John Simkin Thought John McAdams Was a CIA Propagandist

[W. Niederhut]

      Education Forum founder, John Simkin, thought John McAdams was a CIA-affiliated internet propagandist.

      Until this past weekend, I thought everyone in the JFKA research community believed as much.

      McAdams devoted a great deal of attention to smearing Col. L. Fletcher Prouty as a "crackpot," and "anti-Semite," during his internet career, in a similar fashion to the way that Fred Litwin has been smearing Jim Garrison, Oliver Stone, and James DiEugenio since 2018.

      I came under attack this weekend by John McAdams' former associate, W. Tracy Parnell, and a few other LN-aligned Education Forum members (especially Steve Roe) for posting references to James DiEugenio's critiques of Mr. Litwin's work. 

      These gentlemen were outraged that I had even raised the question of possible CIA-funded "Mockingbird" type disinformation on the 21st century internet.  They accused me of "harassment," presumably for posting DiEugenio's essays on Litwin.

      However, as early as 2005, John Simkin was also concerned about CIA "Mockingbird" type involvement in internet information about the JFK assassination and cover up.

      In fact, in the process of his 2005 reconstruction of the history of Operation Mockingbird, (for his Spartacus encyclopedia) Mr. Simkin observed that Google was blacking out any references to his articles on Mockingbird, Frank Wisner, et.al.

      Here's the EF archival link.

 

Edited October 7 by W. Niederhut

[W. Tracy Parnell]

40 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Education Forum founder, John Simkin, thought John McAdams was a CIA-affiliated internet propagandist.

He thought that, but can he prove it?

42 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

These gentlemen were outraged that I had even raised the question of possible CIA-funded "Mockingbird" type disinformation on the 21st century internet.  They accused me of "harassment," presumably for posting DiEugenio's essays on Litwin.

I am certainly not outraged that you raised the subject of Mockingbird. You can talk about whatever you want. What I am concerned about is you are accusing Litwin (and others I assume) of being a paid CIA disinformation agent without proof. Number one, I don't think that should be allowed here. Number two, if it is allowed you should not be a moderator because as I explained a moderator should be one who sees that the members abide by the rules and is careful about what they themselves post.

[W. Niederhut]

12 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

He thought that, but can he prove it?

I am certainly not outraged that you raised the subject of Mockingbird. You can talk about whatever you want. What I am concerned about is you are accusing Litwin (and others I assume) of being a paid CIA disinformation agent without proof. Number one, I don't think that should be allowed here. Number two, if it is allowed you should not be a moderator because as I explained a moderator should be one who sees that the members abide by the rules and is careful about what they themselves post.

W. Tracy,

 So, moderators are not supposed to ask questions, or post reference articles about topics under discussion?

 Is that your concept? 

 Did your former associate, John McAdams, have such a policy at McAdams.edu?

[James DiEugenio]

McAdams did run an acappella music channel, during which he ran advertisements for CIA recruitment.

Just a coincidence I guess.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

5 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Is that your concept? 

My "concept" is that moderators should not accuse posters of being CIA disinformation agents without proof. I don't believe that is a radical idea. The whole concept is silly anyway and certainly beneath a professional person such as yourself. Accuse someone of being CIA and then you can ignore them and discount everything they write as propaganda. Just refute them using good evidence and move on. But I do believe that a moderator has a special responsibility to watch what they say.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

An example of a good moderator was Peter Fokes who worked with McAdams at his forum. Fokes worked with McAdams and using the adversarial system decided what comments were moderated. Sure, it was McAdams' forum in the end and Fokes knew that but he had his input and his own comments were very fair. 

When posting on forums, I think it is always important to remember where you are. This is a CT forum, that is, it is dominated numbers wise by CTs. I always keep that in kind when deciding when to "give up." If I have 10 guys against me, I am probably not going to go that far. If it is a topic I specialize in maybe I can get my point across.

I guess my point is, I would like to see more civility and less demonization of "the other side" on forums and in life in general.

[James DiEugenio]

Let us never forget McAdams' Joe Nolan impersonation at a conference.

Which was picked up by a reporter on a mission and printed.

