David McCullough, rest in shame

[Joseph McBride]

The late David McCullough was a Skull & Bones member who practiced deceit in his books on Adams and Truman. A rather shameful figure. McCullough justified Truman's dropping of the two atomic bombs and distorted history to do so, as well as ignoring recent scholarship on why the bombs were not necessary in ending the war. He also was the keynote speaker at Dallas's 50th anniversary commemoration of the JFK assassination -- behind police lines, holding back dissidents, including me -- and never mentioned the assassination. He just gave a dull, anodyne recital of some of JFK's famous quotes. McCullough was a thoroughly establishment figure whose eminence came from his willingness to prop up America's official mythology.

https://hnn.us/articles/157.html

http://mobylives.com/Nobile_Pulitzer_speech.html

 

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Greg Wagner]

I couldn't agree more, Joseph. Thanks for sharing.

[James DiEugenio]

Here it is, Mr Pulitzer screwed up both Adams and Truman.

The one with Truman was really a doozy.  It really let him off the hook for the decisions to drop both the bombs.  The War Department never expected a half million fatalities in an invasion.  They expected about 46,000 at the maximum.

https://hnn.us/articles/157.html

I am really glad that Stone and Kuznick went after Truman on this.  And that James Douglass began his book using this to contrast Truman and the use of atomic weapons with Kennedy.

 

[James DiEugenio]

It was also disgusting, as Joe notes, to have to endure David M's completely undistinguished speech at Dealey Plaza on the 50th.

A guy who really had not done any work on Kennedy, and was simply there because of his Establishment name and collecting, undoubtedly, a hefty pay check.

What a dark day that was. Over a year in the making.

 

[W. Niederhut]

      Excellent thread.  I never recognized David McCullough's fraudulence about Truman and Hiroshima/Nagasaki until I watched (and read) Oliver Stone & Kuznick's Untold History of the United States.   

 

[Pete Mellor]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

What a dark day that was. Over a year in the making.

After years of Lancer + members of the public gathering in the Plaza for a solemn ceremony, at the 50th the city fathers block off the area for this debacle!

[James DiEugenio]

That is correct.

Quite often there would be gatherings in the Plaza on the night of the 21st.  There would also be speakers.

And some very distinguished people would be there to address the crowd: like Wecht and Fonzi.

But see, that is what they did not want to happen on the fiftieth.  Because of the massive media exposure. 

So you had three entities--the Sixth Floor, the mayor's office, and Bello Corporation (the communications conglomerate)--which combined to make sure that only what they wanted to be presented got out that day. You had to submit your name in advance, and it had to be cleared through Homeland Security to be allowed entry into the Plaza.

I knew I would never make the cut.  So me, and many others, gathered at a coffee shop about two blocks from the Plaza.  Where we got a nice view of the demagogue Alex Jones, with his bullhorn, taunting the police; who had set up road blocks at every entry point. The cops were there in every form: on foot, on cycles, in cars, and even on horseback. Must have been 200 of them.  Alex Jones turned this into another lead in for his show.

It was really a withering experience.  This was the fiftieth, and every MSM portal carried what the their partners in crime wanted them to broadcast.  David M and all. 

Edited August 10, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

As I looked into the faces of the police officers guarding

the line a block from Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963,

I felt that many of them looked uncomfortable and somewhat

ashamed at what they were being made to do that day. The

ceremony was not in honor of President Kennedy but a PR

exercise by the mayor et al. to further whitewash the corrupt

image of Dallas. To paraphrase Lady Macbeth, "Yet who would have

thought [JFK] to have had so much blood in him. . . . Here's

the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will

not sweeten this little hand."

[Pat Speer]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

That is correct.

Quite often there would be gatherings in the Plaza on the night of the 21st.  There would also be speakers.

And some very distinguished people would be there to address the crowd: like Wecht and Fonzi.

But see, that is what they did not want to happen on the fiftieth.  Because of the massive media exposure. 

So you had three entities--the Sixth Floor, the mayor's office, and Bello Corporation (the communications conglomerate)--which combined to make sure that only what they wanted to be presented got out that day. You had to submit your name in advance, and it had to be cleared through Homeland Security to be allowed entry into the Plaza.

