What Have We Learned This Past Week?

The past week we in the United States - at least many of us- recalled the events leading up to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy 50 years ago Friday. As with previous commemorations (25th, 30th, 40th) , the way the lead up and final day were dealt with disclosed a lot about who we are as a people.  Most critically, the spotlight shone bright on our media culture and the political class.

For myself, it was especially useful to look back at the media from previous commemorations to see what was portrayed compared to the monumental 50th occasion. What I saw, on looking back at old 30th, 40th anniversary tapes, wasn't too appealing.

It mainly showed that much of the media perspective has been lost, or otherwise totally distorted. For example, only once  in all the news segments dealing with the event did I hear a media maven (Charlie Rose) use the words "alleged assassin" to refer to Oswald. Whether this has been intentional I can't say. However, if the media culture - mainly corporate- takes its cues from the political class, it is perhaps understandable. As we know, one of the most shocking early disclosures this year - certainly shocking to those of us in the JFK assassination research community - is that the National Archives refused to release key files on the assassination, and in the 50th anniversary year.  See:  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/national-archives-to-jfk-file-seekers.html

The records were originally requested by the nonprofit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), will now remain secret until at least 2017, when the 1992 JFK Records Act mandates public release of all assassination files in the government’s possession. 


Interestingly, The Archives’ decision came as two former CIA officers went public with the unsubstantiated (and nonsensical)  conspiracy theory that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had advance knowledge of JFK’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. In a piece published in the Daily Beast the week of June 15th, retired CIA officer Glenn Carle claimed that “the Cuban dictator knew of Lee Harvey Oswald’s intention to kill President Kennedy.” Carle also defended a deceased CIA colleague, David Phillips, from allegations of JFK conspiracy theorists that he conspired in JFK’s death. Of course, I quashed Carle's gibberish and disinfo in my two blog posts (last month) on the Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald. I also skewered author Philip Shenon whose absurd new book is based on this flatulence. See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/author-philip-shenon-is-he-idiot-or-dupe.html


According to Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia (who also published a book about the impact of JFK’s assassination) referring to the National Archives:

“This is a deeply disappointing decision that deprives everyone of a fuller understanding of the JFK assassination The 50th anniversary of that terrible event is the perfect opportunity to shed more light on the violent removal of a president. This adds to the widely held public suspicion that the government may still be hiding some key facts about President Kennedy’s murder.”

But my point here is that the corporate media may well have taken their cue from this and decided to go all out on the way they portrayed the assassination.

Anyway, here are some of my takeaways from this past week:

1)The nation still hasn't come to terms with the reality of the assassination, and how it undermined civil, democratic society while hyper-empowering the military-national security war state. At the heart of this is what James Douglass has called "denial" and the "unspeakable".

Douglass presciently wrote in his landmark  book (JFK and the Unspeakable) 6 years ago [1]:

“Our collective denial of the obvious, in the setting up of Oswald and his transparent silencing by Ruby, made possible the Dallas cover-up. The success of the cover-up was the indispensable foundation for the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government – and ourselves.

Hope for change in the world was targeted and killed four times over. The cover-up of all four murders, each leading into the next, was based – first of all –on denial. Not the government’s but our own- and the unspeakable was not far away.”

Douglass held all of us accountable (including himself) to the extent we have contributed directly or indirectly to the zeitgeist of entrenched denial, spinning and subterfuge and worse, dignifying the Warren Commission as the default perception. He referred to this behavior as being part of the “Unspeakable”.  This term was first coined by monk, Thomas Merton,  to describe: “an evil whose depth and deceit go beyond the power of words to describe”.

 

To me, this evil was evident in almost every frame and soundbite in nearly every media program I beheld - whether documentary or film - about the assassination:  from History's  'The Definitive Guide' to the National Geographic's 'Killing Kennedy' to dozens of media segments that aired either as part of the morning news offerings or the nightly news.  The contributors to it ranged from Mo Rocca - trying to paint Dallas as not nearly as wretched as it actually was back in 1963, to  Bill Maher, trying on his 'Real Time' to insist conspiracy thinking was akin to "belief in God" and being "unable to accept a random event" (see (3) below) to ABC reporter Byron Pitts - essentially punking Jean Hill (who was 21' from JFK when he was struck by the kill shot and always maintained she heard up to 6 shots). While his segment allowed Hill's relatives to have their say Pitt ended by noting they held to Jean's belief "despite a Blue Ribbon Commission" that found Oswald guilty. Of course, that Commission was actually a pig in lipstick as I already showed in the FAQ Parts 4 (a) and (b).

