COPA

COPA quoted in

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On this day

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On this day

Plot to kill JFK in Chicago, early November.

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

.TV online : provided by Ustream

Kennedy assassination 'blowback' from Cuba

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Author T.J. English is interviewed in the Irish Voice about his work on the mob in Cuba.

What Happens in Cuba…

June 26, 2008 In Havana Nocturne Irish American author T.J. English tells the riveting tale of the Mob in Cuba. It features a heady brew of organized crime lords, political corruption, world famous nightlife and international conflict. CAHIR O’DOHERTY talks to the author about the nation and his new book. BY the mid 1950s the Havana Mob comprised some of the most notorious American underworld figures of their day. Legendary gangsters like Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante, and others had come to Havana in the late 1940’s and early 50’s seeking criminal opportunities. These were men who had honed their craft or amassed their wealth in the “glory days” of Prohibition in the U.S., and who had always dreamed of controlling their own country. A fascination with Cuba and the criminal underworld might seem like an odd fit for Tom English, 50, the son of a large Irish Catholic family of 10 brothers and sisters from Tacoma, Washington. But early in his writing career, English worked as a freelance journalist in New York City (for the Irish Voice and Irish America magazine) during the day and drove a taxi at night. He now refers to cab driving as a metaphor for what he does as a writer – “interviewing strangers, exploring the unknown, reporting on what he sees and hears from his sojourns in and around the underworld.” In the 1990’s while working as a reporter for the Irish Voice covering the Westies, the-last-of-their-kind New York based Irish American criminal gang, he became known as a crime author. His book The Westies was a bestseller and a movie, State of Grace, starring Sean Penn followed, as did a stint as a writer on NYPD Blue. Then came a book on Vietnam gangs in New York. In all his books English has always had a poet’s ear for nuance and irony, which serves him well again in Havana Nocturne, an almost surreal tale of wildly competing interests. Havana, Cuba became the Mafia Shangri-la, a place where they provided the gambling, narcotics, booze, prostitution and every other form of vice free from government interference or threat of law enforcement. By the mid 1950s Havana had became the dark side of the American Dream, a sparkling playground built on fear, exploitation and greed, and in the fondest dreams of the Mob who ran it, a potential stepping stone to a global enterprise. But running in tandem with the mob’s ambitions, a radical political group was determined to write a much different destiny for Cuba – a destiny completely at odds with the bloated gambling dens and show palaces of the criminal classes. From the beginning a dramatic showdown was inevitable between the double-breasted mob bosses and the small but surprisingly effective inland band of guerilla fighters led by a charismatic former lawyer and political candidate named Fidel Castro. As English argues in his authoritative study, it’s impossible to tell the story of the Havana Mob without also chronicling the rise of Castro and the revolution he founded. It is also surprising to note that until English’s new book it has not been comprehensively done. The fact is that Castro’s struggle found its focus in opposition to the criminality and exploitation of the mob run city, and the political regime that they claimed was in its pocket. Although English carefully points out that it’s not accurate to say that the mobsters were the chief reason for the Revolution, it’s true to say they became a powerful symbol of the national corruption and exploitation Castro’s uprising vowed to change. The tense standoff between the two opposing groups often led to completely surreal moments – the mob responded to violent popular protests, for example, by building even more casinos and hotels and inviting more movie stars to perform. They seemed to be suggesting that style (so to speak) could triumph over substance. They threw truckloads of money at the their problems, but never at their roots. As English notes in his book, what happened next changed the history of both Cuba and the U.S. It’s impossible, he argues in Havana Nocturne, to understand the present day stand-off between the governments of Cuba and the U.S. without first knowing the details of this deeply conflicted era. For English, right from the start, the logistical difficulties of writing Havana Nocturne stemmed from the decades long face down and continuing embargo between the two nations. “I went there legally,” he says “I got a special license from the U.S. Treasury Department. But my first application was rejected. You have to explain what your research is and what the theme of your research is. “I had written I was researching the role of the mob to the Batista government in the 1950s. When that was rejected I thought maybe there’s something wrong with the politics of this application. So I rewrote it. The only thing I changed was I’m researching whether the mob funneled guns and money to the Revolution. It came back approved.” Finding the right political formula for each nation also came in handy going through Cuban customs. “I happened to arrive in Cuba in a really difficult time. Fidel has just gone into hospital. This was July of 2006. Cuba was in lockdown. Friends were telling me you’re not going to get in,” English recalls. “But I told them the truth; I was there to research the mafia subject. And they’re quite proud they chased the mob out so they were predisposed to let me in. I had packed the collected works of Jose Marti, the great poet revered by Castro and the Revolution. “When the customs guys saw it his whole demeanor changed. It was a tremendous weight had been lifted from both our shoulders. I’m sure that book was the good omen that got me in there.” It’s difficult now to appreciate the appeal and excess of Havana in it’s heyday. For some it was a non-stop glamorous party, for many others it was an era of corruption and excess to which they were not invited. But for America’s political class it exuded a strange fascination, and some will be surprised to learn of the visitors who made the trip. As English notes in the book, Jack Kennedy went to Havana for the first time as the senator from Massachusetts in the December of 1957, where his traveling companion Senator George Smathers of Florida (who died last year at the age of 93) introduced him to the two co-leaders of the Havana mob, Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante. One of the attractions of Cuba in the 1950s for a young senator was that you could wine and dine with such people, and it all was outside the scope of the American media and American law enforcement. That was one of the attractions of Havana — what happened there, stayed there. Says English, “It was a junket for business people and politicians who would go down there and would dabble in the sexual marketplace and the nightlife down there. They’d perhaps do things they wouldn’t do back home.” According to English, Trafficante got a sense that Jack Kennedy had a keen taste for the ladies, and so he set up a tryst between Kennedy and three prostitutes in a very upscale neighborhood in Havana at the Hotel Commodoro, which still exists there, frozen in time. They set him up in a room with a two way mirror – which Kennedy didn’t know – and the story goes Trafficante and an associate of his watched the tryst take place but didn’t photograph it. Trafficante later kicked himself, English explains, because it would have made terrific blackmail material. Says English, “It’s an interesting incident because it explains the animosity that the mob felt toward the Kennedys in later years when Jack Kennedy was elected president. When he appointed Bobby Kennedy attorney general, Bobby continued his vendetta against the mob that he had started earlier, and it angered them no end. The theory being that that’s part of the blowback that led to the Kennedy assassination.” It’s also a stark reminder that although, as English says, “the sound of the shot machines and the intoxicating rhythm of the mambo linger on” the standoff between the two competing legacies has endured, and neither side has shown any indication of forgiving or forgetting.

Photos from COPA's June 10th meeting

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

COPA commemorated JFK's American University Cold War speech this year. Here as some of the photos of the monument.

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politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

RFK Autopsy Photos and Report Hidden in FBI Secret File Room

politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

An FBI Memorandum of October 25, 1968 has surfaced in a recent release of files concerning documents kept in the Secret File Room at the FBI concerning their intention to prevent public access to both autopsy photographs and the neuropathology report from the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles once Sirhan Sirhan't trial was complete. Note that Cartha Deke DeLoach of FBI Division V, which ran COINTELPRO, writes that the materials are to be kept in "my office per instruction of Mr. Tolson". Other documents are mentioned concerning Jimmy Hoffa in 1963 as well as plans to kill Fidel Castro. See page 372 of this PDF for original document at http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/FBI-CFR-With-Appx.pdf I have transcribed what I could below. Brackets [ ] denote handwritten or stamped text. There is a topic and name index at the end of the PDF document starting with page A-1 US Government Memorandum (FBI) Date: October 25, 1968 To: Mr. DeLoach From: A. Rosen 1 - Mr. DeLoach 1 - Mr. Rosen 1 - Mr. Malley 1 - Mr. Shroder 1 - Mr. Schutz 1 - Mr. Bishop 1 - Mr. Sullivan 1 - Mr. Mohr 1 - Mr. Tavel Subject: ASSASSINATION OF SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [Conf. File Room] Los Angeles Authorities have provided our Los Angeles Office with the phorographs of the autopsy of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy as well as the neuropathology report pertaining to the post-mortem examination. This mateial has been forwarded to the Bureau. [See LA airtel 10/1/68 (62-587-989) Legislation is currently pending in the State of California which would restrict this material from the general public. ACTION: In veiw of the sensitive nature of this material it is recommended that it should be maintained in the Special File Room of the Records Branch and should be charged out only upon the special authority of the Assistant Director, General Investigative Division. Los Angeles has a set of these photographs and report which they are affording top security. Upon conclusion of Sirhan's trial set for 12/9/68, at which time it would appear Los Angeles would have no need for such material, all photographs and related material will be forwarded to the Bureau for safe keeping. HAS:jls (10) [See Mr. DeLoach 10-28-68 R] [66-17404-NOT RECORDED OCT 31 1968] [ORIGINAL FILED IN 62-587-988] [To be kept in my office - per Mr. Tolson's instructions - D (DeLoach)] ALL INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS UNCLASSIFIED DATE 3/19/08 BY 60324 UC BAW/RS/MW [67 OCT 31 1968]

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politicalassassinations — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

FBI file shows Ted Kennedy was death threat magnet Jun 15, 1:08 AM EDT By ANDREW MIGA and GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON (AP) -- For decades after gunmen shot down his brothers, Sen. Edward Kennedy lived under constant assassination threats of his own, sometimes chillingly specific, as he became a target for extremist rage, previously private FBI documents disclosed Monday. Five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed and shortly after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot, one letter warned that the third brother was next: "Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date." Nearly two decades later, in 1985, the threats continued, this time including the Republican president as well as the liberal Democratic senator: "Brass tacks, I'm gonna kill Kennedy and (President Ronald) Reagan, and I really mean it." Releasing 2,352 pages from Kennedy's FBI file, many of them concerning threats over the years, the agency said on its website: "These threats originated from multiple sources, including individuals, anonymous persons and members of radical groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, 'Minutemen' organizations and the National Socialist White People's Party." Some of the threats prompted investigations, some resulted in warnings to Kennedy or local law enforcement authorities. There is no indication any attempts were carried out. In 1977, the FBI even looked into allegations that Sirhan Sirhan - the man who assassinated Robert Kennedy - had attempted to hire a fellow prisoner to kill Edward Kennedy. The prisoner, who was housed next to Sirhan for 18 months, told the FBI he was offered $1 million and a car but declined. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Robert Kennedy died on June 6, 1968, a day after he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Their deaths cast a long shadow on the youngest brother's life, and prompted fears he, too, would be targeted by an assassin's bullet. Indeed, Kennedy wrote in his memoir "True Compass" that after his brothers were killed he was easily startled by loud sounds and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired. He died last year at 77 after fighting brain cancer. Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, declined comment on the document release through a spokesman. Most of the documents released Monday are about death threats and extortion attempts against the Massachusetts Democrat. The release had been highly anticipated by historians, scholars and others interested in the life and long public career of one of America's most prominent and powerful politicians. The Associated Press and other media organizations requested the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. There is relatively little on a major controversy, Kennedy's car accident on Chappaquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman who had been a worker in Robert Kennedy's campaign. The files do show that the FBI was told almost immediately of the accident and Kennedy's involvement, but authorities kept his identity quiet at the start. The Boston FBI office relayed word to Washington headquarters at 2:45 p.m. EDT on July 19, 1969, after being notified by Police Chief Dominick Arena in Edgartown, Mass. The advisory said that Kennedy - the vehicle's driver - was uninjured. It also said, "Stated fact Senator Kennedy was driver is not being revealed to anyone." Kopechne drowned after Kennedy drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car. Kopechne, 28, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation. In his memoir, Kennedy wrote that his actions on Chappaquiddick were inexcusable. He said he was afraid, "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt the rest of his life. Kopechne's death also caught the attention of the Nixon administration and one of the eventual Watergate conspirators. One file shows FBI Deputy Director C.D. DeLoach reporting an Oct. 17, 1969, call from John Dean, then assistant to the deputy attorney general. "He stated that both the deputy attorney general and attorney general are anxious to discreetly find out if Mary Jo Kopechne (deceased) had visited Greece in August 1968," DeLoach writes in his report. John Mitchell was attorney general at the time. Dean supplied Kopechne's passport number. The subsequent report about the results of the check on any visit to Greece was blacked out. Meanwhile, the FBI said Monday it has additional documents on threats to Kennedy, possibly thousands more pages, that it plans to make public once the agency finishes reviewing them. Kennedy family members were given a chance to review and to raise objections to the documents before they were released Monday, the FBI said. Dennis Argall, assistant section chief of the FBI's record information dissemination section, declined to specify how much time the family was given. He would only say the family was given an "appropriate" time to review the documents. The family has no legal power to keep information withheld. But the FBI does consider privacy concerns on a case-by-case basis, he said. Johnson reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report. Online: http://foia.fbi.gov/hottopics.htm

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Scotland Yard investigates Bhutto's assassination

politicalassassinations — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:02:35 +0000

One has to wonder, with no autopsy performed and with crime scene evidence destroyed, how their conclusions were reached. Other evidence has been released that contradicts this conclusion. The science of forensics in murder seems to take a second place to politics and religious ceremony in Pakistan. However, the whole matter recalls the destruction of evidence, removal of the body, incompetent autopsy, and conclusions without full investigation that marked the assassinations of the 1960s and onward. Scotland Yard was also called in to privately investigate the Kennedy assassination for the family. I wonder if they were better at that task - John Judge British Team Says Blast, Not Bullet, Killed Bhutto By Candace Rondeaux Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, February 9, 2008; A12 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 8 -- Scotland Yard investigators have concluded that Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed by the impact of a suicide bomb blast, not gunfire, according to a report released Friday. The much-anticipated report concurred with the Pakistani government's earlier assertion that a head injury Bhutto sustained in the blast had caused her death. However, contrary to earlier speculation that two men carried out the Dec. 27 attack, the British-led inquiry concluded that there was only one assassin. "The inevitable conclusion is that there was one attacker in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle in which Ms Bhutto was traveling," said the report, which was released a day after thousands of Bhutto's supporters converged on her burial site to mark the end of a 40-day mourning period. Members of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, or PPP, immediately condemned the findings, insisting that she had been shot to death. They also renewed calls for the United Nations to launch a separate independent investigation into her assassination. "It is not material what caused her death. What is material is to identify the perpetrators who caused her death," said Farhatullah Babar, a PPP spokesman. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has rejected the idea of U.N. intervention, saying his government would rely solely on the Scotland Yard inquiry. Government officials on Friday reiterated their confidence in the British agency's findings. "We are relying on Scotland Yard. They have given a categorical and definite report," said Chaudhry Abdul Majid, head of the Pakistani police division that conducted its own investigation. Bhutto's assassination following a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi, just 10 weeks after her return from exile, plunged Pakistan into chaos, sparking riots and raising international concerns about deteriorating security conditions in the nuclear-armed nation of nearly 165 million people. Pakistani officials announced findings similar to Scotland Yard's shortly after the attack that killed Bhutto and more than two dozen other people as she waved from the sunroof of an armored sport-utility vehicle. Nathaniel Cary, the British Home Office pathologist who was consulted as part of the Scotland Yard inquiry, said in the report that an examination of X-rays led him to believe Bhutto was killed when the powerful blast caused her head to strike the lip of the SUV's roof hatch. Cary did not rule out the possibility that she might also have been struck by gunfire in the neck or upper torso but emphasized the head injury as the main cause of death, adding that only a postmortem examination could provide conclusive evidence of bullet wounds. The X-rays were taken by doctors when Bhutto arrived at the hospital. Her family declined an autopsy. "In my opinion Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto died as a result of a severe head injury sustained as a consequence of the bomb-blast and due to head impact somewhere in the escape hatch of the vehicle," Cary said, using an honorific. The report drew no conclusions about who was behind the assassination. But the Pakistani government and Western intelligence officials have alleged that Baitullah Mehsud, a top Taliban commander with links to al-Qaeda, was the lead organizer of the attack. Pakistani authorities confirmed Friday that two suspects -- Husnain Gul and a man identified only as Rafaqat -- were arrested this week in connection with Bhutto's killing, bringing to five the number of people implicated in the case. Police in Rawalpindi released few details about the two men, saying only that they were "apparent facilitators" of the attack. <> Posted article from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020800447_pf.html

Newly discovered JFK assassination items revealed

politicalassassinations — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:18:28 +0000

Note that this release of files after 45 years was authorized by the new Dallas County DA, Watkins, a Democrat who is liberal. Bill Kelly, co-founder of COPA and the Committee for an Open Archives, has been promoting a petition for a Grand Jury on the JFK murder to reopen the case and hear the evidence. This new DA may be the right person to approach given his comments about "nothing to hide" - John Judge Newly discovered JFK assassination items revealed 04:01 PM CST on Monday, February 18, 2008 By DAVID TARRANT / The Dallas Morning News dtarrant@dallasnews.com Historical items related to the Kennedy assassination secretly kept locked for decades in a six-foot safe in a Dallas courthouse were publicly revealed for the first time today. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said he was going public with the existence of the items as part of an effort to run an open administration. “Our motto has always been that everything is open. We have nothing to hide. So we’re making public everything that we have found in the safe,” Mr. Watkins said during a news conference on the 11th floor of the Frank Crowley Courts Building. The courthouse overlooks the site where President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. News that a secret treasure trove of documents related to the Kennedy assassination was first broken by The Dallas Morning News in its Sunday editions. Monday’s news conference attracted several dozen members of the news media, both local and national. Mr. Watkins said he anticipated that his office would get calls from around the country and the world. 02/17/08: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia Archive: JFK – The story behind the story Mr. Watkins stood by two tables stacked with more than a dozen cardboard boxes filled with documents as well as other items of curiosity, including a leather gun holster and a set of brass knuckles that belonged to Jack Ruby. The treasure trove of documents and other items include personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade and clothing that likely belonged to Ruby and Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mr. Watkins said. Among the most interesting documents unearthed so far was a transcript of an alleged conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the Mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, said last week that the conversation could not have happened because it was well-documented that Oswald was in Irving at home with his wife the evening that the conversation was supposed to have taken place. Mr. Watkins said he didn’t know if the alleged conversation was real or fake. “But what we do know is that it will open up the debate as to whether or not there was a conspiracy to assassinate the president.” Another document appeared to be a contract signed by Henry Wade for a movie production deal, which is dated April 27, 1967, and which “would have made Mr. Wade a rich man,” Mr. Watkins said, adding, “We don’t know why this movie was never produced.” Mr. Watkins also noted that documents found in the safe reflected the tone and climate of racial relations that existed in the criminal justice system and throughout the country in the early 1960s. Throughout many of the documents, Mr. Watkins said, “you see that racist tone that goes throughout our criminal justice system in the 1960s. …You’d be surprised how people of color are characterized.” Brandishing a letter written in 1964 from the district attorney of Hunt County to Mr. Wade, Mr. Watkins noted that the Hunt County letterhead included the slogan: “The blackest land and the whitest people.” Noting that it was Black History Month, Mr. Watkins said that the letter “tells you how far we’ve come in criminal justice, not only in this state but in this country. “This is why we have to bring credibility to the criminal justice system — because there was a time when a person’s color mattered more than his guilt or innocence.” Mr. Watkins' office hasn’t completed scanning the information — about 90 percent has been finished. Once that's done, his office plans to donate the information to a third-party institution, including The Sixth Floor Museum. Staff writer Jennifer Emily contributed to this report.

Exclusive: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia

politicalassassinations — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 03:47:58 +0000

More details about newly discovered JFK assassination artifacts and documents locked away in the DA's office since 1963 - John Judge Exclusive: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia 01:32 AM CST on Sunday, February 17, 2008 By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News jemily@dallasnews.com The Dallas County district attorney's office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse. It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. "It will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy," said Mr. Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was killed in 1963. But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the conversation could not have happened. Terri Moore, Mr. Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the transcript is part of a movie that Mr. Wade was working on with producers. "It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," she said. "If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president." Mr. Wade wrote about the movie, Countdown in Dallas, in letters found in the safe. Mr. Wade prosecuted Ruby in Oswald's death, although the verdict was overturned and Ruby died of cancer in 1967 before his second trial could begin. "I believe it important for the film to be factually correct, that it come from official files, that the witnesses who in any way were participants should appear in person in the film, and in my opinion, will result in an excellent film not only of interest at present but the record of events for history," Mr. Wade wrote. It is unclear if any further work was ever done on the film. Mr. Watkins is expected to formally announce the finding of about a dozen boxes of materials on Monday at a news conference. The vast majority of the documents are authentic records from the 1960s. The purported Oswald-Ruby conversation took place on Oct. 4, 1963, at Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street. It reads like every conspiracy theorist's dream of a smoking gun that ties the men to a plot to kill Kennedy. Part of the two-page transcript reads: Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General. Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into everything. Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him. Ruby: How's that? Lee: I can shoot his brother. ... Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic. Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting the President? Ruby: It would get the FBI into it. Lee: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning." Later, Ruby warns Oswald that the mafia will ask Ruby to kill him if he's caught. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, laughed when told of the transcript. He has not seen it or any of the other documents found in the safe. The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation – again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor – was definitely fake. Mr. Mack said that it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not have been at Ruby's club. Mr. Mack suggested that the transcript in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the one found in the district attorney's safe. The conversation published in the commission report was a fake account of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald on the same night at the Carousel Club. A now-deceased Dallas attorney "re-created" the conversation after Kennedy's assassination for authorities after he claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby that night. "The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mr. Mack said of the newly found transcript. "He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie." William J. Alexander, the only surviving prosecutor from Ruby's trial for killing Oswald in the days after Kennedy's assassination, told the district attorney's office he'd never seen the Ruby-Oswald transcript. But it's labeled with a sticker that says, "Plaintiff's Exhibit 27." Typically, exhibits for criminal trials are marked as state's exhibits or defense exhibits. The DA's office said Mr. Alexander, who rarely talks about the Ruby trial, declined to be interviewed. While the two-page transcript is most likely fake, Mr. Watkins says he's never believed Oswald acted alone. "You know me: I'm always a conspiracy theorist," Mr. Watkins said. "It was too simple of an explanation. I don't see that." Mr. Watkins, Ms. Moore and several investigators from the DA's office found the boxes of materials about a year ago because they had heard that the gun used to kill Oswald was somewhere in the courthouse. They didn't find the gun, which Mr. Mack said is privately owned, but instead found the records and other items. For the past year, they've been trying to determine what they discovered and began scanning some of the documents. The process is not complete. The boxes probably sat in the safe since being moved when the courthouse opened in 1989. Mr. Watkins said he plans to donate the files to an entity that will authenticate and preserve them, as well as make them available to the public. "It's interesting, and it's not ours," Mr. Watkins said. "It's the public's." No one has yet thoroughly read all of the documents, so it's not known whether they contain information previously unknown to the public or the Warren Commission. Mr. Mack, the museum curator, said many of the court files and even personal letters to Mr. Wade and Ruby have been widely circulated. The museum already has a transcript of Ruby's trial, as well as his medical records. Still, he said, he would be eager to obtain the documents and authenticate them to see "anything and everything that can help answer lingering questions." "These records may not have any particular value," he said. "But 100 years from now, who knows what's going to be important?" WHAT WAS FOUND The district attorney's office discovered about a dozen boxes of materials in a courthouse safe that included items and documents from the Jack Ruby trial. Ruby was convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, but the verdict was overturned. He died before a second trial occurred. Many of the records, including interrogations with Ruby, his family and witnesses, are undated, and it's unclear which agency or people conducted the interviews. Other documents are signed and dated. A sampling of what was found: • Transcripts of interviews with prospective jurors. • Notes to District Attorney Henry Wade about prospective jurors from people, possibly in the DA's office, who knew them. One note mentioned that someone was Catholic. Others said a person had mental problems or was likely not to consider harsh punishment. • Letters that show Mr. Wade was working on a movie deal for a documentary-type film to be titled Countdown in Dallas. • A typed, undated, unsigned memo from the DA's office with Mr. Wade's name on the letterhead that says Ruby said he planned to kill Oswald because he did not want President Kennedy's widow to have to testify at his trial. Mr. Ruby also said, according to the memo, that there were no conspirators in his plan. The memo says in an interview that appears to have taken place after the trial that Ruby "said there was absolutely no blackout, that he had premeditation with the intent to kill Oswald if he was there." • Typed notes from an interview with Ruby before the trial where Ruby said he did not recall anything after walking down the ramp into the area where he shot Oswald. • A document that says that during an interview Nov. 24, 1963, in Dallas police Capt. Will Fritz's office, Mr. Ruby said he "felt Oswald was a Red" and he "felt Oswald was alone in the assassination." • The files also contain hundreds of pages of copied letters and cards sent to Ruby before and during his trial. Some letters and cards sympathize with Ruby. At least two women – one from Philadelphia and another from Plainfield, Ind. – sent Ruby checks for $2. Others sent Valentine's Day cards, and at least one sent a St. Patrick's Day card. • Other letters lash out at Ruby. One handwritten, unsigned note apparently sent to him says: "You expect a fair trial. So did Mr. Oswald. It would not be a happy situation if the assassin of the assassin were himself assassinated." Others are addressed "Dear Killer" and called Ruby a "Commie Jew." One man typed a letter using red ink because he said the black ribbon was out. NEWS CONFERENCE The Dallas County district attorney's office will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. Monday to discuss documents related to the Jack Ruby trial found in the safe at the Crowley Courts Building. The news conference will be held in the lobby on the 11th floor.

Italy Follows Trail of Secret South American Abductions

politicalassassinations — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:46:30 +0000

Operation Condor involved seven different South American governments along with the CIA, and years of abductions, torture and assassinations of political dissidents. Italy is taking the unprecedented step of holding officials accountable - John Judge

New York Times,

February 22, 2008

Italy Follows Trail of Secret South American Abductions

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BUENOS AIRES — In an unusually sweeping investigation, Italian authorities are seeking to prosecute former top officials in seven South American countries for their roles in a secret operation in the 1970s and 1980s by the region’s security forces to crush left-wing political dissent. The extraordinary breadth of the seven-year Italian investigation, into what is known as Operation Condor, has drawn in countries formerly not thought to have been deeply involved in the shadowy program, particularly Peru. It has also agitated political establishments up and down the continent. The investigation and recently declassified documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, suggest a complicit role of the United States in Condor’s often-deadly operations, some of which American officials knew about before but did little to stop. In late December, Judge Luisianna Figliolia in Rome issued arrest warrants for 140 former officials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, seeking to prosecute them in connection with the disappearance of 25 Italian citizens. The Condor countries helped one another locate, transport, torture and ultimately make disappear dissidents across their borders, and even collaborated on assassination operations in Europe and the United States. In an operation that historians call reminiscent of the United States’ modern terrorist rendition program, the Condor countries sometimes used an allied intelligence network to track and transport terrorism suspects to a third country for interrogations. “This is the most ambitious look yet at Operation Condor,” said Reed Brody, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch in Brussels. “I don’t know of any other case that has taken on so much.” While Argentina and Chile are well known to have been at the center of Operation Condor, the arrest warrants have forced new soul-searching in Peru and a reconsideration of its involvement. The 250-page indictment issued by Judge Figliolia, part of which was reviewed by The Times, names four former Peruvian officials, including Peru’s dictator from 1975 to 1980, Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez, and his military commander, Pedro Richter Prada. The arrest orders for the Peruvians deal indirectly with the June 1980 abductions of four leftist rebels, called Montoneros, in Lima by a joint group of security agents loyal to General Morales Bermudez and members of Argentina’s military police. At the time, Peru had largely avoided the guerrilla movements and brutal counterinsurgencies that had roiled Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, where Operation Condor was most active. But in June 1980, in the last two months of General Morales Bermudez’s dictatorship, members of Argentina’s 601 Battalion, a special army intelligence unit, went to Peru to track down Montoneros members bent on overthrowing Argentina’s junta. The Argentine agents had captured one member of the group, Federico Frías Alberga, in Buenos Aires, and took him with them to Peru to help identify his comrades in a sting operation. On June 12, 1980, Argentine and Peruvian intelligence agents took undercover positions in a park in Lima, the Peruvian capital, dressed as salesmen, street artists and transients. After Mr. Alberga exchanged a coded message with one Montonero, the agents pounced. They arrested her and two others, Noemí Giannotti de Molfino and Julio César Ramírez, according to a 2004 book by a Peruvian journalist, Ricardo Uceda. The Argentines later tortured them at a Peruvian military installation, according to the account by Mr. Uceda, who interviewed a Peruvian Army intelligence agent who witnessed the torture sessions. One week later, on June 19, according to the declassified documents, James J. Blystone, a political officer in the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, described in a memo to his boss what was to happen next. Mr. Blystone told his boss, Ambassador Raul H. Castro, that an Argentine intelligence source had informed him that the four Montoneros would be held in Peru and then “expelled to Bolivia” and sent on to Argentina, where they would be “interrogated and then permanently disappeared.” Mr. Castro wrote to the secretary of state’s office in Washington that an Argentine source had confirmed the abductions and a plan to take the captured Montoneros back to Argentina. But the news of the arrests found its way into the Peruvian media, and because of the public outcry, the plan to return the rebels to Argentina was dropped, according to a copy of Mr. Castro’s memo, which is among the declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, a private research institute and library. In a phone interview, Mr. Castro, now 91, said he recalled “being concerned” about the Montoneros operation. But, he said, “I don’t recall what action, if any, we took at the time.” The level of Peru’s involvement in Operation Condor was debated heavily in American intelligence circles, he said. “We couldn’t agree, the Foreign Service and Washington and the intelligence services, if Peru was involved,” Mr. Castro said. “I thought they were very much involved. It seemed very clear after those Montoneros were taken to Bolivia.” Mr. Blystone, also reached by phone, said American officials should have lobbied harder for the prisoners’ release. “I got all that information and I passed it on, and we could have done something,” he said. “But we dropped the ball, let’s face it.” A month later, the scandal still had not died down when Mr. Castro met with the Argentine Army commander, Lt. Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri. Mr. Castro prodded him so much about the Montoneros that General Galtieri waved his hand and said, “Enough is enough,” according to Mr. Castro’s report to Washington. Despite the publicity, the Argentine security agents went ahead with their plans, which apparently included taking Mrs. Molfino to Spain. On July 21, 1980, she was found dead in a Madrid apartment. The three other Montoneros were never found. Peru is already reeling from the continuing human rights trial of Alberto K. Fujimori, who was president for a decade until 2000, and officials there have been quick to defend those accused in the Italian case. President Alan García viewed the arrest warrants as an affront to Peru’s sovereignty. He described Judge Figliolia’s move as an attempt to depict Peru as a “little banana republic” and offered his support to General Morales Bermudez. The Italian investigation deals not only with individual cases involving Italian citizens but also with the broader responsibility for Condor’s cross-border kidnapping and torture operations, according to two people in Italy involved in the case. Italy claims jurisdiction because it believes crimes occurred against its citizens. But only one of the accused, a retired Uruguayan Navy officer, was taken into custody in Italy, and he was later released for what a magistrate cited as a lack of evidence. It seems unlikely that the South American countries will go through with extraditions. Remigio Morales-Bermudez Pedraglio, a son of General Morales Bermudez, the former dictator, said in an interview that the case was “a disgrace.” He said his father would agree to be extradited to Italy only if Peru’s Supreme Court found merit in the Italian charges. Under Italian law, he can be tried in absentia, however. General Morales Bermudez, now 88, took power in 1975 in a coup but is still admired by many Peruvians for allowing presidential elections in 1980. In an interview with the Peruvian journalist, Mr. Uceda, in 2000 he acknowledged that he had given the order to capture the Montoneros, following the advice of Mr. Richter, his military commander. “We couldn’t give ourselves the luxury of having subversives on the loose in the country during the transition of power,” he said. In statements to the Peruvian media, General Morales Bermudez rejected the assertion that Peru was part of Operation Condor, but said he was prepared to clarify the events in question.

