The BIG UNANSWERED QUESTION: Why was JFK murdered?

[Mervyn Hagger]

While I have read and collected a lot of material about Manuel Artime Buesa, I do not have a biography devoted to his life and times. Can anyone suggest such a book?  (In the English language.)

[Greg Doudna]

On 12/15/2020 at 11:13 AM, Mervyn Hagger said:

If JFK was not the work of a lone nut, any plan would take a lot of organization and that means a lot of money.

Who would gain?

You repeatedly assume a huge organization and a lot of money, and that some gang must financially benefit, for the JFK assassination not to have been lone-nut. Why insist on those assumptions? No huge organization needed to do a hit, just knowledge of vulnerabilities in security. No huge amount of money required beyond expenses, and what was needed would come from some sympathetic private donor source.

John Curington, aide to HL Hunt, says HL Hunt funded a lot of unsavory groups, by means of briefcases of cash. He says Hunt was on the phone frequently by private line to J Edgar Hoover and they would exchange information and favors. Hunt put significant sums of his own money into his Lifeline national radio program which was entirely ideologically motivated. Curington says Hunt, with advice from Mob figures, seriously discussed organized killings of domestic and foreign influential figures for ideological reasons (though Curington does not claim on the record that he is aware that that ever went beyond talk). This was the climate of the times. 

There is no "must" have involved a large organization and no "must" have been motivated by financial benefit, if it was not lone-nut. Would not your logic disprove the Lincoln assassination was a conspiracy?   

[Mervyn Hagger]

19 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

You repeatedly assume a huge organization and a lot of money, and that some gang must financially benefit, for the JFK assassination not to have been lone-nut. Why insist on those assumptions? No huge organization needed to do a hit, just knowledge of vulnerabilities in security. No huge amount of money required beyond expenses, and what was needed would come from some sympathetic private donor source.

John Curington, aide to HL Hunt, says HL Hunt funded a lot of unsavory groups, by means of briefcases of cash. He says Hunt was on the phone frequently by private line to J Edgar Hoover and they would exchange information and favors. Hunt put significant sums of his own money into his Lifeline national radio program which was entirely ideologically motivated. Curington says Hunt, with advice from Mob figures, seriously discussed organized killings of domestic and foreign influential figures for ideological reasons (though Curington does not claim on the record that he is aware that that ever went beyond talk). This was the climate of the times. 

There is no "must" have involved a large organization and no "must" have been motivated by financial benefit, if it was not lone-nut. Would not your logic disprove the Lincoln assassination was a conspiracy?   

Greg, no one kills someone for someone else out of the kindness of their heart. Organization that works costs big money.

[Greg Doudna]

Mervyn, I hope this is sufficiently related to the topic (not something that would be argued in a court prosecution). I wonder how you would assess the following propositions:

(1) That the controlling authority in terms of real, as opposed to nominal, power in the United States is the military, referring to the top commanders, the joint chiefs and their circles. They permit the traditional and civilian and constitutional mechanisms to function and in almost all times support those mechanisms, for the most part because they personally believe in and are committed to them. But the nation's governance by the military chiefs' nominal bosses, the term-limited elected civilian presidents whoever they may be, and the president's cabinets that come and go, is always by permission.

(2) I have puzzled whether the Defense Dept. or CIA has higher or more real power, i.e. which answers to or has the ability to veto actions of which, and the answer to that would be: defense/military. 

