Parsing Key Aspects Of The JFK Assassination Documents Release

JFK and Jackie in limo moments before he was killed by a head shot coming from the Grassy Knoll area.

Lee Oswald killed by Jack Ruby on orders from mob-CIA Staff D conspirators.

With the release of the first batch of JFK assassination files late Thursday, it is important to try to get a grasp of what they mean- including future ones.  In this post, I parse the basics. While many may find their head spinning- I have made every effort to break down the most critical elements of what you will hear and see from the media - and why various aspects are important - or not.

1. The one important thing we learned thus far:

As Chip Reid reported on CBS Early Show, the FBI  had called the Dallas police the night before Oswald's murder and cited a memo from J. Edgar Hoover in which one reads:

"We received a call in our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald. We at once notified the Chief Of Police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection.  

This morning we called the Chief of Police again warning of some effort against Oswald and he assured us adequate protection would be given. However, this was not done."

Why wasn't it done?    Why did Chief Jesse Curry give assurances to the FBI that weren't followed through?  The trope that the Dallas cops let their "friend" Jack Ruby into the basement because they knew him (Jack gave them free drinks at his Carousel Club) is pure bull pockey.  Former British Intelligence officer John Hughes-Wilson concurs with former Justice Dept. agent Walt Brown ('Treachery in Dallas', Chapter 'Blue Death) ',and author James Douglass ('JFK and the Unspeakable') that the Dallas cops were part of it.   They needed a backup plan - likely in concert with the Dallas mob - to stop Oswald so he wouldn't talk.  The "committee" in Hoover's memo then was likely made of an alliance between the mob and the Dallas cops. 

Before proceeding, let's appreciate that Hoover had no soft spots for Lee Harvey Oswald. The call to Curry to ensure his safety was entirely about keeping Lee alive to extract a confession from him as the sole assassin. Of course, J. Edgar was totally delusional as there was no way in hell Lee would do that - short of ripping out his nails and water boarding - and I doubt he'd do it then. No, he wanted his public say to clear things up at a public trial and no Hoover, LBJ or others were going to take that away. But that was precisely what cost him his life and the "committee" knew it.

To the point, the Dallas cops' original orders (likely from Dallas Mob boss Joe Civello) were to kill Oswald at the Texas Theater so there'd be no chance of his ever getting his say at a public trial.   Douglass (p. 292) makes it known that the Dallas cops who entered the theater approached Oswald (in his seat) "almost as if they were provoking the suspected police killer to break away from his seat ..which would have given Tippet's enraged fellow officers an excuse to kill him".

But Oswald did no such thing. He knew their game and he wasn't that stupid.  Nor did he attempt to fire any shots. Lee clearly and obviously knew by now he'd been set up as the patsy and the last thing he wanted to do was make these Dallas cops his judge, jury and executioners. No, he wanted to have his trial and his say, and let it be known how and why he'd been set up. So, rather than mindlessly react he expressly said: "I am not resisting arrest! Police brutality!" He never said "It's all over now" - those words were put into his mouth by the WC's cavalcade of faux witnesses, puppets and liars.

Hughes-Wilson cites his own source (p. 176, 'JFK - An American Coup  d 'Etat') who overheard two Dallas cops talking about how Oswald was to have been killed before he ever arrived at the station. One, in a snarling voice, said to the other (ibid.) "You were supposed to kill Lee....you stupid son of a bitch, then you go and kill a cop". Referring to the shooting of officer J.D. Tippet.

So there were snafus along the way. Even the best planned conspiracies can go awry, but in the JFK case the architects ensured there was always a back up plan. In this case, to recruit former Chicago mobster Jack Rubinstein, aka Ruby, to snuff Oswald. Mark North, using actual, released FBI files, documents many of Ruby’s Mob connections in his book, Act of Treason- including his reported “gangster connections in Dallas”, especially to Joseph Civello, the Mafia boss in Dallas. The same files disclose that Ruby, on October 26, 1963, “placed a 12 minute person to person call to Irwin S. Weiner at Weiner’s Chicago home”.

It is further noted that Weiner was a mob lawyer:

This dovetails with what most serious researchers already know, that Jack Ruby didn't just kill Oswald out of the goodness of his little heart to spare Jackie from having to testify.

The document trail unearthed by Mark North ('Act of Treason') is revelatory here, namely the FOIA -released files retrieved in the 1990s that showed Ruby had an outstanding  debt to Uncle Sam - owing more than $40,000 in back excise taxes to the federal government, plus $20,000 in other back taxes. A phone call (also documented)  then would have assured Ruby his tax problems would “disappear” if he performed one more job: offing Oswald. Given the mob link to ZR/Rifle, such a scenario would be totally logical. Few people today, unless they've  mined the document trail, are remotely aware of the extent to which the CIA and Mob worked hand in glove, especially on the ZR/Rifle Castro assassination operations.

We also know mobster Johnny Roselli was offed before he could provide any testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) about Ruby's role.  Again, this was the only legitimate government investigation to ever come about - the Warren Commission being merely an artifact created by Lyndon Johnson - mainly to cover up his own tracks.

Thus it was that prospective HSCA witness Roselli had to also meet his cruel end, as described below by Gaeton Fonzi in 'The Last Investigation', p. 375:

"In July, 1976, Roselli had disappeared and in August, the month before the Committee (HSCA) was established, Roselli surfaced in the shallows off the Intracoastal Waterway in North Miami. He had been smothered to death and shot, then cut open from chest to navel. His legs had been hacked off and stuffed with his torso into a 55-gallon steel drum which was wrapped with heavy chain and moored to a weight in the water. The mooring broke when the gases from Roselli's decomposing body forced the drum to float to the surface."

The killers wanted to make damned sure there were no flapping gums.. They wanted to ensure Roselli never talked about Ruby's role - or his connections - to do with  eliminating Oswald.. Murdering witnesses does wonders to keep a conspiracy under wraps - while moron media blabbermouths and their useful idiot lackeys keep babbling about "tin foil hats."

