Fuedalism and JFK

[Peter McGuire]

Do you think it is possible that when the files on the assassination are released, the reason given for JFK's assassination, (if there was a conspiracy) would be this:

[qoute]The Kennedy's were in the process of setting up a dynasty, and this is wrong in a democracy?

They have been called 'America's royal family'.

I think that this is one of the reasons they may give, but is is not the whole story.

There is also the issue of national security, which appears to be the reason the files are withheld.

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

Edited November 19, 2006 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Myra Bronstein]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

Hell, it was when Poppy Kennedy had his stroke that the bad guys lost any supposed control over President Kennedy and he really blossomed into a great president. He totally had his own mind, and that is why he was murdered.

[Peter McGuire]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

[qoute]Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

[/qoute]

Credit Seymour M. Hersh in the Dark Side of Camelot.

I bought this book for 99 cents to see what dirt was being spread around about Kennedy. Kennedy did assume office on January 20th, 1961 , so JFK was in office before his father's stroke in December , 1961.

FWIW, I take what Hersh says with about a ton of salt.

According to Hersh " After his son's election to the presidency, Joe Kennedy served as a one-man kitchen cabinet until his severe stroke in December 1961."

I did not say JFK was killed because Seymour Hersh said the President had a dedicaded telephone line installed to his father's residence. The OP's thread was about the possibility of a 24 year old Kennedy dynasty being a motive in the assassination. This idea is certainly not new, and Hersh's assertion is relevant to this theory.

Edited November 20, 2006 by Peter McGuire

[Myra Bronstein]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

Credit Seymour M Hersh in the Dark Side of Camelot.

Yeah...about that.

I'm trying to decide what's up with Sy. Did he do the hatchet job on President Kennedy for the obvious, CIAesque, reason?

He's released some truly good info over the years, thanks to his, uh, access to certain kinds of whistle-blowers. And I've seen him give a speech where he talked about Abu Ghraib torture of kids, which he reported to the embarassment of the regime, and he was damn near crying. I'm having some trouble believing he's a total hack.

But... that hatchet job on President Kennedy--what's up with that?

Edited November 20, 2006 by Myra Bronstein

[Peter McGuire]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

Credit Seymour M Hersh in the Dark Side of Camelot.

Yeah...about that.

I'm trying to decide what's up with Sy. Did he do the hatchet job on President Kennedy for the obvious, CIAesque, reason?

He's released some truly good info over the years, thanks to his, uh, access to certain kinds of whistle-blowers. And I've seen him give a speech where he talked about Abu Ghraib torture of kids, which he reported to the embarassment of the regime, and he was damn near crying. I'm having some trouble believing he's a total hack.

[qoute]But... that hatchet job on President Kennedy--what's up with that?[/qoute]

Exactly, it seemed that trashing Kennedy was , for the most part , off limits. Killing him was good enough, there was no need to do any more damage. Good question , why did they feel , in 1997 , that they had to spread this dirt?

Edited November 20, 2006 by Peter McGuire

[Myra Bronstein]

Also, if true , the President's father having a dedicated telephone line to the White House was not right , either.

Even if it were true, this must be a candidate for the title of Most Absurd Motive Ever Offered for the Assassination, considering that it was a well-known fact that Joseph Kennedy suffered a serious stroke in early 1962, and was ever after unable to communicate by telephone with anyone.

Credit Seymour M Hersh in the Dark Side of Camelot.

Yeah...about that.

I'm trying to decide what's up with Sy. Did he do the hatchet job on President Kennedy for the obvious, CIAesque, reason?

He's released some truly good info over the years, thanks to his, uh, access to certain kinds of whistle-blowers. And I've seen him give a speech where he talked about Abu Ghraib torture of kids, which he reported to the embarassment of the regime, and he was damn near crying. I'm having some trouble believing he's a total hack.

[qoute]But... that hatchet job on President Kennedy--what's up with that?[/qoute]

Exactly, it seemed that trashing Kennedy was , for the most part , off limits. Killing him was good enough, there was no need to do any more damage. Good question , why did they feel , in 1997 , that they had to spread this dirt?