I knew I would never make the cut.  So me, and many others, gathered at a coffee shop about two blocks from the Plaza.  Where we got a nice view of the demagogue Alex Jones, with his bullhorn, taunting the police; who had set up road blocks at every entry point. The cops were there in every form: on foot, on cycles, in cars, and even on horseback. Must have been 200 of them.  Alex Jones turned this into another lead in for his show.

It was really a withering experience.  This was the fiftieth, and every MSM portal carried what the there partners in crime wanted them to broadcast.  David M and all. 

I had a friend who was a huge Alex Jones fan. He became excited when I told him I was at the barricades on the 50th. I had to let him down, though. The police were actually quite professional. It was Alex Jones who tried and tried again to cause a riot, so that the cameramen following him around could capture images of policemen beating on po' Alex Jones and his "warriors for truth."

As far as the show put on by the City of Dallas... They had large screens in place so that those locked out by the barricades could see what was going on. It was fairly boring. While in Dallas that year, I spoke with many attendees of the Lancer and Judyth conferences, moreover, and it turned out that a number of them had been allowed to attend the gathering in Dealey. They just submitted their names online, and tickets were handed out by lottery. It was assumed no conspiracy theorists would be allowed to attend, but it turned out that no extensive background checks were conducted, and that many CTs were in fact allowed to attend. 

They just weren't allowed to speak. 

[James DiEugenio]

That was the point.

Which is what made it so different than the other ones.  

To this day I think what they did was susceptible to a legal challenge on free speech grounds.

And make no mistake, what they did was all plotted out in advance for about a year.  Don't ask me how, but someone got some of the email messages between the Sixth Floor--I think it was Gary Mack--and the Mayor's Office.  When I saw those, I said, I am not sure this is legal.  But it did not matter.  The mayor, I think his name was Rawlings, was determined to do his masters'--in this case, The Sixth Floor and Bello--bidding.

To be forced to watch that completely empty, dull, and anodyne program with David M, and the planes flying over etc.  What a smashing disappointment.  And they even put up huge TV screens so you couldn't miss it. 

And Joe is right, this was a half century later. And the Power Elite in Dallas went to these lengths.

Edited August 10, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

That was the point.

Which is what made it so different than the other ones.  

To this day I think what they did was susceptible to a legal challenge on free speech grounds.

And make no mistake, what they did was all plotted out in advance for about a year.  Don't ask me how, but someone got some of the email messages between the Sixth Floor--I think it was Gary Mack--and the Mayor's Office.  When I saw those, I said, I am not sure this is legal.  But it did not matter.  The mayor, I think his name was Rawlings, was determined to do his masters'--in this case, The Sixth Floor and Bello--bidding.

To be forced to watch that completely empty, dull, and anodyne program with David M, and the planes flying over etc.  What a smashing disappointment.  And they even put up huge TV screens so you couldn't miss it. 

And Joe is right, this was a half century later. And the Power Elite in Dallas went to these lengths.

Yes, agreed. The Dallas powers knew the international media would descend upon Dealey on the 50th, and they wanted it to be a conspiracy-free zone. Pathetic. But it worked. The snore-fest in Dealey received hours of national coverage, and dozens if not hundreds of reports in the international media. While at the same time, not even one journalist, as I recall, attended the Lancer conference down the street, and reported that Kennedy's cousins had attended and had declared that they believe he was killed as a result of a conspiracy. That wasn't front-page news. But I tend to think it would have been mentioned somewhere by someone should the Dallas powers not have distracted the media with their dull yet shiny object in the plaza. 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Pamela Brown]

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Yes, agreed. The Dallas powers knew the international media would descend upon Dealey on the 50th, and they wanted it to be a conspiracy-free zone. Pathetic. But it worked. The snore-fest in Dealey received hours of national coverage, and dozens if not hundreds of reports in the international media. While at the same time, not even one journalist, as I recall, attended the Lancer conference down the street, and reported that Kennedy's cousins had attended and had declared that they believe he was killed as a result of a conspiracy. That wasn't front-page news. But I tend to think it would have been mentioned somewhere by someone should the Dallas powers not have distracted the media with their dull yet shiny object in the plaza. 

