CNN rolls out the execrable Greald Posner

[Robert Burrows]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-jfk-s-secret-service-agent-s-bullet-story-believable/vi-AA1gOARd?ocid=socialshare

[Karl Kinaski]

Landis

Posner

David Wangstedt ( a 30 year old musician!) and his "all style and no substance" video.  

... I see a pattern to muddy the water again ... 

What's next? Activate the 92 year old Howard Willens again? The last living member of the WC staff? Who's refrain was is and will be: HISTORY WILL PROVE US (the WC and WC staff) right? 

 

HISTORY WILL PROVE US RIGHT was the 50th anniversary LN bullet they shot to the head of all critical thinkers. Martin Hay wrote a brilliant critique about Howard Willens book. The critique has since been removed from Amazon, but 9 years ago I saved it to my computer. Here it is: 

Quote, Martin Hay:

 

 

Quote

A Whitewash of a Whitewash
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2014
Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, even on small, trivial issues. So imagine you screwed up – whether by
accident or design – something as monumental as the investigation into the murder of the President? How
much time do you think would have to pass before you were ready to hold up your hand?
Apparently, for former Warren Commission lawyer Howard Willens, even 50 years is not long enough. Because,
despite close to five decades of criticism, Willens remains defiant and unapologetic in his defense of the
Commission and its now-defunct conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. And it is not as if that
criticism has come entirely from conspiracy "buffs." Far from it. The Commission's findings and methods have
been questioned by historians, pathologists, lawyers, district attorneys, state governors, US senators,
presidents, and even members of the Commission itself.
For example, in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that "The Warren Commission
failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President." (HSCA report, p.
256) It went on to say that "the committee found fault with the manner in which the conclusions of the
Warren Commission were stated...There were instances, the committee found, in which the conclusions did not
accurately reflect the efforts undertaken by the Commission and the evidence before it...the Commission
overstated the thoroughness of its investigation and the weight of its evidence in a number of areas, in
particular that of the conspiracy investigation...It is a reality to be lamented that the Commission failed to live
up to its promise" (Ibid, 259-261). Indeed this failure to do as promised and fully explore the possibility of a
conspiracy is the reason why one of the Commission's own members, Senator Richard Russell, later admitted
to not being satisfied that Lee Harvey Oswald really had planned and executed the assassination all by himself.
Professor emeritus of history, Gerald McKnight, goes much further in his landmark book, Breach of Trust: How
the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why. McKnight describes the Warren Report as "a shoddily
improvised political exercise in public relations and not a good-faith investigation into the Kennedy
assassination." (McKnight, p. 7) He explains that the Commission "favoured witnesses who strengthened the
case for Oswald's guilt and discounted or even suppressed testimony (and evidence) of those who jeopardized
the prosecution case the government was building against a dead man." (Ibid, p. 3) McKnight does not just say
these things, he proves them over and over again, using the government's own records almost exclusively.
Willens is having none of it. He dedicates his book "To my colleagues on the staff of the Warren Commission
who knew that Truth was their only client". And he insists, presumably with a straight face, that "In the nearly
fifty years since the report was published in 1964, not one fact has emerged that undercuts the main
conclusions of the commission that Oswald was the assassin and that there is no credible evidence that either
he or Ruby was part of a larger conspiracy." (Willens, p. 11)
This is patently absurd. After careful study of the Warren report and its 26 volumes of hearing and evidence,
first generation critics like Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, and Sylvia Meagher proved beyond any shadow of a
doubt that the evidence before the Commission undermined, contradicted, and flat-out disproved its central
conclusions. That was over 40 years ago and the Commission's conclusions do not look any better today.
There is a word for Willens's stance: denial. Quite frankly, Willens needs to step up and admit that the world is
round.
At the time of the assassination, Howard Willens was a lawyer in the Justice Department's criminal division.
After President Lyndon Johnson announced that he was putting a Commission together, Deputy Attorney
General Nicholas Katzenbach hand-picked Willens to "help the commission get up and running." (Ibid) This is
significant because Katzenbach made his own objectives abundantly clear within hours of Oswald's murder on
November 25, 1963. "The public must be satisfied", he wrote in his now infamous memo to Bill Moyers, "that
Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large, and that the evidence was
such that he would have been convicted at trial." He also suggested that "speculation about Oswald's
motivation ought to be cut off" and that the government should rebut "thought that this was a Communist
conspiracy or...a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists."
In other words, the buck stops with Oswald. This was long before the facts of the case had been established.
On November 25th the authorities did not have a single credible eyewitness against Oswald, had not yet
"found" his print on the rifle, and had performed a nitrate test that indicated he had not fired the weapon. It
had not even been established that Oswald was the gunman let alone that there was no conspiracy. Clearly,
the real solution to the crime mattered very little to Katzenbach.
When Katzenbach picked Willens for the job, one can assume he trusted Willens would not rock the boat. And
his own actions suggest that Willens did not want to disappoint. As he writes, "Beginning on December 20,
1963, I devoted the next three weeks to assisting [J. Lee] Rankin in getting the commission staffed and
organized." (p. 37) But Willens did not look for brilliant, independent-minded, professional investigators as
would be expected in a genuine pursuit of the truth. He brought in a bunch of Ivy League lawyers; men whose
skills lay not in investigating, but in assembling a case. Which, of course, suited the desires of Katzenbach and
the Commission perfectly, since they intended to rely on the FBI and other federal agencies to supply the
evidence while they put the correct spin on it for their report.
What's more, the men Willens picked were mostly business or corporate lawyers. One staff member, Burt
Griffin, admitted later on that when he arrived in Washington he "was struck by how few of his new colleagues
had been prosecutors or had any other experience in law enforcement." (Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking
Act, p. 124) This only got worse when several members of the staff left before the work was done. With a
report yet to be finished, Willens brought in men with virtually no legal experience at all. One of these, Murray
Lauchlit, began working for the Commission the day after he received his diploma! (Ibid, p. 404) Did Willens
really think this staff was up to the task of solving the assassination? Or were they picked because they would
most likely fulfill Katzenbach's objectives?
History Will Prove Us Right is a whitewash of a whitewash that seeks to undermine long-established truths
about the Commission's aims and methodology. Willens writes, "The repeated claim by critics that the White
House, a federal agency, or unspecified powerful forces influenced the extent of the commission's
investigation or the content of its report is simply false." (Willens, p. 266) In order to make this seem plausible,
he has to distort or omit reams of relevant information – including the aforementioned memo written by his
boss, Nicholas Katzenbach, from which he avoids quoting at all costs.
To me, the way in which Willens deals with Earl Warren's acquiescence to chair the Commission is a perfect
example of his desire to hide, and unwillingness to confront, the evidence that casts serious doubt on his
claims. It is well known that Warren did not want to take the job, but gave in after President Johnson called
him to the White House. In Willens's account of their meeting, there is no mention of the way in which the
Chief Justice was reportedly brought to tears by LBJ's dire warning that millions of lives were in jeopardy.
Johnson later reported telling Warren, "Now these wild people are chargin' Khrushchev killed Kennedy, and
Castro killed Kennedy." He then raised the possibility that if the American public came to believe this story,
they might call for a retaliation that could lead to a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. "If Khrushchev moved
on us", he said, "he could kill 39 million in an hour, and we could kill 100 million in his country in an hour. You
could be speaking for 39 million people." (Shenon, p. 60-61) Understandably, these words had a profound
effect on Warren who, according to historian David Wrone, "From the day he assumed chairmanship of the
Commission until the day of his death...firmly believed that a Soviet conspiracy had assassinated President
John F. Kennedy." (Wrone, The Zapruder Film, p. 245) So, understanding his duty was to take a Soviet
conspiracy out of the equation, Warren agreed to take the chair.
On January 20, 1964, Warren held his first meeting with the Commission staff. There, he impressed upon them
the seriousness of the situation, restating LBJ's concerns. The contents of the meeting were recorded in a