*******************************************************************

Well I'm not puzzled about that Peter. There are three steps to an assassination:

1) Murder the person

2) Cover up the crime

3) Assassinate their reputation and legacy so they won't become a beloved martyr

The CIA follows that formula consistently. (And they have most definitely spent decades trying to trash President Kenendy so we won't realize that a man standing up for the people was executed for doing so.)

I'm wondering, given that my world view is a simplistic "good guys" vs "bad guys," if Sy Hersh is a good guy or a bad guy. He's a tough one to figure out since there is such extreme evidence supporting both scenarios.

Edited November 20, 2006 by Myra Bronstein

[J. Raymond Carroll]

But... that hatchet job on President Kennedy--what's up with that?

Here is a link to an interesting piece on Hersh by Jim Di Eugenio:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspir...pr1197-jfk.html

[Guest Eugene B. Connolly]

I believe the fear of a Kennedy Dynasty becoming a reality was very much abroad in 1963.

The idea of a Dynasty or a new Aristocracy would have been anathema to many

Americans. It would have meant the end of the American Republic.

They didn't call the Kennedy era Camelot for nothing.

Julius Caesar was assassinated because it was felt that he

wanted to make himself King (Rex). In Caesar's time 'Rex'

was a bad word.

It is interesting to note that Caesar's assassination led directly to

the foundation of the Roman Empire.

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.

EBC

[Myra Bronstein]

But... that hatchet job on President Kennedy--what's up with that?

Here is a link to an interesting piece on Hersh by Jim Di Eugenio:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspir...pr1197-jfk.html

Holy cow! That is the best article I've ever read. The best. Well, along with part one, they're the best. Thank you *so* much...J? Raymond? Ah, the Probe articles. I didn't know they were online. Wow, now I can't wait to read The Assassinations book.

These articles got right to the heart of everything, specifically how it's essential for the assassins to assassinate the victim's reputation after the murder. That's the whole point (along with the cover-up of course) of the decades of smears. And the author says so perfectly:

“This blurring of tabloid and journalistic standards inevitably leads to a blurring of history. With people like Kelley, Rivera, and Exner commenting, the Kennedys get inserted into a giant Torbitt Document of modern history. With people like Davis translating for them, RFK does not pursue Giancana, they are actually pals in MONGOOSE. The Kennedys agree with the Joint Chiefs: we should invade Cuba. And then escalate in Vietnam. Disinformation feeds on disinformation, and whatever the record shows is shunted aside as the tabloid version becomes “accepted history,” to use Davis’ phrase (p. 290). The point of this blurring of sources is that the Kennedys, in these hands, become no different than the Dulles brothers, or Nixon, or Eisenhower. In fact, Davis says this explicitly in his book( pp. 298-99). As I noted in the last issue, with Demaris and Exner, the Kennedys are no different than Giancana. And once this is pounded home, then anything is possible. Maybe Oswald did work for Giancana. And if RFK was working with Sam, then maybe Bobby unwittingly had his brother killed. Tragic, but hey, if you play with fire you get burned. Tsk. Tsk.

But beyond this, there is an even larger gestalt. If the Kennedys were just Sorenson-wrapped mobsters or CIA officers, then what difference does it make in history if they were assassinated? The only people who should care are sentimental Camelot sops like O’Donnell and Powers who were in it for a buck anyway. Why waste the time and effort of a new investigation on that. For the CIA, this is as good as a rerun of the Warren Commission, since the net results are quite similar. So its no surprise to me that the focus of Hersh’s book has shifted between Oswald did it for the Mob, and an all out trashing of the Kennedys.”

Other interesting blurbs:

Noam Chomsky:

“In the talk to date, I've dealt primarily with the attacks on Kennedy from the left by Noam Chomsky and his henchman Alexander Cockburn which occurred at the time of the release of Oliver Stone's JFK.”

(I knew that guy couldn't be trusted!)

McGeorge Bundy (Not surprising eh Ashton?):

“Even McGeorge Bundy, about whom many have had suspicions, denied that Kennedy had ever approved them or been informed of any plots (Ibid. p. 156).”

