with his back to the camera was wearing glasses and they don't appear to be sunglasses either.

I don't see glasses in the picture.

I've seen many pictures of Lansdale, and not one with him wearing glasses.

Maxwell Taylor in 1966:

[Sandy Larsen]

Ron - don't know if you're aware but the guy walking in Dallas with his back to the camera was wearing glasses and they don't appear to be sunglasses either.

I don't see glasses in the picture.

I've seen many pictures of Lansdale, and not one with him wearing glasses.

Maxwell Taylor in 1966:

Michael,

Not long ago, someone (maybe you) commented on the glasses and I looked and could easily see the frame of the glasses. Yet here, in this picture, it is hard to make out the glasses. Because of the chain-link fence.

Is there another picture of this man walking away like this, but not next to a chain-link fence?

Edited April 27, 2016 by Sandy Larsen

[Jim Hargrove]

The top guy by the order of succession was Sec of Defense Robert McNamara but he was sidelined that afternoon, didn't find out the Commander in Chief had died until informed by Bobby Kennedy, &kept busy with relatively minor tasks like gathering Oswald's files, and making arrangements for the arrival of AF1.

The top US officials on the job from the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead were the #2 man at the State Department, George Ball, Averell Harriman right beside him.

The two guys most responsible for the dispatch of Cable 243 and the seismic shift in Kennedy's So East Asia policy were the two guys at the pinnacle of power in DC the day Kennedy died.

Averell Harriman was a man of immense wealth and power belied by his #3 ranking at State.

On December 15, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev landed in Washington DC on the first stop of a two week tour of the States.

The next day he showed up at W. Averell Harriman's pad in Manhattan.

Hi, Cliff,

Every few years, we seem to go around this question a few times, and so here’s my addition to this year's installment.

There is little doubt that JFK was ticking off a whole lot of military people for his decisions about S.E. Asia as well as Cuba. And Jim DiEugenio has shown that the President's policies in other parts of the world were also out of step with MIC goals. But, at least in my opinion, for more than half a century, the evidence has been pretty clear that the set-up of "Lee Harvey Oswald" for the assassination of JFK was designed to provoke an invasion of Cuba.

* The Fair Play for Cuba Committee pantomime around Clay Shaw's Trade Mart in New Orleans was an obvious attempt to associate the future alleged assassin with Castro.

* In a June 1964 interview with FBI undercover agent Jack Childs, Fidel Castro indicated that he thought the assassination was designed to implicate Cuba and provoke an invasion of his island nation. [FBI Airtel from SAC New York to FBi Director, 6/12/64; FBI HQ File 100-428091-3911]

* Around Labor Day prior to the assassination, a man identifying himself as “Lee Oswald” repeatedly tried to purchase four .300 Savage rifles from Robert McKeown, Castro’s personal friend and long-time munitions supplier. McKeown smelled a rat and refused to consider even the ridiculously high price “Oswald” finally offered. Any doubt one of these guns would have appeared on the TSBD sixth floor had Castro’s personal gun supplier made the sale to “Lee Oswald?”

* Let’s not forget that fine story of CIA officer David Atlee Phillips’ snitch Gilberta Alvarado Ugarte that a “negro with red hair” offered Oswald $6500 in cash inside the Cuban Consulate to kill President Kennedy. Just to sell the story a bit harder, Alvarado also claimed Oswald appeared to be “completely at home” in the Cuban Consulate.

* Less than three hours after President Kennedy’s murder, before LBJ quashed the whole “Cuba thing,” Hoover told the President that ”Oswald” had visited Cuba on several occasions after returning from the Soviet Union.

* Why do you suppose none other than Jack Ruby had to correct Dallas D.A. Henry Wade at that famous press conference, pointing out that “Oswald” belonged to a pro-Castro organization, rather than an anti-Castro one?

There are many more indications that the immediate goal of the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, though, as you point out, the evidence is pretty clear that important elements of the U.S. military were also royally ticked off about Mr. Kennedy’s refusal to go full scale war in Vietnam—and worse yet, to schedule its end. My philosophy has always been to follow the clear evidence that we have, and see what else comes to light.

Good luck with your continuing research!

[Michael Walton]

Sandy and Ron,

Here is the animated GIF I made a while back showing the guy people think of as Landsale (and now Taylor) wore glasses in Dealey Plaza.

[Ron Ecker]

Sandy and Ron,

Here is the animated GIF I made a while back showing the guy people think of as Landsale (and now Taylor) wore glasses in Dealey Plaza.

Thanks. I remember that now. The old shadow-of-the-eyeglasses bit.

A third possibility (besides 20-20 vision Lansdale and bespectacled Taylor) is that the man is a demon or Satan himself. See the two horns on the back of his head.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Ron Ecker

[Cliff Varnell]

The top guy by the order of succession was Sec of Defense Robert McNamara but he was sidelined that afternoon, didn't find out the Commander in Chief had died until informed by Bobby Kennedy, &kept busy with relatively minor tasks like gathering Oswald's files, and making arrangements for the arrival of AF1.