Simon Romero contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Andrea Zarate from Lima, Peru.

Mexico: Singer Found Killed in Tijuana

politicalassassinations — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:53:28 +0000

Like Tupac Shakur and Biggie Small? Progressive musicians have been targets for political assassination in many countries, and in Nazi Germany - John Judge

February 22, 2008

World Briefing | The Americas

Mexico: Singer Found Killed in Tijuana

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jesús Rey David Alfaro, a popular local singer known as the Rooster, and two members of his staff have been found tortured and killed in Tijuana, apparently the latest victims in a string of killings of Mexican musicians who sing about love, violence and drugs, federal prosecutors said.

Memories of a C.I.A. Officer Resonate in a New Era

politicalassassinations — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 08:03:36 +0000

Sidney Gottleib, Larry Devlin, toxic toothpaste and the CIA's plot to kill Patrice Lamumba in the Congo. The story claims Presidential approval for the plot from Eisenhower, without documentation, and also claims that Lamumba was killed by forces inside the country in the end. An old hand recalls then and now - John Judge

New York Times

February 24, 2008

Memories of a C.I.A. Officer Resonate in a New Era

By SCOTT SHANE

LOCUST GROVE, Va. — Larry Devlin is 85 now, suffering from emphysema and tethered to an oxygen tank, his Central Intelligence Agency career long behind him. But he recalls with sunlit clarity the day in Congo nearly half a century ago when he was handed a packet of poisons, including toxic toothpaste, and ordered to carry out a political assassination. “I was totally taken aback,” said Mr. Devlin, sitting in his den, looking out on a small lake in the Virginia countryside. He uttered a mild profanity, he recalled, and asked, “Isn’t this unusual?’ ” It was 1960, and Mr. Devlin, the C.I.A.’s young station chief, was in the middle of a political maelstrom as Congolese factions fought for control of the newly independent nation and the United States jostled with the Soviet Union for influence and control over deposits of critical metals. Mr. Devlin had no problems with bribery, blackmail or other varieties of skulduggery — “all part of the game” for the C.I.A. under Allen Dulles at the height of the cold war, he said. But he thought the order to kill Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic Congolese politician the Eisenhower administration feared would become an African Fidel Castro, was both wrong and stupid, a desperate plan that could easily go awry and devastate American influence in Africa. “Worldwide it would have been disastrous,” he said. So he stalled. And Lumumba’s political rivals eventually killed him without the C.I.A.’s help. Today, Mr. Devlin’s story has new resonance amid a renewed debate about the proper limits of C.I.A. actions to counter a different global threat and their cost to the United States’ standing. The C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations is under criminal investigation. Congress has been reviewing the C.I.A.’s secret detention program and the transfer of terrorist suspects to countries that practice torture, though so far no inquiry has approached the sweep of the Church Committee in the Senate in the 1970s, whose reports quote Mr. Devlin under a pseudonym, Victor S. Hedgeman. “I think there’s an eerie and disturbing correlation between that era and this one,” said John Prados, an intelligence historian and the author of “Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the C.I.A.” He said the threat of terrorism now, like the threat of communism then, was used to justify extreme measures that “later become controversial legally, morally and politically.” Mr. Prados said the historical record supported Mr. Devlin’s account of his actions, which he described last year in an autobiography, “Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone.” “I believe there’s no reason to doubt that Mr. Devlin conspired to defuse the orders to kill Lumumba,” he said. Mr. Devlin, who was station chief in Congo and in Laos during the Vietnam war and retired from the agency in 1974, said he never used force during interrogations and worried that endorsing such methods might put Americans at greater risk of mistreatment. But he has watched the tribulations of a younger generation at the agency with sympathy. He can attest not only to the quandary of a field officer directed to take extreme measures, but also to the personal cost that can follow. Because his name got associated with the plot against Lumumba, Mr. Devlin was later told, he himself was made a target for death by both a Black Panther faction and Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. “I can put myself in the shoes of the people who did the waterboarding and who thought they’d get information to save lives,” Mr. Devlin said. “I’ve often wondered: How would I react if I thought I had the man who knows about a bomb?” The son of an Army colonel and a schoolteacher in San Diego, Mr. Devlin recalls being shaken when he read “Mein Kampf” at the age of 16 and paying 25 cents to hear lectures on foreign affairs at the local Unitarian church. After serving in combat in North Africa and Europe during World War II, he went to Harvard to pursue a Ph.D. One Sunday afternoon, he was summoned by a professor, William Y. Elliott, a historian and longtime adviser to presidents. Waiting for him was McGeorge Bundy, who went on to be the national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Mr. Bundy urged him to join the recently formed C.I.A. to keep the cold war from turning hot. His first job was as what C.I.A. calls a “noc,” for nonofficial cover, traveling in the guise of a writer of travel guides. At the age of 38, he landed in the tumult of Congo, where he would be jailed, beaten and narrowly escape death on several occasions. In September 1960, Mr. Devlin received a cable advising him that he would get an important message from “Joe from Paris.” The envoy turned out to be Sidney Gottlieb, the agency’s club-footed poisons expert, whom Mr. Devlin had met during operations to install listening devices overseas, and who would later become notorious for mind-control experiments using L.S.D. Mr. Gottlieb said that the assassination had been approved by President Eisenhower but admitted that he had not seen the presidential orders. He explained that the poisons, including the spiked toothpaste, had been chosen to make the death appear to result from natural causes. “Morally I thought it was the wrong thing to do,” Mr. Devlin said. “And I thought it was a very dangerous thing to do. If I screwed up and brought in the wrong person and it got out that the United States had done this, I had visions of even Africans who didn’t like Lumumba wiping out every white man they could find. It might have cost hundreds of lives.” Mr. Devlin said he figured that if he refused his orders outright, his C.I.A. bosses would simply call him home and send a more willing replacement. So he listened sagely and hid the poisons in his office safe, scribbling a warning on the box — “just in case someone got in and tried the toothpaste.” After Mr. Lumumba was executed by opponents in January 1961, Mr. Devlin decided he needed to get rid of the poisons in his safe. He took the box to a rocky stretch of the Congo River where no one was likely to stumble upon it, and tossed it in. Such episodes aside, he defends the C.I.A’ s achievements in Congo, including support for the rise of Mobutu Sese Seko, who would become a symbol of corruption in his 32-year rule. “We prevented the Soviets from taking over a very large part of Africa,” he said. Though he retired from the C.I.A., Mr. Devlin stayed in Africa and worked in the diamond business for 12 years, until 1988. His boss was Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-American diamond importer best known as the companion of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the last 15 years of her life. “Diamonds are a political thing,” Mr. Devlin said. “I knew all the ministers of mines. In short, I was in a better position to negotiate than people who knew a lot about diamonds.” When he came across interesting information, he added, he passed it to his old friends in the C.I.A. Last year, Mr. Devlin was called back to C.I.A. headquarters to receive an award honoring his career and exchanged a few words with Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the chief of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. He has closely followed the news since Mr. Rodriguez came under investigation for giving the order to destroy the videotapes. “I feel sorry for the guy,” Mr. Devlin said. “I think I know what he’s going through.”

Exclusive: Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade was poised to profit off JFK files

politicalassassinations — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 08:09:04 +0000

Exclusive: Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade was poised to profit off JFK files 01:20 AM CST on Sunday, February 24, 2008 By DAVID FLICK and DAVID TARRANT / The Dallas Morning News dflick@dallasnews.com ; dtarrant@dallasnews.com Henry Wade, the legendary Dallas County district attorney known for his no-nonsense style, apparently was not immune to the lure of a little movie magic. Henry Wade was known for his no-nonsense style as a Dallas County district attorney. But even he, it seems, was not immune to the lure of Hollywood. And the man with a reputation for unshakeable integrity was agreeable to receiving thousands of dollars in return for giving filmmakers exclusive access to legal documents connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, some of which were kept from the public for another four decades. The existence of 15 boxes of JFK-related material, locked away in a DA's office safe, was announced Monday by Craig Watkins, the current district attorney, who said his predecessors had kept the documents under wraps even after Mr. Wade's retirement. Mr. Wade died in 2001, and several calls to surviving family members were not returned. Tantalizing new details about the little-known episode of Mr. Wade's involvement in a movie venture about the Nov. 22, 1963, JFK assassination and the trial of Jack Ruby were found in a Dallas Morning News examination of the long-hidden files, What emerges is a story that sometimes resembles comic opera but contains what appears to be a breach of ethics. Righting city's image Mr. Wade's involvement in the venture began with a letter to Dallas leaders sometime in early 1967 from Robert Larsen, whose Colorado-based production company made commercials and industrial films. His Hollywood résumé was brief. It included a 1958 "semi-documentary" on the dangers of narcotics and a 1962 short titled Century 21 Calling , in which – according to a synopsis in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) – "two perky teens explore every inch of the telephone exhibit at Seattle's fair." Mr. Larsen's letter, addressed simply "to whom it may concern" and written in florid prose, pitched an idea for a documentary film. [Click image for a larger version] Special to The Dallas Morning News Special to The Dallas Morning News Film producer Robert Larsen, seen here during filming of Countdown in Dallas in Dealey Plaza in 1967, touted the project as a way to revive the city's image, which had been tarnished by the assassination and ensuing media coverage. Mr. Larsen said the film would use the JFK assassination as a starting point, but he touted the project as a way to revive the city's image, which had been tarnished by the assassination and ensuing media coverage. The letter began by appealing to local resentment over the negative portrayal. "Typically, the Northern press pointed a bloody finger at Dallas," Mr. Larsen's letter recounted. "Hundreds of cigar puffing reporters poured from editor's [sic] offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia. Their assignment was clear ... 'Scorch the cocky Texans, blow up that John Birch ad, don't forget that LBJ comes from Texas, exploit the firearms angle, keep it coming, ring it dry.' " The point of his film would be "to balance the scales," Mr. Larsen promised. "The crux of the film will not be a tired rehash of the death of John F. Kennedy. We will use the murder to bait the hook for the more important story; the story of Dallas ... Dallas 1967 ... a dynamic great city absorbed with the infinite promise of the future." The movie, eventually titled Countdown in Dallas, was not intended to be a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Mr. Larsen proposed a budget of $250,000, modest even in that era. While he promised to enlist an A-list Hollywood star to narrate the film ("Jimmy Stewart would be ideal"), other roles would be taken by local people playing themselves. Mr. Larsen's letter found its way to the DA's office, bringing a quick and favorable response from Mr. Wade. By early April 1967, the two men had discussed the project in Mr. Wade's office. The prosecutor sent a subsequent letter assuring the producer of his support. Within weeks, Mr. Wade, Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry and Bob Denson, chief defense investigator in the Jack Ruby trial, had formed a company that would act as a "vehicle for this venture," according to a letter from the district attorney to Mr. Larsen. Making a deal An April 27, 1967, agreement gave the company – called Flag-Star – the option of buying "the exclusive right to use each and all of our several public, private and confidential files [regarding Oswald, Ruby and President Kennedy] for a construction therefrom of a photoplay...." If Mr. Wade's company exercised its option to use the district attorney's files, Mr. Wade would receive $10,000, plus another $10,000 when the film was completed, plus a percentage of the producer's gross. Mr. Curry and Mr. Denson would receive lesser amounts. The copy of the agreement in the files is unsigned. It is unclear if the option was ever exercised, although Mr. Wade said in a letter accompanying the agreement that he and his partners intended to do so. Jesse Curry (left) and Bob Denson would have shared profits with Henry Wade. Jesse Curry (left) and Bob Denson would have shared profits with Henry Wade. Mr. Denson, the only surviving Flag-Star partner, said last week that Dallas businessman Don Lively, who was helping finance the project, later paid Mr. Wade at least $10,000 "for the time he spent on the deal." Dallas lawyer Tom Lively said his older brother, Don, passed away many years ago. But in 1967, having just inherited some money from his late father, he wanted to get involved in films. He agreed to become a producer for the movie. Tom Lively also said he remembers his brother saying that he gave some money to Mr. Wade. He also remembers that his brother and Mr. Larsen, the filmmaker, had a strong business disagreement. The documents examined by The News do not shed light on whether the money was for partial fulfillment of the agreement, and they do not indicate whether Mr. Wade or any of his partners ever received additional money. Robert Schuwerk, past chairman of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct Committee, said he was not familiar enough with the judicial ethics code that existed in 1967 to know if Mr. Wade had violated it by accepting money for public documents. "But this does seem to me to be questionable," said Dr. Schuwerk, now a professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center. "After you've left office and want to write your memoirs, that's one thing. But I don't think that while you're still in office you can profit from what is essentially exercising a part of your duties, and it seems to me that's what was happening here." Mr. Wade kept the deal quiet, even from his own chief prosecutor, Bill Alexander. "Henry concealed that from me. He didn't want anyone to know about it," Mr. Alexander said last week. In any case, the project seems to have quickly fallen into financial trouble. Mr. Denson said the businessman later pulled out after he was unable to raise enough money for the project. Mr. Wade said Marina Oswald, with daughters Rachel (right) and June, "made a favorable impression in television appearances." In the meantime, Mr. Larsen plowed forward. In correspondence over the next few months, Mr. Wade offered advice, provided lists of residents who had played prominent roles in the real-life drama of the assassination and kept track of the film's progress. He also offered to encourage real-life participants to cooperate. He made at least one casting recommendation – the wife of the presidential assassin. "Marina Oswald made a favorable impression in television appearances, and I believe she would make an excellent contribution to history and to the film by appearing live," he wrote to Mr. Larsen. It was advice well-taken: A Los Angeles Times story during that period described Ms. Oswald as the film's star, and one contemporary news account mentioned she was given a screen test. 'A bad taste' Not all local leaders shared Mr. Wade's belief that Countdown in Dallas was a good thing for Dallas. City officials declined to allow the film crews on municipal property, and Parkland Memorial Hospital officials also declined to cooperate. The director of the Texas School Book Depository was quoted in the Times story as saying the concept of the movie "left me with a bad taste in my mouth." Later, he acknowledged that he had asked producers for $2,000 to appear in the movie and $5,000 for use of the building. Although preliminary filming had begun, shooting was shut down in early August with no public explanation. After a brief period of renewed optimism in early September, the deal finally fell apart by the end of the month. It was in that period that Mr. Alexander, the chief prosecutor, said he first learned that his boss had been involved in making a movie. He went to see the district clerk to retrieve some of Ruby's personal items after a probate judge ordered them returned to the former nightclub owner's family. The district clerk told Mr. Alexander that some of the items had already been shipped to the filmmaker. By late September 1967, Mr. Wade wrote in a personal letter that the film project was "a dead issue." One item that did not surface in the files revealed this week by Mr. Watkins – at least in those viewed by The News –was the script to Countdown in Dallas. But Mr. Larsen gave a copy of the script to Dick West, the late editorial page editor of The News. Elizabeth West now has her grandfather's copy. She described the photoplay as "trite," and "one of the worst things I've ever seen," said Ms. West, a New York graphic artist. "If you went to film school and took a class on documentary, this is everything you should not do," she said. She contradicts a theory expressed by Mr. Watkins at the Monday news conference that a disputed "transcript" – allegedly a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting the president's death – might have been part of the movie script. Ms. West said the purported dialogue appears nowhere in the screenplay. Motive? An unanswered question is why Mr. Wade got involved in the movie venture in the first place. A letter from John Bartholomew, the film's writer, to Mr. Wade implies the prosecutor saw the project as a way to ensure his legacy. "I think that all men want a memorial to their stay on earth," Mr. Bartholomew wrote. "They like money and they like power, but the closer they get to their God, the more they crave a lasting memorial that will mark their contribution." In a return letter, Mr. Wade thanks Mr. Bartholomew, but does not respond to that argument. Mr. Larsen's pitch that the film would help restore Dallas' image seemed to carry little weight with Mr. Wade, who never uses it in letters defending the project. Instead he seemed more interested in getting the facts correct as when he writes a letter to one of the film's financial backers, saying that Countdown in Dallas "historically will be of great service to the people of this city as well as the nation and the world." Mr. Alexander, 88, speculated that Mr. Wade's motive was simple: He may have needed money to help pay off old campaign debts. Asked if accepting money for public documents would have been illegal or unethical, Mr. Alexander said: "I won't say what he did was illegal. But I will say it was stupid and in bad taste." Mr. Denson, 80, who now lives on a ranch in the Hill Country, strongly denies that Mr. Wade, who stepped down in 1986, was in the deal for the money. "He did it to help the city," Mr. Denson said. "I've known Wade for a long time, and I don't think I knew a man with more integrity. I can tell you that he would never do anything for the money." John Larsen, the filmmaker's son, said his 82-year-old father now lives in California and didn't want to discuss the movie. The experience left his father, who had seen the Kennedy film as a big career opportunity, deeply disappointed. And he never fully understood why the deal collapsed. "It's something he's been thinking about over the years," said Mr. Larsen, a filmmaker like his father. "He was very earnest about it ... [but] very politically naive.

Exclusive: Help us examine the lost JFK files

politicalassassinations — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 08:25:10 +0000

Hundreds of pages of newly released materials on the JFK assassination avialable online Exclusive: Help us examine the lost JFK files New York Times 02:24 PM CST on Friday, February 22, 2008 Video: Dallas County DA unveils JFK documents Transcript: Report on the alleged conversation between Ruby and Oswald (.pdf) 02/17/08: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia 02/19/08: Newly discovered JFK assassination items revealed 02/21/08: Steve Blow: When DA spoke, he misspoke for Dallas Archive: JFK – The story behind the story Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins announced this week that documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were found in a little-known vault in his office. He said his intention was to release them to the public. The documents were compiled by Henry Wade, the district attorney at the time of the assassination. Mr. Wade and his successors never made them public. Below is one, large chunk of the documents. In the coming days, dallasnews.com will share more of them for your review. The documents contained here are those that the district attorney's office made available in electronic form – an estimated 90 percent of all the documents from the vault. Another 10 percent had not yet been scanned when these files were released to The Dallas Morning News. The contents include transcripts, personal and official letters, newspaper clippings, lists of jurors, police reports, rap sheets, autopsy reports, trial notes, police notebooks, photographs and much more. The documents appear here exactly as they were received by The News . They are neither cataloged nor indexed, and they are in no apparent order. Given the volume, we haven't been able to review most of the files. That's why were calling on you. Here's your chance to review never-seen-before materials related to the JFK assassination. Take a look, and let us know if you see something interesting. 29 separate JFK Documents groups appear for perusal at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/dallas/stories/022208dnmetjfkdocs.15b53191.html

McKinney Looking for Another Comeback

politicalassassinations — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:06:12 +0000

COPA's first regional meeting during this anniversary year took place on February 21st, in New York City at the historic Audubon Ballroom, now the Malcolm X/Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center and the scene of his assassination 43 years ago. Our co-sponsored forum of experts and commentators packed the lobby and was broadcast live over Sirius Satellite Radio nationwide. In this piece, we get passing mention since one of our speakers was former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, now a presidential primary candidate for the Green Party. McKinney introduced the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act in two different sessions of Congress to effect release of hundreds of thousands of pages of classified records on the life and death of Dr. King and she has spoken at several COPA meetings - John Judge Capitol Briefing, Washington Post 2/24/08 McKinney Looking for Another Comeback While Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) battle it out for the Democratic presidential nomination, another (former) Democratic lawmaker is working toward her own party's nod for the November ballot. Ex-Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney is running for the Green Party's nomination for president. She won the Statehood Green Party primary in D.C. with 41 percent of the vote (out of a total of 509 votes cast), and has also won Green primaries in Illinois and Arkansas. She lost in California to consumer activist Ralph Nader. ...Now, she's running full steam ahead for the White House, though in a video interview posted on her Web site, McKinney seems to acknowledge that, given the long odds against her, her candidacy is about more than just winning. "Well of course, I'd love to be able to sign in my new address as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but I also understand that what we're involved in hopefully is the creation of a movement, a movement that is vital to the future of this country," McKinney said. McKinney is now touring the country trying to drum up support and make public appearances. Tonight, for example, McKinney will be at the Audubon Ballroom in New York to participate in a panel discussion on "The Assassination of Malcolm X: A Riddle Unraveled." She has drawn support from an eclectic cast of characters, including convicted murderer and cause célèbre Mumia Abu Jamal. The Green Party is on the presidential ballot in 21 states and is working to get on all 51 (including D.C.). In several states, the party is holding caucuses to choose a presidential nominee. The next big step for McKinney is the party's national presidential nominating convention in Chicago July 10-13. For political reporters who prefer the Windy City to Denver or Minneapolis, and who know that McKinney nearly always has something interesting to say, his could be a hot ticket.

By Ben Pershing | February 21, 2008; 1:50 PM ET 2008 Campaign Previous: FISA Fight Focuses on Trial Lawyers | Next: Rep. Jefferson's Trial Delayed

New evidence challenges official picture of (Robert) Kennedy shooting

politicalassassinations — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:50:55 +0000

Newly released acoustic evidence in the RFK assassination may demolish the official version of events. A new book is coming out on the case based on the evidence, Open and Shut Case. More information at http://www.anopenandshutcase.com/index.php/2008/02/ - John Judge

New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Friday February 22 2008. It was last updated at 18:37 on February 22 2008.

The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy, like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly divided country embroiled in an unpopular war still troubles this nation. Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots. Following his victory speech to supporters after clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California, Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom to address a press conference. But the shortcut he and his entourage took through the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by four shots including one which lodged in the vertebrae in his neck and another which entered his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital the following day. Five other people were injured but survived. Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to "sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor exploited people" - was quickly apprehended. He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. "Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man, Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction of Kennedy's entourage." But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range. But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims. "There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy," said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years. He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case". The inconsistencies in the case have bred numerous conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the CIA and the idea that Sirhan - who claims not to remember the shooting and pleaded insanity at his trial - was a "Manchurian Candidate" assassin who was hypnotically programmed to kill the senator. Now Van Praag has added new weight to the 'two shooters' theory. He reanalysed the only audio recording of the shooting, which was made by an independent journalist, Stanislaw Pruszynski. "At the time Pruszynski was not even aware that his recorder was still on," said Van Praag. The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried. Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149 milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage 366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon. And he was not being pinned to a table at the time. Lastly, five of the shots - 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the sequence - were found to have odd acoustic characteristics when specific frequencies were analysed separately. Van Praag thinks this is because they came from a different gun pointing away from Pruszynski's microphone. To recreate this he recorded the sounds made by firing the Iver Johnson and another revolver, a Harrison and Richardson 922. At least one member of Kennedy's entourage was carrying this weapon when the killing happened. In the acoustic tests it produced the same frequency anomalies Van Praag had seen in the original recording but only when fired away from the microphone. He presented his results on Thursday at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Washington DC. Paul Schrade, a close associate of Kennedy's who was director of the United Auto Workers union, was at the senator's side in the pantry and was shot in the head. He told the meeting that America lost an outstanding leader and potentially great president that day. "I think we were in a position of really changing this country," he said. "What we lost was a real hope and possibility of having a better country and having better relations around the world." He wants to see the case reopened and properly investigated. "We're going to go ahead and do our best to find out who the second gunman was and that's going to take a lot of work," he said. Van Praag also wants the case reexamined. "We would hope that the evidence that we have uncovered ... would make a strong enough case to get serious consideration once again by the authorities," he said.

When DA spoke of JFK, he misspoke for Dallas

politicalassassinations — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:16:14 +0000

When DA spoke of JFK, he misspoke for Dallas

09:39 AM CST on Thursday, February 21, 2008

Dallas Morning News, Steve Blow "Irresponsible" is a strong word, and I hate to use it. But it's the word that came to mind after Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins' news conference this week. I'm talking about the casual way he pumped up conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And let's be clear right at the start. Let's say what the district attorney should have. Absolutely nothing revealed from the DA's "treasure-trove" sheds the slightest new light on the president's murder.

Video

Dallas County DA unveils JFK documents - Video/editing: Richard Michael Pruitt

02/18/2008

Instead of saying that, however, Mr. Watkins blithely brushed aside questions of truth or relevance. "But what we do know," he said at the news conference heard around the world, "is that this will open up the debate as to whether or not there was a conspiracy to assassinate the president." Well, yes. If the district attorney in Dallas, Texas, predicts that newly discovered material will reignite conspiracy theories, it most surely will. And true to that irresponsible, ill-informed prediction, how about this headline? "John F. Kennedy 'assassins' plot revealed.' "

Also Online

02/19/08: Newly discovered JFK assassination items revealed 02/17/08: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia

A plot revealed? Good grief. Not even close. Yet that's the story Great Britain got Tuesday from London's Daily Telegraph. The Web site for an Iranian news service showed a bit more restraint: "Plot to assassinate JFK revealed?" it asked. The International Herald Tribune, the English-language newspaper read around the world, headlined its story: "Conspiracy buffs may feast on JFK documents." And for this worldwide blitz of misinformation, we have our very own district attorney to thank. If he or his staff had done just a smidgen of research, that news conference would have never been called. This whole matter got off to a bad start. The DA's staff went in search of Kennedy material because it had heard that the gun Jack Ruby used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald might be in an office safe. Wrong. A 30-second Google search would have revealed that the gun was held for years by Ruby's executor and ended up being sold into private hands. Furthermore, a similar Google search would have immediately shot holes in the ballyhooed "transcript" of an alleged conversation between Ruby and Oswald. Mr. Watkins unveiled it Monday like a stunning new find. The truth is that it has been sitting in the Warren Commission report all these years – thoroughly discredited as the fevered imagination of a Dallas lawyer with a big drinking problem. It's Warren Commission Exhibit 2821. You can look it up. "It was thoroughly debunked at the time," said Kennedy assassination expert Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Do you suppose Mr. Watkins might call a news conference to say: "Never mind." Don't count on it. I hate to criticize Mr. Watkins. I think he has done a good job as district attorney. I admire his willingness to do things differently. But he has to realize that his words now carry the weight of his office – including his half-baked views on the Kennedy assassination. He told me Wednesday that he has never believed Oswald acted alone. "I believe in conspiracies," he said. "I think that's just too simple of an explanation." But he also admitted that he has never studied the matter. "Just all the stuff I see on TV," he said. "I never have delved into it. I just think there's got to be more to it than that." Let's hope he's not prosecuting crimes based on hunches rather than investigation. Precisely because he knows so little about the assassination, Mr. Watkins said he chose not to state the obvious at the news conference – that the transcript is clearly bogus. "I never believed it," he said. "People just don't talk like that. But I didn't want to give my opinion of it." Mr. Watkins is still fairly new to the job. And maybe there's a good lesson for him here: When you don't know much about a subject, don't call a news conference to announce it.

In Painful Past, Hushed Worry About Obama

politicalassassinations — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:20:32 +0000

Note the statement from Gerald Posner and the parallels with JFK - John Judge

February 25, 2008

New York Times

Political Memo

In Painful Past, Hushed Worry About Obama

By JEFF ZELENY

DALLAS — There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe? In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence. “I’ve got the best protection in the world,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. “So stop worrying.” Yet worry they do, with the spring of 1968 seared into their memories, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in a span of two months. Mr. Obama was 6 at the time, and like many of his admirers, he has only read about the violence that traumatized the nation. But those recollections and images are often invoked by older voters, who watch his candidacy with fascination, as well as an uneasy air of apprehension, as Democrats inch closer to selecting their nominee. Mr. Obama has had Secret Service agents surrounding him since May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection. (He reluctantly gave in to the insistent urging of Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and others in Congress.) As his rallies have swelled in size, his security has increased, coming close to rivaling that given to a sitting president. His wife, Michelle Obama, voiced concerns about his safety before he was elected to the Senate. Three years ago, she said she dreaded the day her husband received Secret Service protection, because it would mean serious threats had been made against him. Among friends and advisers, danger is something Mr. Obama rarely mentions. “It’s not something that I’m spending time thinking about day to day,” said Mr. Obama, who has been given the Secret Service nickname Renegade, a way for agents to quickly identify him. “I made a decision to get into this race. I think anybody who decides to run for president recognizes that there are some risks involved, just like there are risks in anything.” Not long ago, his advisers worried that some black voters might not support his candidacy out of a fierce desire to protect him. It was a particular concern in South Carolina, but Mr. Obama said he believed the worry was also rooted in “a fear of failure.” Now that he has won a string of primaries and caucuses in all corners of the country, and built a coalition of black and white voters, failure would seem to be less of an issue. The fears, however, remain. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, raised concerns in a letter in January to officials who oversee the Secret Service. While Mr. Obama was already receiving protection, Mr. Thompson said that the intense interest in the election prompted him to make sure that Mr. Obama and the other candidates were offered adequate security. “The national and international profile of Senator Barack Obama gives rise to unique challenges that merit special concern,” Mr. Thompson wrote. “As an African-American who was witness to some of this nation’s most shameful days during the civil rights movement, I know personally that the hatred of some of our fellow citizens can lead to heinous acts of violence. We need only to look to the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy as examples.” In an interview, Mr. Thompson declined to elaborate on any specific threats that had come to the attention of his committee or authorities. He said he wrote the letter to the Homeland Security Department without discussing it with Mr. Obama, whom he has endorsed. “His candidacy is so unique to this country and so important that the last thing you would want is for him not to have the opportunity to fulfill the role of a potential presidential nominee,” Mr. Thompson said. “It’s out of an abundance of caution that I wrote the letter, rather than keep our fingers crossed and pray.” Before Mr. Obama decided to run for president, he discussed his safety with his family. His campaign employed a team of private security guards before he was placed under Secret Service protection. Since then, he has grown fond of the agents who surround him, inviting them to watch the Super Bowl at his home in Chicago and playing basketball with them on the days he awaits the results of an election. Mr. Obama was reticent in speaking about his security or the period in American history that is often raised — without prompting — by voters who are interviewed at campaign events. Mentions of the fate that befell President John F. Kennedy and Senator Kennedy only increased after Mr. Obama was joined on the campaign trail by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. “I’m pretty familiar with the history,” Mr. Obama said. “Obviously, it was an incredible national trauma, but neither Bobby Kennedy nor Martin Luther King had Secret Service protection.” Indeed, the assassination of Senator Kennedy in 1968 prompted Congress to authorize protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates. In this campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has had Secret Service protection from the beginning, because she is a former first lady. None of the other candidates had protection during their primary campaigns. “Some candidates are bigger targets than others — any transition candidate or change candidate has a higher profile,” said former Senator Gary Hart, who received protection as a Democratic presidential contender in 1984 and 1988. “The evocation of the same excitement surrounding John and Robert Kennedy triggers both negatively and positively.” The Secret Service does not discuss details of its protection, including whether Mr. Obama is receiving more protection than Mrs. Clinton. Gerald Posner, author of books on the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King, said he did not believe that Mr. Obama was under a significantly higher risk than President Bush or Mrs. Clinton. The fears are more openly discussed, he said, because he is the first black candidate to come this close to winning a major party’s presidential nomination. “Barack scares those of us who think of the possibility of an assassination in a different way,” Mr. Posner said. “He represents so much hope and change. That is exactly what was taken away from us in the 1960s.” Here in Dallas, those memories were raised in conversation after conversation with several of the 17,000 people who came to see Mr. Obama at a rally last week. “Right around the corner is the John Kennedy Memorial; everyone all around me was talking about it,” said Imogene Covin, a Democratic activist from Dallas. “In the back of my mind, it’s a possibility that something might happen because he’s something to gawk at right now. But you know why I think he will be safe? He has a broad range of people behind him.” That afternoon, Mr. Obama’s motorcade passed Dealey Plaza and the Texas Book Depository building, where the fatal shot was fired at President Kennedy in 1963. Several campaign aides looked out their windows, silently absorbing the scene. Not so for Mr. Obama, who later said he had not realized he was passing the site. And no one in his car pointed it out. “I’ve got to admit, that’s not what I was thinking about,” he said. “I was thinking about how I was starting to get a head cold and needed to make sure that I cleared up my nose before I got to the arena.”

