Another Despicable - Andy Puzder-- Bites The Dust As Trumpies Go Ape Shit Over Leaks

Tens of thousands of actual hard working people rejoiced today as the second cabinet level pick in three days went down n flames: the despicable turd named Andy Puzder. This is the asshole Trump had named as Labor Secretary who was anything but friendly to labor, and who paid millions for cheesy ads with half clad chicks when he could have paid higher wages to his Carl's Jr. workers. He is also the character who said he'd rather have robots working for him because they never get sick, or take time off and you wouldn't have to pay overtime or benefits.

Puzder,  Donald Dump's controversial choice to run the Department of Labor, withdrew his nomination as questions about his byzantine business interests, details about his acrimonious divorce and revelations that he employed an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper mounted.

Interestingly it wasn't Dems who scuttled Puzder’s nomination (they didn't have the numbers)  but the Republicans, who grew increasingly concerned about his background and business record. Especially after a 27-year old tape from an Oprah show surfaced on Politico, featuring his wife at the time describing how Puzder dragged her around, beat her severely  (leaving her with two ruptured cervical discs) and warned if she got uppity he'd "see her in the gutter".  Jeez, maybe the son of a bitch was practicing for how he'd like to treat his future workers at Carl's Jr. Yuh think?  (Note: his ex wife recanted but the tape remains as fairly good evidence that what she was relating wasn't just made up. Readers ought to check it out for themselves.)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren had this to say after viewing the tape:

"I have watched the episode in which she appeared and I believe every Senator should. I found it extraordinarily troubling alongside his company's poor record of treatment of female employees, his highly explicit and sexualized ads and his snide comments about sex discrimination. There is ample evidence that Mr. Puzder is a terrible choice ."

Puzder, the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, the billion-dollar parent company of the fast food chains Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s, was due to appear before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee on Thursday- after a series of delays.  However, in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon Puzder said he was withdrawing his nomination: “While I won’t be serving in this administration, I fully support the president and his highly qualified team.”  Right, a highly qualified team dedicated to destroying the agencies to which they've been appointed by president Dump.

Much of the basis for Pudzy's withdrawal can be traced to activist protests across the nation - featuring many workers from Hardee's and Carl's Jr, including some dressed up as robots. Others carried signs of protest that provided horrific optics for the putative backers in the Senate, e.g.
.
It also didn't hurt that cause that Sen. Elizabeth Warren  sent a blistering letter to Puzder Monday in which she charged him with "a sneering contempt for the workers in your stores and a vehement opposition to the laws you will be charged with enforcing." Indeed, workers say that wage theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment are rampant at Puzder's chains. Those allegations are backed up by publicly available data .  But again, it was his wife beating antics that got him to finally pull out, confirming he's as despicable as the two other female assaulters, Steve Bannon and pussy grabber Trump himself.

Incredibly even the conservative magazine the National Review published an editorial titled “No to Puzder”.  The magazine railed against Puzder’s support for “comprehensive immigration reform” and argued that in light of the series of unflattering revelations, “his case for confirmation had diminished to the point of disappearing."

Who'd have thought?

Meanwhile, Trump and his lackeys and media whores (like former BushCo toady Fran Townsend)  are now trying to portray the intel leakers as the criminals. The zany fake news Breitbart -style media are also spinning that Mike Flynn was some kind of upstanding citizen - as opposed to a felonious rat who violated the Logan Act- and blamed "leakers" for the whole fiasco.  Trump himself, now evidently suffering from Alzheimer's scale memory loss on top of his other mental deficits, also blamed "the intelligence agency leakers, the fake media, and Hillary supporters" for Flynn's demise. Evidently forgetting that only a day earlier he asserted Flynn had lost his trust and so was removed.

But let's understand that nearly all criminal administrations (like Nixon's) start out by laying the blame on the leakers, then go too far and end up snaring themselves in their pursuit of the leakers. As John Dean (fmr. Nixon attorney) pointed out last night on 'All In'

"Watergate itself was very much born in leaks. It was the setting up of the so-called plumbers unit that was investigating leaks for Nixon that had Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy - the two principal guys that organized it, that led to the eventual exposure.. The reason the White House was involved in Watergate was because of the things they were involved in while working at the White House, mainly breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office trying to find out if he was up to more leaks. 

It all started with the White House obsession with stopping leaks. Now we have another President who seems equally obsessed. Hopefully he's learned something from history if he's old enough to remember Watergate, and he'll avoid the kind of leak cures used by Nixon."