2. The Oswald- Russia "Association":

Anyone who pays any attention in the coming days and weeks will hear a lot about the Oswald -Russian connection, or rather alleged connection. The problem as usual is that while the mainstream media pushes this stuff out it never takes the time for any critical analysis or history. No surprise then the public only gets a half-assed version and is left to deal with the releases piecemeal and in an uninformed context via unrelated formats. So here is what you need to know in advance concerning the soon to be hyped Oswald-Russia link:

The CIA originally confected the false narrative that Oswald was a "KGB -linked assassin"  hired to kill Kennedy. It was based on a supposed "Oswald" phone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City with a KGB agent, Valeriy Kostikov. From this, and the visit of a fake Oswald to the Soviet Embassy (see the asset "masquerading" as Oswald in Mexico City in the photo below - right)


  A series of falsified cables was generated under the fake name "Lee Henry Oswald"* . These became part of a CI/SIG (Counter Intelligence Special Investigation Group) file on Oswald dating back to 1960, and as researcher Peter Dale Scott notes, has their handiwork all over the false trail.  The purpose, as noted by Scott, was clear:

"to incriminate him falsely as an apparent KGB assassin"

While the "Oswald as KGB assassin"  ruse was never used  or published in The Warren Commission Report, "it almost certainly contributed to the Warren Commission's determination to close the case as the work of a lone assassin" (Scott, Deep Politics, 113)   This is actually validated and was foreseen when one examined a key paragraph in the Katzenbach memo which readers can see in full here: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=756877 Note in particular paragraph (2):

"Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis of rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy".

This was also the primary directive for J. Edgar Hoover, and why he insisted the Dallas Police keep Lee Oswald alive after a death threat was called in to the Dallas FBI office.. Hence, Hoover's warning memo (see (1)) must be interpreted in the context, i.e. convicting Oswald as the one and only assassin, So there could be no loose ends pointing to conspiracy. LBJ wanted this too, as author Noel Twyman makes clear in his book, 'Bloody Treason'.  This is why he. ordered that the entire investigation be conducted by the FBI under the supervision of J. Edgar Hoover (his dear pal) and he ordered all other investigations, i.e. under federal government or local government be stopped. As Twyman puts it:

"This placed Johnson in virtual control of the investigation through J. Edgar Hoover."

This is why serious researchers, as opposed to lone nut buffs, regard the Warren Commission as an artifact or creature of Johnson, designed for no other purpose than to cover up his own role.  As one wit once put it: "To commit the perfect crime all that is necessary is to be in charge of the investigation that follows."  Johnson totally succeeded in doing that via his "Warren Commission", even getting Hoover to threaten disclosure of an Earl Warren incident if Warren refused to bestow his name cachet.

It is clear the Commission was driven to the lone assassin bunkum as the only safe alternative to the KGB assassin hypothesis. (For which Johnson had warned of the threat of nuclear war if pursued.)

This was reinforced after the Commission was informed  by CIA head Richard Helms** of the Kostikov -Department Thirteen connection ("Department Thirteen" was that KGB Section assigned to assassinations) . Earl Warren evidently became so spooked that he felt the only alternative to a possible nuclear  confrontation  was to find for the lone assassin theory. From then, all evidence, documents and tests became devoted to framing Oswald as the lone perp. It was either that or find him a KGB- hired contract killer, which many (including LBJ) felt would have led to war.

The point was that the CIA had compiled such a compelling false narrative and guilt trail using phony cables, photos  phone calls etc. that the Commission bit into it hook, line and sinker and never remotely considered (or seriously considered) the alternative: that a right wing based- military- intelligence operation had targeted Kennedy. One that included powerful forces enraged at his backing down (from invasion) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his removal of Gen. Edwin Walker from command, his intent to pull out of Vietnam and his efforts at rapprochement with Fidel Castro..


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Footnotes (2):

* Scott conjectures that the false name of  'Lee Henry Oswald'  may have been used to deceive investigators into Kennedy's killing. It may also have been what agent James Jesus Angleton called a 'marked card' operation in which falsified information 'like a  bent card' is passed through an intelligence channel to see where it ends up.

**  Memo of 1/13/ 64 from Richard Helms to the Warren Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin, CIA Document 509-803.


3, The "Oswald as Commie " myth:

The typical twaddle the corporate media and government lackeys have been trotting out for 50 years now, but which any reasonably intelligent person can disprove with just a modicum of effort and  investigation. "Oswald as communist" was actually the cover story for him to be used as a false defector to gain access into Russia. People first became aware of the CIA-ONI false defector program after the publication of 'The Cult of Intelligence' by Former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti- who  actually informed researcher Anthony Summers about this program as well, noting:

“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.”

Oswald's bona fides as an intelligence asset - as opposed to a "run muck, loner psycho"-  were established by Military Science professor John Newman in his book, Oswald and the CIA. Therein he provided the documents showing three key CIA files for Oswald:  the OS-351-164 (office of security), the 201-289248 CI/SIG, and the 74-500. 

As Michael Parenti notes (The JFK Assassination  - Defending the Gangster State.):

“Lee Harvey Oswald spent most of his adult life not as a lone drifter but directly linked to the U.S. intelligence community. All of his IQ tests show that he was above average in intelligence and a quick learner. At the age of eighteen in the U.S. Marines he had secret security clearance and was working at Marine Air Control in Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan, a top secret location from which the CIA launched U2 flights and performed other kinds of covert operations in China. The next year he was assigned to El Toro Air Station in California with security clearance to work radar. “

Lee Oswald then was no "commie" dupe but an intel operative. Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. A classic decoy.  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 .

The proof in the pudding was the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating a  CIA Staff D  SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA. As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): “In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle.”

Footnotes (3)

Newman, op. cit., p. 169.

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4.  The "Oswald In Mexico City" Canard:

This trope gained most recent currency with the book: A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination by Philip Shenon, which I posted on previously (Oct. 28, 2013).Shenon   points to a statement Oswald purportedly made when at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and related by J. Edgar Hoover in declassified FBI files:

"He (Oswald) stormed into the Embassy, demanded the visa, and when it was refused him, headed out saying: 'I'm going to kill Kennedy for this.!"

So, basically, Shenon places his faith in one of the most ardent Kennedy haters of the era, J. Edgar Hoover. The same Hoover who possessed information about a proposed assassination plot on Kennedy from New Orleans' gangster Carlos Marcello in 1962 and who failed to disclose it. (See the documents presented in Mark North's book Act of Treason). 

Meanwhile, Shenon lets himself be played and led into a blind alley by a CIA determined to frame Oswald using the 'Oswald in Mexico City' fiction.

