John Newman and Greg Burnham Interview

[David Boylan]

Newman and Burnham:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXZo8cm-_Pg

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHl1ICHOEJ4&t=10s

 

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Newman and Burnham:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXZo8cm-_Pg

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHl1ICHOEJ4&t=10s

 

Thanks for posting. 

[Paul Cummings]

Thanks David. 

[David Boylan]

You are welcome, guys. I think they both did a great job.

 

[Robert Morrow]

Greg Burnham believes that Gen. Edward Lansdale was behind the Diem coup in Vietnam.

And that is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

In fact, the opposite is true. Gen. Lansdale VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED the Kennedy Administration's coup against Dien, who for about 10 years had been a good friend of Lansdale. Lansdale was in a RAGE over the death of Diem and it was a big factor for Gen. Edward Lansdale to play a big role in the JFK assassination.

In fact, earlier Lansdale had told John Kennedy that if you ever want to overthrow Diem I will never have any part of that you will have to get someone else!

As a reward for participating in the JFK assassination, see below what happened:

  By December 30, 1964 Lyndon Johnson  was specifically asking for men like Gen. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein to be sent to Vietnam

 QUOTE

 On December 30, 1964, the president wrote to Ambassador Taylor suggesting that “we ought to be ready to make full use of the specialized skills of men who are skillful with Vietnamese, even if they are not always the easiest men to handle in a country team…. To put it another way, I continue to believe that we should have the most sensitive, persistent, and attentive Americans that we can find in touch with the Vietnamese of every kind and quality.” (italics added). The original draft of Johnson’s letter had included the words “of the general type of Lansdale and Conein” in place of “men who are skillful with the Vietnamese”; McGeorge Bundy must have blown a gasket and taken the names out, but the meaning remained clear.

 UNQUOTE

 [Max Boot, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, p. 448]

 Edward Lansdale and Rufus Phillips were totally against the coup against Diem

 [“I lost my oldest friend in 2021. Rufus was the ‘good American,” Max Boot, 1-11-2022]

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/11/i-lost-my-oldest-friend-2021-rufus-phillips-was-good-american/

 QUOTE

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

 UNQUOTE

 WHOLE ARTICLE

 It was such an awful year in 2021. It was entirely fitting that it ended with the death on Dec. 29 of my oldest friend, Rufus C. Phillips III. I call him my “oldest friend” not because I had known him longer than anyone else but because he was 92 when he died of complications of pneumonia at a hospital in northern Virginia.

 Had you met him, you would never have noticed his advanced age. He was active to the end, working on a book that will come out this year from the University Press of Kansas: “Stabilizing Fragile States: Why It Matters and What to Do About It.” I have been reading it and find it a font of good sense based on the author’s firsthand knowledge not only of the war in Vietnam but also of the more recent conflict in Afghanistan.

It was because of Rufus’s role in Vietnam that I met him — and I quickly found that he was not only an invaluable source of historical insights but also a wonderful person, one of the truest gentlemen I have ever known. Meeting Rufus for the first time around 2010 helped inspire me to write a book about his mentor, the legendary counterinsurgency adviser Edward Lansdale, who helped to defeat a communist uprising in the Philippines in the early 1950s and went on to help create the state of South Vietnam in 1954-1956. I developed a close friendship with Rufus during the many hours he spent patiently answering my questions.

 As Rufus recounted in his memoir, “Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned,” he first arrived in Saigon in August 1954 as a young Yale graduate recently enlisted in the CIA. Taken under Lansdale’s wing, Rufus was given a crash course in political warfare — what would later become known, somewhat misleadingly, as the battle for “hearts and minds.” His instructions were simply to “make friends, see what they were doing, and figure out how to help.”

Against all odds, Lansdale and his small team helped the new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, consolidate his authority against the challenges posed by both communist fighters and warlord militias. Serving as an adviser to the newly created army of South Vietnam, Rufus helped the troops in 1955 to pacify a region newly vacated by the communist-dominated Vietminh. His key advice was simply for the soldiers to treat the local people with kindness and respect — a reflection of the way that Rufus himself dealt with everyone he met.