Ex-Henry Wade secretary upset over questions about JFK film talks

politicalassassinations — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:11:56 +0000

Note that Jack Ruby was a frequent visitor to DA Henry Wade's office who "just hung around" and "came in...because of hot checks". Also note that Wade had a 100% conviction rate in his cases and 90% for his office, now overturned in some cases due to DNA. His prosecutorial skills were lauded by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese. Like Wade, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are both dead and can't defend themselves either - John Judge Ex-Henry Wade secretary upset over questions about JFK film talks Former Wade secretary angered over story about JFK film talks 12:00 AM CST on Sunday, March 2, 2008 By ED HOUSEWRIGHT / The Dallas Morning News ehousewright@dallasnews.com PHOTO – June McNabb had a front-row seat during the most notorious period in Dallas history. She was secretary to Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade at the time of the Kennedy assassination. June McNabb, with a photo of her and fellow secretaries attending a luncheon with Henry Wade in the 1950s, remembers her former boss as a good-hearted person and someone to admire. 'His employees, the girls especially, just loved him to death,' she said. "He was a wonderful man," she said of Mr. Wade. "His employees, the girls especially, just loved him to death." Mr. Wade served as district attorney from 1950 to 1986 and developed a reputation for winning convictions and securing long prison sentences. Ms. McNabb is perturbed at questions raised about Mr. Wade after the release of JFK memorabilia by current District Attorney Craig Watkins this month. Documents show that Mr. Wade, a straight-arrow lawman, considered accepting money for giving a filmmaker exclusive rights to assassination records that wouldn't be made public for 40 years. The movie deal never materialized. Ms. McNabb, who is 75 and lives in Celina, said a story in last Sunday's Dallas Morning News about the film talks angered her. Mr. Wade died in 2001 at age 86. "The man is deceased," she said. "He can't defend himself. I think nearly everybody who could defend him is dead. If he was here, he would take care of it." In the mid-1950s, Ms. McNabb went to work for Mr. Wade when she was 22, and she remained for a decade. She worked as receptionist and a secretary, watching people stream and out of Mr. Wade's office. One frequent visitor: Jack Ruby, who fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald as he was being transported to jail after the assassination. Mr. Ruby owned the Carousel, a downtown strip club. "Ruby was one of the guys who just hung out," Ms. McNabb said. "Nobody paid any attention to him. He came into our office because of hot checks. He tried to give passes to everybody in the office. Nobody went, or at least I didn't." Mr. Wade personally tried the 1964 murder case against Mr. Ruby. The jury took less than two hours to find Mr. Ruby guilty and sentence him to death. Profiles on Mr. Wade always mention that he never lost a case he personally prosecuted. His office won convictions in more than 90 percent of the cases it tried. Since he retired, though, the convictions of more than a dozen men have been overturned because of DNA testing. Many of the faulty convictions occurred during Mr. Wade's tenure. Ms. McNabb doesn't think the exonerations taint his legacy. When Mr. Wade retired in 1986, tributes flowed in from around the country. President Reagan sent a congratulatory letter. U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese spoke to 1,300 people at a tribute dinner, calling Mr. Wade "the dean of American prosecutors." Ms. McNabb echoes the sentiments about Mr. Wade. "He was someone I very much admired," she said. "He was a genteel, bright man and a good-hearted person."

Dallas DA says unearthed JFK documents will likely be given to Sixth Floor

politicalassassinations — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:06:30 +0000

It's time for a letter-writing and calling campaign to Dallas County D.A. Watkin's office to make sure that the newly discovered JFK assassination records do not end up at the Sixth Floor Musuem (see related article below), but become part of the JFK Records Collection at Archives II, where they legally must reside: DISTRICT ATTORNEY Craig Watkins FRANK CROWLEY COURTS BUILDING 133 N INDUSTRIAL BOULEVARD, LB 19 DALLAS, TEXAS 75207-4399 (214)653-3600 Office (214) 653-5774 FAX In 1992, the Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Act (http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part15.htm) to release all federal, state, local and court records related to the assassination of President Kennedy. A "related record" is broadly defined by the regulatory guidance implemented by the Assassination Records Review Board in their search for files and artifacts:

36 CFR 1400--Guidance for Interpretation and Implementation of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part16.htm)

Records from both the New Orleans and Dallas District Attorney offices were requested. (The Act specifiically includes records from "any State or local law enforcement office that provided support or assistance or performed work in connection with a Federal inquiry into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy") The Records Act is still in effect and it legally supercedes other legislation, as well as the 1994 court decision regarding the Dallas County Historical Association or Sixth Floor Museum. (The Act states clearly, "Precedence over Other Law- When this Act requires transmission of a record to the Archivist or public disclosure, it shall take precedence over any other law (except section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code), judicial decision construing such law, or common law doctrine that would otherwise prohibit such transmission or disclosure, with the exception of deeds governing access to or transfer or release of gifts and donations of records to the United States Government.") The Act also specifies that. "No assassination record created by a person or entity outside government ... shall be withheld, redacted, postponed for public disclosure, or reclassified." The Act also envisions periodic review to include newly found records, "A periodic review shall address the public disclosure of additional assassination records in the Collection under the standards of this Act.") President Kennedy's death happened in Dallas but it affected the nation and the truth of his death belongs to history. The provisions of the JFK Records Act remain in effect until March of 2017 or until the Archivist certifies full release of all related files. (The Act specifies that, "Each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act" and also that. " The remaining provisions of this Act shall continue in effect until such time as the Archivist certifies to the President and the Congress that all assassination records have been made available to the public in accordance with this Act.") The JFK Records Collection is the most visited section of the whole National Archives, despite its isolation in College Park, MDs National Archives II facility. Tourists to the Sixth Floor Museum or the Grassy Knoll in Dallas rarely visit to pore over documents, and copies would suffice for those who wish to see them there. The serious researchers into political assassinations have already been frustrated by their lack of access to many of the 20,000 records controlled by the Sixth Floor Museum, since a private museum can restrict access in ways that the National Archives cannot. No single researcher can determine the presence of a smoking gun, and records have intrinsic value beyond their contents in terms of the historical context. These files, which relate to Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Henry Wade and the events surrounding and following November 22, 1963 are clearly related and as such fall under the provisions of the JFK Records Act. The originals properly belong in the National Archives under the law, while copies can be retained at other agencies or museums. Many other related records generated by the Dallas police, courts and justice agencies have already been given over under the provisions of the law, and there are no legal provisions that exempt files that have been improperly hidden from the public for decades and illegally held back from the Review Boards request now over a decade ago. These files belong with the national collection, not with Dallas. This is not a decision that can be made by either Dallas County District Attorney Watkins nor archivist Steve Tilly, it is determined by federal law. I hope these legal clarifications will guide D.A. Watkins' decision as to the fate of the newly released documents and artifacts which are clearly JFK assassination related records. John Judge for the Coalition on Political Assassinations, Washington, DC Dallas DA says unearthed JFK documents will likely be given to Sixth Floor 10:46 PM CST on Friday, February 29, 2008 By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News dflick@dallasnews.com It appears that what happened in Dallas will stay in Dallas. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins Jr. said Friday that, while he will not make a final decision until next week, he probably will donate long-hidden documents regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. "I feel an obligation," he said. "This is where I live, this is where it happened, and I think it would be good for tourism and good for the local economy to keep the documents at The Sixth Floor Museum." The 15 boxes of materials were stashed and then kept secret by Mr. Watkins' predecessors for four decades before being revealed by Mr. Watkins two weeks ago. In a Feb. 18 news conference announcing the collection's existence, Mr. Watkins said he intended to donate it to a museum, and he left open the possibility that it might go somewhere outside Dallas. The stakes were raised recently when a federal judge urged Mr. Watkins to donate the thousands of pages of JFK-related materials to the National Archive's Kennedy Assassination Collection in College Park, Md. U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim of Minneapolis was speaking as a private citizen, but one with some standing. He served during the 1990s as chairman of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board, which was established by Congress to collect all previously undisclosed records related to the assassination and assess their value. The National Archives' JFK collection "is a treasure trove of information, preserved under ideal conditions and accessible to the public," Judge Tunheim wrote in a Feb. 22 letter to Mr. Watkins. He also argued against giving the documents to The Sixth Floor Museum. "I have always been concerned that it may not be a proper archival facility, particularly for documents, and may not continue into perpetuity," the judge wrote. "What will happen to the records at the Sixth Floor Museum in the long term, I do not know." Sixth Floor's defense Sixth Floor officials, who have made no secret of their desire to obtain the files, expressed delight Friday at Mr. Watkins' words, but they were cautious until a final decision is announced. "We would be very pleased if they came to The Sixth Floor," said Nicola Longford, the museum's executive director. She also said worries about the museum's ability to care for the documents are misplaced. "I am surprised by Judge Tunheim's concern about the long-term viability of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza," Ms. Longford said in an e-mailed statement. "Visitor attendance has remained steady with average annual attendance of over 325,000. The museum remains one of the most heavily visited historic sites in Texas, outside the Alamo." The National Archives' materials dwarf The Sixth Floor's collection. National Archives officials say they have 5 million pages of documents regarding the JFK assassination. Officials at the Dallas museum say they have about 20,000 documents, though no estimate on the number of pages. But Ms. Longford defended the quality of her museum. "We have storage facilities that are equal to any in the country," she said. Judge Tunheim said Friday he was disappointed by Mr. Watkins' remarks. He said he still believes that giving the documents to the National Archives would make them more accessible to researchers, but "I understand the hometown aspect of all this." It was a card that Sixth Floor officials were not shy about playing. "The documents are from Dallas. They're from the Dallas County DA's office. They are best kept in Dallas," Ms. Longford said. Mr. Watkins said Friday that his office, in any case, may have no legal choice in the matter. He said he was researching a 1994 Commissioners Court order that instructed all county offices to turn over materials related to Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald and President Kennedy to the Dallas County Historical Foundation – which does business under the name of The Sixth Floor Museum. Even if there is no such requirement, Mr. Watkins said, "I would probably give them to The Sixth Floor anyway." National Archives officials said they had been discussing whether they would be interested in the Dallas County DA files. "We want to look at what's in there before we could make a decision on whether we would accept it," said Steven Tilley, who oversees written documents at the National Archives' College Park facility. At first glance ... The ultimate importance of the documents is unclear. Mr. Watkins' initial announcement made international news and was expected to trigger a frenzy among assassination history buffs. But that frenzy has yet to happen. After The Dallas Morning News obtained and posted the bulk of the DA files online, most comments on the newspaper's Web site and on sites devoted to the assassination expressed confusion over the meaning of the documents or frustration that they seemed random and without context. Among history enthusiasts searching through the documents has been Steve Thomas, a librarian in Newburgh, Ind., who describes himself as an amateur assassination researcher. Over the last week, he has posted summaries of the files on a JFK assassination discussion group on www.educationforum.ipbhost.com – a site for teachers and educators. After going through about half the files, Mr. Thomas said, he is not sure what to make of them. "If you're looking for a historical record of the Jack Ruby trial, it puts it into the context from [former Dallas County DA] Henry Wade's perspective," he said. But the documents are unlikely to contain any blockbusters. "If you're looking for a smoking gun," Mr. Thomas said, "you're not going to find it."

Cynthia McKinney talks about Malcolm X-youtube

politicalassassinations — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:33:08 +0000

Green Presidential candidate and speaker at COPA event, Cynthia McKinney, speaks after the COPA conference at the Audubon ballroom on February 21st. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlfeLs0GJPo]

CIA Lawyers to Face JFK Questions

politicalassassinations — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:36:25 +0000

CIA Lawyers to Face JFK Questions <http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/in-federal-court-cia> By Jefferson Morley <http://www.washingtonindependent.com/person/12620-morleyj> 02/26/2008 12:41PM The Central Intelligence Agency will quietly defend its refusal to release a batch of top-secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in a Washington courtroom tomorrow. Amid all the headlines about the discovery of a cache of previously unknown JFK material in Dallas, agency lawyers will make their first response to a court order to explain the secrecy surrounding a career CIA undercover officer allegedly involved in the events that led that to the murder of the president on Nov. 22, 1963. For four years, the agency has been battling in federal court to block my Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure of the secret operations of a deceased CIA officer named George Joannides. He is a shadowy figure in the complex story of JFK’s assassination. At the time of the Dallas tragedy, Joannides was serving as chief of the CIA’s Miami-based "psychological warfare" operations against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In December, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out the many of the agency’s decades-old claims of secrecy around Joannides. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers and two colleagues ordered the CIA <http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200712/06-5382a.pdf> to search its operational files for more material on Joannides. They also ordered the agency to explain why 17 reports on Joannides’ secret operations in 1962, 1963 and 1964, are missing from CIA archives. In legal briefs, agency officials have claimed that more than 30 documents about Joannides’s actions in the 1960s and 1970s cannot be made public in any form—for reasons of "national security." Joannides’ curious connection to the JFK assassination story was unknown until 2001. Declassified CIA records revealed that Joannides had guided and monitored a Cuban exile student group that publicly denounced the pro-Castro activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in August 1963. Three months later, Oswald shot Kennedy dead from an office buildings. Joannides’ agents in Cuban Miami shaped the first day press coverage of JFK’s assassination by generating evidence of Oswald’s support for Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The Joannides files could shed light on the question of whether CIA officers overlooked, underestimated or manipulated Oswald as he made his way to Dallas. The disputed files could prove more significant to the JFK case than the much-publicized files of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, made public last week. Those files mostly concern Wade’s case against Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who murdered Oswald in police custody before he could be brought to trial. Thanks to the Dallas Morning News, the Wade files <http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnmetjfkdocs.15b53191.html> can now be viewed online. By contrast, the complete Joannides file has never been public. What remains unknown is the extent of Joannides’ control over his agents in the Cuban exile community who sought to link Oswald to Fidel Castro. The day after JFK was killed the Cuban communist leader scorned the reports that Oswald was a supporter of his revolution and suggested that the CIA was behind the charge. The available records show that Castro was right: CIA funds did help publicize the allegation. Joannides, who received a CIA medal in 1981, was never questioned by JFK assassination investigators. A resident of Potomac, Md,, he died in 1990. His Washington Post obituary described him as a "Defense Department Lawyer." To date, all efforts to pierce the veil of secrecy around Joannides’ actions in 1963 have been thwarted. The agency has ignored an open letter from two dozen leading JFK scholars <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18193> calling on the CIA to release the records.Last year, the National Archives requested access to the records without success. And the agency’s public affairs officers agency refuse to answer any questions about Joannides. "Joannides’ service as case officer of the Cuban exile group which dealt with Oswald make his files highly relevant and in need of public release," said Rex Bradford, senior analyst at MaryFerrell.org <http://maryferrell.org/>, the largest online archive of declasssified JFK assassination records. "The files are clearly within the scope of the JFK Records Act which remains in effect despite the CIA’s failure to recognize the fact." The JFK Records Act, passed in 1992 after Oliver Stone’s controversial movie, mandates the "immediate" public release of all JFK-related records. Judge Richard Leon will preside over the hearing in the DC Federal Courthouse on Wednesday morning. (The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided support for the reporting in this article. A fuller account of Joannides’ role in the events of 1963 is found in my forthcoming book "Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA," <http://www.amazon.com/Our-Man-Mexico-Winston-History/dp/0700615717/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203870052&sr=1-8> now available on Amazon.com. I have also written about Joannides for Playboy.com. See "The Man Who Didn’t Talk." <http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/jfk/jfk-page01.html>)

COPA In Memphis, 40th Anniversary of ML King Assassination

politicalassassinations — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:06:37 +0000

Join us in Memphis for this historic meeting. Reserve now with the hotel, they are filling up. Details below. Our events run from Friday evening to Sunday noon - John Judge

April 3-6 (Thursday - Sunday)

"The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Killing the Dream"

40th anniversary of his murder in Memphis

April 4th Foundation event on April 3rd and 4th as well, civil rights leaders speak

Regional Meeting of COPA, Memphis, TN

Comfort Inn, Downtown, 100 N. Front Street, (901) 526-0583

Reserve now for "COPA 2008": $99/night single/double

Speakers: Keynote: Judge Joe Brown, T Carter, Lyndon Barsten, author of Truth At Last, Charles Cabbage, and more

Visit National Civil Rights Museum at the site of the assassination

Registration on site

RFK assassination: More than 1 shooter says study

politicalassassinations — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:43:22 +0000

Dr Philip Van Praag and Dr Robert Joling will be presenting their findings at the COPA conference in Los Angeles this June. Further details here, http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_Multiple_shooters_in_RFK_assassination_0326.html [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDXNDnPhYkQ&hl=en]

Video of the MLK civil trial 1999

politicalassassinations — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:49:57 +0000

Here is the first part of the opening remarks by Dr William F Pepper on behalf of the King family during the 1999 civil suit brought against Llyod Jowers and other un-named co-defendants for participation in a conspiracy to kill Dr MartinLuther King jnr. The second part of the opening statement can be seen here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuqRIlZLurw The 10 part closing remarks have already been uploaded and the rest of the trial is in the process of being uploaded also. You can see all of the videos at www.youtube.com/user/reprehensor Many thanks to reprehensor (911 blogger) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEpAs1E5v4s&hl=en]

Anniversary of Reagan shooting

politicalassassinations — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:25:33 +0000

One of the most overlooked attempted political assassinations is the Reagan shooting on March 30th in 1981. Here follows excerpts from an interview with John Judge conducted by Dave Ratcliffe that is hosted in full here, http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/112600.html Here are several videos of the event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w6KPkv0vT8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kPUjuYKQeA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYlYSc9hAUA In the period when Reagan came in, I believe Bush took over. He was vice president and rose to power, I believe, on March 31 1981 when Reagan was nearly assassinated. The person placed as the patsy, not the person that actually shot Reagan but the person placed as the patsy in the case, was John Hinkley. His family ties were to oil. Through that oil connection, Neil Bush -- George Herbert Walker Bush's son, who worked in oil -- knew Scott Hinkley who also worked in oil. Neil had been involved with Scott in many oil operations -- both working for oil speculation and oil companies. The two families lived close to each other. They knew each other socially and financially. When the Hinkley oil company started to fail in the sixties, Bush's Zapata Oil financially bailed out Hinkley's company. It went from being Vanderbilt Oil to Vanderbilt Energy or Vanderbilt Resources in the 60s after Bush intervened. The Hinkleys had been running an operation with six dead wells but then they were making several million dollars a year after the Bush bailout. I always thought this was some sort of a money-pass front where they were laundering money through on this phony oil operation but actually operating some type of an intelligence pay-off. The father in that family, John W. Hinkley Sr., was also the president of the board for World Vision. World Vision is a far-right evangelical missionary operation that does missionary and "good work" operations in countries where there is a political purpose for it to be there. From it's inception, it was rabidly anti-Communist and it focused on refugee populations of people running from countries that had been taken over by Communism. This was from the fifties on. World Vision had a hand in the movement of the Cubans into the United States and other refugees of revolutionary regimes. When you're a refugee you're cut loose, basically, and pretty much fair game to be manipulated by whoever is willing to give you a hand because you don't have a home or any place to stay and somebody has got to accept you. World Vision was able to recruit out of these mercenary populations, people who could be politically turned to their intelligence purposes. World Vision served as a penetration force -- not as visible as the military actually going in or the CIA going in -- going in as missionaries and working among the people. This link between missionary and intelligence for capitalistic infiltration operations goes way back. It was part of the internationalism with the Rockefellers. It's talked about in a book called Thy Will Be Done^[4] about Rockefeller, Venezuela, and Latin American Oil, the Summer Linguistic Institute, World Vision and others. But they operated in this way for a long time. They were paid by the CIA for a long time during the Vietnam war and went into SE Asia -- Cambodia and Laos. Throughout Vietnam they were given U.S. military equipment to use. They still maintain a budget under USAID, which was just (Agency for International Development), which was just a pass-over in order to give the CIA more cover. They ran operations through USAID. The current cover replacing that is the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), which is supposed to be how we're exporting democracy around the world. But of course, we're exporting exactly the kind of corrupt democracy we have here, which is rigged and manipulated elections and press manipulation in order to keep in power or put in power the people that we want to be in those countries for the purpose of having our investments protected and milking what we can out of the resources and the labor available in any of those countries. World Vision was part of that scheme and they did some nasty things. They ran the refugee camp in Sabra-Shatilla where the fascist Phalange were allowed in to kill the Palestinians. Moe Dalitz, a Cleveland syndicate mobster, had building operations and construction stuff going on in Miami that the anti-Castro Cubans were hired to take part in. They meld them in -- and so they recruit from them, whoever they can. They ran the Cuban and Thai refugee camps in the United States. Mark David Chapman -- who eventually shot John Lennon -- worked at the Thai refugee camps out in Arkansas that World Vision operated there. They ran these camps brutally, forcing people into political education against Castro, refusing to feed people, beating people -- by many reports -- and bringing in Alpha 66 and Omega 7 people (the worst of the killing teams -- or murder squads -- of the anti-Castro Cubans in the United States) to run the camps in Florida, Fort Chafey in Arkansas and other places where the Cuban exiles were. These people came in and there were eventually riots in the Cuban refugee camps against their treatment there. This according to legitimate refugee charity workers and organizations that I have spoken to. Ratcliffe: This is during what period? Judge: This is in the seventies, after the boat lift and all that. But they were in there trying to recruit a whole new batch of anti-Castro Cubans that could be used in, not only domestic, but international operations. It was anti-Castro Cubans that were used in the murder of Lumumba for instance, by the CIA. These people were interchangeable units but World Vision was part-and-parcel of running these camps and manipulating these refugees. At the same time doing a television presence that made them seem as if they were some sort of charitable Christian operation. Their CIA funding and their background had been exposed over a long time. The chairman of the board for some period was John W. Hinkley Sr.. The son worked at Fort Chafey at the Thai refugee camps. There were pictures of him after the Reagan shooting running in his World Vision T-shirt around the edge of the camp. He was tied-in but he was not going along with the program at the same level as Scott was. Scott was already doing the wheeling and dealing and was tight with Neil Bush. Bush's daughter was making the dating arrangements for Scott Hinkley and helping to set him up for dates. They knew each other socially quite well. The press said that they were to have dinner -- Scott Hinkley and Neil Bush were to have dinner on March 31 1981. But they cancelled the dinner after the news of the shooting. The press said that that was ironic. It gives a new meaning to the word `irony'. Because if Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey's older brother and Lynda Bird Johnson were going to have dinner the night of the JFK assassination, somebody would figure out it meant something. What it means is that Bush was part of the planning of the take over -- and it was a take over, I believe. There were elements that matched the Kennedy assassination. Richard Bartholomew, a researcher in Texas, told me that he himself talked to Strategic Air Command bomber pilots who, like the pilots I talked to that were in the air the hour of the Kennedy assassination, told him that on March 31 they had no code books aboard. The black box, the presidential communication box for national emergencies -- the "nuclear football" as they call it, disappeared in Dallas after the Kennedy shooting and did not fly back on Airforce One with LBJ and didn't get back to him for many hours. Similarly, Rodriguez, an Army Colonel that was in charge of carrying it with the president, at the time of Reagan's shooting, ducked, hit the ground during the shooting, got up and ran in the other direction and came back hours later with a Secret Service Agent trying to get the control card out of Reagan's wallet that was under the control of the FBI. FBI Agents had taken his clothes as they were clipped off in the emergency room. At that point an FBI Agent called William Sessions, the Director. But he wasn't at the Agency. He was in the situation room where the big fight had emerged between the Reagan loyalists and the Bush loyalists. Sessions told him to hold on to the card. Ratcliffe: Sessions told the guy who had taken the football with him? Judge: No, he told the FBI Agent who had the card. The nurses were taking Reagan's clothes off, cutting them off, whatever they had to do and in his wallet was the card that activates the box. The FBI had control of that back at the hospital. The guy in control of the box itself ran off and came back with a Secret Service Agent trying to get the card, as well. The FBI guy said `Wait a minute. I have to call headquarters.' Sessions told him `No, don't give up the card.' That's the level at which the battle was going on. Ratcliffe: And Sessions would be with Bush or Reagan? Judge: Sessions would have been loyal to Reagan, I believe. Ratcliffe: Rodriguez was loyal to Reagan? Judge: Well, Rodriguez was obviously playing the other side. Rodriguez was running off with the box. Ratcliffe: He didn't stay with the Commander-in-Chief? Judge: That's right. He broke rank. And then, whoever in the Secret Service -- the Secret Service helped to set-up Reagan too. Reagan was told not to wear his vest that day -- his protective vest. I'll bet he wore it after that. They did not call the procedure with the limousine. He should have come out the door and gone directly into the limousine. That's how he arrived. He came, the Secret Service formed two rows on either side of the back door, they opened the back door and he goes in. When you hire a limousine, they don't go to the house down the street, they come to your door. When you're the president, they'll move it six inches to make sure that it's in the right place. It was in the right place when he arrived. He got out and went in through the phalanx of the two rows of agents. He's safe into the VIP entrance. He comes out the same exit and where's the car?' It is nowhere near the door. It's 40-50 feet down the pavement. So, he's got to walk out into the open. What's supposed to happen? The Secret Service is supposed to surround him like a diamond and protect him. One guy goes forward, McCarthy, to open the door for him. The rest don't surround him. They all file out like a line of ducks off to the right and they leave Reagan walking in the open with Brady and these other guys. Then, the shooting happens. The damage that was done there once the shooting started was quite extensive. Brady was hit which literally took a large chunk of his brain and knocked him on to the ground. A black cop was nicked in the neck, a big beefy cop, and he spun and hit the ground hard by the shot. McCarthy, 160 pounds, was lifted by the shot, that hit him in the groin at the back door of the car, and thrown through the air to the front bumper of the car. He himself says that was no 22. All of the early press reports said that Hinkley was firing a 38 and that is much more consistent with these kinds of reactions. A 22 will hurt you, enter you and do damage inside you, but it's not going to knock you over. A 38 is a much larger caliber of bullet. Hinkley purchased a 38 at a pawn shop on Elm Street in Dallas -- the same street where Kennedy was assassinated.

The problem was that Reagan didn't get back to G.W.U. until after Brady was there, like a good 15-to-20 minutes later before Reagan finally shows up and does walk in. They finally start dealing with him because he does have a collapsed lung but he isn't shot to the extent that he can't move. . . . But it is very significant, I think, that Reagan was taken somewhere else and then turned around. I think the timing of the turn around relates to a huge fight that they later admitted broke out in the situation room at the White House in the emergency between the Reagan loyalists and the Bush loyalists in the administration. . . . There are different loyalties. That was clear in a number of instances.

One was when Bush helped to get Haig appointed as Secretary of State. The entire Cabinet staff underneath him was already pre-appointed and he wasn't allowed to pick or choose any of them, or fire any of them. So it was like he was a figure head put up at the head of this agency that he wasn't really allowed to run. Then just a few days before the shooting of Reagan, there was a switch where Bush replaced Haig as the head of an emergency preparedness committee or unit that they had at the White House. The press was asking Bush right after he was appointed in place of Haig -- this was just three days before the shooting -- `What constitutes an emergency for the purpose of this special office?' And Bush said, "The president will know it when he sees it." I think he meant that he -- Reagan -- would know it when he saw it lying on the ground dying.

This I believe was a coup. The black box disappeared for several hours. . . There was that kind of transition-of-power going on -- who was actually going to control things and there were switch-overs about the Strategic Air Command bomber pilots, again, not having code books aboard on March 31, 81 like they didn't on November 22, 63. This was a classic transition-of-power situation.

