Oswald as designated patsy; from Bart Kamp's new book

[Cliff Varnell]

Decent analysis from Uber-Establishment TIME, depending on how one defines “much of the world” in the concluding line.

What America's Plutocrats Today Should Learn From Past Generations

https://time.com/6072132/americas-plutocrats-learn-past-generations/

<quote on, emphasis added>

There’s an emerging consensus in America today that the accumulation of vast wealth by a handful of individuals is untenable for our democracy. Balancing the other-worldly success of a few in contrast with the challenges many still face is one of the thornier dilemmas of a post-COVID-19 world where those gaps have grown ever wider. The recent analysisof the tax rates of the mega-rich—which showed that the 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet, paid a paltry $13 billion in federal taxes on income and gains of $400 billion over a four year period 2014 and 2018—is just the latest powerful example.

There is, however, an earlier moment in the American past that points to a better balance: that those with great power bear great responsibility, that private gain should not be detached from public good, that the flows of money can create but also disrupt, and that you can’t endlessly beggar the commons. There’s no going back of course—and given how elites of an earlier time were an exclusive club, we wouldn’t want to, but that past does offer some hints of what might work today.

The apex of that formula, where elites of wealth and privilege answered a call to service even as they were, admittedly, self-serving, was during and after World War II, and the exemplar was the private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

At the end of World War II, much of Europe was devastated. Japan had been devastated not just by two atomic bombs but by successive rounds of conventional bombings. Swaths of destruction extended throughout southeast Asia, China, and into Southern Europe. And the United States? It had suffered grievous casualties but its infrastructure and industrial capacity were untouched, and its relative power had never—and has never—been greater. And at that crucial juncture, American companies, the U.S. government and a slew of highly privileged individuals came together to craft a post-war global order, provide massive economic aid to Europe and Japan to rebuild, and set the parameters for trade and commerce that remain the operating code for the planet to this day.

The world-order that was crafted, cemented by American leaders and U.S. leadership underpinned by the dollar, was only possible because those who had benefitted most from the evolution of American capitalism understood that they had a responsibility to preserve and maintain a collective order. They did not act selflessly—the system they erected served their interests. And in light of rigid ideology of Cold War that took hold, how they acted around the globe was far from perfect. But they nonetheless crafted a model of sustainable capitalism that juxtaposed private gain to the public good to create a potent formula that enriched both the U.S. and parts of the world and for a time at least didn’t lead to the wide gaps between winners and losers so troubling today.

Founded at the turn of the 19th century by an Irish linen merchant named Alexander Brown who was fleeing the sectarian violence of Belfast, Brown Brothers became one of the most influential merchant in the U.S. in the decades before the Civil War, as one of the dominant cotton merchants (and thereby deeply complicit with slavery) but also a staunch supporter of the Union cause and the Republican party. They helped create the transatlantic trading system, innovating with financial instruments such as letters of credit that underpinned the whole system. They propelled American trade with the wider world in the later part of the 19th century, and became one of the pillars of an emerging WASP elite at the turn of the 20th century, centered around elite schools such as Groton and Yale, interlinked by professional and personal bonds.

And then, during the Great Depression, the partners of Brown Brothers, led by the great-grand-children of Alexander, merged with one of the great railroad fortunes and its scion Averell Harriman to become Brown Brothers Harriman.

They had a particular culture of noblesse oblige. In an interview in the 1920s, Averell Harriman explained, “It is indefensible for a man who has capital not to apply himself diligently to using it in a way that will be of most benefit to his country.” Another partner, Robert Lovett, who served in increasingly higher positions starting during World War II and culminating in his elevation to Secretary of Defense in 1950, never wavered from his mantra that his affluence and standing in society made it incumbent on him to serve the public good.

In 1941, the founding editor of Time, Henry Luce, dubbed the moment the beginning of “The American Century,”which left a legacy of international institutions ranging from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization to the World Health Organization to an economic system underpinned by the dollar that is still in place. Luce himself was part of what we know call “the Establishment,” a group almost entirely white men connected by a small set of schools and economic interests. Luce had gone to Yale, as had the four leading Brown Brothers partners of his age: Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, Robert Lovett and Prescott Bush. They had helped Luce launch his media empire. They had all pledged to the elite society Skull & Bones, and their close affinity later led to a backlash (during the Vietnam War) that there was something seriously awry with democracy when a small cabal of WASP elites was pulling the levers of power to their advantage.