Later, in 1962, Rufus returned to South Vietnam to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development as head of “rural affairs” — which, in effect, made him the U.S. director of counterinsurgency at a time when the communists, now known as the Vietcong, were on the march. Because he knew so many Vietnamese so well, he realized that the rosy assessments being advanced by the Pentagon bore little relation to reality — and he wasn’t afraid to say so.

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

After the publication of his memoir in 2008, Rufus was enlisted as an adviser to U.S. officials directing the Afghanistan War. He spent his 80th birthday in Kabul observing that country’s fraud-marred election in 2009. Seeing how deeply flawed the U.S. effort in Afghanistan was, as he writes in “Stabilizing Fragile States,” he became convinced that “some serious reform is needed regarding how our foreign policy apparatus works to help stabilize fragile, failed and failing states.” His new book is an important primer on the subject.

 But really all that future U.S. diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers need to know is that they should act the way that Rufus would have. He had an inexhaustible font of decency and empathy for everyone he came into contact with. He made lifelong friends in Vietnam and everywhere else he went.

 While another legendary adviser in Vietnam, John Paul Vann, had a famously checkered private life, Rufus was a model of love and devotion to his wonderful wife of 59 years, Barbara, a top-level translator for the State Department who died in 2020. They had four children and six grandchildren — all of whom were with Rufus at the end.

Much has been written about “ugly Americans.” Rufus Phillips was the opposite. Like the aid worker Bob Gersony, who was profiled in a book by Robert D. Kaplan, he was a genuine “good American” — a gentle, decent man who served his country with humility and devotion and fearless truth-telling. Let us hope his example inspires others.

Edited May 24 by Robert Morrow

[Pat Speer]

27 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Greg Burnham believes that Gen. Edward Lansdale was behind the Diem coup in Vietnam.

And that is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

In fact, the opposite is true. Gen. Lansdale VEHEMENTLY OPPOSED the Kennedy Administration's coup against Dien, who for about 10 years had been a good friend of Lansdale. Lansdale was in a RAGE over the death of Diem and it was a big factor for Gen. Edward Lansdale to play a big role in the JFK assassination.

In fact, earlier Lansdale had told John Kennedy that if you ever want to overthrow Diem I will never have any part of that you will have to get someone else!

As a reward for participating in the JFK assassination, see below what happened:

  By December 30, 1964 Lyndon Johnson  was specifically asking for men like Gen. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein to be sent to Vietnam

 

QUOTE

 

On December 30, 1964, the president wrote to Ambassador Taylor suggesting that “we ought to be ready to make full use of the specialized skills of men who are skillful with Vietnamese, even if they are not always the easiest men to handle in a country team…. To put it another way, I continue to believe that we should have the most sensitive, persistent, and attentive Americans that we can find in touch with the Vietnamese of every kind and quality.” (italics added). The original draft of Johnson’s letter had included the words “of the general type of Lansdale and Conein” in place of “men who are skillful with the Vietnamese”; McGeorge Bundy must have blown a gasket and taken the names out, but the meaning remained clear.

 

UNQUOTE

 

[Max Boot, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, p. 448]

 

Edward Lansdale and Rufus Phillips were totally against the coup against Diem

 

[“I lost my oldest friend in 2021. Rufus was the ‘good American,” Max Boot, 1-11-2022]

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/11/i-lost-my-oldest-friend-2021-rufus-phillips-was-good-american/

 QUOTE

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

 UNQUOTE

 WHOLE ARTICLE

 It was such an awful year in 2021. It was entirely fitting that it ended with the death on Dec. 29 of my oldest friend, Rufus C. Phillips III. I call him my “oldest friend” not because I had known him longer than anyone else but because he was 92 when he died of complications of pneumonia at a hospital in northern Virginia.

 Had you met him, you would never have noticed his advanced age. He was active to the end, working on a book that will come out this year from the University Press of Kansas: “Stabilizing Fragile States: Why It Matters and What to Do About It.” I have been reading it and find it a font of good sense based on the author’s firsthand knowledge not only of the war in Vietnam but also of the more recent conflict in Afghanistan.