 

2) The media has essentially boiled its POV down to one note: Oswald did it, case closed. This was sounded repeatedly all through the week with nary ONE single skeptical-conspiracy POV broadcast, other than short (2-3 min.) segments like Byron Pitt's when he ended up punking the person (Jean Hill) featured. This was in contrast to 2003, for example, when the History Channel broadcast the BBC 6- part series 'The Men Who Killed Kennedy' - which at least provided some strong counter narratives to the Warren Commission claptrap.  How is it the series wasn't shown this year?  According to Wikipedia:

 

The network was also criticized by Stanley Kutner for airing the controversial series The Men Who Killed Kennedy in 2003. Kutner was one of three historians commissioned to review the documentary, which the channel disavowed and never aired again.^[8] On the other hand, programs such as Modern Marvels have been praised for their presentation of detailed information in an entertaining format

 

Yet the network is quite okay with broadcasting 'The Definitive Guide to the Assassination' with two of the biggest shills and liars to ever appear on the tube. As well as televising inspiring and awesome fare such as  Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men and Pawn Stars . Look, no one says The Men Who Killed Kennedy was perfect and flawless. But it certainly didn't merit being punked because a couple "academics" pitched a hissy fit - yet when presented with the Warren Follies it's all A-ok.  All I am saying is balance was needed, another POV - even if parts might be subject to different interpretations. Hell's bells, have a short discussion period afterwards then, but don't eliminate the POV completely!

 

Meanwhile, for the 30th anniversary in 1993, Marina Oswald Porter was interviewed on prime time on NBC.  Marina - having vastly improved her English from those dark days in Dallas 30 years earlier- gave Tom Brokaw all he could handle and more. Even as Brokaw incessantly tried to browbeat her to admit Lee's guilt, Marina steadfastly refused. She repeated several times how Lee admired and loved JFK, and would never ever have shot him.  After she warned Brokaw to stop his errant mischief and the blowhard  refused, Marina detached her mic and walked out. I actually had to give a few hand claps to putting the self-styled media maven in his place!

 

 

3) Even progressives  don't get it. Including Bill Maher who asserted last night:   "We need conspiracies for the same reason we need God because we cannot accept that things are just random." 

 

Brit guest Katty Kay also stepped into the heaping pile prepped by Bill when she bloviated how "government distrust" fuels conspiracy theories (it actually does, but FACTS are what we are about in the JFK case, not global warming "conspiracies")  and how we can't accept "some lone, banal loser with a twenty -one dollar rifle (actually it was $12.78) could shoot the President of the United States just seems implausible to people."
 

 

Adding: "And if you don't like government at all it's just one more step to saying it's conspiracy"

 

NO! NO! NO!   At this point I felt like tearing my hair out and hurling a chair at the TV. How could professed liberals be so fucking dumb and uneducated? How could they play into this horse crap? And yet we beheld Steve Kornacki doing it barely 5 days earlier, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/even-liberals-can-be-victims-of.html

 

Therein I noted the error in conflating the personal political value of JFK with the value of the assassination. As good as JFK was, in so far as he managed to change from Cold Warrior to peace advocate, his personal political value was relatively low.  The point is that the assassination was the primal event, not John F. Kennedy per se. It was the assassination that altered the arc of American history for the worse. It was the assassination  that had the high political value, since with Kennedy out of the way, many more nefarious initiatives could be undertaken. So, Katty Kay just like Robert MacNeil on Kornacki makes the same stupid error.

 

As for Maher, I would have thought he had more ability for intellectual discrimination than to compare skepticism of the official story on the JFK hit to God belief. In so doing, Maher disclosed he has absolutely no insight into what happened, and perhaps doesn't care to. As for the event being random, so leading us to conspiracy, why?  That's gibberish. It is also echoing the conspiracy phobia Michael Parenti has noted.

 

What we do know is, given the basic definition of conspiracy  (e.g. Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary), viz.

 

“A treacherous, surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons”

 Then something either meets these criteria or it doesn’t. The definition isn’t rejected because the conspiracy is proven ex-post-facto or its objectives never manifested in reality, or one is erroneously convinced it's invoked as a path out of randomness! If at any time the “plan” condition in the definition was met, however briefly, then it was a valid conspiracy! From this, Watergate was a conspiracy, so was Iran-Contra. Similarly with the JFK assassination, since we have the files, documents track including Oswald's OS-351-164 (office of security), the 201-289248 CI/SIG, and the 74-500.  Has Bill seen any of these, or is it easier simply to talk out of his  ass?  In which case his segment isn't serious but done merely for shits and giggles.