In a few short years in the 1940s and into the 1950s, this coterie framed the rules and institutions that define American national security and the global international system to this day. It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate or denigrate that: we live in the world that they made. Lovett and Averell Harriman were integral to every major foreign policy decision during the seven years of the Truman administration from 1945-1952. Harriman served as secretary of commerce, then administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe and then coordinator for all U.S. aid to Europe in the early 1950s before becoming governor of New York. Lovett served as the number two twice to General George C. Marshall, first in the state department and then the Pentagon before himself becoming secretary of defense for the final years of the Korean War. Prescott Bush then went on to serve two terms as a Republican senator from Connecticut, as well as being the father to one president and grandfather to another.

Their post-war architecture was derived from formula that had made them and their class and by extension the United States rich and powerful: a world governed by an elite and by rules that transcended any one individual or firm. They had helped establish the dollar as the most reliable currency. With the Bretton Woods system (named after the hotel in New Hampshire where the details were hashed out), they engineered the replacement of the British pound, which had been the fulcrum of international trade and commerce for almost two centuries, with the dollar. That made sense, given the relative strength of the U.S. economy at the end of the war, but it nonetheless put partnerships such as Brown Brothers and an entire class of financiers along with the U.S. government as the issuer of dollars in a privileged position in global commerce, which they gladly took advantage of. That dollar-denominated world, more than anything other than U.S. military might, has ensured the primary of the country ever since.

And they also were integral to the creation of that military might. Lovett during the war helped create the modern air force and then been one of the designers of the modern Pentagon and the national security apparatus at the White House: the national security council, and the CIA. He was a staunch Cold Warrior, and under his aegis, the Pentagon developed the first peacetime standing military in American history.

Finally, in one of the more overlooked contributions at the time, Lovett was central to the signing of the multi-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which eventually turned into the World Trade Organization and was founded on the belief that more free-flowing commerce between nations bound by consensual rules would expand the arc of global prosperity, which it undoubtedly did even as in time it came to threaten domestic industry in multiple countries.

Beginning in the 1960s and intensifying in the decades since, the system these men created has come under closer scrutiny for assorted ills: it made America rich but also led to stunted development in much of Africa, Latin America and parts of East Asia; it hyper-charged global trade, but privileged American rules, the dollar and U.S. companies; and the standing army was used and abused with disastrous consequences not just in Vietnam but in multiple countries throughout the world.

Many of those critiques hold water, but it remains true that these men, and a firm such as Brown Brothers, saw a responsibility to address the common good and not just their own pocketbooks. Lovett, a Republican, supported many of the financial regulations of the New Deal including the separation of commercial and investment banking in the Glass-Steagall Act and the formation of a regulator in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He also went into government service because he believed that it was his responsibility as someone with more to give back and help as he could. Harriman and Bush were both deeply ambitious men of their class, but they too had an unquestioned belief that, as Harriman put it, “public service is a duty.”

The formula of elites cleaving to an ideal of public responsibility unfolded in an era where the gap between the very wealthy and the average worker was a comprehensible multiple of perhaps 20 to 1. Today it is over 300 to 1. They were a closed insular class but they were nonetheless connected to the world around them. Lovett told a story of getting ready to take the train to work from his Long Island home at early one morning when his wife answered the phone and it was Truman calling to ask him to come to Washington. Lovett barked that he was going to miss his train until he realized who was on the other end. He was rich, privileged and called to serve, but he still took a commuter train to work, not a car and driver.

In the middle of the 20th century, elites more or less understood that they had an obligation to public service; in the early 21st century, that is hard to be found. The world that Brown Brothers Harriman and their class created was hardly flawless, and it was deeply exclusive, but it was a coherent system of rules and responsibilities that on balance benefitted not just the United States but much of the world for many years.

</q>

Edited October 4, 2023 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Luce had gone to Yale, as had the four leading Brown Brothers partners of his age: Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, Robert Lovett and Prescott Bush. They had helped Luce launch his media empire. They had all pledged to the elite society Skull & Bones, and their close affinity later led to a backlash (during the Vietnam War) that there was something seriously awry with democracy when a small cabal of WASP elites was pulling the levers of power to their advantage.

 

Vincent Salandria: "Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012"

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I explained [to Specter] that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot. 
Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot. We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth. In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.

<quote off> 

 

[James DiEugenio]

BTW,   as Bart mentions in his book, Hoover directed FBI agent Manning Clements to establish contact with the DPD right when the news of the assassination broke.  (Gibson p. 39)

In other words, Hoover is in contact with Shanklin and with the DPD through Clements within an hour or so.  This is why he has two agents in on Oswald's first questioning session.