It was because of Rufus’s role in Vietnam that I met him — and I quickly found that he was not only an invaluable source of historical insights but also a wonderful person, one of the truest gentlemen I have ever known. Meeting Rufus for the first time around 2010 helped inspire me to write a book about his mentor, the legendary counterinsurgency adviser Edward Lansdale, who helped to defeat a communist uprising in the Philippines in the early 1950s and went on to help create the state of South Vietnam in 1954-1956. I developed a close friendship with Rufus during the many hours he spent patiently answering my questions.

 As Rufus recounted in his memoir, “Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned,” he first arrived in Saigon in August 1954 as a young Yale graduate recently enlisted in the CIA. Taken under Lansdale’s wing, Rufus was given a crash course in political warfare — what would later become known, somewhat misleadingly, as the battle for “hearts and minds.” His instructions were simply to “make friends, see what they were doing, and figure out how to help.”

Against all odds, Lansdale and his small team helped the new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, consolidate his authority against the challenges posed by both communist fighters and warlord militias. Serving as an adviser to the newly created army of South Vietnam, Rufus helped the troops in 1955 to pacify a region newly vacated by the communist-dominated Vietminh. His key advice was simply for the soldiers to treat the local people with kindness and respect — a reflection of the way that Rufus himself dealt with everyone he met.

Later, in 1962, Rufus returned to South Vietnam to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development as head of “rural affairs” — which, in effect, made him the U.S. director of counterinsurgency at a time when the communists, now known as the Vietcong, were on the march. Because he knew so many Vietnamese so well, he realized that the rosy assessments being advanced by the Pentagon bore little relation to reality — and he wasn’t afraid to say so.

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

After the publication of his memoir in 2008, Rufus was enlisted as an adviser to U.S. officials directing the Afghanistan War. He spent his 80th birthday in Kabul observing that country’s fraud-marred election in 2009. Seeing how deeply flawed the U.S. effort in Afghanistan was, as he writes in “Stabilizing Fragile States,” he became convinced that “some serious reform is needed regarding how our foreign policy apparatus works to help stabilize fragile, failed and failing states.” His new book is an important primer on the subject.

 But really all that future U.S. diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers need to know is that they should act the way that Rufus would have. He had an inexhaustible font of decency and empathy for everyone he came into contact with. He made lifelong friends in Vietnam and everywhere else he went.

 While another legendary adviser in Vietnam, John Paul Vann, had a famously checkered private life, Rufus was a model of love and devotion to his wonderful wife of 59 years, Barbara, a top-level translator for the State Department who died in 2020. They had four children and six grandchildren — all of whom were with Rufus at the end.

Much has been written about “ugly Americans.” Rufus Phillips was the opposite. Like the aid worker Bob Gersony, who was profiled in a book by Robert D. Kaplan, he was a genuine “good American” — a gentle, decent man who served his country with humility and devotion and fearless truth-telling. Let us hope his example inspires others.

The CIA Chief in Vietnam, Richardson, was also against the coup, and was forced out as a result by the likes of Lodge and Harriman. 

In an incredible irony, for that matter, both the Schlesinger pre-assassination article claiming the CIA was running their own foreign policy in Vietnam and the Truman post-assassination article in which he complained about the CIA were written as a response to the struggle between the State Dept., which wanted the coup, and the CIA, which thought Diem was better than the alternatives. 

The CIA wasn't always the bad guy. 

 

Edited May 22 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

Lansdale was Diem's benefactor and advisor.

The two guys running the overthrow were Lodge and Conein.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Lansdale was Diem's benefactor and advisor.

The two guys running the overthrow were Lodge and Conein.

In Saigon, yes.

In Washington DC it was Harriman -- according to JFK and others,

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5

<quote on, emphasis added>

Who changed the coup [overthrow of Ngo Brothers in South Vietnam 11/01/63] into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

<quote off>

[Cliff Varnell]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

The CIA Chief in Vietnam, Richardson, was also against the coup, and was forced out as a result by the likes of Lodge and Harriman. 

In an incredible irony, for that matter, both the Schlesinger pre-assassination article claiming the CIA was running their own foreign policy in Vietnam and the Truman post-assassination article in which he complained about the CIA were written as a response to the struggle between the State Dept., which wanted the coup, and the CIA, which thought Diem was better than the alternatives. 

The CIA wasn't always the bad guy. 

