Rachel Maddow, JFK and Easy Money

[James DiEugenio]

This is one of the worst examples on the reporting the day before the file release.

It was absolutely pitiful.  And lazy and slothful and simply wrong. Its one thing to fish out a 24 year old report.  Its quite another to not recognize the errors the guy made in that report and to present it as honest and truthful. All in order to say there was nothing significant from the ARRB, when he was saying it a year before the ARRB is created!   How dumb can you get!!!

But I don't think Maddow is dumb, at least her academic record does not indicate that. As I conclude at the end, she learned how to play the game while Air America was having problems and she was transitioning to TV.  The Golden Rule in the MSM: You go along to get along; especially with that kind of money on the table.  

What a sorry state of affairs we live in.  After all its only the assassination of President Kennedy. Read it and weep.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/rachel-maddow-jfk-and-easy-money

Edited October 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Cory Santos]

Agree Jim.

[Douglas Caddy]

Yes, I felt Rachel let her viewers down in how she handled this topic. Truth was DOA.

Chris Matthews on his show tonight was even worse.

[James DiEugenio]

OMG, how could it be worse?

It must have been journalistic pornography.

Which means I don't even want to see it.

 

Edited October 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

I actually write to Maddow about this, and about whether she had ever read any of the better researchers books - named a few for her. Asked her to wonder why Shenon was all over the media instead. 

[James DiEugenio]

I will take a guess and say she did not reply.  Right?

When you write her again, send her my column.

Edited October 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

I will if she ever replies

 

[Eddy Bainbridge]

Mr DiEugenio , I always read your posts with great interest and there is an area that I would like to read your comments on. The CIA's official position has morphed into stating there was a 'benign cover-up'. Can you comment on the what/when/why of this change? You could hardly say the MSM forced the change?

[James DiEugenio]

To the best of my knowledge, that idea is not new.

It actually began at the thirtieth anniversary, if I recall by Walter Pincus, a well known CIA asset.

It has evolved over time into a favored position by Shenon, and Sabato, and a couple of others.  The idea is that somehow the FBI via Hosty, and CIA had a lot of info on Oswald and he still seeped through the net, even though he had actually talked about killing JFK in advance.

The problem with that idea--and I don't for ten seconds think that Shenon and Sabato do not know this--is that the information they rely upon to proffer the concept is quite dubious and was very likely added after the fact.  I spent a lot of time going through this in my review of Shenon's godawful book, especially at the end where I consulted John Newman and Arnaldo Fernandez.  ( https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/shenon-philip-a-cruel-and-shocking-act) What Shenon did was to adapt the CIA's Brian Latell's ideas about Castro's involvement and then use every trick in the book to somehow make Silvia Duran into some kind of Castro agent, even though she wasn't even Cuban.  Even though Win Scott thought the source for this--the rightwing Elena Garro De Paz--was nuts.  Bill Kelly has done a nice job in decimating that whole De Paz twist story fairy tale with  formerly hidden testimony by actor Richard Beymer. Also, Eddie Lopez told me he regrets spending as much time as he did on her in the Lopez Report.

In my view, this is really an attempt to negate what the facts really indicate.  The reason the FBI and CIA had materials on LHO is because he was an FBI informant and a CIA agent provocateur.  To me, the evidence for this today is pretty much overwhelming.  Especially with the INS report presented by Bill Davy at his VMI talk last month.

 

[Joe Bauer]

19 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

To the best of my knowledge, that idea is not new.

It actually began at the thirtieth anniversary, if I recall by Walter Pincus, a well known CIA asset.

It evolved over time into a favored position by Shenon, and Sabato, and a couple of others.  The idea is that somehow the FBI via Hosty, and CIA had a lot of info on Oswald and he still seeped through the net, even though he had actually talked about killing JFK in advance.

The problem with that idea--and I don't for ten seconds think that Shenon and Sabato do not know this--is that the information they rely upon to proffer the concept is quite dubious and was very likely added after the fact.  I spent a lot of time going through this in my review of Shenon's godawful book, especially at the end where I consulted John Newman and Arnaldo Fernandez.  ( https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/shenon-philip-a-cruel-and-shocking-act) What Shenon did was to adapt the CIA's Brian Latell's ideas about Castro's involvement and then use every trick in the book to somehow make Silvia Duran into some kind of Castro agent, even though she wasn't even Cuban.  Even though Win Scott thought the source for this--the rightwing Elena Garro De Paz--was nuts.  Bill Kelly has done a nice job in decimating that whole De Paz twist story fairy tale with  formerly hidden testimony by actor Richard Beymer. Also, Eddie Lopez told me he regrets spending as much time as he did on her in the Lopez Report.