He added:

"Presidents have to be very open about what they are going to do. They can't have secret squads looking for leakers, or have enemies that they want to punish because of their leaks. It's part of the territory. With Trump it was inevitable because of the way he's been approaching his presidency. He was planning to shake things up, but there are going to be bureaucracies in the White House, National Security Council, permanent staff, Office of Management and Budget. Those people aren't going to like it so this is going to be a very leak-prone presidency. Not to mention what will happen out in those departments and agencies with these cabinet members who want to take apart the agencies they're going to be running. So it's going to be a leak prone presidency. If there's anything that Nixon has taught it is just let it flow."

But, of course, Trump and his minions are too stupid to do that - so they will likely overreach in trying to plug the inevitable leaks like Nixon did.  Hell, they can't even adopt which reality they will accept - with Trump blaming "fake media and unfair leaks"  when merely 30 hours earlier he laid the blame on Flynn's own untrustworthiness. WTF can't this ass wit make up his mind? Oh wait, he doesn't have one!  It's easier to blame the "conspiracy theories" on the intelligence community - the guys watching his back - when HE is the one who has plenty of 'splainin to do.  After all, Donald Jr. stated flatly in 2008 to a real estate conference that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of our a lot of our assets...We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia".  So why not  keep the Russians happy including with collusion to ensure a friendly guy is elected who can keep the dollars pouring in?

Now with the report Trump campaign  aides were cozying up to the Russians over the campaign, there's not only smoke, but some hints of fire.   After all the Steele dossier exposed a well developed conspiracy managed on the Trump side by Paul Manaforte and  Carter Page.   To quote Peter Wahner,  Senior Fellow at the conservative  Ethics and Public Policy Center :

"There's smoke here and there's fire, we just don't know the nature of the fire. If there was collusion going on it could lead to the ruination of the Trump presidency"

Hence can only hope that those patriot intelligence officers doing the leaks will continue  - placing country over cynical laws, like Snowden did.

Make no mistake those of us who want to get to the bottom of the Trumpian snake pit that passes for a White House, want the leaks to continue unabated - to press further investigation as occurred in Watergate.  A recent column in the Columbia Journalism Review was even titled 'Flynn Resignation Shows Leaks Under Trump Are Working - Keep 'Em Coming"  The author argued, and I totally agree - as does John Dean- that "leaks to the press are vital to democracy".  Indeed they have the same import and value as whistle blowing on the power mongers, especially when they are acting without any transparency.

Even conservative Joe Scarborough on his show commended whoever leaked the information, He said:

"The only reason we're finding out about it now is because a patriot did leak this to the Washington Post. Did get this information out there or else we wouldn't even have known about it."

Of course, the Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee - careful to keep his aide in Trump;s favor to further a despicable agenda - says he will ask the FBI to investigate "the recent rash of leaks". Well, good luck, buddy! But there are some in this land who remain true patriots and will not be deterred by the threats.  These leakers, whether from the intel agencies or Trump's own NSC, are freaking PATRIOTS and deserve as many medals as Edward Snowden.

Lastly, the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Sens. Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstsin have sent a formal letter to the Dept. of Justice requesting transcripts of all of Flynn's Russian  communications  the FBI has in its possession. The problem? The FBI is now under control of Jess Sessions who used to work in the Trump campaign. The bastard has failed to recuse himself and it is quite evident any guy who worked in the Trumpy campaign is not going to go after it now. I doubt this Johnny Reb from Alabama can be an independent voice for the law - as most of us feared when he was approved.

Fortunately, European Intelligence services have transcripts of all Trump campaign communications dating from August last year. This according to Kurt Eichenwald speaking last night on MSNBC. Thus, even if Sessions' DOJ tries to destroy the key evidence showing collusion, it is bound to turn up from other venues, agencies and still sink the Trump Imperium.

All the signs now point to the need for a totally independent Special Prosecutor, such as we had in the Watergate case. We simply cannot trust Jess Sessions to be independent.

See also :'Let's Consider the Evidence Trump Is A Traitor'

Excerpt:

"Trump’s presidency has many of the traits of a criminal enterprise and a financial shakedown operation, masquerading as a democratically elected government."