All of this was to give us an early signal that this is one of their jobs. But at the same time none of Hinkley's bullets hit Reagan and that was clear from Reagan's lack of this kind of reaction. Reagan gets to the car still standing. He is pushed into the car by McCarthy. He's got some pain in his rib, which he thinks McCarthy caused by pushing him in and eventually coughs up a little blood. But even when he finally gets down to G.W. [George Washington University] Hospital, he is still standing when comes in and walks into the hospital and they put him on the gurney. He's not at all in the same shape as everyone else that's hit by Hinkley's 38.Then the official story changes after three or four hours and Hinkley supposedly had a 22. I went through the ABC footage and you can actually see the replacement of the 22 and the pick-up of the 38 by a Secret Service agent. Ratcliffe: How do you mean `see the replacement?' -- you can see it in watching the replay? Judge: In watching the footage, you can see a Secret Service agent at the outer edge of the crew. There's a group that have sort of tackled Hinkley and they're taking him in and you can see the gun is on the ground. Hinkley's 38 is on the ground at the edge of the that crowd near the retaining wall. The Secret Service agent kind of sidles over to the wall, takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, kneels down, like crouches, and lifts the gun up and puts it in his pocket. Meanwhile, a DC cop in a slick yellow raincoat comes to the outer edge of the crowd -- this is after they already have Hinkley subdued -- and for no apparent reason he comes to the edge of the crowd and puts his hand out. He's a motorcycle cop. That motorcycle rentinue did not leave with Reagan's limousine when he did leave. He has no escort when he goes. That is not explainable either, especially if there has just been an assassination attempt -- why he would be put out there without escort. But he does, he goes without anybody. This cop comes over, off of his motorcycle, spreads his arms and kind of moves back and forth in front of -- at the edge of the crowd. He's not serving any purpose but he's there and after a moment the camera pans back and you can see at his feet, this 22, as if he's dropped it. One of his hands goes in towards the center of his coat and then comes out and right after that, as the camera is panning all around, it pans right between his feet, and you can see this 22 that becomes the official weapon. There is also a weapon near Brady's head that one of the Secret Service guys drops. That's how they explain the 38, saying that it was a confusion because it was really the Secret Service guy's gun. I believe, Hinkley was firing a 38. Hinkley damaged everybody but Reagan, also put holes in the car and the building across the street. But he only had six rounds and each one of those is explained and then a seventh round has to explain the wound in Reagan. Reagan's wound is so minimal that it doesn't match either a 22 or a 38. It is described as a little thin razor line when they finally get his clothes off. They think he's having a heart attack -- actually his lung had collapsed because of the thing penetrating him. Then finally a nurse sees a little line of blood underneath his left arm pit. She determines that something has gone in but it's a little razor cut. They know what a bullet hole looks there in the emergency room at G.W.U.. They get them all the time. They do poke around until they finally find this thing in the x-ray. They try three times to get it out and finally pull it out and it is a little disc, a flattened disc, that was described as `thin as a dime' and `razor-edged.' This fits the profile of these aerodynamic discs that are used by the intelligence agencies in weapons that the Church Committee showed during the time that they did their testimony. They are fired with a CO2 (carbon dioxide) cartridge, so they are relatively silent. They just make a little puff. They have an accuracy up to a great length. They can be fired out of a regular gun or even out of these little tubes with the CO2 cartridge at the back. They also can be loaded with toxins. One of the uses they had for them was making them out of plastic and filling them with shellfish toxin which goes in and makes a razor split in the skin which wouldn't be noticed during an autopsy. The x-ray won't pull up the plastic and the shellfish toxin, once it gets into any part of the bloodstream, will cause a heart attack within 30 seconds. Very lethal -- several milligrams of the shellfish toxin is enough of a dose. Whether this thing had a poison load in it or not, who knows? But it didn't immediately kill him so if it did have such a load, it didn't work. It didn't shoot off. It bounced off of his rib. It would have cut into his aorta but bounced on his rib and missed the aorta by a quarter of an inch and went into the lung instead. But they did finally get it out. The lung was collapsed from it but they got him stabilized. Meanwhile, all night, there were people trying to move him back to the Bethesda. Because when the car takes off from the Hilton where the shooting happens, they're screaming `Rawhide is okay' into the radio. Rawhide is the code name for Reagan. They're radioing back according to McCarthy, `Rawhide is okay, Rawhide is okay.' But I don't think he is supposed to be okay. I think he was supposed to have been killed there and they've got a problem. So the car goes up to Connecticut Avenue and if they were going to go to G.W.U. Hospital, they needed to either go straight across down Florida to 21st and then (it's close) around a little traffic circle. Or they could have gone left further down to M Street and then turned across M to 21st. McCarthy's story is that they went under the bridge at M Street and then he coughed up some blood and then they realized he'd been hit and they said `get to the nearest hospital.' But they still didn't even turn on M, which they could have easily done. They went all the way down to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue -- four or five more blocks. Then they turned to the right from 17th over to 21st and then came back up to 21st until they hit G.W.U. Hospital, which is going along three sides of a triangle instead of just cutting across. So if you're in a hurry -- the president's in an emergency -- you take the quickest route. But what McCarthy says in his book is that when the car went up to Connecticut Avenue, that they went right and went toward the White House. If you turn right on Connecticut off of T, where they were, you're not going towards the White House, you're headed north toward Bethesda Hospital and out Connecticut Ave. That was confirmed for me later when ABC News had on the doctor who was the head of the trauma room after they had the press conference with the doctors. The head of the trauma room was there with the news anchor. The newscaster said `I understand that there were people that wanted to move President Reagan out to Bethesda Naval Hospital after he had come into your trauma room.' And the doctor said, `Yes, there were people.' There were reports that it was Secret Service up to as late as 6 a.m. the next morning, insisting to move him. But in fact, he wasn't moved and it was because this trauma room doctor said, `When someone comes into my trauma room in that condition, I don't care who they are -- President of the United States or not -- they are not going to be moved.' He doesn't understand that he saved Reagan's life. If they had gotten Reagan to Bethesda, they could have finished the job there and then done the same phony autopsy they did on John F. Kennedy at Bethesda Hospital. But instead, this trauma room doctor intervened and kept Reagan there and then Reagan recovered in relatively safety and security.

The patterns are always the same. You have a patsy that takes the blame. You have a second gunman that never comes to light. And you have an ascendance of power. That's what I think happened after that point: that Reagan was basically allowed to function but Bush was President.

That dynamic is born out by other instances including the Contragate scandal where the Tower Commission determined in testimony of all the top people, McFarland and the people at the highest levels, that one day, July 15, 1985 was this day they all name as the key day when the President of the United States signs a Finding allowing the shipment of TOE missiles to Israel . . . I went back and looked that day up -- that all of them had named in the Tower Report -- to see what Reagan was supposedly doing that day. Because Reagan later said that he could not remember signing that. In fact, on July 15, 1985 Reagan was in an eight-hour prostate operation all day and Bush was acting President of the United States for those eight hours.

It was clear to me that Bush had signed the Finding. That it was a covert operation that Reagan didn't know anything about and wasn't allowed to know anything about. When the stuff started to break, they had to then shred the signed papers and get Oliver North and the boys in there to do the shredding because it would have shown Bush's signature all over it. Bush was actually calling the shots for Contragate.

There was a strange incident that Mae Brussell noticed that they brought blood in to him. First, it is unusual for them to bring blood because the Secret Service already knows when they travel to a city what hospital has blood and what the closest one is. They make sure that the hospitals nearby where the president travels, and those DC hospitals, have enough blood of his type in storage. It was unusual, first, that they didn't have enough and secondly, this vehicle that arrived to bring the blood wasn't anything formal from the pictures. It looked like some kind of a van where somebody had painted a red cross on the back of it but it clearly was not an official vehicle. Mae thought that tainted blood might've been brought in and caused Reagan problems later with cancer or other things.Generally, his care there was certainly better than what would have happened to him. Interestingly enough, when the ABC News Anchor asked the doctor this and he said, `In my trauma room, they are going to stay there and we're not going to move him.' The response of the news anchor was, `No matter how much the Navy yells?' The doctor said, `That's right. No matter how much the Navy yells.' The question that we have to ask, `What is the Navy yelling about moving the president for after he's been shot?' Meanwhile, Brady, who's lying on the ground, and still on the ground five minutes after Reagan takes off, ends up getting to G.W.U. before Reagan does. Reagan's on his way to Bethesda. Brady, who takes five extra minutes to even get the ambulance in to load him, gets to G.W.U. and is taken in on a stretcher surrounded by Secret Service agents. That became confused with Reagan. In the first hour, they said Reagan was shot, he wasn't shot, he was dead, he wasn't dead, Brady was shot, he wasn't shot, he was dead, he wasn't dead. The stories went back and forth on the news about who had been shot and who was alive or dead. Nothing was clear. And then that Reagan had gone in to the hospital on a stretcher and then another story that Reagan had walked in on his own. The problem was that Reagan didn't get back to G.W.U. until after Brady was there, like a good 15-to-20 minutes later before Reagan finally shows up and does walk in. They finally start dealing with him because he does have a collapsed lung but he isn't shot to the extent that he can't move. But that's what confused the story as to what condition Reagan was in. At first, I wondered if they were buying time or what was happening. But it is very significant, I think, that Reagan was taken somewhere else and then turned around. I think the timing of the turn around relates to a huge fight that they later admitted broke out in the situation room at the White House in the emergency between the Reagan loyalists and the Bush loyalists in the administration. There was a clear split along those lines because Reagan represents the southern California (what they used to call) `Irish Mob Money' out there and the southern rim economy -- the military-industrial complex and Bush is somewhat of a cross-over coming out of Yale and the upper class schools but also having his money in the south. There are different loyalties. That was clear in a number of instances. One was when Bush helped to get Haig appointed as Secretary of State. The entire Cabinet staff underneath him was already pre-appointed and he wasn't allowed to pick or choose any of them, or fire any of them. So it was like he was a figure head put up at the head of this agency that he wasn't really allowed to run. Then just a few days before the shooting of Reagan, there was a switch where Bush replaced Haig as the head of an emergency preparedness committee or unit that they had at the White House. The press was asking Bush right after he was appointed in place of Haig -- this was just three days before the shooting -- `What constitutes an emergency for the purpose of this special office?' And Bush said, "The president will know it when he sees it." I think he meant that he -- Reagan -- would know it when he saw it lying on the ground dying. This I believe was a coup. The black box disappeared for several hours. There was an attempt to get the card that activated the black box by the Secret Service and Rodriguez -- the guy that was carrying it, that took it away from the President as he wasn't supposed to do -- came back three hours later to get the activating card that the FBI had taken out of the pants they had cut off of Reagan in the emergency room. The FBI guy said `I'd better call the Director.' Sessions was down in this big fight that they were having in the situation room and Sessions told him `no -- hold onto the card.' There was that kind of transition-of-power going on -- who was actually going to control things and there were switch-overs about the Strategic Air Command bomber pilots, again, not having code books aboard on March 31, 81 like they didn't on November 22, 63. This was a classic transition-of-power situation. I think, the loyalists won the concession that Reagan will be allowed to stay alive but Bush would come into power and at that point Haig emerged from the situation room to the press and said, his famous quote, "Gentlemen, I am in charge here until the Vice-President returns." That meant two things: number one, that they were going extra constitutional -- beyond twenty-fifth amendment, a military take-over and Haig in this office of preparedness, prior to Bush and basically he's taking charge. The press were questioning What does this mean? It's not the twenty-fifth amendment which goes to the Speaker of the House or the Vice-President. What's happening that Haig can come up and say this? What they don't understand is all that Constitution stuff is pushed aside once they declare National Emergencies. Then they go into FEMA and they have whole other orders of succession that have to do more with the military and the Pentagon than with any of the civilian sector. So Haig is jumping into that breech. Haig has his own strange progress up the chain-of-command and at one point jumps over literally hundreds of other people that were in line to be promoted when Califono moves him up into these high positions to take over the White House for the removal of Richard Nixon. So Haig is part of their larger game. The second thing Haig is saying is `until the Vice-President returns.' Bush is said to be in a jovial mood on a flight between (of all places) Fort Worth and Dallas when he gets the news. There is no indication that his joviality diminished. He says that he'll come back in a few hours. There is no rush to get back on his part. Again this lack of any emergency response indicates to me that the thing is planned, they knew it was going to happen, the only thing that didn't work out right was that Reagan actually survived the shooting and survived this small disc going in under his arm. They've got a patsy. But Hinkley, instead of being taken under civilian custody or even federal custody -- he is in a military district in DC but he is also in several federal districts -- he's whisked off to Quantico Marine Base and that's where he is held for questioning. I think that that was part of his debriefing and deprogramming. But he's not taken under civilian control, he's taken under military custody. Then he's moved from there for psychiatric evaluation to Fort Butner, South Carolina, which was the first prison that was developed where the cells (and the blueprints) were called labs. It was the first mind-control experimentation prison in the country. He spends his time down there. Again with a group of psychiatrists that are interlinked with other assassinations and then he is eventually brought to court and declared not guilty by reason of insanity for the assassination attempt.

Contragate involved the anti-Castro Cubans, it involved covert operatives, it involved drug dealings, as well as the illegal shipment of these missiles. It was a huge scandal that again began to break open like Watergate did. But it was delimited by the people who were put in to investigate it and it was never allowed to go to the full extent of what it represented, including martial-law and military take-over plans that existed both at the time of Watergate -- the Thomas Charles Houston Plan -- and Oliver North's joint plan with FEMA, for a military take-over and martial-law at the time of Contragate.

But when Senator Jack Brooks brought that up, Senator Inouye -- who had also intervened back during the Watergate hearings -- blocked it from any open testimony and it went into a closed hearing. Then Congressperson Carl Stokes came out of that meeting and was quoted on CNN saying that they had decided that no such plan had ever existed.

But the plan not only existed, it had a name. It was Readiness Exercise '84 -- Rex '84 -- the plans were very clearly in the works and Ed Meese and Tom Turnage and Reagan's top people had participated in martial-law planning in California earlier. A lot of that stuff was not allowed to come to light and a much broader scandal than what was talked about was buried.

It's a convoluted story but the patterns are always the same. You have a patsy that takes the blame. You have a second gunman that never comes to light. And you have an ascendance of power. That's what I think happened after that point: that Reagan was basically allowed to function but Bush was President.

2 MLK article in Memphis online news

politicalassassinations — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:00:11 +0000

Taken from,

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/01/martin-luther-king-jr-40-years-later-case-never/ Notice how HSCA chair Stokes completely ignores the findings of the 1999 civil trial when saying that "No one to my knowledge has come forth with any factual evidence of any kind that would in any way controvert the findings of our committee,". Mr Stokes should read William Pepper's reprinted 'An Act of State' Despite committee's findings on Martin Luther King shooting, conspiracy theories persist

By Bartholomew Sullivan (Contact) Tuesday, April 1, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Thirty years after the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded its exhaustive review of the Memphis shooting of Martin Luther King, its chairman, Louis Stokes, stands by its findings. "No one to my knowledge has come forth with any factual evidence of any kind that would in any way controvert the findings of our committee," Stokes, now a retired lawyer in both Cleveland and Washington, said in a recent interview with The Commercial Appeal.

Associated Press files

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (third from left) is accompanied by Hosea Williams (from left), Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy at the Lorraine Motel April 3, 1968. That evening, King delivered his last public speech to an audience of more than 2,000 at Mason Temple.

But some have looked at the evidence and drawn different conclusions.

The committee found it "ironic" that the FBI's ongoing surveillance and harassment campaign against King helped prove that the bureau did not have foreknowledge of his 1968 assassination in Memphis. It found that James Earl Ray did not harbor "deep-seated racial animosity" sufficient to motivate the killing, but that he might have been lured by a potential financial reward. And it found evidence that others -- including a now-dead lawyer in St. Louis -- were offering a payoff to kill King, which proved there was a conspiracy, and that Ray, a Missouri prison escapee, might have been aware of it. But it also determined that Ray was the lone assassin and that neither the FBI nor the Memphis police were complicit in the killing. It made that finding despite concluding that indefensibly "substandard" Memphis police work may have aided Ray's escape. Perhaps most notably, the committee found plausible a strange explanation for the removal of a black Memphis police detective from his post outside the Lorraine Motel just hours before the killing. Some say the committee ignored evidence or drew the wrong conclusions. John Judge, founder of the Coalition on Political Assassinations and one who believes, like some in King's family, that Ray did not pull the trigger, scoffs at the panel's work. "Look at what they call conclusions," said Judge. "They can't determine anything except that Ray did it." Others, like Ray lawyer William F. Pepper, in his 2003 book, "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King," suggest the committee overlooked evidence it collected that "frequently conflicts with conclusions of the (committee's) report itself." The investigation got off to a rocky start and its first two chairmen resigned before Stokes got to nod from then-House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill. He said there was "a lot of politicking to overcome the general feeling that the committee was going to be an embarrassment and the best thing to do was to shut it down." Stokes knew King before the assassination. King had organized the Cleveland voter registration drive that led to Stokes' brother, Carl, becoming the first black mayor of a major U.S. city in November 1967. Stokes and King waited in Carl Stokes' campaign headquarters for results to come in that night. Despite that intimacy, Stokes said he was determined to approach the investigation without preconceived views. Stokes said he spent eight hours at the Brushy Mountain prison with Ray before the hearings. He said that, by the time of his testimony, "I probably knew as much about James Earl Ray as he knew about himself. In interrogating him, I knew the type of cunning and evasive individual I'd be cross-examining." "He was a very cunning criminal," Stokes recalled. "He was someone who was going to try by any means to keep from admitting that he had killed Dr. King." The investigation looked into the possibility that the FBI and the Memphis Police Department were involved in the assassination, but concluded they were not. It took testimony both in closed and open session on the issue of the removal of Ed Redditt, a black Memphis police detective, from an observation post next to the Lorraine Motel on April 4, just two hours before the assassination. It also looked into the transfer of two black firemen from the observation firehouse. King's plane had been met the day before by a four-man security detail led by Insp. Don H. Smith. The detail followed King throughout his first day in Memphis, but was withdrawn the night before the shooting because of King's party's perceived lack of cooperation, according to the committee report. Redditt maintained surveillance of the motel on April 3 and 4 until he was called back to headquarters to meet with then-Police Chief James McDonald, Fire Chief Frank C. Holloman and an unidentified Secret Service official. They placed him under police protection (Melvin Burgess, later the city's police director, was part of the detail) because of reports that Redditt was the target of death threats. U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., the Memphis Democrat who was a member of the select committee and agreed then declined to be interviewed for this story, reportedly asked Redditt in closed-door testimony whether he was planning to seek elective office. Redditt, now 77 and a track coach at the Fayette Academy in Somerville, has always been suspicious about his removal from the scene. In a recent interview, Redditt said the suggestion that he was unsympathetic to the striking sanitation workers was part of a strategy to discredit him. And when he finally returned to work, he said: "Nobody said one earthly thing about a contract (killing)." The committee report summarized its Redditt investigation with the conclusion that he'd been "removed because his superior perceived real danger to his safety." It added: "The committee found that Redditt's removal was not part of any plot to facilitate the assassination of Dr. King." The post-assassination operation of the Memphis Police Department also came under review. The department was criticized for its "inexcusable" failure to have a contingency plan for trouble in or near the Lorraine Motel, for an "indefensible" failure to post an all-points bulletin for the suspected white Mustang get-away car and for failure to set up road-blocks on major arteries leading out of Memphis. "Nevertheless, the committee found no evidence that the substandard performance of the Memphis police in the aftermath of the assassination was part of a conspiracy to facilitate the assassination of Dr. King or the escape from Memphis of James Earl Ray," the final report said. Assassination records remain sealed WASHINGTON -- It may be another 20 years before anyone sees the 600,000 pages of sealed records on the killing of Martin Luther King examined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Some, including academics, researchers and at least one member of that committee, think that's too long, especially for a committee that concluded in 1978 that King's death was the result of a conspiracy. "King belongs to history, and the incident certainly does," said John Judge, co-founder of the Washington-based Coalition on Political Assassinations, which is meeting Thursday through Sunday in Memphis. "I don't think it was a good idea for them to have locked up the information in the first place for 50 years when you're coming out with as explosive a conclusion as they did: that there's a probably conspiracy...and then say nobody can look at the files for 50 years." But the committee that looked at both the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and King in 1978 simply complied with existing House rules, said its chairman, Louis Stokes, a retired congressman from Ohio. "We had a lot of raw material that would have tended, if released publicly, to defame, embarrass and otherwise effect innocent people," Stokes said. "You cannot just release materials like that, so we followed the House rules and sealed those files under the 50-year rule." Over the years, efforts to make those sealed records available have been attempted through Freedom of Information Act requests and federal legislation. In 2005, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., picked up 64 co-sponsors, including many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, for a measure that would have opened the King files as well as sealed court files and grand jury records, too. (Neither U.S. Reps. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., nor Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., signed on as co-sponsors, records show.) The legislation, with an identical Senate bill sponsored by John Kerry, D-Mass., died in committee. Shortly after he took office last year, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., had legislation drafted by his staff and circulated to Congressional Black Caucus members, the King family, and others, that would have unsealed the files. After a few months, he quietly withdrew plans to introduce it. There was no support. Stokes said Cohen asked him about it. "He called me and I told him I did not know of any necessity for the release of those files," Stokes said. Cohen said the public deserves to know, but he won't pursue it without more support. U.S. Rep. Walter E. Fauntroy, who chaired the subcommittee on the King assassination, has called for more than a decade for the investigative files to be unsealed, saying "there won't be any closure on any of this" until they are. Now retired and a Washington-based minister, he did not respond to repeated requests to elaborate. Judge, the assassination researcher, said he's not indifferent to the King family's wishes or to privacy concerns of other Civil Rights leaders who might be unflatteringly mentioned in the archived material. But he said provisions can be written into the law to protect those interests while releasing relevant historical records. "Are we going to wait for everyone to be dead before we find out anything about what happened?" he asked.

BBC on MLK assassination- Jackson, Pepper, Posner.

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:23:46 +0000

The BBC ran a story on their main page today about the lingering questions in the assassination of Martin Luther King. King's assassination is the closest to being solved and resolved legally out of the four big assassinations of the 1960s. This article cites Jesse Jackson, Dr William Pepper and Gerald Posner. At no point does the article acknowledge the 1999 civil trial brought by the King family which determined that Llyod Jowers and other unnamed co defendants were party to a conspiracy to assassinate Dr King. For the video of the opening and closing statements in that trial, see one of the earlier entries on this blog. Pepper excellently deconstructs Mr Posner's work in his book 'An Act of State', for a thorough analysis of Mr Posner's book 'Case Closed' on the Kennedy assassination see Michael T. Griffiths' website, http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/id81.htm

Seeking answers on King's killer

By Vincent Dowd BBC News

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 40 years ago on 4 April 1968. A year later, James Earl Ray admitted to being the assassin. Because of that guilty plea there was no full trial. But Ray changed his story almost at once and until his death in 1998 insisted he did not murder Dr King. So was he the killer? And if so, did he work alone?

To many, 40 years after his death, Martin Luther King has become a sort of secular saint. In 1968, many whites in Tennessee saw things differently. He was a rabble-rouser, an agitator, possibly a Communist. In a society built on open racial divisions, his arrival in Memphis in support of striking black sanitation workers was a source of white anger and resentment. In that very different America, not everyone was saddened by his death. Dr King died of a bullet wound to the throat just after 6pm on 4 April. He had been standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, talking to colleagues in the motel parking lot about dinner plans. Among them, aged 26, was Jesse Jackson - later a candidate for the presidency. At this distance, he can smile with affection recalling Dr King's last words. "I was coming across the parking lot and he said 'Jesse - you don't have on a tie'. I said the prerequisite for eating was an appetite, not a tie! He said I was crazy and laughed. "Then he looked at the guy who was with me, (the musician) Ben Branch, and he said 'Ben be sure to play my favourite song tonight - Precious Lord'. And then the bullet hit him in the neck and he was killed instantly." Hired hand? The official version would later be that James Earl Ray, working alone, had shot Dr King with a rifle from the small bathroom at the rear of the run-down boarding house across the street from the motel.

Jesse Jackson believes that is a partial truth, at best. "I'm convinced Ray was not the lone shooter. He didn't have the money, the mobility nor the motive to have done it. The fact that James Earl Ray was able to get out of the city and out of the country means he was a hired hand. The government seems to have had the most motive for attacking Dr King." The official line, never tested in court, remains that Ray was solely responsible for the murder - and initially Ray admitted to that. He had been a no-account criminal, brought up in poverty in Missouri, who escaped from jail a year before the murder. After the assassination he fled Memphis, escaping to Canada and then London. He travelled briefly to Lisbon, apparently hoping to arrange contacts with white mercenaries in Africa. He returned to London and was finally arrested at Heathrow trying to board a flight for Brussels. Difficult questions Those are some of the few incontrovertible facts. A small library of books exists about what may have happened between Ray's jailbreak and his arrest. Those who insist Ray was indeed the gunman face difficult questions - yet so do those who claim he was not. There are many such questions. Here are three of the most obvious which each side faces; first, those which his defenders have to answer: Ray at first admitted to the murder. Isn't that the end of the story? Author and lawyer William Pepper, now writing his third book about the case, says Ray was poorly advised by his first attorney, the late Percy Foreman. Mr Foreman told his client that unless he pleaded guilty he could face the electric chair (although the state of Tennessee carried out no executions between 1960 and 2000). Ray sought to change his plea within days but was not allowed to do so. If Ray was innocent, why flee Memphis at all? Ray always maintained he heard on his car radio that Memphis police were looking for someone resembling him following the assassination. As an escaped convict he could not afford to give himself up. No one denies Ray bought a gun at least similar to that used in the shooting shortly beforehand. Why did he do so? And why rent a room in the boarding house opposite the Lorraine Motel? This all touches on Ray's basic defence. He claimed that while on the run he met a man called "Raoul" in Canada who set him up as a patsy. Raoul, claimed Ray, said he wanted him to run guns. The rifle was a sample for potential buyers and the room was rented - using an assumed name - as a potential meeting place. Pepper claims Raoul is alive today and living near New York City. Others have doubted his very existence, suggesting he was invented by Ray to explain away all awkward facts. On the other side, there are three key points which those who argue Ray was the gunman have to answer: The shot which killed Martin Luther King was highly accurate. Yet Ray, by no means a marksman, is said to have shot at an awkward angle through a half-closed window while standing in a bath-tub. The author Gerald Posner wrote a book explaining why Ray must be the murderer. Posner says other writers overstate the difficulty of the shot and that Ray had used guns in petty robberies. Ray's lack of gun-skills also raises problems for those who say he may have been the gunman but was employed by others. With so many better marksmen available, why choose Ray? Ray was a small-time crook. How did he get the money to go to Europe? Mr Posner, who has researched Ray's life more thoroughly than anyone, is convinced he received no money in advance but may have believed he would receive a large "bounty" afterwards. The author says Ray already had money from dealing in marijuana. Ray would probably never have been traced were it not for one strange act. On leaving the boarding house, says the official version, he dropped the rifle and other objects traceable to him on the pavement wrapped in a bedspread. Why would an assassin choose to leave behind such evidence? Mr Posner admits this act is hard to rationalise. He speculates that either Ray saw police cars and panicked or that an accomplice was meant to collect the gun and dispose of it but failed to do so. Mr Pepper believes this is all part of what he calls "the set-up story". If anyone other than Ray was involved in the murder - or if Ray was wholly innocent - those responsible are now either dead or reaching the ends of their lives. Some maintain the truth lies locked in FBI files. The 40th anniversary of the King murder - and the imminent arrival of a new US president - is prompting them to call for those files to be opened at last.

Memphis conference promotional video

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:24:41 +0000

Please feel free to distribute this promotional video for the COPA conference in Memphis. This is COPA's first youtube video, we hope that many more will follow. Please subscribe to our profile and add us as a friend, http://www.youtube.com/user/COPAorg [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv06AyVaRcY&hl=en]

Joe Brown and William Pepper on NPR

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:56:24 +0000

Judge Joe Brown and Dr William Pepper discuss the King assassination on NPR's 'Tell me more' morning show. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89372294 Run time: 6min 49sec [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CSpD2zm8Q&hl=en]

Alexander Cockburn on MLK, RFK and JFK

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:16:10 +0000

There is a huge reluctance on the intellectual left in the US to evaluate either JFK or RFK's threat to the standing order. They were by no means going to deconstruct the capitalist structures that had served them so well , but they both stood in the way of war, profit and rule by fear. Cockburn shares Chomsky's belief that King was assassinated because he posed a threat, but JFK did not pose a threat and thus his death was not conducted by his own class or his own government. Logic has never been so misused, so much so that I dare not call it logic. I would dearly like to know the extent of reading both Cockburn and Chomsky have done on this topic. Sometimes ones insights into power and ones critique of politics is no match for a seat, a book and an open mind. The research community has previously discussed Alexander Cockburn's and Noam Chomsky's reluctance to look at the assassinations with an objective eye , here again is another reminder that one can be intelligent and still lack knowledge.