Edited October 7 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

For this who do not remember the McAdams' impersonation, here is Part one:

 

In the time period of 1993-94, the backlash against Oliver Stone's film was in high gear. The 30th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination was the occasion for a particularly bad CBS special hosted by Dan Rather. But also, Bob Loomis at Random House had enlisted Gerald Posner to write a book reinforcing the Warren Commission. This turned into the bestselling Case Closed. This book was attended by a publicity build up that was probably unprecedented for the time. The book was featured on the cover of US News and World Report, and Posner got a featured spot on an ABC TV newsmagazine. (Posner has since been exposed as a pathological plagiarist, and also part of a scheme to defraud Harper Lee of her royalties. But as we shall see, McAdams still admires his discredited book.)

In the summer of 1994, there was a meeting in Washington between CIA officer Ted Shackley, former CIA Director, the late Bill Colby, CIA affiliated journalist Joe Goulden, writer Gus Russo, and Dr. Robert Artwohl. (Probe Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 30) One of the subjects under discussion was the upcoming fall conference in Washington of the newly formed Coalition on Political Assassinations, or COPA. At the time, the Assassination Records Review Board was being formed and some interesting things had already begun flowing out of the National Archives. When word about this meeting got out, Russo tried to pass it off as a research meeting for his book Live By the Sword. This did not remotely explain what Goulden and Artwohl were doing there. When author John Newman called Colby, he said the CIA was worried about what the research community was going to say about David Phillips and Mexico City. Since they thought Phillips had gotten a bum rap from the HSCA. (ibid) It was later revealed that one of the topics of the meeting was if they should use one of their friendly media assets to attack COPA. (ibid)

Edited October 7 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Here is part 2:

 

It looks like they did. But the conduit for the attack was not Gus Russo. Russo was already unwelcome in the critical community because of his work on the wildly skewed 1993 Frontline documentary about Oswald. He had actually been attacked in public at a Dallas Conference the previous year by Cyril Wecht and this author. So what apparently happened is that the strategy was to use someone with a lower public profile. And then to lower that even further by having him attend the conference under a false name. We might have never learned about this operation if the perpetrator had used the name of say 'Jack Smith'. But he didn't. He used the name of 'Paul Nolan'. One day, the real Paul Nolan was surfing the Internet when he found out what had happened. He then posted the following message: "I was just doing some research over the 'net. I wanted to see if anything came up that had my name in it. Guess what? My REAL name is Paul Nolan! Apparently, some asshole wants to use my name as an alias."

The "asshole" Nolan was referring to was John McAdams. McAdams attended a COPA Conference in Washington under Nolan's name. He just happened to meet up with a reporter named Matt Labash. Labash wrote a rather long article for Washington's City Paper ridiculing the conference. The only attendee given any long quotes in the piece was McAdams, under the name of Nolan.

Was the fact that McAdams managed to get noticed under a phony name and get interviewed by Labash a coincidence? Not likely. When Gary Aguilar called Labash and asked him about the negative spin of the article, the writer replied that he had his marching orders for the piece. Milicent Cranor did some research on Labash and discovered he had an interesting history. At the time, he was employed by Rupert Murdoch's The Weekly Standard. But he had been formerly employed by the Richard Mellon Scaife funded American Spectator. And one of his previous assignments had been infiltrating the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and doing a lengthy hit piece on them in the Unification Church owned Washington Times. As we will see, the political orbits of the two perpetrators-Labash and McAdams-- have much in common. Some would say, too much. Whatever the auspices, the meeting appears to have achieved the objective that Colby and Shackley had in mind. As did the overall counter attack against Stone's film. The goal was the familiar one of 1.) polarize and 2.) then marginalize.

[James DiEugenio]

The above appears to me to be a classic Mockingbird operation.

When grouped with his CIA advertisements its pretty compelling stuff.

[James DiEugenio]

McAdams and Wikipedia, part one

 

 

In his fine article, Mroz traced his Wiki-ticket to the notorious Gamaliel. Most of the huge bureaucracy that runs Wikipedia use false names. But indefatigable Wiki critic Daniel Brandt found out who Gamaliel really was. In fact, Brandt exposed many of the real people behind these false names. (Click here for a directory.) Gamaliel's real name is Rob Fernandez, and he lives in Tampa, Florida. And therein lies a tale that reveals much about the influence of McAdams' site on an unsuspecting public.