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/16/none-dare-call-it-treason-in-the-wake-of-the-flynn-scandal-what-more-proof-do-we-need-that-donald-trump-is-a-traitor/

Exposing More of Larry Schweikart's Lies About Liberals

"I fear that if you're an educated conservative, and you've had the misfortune of reading this book, you've already pulled a good deal amount of hair out of your head like I have........Forget that Schweikart is an abominable writer and harms the conservative movement by making it look like buffoonery. IN FACT.......you know what? .....Just forget this book ever came out"  - Reviewer on Amazon.com

"Schweikart discredits lies that he himself invented and attributed to liberals to make himself appear the hero. It is like the exterminator who releases mice into your house then charges you to get rid of them. "   Reviewer on Amazon.com

We now examine a few more of the ridiculous lies Larry Schweikart attributes to liberals in his book, '48 Liberal Lies About American History' .   

Lie #12: The Founders Envisioned a "Wall of Separation" Between Church and State, Keeping Religious Influence Out of Government

Well, Larry might be excused here, since most fundamentalist-leaning, right wing  radicals don't seem to be aware of Thomas Jefferson's (1802) letter to Danbury Baptists:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

It thereby became an unspoken, unwritten principle that has been practiced on many judicial levels since. And it pretty well embraced Jefferson's (and Madison's) vision of keeping religious influence out of government. The most famous ruling validating it? The 1962 case brought by Madalyn Murray O'Hair which has kept prayer out of the public schools - as it should be.

Lie #18: Senator Joseph McCarthy Concocted the "Red Scare," and There Was Nothing to Fear from Communist Subversives

Most of us, especially from Wisconsin, know the murky history of Joe McCarthy - but evidently this bozo doesn't. We know, for example, that he fomented hysteria about the "Red scare" that reached into almost every U.S. Dept. and agency and at one time bloviated in a Senate hearing about an astounding number of "communists" at  State  and in the military that ran "into the thousands".. He eventually discredited himself by his overreach and unsupported exaggerations, though he ruined hundreds of lives with his insane demagoguery. You can read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

One more interesting fact: It was during the 'Red scare' hysteria of the early 50s  that the Children's Crusade 'Know your Commies' cards came out, e.g.

Lie #21: Columbus Was Responsible for Killing Millions of Indians

 Blatant exaggeration and red herring. Columbus himself did not "kill millions of Indians" and no liberal of any sense ever said he did. This is another case of what one reviewer described as Schweikart's tactic of inventing the lies himself than attributing them to liberals - analogous to the exterminator who releases mice in your home then charges you to remove them.  Those who want the lowdown on the effects of the arrival of the Europeans, including Columbus, on native Americans,  can consult James Loewen's excellent and quality book, 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'.

The key aspect to note? The Europeans brought smallpox with them to the New World, as well as other diseases (e.g. measles) which devastated native populations. But, as Loewen also notes, there was indeed a genocide waged but not over one limited period (i.e. Columbus' arrival) but over hundreds of years. (Culminating in the "Indian Wars" fought in the American West, punctuated by many massacres - such as at Sand Creek in Colorado.)

Lie #27: Richard Nixon Sent Burglars into the Watergate Office Complex

Schweikart can maybe be pardoned for this howler, because he wrote his screed before all the Nixon tapes were released (including new ones only recently). But even then he might have been able to obtain the deathbed account of E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate burglars,  who 'fessed up that  he'd been sent to the Watergate complex by....who else? Nixon!   Bottom line: 'Tricky Dick' basically hung himself by keeping a tape system originally installed by JFK, and using it to the point every nefarious word or plan was faithfully recorded.  By the time of the Watergate investigation in 1973 his 'goose' was basically cooked. (Though his supporters to this day hate to admit it.)

Lie #28: Neither Ronald Reagan's Election nor the "Contract with America" Proved the Triumph of Conservative Ideas

No liberal of any sense ever  "denied" (or proclaimed as a 'lie')  that Reagan's two terms "proved" the triumph of conservative ideas, because one can't deny what never existed in the first place. . What we have said is that too many millions got suckered by Reagan's "aw shucks"  demeanor into buying into conservatism more than they otherwise might. Much of this mental hijacking was superbly described by neuroscientist Robert Ornstein in his 'New World, New Mind'.

Ornstein noted how this "old Mind" (the regressive mind)  of a nation or people can be ramped up collectively and reinforced if its leaders also display and act on their own 'old Mind' predjudices, beliefs, etc. For example( p. 172):

"..the old mind has never been so much in evidence in American politics as in the second half of the Reagan administration"

Ornstein observed that Reagan's 'avuncular' persona and smile (which essentially disengaged too many  Americans' critical thinking centers) made it much easier for them to buy into the "morning in America" pap and swill he was busy feeding them. Never mind the half million tossed into the streets from mental hospitals, or the conversion of the U.S. to the world's foremost debtor and so on.