Shenon goes on to say that the "document then disappears" intimating that had it been circulated to the Dallas' authorities in timely fashion,  the assassination would have been prevented, Why? Because  "people in Mexico City knew Oswald was talking openly about killing President Kennedy.".

In a pig's eye.

Besides, what moron for an assassin "talks openly" about killing an American President at a foreign embassy?  One thing we do know: A moron Oswald wasn't.  An impostor seeking to frame a patsy-  to be set up to take the fall- would do so, however.

But perhaps the most cogent evidence there was no Oswald in Mexico City  - apart from the fact no photos exist (other than of an impostor) -is the following:  The primary witness was consulate officer Silvia Duran who denied even under torture by Mexican police that the man she saw was Lee Oswald. As Peter Dale Scott reports as well as HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi [4]  she was forced to undergo brutal torture for eight hours at the hands of Mexican police in an effort to try to get her to recant her original testimony.  I.e. that the Oswald she encountered at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City was not the Oswald she'd seen arrested in Dallas. She'd insisted instead the man she saw was "blonde and short" (The Lopez Report, p. 190).

Ed Lopez, who sought to interview Duran again in the wake of her torture, found she was unable and broke down, weeping merely at the thought. She also feared reprisals  as a citizen of Mexico.

So be it. Now, ask yourselves this: If Oswald was indeed guilty and performing all the guilty acts Philip Shenon claims, why did the CIA find it necessary to go to such inordinate lengths to distort, hide and even concoct fake cables to paint Oswald as the bad guy?   Not to mention recruiting Mexican police to torture a woman for eight hours merely because she refused to lie about the person she observed. The Oswald in Mexico City fable, like so much else, must be regarded as specious and a concoction of the CIA and its Mexico City station chief (David Atlee Phillips). Or to use the words of John Newman in reference to a cable that surfaced within that episode "a whole cloth fabrication."

 Footnotes (4):

[4] Fonzi. op. cit., p. 409.

[5] Newman, op. cit. p. 408.

Finally, let's not get over-excited as only 2,800 files of more than 30,000 have been released by the due date.  The spooks, as I predicted earlier, were going to invoke the specious excuse of "national security concerns" which is total codswallop given these files are over fifty years old.  It is evident to me that they are concealing connections that were operative in Kennedy's assassination that they do not wish to have uncovered, like between the Dallas cops, the Mob and CIA, NSA (in Staff D operation).  They are aware of the blowback that would explode even now 50 years in the future and that was one reason why LBJ originally wanted to keep all files under wraps until 2049 - by which time all who knew or cared about the assassination would likely have died. 

What you can be sure of in the days and weeks to come is that the mainstream media still has not gotten its act together on the one true conspiracy to come along, and which they remain committed to trying to skewer - even as they mock the 60 percent of the public who accepts a conspiracy in the case. Let's just remind ourselves here that the only valid gov't investigation (the HSCA) DID find for a conspiracy in its conclusion.

Something that is too often overlooked!

See also:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article181380611.html

Yet Another History Prof Misfires On Oswald And The JFK Assassination

Adjunct history prof ( from Northeastern University in Boston) Edward H. Miller's salon.com essay was superb, until I got to the part where he totally blew it on Lee Oswald's role in the Kennedy assassination. All was going well reading Miller's 'When Texas Fell To The Wingnuts: The Secret History of the Southern Strategy, Modern Conservatism and the Lone Star State', until I got to this sentence which blew all Miller's supposed history competence to smithereens:

"Although President Kennedy's killer was a Marxist who lived in Dallas for only two months, many columnists had concluded the city and its right wing had created an environment which contributed to the assassination".

And at that juncture, the perception of original quality was spoiled,  analogous to a fine punch ruined by a bird's droppings, dumped in flight. 

The reason is that as diligent as Miller was in laying out the travails of  Dallas, the Lone Star state and their inherent image and political problems, he totally messed up on the key event that "slandered" the state: JFK's assassination. Fortuitously, serious reporters existed at the time who got it right, that the fingering of Oswald simply didn't fit what was already known. Kenneth Crawford, for example, in his Newsweek piece ('The Enemies He Made’,  Dec. 2, 1963, p. 35) accurately noted the real culprits: the radical right wing and its ‘better circles’ and their elitist enclaves.  Enclaves replete with extremists like oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, responsible for putting up the 'Wanted for Treason' posters on the day of the assassination, e.g.

At the time, however, most reporters couldn’t or wouldn’t see, as Crawford put it,  "the suspicious irony inherent in a lone-pro-Castro gunman being fingered in a city (Dallas) regarded as a citadel of right wing strength". (ibid.)

Indeed, merely four weeks earlier Adlai Stevenson had gone to Dallas for a UN Day meeting, and was attacked – spit upon, and smashed over the head with placards - by fulminating,  reactionary right wing pickets (Newsweek, Dec. 2., 1963, p. 21). It was after that encounter that he warned JFK to reconsider his forthcoming trip.

 Kennedy mulled it over, but LBJ had boxed him in, playing to his machismo instincts. 'What would it look like for a feller like y'erself to be frightened of goin' to Big D and settlin'  party issues,  huh?"

He was referring to the (then) feud between John Connally and Ralph Yarborough. Kennedy, placed in a no-win, no bailout position had no choice but to put himself right in the middle of this cauldron of hate  - where numerous actors - from LBJ and his Texas cohort, to the Dallas PD (full of white extremists who hated JFK for his integration stand) cooperated to get rid of a "traitor" - who negotiated with communists. It wasn't a "Marxist" that killed Kennedy, but extremist Marxist haters (about whom I will have more to post in a future blog, along with links to the CIA).

 But given Miller's evident commitment to the lone nut myth it's no surprise he makes no mention of how the CIA had compiled a compelling false narrative and guilt trail using phony cables, photos  phone calls etc. that the Warren Commission (a creature of LBJ)  bit into it hook, line and sinker and never remotely considered (or seriously considered) the alternative: that a right wing based- military- intelligence operation had targeted Kennedy in Big D using affiliates in that city - most of whom hated Kennedy's guts. They also included powerful forces enraged at his backing down (from invasion) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his removal of Gen. Edwin Walker from command, his intent to pull out of Vietnam and his efforts at rapprochement with Fidel Castro.

Most of this was due to the resourceful work of John Newman and Peter Dale Scott, among others, from whom we’ve learned that Lee Oswald actually had a CIA file : 201-289248 CI/SIG[1], opened on December 9, 1960, more than one year after his defection to the USSR (Oct, 1959) The ostensible reason given for opening the file in the first place was Oswald's defection, and possible “continuing intelligence interest”.