 

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 156:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

When [Diem and Nhu] had first claimed that Americans were active behind the scenes in the agitation spreading in Saigon, they had sounded paranoid – a favorite word among Americans for Diem and Nhu that summer.  But who could disbelieve [David] Halberstam, with his excellent sources in the Central Intelligence Agency, when he reported that the CIA had been openly sending its agents into the pagodas and making daily contact with Buddhist priests and “other participants in this crisis”?  These agents were acting under orders – and they did not go to the pagodas to discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

<quote off>

James W. Douglass, JFK and  the Unspeakable, pg 192:

<q>

Kennedy was losing control of his government.  In early September, he discovered that another key decision related to a coup had been made without his knowledge.

A White House meeting with the president was discussing whether or not to cut off the Commodity Import Program that propped up South Vietnam's economy.  It was a far reaching decision.  For the United States to withdraw the AID program could prompt a coup against Diem.

David Bell, head of AID, made a casual comment that stopped the discussion.  He said, "There's no point in talking about cutting off commodity aid, I've already cut it off."

"You've done what?" said John Kennedy.

"Cut off commodity aid," said Bell.

"Who the hell told you to do that?" asked the president.

"No one," said Bell.  "It's an automatic policy.  We do that whenever we have differences with a client government."

Kennedy shook his head in dismay.

"My God, do you know what you've done?" said the president.

He was staring at David Bell, but seeing a deeper reality.  Kennedy knew Bell's agency, AID, functioned as a CIA front.  AID administrator David Bell would not have carried out his "automatic" cutoff without CIA approval

</q>

Edited May 23 by Cliff Varnell

[Ron Bulman]

I thought this discussion featuring John Newman and Greg Burnham with Paul Bealu and the site hosts was very interesting and informative.  Thanks to David for posting it.

No discussion here about It.  Yet.  I'll mention a couple or three things about It in a day or two.

Since Robert decided to hijack the thread by attacking Greg over a subject not mentioned in That discussion and others responded to it, I will as well, for the moment.  This is what I think I remember reading about the Diem coup.

Harriman was giving orders without consulting JFK.  JFK reluctantly, possibly against his better judgment, did agree to what he thought would a bloodless coup.  That Diem would be persuaded or otherwise convinced to resign and immediately removed from Vietnam by a US plane to I believe it was France.

Lodge* acting on behalf of Harriman, ignored calls, instructions, attempts of communication from JFK.  He then through his military attaché, as Cliff notes (ha!), turned it over to the South Vietnam generals, knowing full well in advance what the result would be.

Jim, Cliff or Pat please correct me on this where I may be wrong or elaborate.  It would be great if Dr. Newman was a member and might comment, as well if Greg should choose to comment.  Though I understand full well why they might choose not to join this fray.

*Many here probably know well better than I the details.  But Henry Cabot Lodge, of the East coast establishment/aristocracy was a sitting, for the second time US Senator in 1952 when Congressman JFK upset him.  Then he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations by Eisenhower, and selected as Nixon's VP for the 1960 presidential election.

Donald Gibson questions why JFK made some of his Cabinet and other selections in Battling Wallstreet in the end notes.  C. Douglas Dillon for Treasury, Harriman Ambassador at large.  Lodge ?  I wonder myself.  Was JFK's appeasement to his US enemies his own downfall?

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. - Wikipedia

[Matt Cloud]

This, albeit from Wikipedia, is actually pretty good.

 

The message [Cable 243] was drafted by W. Averell Harriman, Roger Hilsman, and Michael Forrestal^[4] who were the only senior State Department officials on duty on August 24, 1963, a Saturday afternoon, with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and CIA director John McCone on vacation.

President John F. Kennedy was on vacation at Hyannis Port, his family retreat, when Forrestal telephoned seeking to expedite the process with the commander-in-chief's verbal approval.^[5] Kennedy asked them to "wait until Monday" when all the key figures would be in Washington, but Forrestal said that Harriman and Hilsman wanted to get the cable "out right away."^[5] Kennedy thus told Forrestal to get another high-ranking official to "get it cleared."^[5]