While the talking heads all trolled conspiracy but ended up blaming 'that poor little Communist'...an utter sham....

The Ongoing Cover-up won't be silenced. It will just re-form, like an amoeba...

However, I think this time around the rest of the truth is going to come out...and Bob's MMF is a part of it...so stay tuned...

Edited August 11, 2022 by Pamela Brown

[Michael Griffith]

I do not view McCullough as harshly. His books on Adams and Truman contain a great deal of worthwhile, interesting information. I especially enjoyed his book on Adams. However, regarding his book on Truman, I do agree that he had a major blind spot when it came to nuking Japan. His defense of using the A-bomb was inexcusably wrong and incomplete when he wrote Truman in 1992. By that time, there was ample scholarship that showed that nuking Japan was not only unnecessary but immoral, that by June 1945 Japan was on the verge of collapse and practically defenseless against air and sea attack, and that by June 1945 Japan's moderate leaders (including Hirohito) were trying to bring about a surrender. 

[Bob Ness]

On 8/9/2022 at 11:34 AM, James DiEugenio said:

Here it is, Mr Pulitzer screwed up both Adams and Truman.

The one with Truman was really a doozy.  It really let him off the hook for the decisions to drop both the bombs.  The War Department never expected a half million fatalities in an invasion.  They expected about 46,000 at the maximum.

https://hnn.us/articles/157.html

I am really glad that Stone and Kuznick went after Truman on this.  And that James Douglass began his book using this to contrast Truman and the use of atomic weapons with Kennedy.

 

This is interesting. In our family this was pretty much taken as fact that the invasion of Japan would have had catastrophic consequences. My grandfather was part of the invasion of the Philippines and was in Manilla for the Naval assault on Japanese holdovers, who incidentally killed over 100,000 Filipino non-combatants.

In one city.

In one battle.

We have pictures of some of the slaughter and of the Santo Marcos concentration camp after it was freed.

Truman had every reason to believe casualties would be high and I guess the Purple Hearts we give out to soldiers now were originally made for that battle. You may be able to find a memo somebody in DC wrote expressing their idiotic opinion but there was plenty of justification for that claim. It's plain stupid to think otherwise. 47,000? There were three times that on Okinawa alone and several times more with civilians killed. That does not include casualties in Singapore, Manchuria and who knows where else that would have occurred had the war gone on.

This is one of the more idiotic revisionist theories floating around. That doesn't mean the decision to drop the bombs was correct but some of this stuff is lunacy.

75 Years Later, Purple Hearts Made for an Invasion of Japan are Still Being Awarded | History News Network

Edited August 21, 2022 by Bob Ness

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Bob Ness said:

This is interesting. In our family this was pretty much taken as fact that the invasion of Japan would have had catastrophic consequences. My grandfather was part of the invasion of the Philippines and was in Manilla for the Naval assault on Japanese holdovers, who incidentally killed over 100,000 Filipino non-combatants.

In one city.

In one battle.

We have pictures of some of the slaughter and of the Santo Marcos concentration camp after it was freed.

Truman had every reason to believe casualties would be high and I guess the Purple Hearts we give out to soldiers now were originally made for that battle. You may be able to find a memo somebody in DC wrote expressing their idiotic opinion but there was plenty of justification for that claim. It's plain stupid to think otherwise. 47,000? There were three times that on Okinawa alone and several times more with civilians killed. That does not include casualties in Singapore, Manchuria and who knows where else that would have occurred had the war gone on.

This is one of the more idiotic revisionist theories floating around. That doesn't mean the decision to drop the bombs was correct but some of this stuff is lunacy.

75 Years Later, Purple Hearts Made for an Invasion of Japan are Still Being Awarded | History News Network

Bob,

     If you haven't read the book, or watched the series, Oliver Stone's chapter on Truman and the Bomb in The Untold History of the United States is worth studying-- and I say that as a guy whose uncle was killed on the U.S.S. Lexington in the Pacific theater in WWII.

     Before reading The Untold History, I didn't realize that Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz, and even Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay all disapproved of Truman's decision to drop the Bomb on civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believing that was morally wrong and unnecessary from a military standpoint.

     Here's a discussion of that history with Peter Kuznick.

 

 

     

Edited August 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut