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Steven Gillon: Mark Lane Equals Donald Trump?


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After investigating this guy a bit, I think that the MSM is not the only problem with the JFK case.  Academia is just about as bad.  How anyone can blame the aftermath of this election on Mark Lane, who has been dead since 2016, is simply a non starter.  But what does one expect from someone who worked with Dale Myers at the 50th.

What a disgrace.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/steven-gillon-mark-lane-equals-donald-trump

 

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8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

After investigating this guy a bit, I think that the MSM is not the only problem with the JFK case.  Academia is just about as bad.  How anyone can blame the aftermath of this election on Mark Lane, who has been dead since 2016, is simply a non starter.  But what does one expect from someone who worked with Dale Myers at the 50th.

What a disgrace.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/steven-gillon-mark-lane-equals-donald-trump

 

I'm glad you wrote this. I was equally outraged by Gillon's column blaming the JFK research community for Trump, and Q. I was gonna write a comment on the Post's website but discovered that my subscription had lapsed, and decided it wasn't worth renewing just to shoot down Gillon.

Around the 50th, I added a chapter to my website on LBJ's swearing-in on 11-22-63, and the numerous lies that were told afterwards. Towards the end of this chapter,  I discussed how this event--and the RFK/LBJ feud to follow--was presented in various history books and articles. Here's my section on Gillon. 

The Rorschach Blot As Seen By Steve Gillon

Steve Gillon, the History Channel's resident historian, and the author of The Kennedy Assassination, 24 Hours After, published 2009, is nearly as hard on Johnson as I. He spots many of the contradictions in Johnson's statements, and sees Johnson's lack of honesty regarding what took place on the plane as a major factor in his subsequent rift with the Kennedy's, his loss of credibility with the public, and ultimate downfall. 

He concludes: "LBJ's fear that the nation would not accept him as the legitimate heir to the presidency convinced him that he needed someone close to the slain president, either Kenneth O'Donnell or RFK, to endorse every decision he made on that fateful day. He proved himself willing to manipulate both men in order to obtain the political cover he desired--or he simply lied and manufactured their compliance. He claimed that O'Donnell specifically ordered him to board Air Force One, when that decision was most likely made by the Secret Service. He insisted that O'Donnell was the first person to tell him that JFK was dead, when the evidence shows that Emory Roberts delivered the news. Later, he manipulated a grieving RFK into agreeing that he should take the oath in Dallas. After getting RFK to endorse his decision to take the oath in Dallas, he told everyone on the plane that the swearing-in was the attorney general's idea. The pattern of deception so evident in the early hours of LBJ's administration would eventually erode the moral authority of his presidency. Johnson's penchant for bending the facts to suit his purposes raised doubts about his integrity and created a credibility gap that eventually undermined public trust in his administration...Johnson told so many small lies, and some big ones, that many people started to question everything he said."

And yet Gillon was far too charitable... As Gillon accepted John McCone's claim RFK had agreed to Johnson's being sworn-in on the plane, and failed to note that Ed Guthman had told William Manchester the opposite was true, it seems likely he had a built-in bias to trust Johnson's claims--as long as he had a witness. He fails to accept that some of these witnesses could have been lying. His willingness to provide Johnson--a man he concludes was an habitual xxxx--the benefit of the doubt, moreover, also seems apparent. I mean, why else provide Johnson an alibi for his systematic lies--that he was afraid he would not be accepted? Johnson himself never offered such an alibi. And we shouldn't believe him if he did. 

Yes, as hard as he was on Johnson, Gillon was still far too defensive of the man. In an 11-20-10 blog on the Huffington Post, he claimed "Kennedy loyalists viewed Johnson's decision to fly Air Force One back to Washington as part of the larger narrative of the day -- an example of LBJ's insensitivity and his megalomania. They would later claim that LBJ was so desperate to surround himself with the trappings of presidential power that he hijacked the Kennedy plane. The charge is bogus. Johnson never requested to use the Kennedy plane. The secret service made that call for him. (LBJ and JFK flew to Dallas on separate but identical planes. The Kennedy plane was designated Air Force 26000. Any plane carrying the president is automatically designated Air Force One, so in that sense it did not matter which plane Johnson chose.) But it did matter to the secret service. Agent Emory Roberts never questioned that LBJ would be returning to Washington on Air Force 26000. In his mind, Air Force 26000 was the president's plane. Kennedy was dead and Lyndon Johnson was now president. It was now his plane. It may have been unsentimental, but it was appropriate. And Roberts never asked Johnson what plane he wanted to use." 

When one reads through Gillon's book, moreover, one finds the source for his contention the decision to fly back on Air Force One had been made by Roberts. It was Roberts himself, in his 12-4-64 interview with William Manchester. Here is how the book discusses the matter: "Roberts, typically, was unsentimental about the issue of which airplane to take. When Manchester asked Roberts why the sense of 'urgency' to take Air Force One when the Johnson plane was available, Roberts said, 'Yes, we knew there were two planes there but I was thinking only of the presidential plane...I was thinking only of Air Force One.'" 

Should you fail to be blown away by this, well, join the club. Gillon's position on this issue is almost as nonsensical as Bugliosi's position on, well, many issues. The plane on which the President flies is Air Force One. Period. If Johnson flew back to Washington on the plane formally called Air Force Two, it would have been Air Force One. Period. Roberts' Secret Service report reflects that Johnson sent him down the hall to get O'Donnell's permission to fly back on Air Force One. Even if O'Donnell told Roberts "Yes" and didn't just nod his head, as later claimed by Manchester, and even if he fully understood that by Air Force One Roberts meant Kennedy's plane, it follows from this that Johnson was not forced to fly back on Kennedy's plane by Roberts. It was Johnson's decision. He may have been influenced by Roberts when making this decision. He may have thought O'Donnell had agreed to this decision. But it was his decision. Not O'Donnell's. Not Roberts'. Period. 

I mean, this couldn't be any clearer. Roberts suggested they fly back on Kennedy's plane, and Johnson made the decision that they do so. Johnson could have flown back on the plane that flew him out there--the plane that still held his luggage. No one told him he could not. In fact, it seems obvious from reading the statements of Roberts and Youngblood that they would much rather have had Johnson leave immediately on that plane--even if it was in some way inferior to Kennedy's plane--than sit around for an hour in Kennedy's plane.

This circles back to another point--one unexamined By Gillon. In 1964 Johnson and his defenders were putting the word out that Kenneth O'Donnell had told Johnson to fly back on Air Force One, due to its superior communications equipment. This was disputed by O'Donnell in his testimony before the Warren Commission. This dispute was discussed in William Manchester's book, The Death of a President. In late 1966 and early 1967, then, Johnson's defenders started claiming the Secret Service had told Johnson to fly back on Air Force One, due to its superior communications equipment. What they failed to realize, however, was that the agent in charge of Johnson's detail when it raced off for the airport, Emory Roberts, was interviewed in 1964, and asked why they'd raced back to Kennedy's plane...and had responded in a manner suggesting the decision had had NOTHING to do with the plane's communications equipment, and everything to do with Roberts', and apparently Johnson's, perception that the plane represented something more than just a means of transportation, and was, in fact, something akin to a throne. The dead king no longer sits upon the throne. It was the new king's to sit upon, so sit upon it he must. 

The real weight of the evidence, then, is that Johnson and his defenders had told a series of lies designed to conceal that Johnson had made the decision to wait around in Dallas, and that he had done so against the wishes of the Secret Service, and that he had done so without any input from Mrs. Kennedy. It's clear, moreover, that he didn't really care what Mrs. Kennedy wanted on November 22, 1963--and that she was, in fact, a hostage to his political orchestrations. He had, after all, moved into the plane in which she was accustomed to traveling and made it clear that she was flying back with him...NO MATTER what she wanted...

This fact, however, has proved too hard for many to digest.

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Yeah, that guy has it backward. The cover-up of certain details and information about Lee Oswald and the assassination are what sowed distrust in the government and opened the door for Q. We're talking basic things too, like the Mexico City saga. If the people think you'll lie and cover up a President's assassination, they're going to assume you'll lie about anything.