To Prof. Newman (a REAL historian, at least on this issue) we owe the exposure of the Oswald CIA files, i.e. in his monumental book, 'Oswald and the CIA'. To Scott, we owe using the files to making the connections to the CIA setting up Oswald as the decoy or pawn.  Scott was the one who pointed out that no one had informed the Warren Commission that the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicated CIA Staff D, a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security  Agency or NSA. As he observes (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994):

“In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle”

Thus, it was William Harvey - in conjunction with fired (by JFK) former CIA Director Allen Dulles - who decided to use Oswald as the dupe to set up the assassination and cover the identities of the actual mechanics. We also have to thank Scott for exposing the fake cables concocted by the CIA to frame Lee Oswald.  If Miller is such a grand historian why didn't he gain access to this material - which has been available since its release under the JFK Records Act? Is he just plain lazy, or incompetent?

As noted by Scott (‘Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : “at least three show signs of CIA doctoring and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest.” This was the cable from the Mexico City Station on Oct. 8 that claimed Oswald had appeared at the Soviet Embassy on Oct. 1, claiming  he had spoken with Valeriy Kostikov three days earlier. (Kostikov was top man in the KGB's "Department Thirteen" - responsible for assassinations. As Scott notes, ibid., this is why American Rightists made use of any sources they could to try to parlay this into something to force the WC's hand into a "phase one" conclusion. That included using Oswald's brother, Robert.

More sobering is Newman’s apt reflection on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans from May –Sept, 1963 (Oswald and the CIA, p. 292):

"The record of Oswald's stay in New Orleans, May to September 1963, is replete with mistakes, coincidences, and other anomalies. As Oswald engaged in pro-Castro and anti-Castro activities, the FBI says they lost track of him. The Army was monitoring his activities and says it destroyed their reports. The record of his propaganda operations in New Orleans published by the Warren Commission turned out to have been deliberately falsified."

Even more vexing and worrisome, is that the CIA had spies squirreled away inside the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City  who could have pulled off all manner of chicanery, including altering the impostor Oswald's documents (substituting the real Oswald's photo, signature, etc.). As HSCA Investigator Fonzi  notes (using research by two staffers, Dan Hardaway, and Eddie Lopez - whose work led to the  Lopez Report, still in CIA files)[2]:

"In questioning (David Atlee)Phillips, Hardway was also working from information that had been dug up on a couple of secret trips to Mexico City made by Lopez, and investigator Harold Leap. Without the Agency's permission, they had located and interviewed a couple of CIA assets who had worked inside the Cuban Consulate at the time. The Agency never revealed this to the Warren Commission, but it actually had planted spies within the Cuban compound. That may be relevant to the fact that, in the end, the only 'proof' that the real Oswald was inside the Cuban Consulate were his photographs and his signature on his visa application.”

David Atlee Phillips - responsible for framing Oswald with phony CIA cables.

 

Fonzi noted that Lopez and Hardway observed that David Atlee  Phillips seemed to be especially nervous when Hardway began questioning him about the lack of photographs of Oswald. He maintained that the surveillance cameras at both Soviet and Cuban Embassies were “not functioning at the time of Oswald's visits” . Phillips stuck to the story that the Agency didn't maintain an around-the-clock  and weekend surveillance of the Soviet Embassy. He also said the Cuban Embassy camera “happened to be malfunctioning”  during the time of Oswald's visit.

So, despite the fact that Oswald had allegedly made five visits to the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy, there were no photographs to substantiate it.

As Gaeton Fonzi observes (p. 295)

"In the end, Phillips couldn't explain the contradictions in his testimony about the Agency's surveillance capabilities or why, if the cameras at the Soviet Embassy were working on October 1^st -when it photographed the unidentified man passed off as Oswald, there was no photograph of the real Oswald."
 

The 'Oswald in Mexico City' caper, like so much else, also provides a cautionary tale about accepting anything in this case at face value, especially if it emanates from 'official sources', departments, or agents- who have a vested interest in keeping the “lone nut” myth alive and well.

Neither does Miller tell us anything about the top man, George de Mohrenschildt, linked to the CIA and known to be Oswald's "handler" in Dallas. Why this huge gap? Didn't Miller consider it important enough?
 

Gaeton Fonzi, affiliated with the HSCA investigation, and author of 'The Last Investigation" notes this concerning de Mohrenschildt:
 

The Assassinations Committee discovered  that George de Mohrenschildt, a prominent Dallas social figure who mysteriously befriended a working class ex-Russian defector, had been asked by the CIA's resident Domestic Contact Agent to debrief Oswald. When Committee investigator Fonzi tracked down De Mohrenschildt in South Florida, the longtime CIA asset was found dead before he could be questioned. However, in the skewered world of Washington politics, De Mohrenschildt's sudden death was a factor in keeping the Assassination Committee alive"

George de Mohrenschildt - murdered at his home before he was to testify before the HSCA about his connections to Oswald in Dallas

 How so? The answer emerges in a post-script addendum authored by Gaeton Fonzi, referencing the date (March 29, 1977)  of de Mohrenschildt's killing (by CIA contract killers) and what else transpired, after he was notified by Fonzi that he was being sought to testify in the HSCA hearings:

"That evening in Washington,  with the Committee on the verge of losing a House vote for its reconstitution and funding Chief Counsel Sprague resigns. The next morning the news of de Mohrenschildt's death and Sprague's resignation produce a victory for the Committee's continuation."

Be assured this was no coincidence. While de Mohrenschildt was a key witness (who would have disclosed how Oswald was being manipulated or "sheep dipped" in Agency parlance) Richard Sprague - the original HSCA head - vowed to "dig deeply into the methods of the FBI and CIA" and also hold them to account. But as per its usual wont, the CIA began a smear campaign in the media against him  - and also rounded up useful collaborating 'whores' in the House (like Henry Gonzalez- who told the spooks to "ignore all Sprague's subpoenas") to ensure Sprague had to depart. That it occurred simultaneously (the same night) as de Mohrenschildt's death probably led Sprague to see what would also happen to him if he didn't leave. The CIA takes no prisoners, as we've beheld with their torture routines- and how their henchmen solved the Roselli problem (recall Roselli had flapped his gums and blabbed that Ruby had actually killed Oswald to silence him.)