(3) Ronald Reagan, who captured the heart of mainstream America as no other since FDR, ran on campaign and State of the Union pledges to pursue deep mutual nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union toward an objective of ending all nuclear weapons in the world, criticizing the widely popular Nuclear Freeze movement on the grounds that it did not go far enough. Reagan spoke that with passion, and it is widely attested by those who knew Reagan personally that Reagan believed his sound-bite political views delivered convincingly. In a 1986 "walk in the woods" in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev accepted Reagan's public proposals to the Soviet Union that had been widely regarded as framed so as to be impossible for the Soviet Union to accept. Gorbachev surprised pundits by embracing Reagan's proposals and a serious four-stage plan to end nuclear weapons on earth, in accord with Reagan's stated and actual wishes and campaign and presidential addresses. Reagan agreed. The principals were in agreement and the next step was to instruct staffs to work out the paperwork and do the rollout, which each did. Reagan's staff, horrified, immediately walked that back and killed the deal, explaining, as Haig later put it in Time magazine, that Reagan's campaign rhetoric never had been meant to be taken seriously; that nuclear deterrence had kept the peace in Europe and it would be catastrophic to alter that now. Another Reagan official, so I remember reading, explained that Reagan had on that point gotten outside of Reagan administration policy. There was no serious issue that the Gorbachev-Reagan agreed plan was not doable and verifiable; the issue was whether to do it. The Pentagon weighed in with a budget or fiscal responsibility argument: nuclear deterrence against invasion costs a lot less than maintaining standing armies; if reliance upon nuclear weapons was ended, America's defense budget and burden on American taxpayers would be significantly increased. The Gorbachev-Reagan vision and agreement of the Soviet Union and the US working together to bring about a world without the threat of nuclear war was therefore killed within hours by Reagan staffers. The conventional wisdom was that Reagan had tried, but what could a poor president do, when his staff would not carry out his wishes?

That is the runup to the question or proposition: if a Reagan of a different character had had the capacity and the will to respond differently, had cracked heads and MADE his staff carry through with the Gorbachev-Reagan program to be undertaken, against almost unanimous opposition from the military, and Reagan had refused to back down on that, would the popular Reagan have been forcibly removed on national-security grounds? With financial benefit to some gang having nothing whatsoever to do with it, except as spinoff collateral benefit (insider stock trading and the like)? Just a thought experiment. (The point of this thought experiment is to cause you to reconsider your bedrock insistence that organized assassinations, whether foreign or domestic, do not happen for ideological or realpolitik reasons as primary driver, not private financial advantage.)

[Joe Bauer]

41 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Mervyn, I hope this is sufficiently related to the topic (not something that would be argued in a court prosecution). I wonder how you would assess the following propositions:

(1) That the controlling authority in terms of real, as opposed to nominal, power in the United States is the military, referring to the top commanders, the joint chiefs and their circles. They permit the traditional and civilian and constitutional mechanisms to function and in almost all times support those mechanisms, for the most part because they personally believe in and are committed to them. But the nation's governance by the military chiefs' nominal bosses, the term-limited elected civilian presidents whoever they may be, and the president's cabinets that come and go, is always by permission.

(2) I have puzzled whether the Defense Dept. or CIA has higher or more real power, i.e. which answers to or has the ability to veto actions of which, and the answer to that would be: defense/military. 

(3) Ronald Reagan, who captured the heart of mainstream America as no other since FDR, ran on campaign and State of the Union pledges to pursue deep mutual nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union toward an objective of ending all nuclear weapons in the world, criticizing the widely popular Nuclear Freeze movement on the grounds that it did not go far enough. Reagan spoke that with passion, and it is widely attested by those who knew Reagan personally that Reagan believed his sound-bite political views delivered convincingly. In a 1986 "walk in the woods" in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev accepted Reagan's public proposals to the Soviet Union that had been widely regarded as framed so as to be impossible for the Soviet Union to accept. Gorbachev surprised pundits by embracing Reagan's proposals and a serious four-stage plan to end nuclear weapons on earth, in accord with Reagan's stated and actual wishes and campaign and presidential addresses. Reagan agreed. The principals were in agreement and the next step was to instruct staffs to work out the paperwork and do the rollout, which each did. Reagan's staff, horrified, immediately walked that back and killed the deal, explaining, as Haig later put it in Time magazine, that Reagan's campaign rhetoric never had been meant to be taken seriously; that nuclear deterrence had kept the peace in Europe and it would be catastrophic to alter that now. Another Reagan official, so I remember reading, explained that Reagan had on that point gotten outside of Reagan administration policy. There was no serious issue that the Gorbachev-Reagan agreed plan was not doable and verifiable; the issue was whether to do it. The Pentagon weighed in with a budget or fiscal responsibility argument: nuclear deterrence against invasion costs a lot less than maintaining standing armies; if reliance upon nuclear weapons was ended, America's defense budget and burden on American taxpayers would be significantly increased. The Gorbachev-Reagan vision and agreement of the Soviet Union and the US working together to bring about a world without the threat of nuclear war was therefore killed within hours by Reagan staffers. The conventional wisdom was that Reagan had tried, but what could a poor president do, when his staff would not carry out his wishes?