The populace' old Mind was its own worst enemy in perceiving the very real damage Reaganites were perpetrating (which has more recently been emulated by the Bushies as well as  Bushie leftovers- i.e. neocons, in Obama's State Dept.. ) Orstein points to the (then) 'Star Wars' program as yet another example of 'old Mind' workings (p. 169):

"The Star Wars program represents the continuation of a mind blindness to trends that have long made military thinking one of the clearest examples of old mind functioning. The rigid, unimaginative training of those who choose military careers apparently reinforces the brain's natural tendency to focus on the immediate and the near term and especially, to count on the environment to remain unchanged. So obvious is this effect that the comment that 'generals are always preparing to fight the previous war' has become a text book commonplace. "

The takeaway was that despite the face these assorted conservo  clowns have put on (e.g. Gee Dumbya) Americans bought into them in enough numbers to put them into power (or keep them there)  where they wrecked the economy even before Obama arrived! Sadly, those like Reagan, Bush Jr. et al have exploited Americans' dumb "faith in the future" i.e. that Repukes will do things better, despite the fact their very core plans (preserving massive tax cuts for the wealthiest) will do the opposite!

But let's go on:

Lie #30: George W. Bush Was Selected, Not Elected, in 2000, and Votes Were Stolen on His Behalf

This is the truth. The theft of the 2000 election was described in detail, including the publication of actual documents from Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris showing how Choicepoint was hired to put more than 53,000 black voters in Duval County on felons' lists (they weren't but they were put there, because Harris knew most black voters were democrats). The entire background and evidence is available - for those who want it  - in Chapter One of Greg Palast's 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.'

The unlawful elimination of all those black voters allowed Bush to take the 27 electoral votes of Florida, though he lost the popular vote by over a half million. Hence, the evidence is there that Harris, Jeb Bush et al, stole the election on his behalf.  The  Fla. recounts to try to show Gore actually won were doomed from the start because they didn't include all counties. In any case, the voter rolls would still have been short those 153,000 banned black voters.

Still, the  abrupt stoppage of the vote recount by the Supreme Court effectively halted the process and amounted to a "selection" of Bush Jr., as Vince Bugliosi pointed out in his book, The Betrayal Of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined Our Constitution and Chose Our President .

The truth is a bitch.

Lie #37: Global Warming Is a Fact, and It's a Man-made, American-Driven Problem

Actually, all the evidence shows that this is the case.  Anthropogenic warming  is certainly as much a fact as just about anything in science can be expected to be, and the evidence is all around us from collapsing ice sheets and glaciers, to the instability of the polar vortex, to increasing intense storms and heat waves to acidification of the oceans. As for being "American -driven", it largely is. It is also a fact that we are offloading many of the worst carbon-laden fuels and also coal, and tar sands oil to China. Hence, much of their CO2 output is actually derived from what WE have dumped on them!

Lie #47: The Reagan Tax Cuts Caused Massive Deficits and the National Debt

Again, this is true, though portrayed by Schweikart as "a liberal lie."  The fact is that before the Reagan era America was still largely a creditor nation, more capital inflows than outflows, holding more debt from other nations than debt owed to them. Reagan changed the dynamic by going on a $2,1 TRILLION spending spree, mainly for military hardware and toys as well as allowing ridiculous cost overruns for common materials (e.g. $75 hammers $3,000 each toilets).  In the wake, and coupled with Reagan's tax cuts, the country went from mainly creditor to debtor and the situation has remained the same since - as tax cutting has become a fetish with the Reepos.

Final Lie: History Textbooks Used in Schools Are Unbiased and Not Politically Correct

Again, this is true, though portrayed by Schweikart as a liberal lie. The problem is not, however, so much "political correctness" as the refusal to look at all the blemishes, fractures and conflicts of our history. In other words, our history books are overly sanitized, a point noted by James Loewen. Do any of the current history texts examine the duplicity of the Warren Commission in its findings on the JFK assassination? Of course not. Do any of them examine the My Lai massacre committed by American troops in Vietnam? No. Do any of them really examine the betrayal of native Americans in assorted treaties (concerning their land) and the many massacres ...such as at Sand Creek here in Colorado, or at Wounded Knee?  What about the nation's track of growing inequality? Is there any examination of the historical factors that have led to this? What about the origin of Army Security and spy programs and how they were mounted against unions, workers? I could go on and on, as Loewen does - which is why he refers to 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' - the title of his book.