For Fernandez is the perfect gatekeeper for the professor. Consider some of the firsthand comments by Fernandez quoted by J. P. Mroz:

What I'm proudest of and spent more time working on than anything else are my contributions to Lee Harvey Oswald. The Oswald entry is even mentioned in a newspaper article on Wikipedia. If you want to witness insanity firsthand, try monitoring these articles for conspiracy nonsense.

Don't worry, we have years of experience dealing with the conspiracy folks. If you are really bored, check out the talk page archives-its like a never ending series of car crashes.

As I said in my edit summary, conspiracy theorists take issue with every detail of the Kennedy assassination. To include each of their challenges would overwhelm the text.

In other words, Fernandez and McAdams are soul brothers on the matters of 1.) Oswald's guilt in the JFK case, and 2.) Critics of the Warren Commission being just street corner "buffs". Therefore--like McAdams' moderation on his forum-Fernandez swoops down on anyone who dares defy the Commission and its efficacy. In fact, in his obeisance to the Warren Report, Fernandez is roughly the equivalent of Orwell's Thought Police. And that comparison is not made by me. It is made by him. For, as more than one observer has noted, Fernandez once had a Nazi Swastika on his web site. And there is a famous picture of him wearing a white T -shirt with a giant scissors imprinted on it.

Now, how close are McAdams and Fernandez? According to Wikipedia expert Tom Scully, McAdams' biography at Wiki was first started by Fernandez. One will see not one negative sentence in that entry about McAdams. In fact, one will see his JFK web site both singled out and praised. At the bottom, one will see an External Link to the McAdams JFK page. With this kind of built-in bias, it is no wonder that John McAdams is one of the most active editors of JFK material on the "people's encylopedia". That Fernandez allows this is really kind of shocking. But it shows how Wikipedia, like much of the "online revolution", has grown into a huge disappointment. Because Fernandez is about as objective on the JFK assassination as say Anthony Lewis or Tom Wicker from the New York Times were. Therefore, the Times championed books by writers like David Belin and Gerald Posner. Today, Fernandez paves the way for someone as agenda driven and factually challenged as McAdams. As many commentators have stated, this illicit union between Fernandez and McAdams does much to drive the unsuspecting public to the professor's boondoggle of a web site. The damage inflicted on what may be thousands, or tens of thousands, of unwary neophytes is staggering to imagine. For when one Googles the name "Lee Harvey Oswald", the number one reference that comes up is Wikipedia's. If one looks at the External Links list at the bottom, one will see not one, but two references to McAdams' site.

[Denny Zartman]

42 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

What I am concerned about is you are accusing Litwin (and others I assume) of being a paid CIA disinformation agent without proof. Number one, I don't think that should be allowed here. Number two, if it is allowed you should not be a moderator

You're so offended that you want him removed as a moderator, but not so offended as to simply leave the forum yourselves in protest.

Right.

You know, W. is actually paying you guys a compliment.

Being a paid CIA disinformation agent 1. Implies that your efforts to spread disinformation is valuable 2. Implies that your efforts to spread disinformation is effective 3. At least makes you some money, and 4. Implies that you don't really believe the useless nonsense you all spout.

I think it's much more embarrassing to admit that you're all here tirelessly spreading disinformation for free; that it's just some sort of weird hobby for all of you.

At least CT's are trying to solve the crime and get some answers. LN's think the case was solved in one hour after it happened by cops that couldn't even correctly identify the alleged weapon. So what keeps the LN's coming back here? If it's not for pay, it's just to score points on CT's that you all despise simply because they're CT's.

You guys think LHO acted alone. Acknowledged. Now how about you go find another hobby and leave us alone to do some serious research?

If you LN crybabies were actually so terribly, terribly offended at a forum moderator being allowed to wonder if you're all paid shills, you'd all quit the forum in protest. But you won't. Since it's obvious you all won't quit in protest, the question becomes "why?"

Maybe it's because if you do all quit the forum in protest, you won't earn your paychecks?

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Denny.