That is the runup to the question or proposition: if a Reagan of a different character had had the capacity and the will to respond differently, had cracked heads and MADE his staff carry through with the Gorbachev-Reagan program to be undertaken, against almost unanimous opposition from the military, and Reagan had refused to back down on that, would the popular Reagan have been forcibly removed on national-security grounds? With financial benefit to some gang having nothing whatsoever to do with it, except as spinoff collateral benefit (insider stock trading and the like)? Just a thought experiment. (The point of this thought experiment is to cause you to reconsider your bedrock insistence that organized assassinations, whether foreign or domestic, do not happen for ideological or realpolitik reasons as primary driver, not private financial advantage.)

Interesting. Thought provoking.

[Mervyn Hagger]

7 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Mervyn, I hope this is sufficiently related to the topic (not something that would be argued in a court prosecution). I wonder how you would assess the following propositions:

(1) That the controlling authority in terms of real, as opposed to nominal, power in the United States is the military, referring to the top commanders, the joint chiefs and their circles. They permit the traditional and civilian and constitutional mechanisms to function and in almost all times support those mechanisms, for the most part because they personally believe in and are committed to them. But the nation's governance by the military chiefs' nominal bosses, the term-limited elected civilian presidents whoever they may be, and the president's cabinets that come and go, is always by permission.

(2) I have puzzled whether the Defense Dept. or CIA has higher or more real power, i.e. which answers to or has the ability to veto actions of which, and the answer to that would be: defense/military. 

(3) Ronald Reagan, who captured the heart of mainstream America as no other since FDR, ran on campaign and State of the Union pledges to pursue deep mutual nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union toward an objective of ending all nuclear weapons in the world, criticizing the widely popular Nuclear Freeze movement on the grounds that it did not go far enough. Reagan spoke that with passion, and it is widely attested by those who knew Reagan personally that Reagan believed his sound-bite political views delivered convincingly. In a 1986 "walk in the woods" in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev accepted Reagan's public proposals to the Soviet Union that had been widely regarded as framed so as to be impossible for the Soviet Union to accept. Gorbachev surprised pundits by embracing Reagan's proposals and a serious four-stage plan to end nuclear weapons on earth, in accord with Reagan's stated and actual wishes and campaign and presidential addresses. Reagan agreed. The principals were in agreement and the next step was to instruct staffs to work out the paperwork and do the rollout, which each did. Reagan's staff, horrified, immediately walked that back and killed the deal, explaining, as Haig later put it in Time magazine, that Reagan's campaign rhetoric never had been meant to be taken seriously; that nuclear deterrence had kept the peace in Europe and it would be catastrophic to alter that now. Another Reagan official, so I remember reading, explained that Reagan had on that point gotten outside of Reagan administration policy. There was no serious issue that the Gorbachev-Reagan agreed plan was not doable and verifiable; the issue was whether to do it. The Pentagon weighed in with a budget or fiscal responsibility argument: nuclear deterrence against invasion costs a lot less than maintaining standing armies; if reliance upon nuclear weapons was ended, America's defense budget and burden on American taxpayers would be significantly increased. The Gorbachev-Reagan vision and agreement of the Soviet Union and the US working together to bring about a world without the threat of nuclear war was therefore killed within hours by Reagan staffers. The conventional wisdom was that Reagan had tried, but what could a poor president do, when his staff would not carry out his wishes?