Altogether, Hoover wrote four memos that day. One was directly for LBJ. (ibid)

Donald Gibson was such an underrated author on this case.  This stuff is from his essay "The First 72 Hours".  The one which follows that one is his milestone article "The Creation of the Warren Commission."  There he brings out the roles of Eugene Rostow, Alsop and, to a lesser extent,  Acheson in the formation of the Commission.

I am  glad his two books, Battling Wall Street, and the Kennedy Assassination Cover up were reprinted.  The former is simply a classic in the literature.  It was really a breakthrough.

As anyone can see, although Hoover did not get the evidence until that evening through Drain, he was clearly in on the investigation just about from the outset through his proxies on the scene.  And boy was he out to close the case and get the Kennedys out of his life.

Which he did.

Edited October 4, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

Early on Hoover was locked and loaded for a Communist Conspiracy.

JFK had two soft tissue entrance wounds back/throat with no exits and no bullets.  The FBI had been briefed to look out for exactly that wound pattern.

Charles Senseney worked on a CIA project which developed blood soluble toxins and paralytics, MKNAOMI.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

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Senseney: And the only thing that I can say is, I just have to suppose that, having been told to maintain the sort of show and tell display of hardware that we had on sort of stockpile for them, these were not items that could be used. They were display items like you would see in a museum, and they used those to show to the agents as well as to the FBI, to acquaint them with possible ways that other people could attack our own people. (pg 163)

Baker: ...There are about 60 agencies of Government that do either intelligence or law enforcement work.

Senseney: I am sure most all of those knew of what we were doing; yes...

...The FBI never used anything. They were only shown so they could be aware of what might be brought into the country. </q>

If Oswald had been gunned down around 1pm 11/22/63 we probably would have heard a lot about ice bullets and some Russkie named Kostikov.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

A letter from Averell Harriman to Allen Dulles, c 1960. 

Body: 

Approved For Release 2002/08/21 : CIA-RDP80BO1676R003600070018-9 !~ DC(., 40 December 7, 1960

 

Dear Allen: I would like to talk over with you the implications of the attached. Also I'd like to talk over the new Moscow Communist Manifesto. It looks to me as though Mr. Khrushchev had made some real concessions to Peiping. This may lead to a tougher stand in the Congo, as well as in other troubled spots in the world. This seems in conflict with what appeared to be his desire to start afresh with the new Administration. Needless to say, I am delighted that you are continuing in your vitally important job. With my congratulations to you and our country, and my warm regards.

<emphasis added>

In the 50’s Robert Lovett and Joe Kennedy tried to get Allen Dulles fired.

https://cryptome.org/0001/bruce-lovett.htm#schlesinger

As the warm letter above indicates (sincere thanks for posting this Ben), Harriman and Dulles were tight.  

Lovett’s Dad ran the Union Pacific Railroad for Harriman’s Dad.  They were business partners, Skull & Bones bros, life-long friends.

Lovett wanted Dulles gone; Harriman was a big fan of the top spy.  When Dulles had Patrice Lumumba whacked in the Congo three days before JFK’s inauguration, I posit he lost Harriman’s support.

Dulles was out within the year.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Cliff Varnell

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW,   as Bart mentions in his book, Hoover directed FBI agent Manning Clements to establish contact with the DPD right when the news of the assassination broke.  (Gibson p. 39)

In other words, Hoover is in contact with Shanklin and with the DPD through Clements within an hour or so.  This is why he has two agents in on Oswald's first questioning session.

Altogether, Hoover wrote four memos that day. One was directly for LBJ. (ibid)

Donald Gibson was such an underrated author on this case.  This stuff is from his essay "The First 72 Hours".  The one which follows that one is his milestone article "The Creation of the Warren Commission."  There he brings out the roles of Eugene Rostow, Alsop and, to a lesser extent,  Acheson in the formation of the Commission.

I am  glad his two books, Battling Wall Street, and the Kennedy Assassination Cover up were reprinted.  The former is simply a classic in the literature.  It was really a breakthrough.

As anyone can see, although Hoover did not get the evidence until that evening through Drain, he was clearly in on the investigation just about from the outset through his proxies on the scene.  And boy was he out to close the case and get the Kennedys out of his life.

Which he did.

JD--

Donald Gibson was such an underrated author on this case.  This stuff is from his essay "The First 72 Hours".  The one which follows that one is his milestone article "The Creation of the Warren Commission."  There he brings out the roles of Eugene Rostow, Alsop and, to a lesser extent,  Acheson in the formation of the Commission.---JD

Remember the basics. 

Yes, but it was LBJ who had say-so on the presidential commission to be established, and that became the WC. 

