Willans weighs in on JFK and Aldo Moro

[Anthony Thorne]

In Tasmania in the late 70’s we had a school class where we practised lying in a gutter, duck and cover style, to avoid the effects of the nuclear flash. Good luck avoiding the blast that follows, of course.

Four decades later - just last year, from memory - a news story appeared about how Israel had conducted an illegal nuclear test overeseas and a deadly raincloud of fallout had drifted over Australia and NZ, poisoning sheep and so on. They had a map showing the weather pattern and the path the fallout took. The map showed the fallout drifting over the northern part of my state, and right over my school.

Kevin Ryan touches upon Gladio and Condor in his book ANOTHER 19, and one of the undercurrents in the book is the number of participants performing covert ops throughout both Bush administrations who had earlier been active in Vietnam, and - in some cases - circumstantially linked to Operation Phoenix. The ‘doing whatever it takes’ attitude is prevalent among those guys, as is a stated determination among many to kick Vietnam Syndrome and ‘win’ the bigger broader fight. So Oliver North dives in to running covert ops and preparing domestic terrorism responses during Iran Contra, Brian Jenkins has a busy career prognosticating about future terrorism in and out of the RAND corporation, and L Paul Bremer takes foreign posts in Gladio-afflicted countries - he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Norway from 1976 to 1979, and  Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1983 to 1986. And then, as a collective, the group of them warning about forthcoming terrorism through the 90’s gets bigger and bigger.

FWIW, I read something I hadn’t noticed about Gerald Ford yesterday. Ford was a member of the Business Roundtable that formed in 1972, and that group made the strengthening of the American Enterprise Institute one of its top priorities. According to a Val Burris essay in the Harland Prechel book POLITICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, when Ford lost the 1976 election to Carter, Ford ‘became a fellow at the AEI, bringing with him a retinue of conservative advisors from the Nixon/Ford administration and committing himself to assist in the organisation’s fundraising. With the endorsement of former President Ford and support from business leaders associated with the Business Roundtable, the AEI launched a development campaign in 1978 to raise a $60 million endowment, mainly from large corporations. The campaign had the effect of dramatically increasing the AEI’s budget and scale of operations, as well as shifting the source of its funding from a handful of right-wing foundations to the broader corporate community.” This is what brought guys like David Packard into the AEI, and got the ball rolling for the eventual Project for a New American Century, which many of the same participants would ultimately found in the same building years later.

That comment about ‘another Jacqueline’ is really striking, I agree.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Anthony Thorne

[James DiEugenio]

Chevy Chase did Ford a favor.

By caricaturing him as a clumsy oaf, he hid a real rat.

[Rob Couteau]

Just now, James DiEugenio said:

Ford, who told the premier of France, an "organization" killed JFK.

I recall reading, many years ago, that J Edgar Hoover controlled Ford via information he had on his wife's alcoholism - that she had secretly gone for treatment. This was during a period when such an admission would have finished a politician's career. So by the time Ford was picked for the Warren Commission, he was completely "trustworthy." I may have read this in one of the Hoover biographies, but I cannot recall which one.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Rob Couteau said:

I recall reading, many years ago, that J Edgar Hoover controlled Ford via information he had on his wife's alcoholism - that she had secretly gone for treatment. This was during a period when such an admission would have finished a politician's career. So by the time Ford was picked for the Warren Commission, he was completely "trustworthy." I may have read this in one of the Hoover biographies, but I cannot recall which one.

I read somewhere that Hoover and LBJ blackmailed Gerald Ford into working for them on the Warren Commission with a sex tape of Ford with East German spy Ellen Rometsch.

[W. Niederhut]

Addendum:  I think I read this story about Ford and Rometsch at Spartacus.edu.*  The original source was a Daily Mail article.

*  https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrometsch.htm

" It is claimed that Ellen Rometsch returned to the United States in 1964 and had an affair with Gerald Ford during his time on the Warren Commission where he was tasked with investigating President Kennedy’s assassination. The affair was used against him by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who was frustrated that the Warren Commission was not sharing their findings, "So, (Hoover) had this tape where Jerry Ford was having oral sex with Ellen Rometsch. You know, his wife had a serious drug problem back then… Hoover blackmailed… Ford to tell him what they were doing." (18)

[James DiEugenio]

WN:

its always good to ask, where did the Daily Mail get it?  Since its not really a scholarly kind of source.

[W. Niederhut]

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

WN:

its always good to ask, where did the Daily Mail get it?  Since its not really a scholarly kind of source.

Understood.  I mentioned the Daily Mail as the source posted in the Spartacus paragraph about Gerald Ford and Ellen Rometsch.