revealing memo written by staff member Melvin Eisenberg:
"After brief introductions, the Chief Justice discussed the circumstances under which he had accepted the
chairmanship of the Commission...The President stated that rumors of the most exaggerated kind were
circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went so far as attributing the assassination to a faction
within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched,
could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost 40 million lives. No one would refuse to do
something which might help prevent such a possibility. The President convinced him that this was an occasion
on which actual conditions had to override general principles."
Perhaps the key sentence in this memo is the one about it being "an occasion on which actual conditions had
to override general principles." As historian Jim DiEugenio asked, "How could the message be made any clearer
to a bunch of Yale, Stanford, and Harvard law school graduates? The threat of 40 million dead was going to
take precedence over the general legal principles he had espoused." (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 254-
253). Willens hides all of this from his readers. And because he does not disclose Warren's reasons for
accepting the chairmanship, Willens does not have to explain just who it was that got LBJ worried about a
conspiracy involving Krushchev and Castro. It was the CIA.
The echoes of gunfire in Dealey Plaza had barely stopped ringing when the CIA began a campaign to lay the
blame for the assassination at Castro's feet through the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) – an anti-
Castro Cuban exile group the Agency funded. According to journalist Jefferson Morley, "the DRE was perhaps
the single biggest and most active organization opposing Fidel Castro's regime." CIA veteran George Joannides
"was giving the leaders of the group up to $25,000 a month in cash for what he described as 'intelligence
collection' and 'propaganda.'" (Morley, The Man Who Didn't Talk and Other Tales from the New Kennedy
Assassination Files.) The DRE was known to have had contact with Oswald during the summer of 1963. Within
hours of his arrest on November 22, a representative of the group telephoned Clair Booth Luce (wife of TIME
magazine publisher, Henry Luce), to tell her that Oswald was part of a hit team organized by Castro. The DRE
then assembled a package for the media which included photographs of Oswald and Castro under the heading
"Presumed Assassins." Thus, as Mark Lane noted, "it was the CIA and Joannides that paid for, organized and
published the very first conspiracy theory about the assassination" (Lane, Last Word, p. 234).
Having planted a seed in the press, the CIA turned its attention to the White House. On Saturday, November
23, LBJ met twice with CIA director John McCone who briefed him about Oswald's alleged visit to Mexico City
two months earlier. Based on information sent to headquarters by the CIA's Mexico City station, McCone
reported that Oswald had been in contact with Soviet consular Valery Kostikov, whom, it was alleged, was an
expert in assassinations. Shaking Johnson up some more, the CIA followed this up on Monday, November 25,
with a cablegram from Mexico City Station Chief Winston Scott, who claimed to have uncovered evidence that
Castro, with Soviet support, had paid Oswald to kill Kennedy. (McKnight, p. 24 & 66-67) The effect these
stories from the CIA had on Johnson cannot be overstated since he was already of a paranoid disposition.
According to Kennedy military aide, General Godfrey McHugh, LBJ was already crying about a plot to "get us
all" before Air Force One had even left Dallas on the afternoon of the assassination. And there seems little
doubt that Johnson was convinced by the CIA reports, because years later, he said to ABC News anchorman
Thomas K. Smith, "I'll tell you something that will rock you. Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro
got to him first." (Shenon, p. 526)
When we take all of the information above and put it together, it paints a fairly clear picture. The CIA fed false
information to the press and the White House, blaming Castro for the assassination. A terrified Johnson balked
at the idea of retaliation that might lead to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets and so appointed Earl
Warren to chair a Commission that would ensure the blame rested squarely on Oswald's shoulders. Warren, in
turn, tacitly explained to the Commission's staff at its very first meeting the perceived severity of the situation
and just what was expected of them. Consequently, as McKnight puts it, "the Warren Commission went
through the motions of an investigation that was little more than an improvised exercise in public relations."
(McKnight, p. 361) Little wonder, then, that Willens leaves all of these details out of his book.

I just say:  New anniversary - same old sh...t. 

Edited September 17, 2023 by Karl Kinaski