 

If Maher had taken the time and trouble, he'd have learned for example, 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 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”. In other words, Oswald was part of the ZR/Rifle operation. Is this "random"? Not when being part of it also facilitates being set up as the patsy that Oswald proclaimed, see: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee_1807.html

Other nominal progressives, like Marilyn Elias in her piece 'Conspiracy Act' , in The Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report (Winter, 2013),  have shown themselves willing to wade into the JFK assassination based on minimal knowledge or research. Hence, despite dubious preparation that'd put a college freshman's term paper to shame, they're ready and willing to tar all those who've shown Jack Ruby's role in Oswald's killing, or the basis for JFK witness deaths, as well as those who've revealed (as I did in my FAQ Part 5 ) that the autopsy of JFK was indeed "doctored".  These conspiracy phobic, reactive progressives give credence to Michael Parenti's criticism of "conspiracy phobia" on the Left - and its basis in superficial or emotional investigation- often citing poor or discredited  sources such as Gerald Posner and Vince Bugliosi.  As I also noted about Elias (see my  Nov. 24th post: 'The Second Assassination') while she goes guns blazing after Richard Belzer for his recent  conspiracy stances and support - including of hyper-conspirator Alex Jones- she remains stone silent about the NSA's much more malignant transgressions against 4th amendment rights. In this sense, she and others of her ilk emerge as civil rights hypocrites: prepared to go after isolated individuals but not stand up to the national security state itself- the selfsame that killed Kennedy.


On the positive side, it appears Tom Hanks' planned 13 -part  extravaganza on HBO (based on Bugliosi's bollocks) never materialized. We can be grateful for small mercies.

 

Sadly, if we are so lazy, self-absorbed and disconnected that we accept Maher's "random" event take or Marilyn Elias' conspiracy phobia and cherry-picked villains, then we merely become cogs in the wheels of the "unspeakable" and part of the ongoing denial on display this whole week. And if that's the case, this country will never be healed - since the festering pustule left on the body politic 50 years ago will ultimately lead to its downfall.

 

 

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[1] James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Orbis Book, p. xvi

National Archives to JFK File Seekers: 'DROP DEAD!'

Yeppers, that's the response of the National Archives - reduced to a nutshell - to those of us who want 1,117 critical files released by next year, the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), said the Archives would not release the records as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing declassification campaign. Stern cited CIA claims that “substantial logistical requirements” prevented their disclosure next year.

Some of us suspect that translates to: "Some of our assets who played a key part in the events of the time are still alive".  Suspicious? Paranoid? Fuckin-A right! I mean what have they got to hide?

Let's get sensible for once: One single unabashed and full release of the remaining files would quell nearly all the most dire conspiracy subtexts (e.g. those directly implicating the government or its agencies in executive action) and render redundant Comedian Tom Hanks' proposed 13-part HBO series next year - ostensibly designated to "prevent the American people from being snookered by the belief Oswald was framed".

Hey, Mr. Hanks, who is 'snookering' who? If you had one milligram of gumption or intestinal fortitude you'd be using all your energies to get those files released and dealing with them, instead of trying to brainwash the rest of us with two-bit propaganda dredged out of Vince Bugliosi's Warren Commission PR 'brief'.

According to Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, who is writing a book about the impact of JFK’s assassination on American politics:

“This is a deeply disappointing decision that deprives everyone of a fuller understanding of the JFK assassination The 50th anniversary of that terrible event is the perfect opportunity to shed more light on the violent removal of a president. This adds to the widely held public suspicion that the government may still be hiding some key facts about President Kennedy’s murder.”

Well, uh ..duh...and why on earth wouldn't such suspicions be aroused? Any person with a pair of functioning neurons ought to be asking: What has the government got to hide?

The records were originally requested by the nonprofit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), will now remain secret until at least 2017, when the 1992 JFK Records Act mandates public release of all assassination files in the government’s possession. However, do not be surprised that if Mitt Romney gets in, he passes an Executive Order mandating the remaining files never be released. Especially if they're found to contain what many of us already suspect.

Interestingly, The Archives’ decision comes as two former CIA officers have gone public with the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had advance knowledge of JFK’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. In a piece published in the Daily Beast this week, retired CIA officer Glenn Carle claimed that “the Cuban dictator knew of Lee Harvey Oswald’s intention to kill President Kennedy.” Carle also defended a deceased CIA colleague, David Phillips, from allegations of JFK conspiracy theorists that he conspired in JFK’s death.

Two things:

First, I already exposed the 'Castro did it'  bunkum for the horse shit it is, and people can see that in the blog eviscerating CIA hack Brian Latell's effort:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/03/biran-latell-another-cia-hack.html

As I asked therein, and do so again: WHY should anyone in his or her right mind believe a pack of inveterate liars and their disinfo lackeys who had no compunction about blowing an airliner out of the sky off the coast of Barbados, on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 on board- the entire Cuban National Fencing Team?

