The Problem of WCR/'Lone Nut" Disinformation on the Education Forum

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Pat,

    Let's get real.

    There is no meaningful equivalence between the systematic, deliberate falsehoods promoted by the WCR and its salespeople in the mainstream and social media, and the honest, accurate research evidence debunking the WCR "Lone Nut" theory of the JFK assassination.

    Certainly, some alternative theories are flawed, but no honest, informed person accepts the Lone Nut theory.

    Based on the philosophy of science, valid theories must explain ALL of the facts without being debunked by ANY facts.

    It's a high bar, and the Lone Nut theory doesn't even come close to clearing that bar.

    And let's acknowledge that the CIA has invested heavily in promoting WCR disinformation for 60 years.

     That is the essential subject of this thread.

If you get outside the bubble of this forum, you will find that 30% or more of the people who consider themselves honest and informed on this issue are lone-nutters. 

If one were to poll the 100 most-prominent historians in the country, moreover, I would bet at least half would say the odds are strong that Oswald did it. They would be reluctant to state it as a fact, I suspect, but they would agree that the record suggests as much. 

Over the last 30 years I have spoken to what I will guess was 500 non-buffs on the assassination. The vast majority suspect a conspiracy--I would say maybe 70%. But of that 70%, a big chunk--I would guess half--will tell you why they suspect a conspiracy, and tell you something that most on this forum would think is nonsense.

Typical answers.

"The driver did it--I saw it on Youtube."

"An SS agent shot him by accident--I saw it on TV."

"Someone told me his body was switched and the body in the autopsy photos was that cop who got shot."

"Oswald was brainwashed into shooting Kennedy by the CIA."

"Israel did it." 

"I don't understand why so many people make such a big deal about it. Onassis was behind it. Obviously. I mean, what are the odds that he spends time with Jackie and that JFK then gets shot? And that he then marries Jackie?"

"The mob did it. Heck, I heard there was a mob hit man who even admitted pulling the trigger." 

I don't consider such people any better informed than the numerous academics and historians who read Posner or Bugliosi and stopped right there. Do you? 

 

 

[Gil Jesus]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

If you get outside the bubble of this forum, you will find that 30% or more of the people who consider themselves honest and informed on this issue are lone-nutters. 

 

How honest and informed are people who are willing to listen to only one side of the story ?  It's like a juror who only hears the prosecution's side of the case and renders a verdict based on that. The Commission was never impartial, in fact, before it heard its first witness, its outline of its work used phrases like, "Oswald as President Kennedy's assassin" and such.

In a January 11, 1964 memo, “For the Members of the Commission”, Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin outlined the areas of the Commission’s “work”. In this memo, he used the phrases, “Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy”, “Evidence Demonstrating Oswald’s Guilt”, “Evidence Identifying Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy”, the “Permissable Inferences of Oswald’s Murder of Tippit“, “Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives” and “Lee H. Oswald as the Assassin”.

Keep in mind that this memo naming Oswald as the President’s lone assassin, was written almost one month BEFORE the Commission heard its first witness or saw its first piece of evidence.

And in the last link you can see that it deemed the curtain rod story a "fake" before it had even heard from the witnesses. ( red arrow ) Strange behavior for a Commission that was ( according to the lone nutters ) honest and truthful.

Edited August 11 by Gil Jesus

[W. Niederhut]

Pat,

     I'm responding to your latest comments in red (below.)

Pat Speer wrote:

If you get outside the bubble of this forum, you will find that 30% or more of the people who consider themselves honest and informed on this issue are lone-nutters. 

There are two types of Lone Nutters, Pat -- 1) those who are ignorant of the facts, and 2) those who are deliberately misrepresenting the facts for the CIA "Mockingbird" establishment.

Your alleged 30% are the honest, ignorant people.

If one were to poll the 100 most-prominent historians in the country, moreover, I would bet at least half would say the odds are strong that Oswald did it. They would be reluctant to state it as a fact, I suspect, but they would agree that the record suggests as much. 

There are two types of historians, Pat-- 1) those who are ignorant of the facts, and 2) those who are deliberately misrepresenting the facts for the CIA "Mockingbird" establishment.

Even academic geniuses like Jeffrey Sachs and Ron Unz have been latecomers in discovering the legitimate JFKA research.