 

All of this is pertinent to what transpired before and after Kennedy's assassination, and Oswald's role - which was no more or less than a dupe, a patsy - just as he said.
 

It is understandable, of course,  if an adjunct history prof author is averse to "getting in the weeds" on such issues, especially when he may not have done much relevant research on the assassination itself. But in that case it is his responsibility to avoid making bald statements about principals in a way that portrays the statements as factual. This is the major mistake Prof. Miller commits in his essay.  It may mean little or nothing to lone nuts but it makes a big difference to the rest of us.

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[1] CI/SIG =  'Counter Intelligence/ Special Interest Group'

 

[2] Fonzi. op. cit., pp. 293-94.

Bill O'Reilly's Lies In "Killing Kennedy" Show His Assassination Book Is A Sham

It doesn't take a genius to perceive that Bill O'Reilly is a consummate liar who's been exposed in so many venues and ways it boggles the mind how he could still have a job. I mean, if Brian Williams could get six months suspension over his "misrepresentation" - on how he'd been in a chopper that was fired on by RPGs while on assignment in Iraq, how is it O'Reilly hasn't gotten suspended for a year or even fired?  Apart from media lies he's also lied about his work background, claiming to once having been a "history teacher at a Florida high school."  Well, that high school was Monsignor Edward Pace High in Miami where I graduated from, and he never taught history - he taught English.   This is important because this blowhard is trying to claim experience and background inapplicable to his "Killing" books - which are made up bollocks.

The latest lie exposed (at salon.com) concerns O'Reilly's claim (in his book, 'Killing Kennedy')  of tracking George de Mohrenschildt (then Oswald handler for the CIA), who befriended the Oswalds after they'd returned from Minsk, USSR.  In his daffy book, O'Reilly writes - regarding the death of  de Mohrenschildt - which most serious researchers take to be homicide of yet another would-be witness:

"As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood.

By the way, that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly."

Now let's note first that the mistake of de Mohrenschildt   before being called for preliminary testimony for the HSCA Investigation, is that he'd already maintained Oswald had been a "scapegoat" and he'd been charged with "babysitting" him to ensure he hit the right marks at the right time for the frame up. Alas, three hours after he'd revealed the CIA had sanctioned his contacts with Oswald he was found shot to death in his daughter's home in Manalapan, FL.

Now, where was O'Reilly really? Well, 1200 miles away talking to one of the lead HSCA investigators, Gaeton Fonzi (author of the book, 'The Last Investigation' which I recommend to all interested readers). This is verified from a tape posted at one of the JFK assassination clearing houses JFKFacts.org,  .

To paraphrase Jefferson Morley: "No way could O'Reilly have heard a gunshot from 1200 miles away."  Besides which, IF O'Reilly was there it is a good bet he wouldn't be around now. Any CIA hit men taking out de Mohrenschildt    surely wouldn't have allowed any witnesses - no matter how proximate, optical or audible,  to live.

How vicious and vindictive were these CIA contract killers that took out de Mohrenschildt ? Clue one emerges after mobster Johnny Roselli had blabbed to journalist Jack Anderson how "Ruby was one of our boys and had been hired to kill Oswald". (Twyman, 'Bloody Treason', p. 386).  Of course any testimony on this score would have blown the cover story that Ruby shot Lee out of the goodness of his heart ("to spare Jackie a trial appearance") to kingdom come. It would also have fixated public consciousness on the conspiracy,  which of course could not be permitted. That would've exposed LBJ's Warren Commission for the fraud it was.

Thus it was that prospective HSCA witness Johnny Roselli had to also meet his cruel end, as described below by Gaeton Fonzi in 'The Last Investigation', p. 375:

"In July, 1976, Roselli had disappeared and in August, the month before the Committee (HSCA) was established, Roselli surfaced in the shallows off the Intracoastal Waterway in North Miami. He had been smothered to death and shot, then cut open from chest to navel. His legs had been hacked off and stuffed with his torso into a 55-gallon steel drum which was wrapped with heavy chain and moored to a weight in the water. The mooring broke when the gases from Roselli's decomposing body forced the drum to float to the surface."

Well,  the killers wanted to make damned sure there were no flapping gums. Like David Ferrie nine  years earlier, and George de Mohrenschildt  a year later, they wanted to ensure Roselli never talked. Murdering witnesses does wonders to keep a conspiracy under wraps - while moron media blabbermouths and their useful idiot lackeys keep babbling about "tin foil hats".

What does Gaeton Fonzi have to say about de Mohrenschildt? In the photo section on the 6th page (of  16 pages) we see this stock image of him:

And on the left side we read  the following:

"The Assassinations Committee discovered  that George de Mohrenschildt, a prominent Dallas social figure who mysteriously befriended a working class ex-Russian defector, had been asked by the CIA's resident Domestic Contact Agent to debrief Oswald. When Committee investigator Fonzi tracked down De Mohrenschildt in South Florida, the longtime CIA asset was found dead before he could be questioned. However, in the skewered world of Washington politics, De Mohrenschildt's sudden death was a factor in keeping the Assassination Committee alive"

How so? The answer emerges in a post-script addendum by Fonzi, referencing the date (March 29, 1977)  of de Mohrenschildt's killing and what else transpired, after he was notified by Fonzi that he was being sought to testify in the HSCA hearings:

"That evening in Washington,  with the Committee on the verge of losing a House vote for its reconstitution and funding Chief Counsel Sprague resigns. The next morning the news of de Mohrenschildt's death and Sprague's resignation produce a victory for the Committee's continuation."

Be assured this was no coincidence. While de Mohrenschildt was a key witness (who would have disclosed how Oswald was being manipulated or "sheep dipped" in Agency parlance) Richard Sprague - the original HSCA head - vowed to "dig deeply into the methods of the FBI and CIA" and also hold them to account. But as per its usual wont, the CIA began a smear campaign in the media against him  - and also rounded up useful collaborating 'whores' in the House (like Henry Gonzalez- who told the spooks to "ignore all Sprague's subpoenas") to ensure Sprague had to depart. That it occurred simultaneously (the same night) as de Mohrenschildt's death probably led Sprague to see what would also happen to him if he didn't leave. The CIA takes no prisoners, as we've beheld with their torture routines- and how their henchmen solved the Roselli problem.