Did the Elites Want MLK Dead--If So, Why?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn04052008.html I believe Oswald killed JFK and Sirhan killed Bobby. Lone gunmen both. With MLK, it could be a different matter. And with the infinitely more radical Malcom X it certainly was. The Kennedys were no threat to ruling power. They were part of the ruling power. Whatever his actual function--and King was given a hard time as an Uncle Tom by radicals in the later Sixties--the ruling power construed him as a threat. He was assassinated forty years ago just after 6 pm as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A single rifle bullet hit him in the jaw, then severed his spinal cord. James Earl Ray, a white man, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to 99 years. Ray was certainly the gunman. But there are credible theories of a conspiracy, possibly involving US Army intelligence, whose role in the life and death of Martin Luther King was explored by Stephens Tompkins in the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1993. The Army's interest in the King family stretched back to 1917 when the War Department opened a file on King's maternal grandfather, first president of Atlanta's branch of the NAACP. King's father, Martin Sr., also entered Army intelligence files as a potential troublemaker, as did Martin Jr. in 1947 when he was 18. He was attending Dorothy Lilley's Intercollegiate School in Atlanta and 111th Military Intelligence Group in Fort McPherson in Atlanta suspected Ms Lilley of having Communist ties. King's famous denunciation of America's war in Vietnam came exactly a year before his murder, before a crowd of 3,000 in the Riverside Church in Manhattan. He described Vietnam's destruction at the hands of ''deadly Western arrogance,'' insisting that ''we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." US Army spies secretly recorded black radical Stokely Carmichael warning King, "The Man don't care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got trouble." Carmichael was right. After the 1967 Detroit riots 496 black men under arrest were interviewed by agents of the Army's Psychological Operations Group, dressed as civilians. It turned out King was by far the most popular leader. That same year, watching the great antiwar march on Washington in October 1967 from the roof of the Pentagon Major General William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for Army intelligence, concluded that "the empire was coming apart at the seams". He thought there were too few reliable troops to fight the war in Vietnam and hold the line at home. The Army increased surveillance on King. Green Berets and other Special Forces veterans from Vietnam began making street maps and identifying sniper sites in major American cities. The Ku Klux Klan was recruited by the 20th Special Forces Group, headquartered in Alabama, as a subsidiary intelligence network. The Army began offering 30.06 sniper rifles to police departments, including that of Memphis. King was dogged by spy units through early '67. A Green Beret unit was operating in Memphis the day he was shot. The bullet that killed him came from a 30.06 rifle purchased in a Memphis store. Army intelligence chiefs became increasingly hysterical over the threat of King to national stability. After his Vietnam speech the major US newspapers savaged King. Fifteen years later the New York Times was still bitter when the notion of a national holiday honoring the civil rights leader was being pressed--with ultimate success--by labor unions and black groups. "Why not a Martin Luther King Day?" an NYT editorial asked primly. "Dr King, a humble man, would have objected to giving that much importance to any individual. Nor should he be given singular tribute if that demeans other historical black figures." Give one of them a holiday and they'll all be wanting one. Within hours of King's murder rioting broke out in 80 cities across the country. Dozens of people, mostly black were killed. On April 6 the Oakland cornered the Black Panther leadership and when one of the young leaders, Bobby Hutton, emerged with his shirt off and his hands up, shot him dead. Futher police executions of Panthers followed, most notoriously the killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, as they slept, by the Chicago police, with FBI complicity, in December, 1969. In contrast to Hutton, the Panthers and above all Malcolm X, slain in 1965, white liberal opinion, resentments at the disloyalty of the Riverside Church speech conveniently forgotten, has hailed King as a man who chose to work within the system and who furthermore failed to make any significant dent on business as usual. In his last years King was haunted by a sense of failure. Amid a failed organizing campaign in Chicago he was booed at a mass meting there and, as he lay sleepless that night he wrote later that he knew why: "I had urged them [his fellow blacks ] to have faith in America and in white society They were now booing because they felt were unable to deliver on our promises They were now hostile because they were watching the dream they had so readily accepted turn into a nightmare." As the radical journalist Andrew Kopkind wrote shortly after King's assassination, "That he failed to change the system that brutalizes his race is a profound relief to the white majority. As a reward they have now elevated his minor successes into major triumphs." Forty years on, America is still disfigured by racial injustice. Militant black leadership has all but disappeared. To black radicals Obama's sedate homilies and respectful paeans to America's ladders of advancement available to the industrious are to the fierce demands for justice of Malcolm X and of King in his more radical moments, as Muzak is to Beethoven. Obama is caught, even as King was. The moment whites fear he is raising the political volume, he's savaged with every bludgeon of convenience, starting with the robust sermons of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sin is to have reminded whites that there are black Americans who are really angry. "Damn America," roared the Rev Wright. King was just as rough at Riverside Church in the speech that so terrified the white elites: "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government." Honesty of this sort from a black politician in America extorts due retribution. And an Aside on Eldridge Cleaver Reading up on the death of Bobby Hutton, and MLK, a few weeks ago I came across Henry Louis Gates Jr's interview with him for Frontline, from which I recently quoted some lines. I'd been inclined to think of Eldridge Cleaver as a somehat pathetic figure in his later years, after a failed bid in the 1980s to bring the codpiece back into sartorial repute. But Cleaver was a smart fellow who understood that aside most Americans really believe in rebirth. So, amid problems with crack addiction, burglary charges and the rest of it, he sensibly rebirthed himself in the 90s as a Christian and a Republican. He remained as sharp as a tack and essentially a Marxist in political analysis right untl the end, as his interview by Henry Louis Gates for Frontline shows. This must have been done shortly before his death at the age of 62, in 1998. Next time you want to explain Marx's theory of the reserve army of the unemployed to someone, you could do a lot worse than quote Cleaver here: GATES: Are you optimistic about the future? I mean given the fact that we have this large black underclass and a large black middle class, it looks like we have two nations and they're both black. CLEAVER: We have more nations than that because we have poor white people, we have poor Indians, we have poor -- we have got to eliminate the economic basis of the underclass by providing them with jobs not handouts from the federal government. That is the failure of our economic system, that you have economists who say that you've got to keep the people on the brink of starvation in order to motivate them to work and hustle around. The failure of the capitalistic economic system is that they did not provide for full employment. They were satisfied with a certain percentile and then they were willing to keep a lot of people perpetually in reserve and that was to keep wages down and all that kind of pressure. We have got to have a policy of full employment and by restoring the frontier and the union of the western hemisphere it is a full employment program for the whole hemisphere. There's a lot of work to be done but we have to reorient ourselves from a system of scarcity and a belief system in scarcity and there is no problem that we have on our agenda that we cannot solve. GATES: But Tupac was a gangster, wasn't he? CLEAVER: Huey was a gangster. GATES: Oh, he was? CLEAVER: I'm not-- I'm talking about a real gangster. Tupac, they were talking about gangster rap. Huey P. Newton was a gun toting gangster, but that's not all he was. I'm saying he went through that experience as a criminal, but the thing about Tupac was his spirit and his rebellion against oppression. This comes from the way that he was raised and the values that were transmitted to him. His father died in a gun fight with the New York police department and so Afena was a very strong stalwart of the Black Panther party and Tupac was raised like that. He is what we call a panther cub. And that was what he was about. And that is why it was such a blow, [Tupac's] liquidation, and many people think that it was the COINTELPRO that took him out because the story doesn't hold up because anybody who knows Las Vegas knows that after the Mike Tyson fight there, there is no way that anybody going to drive along upside of another car, shoot them and drive away because it's gridlocked for blocks around there, man. So that is not what happened. There is more to it than that. GATES: Eldridge, now, thirty years later, the smoke has cleared, bodies are buried, people have moved on. Was it worth it? I mean was the Panther movement worth it? Was it a good thing? CLEAVER: It was a good thing and like all things, there was good and bad, but nothing like what this nitwit, Horowitz, is talking about because that is not where we were coming from. And I regret the way that the Party was repressed because it left a lot of unfinished business because we had planned to make a transition to the political arena and we would have been able to transmute that violence and that legacy into legitimate and peaceful channels. As it was they chopped off the head and left the body there armed. That's why all these young bloods out there now, they've got the rhetoric but without the political direction and they've got the guns. A man told me in Berkeley, said-- 'Eldridge, the two most dangerous demographics in the Bay Area right now are young black men with guns and middle-aged white women with Volvos.' GATES: You're crazy. CLEAVER: They're taking out more people than anything else. GATES: Will history judge you and your contemporaries from the '60s -- Karenga, Rap, Stokely, Angela, the whole gang, Julian Bond -- favorably, do you think? CLEAVER: I think they will. I think they will give us Fs where we deserve them and they'll give us As where we deserve them and they're going to give Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver an A plus.

Charles Cabbage on Democracy Now

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:48:43 +0000

Charles Cabbage was a witness to the assassination of Dr King. He is one of COPA's speakers at this year Memphis conference, http://www.politicalassassinations.com/Conferences.html Amy Goodman also spoke to Jesse Jackson, Dr Vincent Harding and Memphis police detective Jerry Williams. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/4/mlk_anniversary_placeholder

AMY GOODMAN:

CHARLES CABBAGE:

COPA quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer

politicalassassinations — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:01:33 +0000

Martin Luther King's murder no mystery to Louis Stokes

Former congressman still convinced conspiracy theory is without merit

Friday, April 04, 2008

Robert L. Smith

Plain Dealer Reporter

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1207298002260790.xml&coll=2&thispage=3

Louis Stokes knew Martin Luther King Jr. as a friend and confidant before he made it his duty to find out who killed him. King organized voter registration drives that helped Stokes' younger brother, Carl, become the first black mayor of a major American city in November 1967. Then he stood beside Louis Stokes at campaign headquarters in Cleveland, discussing the meaning of the moment, as volunteers celebrated in the street. Less than a decade later, Congressman Louis Stokes led the inquiry into King's murder as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. His love and admiration for the man he still calls Martin stoked his emotions but did not cloud his judgment, Stokes insists. At the 40th anniversary of King's death, he remains convinced that his committee got it right. About 6 p.m. April 4, 1968, King was shot with a high-powered rifle as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray alone pulled the trigger, maybe for money. The government and the police had nothing to do with it. Those conclusion have inspired decades of second-guessing, grand conspiracies and speculative books and movies. Even in Cleveland, where Stokes' reputation is sterling, doubts linger. "I never have thought that they got to the bottom of it," said Stanley Tolliver, a Cleveland lawyer who represented King during his civil rights work in Cleveland in the late 1960s. Tolliver said he thinks that Ray, an escaped convict, pleaded guilty to a crime someone else masterminded. "I was never satisfied that he was the one who did it. I don't think he was smart enough," Tolliver said. "I think somebody put him up to it and he copped to it to avoid the death penalty." Stokes is not surprised to hear Tolliver's theory. He has heard hundreds. During a 29-year career in Congress, his expertise in leading sensitive investigations led to a familiarity with conspiracy theories. "People are fascinated by assassinations," said Stokes, who practices law between Cleveland and Washington, D.C., with Squire Sanders & Dempsey. "Just look at the Lincoln assassination. People are still speculating, writing books about it." Stokes said he stands by his committee's conclusions, in part, because they have stood the test of time. "What I look at now is that no one has been able to refute our findings," he said. "Nobody -- with all the investigations going on all over the country -- nobody has been able to refute our findings." His committee's report was less than complete, he concedes. But then, it faced unusual challenges. King's murder was eight years old and President John F. Kennedy had been dead 13 years when a task force was assembled to investigate both assassinations. The rumors of government complicity and cover-ups had never ceased. The nation needed to hear the truth. Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill turned to Stokes. "What we encountered was evidence that had been destroyed, important witnesses who were deceased," Stokes said. Still, he was determined to run down every rumor and accusation, he said. His committee dismissed most allegations and confirmed a few. It concluded that Ray was likely part of a conspiracy, a plot to kill King. Ray was aware of a bounty offered by a St. Louis lawyer and he had stalked King across the country, Stokes said. Ray needed help to escape to Mexico and to England, where he was captured. "We think his brothers, who were also notorious criminals, helped finance his trips," Stokes said. But the committee knocked down the most explosive allegations. Law enforcement authorities were not involved in King's death, it concluded, and there was no government cover-up. Over the years, many have questioned Ray's role as assassin, including members of the King family, who supported Ray's call for a new trial before he died in prison in 1998. Skepticism crescendoed in 1992 after the release of "JFK," Oliver Stone's movie about the assassination of President Kennedy. "That was the weirdest, wildest, most senseless movie I've ever seen," Stokes said. He still marvels at its premise: "Our government killed our president and then we had a congressional committee cover it up." The closing credits listed Stokes' Washington address and he was deluged with accusatory letters and phone calls. Soon after, Stokes took action to begin to publicize evidence collected for the Kennedy investigation. Records from the King investigation remain sealed and likely will be for another 20 years, following Stokes' instructions in 1978. That secrecy bothers John Judge, a co-founder of the Washington-based Coalition on Political Assassinations. "We don't think the committee did everything wrong," Judge said. "We don't think they went far enough. We don't think they were exhaustive." Judge's group argues the sealed records could shed new light on an unsolved crime. Stokes said the release of interview transcripts and other papers could embarrass and malign innocent people. Confident that he got his man, Stokes finds himself thinking instead about who was lost. When he first heard over the radio that King had been shot, he sat in his car and cried. "There was a greatness about him that you don't feel with ordinary people," Stokes said. "It's impossible to measure what our nation lost. He changed us all." King was, he noted, 39 years old. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: rsmith@plaind.com, 216-999-4024

An appeal for justice

politicalassassinations — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:03:08 +0000

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Students, As many of you know, the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday announced its intention to re-try my father, former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, on miscellaneous charges of "public corruption" immediately on the heels of U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab's declaration of a mistrial following the government's first such effort. The prosecutor not only wasted no time in doing so, but did not even take the customary and legally prudent step of polling the jurors to determine how they were split. Without getting into my own thoughts on the original or ongoing motives for this prosecution, I feel it important to point out that this jury of my father's peers, following nearly two months of testimony by 44 prosecution witnesses, and despite the fact that the defense did not find it necessary to call any witnesses to the stand, were unable to return a guilty verdict on even a single count -- and this despite the fact that they'd extended their deliberations, under the judge's orders, far past the point of deadlock. By any reasonable standard, the case against my father would appear to lack substance at this point in time. I'm writing to you as a son, as a Western Pennsylvanian, and as an American, to ask you to share your own opinions on this matter with the editors of our leading local daily newspapers, as well as with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan herself. While Ms. Buchanan will not be easy to dissuade from her chosen course of action, there is reason to believe that, faced with ample public pressure, she will have no choice but to consider her office's alternatives. And in a society (and region) faced with the multiple blights of gang warfare, drug trafficking, child pornography and other criminal activities, there is no question she has some "alternatives" to pursue. By contrast, if a second trial is permitted to proceed, as scheduled, on May 27, the costs to both my father (financial, professional and otherwise) and to the taxpayers of Western Pennsylvania (already conservatively estimated at over $200,000) will continue to climb. If you have any thoughts on this matter, please make your voice heard by writing to one or more of the addresses listed below. The time to act is now, before new charges are filed. On behalf of my father, my family, and the cause of justice, I thank you. Sincerely, Ben Wecht p.s. For those unfamiliar with the case, here are some pertinent links to recent news items: Retry Wecht? No (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_561535.html) Some jurors skeptical of case against Wecht (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08101/872086-85.stm) The Wecht case: pronounce it dead (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08101/872069-155.stm) It's over: There is no need for a second Wecht trial (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08100/871522-35.stm) _____________________________________________________________________________ Letters to the Editor Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 34 Boulevard of the Allies Pittsburgh, PA 15222 FAX: 412-263-2014 EMAIL: letters@post-gazette.com (250-word maximum) Letters to the Editor Pittsburgh Tribune-Review D.L. Clark Building 503 Martindale St., 3rd Floor Pittsburgh, PA 15212 FAX: 412-320-7965 EMAIL: opinion@tribweb.com (200-word maximum)

The Honorable Mary Beth Buchanan

United States Attorney

United States Attorney's Office

Western District of Pennsylvania

U.S. Post Office & Courthouse, Suite 400

Seventh Avenue and Grant Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (NO maximum)

Documentary of the week-Conspiracy Test

politicalassassinations — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:51:15 +0000

We are pleased to announce the commencement of a weekly feature on the COPA blog- documentary day. Every week we will feature a new documentary or talk on the topic of political assassination. This week we bring you the discovery channel's 'Conspiracy Test', which is based on the work of RObert Joling and Philip Van Praag. These important new findings will be on show at COPA's conference on the RFK assassination in June, see our website for details- www.politicalassassinations.com [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaF6pW45d0o&hl=en]

Letter asks attorney general to end celebrity coroner case

politicalassassinations — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:29:39 +0000

For those of you that do not know, Cyril Wecht is a Warren Commission critic and expert on the pathological evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy. By Joe Mandak, Associated Press Writer | April 17, 2008 PITTSBURGH --Thirty-three prominent Pennsylvanians on Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking him to dismiss a fraud and theft indictment against celebrity pathologist Cyril Wecht. The letter argues that the case against the 77-year-old coroner is weak as indicated by the declaration of a mistrial on April 8 after jurors failed to reach a verdict following a seven-week trial. A new trial is scheduled for May 27. Wecht has earned millions investigating deaths, including those of JonBenet Ramsey, Elvis Presley and Vince Foster. The letter to Mukasey, given to The Associated Press by Wecht's attorneys, was signed by political leaders, attorneys, a retired FBI agent and some media members. The signees include Wecht's original defense attorney in the case, J. Alan Johnson, a former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh. "You brought your case to the people. The people have spoken. You have discharged your duty," the letter says. "Do not now summarily dismiss the findings of this jury, but rather dismiss the indictment." The letter notes that one anonymous juror told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that a "majority" of jurors favored acquitting Wecht. U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan responded in a written statement that her office will litigate the case in court, not in the media. Wecht is charged with wire fraud and theft for allegedly misusing his county staff to benefit his private practice and for allegedly trading unclaimed county morgue cadavers for office and lab space at a university where he taught. Wecht is also charged with mail fraud for allegedly overbilling his private clients, including other Pennsylvania prosecutors, for bogus travel expenses. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/04/17/letter_asks_attorney_general_to_end_celebrity_coroner_case?mode=PF

Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs

politicalassassinations — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:36:57 +0000

Today marks the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, an event of extreme importance to the assassination of President Kennedy. It could be said that this event was the beginning of the end for Kennedy, setting the anti Castro Cubans into action against him. Here follows a video disseminating Richard Nixon's remarks upon the "whole Bay of Pigs thing", which H.R. Haldeman alluded was a reference to the Kennedy assassination. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-y2KQvvYtg&hl=en]

COPA in Memphis- report

politicalassassinations — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:33:33 +0000

The COPA regional meeting in Memphis, TN, to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a success and an historic event. We got extensive press coverage in articles before and after the event in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (see COPA's blog). All of our meetings and speakers were listed in the Commercial Appeal's special calendar for the King anniversary, and were visible all week online and in print. We brought in about 10 people from the Memphis area through press notices and leafleting we did at various other conferences and events. Our keynote speaker was Judge Joe Brown, the appointed judge in the last appeal trial of James Earl Ray, who tested the alleged murder weapon only to find that it did not match the bullet in Dr. King's body. When he sought a final test, and comparison with earlier tests by the FBI and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he was removed from the case by the Tennessee Supreme Court, and Ray died in prison with the case still undecided. Judge Brown later testified in the civil suit, brought by the King family, to exonerate Ray and expose US government and military involvement in the assassination, as the jury ruled. COPA presented the Sylvia Meagher Award for seeking truth to both Judge Brown and to Jerry Ray, a brother to the framed assassin who has worked to prove his brother's innocence. Jerry Ray answered questions for us on the second day of the conference. Unfortunately, neither Lyndon Barsten, author of Truth At Last about Ray, nor his research assistant T Carter were able to speak at the event about his work. This important book, based on hard documentation, chronicles apparent psychological manipulation of Ray in the Army and his positioning as a patsy later in the assassination. Memphis was full of conferences that weekend. The April 4th Foundation held a commemorative banquet featuring civil rights leaders, where we attempted to add a COPA speaker. Harry Belafonte held a meeting on his Gathering for Justice, a program to stop the masssive incarceration of Black youth at LeMoyne Owens college nearby. We visited the National Action Committee's conference site at the ornate Peabody hotel and got to see the famous "duck walk" to the fountain. We joined their rally, led by Al Sharpton, with over a thousand people, and held out our COPA banners and leafleted the crowd about our conference that night. We lifted our banners on releasing the files high during a talk by Martin Luther King, III. We joined with the group in a March for Recommitment to King's program, down to the National Civil Rights Museum. the scene of the assassination, and saw the inspirational talks given from the balcony where King was killed by two of his children. We also took a critical tour of the Museum itself and the grounds outside, commenting on the phony sniper's nest bathroom window that has been preserved like the other one in Dallas at the Book Depository. The location of the actual assassination on the bushy hill across from the Lorraine Hotel, has been destroyed by reverse grading the dirt and breaking the retaining wall to put in a stairwell down to Mulberry St. from Main. We were able to be seen by hundreds of people with out COPA signs at the event as well, just before returning to hear Judge Brown. We visited the Dream Reborn conference, run by Green environmentalist groups and other youth-oriented programs and left out flyers out prominently. Our attendees came from New York, Georgia, DC, Kansas, Texas, California and as far away as England. An interview in advance on Black Ops radio got renewed attention to our website, and a video teaser designed for the site by webmaster John Geraghty has gotten hundreds of hits. Joe Green was able to get a hand-held video recording of the events and we will be posting some of that along with still photographs soon at the website. Now, we are preparing for a blockbuster meeting in Los Angeles from June 6-8 featuring great speakers and new, hard evidence of a second gun in the pantry where RFK was shot that night. We will have eyewitnesses, ballistics and audio experts, researchers and lawyers who work with Sirhan's case. Hope you can join us. Details available at www.politicalassassinations.com. John Judge

Bill Turner to speak at COPA in LA

politicalassassinations — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:50:46 +0000

Former FBI agent and author of 'The assassination of Robert Kennedy' William Turner has been announced as a speaker for the forthcoming COPA conference in June. Other speakers include documentarian and author Shane O'Sullivan, and displaying their new acoustics evidence will be Philip Van Praag and Robert Joling. Bio of William Turner here http://www.politicalassassinations.com/Conferences.html

Joling and Van Praag on CNN

politicalassassinations — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:53:54 +0000

Discussing their new research on the RFK assassination, Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag were on CNN international. See it here, http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/04/19/rfk.interview.cnn

On this day

politicalassassinations — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:16:56 +0000

On this day in 1969 Sirhan Sirhan was sntenced to death for the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy. On this day in 1998 James Earl Ray died in prison. Evidence in both cases suggested their innocence of murder. Here, for your viewing pleasure is an interview with Sirhan in 1985

RFK- An open and shut case

politicalassassinations — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:11:28 +0000

A message from Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwvO0u8MseA&hl=en]

FRIENDS........This new scientific proof corroborates the physical evidence that we found in the 70's that more shots were fired than the eight shots that Sirhan fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5. 1968. Sirhan was firing in front of us slightly to the left. I was walking behind Bob facing Sirhan and took the first shot from Sirhan in the center of my head. He was then captured but firing wildly. This proves that we were facing Sirhan, and that Sirhan was never in a position to fire four point-blank shots into Bob from behind and to his right. These audio tests prove that a second gunman was behind him to his right and fired the four point-blank shots including the fatal shot one inch from the back of his head.

These gun shot tests are based on gun shot sounds on the only known audio recording made by a Canadian journalist. The tape recorders of all other journalists were turned off on their way to the press conference with Bob. New technology, methodology and computers made these scientific tests possible and couldn't have been made earlier. These findings proving that a second gunman not Sirhan did it were presented to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Washington DC on February 21 and at the Dr. Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science in New Haven on March 25.

Go to our website for greater detail.(www.anopenandshutcase.com) All of the scientific and physical evidence is in the book AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE and is only available on our website The two forensic scientists responsible for these discoveries are Dr. Robert Joling, a former lawyer and judge who has investigated this case since 1969; and Audio engineer Philip Van Praag who has worked for corporations as a professional audio engineer for over forty years. Their full biographies and credentials are on the website.

I have been consulting lawyers on a legal strategy, and with Bill Rosendahl, '68 RFK campaigner and member of the LA City Council on a political strategy. Those of us who loved, admired and worked with Bob have the first responsibility, as does his family, to find out who assassinated him and why. We must be as concerned and active as Bob who tried to find out who assassinated President Kennedy and why. He first said it publicly at a student rally in Los Angeles on March 25, 1968,"Nobody is more interested in who killed my brother than I am." He promised the students who asked him that he would release the secret JFK archives. We must seek the same answers about his fate that he sought about his brother's. We along with the American public need to know the truth and that justice will be done........PAUL

PS: The title "An Open and Shut Case" was used by LA Police Chief Ed Davis. In fact this case was never opened and was shut down quickly as key evidence was destroyed, witnesses were abused and evidence was covered up or mishandled.

Dr William Pepper on CNN

politicalassassinations — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:58:29 +0000

Dr William Pepper appeared on CNN international recently discussing his work as Sirhan Sirhan's new attorney. Dr Pepper will be in attendance at the COPA conference in Los Angeles between 6-8 of June. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1unCs8RBw&hl=en] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqX3CLoqhQ&hl=en]

Hitman Charles Harrelson on the assassination of JFK

politicalassassinations — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:22:57 +0000

Charles Harrelson was accused by Chauncey Holt as having been one of the three tramps arrested following the assassination of President Kennedy.

Do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy... alone without any aid from a rogue agency of the U.S. government or at least a portion of that agency? I believe you're very naive if you do.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVlqh14WHY&hl=en]

Short documentary on JFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:22:48 +0000

This video is an excellent example of what can be done using new media. This video was directed by Braddon Mendelson and presented by researcher Pat Speer. Pat is a regular contributing forum member on the education forum. His work is well respected and extremely accurate. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEvZWeYXpec&hl=en]

Cynthia McKinney campaign

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:46:00 +0000

Green party presidential nominee to be Cynthia McKinney may be speaking at the COPA conference in LA this June. COPA has endorsed the McKinney campaign and we hope you enjoy this new supporter video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEGFXjIjEFY&hl=en] Cynthia McKinney's blog comments on the video,

Wecht institute conference on the assassinations-October

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 May 2008 15:06:31 +0000

A new conference hosted by the Cyril Wecht institute on forensic medicine and law has been announced for October 3-5. The conference will be hosted at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More details will be available soon, but the line up includes author of 'Brothers' David Talbot and coroner in the RFK assassination Dr Thomas Noguchi. This looks set to be a fascinating symposium from leading experts. COPA will bring you more news as it is available. We expect more details to be available on the Wecht Institute website very soon.

Clinton draws rebuke over RFK remark

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 May 2008 15:14:06 +0000

This is very interesting timing for such a statement from Hillary Clinton. Indeed, RFK was on the way to the Democratic nomination following his victory in California. By Thomas Ferraro Reuters Friday, May 23, 2008; 11:04 PM SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton mentioned the June 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy in explaining on Friday why she had resisted calls to end her White House bid, drawing a rebuke from Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's campaign. Clinton, who later expressed regret over the remark, made it to the editorial board of a South Dakota newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, when explaining that other races for the Democratic presidential nomination had lasted into June. "My husband (Bill Clinton) did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," she said. "I don't understand it," Clinton said, referring to calls for her to pull out of the Democratic race in which the final nominating primaries are held on June 3 in South Dakota and Montana. The Democratic nominee will face Republican John McCain in the November election. Kennedy, brother of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, was assassinated during his 1968 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton's comments drew a sharp response from the Obama campaign. "Senator Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. Clinton told reporters later: "I regret if my referencing of that moment of trauma for our entire country and particularly the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I had no intention of that whatsoever." "I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family," Clinton added. A spokesman said Clinton had simply been pointing out that Democratic campaigns in the past had continued into June and therefore people should not be pressuring her to withdraw. 'HISTORICAL EXAMPLES' "She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Robert Kennedy in 1968 as historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer. Any other reading is inaccurate," Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said. Robert Kennedy Jr., son of the slain senator, said in a statement, "It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June." "I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense," said Kennedy, a Clinton supporter unlike some other members of his family, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, who back Obama. There have been concerns about the safety of Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black U.S. president. He began receiving Secret Service protection 18 months before the November election -- earlier than any other candidate has received increased security. Obama has an almost insurmountable lead over Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. The former first lady has said she would continue until the last state has held its nominating contest. (Editing by Peter Cooney)

Dallas Morning News archive

politicalassassinations — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:28:40 +0000

As we reported several months ago, when the Dallas district attorney announced the finding of new materials relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy, the Dallas Morning News has archived the materials online. We would like to remind you all that these materials are available online in their entirety here.

Malcolm X project at Columbia University

politicalassassinations — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:41:21 +0000

Columbia University lies on the doorstep of Harlem, Malcolm X's most loyal constituency. The University has launched a Malcolm X online multimedia archive. The collection includes a lot of material relating to his assassination, including interviews with Max Stanford, Peter Bailey, Dorothy Fardan, Ossie Davis, Herman Ferguson and Abdullah Abdur-Raazaq. The archive also boasts an impressive collection of newspaper clippings, article and references to books. COPA hopes to upload the videos on the website to youtube so that they might expose more people to the realities of the assassination of Malcolm X. The archive can be found here

Friday of LA conference broadcast live

politicalassassinations — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:05:41 +0000

The Friday session of the COPA conference from Los Angeles will be broadcast live from www.politicalassassinations.com This session includes a panel consisting of Paul Schrade, Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag and a talk by Dr William Pepper. The conference will also be recorded for resale following the event. We will be using ustream.tv to stream the content for free over the internet. Please check politicalassassinations.com from 7pm LA time on Friday 6th of June. If you live outside of this time zone please remember to make the necessary conversions.

Plot to kill JFK in Chicago, early November.

politicalassassinations — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:03:06 +0000

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBKcJAwwKrQ&hl=en]

Cynthia McKinney to attend COPA L.A.

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:39:07 +0000

Green party presidential candidate and former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney will speak on the 6th of June at the COPA conference on the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Ms. McKinney also spoke at the COPA conference on the assassination of Malcolm X, held at the Audubon ballroom in February of this year. The Friday of the conference will be carried live on COPA's website, be sure to drop by between 7-10pm L.A. time or 10pm-1am EST. Trailer for 'American Blackout', chronicling her political career against the backdrop of the disenfranchisement of voters in 2000 and 2004. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8_3Lk3x8fA&hl=en]

fireshot-capture-10-foxnews_com-ap-news-calendar-local-news-i-news-articles-i-national-news-i-us-news-www_foxnews_com_wires_2008may30_04670newscalendar00_html

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:16:26 +0000

COPA listed in AP calendar

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:17:04 +0000

COPA's conference on the RFK assassination has been listed in the Associated Press calendar for the coming week. The calendar is sent to all major and minor news media organizations throughout the US. At the moment COPA is mentioned all over the net, from the Boston Globe to Fox news to Forbes. http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008May30/0,4670,NewsCalendar,00.html http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/05/30/ap_news_calendar/ http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/05/30/ap5065123.html

Promo video for L.A. conference

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:26:34 +0000

Here is a promotional video for the L.A. conference. Please distribute to mailing lists, your blog and your friends. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn-2ce6SVpw&hl=en]

John Meier says the Howard Hughes organization was involved in the RFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:35:12 +0000

From Lisa Pease' Real History blog This may be a topic of discussion at the COPA conference in L.A.