But then teachers are constrained by their tepid history curricula and textbooks. If those are avoidant of the underbelly of American history, the history teacher will be averse to exploring it too. (One reason why any real American history teacher also needs Howard Zinn's text : "A People's History of the United States" as an accompaniment.

Our kids get bored senseless by history because it's taught as settled events and assorted dates to be memorized, as opposed to a sequence of conflicts, many of which are ongoing. The aim ought to be not to whitewash our history but to show it with all its boils, pustules and follies as well as internecine, unsettled conflicts and divisive issues.

We do our students a disservice by teaching them the nation's history is immaculate and getting them to buy that we are the "exceptional people of the world". We aren't!  We are no different from all other nations, and the delusional belief we are "special" merely feeds our hubris.

Frequently Asked Questions on the JFK Assassination (Pt. 9): Earlier Plots, Designated Assassins, Oswald Double

1. I understand there were earlier plans afoot to kill JFK? Where and anyone identified in them?

There were at least two earlier plots for assassinating JFK – one in Chicago, timed for November 2, to coincide with the assassination of the Diem brothers in Vietnam, and one on Nov. 18^th in Miami.   The latter fell apart after an FBI informant, William Somerset, used a wire to record the words of one Joseph Milteer who calmly forecast that Kennedy would be shot and killed from a tall building using a rifle with telescope sight. Kennedy was in Miami at the time to give a speech, and his motorcade was cancelled.

The Chicago threat was the more serious of the two, as a warning had been phoned in (by an FBI informant named “Lee”)   that a team of snipers planned to shoot Kennedy in a motorcade while on the then Northwest (now Kennedy) Expressway, en route to Soldier Field for a football game (JFK ended up cancelling these plans). Author James Douglass has noted the eerie resemblance of the motorcade route to that in Dallas, starting with the site of the original building at 625 West Jackson,  “an old eight story building that had been remodeled for apartment dwellers”. As he notes[1]:

 

“From its roof I could look down and over to where JFK’s presidential limousine had been scheduled to make a slow turn up from the Northwest Expressway exit ramp onto west Jackson on November 2, 1963. It was analogous to the slow curve the limousine would make in Dallas in front of the Texas School Book Depository three weeks later.”

2. Was Oswald one of the assassins then, or was it some one else?

In fact, Lee Oswald is believed (certainly by James Douglass, and myself) to have been the FBI informant “Lee” who warned of the hit, or more exactly the real threat in a phone call to the Chicago FBI office[2].  The latter issued from a team of four Cubans who were the actual direct threat to Kennedy while a chosen patsy (Thomas Arthur Vallee) was designated to be arrested as the lone assassin in the IPP-Litho Plate building on West Jackson. (Similar to Lee Oswald at the Texas Book Depository)

 

A separate tip (warning) on Vallee came from Chicago Police Lt. Berkeley Moyland, who observed Vallee in a cafeteria and sized him up as “damaged unbalanced personality”. Evidently, it was remarks of Vallee concerning Kennedy that caused Moyland to phone in a tip to the Treasury Department (under which the Secret Service operates). Moyland received a call back from a Treasury official who committed him to absolute silence and was told: “Don’t write anything else about it. Don’t tell anybody about it. Just forget about it”.[3]

 

Thanks to Moyland’s alertness and “Lee’s” willingness to give a timely heads up, JFK got an extension of nearly two more weeks to live. The latter’s tip busted the main threat, with rifles recovered from a Chicago boarding house. The perpetrators, or planners, escaped. Thomas Arthur Vallee was arrested on a pretext just 2 ½ hours before JFK’s plane was to touch down at O’Hare. The main blessing, is that Vallee was spared the stigma of being identified as JFK’s assassin.

 

3.     What was the skinny on Vallee? Was his background similar to Oswald’s?

It was, and we can thank author James Douglass for his diligent work here, including interviewing Vallee’s sister.  Like Oswald, Vallee enlisted in the Marines, and for a 2^nd term starting in February, 1955. Also, like Oswald, he’d been assigned to a U-2 base, this one in Camp Otsu, Japan.  An extensive psychiatric evaluation by the Marines for his re-enlistment led to a diagnosis as exhibiting “schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type #3003”.[4]

 

While at Camp Otsu, Japan,  Vallee came under the control and manipulation of the CIA just as Oswald had while in the capacity of a radar operator at Atsugi, Japan. Also like Oswald, Vallee had trained with Cuban exiles,  in his case at Levittown, Long Island, while Oswald trained near Lake Pontchartrain, La.  In August, ’63, as Lee Oswald was preparing to move from New Orleans to Dallas, Vallee was preparing to move from New York to Chicago.[5]