You can read more of the details here:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_19.html

Take particular note in the above link of the fact that in the wake of Sprague's departure, none other than CIA "Information and Privacy Coordinator"  Jim Lawderman took control and on July 27 wrote out the terms of the CIA’s control of Blakey’s  HSCA investigation. (Mellen, J., ‘Farewell to Justice’, p. 345).  One of the terms cited was (ibid.):

“ Certain areas relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be entirely disregarded based upon our contention they are without merit or corroboration” (ibid.)

 

 

Thus, the CIA's overseers were effectively judging the threshold for acceptable evidence even before there was any.

NONE of this appeared in O'Reilly's book 'Killing Kennedy'. But we know what did appear were his false claims of where he was when de  Mohrenschildt met his Maker.

The CIA control meant the HSCA like the Warren Commission before it, was basically a sham, a posturing bit of showmanship to try to please and placate the hoi polloi. There was never any real intent to get at the truth - exposed when they actually managed the incredible Jedi mind trick of finding for conspiracy (95%) but also still claiming the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository. Square the circle anyone?

Fonzi himself minces no words on p. 402 of his penultimate chapter, 'Looking Beyond Conspiracy':

"This was the last investigation and it did not do the job the American people had asked it to do....there is not one investigator, not one, who served on the Kennedy task force who honestly felt he took part in an adequate investigation, let alone one 'full and complete'"

But again, the presence of CIA control had to hold a shadow over it, and fear played a role as Fonzi observed in his "Last Note", p. 410:

"If there was one point in the House Assassinations Committee investigation which showed without a doubt that the Committee did not want to open doors that would force it to face facts it did not want to face it was this: David Atlee Phillips perjury before the Committee".

So the HSCA Committee would rather let this rat perjure himself,


Than confront the CIA that put him up to it. Recall it was Phillips who was Mexico City station chief and who crafted the cables that helped to frame Oswald. As noted by Peter Dale Scott (‘Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : “at least three show signs of CIA doctoring and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest.” This was the cable from the Mexico City Station on Oct. 8 that claimed Oswald had appeared at the Soviet Embassy on Oct. 1, claiming  he had spoken with Valeriy Kostikov three days earlier.

Thus, our democratic reps were in fear and trepidation at the prospect of confronting the national security state - which they also had to know played the major role in Kennedy's killing (at Johnson's behest as would come out years later.)

Meanwhile, in Fonzi's mind there was never any issue or doubt on conspiracy (p. 408):

"Long before the Assassinations Committee received confirmation from the acoustic tests in Dealey Plaza, the evidence for a conspiracy was overwhelming.  And in the narrow perspective of my personal quest for substantiation, I've come to conclude that, for me, two pieces of evidence provide irrefutable evidence of conspiracy:  One demolishes the single bullet theory - the locations of the bullet holes in the back of Kennedy's jacket and shirt - hard, tangible, measurable evidence - that obliterate the possibility of a bullet emerging from Kennedy's throat and striking Governor Connolly. The other was.... the deliberate act of connecting Oswald to the assassination before the assassination."

It seems to me that if "Billo"  O'Reilly wanted to truly write a serious book on the assassination, he not only would have spoken to Fonzi in 1977 (as he did - from the tapes released), but also have gotten hold of his book 'The Last Investigation', published in 1993 and taken his conspiracy position seriously.  After all, Fonzi was instrumental in helping O'Reilly move ahead while at Miami Magazine, and even moving on to TV spots.  But then, the objective was never about telling the truth and "informing the folks" but interjecting himself into a historical aftermath that amounted to bare faced lies, and sticking with the usual official bollocks that "Oswald dunnit".


 See : This interview with Gaeton Fonzi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCPBOHSGKk

And also my original take on O'Reilly's book:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/be-still-my-heart-oreilly-does-jfk.html

13 Pages On The 'Conspiracy Industry' - And TIME Gets Hardly Anything Right

In two lengthy articles on the "conspiracy industry" in the latest TIME (Nov. 25, pp. 40- 52) the two authors (David von Drehle, 'We Have Lived With It For Half A Century';  and Jack Dickey, 'Debunker Among the Buffs')  try to take us back to look at that fateful day  50 years ago and the intervening years in terms of how the conspiracy meme became entrenched. But alas, the ardent truth seeker finds very little other than useless conflations, misdirection, long since exposed canards and the usual balderdash the corporate media has refined in the last 50 years to keep Americans deaf, dumb, blind and stupid.

Von Drehle in his first article, consuming nearly 10 pages, at least makes a halfway decent effort but after the first few pages it's evident he lacks the bona fides, education or determination to separate wheat from chaff in parsing conspiracy theories to do with this event. And yes, like the conspiracy zeitgeist in general, not all theories are created equal because not all theorists put in the same amount of research, hard work. This ought to be self-evident, but not to von Drehle. who first complains (p. 42) that "the number of explanations offered for that moment in Dallas is dizzying: Kennedy was murdered by a lone gunman, the Mafia, the CIA, the Military -Industrial complex, his own Secret Service, right wing millionaires, Fidel Castro, Kennedy's Vice President Lyndon Johnson".

And when the untutored reader sees this, he's inclined to agree, failing to see the components involved are muddied together, which makes it appear that the whole conception of conspiracy is absurd. But that has been the intent of the 'Mockingbird' media for as long as I can recall. For example, if one intelligently grasps that the ones who actually carried out  the deed are separate from the architects, then he also sees it's stupid to single out actors as if they are all distinct possible conspirators to the same degree and with the same objectives.  But had von Drehle really done his homework for the piece, especially using texts such as Donald Gibson's 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency',   he'd have seen how the CIA, Oil, Banking, and the Military-Industrial Complex have been in bed together for decades.  Hence, it's nonsense to separate the Military-Industrial Complex, the CIA and right wing OIL millionaires, when they had shared interests in seeing Kennedy killed and were linked at the hip by the backgrounds of people like Allen Dulles, H.L. Hunt. John Foster Dulles. But people like von Drehle are too lazy or intellectually incompetent to pursue the research where it leads.

As for the Mafia, as I noted in my previous FAQ (Pt. 7) it was G. Robert Blakey who incepted that nonsense to misdirect the attention of the HSCA away from the CIA. No serious researcher today believes or accepts the "mob" had anything to do with the killing in any other than a mechanics capacity, i.e.  responsible for bringing in Jean Soutre- a  member of the Corsican Mafia hired out of Marseilles to be one of the snipers. Former Justice Dept. specialist Walt Brown  ('Treachery in Dallas'  ) indicates that FOIA -released files suggest Soutre was the likely grassy knoll shooter. (Often referred to as "Badgeman" from the Mary Muchmore photo taken at the instant of the head shot).