John Meier, former advisor to the recluse billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes, claims that the Hughes organization was involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Among Mr. Meier’s acquaintances were members of the Nixon family, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Head of the F.B.I. J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Schrade (who also was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles along with Robert Kennedy), Harry Evans (who was six feet away from Kennedy when he got shot) and numerous others that are pertinent to this subject. Mr. Meier had been introduced to Sirhan Sirhan’s lawyer, Mr. Lawrence Teeter, by Paul Schrade in 2005. Mr. Meier had numerous telephone conversations, e-mail exchanges, and meetings in Los Angeles with Mr. Teeter regarding Robert Kennedy’s assassination. The meetings that occurred during the week of February 13th - 19th 2005 in Beverly Hills, California, were recorded by Mr. Teeter. During that time Mr. Meier was also in communication with Paul Schrade and his wife. Mr. Meier claims that Mr. Teeter was preparing for a new trial for Sirhan Sirhan based on the new evidence that they had put together. Mr. Teeter died in Conchitas, Mexico on July 31, 2005. Mr. Meier had his lawyer, Mr. Dale Pope get in touch with the State Bar of California, in order to retrieve all the documents, tape recordings, and e-mails that were in the hands of Mr. Teeter pertaining to Mr. Meier. After getting no satisfaction from the State bar of California, Mr. Meier had been informed by a contact that a burglary took place at Mr. Teeter’s home. Mr. Pope then was told by Mr. John Fulton from the State Bar of California that there was indeed a theft of records from Mr. Teeter’s home. Mr. Meier has not been given back any of the items that he requested. Mr. Meier is now preparing to release the information that he has in regard to the Robert Kennedy assassination. Go to www.johnhmeier.com for more information on Mr. John Meier and the harassment by the U.S. Government on Mr. Meier and his family

Video log by Mr Meier about Hughes involvement with the assassination and his knowledge of the affair. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAHYTu_6wg&hl=en]

San Fran gate article on RFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:53:50 +0000

Mentioned in this article are Shane O'Sullivan, William Turner, Philip Van Praag, Robert Joling, all of whom will be presenting at the COPA conference this Friday in Los Angeles. (06-02) 20:11 PDT -- The assassination was over in a few seconds. In the photograph of that moment, Bobby Kennedy, his eyes open and glazed, lies on his back on a hotel pantry floor, his head cradled by a busboy dressed starkly in white - a tableau that seems almost angelic were it not so brutal. Less than 26 hours after being shot early on June 5, 1968, right after winning the California presidential primary, Kennedy was dead. He was 42. Three major assassinations rocked America in the 1960s. Two of the assassins - Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, and James Earl Ray, who shot Martin Luther King Jr. - are dead. But Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy 40 years ago this week in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, is living out his days in the California state prison at Corcoran. He is 64 and has never fully explained what happened that night other than to say he can't remember it. Sirhan was a seemingly unremarkable man. He was a Palestinian who was raised in the Middle East until he was 12, when his family settled in Southern California. Before the Kennedy assassination, he held a series of menial jobs and at one point worked at the Santa Anita racetrack and had hoped to be a jockey. After Los Angeles police found his diary, in which he had written, "RFK must die," investigators concluded that he was angry about Kennedy's support for Israel and somehow had tied the assassination date - he wrote that Kennedy must be killed "before 5 June 68" - to the one-year anniversary of the Six-Day War. Open and shut Los Angeles police, who declined Monday to comment on their investigation, deemed the assassination an open-and-shut case - Sirhan did it by himself. Independent investigators who have looked at the case over the years, however, suggest otherwise. "The interesting thing is how under-examined the Robert Kennedy assassination is, compared to President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.," said David Talbot of San Francisco, author of "Brothers," a book that looks into Robert Kennedy's own investigation into his brother's death and his conviction that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy. "Bobby remains the unknown territory," Talbot said. "But even if you look at it minimally, there are questions that come to mind." Among them: -- Sirhan fired his .22-caliber revolver from a few feet in front of Kennedy, according to police, yet Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi reported that the fatal shot was fired less than one inch from Kennedy's head, behind his right ear. Of the four shots fired at Kennedy, all came from the rear. None of this was raised at Sirhan's trial because his defense was based on the theory that he suffered from "diminished capacity" rather than on any challenge of prosecutors' evidence. -- Sirhan's revolver held eight rounds; a radio reporter's tape recording of the shooting has sounds of what one audio expert describes as 13 shots. Sirhan never had a chance to reload before bystanders tackled him. Two of the sounds on the tape are what forensic experts call "double shots," which means two shots so close together that they couldn't have come from the same revolver. -- Several witnesses saw a security guard just behind Kennedy draw his revolver, and one reported seeing him fire it. -- Over the years, Sirhan has told investigators who interviewed him in prison that he was in a hypnotic trance during the shooting and can't remember it at all. He said he could not remember writing, "RFK must die." He did not respond to an interview request for this story. Night of celebration On the night Kennedy was killed, the hotel ballroom was filled with supporters celebrating his victory in the California primary and looking to the Democratic convention in Chicago. The last thing Kennedy said from the ballroom podium, just after midnight, was, "My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there." In the pantry, as Kennedy moved through the crowd, he was surrounded by friends, including Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers, labor chairman for Kennedy's campaign. "All of a sudden, I got hit in the head by a bullet," Schrade said. "I shook violently. I thought I was being electrocuted. When I came to, I was on the floor." Schrade was one of five people besides Kennedy who were hit by bullets. For the past 33 years, he has been investigating the shooting. Mystery bullet hole Unlike the JFK assassination, which created an outdoor crime scene in Dallas sprawling from the grassy knoll to the Texas School Book Depository, the shooting of Robert Kennedy happened in a confined space. Stray bullets ended up buried in walls and the ceiling, where they could be tracked down. In photos, police investigators can be seen circling what they later said was a bullet hole in a ceiling panel, behind where Sirhan fired. For Sirhan to have shot into that panel, he would have had to "either turn around or the bullet would have to have made a U-turn," said Philip Van Praag, a retired electrical engineer and audio expert who co-authored a book about the case. Then there was the mystery of the woman in the polka dot dress. According to witness Sandra Serrano, the woman fled from the hotel kitchen with an unidentified man, shouting, "We shot him, we shot him." When a bystander asked who got shot, the woman said, "We shot Kennedy." Other witnesses reported seeing the woman, though it is not clear whether they heard the comment. In a new film about the assassination, "RFK Must Die," Irish documentary maker Shane O'Sullivan asked Serrano about what happened later. She said Los Angeles police spent hours trying to convince her she was wrong in what she saw, and she finally gave in. Forty years later, however, she told O'Sullivan that her original version was correct. 'I don't remember' In fact, the iconic polka dot dress is also something fixed in the mind of Sirhan himself. William Turner, a retired FBI agent who wrote a book about the case, says he interviewed Sirhan in prison in 1975. "He told me, 'I don't remember anything after the woman in the polka dot dress asked me for coffee, and heavy on the cream and sugar,' " said Turner, who lives in San Rafael. "He said he had amnesia from that time until he was overpowered in the pantry after the shots were fired. He said, 'I must have done it, but I don't remember.' " Turner thinks Sirhan was "hypno-programmed to shoot" and that he was a real-life Manchurian Candidate - the fictional brainwashed dupe whose controllers want to assassinate a presidential candidate. Turner suspects the same villains as do the JFK conspiracy theorists - "organized crime and, predominantly, people from the CIA." Van Praag and a fellow investigator, former American Academy of Forensic Scientists president Robert Joling, don't subscribe to any one conspiracy theory, but they are convinced more than one gunman was involved. The two have written a book about the killing, whose title, "An Open and Shut Case," is a dig at the police investigation. Van Praag, a former senior instructor in commercial audio-video systems for Ampex Corp., analyzed a tape recording of the killing made by a Polish radio reporter. He said he heard 13 shots over five seconds and was able to isolate the sounds well enough to say that two different weapons were firing during those five seconds. Guard passed polygraph One of those weapons, according to the documentary, "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination," which ran on the Discovery Times Channel a year ago, could have been held by Thane Eugene Cesar, the security guard who was near Kennedy. Dan Moldea, who wrote a book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity," said he thought for years that "Cesar had done it." But in 1987 he persuaded Cesar to undergo a polygraph examination that the former guard "passed with flying colors," Moldea said. "He's being accused of murder all over the place," Moldea said, adding that he is now Cesar's protector and would be willing to "bring him forward" if authorities ever reopen the case. In fact, reopening the case is not a far-fetched idea. Joling says an "independent panel of forensic scientists" should be created to "reinvestigate this matter on all the evidence." The case "should be resolved in a truthful, factual and honest presentation," he said. "Let the chips fall where they may. That way, at least, the American people will know that somebody without a stake in the outcome made this finding." Online and on screen Documents and other information about the Robert Kennedy assassination can be found at these Web sites: www.anopenandshutcase.com www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Robert_Kennedy_Assassination www.aarclibrary.org www.robertfkennedylinks.com/assassination.html www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/assassinations/rfk.htm www.aldridgeshs.qld.edu.au/sose/modrespg/mystery/rfk/titlepg.htm www.paperlessarchives.com/rfk_assassination.html A new documentary, "RFK Must Die," will be screened at 9:20 tonight at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., San Francisco. Another documentary, "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination," ran on the Discovery Times Channel last year and can be found on YouTube. E-mail Michael Taylor at mtaylor@sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/03/MNN110S5KH.DTL This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Bill Eppridge, RFK assassination photographer

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:14:14 +0000

www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bal-to.eppridge04jun04,0,4825895.story

baltimoresun.com

Epic Vision

Forty years ago tomorrow, photographer Bill Eppridge captured the image that many can't forget: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

By Christopher T. Assaf Sun reporter June 4, 2008 New Milford, Conn.

The kernel was planted in Bill Eppridge's mind while he was studying photojournalism at the University of Missouri. "Create a photographic epic poem." Eppridge was taking a history course in the late 1950s taught by the university's poet-in-residence, John Neihardt, who was best known for his 1932 book, Black Elk Speaks, about an Oglala Lakota medicine man who had witnessed Gen. George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn and the Massacre of Wounded Knee. Outside of class, Eppridge spent a lot of time discussing what Neihardt, the poet laureate of Nebraska and the Plains, called epic poems. He asked Neihardt if he had ever seen a photographic version of an epic poem. "I have seen a lot, but never really something I would call an epic," the professor told him, Eppridge said. Forty years ago tomorrow, Eppridge captured what could be described as an epic photo and certainly one of the most famous images in modern American history: A mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy lying cradled in the arms of an anguished hotel busboy named Juan Romero. The slow-motion events of that night, June 5, 1968, remained with Eppridge forever. "Every day I think about it," he said, sitting in a wooden rocking chair as a thunderstorm boomed in the hills surrounding the Connecticut home he shares with his wife, and editor, Adrienne Aurichio. "Bad dreams go away. ... I don't think nightmares ever do." In 1966, Life magazine assigned Eppridge to cover Kennedy, the 42-year-old New York senator, former U.S. attorney general and brother to assassinated President John F. Kennedy, for a six-month assignment. "He's a superb photojournalist," Donald M. Wilson, assistant publisher of Life at the time, said of Eppridge. "I worked there for many years, knew all the greats. He was excellent." In 1968, after Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, Eppridge volunteered to cover his campaign. From state to state, in open limousines and among the throngs of people, the specter of the candidate's brother's tragic death always seemed to accompany them. Eppridge was in Los Angeles the June evening when Kennedy won the California primary. Inside the Ambassador Hotel that night, he stood directly behind Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, as the candidate gave his victory speech - "now it's on to Chicago" - to a crowded ballroom. Eppridge was in the kitchen, hanging tight to the sparsely protected candidate as he left the ballroom the same way he had entered it. The photographer was not far behind Kennedy when Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian whose motives were believed to be tied to Kennedy's support of Israel, fired eight .22-caliber shots. One struck Kennedy in the head. He would die the next day. "I have been living with this thing 40 years now," Eppridge said. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think, somehow, about him. Or that campaign. Or the consequences of his assassination." Eppridge, an avid outdoorsman who had slogged his way through a Vietnam stint and other conflicts for Life, immediately recognized the firecracker pops as gunshots. His thought that they came from a .25-caliber gun was off just a little. Eppridge pushed himself and CBS cameraman Jim Wilson forward through the small, dense crowd stuffed in the narrow kitchen. He stopped briefly to photograph a wounded Paul Schrade, a United Auto Workers official. Then he continued to push and covered the 12 or so feet to the candidate. Instinct took over. Emotion, for the moment, repressed. Eppridge crouched at Kennedy's feet, the television light for Wilson's camera eerily illuminating the scene. Bracketing the imprecise exposure, the first two grainy frames of Tri-X black and white film show Romero holding Kennedy's head and looking down at him. In a third frame, backlit and underexposed, Romero looks up. The images after that show the bedlam that erupts. As he recalls that night, Eppridge sits with a slouch. Steel and titanium rods run through him: He wears a back brace to help with the genetic osteoporosis intensified by years of carrying camera gear and bags. His gaze turns down. He reveals what Kennedy told him and others on the trail. "There were something like 22,000 Americans killed because that [Vietnam] War didn't end when [Kennedy] said he was going to end it. If he told us once he told us 20 times that 'When, not if, but when I am president, that day the war ends. We're out.'" In April, Abrams published Eppridge's book, A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties. He had published an earlier book, Robert Kennedy: The Last Campaign, in 1993 that eventually sold out its 10,000 copies, but the results left him unsatisfied. "The words really weren't mine," he said of that earlier effort, on the 25th anniversary of Kennedy's death. "I wasn't able to talk too much about what I felt. "That didn't get the message out as far as I was concerned. It's important that we recognize and realize who this man was, and what he meant, and what might have been. Because, he certainly, historically, will be proved to be a most important figure in the history of this country." The new volume includes Eppridge's own text - and pictures he didn't know he had. "One day, I heard this little yelp," Eppridge recalled. His wife was cleaning out his unorganized archive, full of the cardboard boxes that Eppridge says all photographers use for storage. "She called to me and said. 'You might want to see this.'" She had uncovered more than 2,000 photographs - in unopened boxes - that were sent to him when Life magazine folded in 1972. "You'd be off on the next assignment, and you just didn't have time to look at what it was you did," he said. "You'd always be looking to the future." Among the photos were 500 from his Kennedy assignment, including some that would become logical closers for his latest book, such as a motion-blurred, watery view from the photographers' bus of the funeral procession as it approached Arlington National Cemetery. Much of 2008 reminds Eppridge of the tumultuous '60s: an unending war, an embattled White House. And then there is Democratic candidate Barack Obama, whose style has been compared to Kennedy's. Eppridge and his wife traveled to an April rally in Philadelphia to hear Obama speak. It was the first time Eppridge had ventured near politics of any sort in almost 40 years. There were more than 20,000 people there and, unlike in 1968, enormous security. All serious candidates for the presidency, not just the party nominees, get Secret Service protection now. Kennedy did not even have police protection in Los Angeles. "Security is incredible with this guy," Eppridge said of Obama. "And I was glad to see it." When not watching the security at work, he studied Obama and the crowds. "It's fascinating to watch him work the crowds, and the crowds look the same," he said. "And they look at him like God. And Bobby's people did the same." Returning to Missouri to teach a workshop in the early 1970s, Eppridge went to his former mentor Neihardt, who asked to see the Kennedy photographs. He sat silently while going through the images, Eppridge recalled. When he finished, a half-minute passed before the poet looked up. "You did it," he told his former student. "That is an epic poem." christopher.assaf@baltsun.com

Bill Eppridge

Age: 70 Education: Bachelor's degree in photojournalism Career: Photographer for Life magazine where he covered Barbra Streisand in Paris, the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Revolution, the Beatles' first visit to the U.S., civil unrest in Mississippi and the war in Vietnam; staff photographer for Sports Illustrated; has covered such things as the Olympics and the America's Cup, the Mount St. Helens eruption and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Awards: Twice named Photographer of the Year by the National Press Association while in college. Books: A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties; Robert Kennedy: The Last Campaign; provided photographs for Upland Passage: A Field Dog's Education and Jake: A Labrador Puppy at Work and Play. Personal: Lives in New Milford, Conn., with his wife, Adrienne Aurichio. She is also his editor.

Online

See a multimedia presentation on Bill Eppridge at baltimoresun.com/eppridge

Priscilla Johnson McMillan on assassinations

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:20:33 +0000

It seems as though the International Herlad Tribune has picked up where the North American Newspaper Alliance left off (NANA was formed by British intelligence agent and James Bond creator Ian Fleming). See the article bottlefed by Oswald's NANA as referenced by COPA's William Kelly here Priscilla Johnson McMillan wrote a biography of Lee Harvey Oswadl. She acted as Marina Oswald's minder, she met Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia and her husband wrote a book about James Earl Ray.

Why assassination talk is taboo

By Priscilla Johnson McMillan

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Shock ran through many of us when Hillary Clinton raised the specter of Robert Kennedy's assassination 40 years ago this week to justify her decision to stay in the presidential race. Although Clinton regarded her comments as innocent, they were disturbing because fear for the safety of Barack Obama has been a disquieting undercurrent throughout the primary season. Clinton's remarks only served as an incitement. While writing a biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, I learned that there is a web of associations in the mind and emotions of the assassin that leads him toward his victim. Almost anything can contribute. Oswald, for example, may have begun to consider committing an act of political violence as early as 1962, when he was living in Minsk, which was then in the Soviet Union. There, he heard a relative of his wife, Marina, recount in hushed, frightened tones the details of a shooting attempt on the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that had just taken place at a nearby hunting lodge. Commenting on the secrecy that surrounded the attempt, Oswald said, "If this had happened in America, it would have been in all the newspapers and everyone would be talking about it." For Oswald, another suggestive event appears to have occurred on June 12, 1963, when civil rights leader Medgar Evers was slain by a sniper outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, a city close to New Orleans, where Oswald by then was living. But the associations that affected Oswald most had to do with President Kennedy himself. Oswald was attracted by Kennedy's youth and the spirit of hope he conveyed. And there were personal resemblances. Kennedy was, like Oswald during the summer of 1963, a husband and father of a young daughter, with another child expected soon. We know that these similarities were in Oswald's mind because he talked about them to his wife, Marina. When the Kennedys' child Patrick was born prematurely in August and died, the Oswalds took it to heart and were afraid that something similar would happen to their child. Oswald had often told Marina that he wanted enough children for a "whole football team," like the Kennedy family, and, during the summer of 1963, he boasted that he would be president or prime minister some day. Not only does a chain of suggestion sometimes lead an assassin to his victim, the act of assassination itself is, to an appalling degree, contagious. As the convicted bank robber James Earl Ray watched reports of President Kennedy's assassination on a rickety television set at the federal penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1963, he jumped up, a fellow convict later reported, and shouted that he was going to kill the Reverend Martin Luther King. Less than five years later, he did. There are other signs pointing to the contagious nature of assassination, among them the succession from the Evers shooting in June 1963 to that of John Kennedy in November the same year to those of Malcolm X in 1965, King in April 1968, Robert Kennedy in June of that year, and, finally, the attempt on former Alabama governor George Wallace in a Maryland shopping center in 1972. Not only is the crime of assassination contagious: Most people, at some level, know it. That knowledge accounts for the curtain of silence that until recently has enveloped the anxiety many people - and not only blacks - feel about the peril that constantly confronts Barack Obama. Even the dismay that greeted Mike Huckabee's careless gaffe before the NRA recently failed to inhibit Hillary Clinton. Clinton, who has been shielded by the Secret Service since 1992, raised the taboo subject, and in a way that could only lead emotionally troubled members of the public to thoughts of her rival for the nomination. The trouble is that because of the contagiousness - and, for many, the parricidal appeal - of the act of assassination, Clinton's intentions do not matter. A remark such as hers only compounds the atmosphere of suggestion. Priscilla Johnson McMillan is author of "Marina and Lee."

Robert Blair Kaiser's book republished

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:53:56 +0000

From the Overlook Press. Link. A new edition of the classic work on the R.F.K. assissination, "R.F.K. Must Die! Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination" by Robert Blair Kaiser, will soon be published by The Overlook Press to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Senator Robert Kennedy's murder. Newly edited and revised by the author, streamlining the facts and updating the argument, the book is arguably more relevant today than it was when it was first released in the aftermath of the trial. Widely recognized as an important contribution to the literature of political assassinations and as a primary document on the tragedy of R.F.K’s death forty years ago, Robert Blair Kaiser’s “R.F.K. Must Die” will be published in June 2008.

Shane O'Sullivan on Coast to Coast AM

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:06:51 +0000

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2008/06/05.html Shane O'Sullivan will be talking with George Noory about his new film 'RFK must die'. www.rfkmustdie.com

Lisa Pease on Black Op radio

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:10:17 +0000

Lisa Pease discusses her work, the COPA conference and the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Lisa will be a featured speaker at the COPA conference. Her excellent blog can be found here. This link will automatically open the audio file. Link

Video: Larry Teeter talk on the CIA and RFK

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:23:11 +0000

With thanks to Reprehensor Lawrence George Teeter was Sirhan Sirhan's lawyer until his untimely death in 2005. To mark the 40th anniversary of RFK's assassination, here is a talk by Teeter given November 14, 2000 entitled, "CIA Interventions: The Role of the CIA and the LAPD in the RFK Assassination". The talk was given at the Sepulveda UU Church. R.I.P. RFK (1968), and Larry Teeter (2005). You can order a DVD of this talk from justicevision.org This is part 1 of 9 and is well worth viewing. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6thJeYm1sE&hl=en]

Jim Douglas on Black Op radio tonight

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:37:58 +0000

Jim Douglas has spoken frequently at COPA assassination conferences. He was also the only journalist to cover the civil trial on the Martin Luther King assassination. Tonight will be the third installment of his interviews relating to his book 'JFK and the unspeakable, which is getting excellent reviews. The interview will be audible here at 1am. Alternately you can view the archived show here

RFK campaign aide on assassination conspiracies

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:24:22 +0000

This is only a brief mention of William Schehter's feelings on the assassinations of JFK and RFK, Taken from the Daily Freeman,

"The New York Times sent a reporter (Pulitzer Prize-winner Homer Bigart) after a (1966 gubernatorial) campaign stop in New York," he said. "Bobby agreed to speak to him. He asked the senator if he believed there was a conspiracy surrounding his brother's death or if he accepted the Warren Commission's finding that a lone gunman had done it. Bobby thought for a moment, shook his head and said, 'No, I don't believe there was a conspiracy.' I think my thinking was affected by that when he (Bobby) was killed

Retired air force officer remembers death of RFK

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:27:25 +0000

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080605/OPINION02/806050353/1039/OPINION June 5, 2008 Robert F. Kennedy's assassination still moves a retired air force officer. John E. Norvell Guest essayist In 1968, I was a brand-new Air Force second lieutenant newly arrived in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy vessel on an intelligence mission off the coast of North Korea, was attacked by North Korea. One man was killed and 82 crew members were captured. This news touched close to home. On March 31, 1968, in the Washington National Cathedral, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon titled: "Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution." I was there in the congregation to hear him preach. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., and the city of Washington erupted in riots and fires. It was not safe to drive or go into many areas of the city for several weeks. These things alone would be major reasons to remember 1968. It was, however, the death of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy that touched me in an even more personal way. On June 5, 1968, Sen. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles; he died the next day. I heard the news of the shooting while working my shift in the Air Force Command Post at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. For any person of my generation, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Dr. King were numbing events. I sat at my desk and could not believe my ears. As the story unfolded, it was announced that RFK's body would be flown back to New York for his funeral on June 8, and plans were made to bring his body to Washington, D.C., by train for burial in Arlington National Cemetery near his brother's grave. I went down to Union Station to be there when the train arrived. It was dark and late on a Saturday night and I climbed up on a wall to see the limousines, hearse and media move through the darkened city on the way to Arlington. The streets were lined with spectators, all seeking as I was to somehow be part of this moment, to share in the loss and mourn. On Sunday, June 9, 1968, I decided to go to Arlington to visit the Kennedy gravesites. It was a warm, sunny morning and despite all the recent events of the previous days, the area around the graves was deserted. I climbed the hill to the graves to spend a quiet moment and pay my respects. As I turned to leave, there, to my surprise, were Jacqueline Kennedy, John Jr. and Caroline coming up the hill. The Kennedy family had come at this quiet moment to visit JFK's grave and pay their respects to Bobby. Jackie and the children walked to President Kennedy's grave, knelt down, prayed, and then moved slowly to Robert's freshly dug resting place. Jackie carried a single rose, which she placed on the grave, and then turned and left, passing not more than a foot from where I stood. Many people remember 1968 for many reasons. It was this quiet moment that I shared in a special way with the Kennedy family that I will never forget. Norvell, of Canandaigua, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Preserving the Ambassador Hotel

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:36:10 +0000

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-morrison5-2008jun05,0,6958500.column

From the Los Angeles Times

Where history turned

Why didn't we preserve the actual site where Bobby Kennedy was shot 40 years ago?

Patt Morrison June 5, 2008 FIRST, BECAUSE of what happened there 40 years ago today, it was a crime scene. Then it became evidence in a murder trial. The passage of time eased it from a place of horror to a place in history. And then bureaucracy consigned it -- most of it -- to a landfill. On California's primary election night in 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy walked from the joyous, luminous ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel into the kitchen pantry, and into the range of an assassin's gun, he walked from America's future into its sorry, bloody past. What about that place, the hotel pantry, where history was unmade and remade in a moment? The assassination turned out to be the last notable chapter of the storied and usually gloried Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, just west of downtown. George Washington didn't sleep there, but Winston Churchill did, and Albert Einstein and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nikita Khrushchev, sulking when he wasn't allowed to go to Disneyland. But time went by, and the chic hotels went west, and in 1989 the Ambassador closed. Donald Trump wanted to extend his edifice complex to L.A. and bought the place. The school district said it needed the property for schools, but then changed its mind in favor of something called the Belmont Learning Center downtown, and we all know how that turned out. A quarter-billion wasted dollars later, back the LAUSD came to the Ambassador. The Los Angeles Conservancy moved in front of the wrecking ball to try to preserve what it could. Imagine studying American history within the very walls where Richard Nixon wrote the "Checkers" speech that saved his political bacon. But the Kennedy family pretty much wanted the place razed and the ground sown with salt. Coupled with the LAUSD's desperate need for classrooms, it was adios, Ambassador. The first of the three new schools on the property is supposed to open 15 months from now. So where is the pantry now? After the preservationists' lawsuits and the environmental impact reports, the LAUSD agreed to pluck it out and maintain it intact. But the LAUSD's senior project manager, John Kuprenas, told me that an engineer said no way. "Hold the bus," is what Kuprenas told me the engineer said. "This plan looks kind of iffy." The fear was that if the district "tried to take it out in a mass, it'd all completely crumble," Kuprenas said. So the pantry exists today not even as a kit to be eventually reassembled but in sample pieces -- 2-foot-diameter cores of floor, walls and ceiling, along with doors, electrical panels and the biggest piece, the ice machine behind which Sirhan Sirhan stood, waiting to open fire. It's all on 30 pallets, shrink-wrapped and stored in a secure, undisclosed location, waiting for a special commission and the school board to decide what historical institution might deserve them. Except for some recycled steel, the rest of the pantry, along with most of the Ambassador Hotel, went to a landfill. The schools' new library will be built to the dimensions of the old ballroom, with a history corner with computer exhibits and maybe pages from RFK's notes. A Judy Baca RFK mural is planned, as is a tribute to him in the park on Wilshire Boulevard. Ambassador artifacts, such as a bottle unearthed from the Cocoanut Grove, may go to Loyola Marymount's extensive L.A. history collection. The Los Angeles Public Library will decide how to exhibit myriad photographs and a 3-D laser survey of the pantry. And that's it -- the historical diaspora. Much as I love L.A. -- both the fake tinsel and the real tinsel beneath it, as someone said -- in our grasping for the future, we let too much of our past fall from our fingers. The loss of the pantry is an especially sore point. The pantry is of national significance because the RFK assassination was a national turning point, the "great perhaps," as Kennedy's friend, Pete Hamill, put it. And yet we knocked it down and swept it away like an outdated mini-mall. The Universal Studios fire that burned a fake New York street scene last weekend got more attention, and more lamentation, than the Ambassador pantry. In Memphis, the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, is a civil rights museum. In Dallas, the sixth floor of the book depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired his mail-order rifle is a museum to John F. Kennedy's assassination, and his legacy. And millions go to Ford's Theatre in Washington to stand where the savior of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, was murdered. Surely there could have been a way to preserve the pantry in situ, to keep it open where it stood, to keep alive the singular experience of "it actually, truly happened here." What was in short supply was the political will to save the place. Years ago, a prison chaplain who liked something I'd written invited me to interview Sirhan Sirhan. I went to Soledad prison with a Times reporter who had covered Sirhan's trial; I didn't know enough to contribute much to the interview, but I did shake the hand that pulled the trigger that killed Bobby Kennedy. Then, late last year, with another fellow reporter, I got a look into the historical vault at the criminal courts building, a high-security storehouse for the evidence associated with renowned cases such as Manson's and the Black Dahlia's -- and Kennedy's. There, in a storage box, was the dark suit Kennedy wore that night in June 1968. One sleeve was missing; one shoulder was still blotched with what I took to be blood. He was a smaller man than I had thought. With the back of my right hand -- the same hand that shook Sirhan's, I realized later -- I made the merest contact with the fabric of the jacket. The galvanic circle of history crackled closed. Saving the pantry for posterity could have delivered something of the same to millions brought up in a lip-sync, ersatz culture -- an actual, authentic place where history stopped, pivoted, and took us down another road. No exhibit, no re-creation, no technology, however adroit, can evoke that. Well, I should be grateful for small favors. Thank goodness they saved the clock tower from that "Back to the Future" set at Universal. What a loss to fake history that would have been. patt.morrison@latimes.com

Friday conference venue changed

politicalassassinations — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:59:54 +0000

The Friday evening session of the COPA conference in L.A. was originally scheduled to have taken place in the Custom hotel. It will now be in KJ's diner banquet room. This is the location for the rest of the conference also.

KJ's Diner, Banquet Room

8731 Lincoln Blvd. (Pacific Coast Highway), at W. Manchester Ave.

Banquet Room has separate entrance on Loyola Blvd., parking available

Kj's is in very close proximity to the Custom hotel, so it should not prove a troublesome move.

We regret any inconvenience caused.

John Pilger confirms multiple RFK shooters

politicalassassinations — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:35:01 +0000

John Pilger was present at the Ambassador hotel when RFK was shot. He discusses being told of a 'funny looking guy' present, who turned out to be Sirhan Sirhan. Shane O'Sullivan's 'RFK must die' is featured. John Pilger said that he heard shots after Sirhan had been tackled to the ground. He bore witness to the actual shooting. He discusses his recollections on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. "There was another assassin, or there were several assassins", he thought that he may have seen the woman in the polka dot dress. It is good to see coverage of this case on independent liberal media in the U.S. Democracy Now! had some good features on the Martin Luther King assassination, and it is reassuring to see that they are giving publicity to the existence of a conspiracy in this case. Momentum appears to be building, hopefully we can capitalize upon it by reaping some form of justice. Video

Repost: RFK conference video promo

politicalassassinations — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:20:07 +0000

Video

New LAFD assassination photos released

politicalassassinations — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:03:34 +0000

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/06/content_8318266.htm Photos taken after Robert F. Kennedy assassination released www.chinaview.cn 2008-06-06 04:10:28 LOS ANGELES, June 5 (Xinhua) -- The Los Angeles Fire Department(LAFD) on Thursday released new photos taken moments after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 40 years after the death of the former senator and younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was shot to death in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968 during his presidential nominating campaign. He had just finished a speech at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the California primary when he was shot in a crowded passageway by assassin Sirhan Sirhan. The newly released photos were taken by Harold Burba, a photographer of the LAFD who was in the Ambassador Hotel pantry after the shooting. The photos, showing a struggle involving several men and the assassin, were sent to a Los Angeles grand jury on the morning after the assassination and have been in the LAFD's possession since 1968. Burba reportedly requested that the photos be released after his death. The photos were published in the latest issue of the Los Angeles Firefighter newspaper.