Robert Morrow went to Princeton and I also attended Ivy League universities.  Neither of us were aware of the legitimate JFKA research, and the pervasive "Mockingbird" disinformation in the mainstream media until later in life.

Over the last 30 years I have spoken to what I will guess was 500 non-buffs on the assassination. The vast majority suspect a conspiracy--I would say maybe 70%. But of that 70%, a big chunk--I would guess half--will tell you why they suspect a conspiracy, and tell you something that most on this forum would think is nonsense.

Typical answers.

"The driver did it--I saw it on Youtube."

"An SS agent shot him by accident--I saw it on TV."

"Someone told me his body was switched and the body in the autopsy photos was that cop who got shot."

"Oswald was brainwashed into shooting Kennedy by the CIA."

"Israel did it." 

"I don't understand why so many people make such a big deal about it. Onassis was behind it. Obviously. I mean, what are the odds that he spends time with Jackie and that JFK then gets shot? And that he then marries Jackie?"

"The mob did it. Heck, I heard there was a mob hit man who even admitted pulling the trigger." 

I don't consider such people any better informed than the numerous academics and historians who read Posner or Bugliosi and stopped right there. Do you? 

No.  So, there is pervasive ignorance about the JFKA data, even in our academic communities.

60 years of CIA "Mockingbird" disinformation has succeeded in engendering confusion, ignorance, and mass delusions about JFK's Presidency and assassination.

That is, precisely, why I object to LN disinformation here on the Education Forum.

This isn't McAdams.edu.

[Denny Zartman]

Well said, @W. Niederhut.

[Jonathan Cohen]

13 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Certainly, some alternative theories are flawed, but no honest, informed person accepts the Lone Nut theory.

This is a troubling statement, particularly coming from a forum moderator ...

[W. Niederhut]

38 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

This is a troubling statement, particularly coming from a forum moderator ...

What's "troubling" about it, Jonathan?

Should moderators approve of disinformation?

[Miles Massicotte]

16 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Certainly, some alternative theories are flawed, but no honest, informed person accepts the Lone Nut theory.

According your hypothesis this implies that anyone who accepts the Lone Nut theory must be dishonest and/or misinformed. Is that right?

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

What's "troubling" about it, Jonathan?

Should moderators approve of disinformation?

What you seem to be missing is that to others you may be trafficking in disinformation. 

 

[David Von Pein]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

What's "troubling" about it, Jonathan?

Should moderators approve of disinformation?

The statement Jonathan finds "troubling" is obviously this one of yours, W.N.:

"No honest, informed person accepts the Lone Nut theory."

I consider myself to be both "honest" and "informed" re: the JFK assassination, and I most certainly do accept the "Lone Nut theory". And many, many other "honest and informed" people accept it too.

I think a major flaw in the thinking of conspiracy theorists over the last sixty years has been a firm belief that Lee Harvey Oswald, given the evidence that exists in the JFK and Tippit murder cases, could not possibly have committed those two murders by himself. Conspiracists, of course, insist that a multi-person conspiracy/plot must have been involved beyond all doubt.

But I firmly disagree with such a stance. In my opinion, every single thing that happened in November of 1963 that resulted in the deaths of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit could have been accomplished by one single individual---Lee H. Oswald---with no "conspiracy" or "plot" required to enter into the picture at any point.

It's the evaluation and interpretation of the evidence that causes all of the disagreements between LNers and CTers. For a "Lone Nutter" like myself, after evaluating the evidence, I simply cannot fathom the massive overall amount of evidence that points squarely at one Lee Harvey Oswald being able to exist and yet still have Oswald being innocent of both killings (or even one of them). It would just not be possible, in my view.

Planted/faked/manufactured evidence in the quantities required to have Lee Oswald innocent of the two murders he was charged with in 1963 is something that is not likely to have occurred in a million years. Such massive fakery being implemented against one man named Oswald (who, himself, was certainly behaving like a guilty person on 11/22/63) is IMO nothing more than wishful-thinking and wholly-unproven speculation on the part of many conspiracy theorists of the world.

 

Edited August 11 by David Von Pein

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Pat,

     I'm responding to your latest comments in red (below.)

Pat Speer wrote:

If you get outside the bubble of this forum, you will find that 30% or more of the people who consider themselves honest and informed on this issue are lone-nutters. 