As for LBJ no one, including me, has said he was an active participant. But no one other than a dunderhead (like Vince Bugliosi) would deny he stood to gain immensely if JFK was knocked off - since Kennedy planned to dump him from the 1964 ticket on account of the political damage from the Bobby Baker scandal.  Knowing this, and there's little doubt he did, all LBJ had to do is nominally assent to an existing plan, probably made aware of by Allen Dulles. NO documents need have been signed, or actual vocal indication given. In effect, LBJ as a passive benefactor could not really be regarded as a "conspirator" as such - also because all aspects of the plan were compartmentalized. Hence, LBJ wouldn't have known the identities of any actual mechanics.

As for the Secret Service, I already dealt at length with their plausible passive role in this blog:  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/04/secret-service-scandalnot-first.html


The author then whines about a "forest of conspiracy theories which can swallow a person up" and which are "part scholarship, part fever dream".   He goes on, his frustration obvious (ibid.):

"How easy it is to go from a split second in Dealey Plaza to a fathomless argument over the windshield damage in a presidential limousine. And from there to the idea of forged autopsy documents. And from there to the idea of multiple Oswald's.....the path forks endlessly leading everywhere and nowhere."

He then refers to "the most truly resonant image from the grisly scene" as the First Lady  "on the trunk of the limousine" - but is either too lazy, too dumb or too duped to connect the dots between all of the above.  He's not processing that the windshield damage constitutes physical evidence and if the limo is sent away to be dismantled and rebuilt - as LBJ ordered- then one has destroyed evidence. He's not processing that the forged autopsy documents really DO exist - and Gerald Ford was the one who altered those original documents, to change the location of the back wound higher for Arlen Specter's "single bullet theory" to work, i.e.

The initial draft of the report had  stated:

"A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine."

Ford altered it to read:

"A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."
 
Clearly, Ford wanted the document to conform with the single bullet myth and would stoop to altering a document on record to attain the goal. If von Drehle had really prepared for the article he wrote he'd also have encountered the forged autopsy photos used by the Warren Commission - see the one below at left and compare to one of the actual autopsy photos (right):

If von Drehle had any rudimentary physics background - even a high school course under his belt - he'd have been able to intelligently relate the photo at right to the fact of Jackie moving across the limo to try to capture a fragment of JFK's exploded skull.  Then, instead of his hyper-emotional bloviating about the "whole shocking sequence" he'd be able to make some sense of it and why exactly the conspiracy meme has been accepted by a majority of Americans (now 62% but down from 81% in 2000, probably because of the incessant media drumbeat to legitimize the Warren Commission follies)

As for von Drehle's  conspiracy "forest" - that was an understandable consequence of the early days in the wake of the Warren Commission- when skeptics learned the Commission (and LBJ ) had ordered all files remain closed to the public until 2037.  In this closed information arena dozens of different and widely variant theories surfaced and hundreds of books attempted to make sense of the events based on a limited constellation of accessible facts. Thanks to the Oliver Stone film 'JFK' this changed and the JFK Records Act was passed to make available millions of files by 1993. These included Oswald's CIA file : 201-289248 CI/SIG, as well as others, which finally opened the window on Oswald to serious researchers - showing he wasn't the "lone commie nut" portrayed by the Warrenites and their apologists and enablers.  This was the first breakthrough paving the way to the CIA as the primary culprit.

Then, with the HSCA's exposure (mainly thanks to brave investigators like Gaeton Fonzi, Danny Hardway, Ed Lopez (author of the Lopez Report) and others, we finally saw how David Atlee Phillips used forged cable to frame Oswald for the hit. With the actual released photos of an Oswald impostor in Mexico City the framing became more evident, and the path led to assets of the Mexico City Station’s Chief of Covert Action and Cuban Operations, David Atlee Phillips.

Von Drehle rambles on in his piece noting the Dallas connections to Big Oil, Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt, as well as the right wing extremists (like Ted Dealey) ensconced there, and then mentions the attack on Adlai Stevenson, but it's all mainly a parade of incidents that he refuses to tie together - hence leaving the reader to believe we are confronting dozens of unrelated characters and coincidences.  He does also mention Oswald's famous declaration at the Dallas Police station: "I am just a patsy" but evinces cluelessness at what it means. He writes:

"Exactly what he meant by this is never revealed, because instead of facing trial Oswald was shot to death on Nov. 24th while being transported from one jail cell to another."

Had von Drehle done enough research to make himself aware of David Atleee Phillips' role in framing Oswald, he'd not have wondered - despite Lee's being murdered by Jack Ruby-  who later insisted he needed to go to Washington to explain. He maintained it wasn't about merely "protecting Jackie from having to testify" as the media made out. Ruby died of cancer before his final explanation emerged. Meanwhile, von Drehle and cohorts remain undisturbed by the fact that all other lone assassins proudly proclaimed their deed. Oswald, the one they insist had a "huge ego" and believed himself bigger than life, didn't. How come? They don't have any answers and are too dense to see their narrative of Oswald doesn't jibe with his patsy statement.

Then there is Jack Dickey's article which mainly extols one of the top disinformationists around, Prof. John McAdams. According to Dickey's piece, based on talking to McAdams, he is a "debunker". Just like the guys that debunk UFOs John sees his job as debunking conspiracy theories, and hence being a proper apologist (like Vince Bugliosi) for the Warren balderdash.

Long before there was Twitter, Facebook or Blogs, there was something called Usenet where entities known as "newsgroups" sprang up to encourage debate and discussion on any number of issues, topics.  I had observed McAdams putdowns in the (un-moderated)  newsgroup alt. conspiracy.jfk for some months before actually engaging in a one on one exchange with him. This was concerning my REAL FAQ  that I had published in the newsgroup as an antidote to a pro-lone nut FAQ by frequent poster John Locke. 

In one particular confrontation, McAdams complained about my reference to Jackie “climbing over the limo trunk” in an effort to retrieve part of JFK’s blown out skull fragment (later inferred to be the Harper bone fragment retrieved by William Harper). He insisted she wasn't "climbing over anything" to which I then said, Ok, she's moving across it to the rear - which shows a frontal shot".  He tried to "debunk" this but a picture says a thousand words. And in my FAQ Part 5 readers can see the image for themselves.