 

Here is Part 2 of John McAdams and Wikipedia

 

 

Therefore, Fernandez is able to propagate McAdams' disinformation at the same time that he is able to deprive the reader of sources of contrary information. And Len Osanic and Fletcher Prouty are the newest victims of this horrendous double standard. For Fernandez is very eager to use what can be called 'branding irons' on sources of information. For example, the reader will look forever on Wikipedia to see an article or essay referenced to Probe Magazine. Even though that journal was universally praised as perhaps the finest ever in the field. And almost each article was academically footnoted to credible sources in the literature. Here is the question: Why does something like McAdams' fatally flawed web site qualify as an External Link, but neither Probe Magazine, nor CTKA, makes the cut? As per scholarly approach and quality information, there is simply no comparison. Therefore, as the reader can see, Fernandez is not after those qualities. His journey starts in reverse. If the source states Oswald is guilty it can make the cut. The way you get there doesn't really matter.

Now, the biggest shock to the system since 1967 in regards to the Kennedy case was Oliver Stone's film JFK. The late Col. Fletcher Prouty was influential in the making of the film, and he was actually a character in the picture. Portrayed by actor Donald Sutherland, he was code named Mr. X. It was through him that much of the material relating to Kennedy's intent to withdraw from Vietnam was conveyed. This is anathema to McAdams. (As it was to Gary Mack's friend and fellow propagandist Dave Perry.) Therefore, on his web site, he tries to discredit Prouty. For instance, he actually uses an essay by Chip Berlet, who could be called as anti-conspiracy as McAdams. He then uses a long essay originally posted on CompuServe to critique Prouty's work on the Vietnam War. Throughout this page, he makes several inaccurate statements about what Prouty has actually said in interviews and in books. Or, he tries to makes things he did say sound as if they are completely wild and unfounded. For instance, Prouty disputed the idea of petroleum as a "fossil fuel". McAdams tries to say that this makes Fletcher a crackpot. But yet the idea of abiotic oil is not uncommon at all. In fact, today, many people agree with it; and some would say that the new Russian deep well drilling proves it. (Click here for an interesting essay on the topic.) What this really shows is McAdams' restricted mode of thought, combined with his overreaching goal of smearing the critics. Which, with the aid of Fernandez, he has been successful at doing on Wikipedia.

That Jimmy Wales allows this kind of conflict of interest by McAdams to run amok under the protection of Fernandez is a disgrace. Anyone interested in the true facts of the JFK case should never give a dime to any of Wales' recurrent pleas for donations. For as we can see, Wales' constant refrain about this democratic and free "peoples' encyclopedia" is false. It is neither free nor democratic. On the JFK case, Fernandez has guaranteed it is under the control of a blinkered street cop.

 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

3 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

You're so offended that you want him removed as a moderator, but not so offended as to simply leave the forum yourselves in protest.

Of course, we want to stay since it is a place to try and get our message out. But maybe the members should take a vote and decide if they want a closed forum or an open one. I noticed in one thread that several said let the LNs post as it adds to the discussion. My point is that if it is an open forum, anyone can post any idea that goes along with the rules. My personal opinion (that's all it is) is that Dr. Niederhut is not the best choice for a moderator if it is to be an open forum. He wants to be free to make more provocative comments and in my opinion a moderator shouldn't do that. Nothing against him personally, I'm sure he is a nice guy.

[James DiEugenio]

McAdams background and political schema:

Why? Because John McAdams is not only a JFK assassination informational provocateur. He is a rightwing political operative who would be comfortable spending a night in a New Orleans bistro sharing his world-view with the likes of Guy Banister.

For example, back in 1995, the infamous Chase Manhattan memo surfaced. This was a paper written by Riordan Roett of the Emerging Markets division of the Rockefeller controlled bank. Mexican president Ernest Zedillo was being faced with a guerilla uprising by a group called the Zapatistas led by Subcomandante Marcos. Zedillo was trying to negotiate out of the crisis in Chiapas province. Roett's paper urged Zedillo to go in and militarily end the problem for his investors. Roett said that this may provoke some negative reactions internationally, but there were "always political costs in bold action." (Counterpunch, February 1, 1995) The revelation of this internal memo created a firestorm of controversy and picketing of the bank. Therefore the bank backed off the memo once it got too controversial. Wisely, Zedillo ignored Roett. Agreements were reached and lives were spared. That disappointed our political science professor. He wanted Zedillo to obey the memo and go in and wipe out the rebels. (Probe Magazine, Volume 3 No. 3, p. 13)