It's another one of the numerous controversial articles published in the U.K. that mysteriously never appeared in the U.S. mainstream media-- like Carl Bernstein's Church Committee era opus about Operation Mockingbird.

The Ellen Rometsch story may be false, but we all know that Gerald Ford was an accomplice in selling the Warren Commission Report to America.

Similarly, the Ford-Kissinger administration seems to have been deeply involved in murdering democratically-elected foreign leaders who were not sufficiently aligned with Wall Street interests, when GHWB and Angleton were still active in the Company.

[Ron Bulman]

On 9/27/2019 at 4:05 PM, Anthony Thorne said:

In Tasmania in the late 70’s we had a school class where we practised lying in a gutter, duck and cover style, to avoid the effects of the nuclear flash. Good luck avoiding the blast that follows, of course.

Four decades later - just last year, from memory - a news story appeared about how Israel had conducted an illegal nuclear test overeseas and a deadly raincloud of fallout had drifted over Australia and NZ, poisoning sheep and so on. They had a map showing the weather pattern and the path the fallout took. The map showed the fallout drifting over the northern part of my state, and right over my school.

Kevin Ryan touches upon Gladio and Condor in his book ANOTHER 19, and one of the undercurrents in the book is the number of participants performing covert ops throughout both Bush administrations who had earlier been active in Vietnam, and - in some cases - circumstantially linked to Operation Phoenix. The ‘doing whatever it takes’ attitude is prevalent among those guys, as is a stated determination among many to kick Vietnam Syndrome and ‘win’ the bigger broader fight. So Oliver North dives in to running covert ops and preparing domestic terrorism responses during Iran Contra, Brian Jenkins has a busy career prognosticating about future terrorism in and out of the RAND corporation, and L Paul Bremer takes foreign posts in Gladio-afflicted countries - he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Norway from 1976 to 1979, and  Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1983 to 1986. And then, as a collective, the group of them warning about forthcoming terrorism through the 90’s gets bigger and bigger.

FWIW, I read something I hadn’t noticed about Gerald Ford yesterday. Ford was a member of the Business Roundtable that formed in 1972, and that group made the strengthening of the American Enterprise Institute one of its top priorities. According to a Val Burris essay in the Harland Prechel book POLITICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, when Ford lost the 1976 election to Carter, Ford ‘became a fellow at the AEI, bringing with him a retinue of conservative advisors from the Nixon/Ford administration and committing himself to assist in the organisation’s fundraising. With the endorsement of former President Ford and support from business leaders associated with the Business Roundtable, the AEI launched a development campaign in 1978 to raise a $60 million endowment, mainly from large corporations. The campaign had the effect of dramatically increasing the AEI’s budget and scale of operations, as well as shifting the source of its funding from a handful of right-wing foundations to the broader corporate community.” This is what brought guys like David Packard into the AEI, and got the ball rolling for the eventual Project for a New American Century, which many of the same participants would ultimately found in the same building years later.

That comment about ‘another Jacqueline’ is really striking, I agree.

 

"In Tasmania in the late 1970's"...  In 1963/64 at Gust Elementary in Denver in the 2nd grade we did an exercise where we went out into the hall to our coat hook and elevated overshoe shelf, knelt facing it, bent over and covered the back of our necks.  Protection in case of a nuclear attack.

Same school I walked home from for lunch on 11/22/63.  Came back to it empty except my teacher at her desk, crying, saying go back home, no more school today.

[W. Niederhut]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

"In Tasmania in the late 1970's"...  In 1963/64 at Gust Elementary in Denver in the 2nd grade we did an exercise where we went out into the hall to our coat hook and elevated overshoe shelf, knelt facing it, bent over and covered the back of our necks.  Protection in case of a nuclear attack.

Same school I walked home from for lunch on 11/22/63.  Came back to it empty except my teacher at her desk, crying, saying go back home, no more school today.

Ron,

       Small world.  I was in the first grade at Ashley Elementary in Denver on 11/22/63.  I walked back to school after going home for lunch that day and saw that some joker had tried to lower the flag on the flag pole in front of the school.  I started to raise the flag, and our principal came outside and told me to leave the flag alone alone and go to my classroom.

      We used to do those same "duck-and-cover" drills in the hall outside of the classrooms.

      As for the salacious Ellen Rometsch/Gerald Ford story, apparently, all links lead back to a Bobby Baker interview with Politico in 2013.

      Mr. Caddy posted the original New York Daily News account here in 2013.

Bobby Baker: JFK and Ford had affairs with East German Spy

By Douglas Caddy, November 21, 2013 in JFK Assassination Debate