The top US officials on the job from the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead were the #2 man at the State Department, George Ball, Averell Harriman right beside him.

The two guys most responsible for the dispatch of Cable 243 and the seismic shift in Kennedy's So East Asia policy were the two guys at the pinnacle of power in DC the day Kennedy died.

Averell Harriman was a man of immense wealth and power belied by his #3 ranking at State.

On December 15, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev landed in Washington DC on the first stop of a two week tour of the States.

The next day he showed up at W. Averell Harriman's pad in Manhattan.

Hi, Cliff,

Every few years, we seem to go around this question a few times, and so here’s my addition to this year's installment.

There is little doubt that JFK was ticking off a whole lot of military people for his decisions about S.E. Asia as well as Cuba. And Jim DiEugenio has shown that the President's policies in other parts of the world were also out of step with MIC goals. But, at least in my opinion, for more than half a century, the evidence has been pretty clear that the set-up of "Lee Harvey Oswald" for the assassination of JFK was designed to provoke an invasion of Cuba.

* The Fair Play for Cuba Committee pantomime around Clay Shaw's Trade Mart in New Orleans was an obvious attempt to associate the future alleged assassin with Castro.

* In a June 1964 interview with FBI undercover agent Jack Childs, Fidel Castro indicated that he thought the assassination was designed to implicate Cuba and provoke an invasion of his island nation. [FBI Airtel from SAC New York to FBi Director, 6/12/64; FBI HQ File 100-428091-3911]

* Around Labor Day prior to the assassination, a man identifying himself as “Lee Oswald” repeatedly tried to purchase four .300 Savage rifles from Robert McKeown, Castro’s personal friend and long-time munitions supplier. McKeown smelled a rat and refused to consider even the ridiculously high price “Oswald” finally offered. Any doubt one of these guns would have appeared on the TSBD sixth floor had Castro’s personal gun supplier made the sale to “Lee Oswald?”

* Let’s not forget that fine story of CIA officer David Atlee Phillips’ snitch Gilberta Alvarado Ugarte that a “negro with red hair” offered Oswald $6500 in cash inside the Cuban Consulate to kill President Kennedy. Just to sell the story a bit harder, Alvarado also claimed Oswald appeared to be “completely at home” in the Cuban Consulate.

* Less than three hours after President Kennedy’s murder, before LBJ quashed the whole “Cuba thing,” Hoover told the President that ”Oswald” had visited Cuba on several occasions after returning from the Soviet Union.

* Why do you suppose none other than Jack Ruby had to correct Dallas D.A. Henry Wade at that famous press conference, pointing out that “Oswald” belonged to a pro-Castro organization, rather than an anti-Castro one?

There are many more indications that the immediate goal of the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, though, as you point out, the evidence is pretty clear that important elements of the U.S. military were also royally ticked off about Mr. Kennedy’s refusal to go full scale war in Vietnam—and worse yet, to schedule its end. My philosophy has always been to follow the clear evidence that we have, and see what else comes to light.

Good luck with your continuing research!

Jim, always great discussing the case with you!

Yes, the Rockefellers had interests all over the world as Jim DiEugenio has pointed out.

But there was only one place on earth a Rockefeller (Nelson) recommended dropping The Bomb -- No. Vietnam.

Jim DiEugenio totally ignores Laos in his analysis of JFK's foreign policy -- a major omission.

I agree 100% that Oswald was sheep-dipped as a Red Agent and if he'd been gunned down a half hour after Kennedy the US would have invaded Cuba.

When the patsy was captured alive the top perps pulled the plug on Oswald as Red Agent scenario.

I see the killing of Kennedy and the killing of Oswald as two separate operations orchestrated from the very top.

I think people routinely conflate an investigation into the murder of Oswald with an investigation into the murder of JFK.

What did the field team in Dealey Plaza need to know about Oswald?

Nothing.

What did Oswald's handlers need to know about the field team other than time and place of the ambush?

Nothing.

So why do people assume that folks associated with Oswald were part of the Kennedy kill team?

[Jim Hargrove]

Cliff,

What you say above sounds right to me, but….

If you plan to assassinate a sitting U.S. president, and you plan to get away with it, you simply must have a patsy ready to take the blame. If you don’t, the search for you will be RELENTLESS. Sooner or later, probably sooner, you’ll be caught and prosecuted.

Those who directed the Dealey Plaza shooters and those who handled Oswald surely knew nothing about one another, but I’ll bet the farm that the top plotters of JFK’s murder knew both groups of managers. The competence and loyalty of both the kill team and Oswald and his handlers were critical to the continued freedom and good health of the plotters.

For the patsy, the plotters made a brilliant choice: a low-level Russian-speaking intel operative who would be easy to portray as a Castro-loving commie, who had ties to both the CIA and the FBI (thus easing the way for a full-scale bureaucratic cover-up, especially from Hoover), and, most importantly, who had already demonstrated he could follow even difficult orders. (The patsy-to-be had to be in the right places at the right times immediately before and after the hit. Otherwise, the cover story would fall apart.)