William Pepper at RFK fundraiser

politicalassassinations — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:28:37 +0000

Dr William Pepper discusses his plans for the pursual of a civil trial on behalf of Sirhan Sirhan. He talks with confidence of his ability to get some legal remedy for the case. COPA will be assisting Dr Pepper in every capacity in his work. Video (wordpress seems unwilling to allow us to embed youtube videos of late)

COPA conference promoted in USA today

politicalassassinations — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:37:03 +0000

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/06/looking-ahead-3.html Coming Friday: • Got jobs? The Labor Department releases the report on May unemployment, along with the monthly figures on manufacturing payrolls, average hourly earnings and weekly hours. The government also will report on wholesale inventories and sales in April, while the Federal Reserve updates how deep consumers are in credit debt. • With six months left for the Bush administration, Stephen Preston will be sworn in (ceremonially) as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. President Bush will participate. • Vice President Cheney flies to Houston to help raise money for a GOP congressional candidate. • It's the 64th anniversary of D-Day, the massive, bloody Allied assault on Nazi-occupied France. • In Los Angeles, on the day after the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's slaying, the Coalition on Political Assassinations hosts a conference. New evidence about a purported second gunman will be presented. Posted by Michael Winter at 08:39 PM/ET, June 05, 2008

Letter to the editor

politicalassassinations — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:54:43 +0000

Here is a letter to the editor from long time COPA member Susan McLucas to the Boston Globe in light of their publishing of an article by Priscilla Johnson McMillan. Dear Editors, I was very surprised to see the editorial by Priscilla Johnson McMillan in the Globe June 4. Any student of the first Kennedy assassination knows that she was one of the handlers of Lee Harvey Oswald, the person who is commonly considered to be the killer of President John Kennedy. McMillan, who worked for the North American News Alliance, a front for British and American intelligence, helped establish Oswald’s status as a defector, an important element in the effort to frame him for Kennedy's killing. In documents released as a result of the JFK Assassination Records Release Act, it came out that she was a “witting asset of the CIA.” You may remember that in the 70's, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the assassination of Kennedy, but the government has never seen fit to follow up on this very interesting open question. Similarly, the killing of Martin Luther King is not clearly the work of James Earl Ray, the drifter ex-con who is normally considered the assassin. In 1999 the King family helped Ray conduct a civil lawsuit which concluded that he was not King's killer. So, in your editorial, you have one of the people involved in the cover-up of the killing of JFK writing about the motivations of people who were not even the killers in question. Not very useful, I would say. If you'd like to get some real information about the crucial assassinations of the 1960's, tune in to the 40th anniversary conference in Los Angeles of the Robert Kennedy assassination this week-end. It is being organized by the Coalition on Political Assassinations and much, if not all of it, will be shown on their website, www.PoliticalAssassinations.com. They will be reviewing the well-known evidence in this case - the fact that more bullets were fired than would fit in Sirhan Sirhan's gun and that the bullet that killed RFK was shot at point blank range from the rear, whereas Sirhan was always in front of Kennedy - and also presenting newly released information. History is hard to understand in the best of circumstances. When people who are actively trying to confuse the public are given space in reputable newspapers, it is even more difficult. Susan McLucas Citizens Action Team

Report on L.A. conference

politicalassassinations — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:08:47 +0000

Friends, Our regional meeting in Los Angeles was a great success. Wonderful speakers, new evidence and information, and a real researchers' conference. We were able to pay all our bills and our past debts, and have funds for Dallas now. Due to a hotel venue cancellation, we were unable to overcome technical problems with broadcasting it livestream,. but the video will be uploaded and available on our website very soon. Please visit www.politicalassassinations.com. John Geraghty, our webmaster, has been doing a great job in posting new information, videos, etc. there and at our YouTube site. The presentations by Dr. Robert Joling, Philip van Praag and Paul Schrade were eye opening, and COPA is working closely with them to get a new investigation on the presence of a second gunman in the pantry based on new, hard evidence on an audio tape. Dr. William Pepper, formerly the attorney for James Earl Ray in his last appeal, and the King family in their civil suit, is now Sirhan Sirhan's attorney, and working to get legal review based on evidence that Sirhan was under hypnosis and programming at the time of the shooting. Two new films, "RFK Must Die" produced by Shane O'Sullivan and "RFK" by Marc Sobel were shown, and the filmmakers spoke and took questions. The 92-year old Secret Service agent who had been assigned to Bobby Kennedy and his family right after the shooting spoke as well about his autobiography, Dar's Story. Ted Charach, producer of "The Second Gun" was with us for two sessions and spoke from the audience. Summer Reese helped get KPFK-FM, the local Pacifica affiliate, to sponsor our event, and spoke about Larry Teeter's case file records from his work as Sirhan's attorney and their status. Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, now a presidential candidate vying for the Green Party ticket, spoke about her focus on political assassinations, starting with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Researchers Lisa Pease and Michael Calder presented their latest work on the RFK case as well. Recently released books include An Open and Shut Case (Joling and van Praag), Who Shot Bobby (O'Sullivan) and RFK Must Die (Robert Kaiser, updated edition). DVD's of the whole conference will be available soon for a donation to COPA. Four stalwarts came to our annual commemoration of President Kennedy's inaugural speech given June 10, 1963, calling for an end to the nuclear arms race and testing, disarmament and detente with the Soviet Union and a real peace, not a "Pax Americana" based on mutual interest for the future. We gathered in the hot sun under an isolated monument to his talk at American University campus in Washington, DC, and read out parts of his speech, as well as the words of Robert Kennedy the night of the assassination of Dr. King, given impromptu in Indianapolis, IN in 1968. At lunch afterwards, we talked about the future work of COPA. We will mark the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy at our annual regional meeting in Dallas this year, from November 21-23, with our customary moment of silence at the Grassy Knoll, 12:30 pm on the 22nd. We will stay at the Hotel Lawrence, just off Dealey Plaza. Here is the basic information: November 21-23 (Friday - Sunday) *The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Death of Democracy* 45th anniversary of his assassination in Dallas Regional Meeting of COPA in Dallas, TX Hotel Lawrence, 302 S. Houston St. (at Jackson, off Dealey Plaza) COPA rate: Single or double rooms for $79 per night for the 21st and 22nd. Use the group code COPA08 when you call. Call 214-761-9090 or 877-396-0334 toll free Registration on site I am still lining up the best speakers for the event. Our keynote will be at the nearby Adolphus Hotel at 7:00 pm on Friday, following dinner at their Cafe Bistro restaurant in the lobby at 5:30 pm. We will end at 12:00 pm on Sunday. Hope to see you there. Also be aware that Dr. Cyril Wecht, our first COPA president, is organizing a conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA from October 3-5 called Making Sense of the Sixties, regarding the major assassinations, with major speakers. Flyer is attached. COPA continues to support passage of a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Records Act, and we are pursuing it with Rep. William Lacy Clay, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives. Jim Lesar of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in DC has recently written to House Committee on Government Reform chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman to call for the legally mandated oversight hearings on the JFK Assassination Records Act that have yet to happen. I am working to combine the two issues into a discussion about using the JFK Act model for future release of files of historical significance and broad public interest. Please call or visit your Congress Member in the House, especially if they sit on these two committees, and push for new law and hearings. Another recent development based on my work has been the introduction of 35 Articles of Impeachment or President George W. Bush by Rep. Dennis Kucinich under House Resolution 1258. I helped to draft much of the bill and hope to continue to work with him on future bills. You can see the text at http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=93581. It should be widely read and discussed. His floor reading took up 4 1/2 hours on C-SPAN. The theme is that a pattern of abuses make clear Bush constantly violates his oath of office and his Constitutional duty under Article 2 to protect the Constitution, insure the faithful execution of the laws, and execute the duties of his office. The resolution was overwhelmingly voted to be referred to the House Judiciary Committee where it is expected to die without hearings under Rep. John Conyers. However, a groundswell of public support has been organizing petitions, calls and visits to the Members on the committee, and others to demand hearings and ask for co-sponsors for H Res 1258. A video of the reading of the bill can be seen at http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8583196. I have initiated a petition at www.onlinepetition.com/HR1258/hr1258/htm and more information can be seen at www.groundsforimpeachment.com, a website created my Mike Zmolek and myself, who worked on these articles from 2006. Even if they are never given a Congressional hearing, they deserve a public hearing. Don't forget the role of the Bush family in assassinations ranging from President John F. Kennedy, to Orlando Letelier and attempts on Fidel Castro, as well as President Ronald Reagan. For most people, this well documented list of charges against the current Bush president will be an eye-opener. COPA continues to work to release all files concerning all major political assassinations or plots, as well as bringing forward the best current information and new evidence. We are not allergic to donations, though they are not tax-deductible. Some send us monthly donations to keep us going all year. Donations of $50 or more will get a copy of the 2007 Dallas meeting on DVD. John Judge

Committee for an Open Archives 1992

politicalassassinations — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:55:33 +0000

Here is a video of John Judge speaking at American University in 1992 about Oliver Stone's 'JFK'. John is here representing the Committee for an Open Archives, one of the organizations that originally comprised COPA. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQjbiHTeQp8&hl=en]

"JFK assassination documentary analyzes conspiracy theories"

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:25:27 +0000

By Jessica Young GateHouse News Service Posted Jun 19, 2008 @ 02:18 PM http://www.norwichbulletin.com/entertainment/x222991600/JFK-assassination-documentary-analyzes-conspiracy-theories Christopher Andersen remembers devouring the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a 9-year-old. “I sat down with it with my dad. How many kids are riveted by something like that?” the Westmont, Ill., resident said. “But the JFK assassination just mesmerized me. It changed the country entirely — our innocence was lost.” That fateful day in Dallas stuck with Andersen as one conspiracy theory after another surfaced over the years. So much so that it became the subject of his production company’s latest documentary nearly 45 years after the assassination. “Frame 313: The JFK Assassination Theories,” which was just released, is a 114-minute video that uses rare footage, new testimonials and expert interviews to explore the five most credible hypotheses surrounding the events of Nov. 22, 1963. “One thing we’re very proud of is that we don’t have an angle. We present evidence that supports multiple arguments and leave it up to the audience to decide who was behind the murder,” said Andersen, executive producer at Sundown Entertainment in Westmont. “It’s the first complete, objective overview of the most controversial, unresolved murder case in U.S. history.” The educational film, which soon will get a distributor, lays out substantiation for the Warren Commission’s “Lone Gunman” findings, a CIA/mafia plot, a strictly mafia scheme, a Soviet Union/KGB maneuver and a CIA/anti-Fidel Castro Cuban exiles conspiracy. Interview clips bolster, refute and even acknowledge question marks in the convoluted theories. Viewers must then weigh testimony and piece together the puzzle. Although “Frame 313” doesn’t take sides, Andersen personally doesn’t buy the Warren report’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald single-handedly killed the president. Especially since the House Select Committee on Assassinations later disputed the commission’s acoustic analysis and decided Oswald “probably” murdered Kennedy as a result of a conspiracy. “I think JFK was also shot from the front, and we talked to an emergency room doctor who stood above the head wound, which was corroborating proof to me,” he said. “In my opinion, the CIA and mafia have their fingerprints all over it. I mean, the strongest thing I’ve heard is (CIA pilot) Tosh Plumley admitting that he was sent to Dealey Plaza to abort an assassination attempt but that they were too late. “When you look at who was there, it was like a Batman gallery — there were rogues and villains crawling all over the vicinity that day,” Andersen said. While conducting research for the DVD, Lynn Sanders, a co-writer from Winnetka, Ill., actually feared for her life. “Over 100 people who knew something about the assassination have been killed, and I truly did worry about my safety,” she said. “So many people doing research on it had an unusual accident or died mysteriously. To me, that points to a cover-up.” The undetermined cause of death for reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, who interviewed Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby, was forefront in Sanders’ mind as she was reading documents and editing footage over the course of more than a year. “Frame 313” was an intensive, 19-month-long project. Andersen traveled extensively to do background research and record new interviews with investigators, authors and former agents and operatives to add to original archival footage from bystanders, local breaking newscasts and Oswald’s public appearances. The film also includes clips from a JFK symposium of historians and government bigwigs. Sanders calls the documentary an encyclopedia of information. Andersen said he doesn’t believe interest in the assassination will dissipate any time soon, especially because many records still are classified, fueling some people’s assumptions of a conspiracy. “If the government thinks this was such a straightforward murder case and Oswald wasn’t connected to anyone else, why are files from the investigations sealed?” he said. “The powers that be didn’t want something to come out. And we wanted this film to get more information out there.” Suburban Life Publications

'One minute to midnight' -The Cuban missile crisis

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:57:56 +0000

The most interesting part of this Washington Post article is the online discussion with the author. We have linked to it, as it is too long to keep in its entirety. Book World: 'One Minute to Midnight' Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War Michael Dobbs Author and Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 24, 2008; 3:00 PM "In One Minute to Midnight, Michael Dobbs sets out to 'help a new generation of readers relive the quintessential Cold War crisis' and, in particular, its harrowing climax on 'Black Saturday,' Oct. 27, just before the Kremlin leader lanced the tension by agreeing to withdraw the missiles. In this he succeeds brilliantly, marshaling diverse sources to relate an intensely human story of Americans, Russians and Cubans caught up in what the late historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. termed 'the most dangerous moment in human history.'" Washington Post staff writer Michael Dobbs was online Tuesday, June 24 to discuss his new book about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro On the Brink of Nuclear War, which was reviewed in Book World. He also wrote about the Cuban missile crisis and its lessons for today's leaders in the Post Outlook Section. Dobbs awards Pinocchios to exaggerating and prevaricating politicians and pundits in his Washington Post column, The Fact Checker. He is also the author of Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America and Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire. A transcript follows. Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section. INTERVIEW

Robert Kennedy in Palestine

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:01:02 +0000

Linked here is an article about Boby Kennedys visit to Palestine in 1948 as a reporter for the Boston Post. Link

Jim Douglas-'JFK and the unspeakable'

politicalassassinations — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:42:41 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jacbZjouJ0

Shane O'Sullivan interviewed on Irish television

politicalassassinations — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:50:30 +0000

Director of 'RFK must die' and author of 'Who Kiled Bobby?' Shane O'Sullivan is interviewed on Irish television. Shane participated in COPA's last Los Angeles regional meeting in June of this year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTwdbLhp3gw

UPI story on RFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:21:45 +0000

Some want RFK assassination revisited

Published: July 14, 2008 at 5:13 PM

There are valid reasons to re-examine the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to determine if Sirhan Sirhan really acted alone, conspiracy proponents say. Paul Schrade, the labor adviser to Kennedy's presidential campaign who also was wounded in the shooting that left Kennedy dead in Los Angeles 40 years ago, said today's technology can help prove others were involved, the New York Daily News reported Monday. "I'm convinced we can make the case," said Schrade, who is assembling a legal team to challenge the verdict that put Sirhan, now 64, behind bars. Shane O'Sullivan, author of "Who Killed Bobby?," questions the verdict based on evidence he says shows multiple shots came from more than one direction. A security guard implicated by audio analysis of the shots has denied he shot Kennedy, the Daily News said. The Kennedy clan is reluctant to push to have the case reopened. Bobby Kennedy Jr. told the News that while he suspects the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, may have been a conspiracy, he has "never seen particularly compelling evidence" that was the case in his father's death. Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, said while she didn't know if prosecutors knew of the recent analyses, they "believe Sirhan's conviction is valid and supported by the evidence presented to a jury at trial."

McKinney to open files if elected-Newsweek

politicalassassinations — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:34:09 +0000

In an interview with Newsweek, Green party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney says that one of her first acts in office, if elected, would be to open the files on the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King

Also, I would make public the papers pertaining to certain tragedies in the life of our country, like the JKF assassination, Martin Luther King Jr., and the 9/11 Truth Movement-I would release everything the Bush administration knew about September 11.

One more thing I would do is begin the process of putting into place a Department of Peace. It would be wonderful to rename the Department of State as the Department of Peace and have our ambassadors go around the world with a mission…to begin their engagement in the world based on human rights and peace. You were earning your Ph.D. at Berkeley recently, right? Let's put it this way; I've deferred one time too many. But I'm hoping to enroll in some institution once again in January. In January? That's not very optimistic [about the election outcome], is it? Well, I might have to take another deferral in that case.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/146263

'JFK and the Unspeakable' review

politicalassassinations — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:27:22 +0000

Review by COPA member Bill Kely, http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/07/jfk-and-unspeakable.html JFK And the Unspeakable Why He Died & Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008), by James Douglas. As a sensitive and serious subject, the assassination of President Kennedy has been approached from many different ways by journalists, historians, psychologists, witnesses and even suspects who have acknowledged their roles in a conspiracy. But James W. Douglas comes down a very different and spiritual path. A Catholic theologian, anti-war activist, conscientious objector and peace activist, Doublas was slow to connect the death of the President with the constant threat of war, but he did with the help of Thomas Merton, a monk who had attended Cambridge and Columbia. Merton, whose autobiography The Seven Story Mountain, has been compared to the Confessions of Saint Augustine, thought deeply and wrote often about war and racism (including Peace in the Post-Christian Era), until he was banned from doing so by his order. The prohibition led him to conduct lengthy correspondence with a wide variety of people, including RFK’s wife Ethel Kennedy, Clare Booth Luce, Evora Arca de Sardinia, wife of a Bay of Pigs commander, and Douglas. "The Unspeakable," according to Douglas, "is a term Thomas Merton coined at the heart of the sixties after JFK’s assassination – in the midst of the escalating Vietnam war, the nuclear arms race, and the further assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. In each of those soul-shaking events, Merton sensed an evil whose depth and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe." "One of the awful facts of our age," wrote Merton in 1965, "is the evidence that [the world] is stricken indeed, stricken to the very core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable." "The Vietnam War, the race to a global war, and the interlocking murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were all signs of the Unspeakable," explains Douglas. "It remains deeply present in our world." "Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of the Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see." "It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said;" wrote Merton, "the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience…" "In one his letters, Merton even foresaw Kennedy’s murder when he wrote, "I have little confidence in Kennedy, I think he cannot fully measure up to the magnitude of his task, and lacks creative imagination and the deeper kind of sensitivity that’s needed. Too much the Time and Life mentality,…What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don’t have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that some day by miracle. But such people are long marked out for assassination." And Douglas argues, Kennedy did have an epiphany, a sudden (or maybe it was a slow and gradual) realization that war could not be fought on the same terms as it was before because of the development of nuclear weapons. Douglas had his own epiphany when he realized that JFK’s conflicts with his own generals and administrators led to his death, the why of his assassination. And now he wants to do something about it. "When we become more deeply human, as Merton understood the process," says Douglas, "the wellspring of our compassion moves us to confront the Unspeakable." For Douglas, as with most of us, we would prefer not to confront the Unspeakable, but Douglas goes into their Nest, and in this book he reports back what he found there. "By overlooking the deep changes in Kennedy’s life and the forces behind his death, I contributed to a national climate of denial," he writes. "Our collective denial to 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 subsequent murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government – and in 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. The unspeakable is not far away." "The unspeakable is not far away. It is not somewhere out there, identical with a government that became foreign to us. The emptiness of the void, the vacuum of responsibility and compassion, is in ourselves. Our citizen denial provides the ground for the government’s doctrine of ‘plausible deniability.’ John Kennedy’s assassination is rooted in our denial of our nation’s crimes in World War II that began the Cold War and the nuclear arms race…By avoiding our responsibility for the escalating crimes of state done for our security, we who failed to confront the Unspeakable opened the door to JFK’s assassination and its cover-up. The Unspeakable is not far away." Most important, notes Douglas, "…The story of JFK and the Unspeakable is drawn from the suffering and compassion of many witnesses who saw the truth and spoke it." Douglas introduces us to those witnesses and lets us hear what they have to say. "In living the truth, we are liberated from the Unspeakable." With his chronological time line, and compare and contrast style, Douglas shows that the assassination of President Kennedy was not the work of one lone, deranged gunman, or the act of Cubans, mobsters or renegade government agents, but whatever happened at Dealey Plaza it was a well planned and executed coup d’etat. By chronologically comparing and contrasting the lives and experiences of Kennedy and his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Douglas reasonably demonstrates that Oswald was not the lone nut loser that Warren Commission apologists portray, but an active player in the big game, though only as a pawn and patsy. According to Douglas, the paths that led Oswald and Kennedy to Dealey Plaza were divergent but pushed along by the same hidden forces, with the motive for the assassination found with Kennedy rather than in the mind of his accused assassin. Like David Talbot’s book Brothers before him, Douglas reframes the Kennedy presidency to include the backstage manipulations that we’ve only recently learned about. The conflicts with the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and with the racists in his own party fighting the civil rights revolt, as well as his determination to withdraw from Vietnam and establish a dialog and diplomatic resolution to the Cuban problem, were all forces that set Kennedy up for retaliation by those who made the Unspeakable happen. Kennedy, more than once, reflected that a Seven Days in May style military coup could occur in the United States if there was a Bay of Pigs type conflict, and then another similar situation, like the Cuban Missile Crisis presented. Then, if there was a third Bay of Pigs type event, Kennedy reasoned, a coup was possible. Douglas says that Kennedy’s "third Bay of Pigs" was his "Peace Speech" at American University on June 10, 1963, which he reproduces in full as an appendix. But while being threatening to the military-industrial complex, the American University speech was not the straw that broke the camel’s back if you believe (as I do) that Col. Jose Rivera (USAR) had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination and of Oswald’s patsy role, as early as mid-April, 1963, months before the Peace Speech. Douglas starts out with a brief, but incomplete chronology at the beginning, but then jumps around a little in his six chapters, each dealing with various people and events that lead up to what happened at Dealey Plaza. In his first chapter, A Cold Warrior Turns, Douglas show how JFK’s slow evolving epiphany brings him to the realization that war is not the answer, and he turns to backchannel diplomacy when his own administration balks at talking with the enemy (does this sound familiar?). If the President’s assassin was a real psychotic, lone-nut, spree killer, as the official story makes him out to be, then it could all be explained psychotically, like other real psycho spree killers (Howard Unruh for instance), and it would be disjointed from the real world that the victim inhabited. But if that lone assassin is Lee Harvey Oswald, then his background, history, personal profile and every attribute we know about him, as well as his associates, indicate that he was a covert intelligence operative affiliated with a domestic, federal intelligence agency/network. (One that is still in operation, I might add – BK) Oswald’s background fits like a glove into to the covert history of the Cold War, as Douglas so artfully demonstrates by zig zagging the lives of Kennedy, the King, and Oswald, the Pawn, showing how hidden hands put the Pawn into position to checkmate the King. Limiting his chronology from January 17, 1961, when President Eisenhower gave his farewell address and warned of the "military-industrial-complex," and ending at 11:21 AM, November 24, 1963, with the murder of Oswald, Douglas focuses on what he deems necessary to conclusively show that JFK was the victim, not only of a conspiracy, but a high level coup. And he succeeds. Although only 24 years old, Oswald had been involved in at least a half dozen major covert intelligence operations, beginning with his radar monitoring and guarding of the U2 spy plane in Japan. On Holloween, October 31, 1959, Oswald turned his passport, which identified him as an "Import – Export" agent, over to State Department officer Richard Snyder. Oswald threatened to give the Soviets information he had learned in the Marines. Although there is no record of Oswald ever being questioned by the KGB, six months after he defected, Gary Powers was shot down in a U2 over Russia, which forced cancellation of a meeting between Eisenhower and Kruschev. Douglas speculates that Oswald did tell them. All that was necessary to know in order to shoot down a U2, was the speed and altitude of the plane. Gary Powers himself speculated that Oswald gave the Soviets the information they needed to shoot him down. Oswald, it turns out, had a US Military ID card identical to the card Powers had on him when he was shot down. There was also speculation that Oswald was in attendance at Powers’ trial. In any case, Oswald was not prosecuted, or even officially debriefed when he returned home with his Russian wife and baby. George De Mohrenschildt, at the request of the CIA’s J. Walton Moore, met the Oswalds and introduced them to his circle of friends, which included Ruth and Michael Paine. While still under the guidance of De Mohrenschildt, in October, 1962, Oswald got a job at the graphic arts firm Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval, that did work for the Army Security Agency, placing captions on maps and photographs taken by the U2. So during the Cuban Missile Crisis that month, when the President held up photos of Cuban missile sites, the man who would be accused of killing him, may have placed the arrows and captions on those very photographs. Douglas says that the Oswalds were handed off like a football, from De Mohrenschildt to the Paines. Douglas says that J. Walton Moore, of the Dallas Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA had his longtime contact George de Mohrenschildt meet Oswald, saying that sometime in the summer of 1962 one of Moore’s associates gave him Oswald’s address in Fort Worth, and de Mohrenschildt called Moore on the phone to confirm the mission. According to Douglas, it was Moore, of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas who had De Mohrenschildt befriend Oswald, and it was De Mohrenschildt who arranged for the Oswalds to meet Ruth and Michael Paine, who became sponsors and benefactors of the accused assassin and his family. With the assistance of the Paines, the Oswald family moved to New Orleans in the wake of the Walker shooing, which was later blamed on Oswald. Going into all the sorid details of Oswald in New Orleans, Douglas brings out the founding of the Fair Play for Cuba chapter, the run ins with Carlos Bruingier and the DRE, but doesn’t get into the whole Morley vs. CIA over the Joannides records. Most important however, Douglas fits in the anti-Castro Cuban training operations, the CIA maritime raids on Cuba and the backchannel negotiations that were suppose to be secretly going on between JFK and Castro. In the Chapter on Kennedy, Castro and the CIA, Douglas writes that, "It was while John Kennedy was being steered into combat with the CIA and the Pentagon at the Bay of Pigs that Thomas Merton was being blocked from publishing his thoughts on nuclear war by his monastic superiors. Merton, like Kennedy, decided to find another way. The words pouring out of Merton’s typewriter were spilling over from unpublished manuscripts into his Cold War letters." (p.17) "On December 31, 1961, Merton wrote a letter anticipating the Cuban Missile Crisis ten months later. It was addressed to Clare Booth Luce, wife of Time-Life-Fortune owner Henry Luce, a Cold War media barron," who financially supported the maritime raiders, and wrote stories about them for Life. (p.18) "As Merton challenged the Cold War dogmas of Clare Booth Luce, he was raising similar questions of conscience to another powerfully situated women, Ethel Kennedy…" (p.19) and Merton began to see a change in Kennedy’s political thought. At a speech the president gave at the University of Washington, Kennedy said, "It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead." (p.19) Douglas says that JFK’s "fourth Bay of Pigs" was the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and he notes the role Norman Cousins played, and the methodology he used in changing public opinion on the issue. Douglas notes that the Senate vote on ratification of the treaty, approved by a vote of 80 – 19, was held on September 24, not an unimportant date on the Road to Dallas. "One pawn in the Cold War who needed a way out before it was too late was a young ex-Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald. In following Kennedy’s path through a series of critical conflicts, we have been moving more deeply into the question: Why was John Kennedy murdered? Now as we begin to trace Oswald’s path, which will converge with Kennedy’s, we can see the emergence of a strangely complementary question: Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?" (p. 37) "The same government issued a report that described Oswald as unable "to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually disconnected with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it….He sought for himself a place in history – a role as the ‘great man’ who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation." (p.39) Of course this alleged motive, contrived by the Warren Commission, doesn’t take into account the fact that Oswald, who "sought for himself a place in history," denied killing anybody and claimed to be a "patsy." As Douglas puts it, "If we turn from Warren Report psychology to Cold War history, why was the ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald not arrested and charged a year and a half before the assassination when he came back to the United States from the Soviet Union, where he had announced at the American Embassy in Moscow that he would hand over military secrets (about U2 flights) to the Soviets?" (p.39) "Oswald’s trajectory, which would end up meeting Kennedy’s in Dallas, was guided not by the heavens or fate or even, as the Warren Report would have it, by a disturbed psyche, Oswald was guided by his intelligence handlers. Lee Harvey Oswald was a pawn in the game. He was a minor piece in the deadly game Kennedy wanted to end. Oswald was being moved square by square across a giant board stretching from Atsugi to Moscow to Minsk to Dallas. For the sake of victory in the Cold War, the hands moving Oswald were prepared to sacrifice him and any other piece on the board. However, there was one player, John Kennedy, who no longer believed in the game and was threatening to turn over the board." (p.41) In the chapter on JFK and Vietnam, Douglas bring in Operation Northwoods, which many believe was incorporated in the assassination planning. "On March 13, 1962, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Kennedy inherited from the Eisenhower, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, proposed ‘Operation Northwoods.’ It’s purpose was to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba, in which a "Remember the Main incident could be arranged in several forms. We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba…" (p.96-97) Kennedy rejected Northwoods, and his solution to the Vietnam problem was "Easy" the president said, "Put a government in there that will ask us to leave." (p.134) In Marked Out for Assassination, Douglas says that, "Investigative journalist Joseph Trento testified in a 1984 court deposition that, according to CIA sources, James Angleton was the supervisor of a CIA assassination unit in the 1950s. The ‘small assassination team’ was headed by Army colonel Boris Pash. At the end of World War II, Army Intelligence colonel Pash had rounded up Nazi scientists who could contribute their research skills to the development of U.S. nuclear and chemical weapons…" (p.143) Douglas brings out the individual stories of a number of important witnesses, most of whom we have heard from before, but Boris Pash is one of the few individuals Douglas introduces who has managed to avoid the limelight, even in death. Douglas gives much play to James Wilcott (p. 146-148), a CIA accountant stationed in Tokyo (1960 – 1964) who claimed that it was common knowledge in the CIA station there that Oswald was an agent who was disbursed CIA funds from a case officer. Both Wilcott and his wife were CIA administrators. "In the decade following his HSCA testimony," notes Douglas, "Jim Wilcott joined Vietnam veteran Brian Willson and the Nuremberg Actions community outside the Concord Naval Weapons Station in nonviolent resistance to weapons shipments to the CIA sponsored Contra war in Nicaragua. While sitting on the railroad tracks, Willson was run over by a weapons train, which severed both his legs. Undeterred, Jim Wilcott was arrested for blocking a later train." (p.147) We’re going to hear more about Mr. Wilcott, but as Douglas surmises, "Thus, even the assassination of a president could be funded unconsciously by American taxpayers and carried out unknowingly by government employees, while only a few such as CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms and Counter-intelligence head James Angleton knew the intended result beforehand." (p.148) In Saigon and Chicago (Chapter 5), Douglas reinforces the image of Kennedy losing grip on his government, especially in Saigon, where his ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was pushing for a coup to oust Diem, while Kennedy wanted Lodge to use diplomacy. It’s quite apparent, in retrospect that Kennedy’s attempt at appeasement of conservative Republicans by appointing two of their own – Lodge in Vietnam and John McCone as head of the CIA, backfired in Kennedy’s face. There are a few little gems in "The Unspeakable," like Boris Pash, and Marvin Gheesling (p.177), the FBI agent who, on October 9, 1963, took Oswald off the FLASH notice, effectively "turned off the alarm switch on Oswald literally an instant before it would have gone off." While the coup in South Vietnam was being undertaken, the FBI and Secret Service were uncovering a plot to kill the President in Chicago (p.200-207). "Thomas Vallee had been led along a trail that Lee Oswald would follow after him…" writes Douglas. The ex-Marine who worked at a CIA sponsored Cuban commando training camp in Levittown, Long Island. "Thomas Arthur Vallee and Lee Harvey Oswald, two men under the CIA’s thumb for years, were being set up, one after the other, as scapegoats in two prime sites for killing Kennedy." (p.205) In Chicago, Douglas visits the building on the parade route Kennedy would have used, and visits the assassin’s lair where Vallee would have been placed and branded as the assassin if JFK had gone to Chicago that day. Into the Nest of the Unspeakable. Douglas makes the point that if Kennedy had been killed in Chicago on November 1, we might have known Thomas Arthur Vallee as his deranged, ex-Marine, lone-nut assassin rather than Oswald. "Lee Harvey Oswald was being systematically set up for his scapegoat role in Dallas, just as Thomas Arthur Vallee had been set up as an alternative patsy in Chicago," writes Douglas in Washington and Dallas. "Vallee escaped that fate, when two whistleblowers, Chicago Police Lieutenant Berkeley Moyland an FBI informant named ‘Lee,’ stopped the Chicago plot. Oswald was not so fortunate in Dallas. His incrimination by unseen hands continued…" (p.221) Douglas also outlines the original cover story, that is still propagated in some quarters. "Just as Chicago was the model for Dallas, Saigon was the backdrop for Chicago…." says Douglas, indicating a connection between what was going on. "…The legend created for the Dallas scenario of the gun-toting malcontent Lee Harvey Oswald followed a similar pattern. From the claims made by a series of CIA officers to the authors of widely disseminated books and articles, John Kennedy had been convicted in his grave of having tried to kill Fidel Castro, whose supposedly deranged surrogate, Lee Harvey Oswald, then retaliated. As a successful Chicago plot would have done, the Dallas plot ended up blaming the victim. ‘Kennedy tried to murder Castro, and got what he deserved.’" (p.218) Douglas wrote that, "Those who designed the plot to kill Kennedy were familiar with the inner sanctum of our national security state,...The assassins' purpose seems to have encompassed not only killing a president determined to make peace with the enemy but also using his murder as the impetus for a possile first strike against that same enemy." The inclusion of Northwoods in the Dealey Plaza operation is the lynchpin that proves that the bullets that killed the President came from the Pentagon, and the assassination is the most significant national security issue yet to be resolved. We’ve come to learn a lot since JFK was buried, and one of the most important things we should have learned is that the assassination of President Kennedy was a terrorist attack on our nation, as well as one man, and that we must now, or eventually, come to face the Unspeakable and confront it with the truth we’ve come to know. As Douglas puts it, "Unknown to ordinary citizens watching President Kennedy’s funeral on their television sets, the agencies of a national security state had quickly formed a united front behind the official mourning scenes to cover up every aspect of JFK’s assassination. National security policies toward enemies beyond the state (with whom the slain president had been negotiating a truce) made necessary the denial of every trace of conspiracy within the state. As a saddled, riderless horse followed the coffin through the capitol’s streets, plausible deniability had come home to haunt the nation." (p.82) And now the game tables are being overturned, and what was once kept secret for reasons of national security, must now be revealed for reasons of national security, so the Nest of the Unspeakeable can be confronted and purged. [ William Kelly, co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archives (COA) and a member of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) can be reached at bkjfk3@yahoo.com ]