I added more kapow to my response citing  her Warren Commission Testimony (from Volume Five of the special hearings) where she says:

"You know, then, there were pictures later of me climbing out the back, but I don't remember that at all."

She was referring to this Z-film image:

From her secret testimony (excised from original version), op. cit., p. 16:

"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on."

But once again, McAdams disputed my sources and said Jackie also must have been mistaken, as there was no time at which she climbed across the trunk. SO much for John's "debunking" which is largely a matter of denying reality.

Perhaps the best information ever assembled on John McAdams (nee, “Paul Nolan”) was put together by Jim Hargrove. The basic thrust is to answer questions concerning McAdams and his background because it so much seems to fit the sort of CIA assets described in the CIA document 1035-960 wherein it specifies under subsection (3b) the objective: “to employ propaganda assets to negate and refute the attacks of the critics”. While TIME author Dickey waxes on about, oh no, move along, no CIA here with McAdams, he never does cite the CIA document that legitimized the role for assets including in Usenet newsgroups.

Hence, when McAdams blabs: "These people think the CIA cares about them. It does not!"

One is led to ask, 'Oh really? Then how account for the CIA document that explicitly states in one primary objective:  "To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics".

How can this be reconciled with a guy who "just likes to brawl"? Well, if brawling consumes more time than useful communication about facts (like Jackie's limo trunk action) and files (like Oswald's  201-289248 CI/SIG) than one can say the objective has been achieved.

If McAdams has been a real CIA propaganda asset, it makes sense one of his first obligations would be to neutralize any outlets for serious JFK assassination discussion he doesn’t control (like his moderated newsgroup). Thus his intrusions into the un-moderated group shed definite light on his intentions.  Consider, for example, this McAdams post from  (John McAdams) Date: 14 Feb 1997 22:17:02 -0700:

“You buffs have been cooperating marvelously with my scheme to make this group a shambles. And you know the bizarre part? My scheme is not a secret. I have publicly announced it. I have made it perfectly obvious.  I have rubbed you buffs' noses in it. It's blatantly obviously to everybody.”

Now, let’s clear our heads and think about this a bit: Would a normal everyday professor of Political Science be doing these things? Would he be bragging about leaving a Usenet newsgroup a “shambles”?  It doesn’t add up.  Bill Hargrove, in his “McAdams FAQ” provides the Charter Policy written by McAdams himself for his own moderated group. Reading its first paragraph sheds a lot of light:

CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY

This group will be for the purpose of providing an area for serious discussion and research of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The group will be moderated to prevent the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued alt.conspiracy.jfk and made it nearly useless as a vehicle for intelligent research. Questions surrounding JFK's death have made this one of the most talked about and controversial issues of our generation. This will be the one usenet group which deals seriously with this important topic.

But as Hargrove observes:

“One supposes that since the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued the alt.conspiracy.jfk group were and are part of McAdams freely admitted plans to turn the group into a shambles, the moderated group can only be seen as his personal vehicle for selective manipulation of content”

Which is totally logical, and again, it comports with CIA doc. 1035-960!  Hargrove then quotes McAdams from a letter written to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

“(Dr) Gary Aguilar accused me on the politics forum of being A CIA sponsored 

disinformationist because I was once the Marquette Official representative of the I.C.P.S.R. an utterly 

unspooky social science data archive.”

In truth, The ICPSR is housed in the Institute for Social Research, or ISR which itself

 has been documented as recipient of “spook” (e.g. CIA) research grants.

 They also have a webpage:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/

Which the interested reader can explore for himself. My own take is that it could easily be a CIA  (Clandestine Operations) front for  psy-ops intelligence operations which could easily include anti-conspiracy propaganda. We already know that the founder of American Propaganda – Edward Bernays – was steeped in the social sciences and firmly believed the public was too irrational to entrust to its own thought and conclusions and therefore had to be manipulated toward specific directions. In his own words:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 

habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in 

democratic society”

What better way to do that than from a networked academic consortium – interwoven into all the social 

sciences – with access to a central data clearinghouse that’s amassed everything from 

the latest frequency of teen pregnancies, to homicides by race or gender, or assorted 

other historical arcania. It’s literally a propagandist’s dream.

 All of this leaves us with the question of why TIME would put two such dubious articles in its issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event. But in this case, we perhaps need some recollections of TIME's own history.  If we look at TIME's background, we see that it was (and is) part of the Luce Press, including FORTUNE. As James Douglass observes[1]:

“Besides being CIA-friendly, Henry Luce was an enemy to Kennedy. In the wake of the April, 1962 steel crisis, Luce’s FORTUNE magazine had implicitly warned the president, on behalf of the American business elite, to beware ‘the ides of April’ for his dominant role in settling the crisis”.

And who can forget that the Zapruder film first came into possession of TIME, where CIA handlers attempted to exchange key frames to remove the backward head snap, providing support for the theory that a shot came from behind. Fortunately, they didn’t succeed and the (Orville) Nix film shows not only the backward head snap but a piece of skull hurtling over the limo trunk. Such motions are impossible for a rear shot.

In fact, Kennedy was going up against not only U.S. Steel but powerful banking interests. As James Douglass has pointed out (ibid.), in connection with an unsigned editorial appearing in Fortune (a Luce Press magazine), betraying the extent of corporate hostility:

“The editors of Fortune knew that the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel’s Board of Directors. It included top level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, The First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, AT&T.”

Douglass goes on to note  (ibid.) that the Fortune editors themselves answered the key question of why financial interests baited Kennedy into “a vitriolic and demagogic assault”. It had to do with their perception of his prior appeal not to raise prices as “a threat of jawbone control” of prices.  In Douglass’ own words – which I can’t match:

“In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another office holder beholden to the powers that be.”

If readers and those interested in history truly want insight as opposed to pop bunkum and dignifying CIA assets they are better served by reading James Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable than TIME's nonsense.  Yes, the latter is shorter, much shorter, but that alone ought to suggest why you need to dig a bit deeper. (Oh, and be sure to turn off all the morning news programs and most of the nightly ones, that keep to the propaganda of one lone nut)

 

---

[1] James Douglass: 2007, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, Orbis Books, p. 164.