In my view, this is really an attempt to negate what the facts really indicate.  The reason the FBI and CIA had materials on LHO is because he was an FBI informant and a CIA agent provocateur.  To me, the evidence for this today is pretty much overwhelming.  Especially with the INS report presented by Bill Davy at his VMI talk last month.

 

To the best of my knowledge, that idea is not new.

It actually began at the thirtieth anniversary, if I recall by Walter Pincus, a well known CIA asset.

It evolved over time into a favored position by Shenon, and Sabato, and a couple of others.  The idea is that somehow the FBI via Hosty, and CIA had a lot of info on Oswald and he still seeped through the net, even though he had actually talked about killing JFK in advance.

Jim, this is exactly what Shenon said on NPR yesterday.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Figures.

So NPR vetoed me for Shenon.  

You would think that with 200 million from Joan Kroc, they would be independent.

Shenon, Sabato, Posner.  No Jim Lesar, no Rex Bradford, no John Newman.

Well, Bob Parry has agreed to let me write an essay on this for Consortium News. Something to look forward to.

 

Edited October 28, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, dealing with this same subject, the abject failure of the New Media to deal with these documents or this case in any real way, has anyone read Josh Marshall's column yesterday on the so called Mailer Test?

If you have not, you are missing another prime example of just how uninformed, ignorant, and simply obtuse the online media is on this case.

Someone should post it just for a laugh.  

But I will mention it for sure in my article. It is a real humdinger.

[James DiEugenio]

Here is the Josh Marshall blog piece.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-kennedy-documents-and-the-mailer-standard

He bases this claim on the so called Mailer Standard.  How anyone could find Norman Mailer reliable on the JFK case after he flipped sides for monetary reasons and became partners with JFK FBI informant Larry Schiller, that is just nutty.  

But even more stupid is that Marshall does not even know the ins and outs of Hoover's thinking on the SBT.  

Just pathetic.  As I told someone today, viewing the media coverage of these documents has been like watching a 737 crash in slow motion through the glass sliding doors of your living room.  You sit there speechless, helpless and appalled.

Edited October 29, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Clark]

14 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Here is the Josh Marshall blog piece.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-kennedy-documents-and-the-mailer-standard

He bases this claim on the so called Mailer Standard.  How anyone could find Norman Mailer reliable on the JFK case after he flipped sides for monetary reasons and became partners with JFK FBI informant Larry Schiller, that is just nutty.  

But even more stupid is that Marshall does not even know the ins and outs of Hoover's thinking on the SBT.  

Just pathetic.  As I told someone today, viewing the media coverage of these documents has been like watching a 737 crash in slow motion through the glass sliding doors of your living room.  You sit there speechless, helpless and appalled.

It’s a pathetic and painful read, like a FB clickbait interest piece. Sadly that type of writing seems to be infecting the field of jurinalism at a rather aggressive pace.

[Sandy Larsen]

Apparently the MSM will publish assassination tidbits that point to CIA involvement.... as long as the tidbits are provably false.

The following is from a The Sun article noticed by Jim Hargrove:

 

Quote

THE former director of the CIA was asked whether JFK's killer Lee Harvey Oswald was a secret agent — but his answer has been mysteriously cut off.

Newly released documents on the Kennedy assassination contain the bombshell revelation that will further fuel theories of a deep-state conspiracy against the President.

 

A transcript from an interrogation of former CIA director Richard Helms cuts off at the moment it is suggested Oswald could have been a secret agent.

The passage, from a top secret deposition by ex-CIA chief Richard Helms twelve years after the 1963 killing, is being heavily cited by experts poring over the tranche of thousands of files.

It records him being asked: "Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or an agen…”

But the question is cut off there — and his answer remains withheld.

It is among a trove of "obscure clues and shiny objects" that academics and theorists have found — including hints at other killers and a possible CIA cover-up.

(Source)

 

The first problem with that passage is that the document referenced is NOT from the latest release of assassination documents! It was released long ago. And if that weren't bad enough, Helm's reply wasn't withheld at all! It's right there on the very following page of the document. (As seen here on the Mary Ferrell website.) Of course Helms states that Oswald wasn't a CIA agent. Of course.

And lest we believe that only The Sun was snookered into publishing this bullxxxx, I did a search and found the same story on all the following websites:

NBC News
The Telegraph
CNN
Washington Post
New York Times
Huffington Post
etc., etc.

And I saw it earlier today on a CNN news show.

Talk about Fake News.

P.S. I doubt very much this is an isolated incident. I'll bet most the findings "discovered" in the latest batch  of documents -- as noted in the MSM -- are old material.