We also know at the time these "Oswald-Castro did it" tricks emerged, the one key person behind it was George Johannides, the Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami . Almost all his energy was directed to: a) implicating Oswald in the assassination by a strategy of "sheepdipping" (see Univ. of Maryland Military Science Professor John Newman's excellent 'Oswald and the CIA') and b) processing disinformation from pseudo -double agents and deliberate false sources to implicate Castro, the Soviets, Oswald or all three.

Interestingly, on May 20, 2005, the same CIA that wants us to believe "Castro did it" or "knew about it" or "knew of Oswald", filed papers to block the release of specific JFK-assassination related documents to do with the activities of deceased CIA officer GEORGE JOANNIDES. Coincidence? Hardly!  At the time of Kennedy's death, Joannides (as Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of  JM/WAVE) was the character who manipulated Oswald (in conjunction with disaffected anti-Castro Cubans in the DRE and fellow agent David Atlee Phillips) and over months had him painted as a pro-Castro looneytune. By the time of the hit, 'Hey looka that! The Pro-Castro nut dunnit!' (Despite a savvy columnist, Kenneth Crawford, noting "the suspicious irony inherent in a lone-pro-Castro gunman being fingered in a city (Dallas) regarded as a ‘citadel of right wing strength'’. (Newsweek, Dec. 2, 1963, p. 21)

By doing this, Joannides also set the stage for the later Castro –conspiracy theory, that it was really Fidel who had Kennedy killed because of attempts made on the Cuban leader’s life via Operation ZR-Rifle. Not said, of course, is that Kennedy had already (from late 1962) initiated a rapprochement with Castro through his aide-de-camp Rene Vallejo and Kennedy's emissary, William Attwood. (See, e.g. Peter Kornbluh: ‘Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been’, in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999. )

This is what neither of these CIA hucksters, Carle or Latell, want people to process: that it makes ZERO sense for Castro or any of his confederates to want to whack JFK when he was already in the process of healing relations with Cuba, spurred on by the near calamitous events of October, 1962 and the Cuban Missile crisis (when Kennedy was being pressured by Gen. Curtis LeMay and others to bomb and invade Cuba).


Second, Carle's defense of David Atlee Phillips is more disinformation BS.  As reported in The Baltimore Sun, (Nov. 28, 1997): 'Document Supports Conspiracy Theory In JFK Slaying' - Paper Buttresses Theory That Oswald, Agent Met'  we read:


"A long secret government document released Wednesday lends credence to a favorite theory of conspiracy theorists on President John F. Kennedy's assassination: the contention that Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in Dallas with a U.S. Intelligence agent about two months before the killing. This issue has long been connected with unproved reports that a violent Cuban exile group - perhaps with the help of a U.S. intelligence agency - was involved in the assassination."

The Sun article named the intelligence agent as 'Maurice Bishop' which pseudonym was later exposed as the cover identity used by one David Atlee Phillips - who Carle seeks to protect.  The article also noted that the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 "failed to substantiate the report" but we now know why in the aftermath. It was because both Phillips and Joannides were recruited to stonewall and lie their asses off to the HSCA.

Fifteen years after JFK's killing, Joannides was called out of retirement by the CIA to serve as the agency's liaison to the House committee looking into Kennedy's assassination. During this time he never disclosed his own actions in 1963 to the congressional investigators he was supposed to be assisting. It wasn't until 2001, 38 years after Kennedy's death, that Joannides' support for the Cuban exiles, who clashed with Oswald and monitored him, came to light. Since then, the Agency has blocked every effort to get the bastard's files.


"[Joannides'] behavior was criminal," said Robert Blakey, the former House committee counsel who was deceived by the CIA agent. "He obstructed our investigation."

Even pro-lone nut hack Gerald Posner ('Case Closed')  was disturbed enough by the CIA's file disclosure intransigence (on the release of the Joannides' files)  to comment:

"The agency is stonewalling, It's a perfect example of why the public has so little trust in the CIA's willingness to be truthful."

And also why the public should continue to have so little trust in CIA hack disinformationists like Carle and Latell,  trying to pin the tail on Castro. What, Mr. Carle? Latell's crap wasn't good enough psych material so you had to put in your 0.02? Why isn't Tom Hanks investigating THIS?  Why does Hanks instead choose to become part of the matrix of the "Unspeakable"? (After James Douglass' remarkable book: 'JFK and the Unspeakable'). Well, I suppose for a sometime comedic actor ('Larry Crowne') and dabbler in semi-fictional historic fare ('John Adams', 'Band of Brothers', 'The Pacific' etc.) it's a lot easier to be part of BS orthodoxy and getting HBO  propaganda gigs, than it is to take the straight and narrow road to truth!