LBJ clearly said to Warren, and even somewhat bragged about it, that he (LBJ) related the threat of nuclear war story to Warren to get him to serve. That was the WWII virus story, as planted by the CIA. 

LBJ also told Richard Russell that Russell had to serve on the WC, for much the same reason, the threat of nuclear war.

In contrast, Alsop was just a newspaperman, a columnist, a known fop. Dean Acheson was important fellow, but retired by the 1960s, and playing the elder statement role (also a corporate lawyer). E. Rostow evidently was a mentor of sorts to Katzenbach. 

BTW, LBJ, for all of his flaws, was not a member of the old WASP East Coast elite. To put it mildly. 

It was LBJ, a man with a formidable intellect, abundant amoral cunning and towering personal strength, who decided to form the WC, and put Russell and Warren on it, and likely Dulles too. Katzenbach appeared instrumental as well. 

These other guys---Acheson, Alsop, Rostow, Harriman---they are just side characters. You think LBJ did not call his own shots?

You are talking about a guy who took over JFK's Air Force One bedroom within a few hours of the JFKA. 

 

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Ben:

Did you read Gibson's article "The Creation of the Warren Commission"?

It does not sound like you did, because Johnson did not want a blue ribbon committee. Period.

It was only under a lot of pressure indirectly by Rostow, and then by Alsop and the Washington Post that he finally relented to do so.

The triumph of Don's article is that he was the first one to  dig into this after the phone calls were declassified by the JFK Act. No one had really done what he did prior to that.  Alsop essentially forced the issue with him after discussing it with an unnamed person.  LBJ mightily resisted but Alsop appears to have had some training in interrogation, because he simply denuded Johnson in that conversation.

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

15 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Ben:

Did you read Gibson's article "The Creation of the Warren Commission"?

It does not sound like you did, because Johnson did not want a bue ribbon committee. Period.

It was only under a lot of pressure indirectly by Rostow, and then by Alsop and the Washington Post that he finally relented to do so.

The triumph of Don's article is that he was the first one to  dig into this after the phone calls were declassified by the JFK Act. No one had really done what he did prior to that.  Alsop essentially forced the issue with him after discussing it with an unnamed person.  LBJ mightily resisted but Alsop appears to have had some training in interrogation, because he simply denuded Johnson in that conversation.

 

JD-

OK, it has been years, but I will try to find Gibson and read him again. 

I actually went to the LBJ School of Public Affairs back in the 1970s, which is right next to the LBJ Presidential Library. I have been in that library and read documents, and back then many LBJ administration people came through and gave presentations. 

I sure got the impression no one ever told LBJ what to do, especially after he became President. Faded memories, however. 

BTW:

Return to:    LBJ Phone Calls - November 1963   TRANSCRIPT    (PDF: 407 K) In this lengthy conversation, influential Post columnist Joe Alsop first listens to President Johnson complain about "some of the lawyers...at Justice" who are lobbying for a Presidential Commission, saying "...we just can't have them lobbying against the President, when he makes these decisions." Then Alsop argues, cajoles, and invokes the name of Dean Acheson in his persistent attempts to get Johnson to change his mind. The edited transcript of this conversation in Michael Beschloss' "Taking Charge" omits all but one reference to Acheson's name, but the full transcript makes clear that Alsop is calling on behalf of the elder statesman and former Secretary of State. Johnson agrees that he will "call Dean," though there is no recording of such a call in the LBJ Library archives (not all calls were recorded).

Excerpt 1

03:47

WMA

MOV

MP3

In this excerpt, Alsop lays out his argument for a Presidential Commission, buttering up Johnson while strongly urging that he take this path.

Excerpt 2

02:03

WMA

MOV

MP3

Alsop appears to backpedal, telling Johnson that "I now see exactly how right you are and how wrong I was about this idea of a blue ribbon commission," all the while continuing to stress it merits and urging Johnson to call former Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

 

What? Alsop says to LBJ, "I now see exactly how right you are and how wrong I was about this idea of a blue ribbon commission." Huh?

And then LBJ apparently does not call Acheson? 

My take: LBJ decided he wanted the WC, once he figured out how to control the results. 

Side note: Of course, LBJ had to pander to Alsop. Alsop had an influential column, and LBJ played patty-cake with Alsop, and then did what LBJ wanted to do. 

Although the record shows Alsop "backpedaled."  

You tell me, what conclusions to draw from this.

My take is LBJ always did what was best for LBJ.

These establishment WASP fops were a sideshow. 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

But JD---

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-creation-of-the-warren-commission

I will read this, just so you know. I am keeping an open mind. 