 

Another salient fact: the New York license plate on Vallee’s 1962 Ford Falcon: 31-10RF, was later found to be restricted to U.S. intelligence agencies. This was learned after a relative of a Chicago NBC employee attempted to trace it and was told it was “frozen” and “only the FBI could obtain this information”.[6]

The single fact here is that, had  the informant “Lee” not called in a warning, we’d likely never have heard the name “Lee Harvey Oswald” – it would only have been Thomas Arthur Vallee. Reams and reams of words would be written about this “lone assassin” and the (earlier) Warren Commission set up would have found him the only assassin, despite the fact that he never had a chance to talk. (Likely eliminated just like Oswald). In which case the followup historical impetus wouldn’t be about the vindication of Lee Oswald, but of Thomas Vallee.

4.    With all the parallels in place it sounds suspiciously like the CIA had a program in place to churn out patsy lone assassins. True or not?

Your insights are spot –on. Former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti actually informed author Anthony Summers about this program[7]:

 

“At the time, in 1959, the United States was having real difficulty in acquiring information out of the Soviet Union. The technical systems had, of course, not developed to the point they are at today, and we were resorting to all sorts of activities. One of these activities was an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about. Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union or into eastern Europe with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and ‘double’ them if they suspected them of being U.S. agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad , but the operation was being run out of Nag’s Head North Carolina.”

 

Marchetti’s insights here help to explain a lot to do with the apparent quixotic behavior of Oswald. In this light, we see that Oswald’s entire defection to Russia was merely an intelligence ploy cooked up by the CIA or ONI. The overindulgence of Oswald while based at Atsugi is also now more understandable. Why else give him only six weeks or so in the brig for striking an enlisted officer, when normally it would be a court martial? Well, because they’d invested too much in him to have him meet that untimely and useless end!

5.     Would an Oswald “double” also factor into this? Help explain some of the strange behavior – like bragging about Russian cars to a Dallas auto dealer?

This is absolutely the case. The fact is there were just too many different sightings of Oswald, in too many different places to be attributed to one persona, or individual. The most critical and key sighting was made by Sgt. Robert Vinson who observed the Oswald double while on a flight back to Colorado Springs (to Ent AFB, while on the staff of NORAD), from Washington, D.C.[8]  Vinson “served as administrative supervisor of the electronics division and held a crypto-security clearance”, so he definitely was no derelict, loony, goofball or nut. Those nattering media nabobs today who blithely dismiss the whole notion of an Oswald double need to look carefully at Vinson's testimony instead of emulating ostriches.

 

 On November 22, Vinson took a bus to Andrews AFB to try to hitch a ride home on the first flight back to Colorado Springs (ibid.). He managed to secure space on a C-54 cargo plane, which bore no military markings or insignia.  On boarding, Vinson found the inside of the plane empty and then observed two men enter the plane via the cockpit door.

Most suspicious to Sgt. Vinson it that he wasn’t asked to sign a manifest (log), which was standard operating procedure whenever he hitched a ride with the Air Force.  En route, Vinson heard an unemotional voice simply report that “the president was shot at 12.29 p.m.”  By 3.30 p.m. Vinson saw the skyline he recognized as that of Dallas, and the plane turned and came in via a southeast direction, landing abruptly on a sandy flat near the Trinity River.  Two males, one Latino or Cuban and 6’ – 6’1” in height, the other Caucasian and 5’7” or so in height, boarded.

It was only after the fact, on landing and then accessing newspapers and TV coverage, that Vinson recognized the shorter male as the spitting image of Lee Oswald.  If not for Sgt. Vinson, the idea of an Oswald “double” might have remained forever in the realm of speculation or media claimed craziness, but as I showed earlier, others also made the observation at different times. It is also my contention that the real Lee Oswald never set foot in Mexico City. It was a totally different, heavyset male  mistaken for Oswald.

 

Meanwhile, the actual double was dispatched to conduct a host of outrageous behaviors to make the name ‘Oswald’ unforgettable: from going to a rifle range and firing at other users’ targets, to arriving at a Dallas gun shop and ordering a telescopic rifle sight while adding “I may be needing it in a few days” to firing rifle shots at General Walker and making a getaway (with a Latin or Cuban character) in a ’57 Chevrolet whose license plate was later rubbed out in a Warren Exhibit. (Bear in mind here, the real Lee Oswald didn’t drive, had no license.) To going to a Dallas car dealership and announcing that "if anyone wanted to give America an enema all he'd have to do is stick the nozzle right here in Dallas!"