There are two types of Lone Nutters, Pat -- 1) those who are ignorant of the facts, and 2) those who are deliberately misrepresenting the facts for the CIA "Mockingbird" establishment.

Your alleged 30% are the honest, ignorant people.

If one were to poll the 100 most-prominent historians in the country, moreover, I would bet at least half would say the odds are strong that Oswald did it. They would be reluctant to state it as a fact, I suspect, but they would agree that the record suggests as much. 

There are two types of historians, Pat-- 1) those who are ignorant of the facts, and 2) those who are deliberately misrepresenting the facts for the CIA "Mockingbird" establishment.

Even academic geniuses like Jeffrey Sachs and Ron Unz have been latecomers in discovering the legitimate JFKA research.

Robert Morrow went to Princeton and I also attended Ivy League universities.  Neither of us were aware of the legitimate JFKA research, and the pervasive "Mockingbird" disinformation in the mainstream media until later in life.

Over the last 30 years I have spoken to what I will guess was 500 non-buffs on the assassination. The vast majority suspect a conspiracy--I would say maybe 70%. But of that 70%, a big chunk--I would guess half--will tell you why they suspect a conspiracy, and tell you something that most on this forum would think is nonsense.

Typical answers.

"The driver did it--I saw it on Youtube."

"An SS agent shot him by accident--I saw it on TV."

"Someone told me his body was switched and the body in the autopsy photos was that cop who got shot."

"Oswald was brainwashed into shooting Kennedy by the CIA."

"Israel did it." 

"I don't understand why so many people make such a big deal about it. Onassis was behind it. Obviously. I mean, what are the odds that he spends time with Jackie and that JFK then gets shot? And that he then marries Jackie?"

"The mob did it. Heck, I heard there was a mob hit man who even admitted pulling the trigger." 

I don't consider such people any better informed than the numerous academics and historians who read Posner or Bugliosi and stopped right there. Do you? 

No.  So, there is pervasive ignorance about the JFKA data, even in our academic communities.

60 years of CIA "Mockingbird" disinformation has succeeded in engendering confusion, ignorance, and mass delusions about JFK's Presidency and assassination.

That is, precisely, why I object to LN disinformation here on the Education Forum.

This isn't McAdams.edu.

I think it is a mistake to attribute thick-headedness to "mockingbird." 

If you pick most any topic from history, whether it be the Lincoln Assassination, Watergate, or even the moon landing, you will find alternative theories to the most widely-accepted story. 

In the JFK case, this tendency has been amplified by a lack of consistency in the evidence. 

To conclude Oswald did it, people need to ignore or throw out certain evidence.

To conclude Oswald didn't do it, people need to ignore or throw out certain evidence. 

An honest assessment, IMO, is to conclude there is a strong likelihood there was more to it than Oswald. 

But there was political pressure from the beginning to say it was just Oswald. And this became an "official" solution. So people used to kowtowing to authority or officialdom are drawn to this solution. The same way they are drawn to songs proclaiming America is the greatest, or that the market self-corrects, or whatever. That Oswald was a crazy commie fits their world-view. Period.

But at the same time there is a segment of society that finds it comforting to think there is a boogey-man behind all bad things. I'm sorry if that sounds insulting but I don't know how else to put it. These people see conspiracies everywhere. Well, IMO--having met and communicated with many of these people--this a way for them to hide from an awful truth...that the world is largely chaos. 

Now that's not to say there aren't those who try to control this chaos via propaganda campaigns and fake news, etc. We have, in fact, seen plenty of this behavior. 

But the hands-on approach one envisions when discussing "mockingbird"--where the CIA calls people up and tells them what lies to tell--is inaccurate, IMO.

During the Vietnam war, for example, the U.S. military created films touting the war effort and provided these films to TV stations for free. TV stations then ran these films to fill empty air time. The advertisers were happy--many of those advertising on TV supported the war effort, or were personally or through their corporation invested in the many companies profiting off the war. Same thing with universities. Before students started protesting the war, academia had largely supported the war and had received bucks from Uncle Sam for doing so. 

So...the point is that no evil "mockingbird" was needed to create support for the Vietnam War. The media and academia were all in for years...until ordinary people got the word out and people started taking a second look.