[James DiEugenio]

You have to read the transcript.

[James DiEugenio]

What Don's article  suggested was that actors from outside the administration--Rostow, Alsop and Acheson and a mystery man-- were manipulating the White House to get a blue ribbon committee.

Then  they did that double whammy on Warren and it was really all over.

By that I mean:

1.) Johnson scaring the heck out of him with those visions of atomic holocaust.

2.) Hoover, McCloy and Dulles vetoing Warren Olney as his chief counsel.  

Warren was reduced to nothing but a figurehead.

[Michael Crane]

I pretty much went straight to the end of this thread with very minimum reading.Because,sometimes I'm lazy like that.

Any idea of why Oswald was selected as the designated patsy?

Could it be that he was living large in the USSR (cooperating with the USSR IMO) & somehow slipped up on something?

Maybe he was the cause of the U2 spy plane getting shot down?

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

What Don's article  suggested was that actors from outside the administration--Rostow, Alsop and Acheson and a mystery man-- were manipulating the White House to get a blue ribbon committee.

Then  they did that double whammy on Warren and it was really all over.

By that I mean:

1.) Johnson scaring the heck out of him with those visions of atomic holocaust.

2.) Hoover, McCloy and Dulles vetoing Warren Olney as his chief counsel.  

Warren was reduced to nothing but a figurehead.

It seems Katzenbach was influential, and was a protege of E. Rostow. 

But remember, LBJ, to put it mildly, was no shrinking violet. 

Some serious JFKA researchers, such as Larry Hancock, believe it credible that LBJ had the honest USDA investigator Henry Marshall murdered. LBJ was not some guy to be trifled with. 

LBJ had decades of experience in Washington, and was Hoover's neighbor. LBJ was never part of the Eastern establishment and was acutely aware of how they regarded him. 

All I am saying is that LBJ was not intimidated, or even much influenced, by the likes of Acheson, Harriman, or Jospeh Alsop. 

Read the transcript---Alsop is beckoning with and pleading with LBJ, not vice versa. And Alsop eventually gets feet of clay and goes wishy-washy in the conversation. 

However, Hoover maybe intimidated LBJ. The CIA, maybe.

LBJ was most deeply influenced by what actions would benefit himself. 

LBJ was the shot-caller on the formation of the WC, once he conferred with Hoover, and possibly CIA-tool Katzenbach, and got it straightened out what the WC would conclude---that LHO was a loner, loser, leftie. 

That's my story and I am sticking with it. 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

21 minutes ago, Michael Crane said:

I pretty much went straight to the end of this thread with very minimum reading.Because,sometimes I'm lazy like that.

Any idea of why Oswald was selected as the designated patsy?

Could it be that he was living large in the USSR (cooperating with the USSR IMO) & somehow slipped up on something?

Maybe he was the cause of the U2 spy plane getting shot down?

You missed Ralph Kramden incredulously asking about Max Holland. 

[Cliff Varnell]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

These other guys---Acheson, Alsop, Rostow, Harriman---they are just side characters. You think LBJ did not call his own shots?

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/03/johnson-meets-with-the-wise-men-march-25-1968-034945

Johnson meets with ‘The Wise Men,’ March 25, 1968

<quote on>

On this day in 1968, as pessimism over U.S. prospects in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with 14 informal advisers. In 1945, some of them had forged a bipartisan foreign policy based on containing the Soviet Union. They went on to craft key institutions like NATO, the World Bank and the Marshall Plan. They were known, collectively, as “The Wise Men.”

They met with LBJ after being briefed by officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. They had been informed of a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, for additional troops in the wake of perceived U.S. setbacks in the Tet Offensive. 

Present at the White House meeting were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy, Cyrus Vance and Gens. Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. 

In the words of Acheson, who summed up the recommendations from 11 of the men, “we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.” Murphy, Taylor and Fortas dissented. 

That was a change from Johnson’s first series of such meetings, on Nov. 1-2, 1967. Then, the Wise Men had unanimously opposed leaving Vietnam. “Public discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Bundy had said, but he told Johnson to “stay the course.”  </q>

In early November, 1967 the Wise Men told LBJ to “stay the course.”  He followed their orders.  On March 25, ‘68 they told him he needed to find a way out of Vietnam.  6 days later he announced he wasn’t running for re-election.  On May 10 the US began negotiations with No. Vietnam.

Who led these talks?  Cy Vance and Averell Harriman.

https://www.nytimes.com/1968/11/15/archives/paris-harriman-vance-and-the-peace-talks.html

Edited October 5, 2023 by Cliff Varnell