Federal Reserve:

“In 1963, Kennedy crossed the Rubicon and actually printed money out of the Treasury, bypassing that crowning jewel of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve Board.”

Secret Service:

Hated Kennedy (which is obvious from the fact that they conspicuously helped murder him), supposedly ‘cause of his unwillingness to pretend that commies are the devil’s right hand.

The Rockefellers:

"Consider some of the things the Rockefellers accomplished in the seventies: they were part of the effort to quadruple gasoline prices through their oil companies; David Rockefeller took part in the effort to get the American government to intervene in Chile in 1973; the Trilateral Commission, which the Rockefellers sponsored, funneled many of its members into the Carter administration; in 1979, Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller convinced Carter to let the Shah of Iran into the country for medical treatment. The reaction in Iran helped give us Reagan-Bush. The rest, as they say, is history."

The Kennedy’s:

"Andy Harland called up Steve Jones after reading his article in The Humanist (Probe Vol. 4 #3 p. 8). He was an acquaintance of Peter Lawford’s who talked to him a few times about the (JFK) assassination. Jones’ notes from that phone call includes the following: Lawford told him that Jackie knew right away that shots came from the front as did Powers and O’Donnell. He said shortly after the funeral the family got together.... Bobby told the family that it was a high level military/CIA plot and that he felt powerless to do anything about it.... the family always felt that JFK’s refusal to commit to Vietnam was one of the reasons for the assassination....Lawford told him that the kids were all told the truth as they grew up but it was Teddy who insisted that the family put the thing to rest."

Waldron and Hartman:

"As the declassified record now shows (Probe Vol. 4 #6 “Gerald Ford: Accessory after the Fact”) this is just plain wrong. Davis then tries to insinuate any cover-up was brought on by either a backfiring of the Castro plots (Davis p. 454) or JFK’s dalliance with Exner (p. 498). As wrongheaded and against the declassified record as this seems, this argument still has adherents, e. g. Martin Waldron and Tom Hartman. They refine it into meaning that the Kennedys had some kind of secret plan to invade Cuba in the offing at the time of the assassination. This ignores the Church Committee report, which shows that by 1963, Kennedy had lost faith in aggression and was working toward accommodation with Castro. It also ignores the facts that JFK would not invade Cuba under the tremendous pressures of either the Bay of Pigs debacle, or the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Bobby backed him on both occasions. Reportedly, like Davis, Waldron likes to use CIA sources like Bill Colby (Mr. Phoenix Operation) on JFK’s ideas about assassination. Just as Newman corrected the Vietnam record in 1992, his long-awaited book Kennedy and Cuba will do much to correct these dubious assertions."

(Well...this certainly reinforces my mistrust of that book.)

Sy Hersh:

Hersh is a longtime CIA mouthpiece. No shock there. But it also mentions him blubbering and sobbing about the great Jack Kennedy (as he smears him for money).

As an editorial aside, when I saw Sy talking a couple of years ago on torture at Abu Ghirab, it was the most bizarre speech I ever witnessed. He spoke seemingly extemporaneously about tapes of children being violated, in a very low weak mumble, and then he’d seem to lose his place and repeat things. He seemed to be on the verge of tears; he was just in another place. Granted the subject matter was awful. But he rambled on so long that Anthony Romero walked out and physically pulled him offstage (quite rude actually, but that’s Romero). He seemed tortured himself. Well, whatever. If he feels conflicted that’s his problem. He's the one who sold his soul. I just know now not to trust the little hack.

Book:

Guns of the Regressive Right

Parts 1 and 2 of the article:

http://tinyurl.com/vhayd

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspir...pr1197-jfk.html

The Probe magazine vault:

http://www.ctka.net/home.html

And:

“The power elite realizes that, in a very real and pragmatic sense, assassination isn't enough. You have to cover it up afterwards, and then be ready to smother any legacy that might linger. The latter is quite important since assassination is futile if a man's ideas live on through others…. The smothering effect afterward must hold, since the assassinated leader cannot be allowed to become a martyr or legend.”

Edited November 21, 2006 by Myra Bronstein