Harriman and Hilsman then drove from their offices to a Maryland golf course where Under Secretary of State George Ball was playing with Alexis Johnson.^[5] Ball told the trio to meet him at his home after he and Johnson finished their round of golf. Having returned home, Ball read the message but, knowing that the telegram could raise the morale of the generals and prompt a coup, refused to authorize it until his three visitors had gained Secretary of State Dean Rusk's endorsement.^[5] Those present at Ball's home then phoned and read the important passages of the message to Rusk. They asked Rusk what he thought of the message if Kennedy was comfortable too. Rusk replied, "Well, go ahead. If the President understood the implications, [I] would give a green light."^[5]

Ball then discussed the matter with the President, who asked over the phone, "What do you think?" Ball said that Harriman and Hilsman were in strong support and that his "watered down" version "would certainly be taken as encouragement by the generals to a coup."^[5] Ball said that his group regarded Diem as an embarrassment to Washington because of his "most unconscionable and cruel, uncivilized" actions.^[5] He further cited Nhu's violence against the Buddhists and Madame Nhu's verbal attacks as reasons for breaking with Diem.^[6] According to Ball, Kennedy appeared to be broadly supportive of the cable but was apprehensive as to whether a new leader would do a better job.^[6] As McNamara was away, Kennedy told Ball that the message was acceptable if Rusk and Roswell Gilpatric endorsed it.^[6]

Rusk then approved the message. In the 1980s, Rusk said, "If Ball, Harriman, and President Kennedy were going to send it out, I wasn't going to raise any questions."^[6] Forrestal then phoned Gilpatric's farm in the evening and told him that both Kennedy and Rusk had already approved. Gilpatric later recalled, "If Rusk went along with it and the President went along with it, I wasn't going to oppose it."^[6] He washed his hands of the matter since it was between Kennedy and the State Department: "In McNamara's absence I felt I should not hold it up, so I went along with it just like you countersign a voucher."^[6] Marine General Victor Krulak also signed off without showing his superior, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor. Richard Helms of the CIA also endorsed the message without notifying Director John McCone and later said that he believed that Forrestal was only advising of a resolution that had already been made.^[6] Forrestal then told Kennedy that he had gained the support of Kennedy's inner circle, so the president told him to send the message. Cable 243 was thus sent to Lodge at 21:36.^[6]

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_243}

 

And ...

"In his position with the Kennedy administration, Gilpatric later signed off on the overthrow of the Diem government.^[13] Gilpatric was also a member of a special task force which hatched "Operation Mongoose", a dirty tricks campaign aimed at destabilizing the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_Gilpatric

 

It's perhaps also worth pointing out that leak to the South Vietnam military of the (now) contentiously-argued "troop withdrawal plans" in NSAM 263 may have hastened the coup.  See reference to Marguerite Higgins' interview here:

https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300280033-9  

[Denise Hazelwood]

It's all just speculation. not completely baseless, but all of it is just speculation, nonetheless. The cover-up doesn't have to be because of "CIA involvement in planning the assassination." It could be (is) because of the SS "Keystone Cops" response to the shooting, which involved the AR-15 accident. I have more hard evidence to support my scenario than all the circumstantial and speculative evidence Newman and Burnham use to support their scenarios, no matter if more people are inclined to believe Kennedy was killed because of his Viet Nam policies.  In fact, I actually use Burnham's description of the "other" Zapruder film in support of my scenario (among many other pieces of evidence).

Edited May 23 by Denise Hazelwood
added a parenthetical & grammar fix

[Sandy Larsen]

15 minutes ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

The cover-up doesn't have to be because of "CIA involvement in planning the assassination."

 

Yes, Denise, of course the cover-up had to do with the CIA's involvement in planning the assassination. That's not just speculation... that's a known fact.

How does your theory account for the fact that the assassination was designed in a way that the Soviets and the Cubans would be blamed? The CIA made it look like Oswald was friendly with the Cubans and had been paid $6500 to kill Kennedy. And that he had met with KGB assassinations chief Valeriy Kostikov. Yet in reality, the whole Mexico City affair, was done without Oswald even being there... it was done by Oswald impersonators.

How do you explain that?

 

[Denise Hazelwood]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Yes, Denise, of course the cover-up had to do with the CIA's involvement in planning the assassination. That's not just speculation... that's a known fact.