 

The best optical-photographic evidence was prepared by specialist Jack White who spliced together two claimed "identical" photos of Oswald together at the chin interface.

It doesn't take any technical specialist ability to see how well all the features match except for the height differential.

 

 

Sec. B  E. Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession to Saint John Hunt

Note: E. Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate burglars with CIA affiliations, and also was in Dallas the day of the assassination. This section deals with his role in Dallas, confessed to his son, Saint John Hunt. 

 

 

1. Do you place any stock in the deathbed revelations of E. Howard Hunt regarding the assassination of JFK?

 

Actually, I do. Hunt in the context of both his NPR, and later literal (deathbed) revelations to his son (Saint John Hunt), noted that the closest book to describe the mechanics involved in the assassination was Weberman and Canfield’s Coup d’Etat in America. Having read it and studied the photos and documents therein, I am 99%  confident the photos shown (including one that is almost certainly Hunt in 1963) are legitimate and reveal at least some of the background mechanics.

 

Were these people capable of committing an assassination? Well, Frank Sturgis, as the authors document, had already murdered 61 pro-Batista supporters in cold blood, in Cuba in 1959. Castro ordered the killings as a pretext for Sturgis to openly demonstrate his loyalty to the revolution – since Castro plausibly figured he might be playing both sides of the table. Without hesitation, Sturgis aimed his weapon at the assembled supporters and mowed them down. If he had no compunction about slaughtering 61 people to prove a point,  he’d have none in eliminating one U.S. president, or at least playing a major role in it.

Interestingly, the sequence of photos of the “tramps” shown in the book, shows Sturgis, Hunt and one person identified to be a near-look alike of Lee Oswald’s. The trio were moving in the direction away from the Book depository and toward the railroad tracks. I’ve studied the photos with magnifiers and compared them to later photos of Hunt and Sturgis and both appear to be the same men, in their earlier years.

 

2. How would you confirm the two identities with an even higher probability?

This would require obtaining photos of the 1963 tramps, including the close-ups of their faces, and comparing them with later images – for example when both Sturgis and Hunt were apprehended in the Watergate break-in. Then, subjecting regions of the suspected same faces to a segmentation, pixel grid analysis of the described here:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/analysis-of-pixel-diffusion-in-oswald.html

 

One would then obtain the coefficient of variation  to show the faces were not statistically different.

 

3. Did Hunt in his deathbed revelations indicate anything astounding or not otherwise known?
 

Well, perhaps not otherwise widely suspected. He indicated that LBJ was involved (which many already believed) and also CIA agent Cord Meyer – whose wife had had an affair with JFK.  Virtually none of this, zero, came out at the time or in the wake, but we have to remember that Cord Meyer was Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee’s brother –in-law and that’s one likely reason The Washington Post has been amongst the least willing sources to accept the conspiracy thesis or even publish any disclosures that might point to such.

 

In the course of his deathbed disclosures, Hunt also connected Cord Meyer’s name to two other CIA Agents, David Morales (a vicious black op specialist)  and Bill Harvey. Recall that Harvey "headed Staff D, assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle”. ( Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994).  CIA Staff D, a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security  Agency or NSA.   In addition, as noted by Peter Dale Scott (op. cit.) Oswald’s 201 file – indicated the letter 'D' on the cover page - showing that Oswald was involved in this operation.

 

Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' (unlike some, I distinguish 'buffs' - who approach the subject like dilettantes from serious researchers) come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. However,  with the plot now turned against Kennedy. Oswald was likely used as the dupe or decoy so the actual perps (likely Cuban exiles, and trained assassins - from the Army's Ft. Benning Assassin school) could escape . Scott and others believe he was told he'd help to expose the plot but he needed to be at the Texas School Book Depository to do so. No surprise that Ruth Paine, another CIA asset, steered him into the job at the Book Depository.

 

 

A CIA accountant with top secret clearance named James Wilcott, testified  the original plan was to "kill Kennedy, link Oswald to Castro, and use this as a pretext to invade Cuba". (Mellen, Farewell to Justice, p. 178) Wilcott had passed three successive lie detector tests to this in preliminary questioning by HSCA investigators. (ibid.)   Wilcott further noted the phony link to Castro could not be established firmly enough to hold and hence the need to brand Oswald as the lone assassin. (ibid.).