That is the runup to the question or proposition: if a Reagan of a different character had had the capacity and the will to respond differently, had cracked heads and MADE his staff carry through with the Gorbachev-Reagan program to be undertaken, against almost unanimous opposition from the military, and Reagan had refused to back down on that, would the popular Reagan have been forcibly removed on national-security grounds? With financial benefit to some gang having nothing whatsoever to do with it, except as spinoff collateral benefit (insider stock trading and the like)? Just a thought experiment. (The point of this thought experiment is to cause you to reconsider your bedrock insistence that organized assassinations, whether foreign or domestic, do not happen for ideological or realpolitik reasons as primary driver, not private financial advantage.)

Greg, I read all of your text and I fully appreciate the point you are making.

However, and leaving aside the specifics of Reagan for the moment, since his appearance happened in a different time period on a new stage, the fact of the matter is that the people on that stage (Reagan being a good example since he was first a theatrical actor and a body-voice in TV commercials); behind his movies, and behind the commercials were accountants, and behind the accountants were managers, and behind the managers were investors engaged in business plans involving money.

Big money.

Beginning with the rigged ballots and that first election of LBJ, was the shadowy but flamboyant 'Duke of Duval' in South Texas, and behind him were the guys who came together and huddled in a Houston hotel suite. They drew their numbers from that central geographical hub which included Galveston and Dallas and several points in-between.

Here was the money, and the main driving force behind the money was the quest for oil.

Showing off their 'good ol boy culture' was achieved by media, both printed and electronic.

Here was the power base that controlled the USA in the days of the flashy Fifties and Sixties and bumpy Seventies and onwards.

Their quest for oil was not confined to the USA.

Since oil made the world at war operate, these guys operated wherever there was oil.

To do that they needed protection. Sometimes by stealth, and often by the show of strength.

Military power represented jobs, good paying jobs and those jobs represented votes.

Votes equaled power.

If anyone interfered with the control that the Texas good ol boys used to run their affairs in Washington DC, and therefore that part of the world not controlled by 'The Reds' - which included the 'ChiComs' - they were denounced as people who were out to destroy those good paying jobs and therefore American home-life of the Fifties and Sixties as portrayed in television commercials and supported by commercial radio. In short, they were "un-American"!

"Better dead, than Red"!

Of course, America of the Fifties and Sixties, as seen on those TV commercials and in the sitcoms that they appeared in, was all an illusion.

Airchecked out of the sound and limited in the images were alternative views of women; Blacks and Hispanics - unless their inclusion supported the illusion that these three groups "asked for it", and were getting what they asked for.

Listen to the Oval Office tapes of guys who sat around the big desk talking to their buddies in person, or on the phone. These were earthy conversations of the type you might hear in a bar, or even of the type that Donald Trump expressed getting off that infamous bus trip when he was talking about the genitals of women.

This is how real men of the real Fifties and Sixties talked and acted: if they were 'in the loop'.

That was the oil loop that stretched across the Atlantic Ocean and had the backing and support of the faceless men in London, England. They were in the process of continuing to lose control of the wealth of the Old World which they had gained by force, prior to the disruption of World War II.

They were rescued from the clutches of Hitler by the guys who controlled the oil in Texas.

(Oil) money talked and bullshit walked, "dooky, or get off the pot" they said.

They were a ruthless crowd, and one day when LBJ called Clint Murchison after upsetting him, and Clint was told by his butler that "The President" was on the phone, he asked "president of what?" "Tell him I'm busy", he replied.

An apocryphal tale that sums up the power that these guys held.

When Reagan came along their power was still in place, just modified.

Maggie helped when she came calling.