Everything about the assassination of JFK smacks of a black op: compartmentalization, deniability, a patsy surrounded by both undercover agents and a confusing biographical fog, pissed-off Cubans, hidden managers and cut-outs. And who worked most comfortably in this type of arena? Military men and their civilian overseers, or spooks?

[Paul Baker]

If you plan to assassinate a sitting U.S. president, and you plan to get away with it, you simply must have a patsy ready to take the blame. If you don’t, the search for you will be RELENTLESS. Sooner or later, probably sooner, you’ll be caught and prosecuted.

Jim, the search has been relentless. Yet in 50+ years no-one has yet to come up with a more coherent and common-sense theory than that which the Dallas Police Department proposed before failing in their duty to protect Oswald. It's quite similar to the conclusion that the Warren Commission reached the following year.

I sound like a stuck record ... or someone banging his head against a wall. I do still enjoy reading these posts.

Back into hibernation ...

Edited April 28, 2016 by Paul Baker

[Ray Mitcham]

Sandy and Ron,

Here is the animated GIF I made a while back showing the guy people think of as Landsale (and now Taylor) wore glasses in Dealey Plaza.

Thanks. I remember that now. The old shadow-of-the-eyeglasses bit.

A third possibility (besides 20-20 vision Lansdale and bespectacled Taylor) is that the man is a demon or Satan himself. See the two horns on the back of his head.

Ron, This is what Tom Wilson said about the guy, in "A Deeper Darker Truth" by Donald T Phillips.

"While [the tramps], being escorted to the police station, a civilian in a business suit was observed to have a wire from an electronic device connected to his eyeglasses and extending down, along the bottom of his hairline and into his shirt collar just below the right ear. This individual could have been part of the assassination team"

Edited April 28, 2016 by Ray Mitcham

[Ron Ecker]

Ron, This is what Tom Wilson said about the guy, in "A Deeper Darker Truth" by Donald T Phillips.

"While [the tramps], being escorted to the police station, a civilian in a business suit was observed to have a wire from an electronic device connected to his eyeglasses and extending down, along the bottom of his hairline and into his shirt collar just below the right ear. This individual could have been part of the assassination team"

I assume that must have been based on a Wilson photo analysis. If he used the photo posted here, I don't see how he found any wire as described.

[Tom Fairlie]

I think many people don't see these sorts of plots coherently, because they're overly conditioned to look at the existing hierarchies of known institutions and make too many assumptions.

So far, Cliff has the best analysis in this thread in terms of thinking beyond these hierarchies.

There is absolutely a hierarchy that exists invisibly behind known institutions, connecting them at certain points such that this supra hierarchy can effectively control them. I'm not talking about a star chamber of insidious plotters, but the people at the top of this hidden pyramid (e.g., Rockefellers) wield great power because they effectively control so many aspects of so many public institutions.

After JFK took office, he presented a threat to a vast array of these institutions AND the hidden connections between them. Like a fly trapped in a spider's web, JFK actions and intentions against Wall Street, organized crime, the CIA, and the developing, post-colonial world, tugged on many silken strands and people like Rockefeller took great notice. Books from Gibson and Talbot do a good job tying some of this together, but they miss the hidden hierarchy aspects. The threat from JFK was so palpable, that connected members in these public institutions really didn't need excessive motivation to work together for a shared outcome. The military, the CIA, organized crime, and some industrialists all came together to eat the fly, remove the threat, or whatever metaphor you'd like to apply.

The trick here is that it wasn't the Mafia, or the CIA, or the military that killed JFK; it was selected actors within these institutions that came together to enable and enact the plan. I'm sure there were people at the top who gave the green light, but I'm not going to name names in a public forum. The brilliance of the plan is that these institutions (the FBI too) all took action in the coverup automatically because they knew they were exposed and had to maintain appearances.

Even though it was only select actors within these institutions that took action, one must also remember what the driving purpose of the the CIA and NSA were. These institutions were not created for the reasons cited in their official histories; they were created explicitly to protect the hidden hierarchy. If you look at their actions, their funding model, their ethics, and their successes/failure, you'll start to see that they were designed to maintain power and control for the Establishment. JFK presented a threat and the beast struck back.

I believe that JFK knew exactly what he was doing and was fatalistic about it. However, I don't think he realized the extent to which the Cold War was essentially a scam. He knew it was a right-wing ploy that was designed to oppress leftist regimes, but I don't think he guessed at exactly how deep and how venal this plot was. The Cold War was created explicitly to demonize leftists (including Democrats, unions, liberals, etc.), create a Christian wedge in world religions, and foment the kind of tensions that demand military spending (similar to what the British used in the 1800s/early 1900s). I don't believe that the Establishment ever wanted to invade Cuba. The military certainly did, but the Establishment saw a communist/militant Cuba as a Hegelian wet dream right off our coast.

The military didn't provide air support at the Bay of Pigs (not JFK), and the military didn't invade after JFK's death. Having a fake Cuban threat and a fake Vietnam threat provided the impetus for trillions in new defense spending (current dollars) even though nobody actually wanted to kill us.

Tom