Back to David Atlee Phillips who Glenn Carle defends against those nasty CT's: Investigator

HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi is abundantly clear regarding the tactics of David Atlee Phillips (The Last Investigation, p. 336):


“David Atlee Phillips, former Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA, lied under oath to the House Select Committee – and he got away with it. In its final report the Committee slipped in that fact obliquely, relegating it to a footnote. This was a devious way to cover its ass; it also illustrated the Committee’s readiness to dismiss evidence that would contradict its final report. That it disregarded Phillips' perjury confirms the Committee's tacit decision not to pursue the truth 'wherever it might lead' - especially if it headed toward the CIA. Chief Counsel Blakey had, after all, a' working agreement' with the Agency."

The last point makes it especially confounding to read Blakey's words (above) about being so incensed at Joannides, when the liar and perjurer Atlee Phillips was equally guilty.  Fonzi goes on to emphasize Phillips import (op. cit., p. 336):

"David Phillips represented the most crucial investigative link ever developed between the Central Intelligence Agency and the assassination of President Kennedy."

So for Glenn Carle to assert Phillips had no role is nothing short of doing what Phillips did in respect of the HSCA investigation: lying!  Fonzi, meanwhile, probably has offered the best perspective on our illustrious government's investigations thus far in the end notes of his book, (Gaeton Fonzi: 1993, The Last Investigation, Thunders Mouth Press, p. 410):

“So again, our government slapped the American people in the face. We have been slapped in the face over and over and over again and we still deny it is happening to us. Why?"

Maybe because they believe they can do so with impunity. Let's also bear in mind that a report issued by the House Select Committee on Assassinations noted that of all the anti-Castro groups, the DRE ( Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil ) of Phillips and Joannides was “one of the most bitter toward President Kennedy for his deal with the Russians”.  (HSCA Volume 10, 1979: ‘Anti-Castro Activities and Organizations: Investigation of the Assassination of    President John F. Kennedy’, in Appendix to the Hearings Before the Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 82) The "deal" referenced pertains to JFK's promise to Khrushchev - as part of  resolving the October,1962 missile deal - to attempt no further invasions of Cuba if all Soviet hardware was removed. Kennedy also, to much right wing consternation, removed U.S. Jupiter missiles based in Turkey - 6 months later. All of this had to make the Phillips-Joannides Cuban clique apoplectic.

Well, imagine - just imagine - how riled and furious that same Phillips-Joannides anti-Castro Cuban group would be when it learned (compliments of their CIA handlers, no doubt) that Kennedy was in the process of establishing normalized relations with Fidel via a rapproachement with his aide-de-camp (Indeed, medical assistance had already been dispatched to Cuba as a sign of good will). Hell, the fuckers would have gone ballistic and begged Joannides and Phillips for anything they might do, any role, to exact payback. Anyone want to bet that one or more were offered the job of mechanics in a hit? Too extreme? They'd never do it? Hey ....these were the same fuckers that blew a Cubana Airliners plane (Flight 455) out of the skies off Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976! If they could kill 73 innocents that day don't tell me they wouldn't volunteer to put one or more bullets into a prez that: a) they believed 'betrayed' them by not providing air cover for Operation Zapata (the Bay of Pigs invasion), or b) had begun rapprochement with Fidel Castro.

To quote Larry Sabato on this NARA perfidy:

“After five decades it is ridiculous that information is still being withheld from the people whose taxes paid for it,”

But hey, maybe it isn't a biggie since they feel no compunction - the gov't - about pissing $10b a week on a useless operation like Afghanistan. So what's a little document concealment in the scheme of things? Especially when it may point the way to finally seeing the permanent war-security state entered via a coup de-etat in November, 1963?

Sadly, as the 50th anniversary of the hideous Dallas tragedy approaches, CIA officials are hiding information about covert operations that culminated in the death of perhaps the most liberal president in the last half century and the National Archives is helping them get away with it. Worse, a supposedly "liberal" president and Democrat seems to be condoning it. Go figure!

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For a solid account of the Cubana Airliner bombing (including the false arrest of five Cubans who were in the process of exposing the actual anti-Castro Cuban-American terrorists)  and why no one should ever believe squat on what the CIA or its lackeys has to say about Castro being involved in the JFK assassination, go to:

http://www.freethefive.org/updates/USMedia/USM455Pertierra101111.htm