I think the same is true for the WC. The media were provided exclusives and leaked stories from the WC and were grateful to the respected citizens on the commission for keeping them in the loop. There was no way they were gonna respond in a truly independent manner to the commission's report. Well, a few years later, after Weisberg and Lane and Epstein brought attention to some problems with the commission and its report, they changed their tune. The media was no longer in the bag. 

CBS, famously, decided to conduct a new investigation. And, even more famously, decided to support the Warren Commission and dismiss the likes of Garrison and Lane as trouble-makers. But here's the thing. It wasn't a call from the CIA that did the trick. It was a corporate executive's decision to bring John McCloy in as a top secret advisor that changed the direction of the investigation. 

So while some see "mockingbird" as the basis for the lone-nut cause, I see self-interest. The CIA doesn't run Wall Street, after all. 

Let's keep in mind, as well, that the biggest monetary advances for JFK books have all gone to Oswald did it writers, from Bugliosi, to Posner, to O'Reilly, to Swanson, and I believe Max Holland. These guys were all paid up front to write Oswald did it books.

Well, has any CT author been paid a six-figure or more advance? Probably not. (But perhaps someone with a name like Belzer or Ventura or Corsi.)

In any event, the efforts at supporting the Oswald did it narrative go way deeper than an office at the CIA, IMO.

It's tied up with some people's notion of America, and the Almighty dollar...

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Miles Massicotte said:

According your hypothesis this implies that anyone who accepts the Lone Nut theory must be dishonest and/or misinformed. Is that right?

Yes, Miles.

I would categorize Dulles's WCR/Lone Nut theory of the JFK assassination with the theory that the Earth is flat.  

It has been invalidated by multiple contrary facts.

But it is quite interesting to observe which forum members are getting riled up about this basic truth.

Here's a related question.

Does anyone on the forum deny that the CIA Mockingbird establishment has aggressively promoted the WCR Lone Nut narrative in our media for the past 60 years?

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

What you seem to be missing is that to others you may be trafficking in disinformation. 

 

Total false equivalence.  Pathetic, really.

Frankly, this is, precisely, why a number of Education Forum members are skeptical about your work, Pat.

[Pat Speer]

29 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Total false equivalence.  Pathetic, really.

Frankly, this is, precisely, why a number of Education Forum members are skeptical about your work, Pat.

Now, THAT is what's pathetic. Really really sad. 

if you can't see that silly and desperate conspiracy theories have done more to harm the CT "brand" than the mainstream media and Federal Government combined, then I feel sad for the forum. 

I once got into this with Fetzer. He insisted that HE should be the public face of the JFK research community. And saw no problem with his embracing that the twin towers were brought down by lasers, etc. He thought that the more conspiracies he embraced, the stronger his position, or some such thing. He even bragged about being invited to Iran to speak there and commiserate about the evils of the USA, etc. 

People recognize now that he was a disaster for the JFK research community. Young "truthers" etc were all turned off to the JFK research community because they saw it as a bastion of old white guys talking about fake moon landings and Paul McCartney being an impostor, etc. They saw him as the public face of the JFK community and they wanted nothing to do with it. 

We should avoid the Fetzerization of the forum. 

 

Edited August 11 by Pat Speer

[W. Niederhut]

3 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Now, THAT is what's pathetic. Really really sad. 

if you can't see that silly and desperate conspiracy theories have done more to harm the CT "brand" than the mainstream media and Federal Government combined, then I feel sorry for you, and sad for the forum. 

 

Spare me the pseudo pity, Pat.

If you truly believe that the CIA's Lone Nut narrative of the JFK assassination hasn't been invalidated, I pity you, and I also question your educational credentials.

[Pat Speer]

6 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Spare me the pseudo pity, Pat.

If you truly believe that the CIA's Lone Nut narrative of the JFK assassination hasn't been invalidated, I pity you, and I also question your educational credentials.

Why do you call it the "CIA's lone nut narrative"? 

It was the Johnson Administrations lone-nut narrative.

From Chapter 1. 

Here are the relevant paragraphs of the CIA's 1967 memo directing its assets to push the single-assassin solution:

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's Report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

Now note that, according to this last paragraph, this trend towards accusing Johnson was, in the eyes of the writer of this dispatch (undoubtedly one of the CIA's top officials), "a matter of concern to the U.S. government," including the CIA. Well, this more than suggests that this order to "employ" the CIA's propaganda assets to help clear Johnson's name did not originate within the CIA itself... but from elsewhere in the executive branch.