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1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

Yeah, that guy has it backward. The cover-up of certain details and information about Lee Oswald and the assassination are what sowed distrust in the government and opened the door for Q. We're talking basic things too, like the Mexico City saga. If the people think you'll lie and cover up a President's assassination, they're going to assume you'll lie about anything.

I think Jim's point was that the paranoid distrust of government preceded the JFK Assassination, and has been the "base" of the Republican party since the 50's. 

In reviewing the "Trump" threads on this and other forums, moreover, it's clear to me that very few earnest CT's buy into the false equivalency holding that the same people who were out to destroy Kennedy are out to destroy Trump. 

Trump (with a not-so-subtle push from Roger Stone) has been trying to paint himself as the new JFK, with the same enemies as JFK, for years, in hopes of luring JFK aficionados and Bernie Bro.s over to his side, which is to say the dark side. 

He's failed, IMO. While many of Trump's supporters would describe themselves as CT's, and say JFK was killed by a conspiracy, they are, in my experience, not educated enough about the case to have an opinion worth considering. In short, they are Birchers-in-disguise, ready to believe evil forces conspired against Kennedy not because that's where the evidence leads, but because it fits their worldview--the same worldview in which Trump is a friend to the working man. 

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Pat, that is correct.

What I am saying is that the group of people who first were gulled by Cohn/McCarthy, did not include Mark Lane. 

As Hofstadter then wrote, it was really that core group--which included the JBS-- that enlisted in the Goldwater forces. 

They then evolved militaristically into the Minutemen and later the Patriot movement. They are anti-government and pro gun and read stuff like The Turner Diaries,  and also listen to Alex Jones.

To me, all that, plus QAnon, is a whole different milieu.   Gillon is incredibly wrong on this and if you can find his 2013 special with Myers, you will see why.

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That Gullion is obviously an idiot. But as I have been saying for awhile is that the Trump conspiracy cultists can only harm and discredit the JFKA conspiracy movement. There will be endless false equivocation to lump all conspiracy theorists together and that can only dilute the message of the JFKA conspiracy. It's already happened.

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The thing is, I would like to think that people like Mark Lane , Sylvia Meagher, Harold Weisberg, and Tink Thompson relied on the evidence in the WC volumes to disprove what was in the Warren Report.  In other words, they used the Commission's own evidence to prove its conclusions were dubious.

QAnon began on a bizarre message board with an anonymous person saying HRC was going to be arrested.

Thus began a mysterious rumor about a giant Satan worshiping, pedophilia ring-which Trump. was going to bust.  But the Deep State is after him.

QAnon infiltrates different web sites and is very good at doing this.  They are opposed to social movements like BLM.

Trump retweets some of their notices. They show up at his rallies.

  It is that group which is directly involved with the suspicions about the election. I have a hard time thinking Gillon did not understand the difference.

 

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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I found it.  The 2013 documentary GIllon produced.

https://archive.org/details/LeeHarveyOswald48HoursToLive

This thing actually tried to insinuate that there is some kind of stenograhic record while Oswald was in detention.  Not true.

It also avoided all questions about LHO being on the sixth floor, and at the Tippit scene. Or how Tippit got to 10th and Patton and why.

Plain and simple: its a rerun of the WR, 49 years later. Like noting happened in the interval.

If you watch how bad it is, you will understand why Gillon wrote that column. 

When I saw he had Myers on it, Mr. Single Bullet Fact, I understood who he was.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I want to bump this because I want to show just how utterly wrong both Gillon and the Washington  post was and is.

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Then there is this.  In this one, the rightwing media now try to say that this was an infiltration job.  Yep and the antifa guys got plastic surgery so precise that they looked exactly like the RW leaders.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/politics/capitol-antifa-infiltration-fact-check/index.html

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Now do any of these people go to JFK conferences?  Has anyone recalled them on this forum or any other JFK forums.

Did any of them have JFK and the Unspeakable in their back pockets?  If so, I did not see them.

DId any of them mention the Kennedy assassination? 

Take your picks, either Gillon was that wrong or he was just using Kennedy's murder anniversary for propaganda purposes.  I think its the latter.

But now he has custard. pie all over his face. 

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