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Mervyn Hagger

[Paul Brancato]

Well, Mervyn and Greg, as General Smedley Butler famously said, paraphrased: I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for big business. War is a racket.

its not either or Big Oil or the Military Brass. It’s both. 

[Joe Bauer]

36 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Well, Mervyn and Greg, as General Smedley Butler famously said, paraphrased: I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for big business. War is a racket.

its not either or Big Oil or the Military Brass. It’s both. 

Big Oil, Big Brass, Big Money, Big Greed, Big Ego, Big Control Obssession, Big Racial Hatred. 

Big Corruption Of The Soul.

[Mervyn Hagger]

4 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Big Oil, Big Brass, Big Money, Big Greed, Big Ego, Big Control Obssession, Big Racial Hatred. 

Big Corruption Of The Soul.

To that list add 'Big Ignorance' within cultism, and the Kennedy adoration tribe is a cult. A dangerous cult because ignorance is very dangerous indeed.

[Richard Price]

Mervyn, I am not a lawyer, a scholar or even an noted intellectual, but overall I am a pretty good judge of character.  You ask about proof which is presentable in court.  You then proceed to poison the well by assuming points NOT IN EVIDENCE AND HERESAY without actual proof, namely, that the Kennedy brothers are two faced XXXXX.  I'll agree with you on one factual point.  Between them, they had two faces.  The rest must be proven, as you say, not by heresay, name calling and personal opinion (we all have those).  As pointed out previously, you presume a lot of money and organization had to be involved.  You seem to miss the point of all the converging energies, enemies and shared objectives among many groups at that time.  The CIA (leadership-at least) knew JFK had threatened to smash it into a thousand pieces.  The Cuban resistance forces were being fed information about JFK's rapport with Castro.  The Mafia was under constant and increasing attack by RFK, the right wing extremists were seeing the increasing pressure to support Civil Rights for blacks in America.  The military (Joint Chiefs of Staff) were aware of JFK's more pacifist role on the world stage (having used his extensive knowlege of history & war) including his personal WWII experiences.  This also would include his "hands on" approach such as in the Bay of Pigs in over ruling overt use of the military.  Then lastly (at least in this list), you have a corrupt Vice President who has ties in many ways to many of these groups and understands that if Kennedy lives, his life long goal of being President is OVER.  He (Johnson) is under investigation by agencies controlled by RFK and sees the end coming quickly and painfully.

Now, none of this on it's face is more than circumstantial evidence, but when placed side by side and documented in their scope a case can be built for a network of any number of these entities causing the fatal act.  It does not require a "follow the money" type of investigation to find a large sum dedicated to the act, but rather a close examination of personnel and funds ALREADY AVAILABLE and whose usage was then allocated in ways not related to its original intent.  This is done all the time within the military/CIA and any group which uses "black money" to achieve their goals without being directly tied to the act/acts which achieves their goal.

Coming from the unwashen masses you alluded to, I am also a JFK cultist in your definition.  I study the man, his times and his acts from any and all angles available to an average Joe.  While evaluating everything it is my duty also to evaluate the various evidence by source, relationship to the subject and bias from that source.  In so doing, I do not close my mind as you do, and proclaim that JFK/RFK were two faced XXXXX.  There is far too much evidence to the contrary (in my opinion).

I close by saying, we will just have to disagree, amicably or not.  Unless you venture further thought worthy of reply, my opinion is stated and is as valid as yours.  Now, after much ado about nothing, what is YOUR answer to the question you proffered?  If any of us had the answer, we would have pursued it to the extent of our ability.  Step up, otherwise you are just continuing the same merry-go-round you profess that the rest of us are doing.

[Pamela Brown]

After emerging from in-depth Bob Dylan research for my recent JFKLancer presentation, and uncovering what I consider to be the unusual significance of his song A Hard Rain's a-gonna Fall, I am considering the possibility that there was supposed to have been a nuclear exchange as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and because JFK refused to cooperate, he had to be taken out of the way.