 

Just because a lot of people believe it doesn't make it a fact.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

How does your theory account for the fact that the assassination was designed in a way that the Soviets and the Cubans would be blamed? The CIA made it look like Oswald was friendly with the Cubans and had been paid $6500 to kill Kennedy. And that he had met with KGB assassinations chief Valeriy Kostikov. Yet in reality, the whole Mexico City affair, was done without Oswald even being there... it was done by Oswald impersonators.

I have no doubt that Oswald had some sort of CIA connection. I don't know what the CIA's plans for him were. And my scenario leaves open plenty of room for speculation about his motives. One speculation is that Oswald wasn't even trying to get Kennedy, but Connally, who had refused to change his discharge status. But between Oswald's crappy rifle and less than perfect marksmanship--he missed Connally and got Kennedy instead (with his first shot).

But honestly, I just can't see Oswald as being a deep, high-level CIA asset. A low-level informant, sure, with possible plans to groom him into something more. Who knows? But I think Russia saw him as something of a loose-canon, or maybe suspected him of being a spy, and kind of humored him by giving him a low-level job manufacturing transistor radios. They didn't buy what he was trying to sell, in any case.

As for the "Oswald impersonator" in Mexico City--surely if the CIA was behind setting up an Oswald impersonator, they could have sent someone who sort of looked like him? "Harvey," perhaps? (The photo that is supposed to be of "Oswald" is clearly someone else entirely, not even close to the "Harvey" photos).

I also don't put it past the Cubans (as revenge for all the failed "Operation Mongoose" plots) or the Russians (as revenge for all the blame they were getting from Oswald's trip to Russia and speculation that the Russians were behind him) to spread some disinformation. Who knows? But by all accounts, Johnson was terrified that the Russians were behind Oswald, and was worried about a potential WWIII breaking out. Cuba or Russia might still have been behind Oswald, or...maybe not. It's speculation. 

And again, Oswald may have been trying to shoot Connally rather than Kennedy. Who knows?

Why did Ruby seem to calm down after he learned he had killed Oswald? Again, who knows. Maybe something Cuban-related was going on between them? Or maybe Ruby just went into shock, knowing that he might then be eligible for the death penalty, and his state of shock was interpreted as "calm"? Again, who knows?

But none of the speculation on motives explains the gun smoke nose witnesses, the absconding with the body, the mountain of evidence of cover-up, and so much more. If the CIA was truly in a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, why all the insistence in the "lone-nut" scenario? Why not just say that Oswald had an accomplice, but we don't know who that accomplice was? Why all the bull-dooky? Why involve more people than just the shooter/s in the cover-up? Why the autopsy charade? Etc.

If the CIA was truly involved, why even shoot Kennedy at all? Why not poison him and make it look like death from "natural" causes (as was the speculation surrounding Guy Bannister's death)? 

Oswald's "patsy" claim may well have been because he knew that a SS agent actually shot Kennedy, not him. If his true target was Connally, he might not have known Kennedy was hit by his first shot--adding more fuel to his "patsy" belief. My own speculation, of course, but no less valid than any of the other multiple speculations out there.

What my scenario does is give an accounting of the shots that fits with the evidence--and fits better than any other scenario I've come across. There's some little bit of speculation involved in putting it together, but that speculation is well within the realm of possibility, credibility, and even probability. 

I've posted the first two shots of my scenario in threads on this forum. (I'm working on the rest.) So far, aside from a bit of gain-say argument (a couple of people just saying I'm "wrong" without explaining why the evidence I present doesn't fit the scenario), forum members have been strangely quiet. Feel free to speculate on alternative explanations for my supporting evidence. But my scenario does follow two important logical razors: Occam's Razor ("The simplest solution is usually the correct one.") and Hanlon's Razor ("Don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.") If you give my scenario a chance, I think you will find it is very elegant.

The reason for all the bullshit and nonsense is because the other shooter was a SS agent, who was handling a defective AR-15. It was so freaking embarrassing that the higher-ups who sanctioned the cover-up (which undoubtedly included the Kennedy family) chose to go with a sloppy and imperfect cover-up rather than just say that Oswald had an accomplice who was still at-large.

 

Edited May 24 by Denise Hazelwood
added a bit of clarification and fixed typo

[Sandy Larsen]

48 minutes ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

I don't know what the CIA's plans for him were.

 

That is just one of the many things you don't know (but could know had you studied it) that makes you think your theory is great.