 

Amazingly, however, historically befuddled idiots like John Kerry continue to regurgitate it - as Kerry did based on a UK Guardian report a week ago.

 

Lastly, Hunt also indicated a connection between Morales and a “French gunman on the grassy knoll” which most of the recent assassination researchers have taken to be Lucien Sarte, though some (e.g. Walt Brown) believe was Jean Soutre,  hired out of the Corsican Mafia. (As disclosed in the BBC series, ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’ via interview in France with Christian David). It therefore seems that Morales made connections with the Corsicans to hire Soutre, and this was probably at Cord Meyer’s behest.

 

4. Any connections with David Atlee Phillips?

Hunt indicated in a later, more exhaustive exchange that Meyer discussed the plot with Phillips, and also William Harvey and Antonio Veciana.  Veciana apparently then met with Frank Sturgis to hatch an initial plan to eliminate JFK in Miami (when he went on Nov. 18 ) and also recruited Morales for the purpose.  LBJ then altered the itinerary to Dallas.

 

Likely the last occurred (I am conjecturing here- since this wasn’t part of Hunt’s disclosures) after J. Edgar Hoover (Johnson’s dear friend as revealed in numerous “Dear Edgar” letters) learned from an FBI informant (William Sommerset) in Miami that a plan was afoot to shoot Kennedy with a high powered rifle from a tall building. So, the stage was changed to Dallas, which was actually much more advantageous since given Johnson’s connections he’d be able to enlist the support of the Dallas Police, as well as ensure evidence could be “managed” wherever it appeared.

 

 

5. Isn’t that going a bit far? That Johnson would even think he could manage or manipulate whole chains of evidence?

 
 

Not really. Bear in mind this is the same character that went to extraordinary lengths to either remove or destroy all negative references and images of him appearing in college yearbooks, college newspaper articles available at Southwestern State Teacher College in San Marcos, Texas.   Evidently, while still an undergrad, Johnson arranged through the president of the college to have excised from all copies of the college yearbook any material that would give clues to his years there. Presumably in case they might prove detrimental to fully attaining any future ambitions.  This, in fact, is the template for how he managed evidence (not to mention the pseudo- investigation) in the wake of the Kennedy hit. As Author Robert A. Caro has put it ( The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. I, pp. xviii-xix  )

 

“Lyndon Johnson not only attempted to create and leave for history his own legend, but to ensure that it could never be disproven.”

6. Was anything about Hunt’s confession reported anywhere in the media?

 

 

Not by the corporate mainstream, but in Rolling Stone, Apr. 5, 2007, ‘The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt’, in an article by Erik Hedegard. As the author specifically noted:

“The "deathbed confession" audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired this weekend - an astounding development that has gone completely ignored by the establishment media.

 

Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast Live radio show on Saturday night to discuss the revelations contained in the tape.

 

Hunt said that his father had mailed cassette the tape to him alone in January 2004 and asked that it be released after his death. The tape was originally 20 minutes long but was edited down to four and a half minutes for the Coast to Coast broadcast. Hunt promises that the whole tape will be uploaded soon at his website.”
 

He goes on, especially key aspects:

 

“E. Howard Hunt names numerous individuals with both direct and indirect CIA connections as having played a role in the assassination of Kennedy, while describing himself as a "bench warmer" in the plot. Saint John Hunt agreed that the use of this term indicates that Hunt was willing to play a larger role in the murder conspiracy had he been required.

Hunt alleges on the tape that then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the planning of the assassination and in the cover-up, stating that LBJ, "Had an almost maniacal urge to become president, he regarded JFK as an obstacle to achieving that."

In the end, like most critical pieces of evidence (including anecdotal) in the assassination, there will be those who have a basis to accept it and others to reject it. The tragedy is, in E. Howard Hunt’s case and given he had nothing to lose, we are basically seeing the first genuine honesty going forward in this horrific event – and gaining an insight into some of the actual players. Unfortunately, most Americans will likely ignore it, because they’ve been propagandized and conditioned to do so by the corporate press, which, despite its almost universal disdain for getting at the truth of the JFK assassination, yet has the time, money and energy to squander on “Balloon Boy” hoaxes.

 

 

 

---

[1] J. Douglass, op. cit. p. 206.

[2] Op. cit., p. 207.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Op. cit. p. 205.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Op. cit. p. 203.

[7] Op. cit. p. 40.

[8] Douglass, op. cit. pp. 299-300. All the details to do with Vinson’s encounter are from Douglass’ book.