Stone's 'JFK' re-release this November

politicalassassinations — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:20:00 +0000

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=68333 Warner Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of JFK (3-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition) on 11th November 2008. Oliver Stone’s feature on the story surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination returns as a new UCE that includes the previous Two-Disc Special Edition Director’s Cut along with a third disc that features The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings, a new documentary from filmmaker Robert Kline based on Thomas Maier’s acclaimed book about five generations of the renowned political family. Unique to the documentary is political and private footage of the Kennedys not widely available to the general public. The set also contains memorabilia from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Kennedy Foundation, including reproductions of Kennedy family and presidential photos, letters written by or to John F. Kennedy from J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon. B. Johnson and more. The UCE also will include a Kennedy campaign button from the National Archives and Records Administration. Of particular distinction is the inclusion of John F. Kennedy’s historic inaugural address and a handwritten letter to his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. In addition, the set features a collectible booklet containing production photos and photo cards showcasing the actors in character with a mini bio of their character. The UCE will retail at $39.98 SRP and the new documentary - The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings - will also be available separately priced at $19.97 SRP.

CNN vs MLK -a video critique

politicalassassinations — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:43:11 +0000

Thanks to Reprehensor for making and distributing this [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12blU_HiX48&hl=en&fs=1]

Bullet analysis in the Dallas Morning News

politicalassassinations — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:02:06 +0000

The full analysis can be found here

Bullet analysis casts doubt on lone gunman in JFK assassination

08:15 PM CDT on Saturday, September 13, 2008
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News myoung@dallasnews.com

Use the latest scientific techniques to poke a hole or two in official findings on the Kennedy assassination and suddenly you have lots of new friends – and lots of enemies.

Forty-five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed in a Dallas motorcade, the details surrounding his death remain topics of endless debate for those who see conspiracies and those who disagree. Cliff Spiegelman will testify to that. The professor of statistics at Texas A&M University organized a six-member team that compared the composition of bullet fragments from the JFK shooting with other bullets from the same manufacturer. The group found that those fragments weren't nearly as rare as the government's expert witness concluded in 1976, when Dr. Vincent P. Guinn determined that all five fragments came from two bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. A third shot missed. "The claim was made that those five fragments could only have come from two bullets," Dr. Spiegelman said. "Our research showed it could have been two or more. "And if it is more than two, there is an increased likelihood that someone else provided one of them."

Also Online

Multimedia: The story behind the JFK story

Findings show bullets not as rare as first thought

Link: Full analysis of the JFK assassination bullet samples

Many of the test bullets showed the same "chemical composition," and one matched fragments from the assassination bullets, he said. Hence the title of the group's paper: "Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is a Second Shooter Possible?" The team was honored by the American Statistical Association with its 2008 Statistics in Chemistry award. The study doesn't say there were two or more gunmen, only that the single-gunman theory can't be supported by science. Naturally, that triggered "a bit of a buzz," said Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. "The no-conspiracy folks, they accepted [Dr. Guinn's] analysis without too much questioning," Mr. Mack said. "But others wondered whether he knew what he was talking about. And the sharp ones were very skeptical that [the one-shooter findings] could be so definitive." By allowing the possibility of multiple gunmen, the study quickly made the rounds on Internet sites and conspiracy bulletin boards. "Do a search of 'Spiegelman and JFK' and see how many hits you get," Dr. Spiegelman said. "Depending on the day, it's somewhere between 50,000 and 90,000." Many readers passed along their own theories. A minister who had served in Central America told him that a former member of the mob confessed that he helped plan the assassination, Dr. Spiegelman said. "I got a letter that said, 'Hey stupid, we had a coup. [Lyndon] Johnson did it.' " A phone message from Australia promised to reveal the real killer only if Dr. Spiegelman called back. And an elderly gent from West, Texas, said he found a weapon like Mr. Oswald's Carcano rifle in a hotel the day after the assassination. Would Dr. Spiegelman like to see it? At the same time, others attacked details of the study, citing things like the bullets' manufacturer, mentioned at one point as Winchester, then as the Western Cartridge Co. Stuart Wexler, a 32-year-old teacher from New Jersey, joined the team and provided the test bullets, acquired during a two-year search of eBay auctions, shooting sites and online newsgroups. "Finding those bullets was incredibly tough," Mr. Wexler said. "There are a lot of Carcano rounds out there, but not a lot of Western Carcano rounds." Yes, they were made by Western, which acquired Winchester in 1931, he said. Even now, a year after the study's publication, Mr. Wexler is amazed at the response. "There was a tremendous amount of buzz," he said. "Unfortunately, a number of the international headlines overstated our conclusions. Some of it was almost pure propaganda." It reminded him of something he saw recently on the Onion, a satirical Internet site, in its summary of the news of 1963: "Kennedy Slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons. President shot 129 Times from 43 Different Angles."

COPA in AP story

politicalassassinations — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:32:58 +0000

COPA was mentioned recently in an Associated Press story about commemorations of the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Hundreds gather at Dealey Plaza to commemorate JFK By ANDRE COE Associated Press Writer © 2008 The Associated Press Nov. 22, 2008, 7:59PM http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6127445.html DALLAS — On the day marking the 45th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, some 500 people crowded into Dallas' Dealey Plaza to remember one of the most tragic moments in American history. People stood shoulder-to-shoulder and bowed their heads during a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Some hawked JFK memorabilia or pitched conspiracy theories to visitors with cameras and video recorders in hand who moved about. Others offered firsthand accounts of their moment in the tragic event. Visiting from Pipersville, Penn., 66-year-old Barbara Koenig said coming to the site was something she needed to do. "I remember the day of the assassination and I've always wanted to visit this site," she said. "It's just an eerie feeling. It kind of takes you back 45 years to what you were doing and thinking about the whole tragedy of the affair. I burst into tears (then). In fact, I'm ready to cry now." Nearby, street vendors held out commemorative newspapers hoping would-be customers would buy them. One person roamed the crowd with a sign that questioned whether it was a lone gunman who killed Kennedy or several. A group of men who wore black suits, matching ties and earpieces stood silent and seemed to guard a large black banner that stood behind them. The day Kennedy was assassinated is one people should always remember, but its truth still has not been entirely revealed, said John Judge, head of the Coalition On Political Assassinations (COPA), a Washington-based organization dedicated to researching political assassinations. Kennedy was shot in the head while riding through Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. Judge believes Kennedy's assassination was a government conspiracy and could be easily solved if all of the facts were revealed. "If the case were to be honestly investigated or if a grand jury could open it up, we could get at it," he said. "I think (people) want to remember a piece of their history that was stolen from them." On Saturday, two Xs spray-painted in the street marked the spots where Kennedy was hit as his motorcade drove through the plaza. A placard from the National Park Service stood on the ground directly across from one X. A short distance from there, Suzanne Guardiola, 47, stood in the crowd with her husband, Moises. "This is the first memory of something tragic that happened that I ever remember," she said. Guardiola recalled how family members responded when they saw footage of Kennedy's assassination for the first time when the Zapruder film was released 12 years later. Even then, her grandmother cried, she said. "It reminded everybody that, 'Yes, this did happen,'" her husband, Moises Guardiola said. Gathering at the plaza was a way for people to reclaim history, Judge said. "I think that people loved and respected John Kennedy and I think that that day not only a man died but democracy died," he said. For 68-year-old Ann Murphy, news of Kennedy's assassination stunned her when it reached her and other teachers in Toronto, Canada. She was in disbelief when school officials announced "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas," she said. Murphy stayed glued to her father's grainy, black-and-white television set for more news on the events unfolding in the United States. She was even more stunned when she saw nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoot the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television, Murphy said. "It's strange that one man's influence and popularity would extend well outside his own country," she said from the grassy area of the plaza, infamous for the numerous theories it has sparked. ____ On the Net: The Sixth Floor Museum, http://www.jfk.org/ The Coalition On Political Assassinations, http://www.politicalassassinations.com/

JFK and Vietnam, LA Times story.

politicalassassinations — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:35:00 +0000

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldstein22-2008nov22,0,403772.story Los Angeles Times JFK and Vietnam Kennedy's assassination 45 years ago today made it an American war. By Gordon M. Goldstein November 22, 2008 The assassination of John F. Kennedy 45 years ago today brought an abrupt end to what his admirers called Camelot, a presidential era of glamour, intelligence, wit and possibility. But the murder had an even more profound consequence: Nov. 22, 1963, was the single most significant day in the history of the Vietnam War. It's not possible to know for certain how Kennedy would have managed the crisis in Vietnam had he lived. But it's clear that he was determined to prevent Vietnam from becoming an American war and that he expected to withdraw fully during a second term. At the point Kennedy assumed office in 1961, American military involvement in Southeast Asia was limited to arms shipments and a small number of advisors. But the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem was facing an increasingly potent communist insurgency and, in the U.S., pressure was building to send in ground troops. Over the course of the year, Kennedy's advisors presented him with half a dozen or more proposals to Americanize the war. In one, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that it would be difficult to prevent "the fall of South Vietnam by any measures short of the introduction of U.S. forces on a substantial scale." Kennedy's advisors told him that to defend the Saigon regime might take more than 200,000 combat troops. McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor, believed that committing American troops was vital. "Laos was never really ours after 1954," Bundy explained to the skeptical president, invoking another Southeast Asian nation where Kennedy had resisted intervention. "Vietnam is and wants to be." Kennedy was not receptive. Long before becoming president, he had spoken out in Congress against the disastrous French experience in Vietnam, citing it as a reason the U.S. should never fight a ground war there. In the summer of 1961, he said he had accepted the conclusion of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who counseled against a land war in Asia, insisting that even a million American infantry soldiers would not be sufficient to prevail. He would offer military aid and training to Saigon, but he would not authorize the dispatch of ground forces. Over the three years of his presidency, Kennedy sometimes invoked hawkish rhetoric about Vietnam. He also increased the military advisors and training personnel there to roughly 16,000. But McNamara and Bundy both came to believe that Kennedy would not have Americanized the war -- even if the price was communism in South Vietnam.

COPA in 2nd AP story

politicalassassinations — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:35:55 +0000

JFK anniversary marked at Dallas shooting site By ANDRE COE Associated Press Writer Kansas City Star 11/23/08 Bill Newman points to the spot he and his wife Gayle, left, were located when President John F. Kennedy was shot Nov. 22, 1963, as they tour The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Tuesday, June 3, 2008. Ed Reinke (photo) Bill Newman points to the spot he and his wife Gayle, left, were located when President John F. Kennedy was shot Nov. 22, 1963, as they tour The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Tuesday, June 3, 2008. About 500 people crowded Saturday into the plaza where John F. Kennedy was shot 45 years ago, all agreeing it was right to remember a pivotal moment in American history, even if they didn't all believe the official line. People stood shoulder to shoulder and bowed their heads during a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. Some hawked JFK memorabilia or pitched conspiracy theories to visitors. Others offered firsthand accounts of their memories of the killing. Visiting from Pipersville, Penn., 66-year-old Barbara Koenig said coming to the site was something she needed to do. "I remember the day of the assassination, and I've always wanted to visit this site," she said. "It's just an eerie feeling. It kind of takes you back 45 years to what you were doing and thinking about the whole tragedy of the affair. I burst into tears (then). In fact, I'm ready to cry now." Nearby, street vendors held out commemorative newspapers hoping would-be customers would buy them. One person roamed the crowd with a sign questioning whether it was a lone gunman who killed Kennedy or several. A group of men who wore black suits, matching ties and earpieces stood silent and appeared to guard a large black banner behind them. The day Kennedy was assassinated is one people should always remember, but its truth still has not been entirely revealed, argued John Judge, head of the Coalition On Political Assassinations, a Washington-based organization that researches political assassinations. Judge believes Kennedy's assassination was a government conspiracy and could easily be solved if all of the facts were revealed. "If the case were to be honestly investigated or if a grand jury could open it up, we could get at it," he said. "I think (people) want to remember a piece of their history that was stolen from them." On Saturday, two Xs spray-painted in the street marked the spots where Kennedy was hit as his motorcade drove through the plaza. A placard from the National Park Service stood on the ground directly across from one X. For 68-year-old Ann Murphy, news of Kennedy's assassination stunned her when it reached her and other teachers in Toronto. She was in disbelief when school officials announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas," she said. Murphy stayed glued to her father's grainy, black-and-white television set for more news on the events unfolding in the United States. She was even more stunned when she saw nightclub owner Jack Ruby later shoot the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television, Murphy said. "It's strange," she said, "that one man's influence and popularity would extend well outside his own country."

COPA CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS, 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:31:41 +0000

“44/44: KILLING THE MESSENGER” A Forum on the Assassination of Malcolm X Commemorating the 44th Anniversary/ 44th President At the Shabazz Center, the site of the historic Audubon Ballroom Saturday, February 21, 2009 – 6:00 pm 3940 Broadway, New York City Co-sponsored by: The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center www.theshabazzcenter.net The Coalition on Political Assassinations www.politicalassassinations.com Speakers: Dr. William Pepper, Esq., author of Orders to Kill, Act of State John Judge, director, Coalition on Political Assassinations Steve Clark, editor of The Assassination of Malcolm X Wynne Alexander, WDAS Radio historian and journalist Professor James Small, OAAU, trustee of Shabazz Center Iman Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid, trustee of Shabazz Center Moderator: Dowoti Dezir, Executive Director, Shabazz Center Open to the public, no admission Check our website for a possible live webcast: www.politicalassassinations.com WBAI Pacifica FM in NYC will be recording this event and will be offering audio copies as part of their fundraising drive. For information and other events: 212-588-1341 or www.theshabazzcenter.net SPEAKER BIOS: Dr. William Pepper, Esq. - A Barrister in England and an attorney, admitted in a number of jurisdictions in the US, whose work has focused on International Human Rights. Dr. William Pepper was a close friend and colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the last year of his life, following Dr. King's reading of his article on the Viet Nam war when he was a young journalist who exposed the war crimes against the civilian population. At Dr. King's request, he directed the National Conference For New Politics, an umbrella peace and freedom organization formed to oppose the war and continue the struggle to empower the poor. He became James Earl Ray's attorney in 1988, after becoming convinced that he was an unknowing patsy. He represented James Earl Ray until he died, and then represented the King family at an historic trial in 1999, where a jury in Memphis found that a government conspiracy existed to kill Dr. King, and cleared Ray. Pepper investigated the King assassination for some 30 years, and is the author of Orders to Kill, Act of State, with a final work in preparation. He has been a visiting scholar and Fellow at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and convened the Seminar in International Human Rights for two years at Oxford University, and he was Robert F. Kennedy's Citizen Chairman in Westchester County, when he ran for the Senate in the year before Malcolm was assassinated. He is now is lead Counsel for Sirhan Sirhan, who he has come to believe was yet another patsy in that assassination. Steve Clark - Editor of George Breitman’s The Assassination of Malcolm X and senior editor at Pathfinder Press of other books on Malcolm X’s speeches and legacy, Steve Clark also edits The New Internationalist magazine. Professor James Small – Currently director of the Organization of African American Unity, founded by Malcolm X, and a trustee of the Shabazz Center, James Small moved to New York City where he joined the organization of Afro-American Unity founded by the legendary Malcolm X. In 1967, Prof. Small became Imam (minister) of the Muslim Mosque Incorporated, also founded by Malcolm X. Between the years of 1966 and 1980, he was a member of the N.A.A.C.P., the O.A.A. U., and S.N.C.C. He served as President of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization’s Eastern Region for two years, where he worked and studied with Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef A. A. Ben Jochannan, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Amos Wilson and Dr. Cress Welling. He taught for nearly twenty years at the City University of New York, including 17 years at the City College of New York's Black Studies Department, and for two years at New York City Technical College Iman Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid – A trustee of Shabazz Center, Rashid is the religious and spiritual leader of The Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, New York City. He is also the Amir (leader) of the Harlem Shura (a coalition of seven Harlem mosques). Having served for a decade as the chairman of the Justice Committee of the Majlis Ash-Shura (Islamic Leadership Council) of New York, he has just been appointed a Vice President, and serves nationally as the Deputy Amir of The Muslim Alliance in North America. Further, Imam Talib (as he is popularly known) serves on or advises several interfaith bodies located in New York City. Wynne Alexander - Author and investigative journalist, Wynne Alexander wrote the first and only music- infused civil rights curriculum in the country, Get it from the Drums, featuring the work of 17 musical superstars. She has also produced radio and TV documentaries and the highly informative website WDASHistory.org chronicling the groundbreaking civil rights work of that radio station and its work with Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and many other national leaders. In 1964, Malcolm X got a serious death threat during a visit to WDAS. John Judge – Independent researcher, author and lecturer, John Judge has been the executive director of the national Coalition on Political Assassinations since 1994, which holds regional and national conferences on the major political assassinations presenting the best evidence of medical, forensic and ballistics experts, academics and authors and researchers, and works to secure full release of all classified government files and records related to these murders. Their work led to the passage and implementation of the JFK Assassination Records Act and the release of over 6.5 million pages of previously hidden government files. Judge is currently working on the passage of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act as well. Dowoti Désir - Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center a not-for-profit focused on human, civil, and educational rights. Dowoti Desir, the former Associate Publisher of The AFRIcan Magazine has served as an Adjunct Professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She has worked for over 20 years in the arts community in the U.S. As the Director of Community Arts Initiatives of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council [LMCC], Ms. Désir managed the largest grant program administered by the State of New York, the Fund for Creative Communities. At LMCC she also conceived and managed the innovative cultural assessment project, Mapping New Terrain: Communities in Transition, which analyzed the impact of globalization in the Harlem’s various communities. Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 12:00 pm "And We Are All Mortal..." Commemorative event on the 46th anniversary of JFK's speech against the Cold War Memorial Plaque, campus of American University (southeast end of football field) 4800 Nebraska Ave. NW, Washington, DC (entance at New Mexico and Nebraska Aves.) Readings followed by luncheon meeting. Open to public, no cost. Friday to Sunday, November 20-22, 2009 Open Secrets: the Assassinations of the 1960s Annual Regional Meeting of COPA Hotel Lawrence, Dallas, TX 302 S. Jackson St. (off Dealey Plaza) Speakers, films, books, resources, email for details Moment of Silence, Grassy Knoll, 12:30 pm November 22. Open to public, registration fees paid on site. Check out our new website: www.politicalassassinations.com National organization of medical and ballistic experts, academics and authors, researchers and interested individuals investigating major political assassinations in America and abroad. Responsible for creation and implementation of the JFK Assassination Records Act. Promoting a Martin Luther King Records Act and a grand jury process to reopen all the major assassinations.

Jim Douglass interview

politicalassassinations — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:19:01 +0000

This is the transcript of one of Jim Douglass' interviews on Black op radio. Thanks to William Kelly for the transcript. Jim Douglass on Black Op Radio with Len Osanic http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2009.html Show #406 Original airdate: Jan 8th, 2009 Part 1 Guest: Jim DiEugenio Topics: Assassination Research Part 2 Guest - Jim Douglass Jim's book JFK and the Unspeakable is now the #1 Kennedy book on Amazon American intelligence was instrumental in the JFK Assassination To say any one force (CIA, Mafia, Castro etc) was responsible is irresponsible Douglass mentions Vincent Salandria as having the case solved many years ago Salandria's overview of the case makes the most sense The Joint Chiefs wanted to win the Cold War In fear of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War Thomas Arthur Vallee, The Chicago Plot and Oswald Jim's message: Why was JFK assassinated? Kennedy reached out to his enemy, Khruschev Because of this we still exist. He prevented nuclear war Kennedy was all but alone in Washington when he turned to peace Jim thinks Lyndon Johnson had foreknowledge but didn't participate personally After the assassinations of JFK, MLK & RFK, he saw his own end and left office The hope of Obama in the context of Kennedy's American University speech The task is to learn from the past to save the future This will be difficult with all the disinformation getting better publicity Len Osanic.: Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Black Op Radio. Today we are joined by Jim Douglas, noted author and researcher and well known in the community. Jim Douglas: Hello, Len. Len O: It’s a pleasure to speak with you again. From what I understand your book “JFK & the Unspeakable” is number one at Amazon.com. JD: According to my editor and publisher it is the number one best selling “Kennedy” book at Amazon.com. Len O. Yea, that’s what I meant. There are a lot of books out there, and for the lack of a better word, a lot of disinformation books that go nowhere, blaming Castro, there’s a new one blaming the mafia. If I could think of another word, but it’s pathetic, with all that is known, for anyone who has read your good work. Let’s sum up for people not familiar with your book, that I can’t recommend it highly enough. We had six interviews with you last fall – one on each chapter and a statement that I thought how important the book is, and dedicated an hour or so to each chapter, and it’s good that this has happened. Do you have an opinion how anyone could in this day and age could believe that Oswald a lone assassin, and write a book about that, or do a documentary? JD: I believe it has government support and instigation actually. It’s beyond any competent authorship or any real work. We’ve known, in terms of available information for decades that the United States government was involved in killing the President. And the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald did it, or for that matter Castro or the mob, that is irresponsible. That’s not to say they weren’t involved, there was a larger plot and they were involved, but to say that either Lee Harvey Oswald or the mob, or that Fidel Castro, was the instigator, not Castro, who was not involved, but to say the first two – Oswald or the mob, that they were the primary actors in the Kennedy assassination, is totally irresponsible. LO: That’s a good word for it. Have you been traveling promoting the book? JD: Yes, quite a bit. I’ve met people in Dallas, Northern California, New Mexico, Portland, Wisconsin, of course around here, Alabama, St. Louis, quite a few places, Denver, Colorado. LO: Has anything come out regarding your book that you would call new information? Since you’ve written it and have been networking with researchers, is there anything new of note worth bringing up? JD: I think the more one gets into the Kennedy assassination, the more the dots get connected. I don’t think there’s been any new information, really. I think the Assassinations Records Review Board and in particular members of the staff, made significant steps in the 1990s that will become more available as the people who worked on it bring out their own studies. But no, there hasn’t been any new significant information that I’m aware of. LO: I just thought I would bring that up, as a researcher could have told you of some new tidbits of information. JD: The Kennedy story is important - why he was assassinated, that’s why I wrote the book. There’s a lot of information about the assassination in the book, but the reason I included that was to connect the dots and to underline His story – John F. Kennedy’s story. And I think we are kind of missing the point in the research community if we continue to feel the need for new information. We don’t need it. We’ve go enough information. What we need is to connect the dots – see the coherence of that information, and to show the irrelevance of the disinformation, and that we’ve already referred to. I think Vince Salandria had it down decades ago as did other researchers. I refer to him because he’s sort of a meta-physician on the assassination. He has an overview that I think was right from the day after the assassination when he anticipated Oswald being killed as well, and when that happened it confirmed the overall nature of the scapegoating of Oswald by intelligence sources. So we’ve known for a long time, and new information can strengthen what is already obvious. You don’t really need to strengthen it. Vince Salandria, one of the foremost researchers, and one who has had an overview of the assassination for decades that makes a great deal of sense, and it is that Lee Harvey Oswald was simply being used by the Central Intelligence Agency and he was being scapegoated. This was a National Security state assassination. Oswald was very much, in terms of the overall apparatus, a minor figure, but in the overall story of the assassination he is significant, because if you follow his story you can’t understand it except by his intelligence connections and by his being manipulated and being brought into a place where he was the scapegoat but also the scapegoat for larger scapegoats – the Soviet Union and Cuba. And fortunately that part of the assassination did not work. Had it did work, we would have had a nuclear war. And that is the reason why Kennedy was assassinated, because stood against it. He didn’t want to win a nuclear war, he wanted to stop it. And that’s an all together different objective from his Joint Chiefs and the Central Intelligence Agency. LO: I think your book illuminates there were other patsies in the wings, and the idea that if Lee didn’t show up for work that day, there were other people there. JD: Yes, and of course the first intended scapegoat was Thomas Arthur Valle in relation to the plot in Chicago. And Valle escapes that, thanks to Oswald himself, as well as some whistleblowers in Chicago, especially Abraham Bolden within the Secret Service. But had the plot worked in Chicago, we probably would have never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald. LO: By the way, have you, speaking of patsies, I came across a book that had some details of someone with the name, have you heard the name Donald Wayne House? JD: I may have, but if so I have forgotten it. I am not familiar with the books you are talking about. LO: Well in some ways you say there is no new information, but to a seasoned researcher… JD: No, I’m not saying there is no new information. There could be a lot of new information. I’m saying in order to understand the assassination of John Kennedy, it’s not critically necessary. But new information is not necessary. I think we have enough information to know what is going on. And I think it is fine that we have new information, but we don’t need it to understand what happened or we are missing the point. LO: As one of my friends say they are cognitively impaired…Even with Vincent Bugliousi. It is really unbelievable, if he wasn’t motivated by money, that he could actually believe this, that he could put this giant book together, and after a 20 years effort, be embarrassed by researchers who pick him apart. JD: Yes, I don’t know Vincent Bugliosi’s motives; I think it’s a shame that he put so much time and effort in trying to do the absurd. LO: His work ends up speaking for himself, when he badgers and belittles people who have taken on an interest in researching this. There isn’t total agreement, but 80% people agree with each other to a point, then somebody else mentions something, and I don’t know about that, but there’s 80% agreement - more than enough to say exactly what is going on - the President was removed. JD: In regards to Kennedy, what I have found most encouraging from going around talking about why he was killed and why it matters, many people are inspired by that story. When I was engaged in the research, friends would suggest that was a totally dark story that I was getting into. In some ways that’s true, but in other ways it’s not true at all. Here’s a person who gave his life in terms of the risk he took to turn the world towards peace instead of war, and he got the consequences of that - he was killed for that reason. But that is a story of hope, if somebody is willing to take those risks, and as a result we have a world to live in instead of a nuclear wasteland - that is a story of hope and of change and of inspiration, if you understand it. The reason I wrote that story wasn’t to empower the government, because if you say well, the government succeeded because intelligence agencies killed the President and he wasn’t able to carry out his vision. There’s truth in that, but the primary truth is that if Kennedy was willing to work with his enemies - he reached out to Khrushchev at the height of the worst crisis of that war, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And because of that we have a world today, and we might even have a president who might carry out Kennedy’s vision. Kennedy overcame those powers himself in the sense he resisted the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA and went to his death in that resistance. But this is a story of hope, it is not about those powers winning, it’s a story of hope, about a president reaching the point to where he was taken out, but to the point where we still have a world in which we can continue to work towards peace. That’s why I end the book with the statement extended by Jacque Kennedy, that John F. Kennedy is dead, and as she put it to the Soviets Union representatives at the funeral, “Peace is up to us,” and though it’s always been up to us, it’s up to us to bring about Kennedy’s vision of peace. And that Kennedy gave his life for that should be inspirational. LO: It’s interesting to go behind the scenes and see more than just the assassination but to understand what was really going on. You highlight those pressures, and I think that makes your book stand out from other books that are just about the assassination, as you try to get a total understanding. JD: The pressures that Kennedy was under were almost unimaginable. Those were pressures for war, not for peace, for war. And other than his brother and a few advisors like Sorensen, he was alone. The national security state, the ideology which he had himself bought into at one time - he was not any apostle of non-violence, he was a Cold Warrior, so he had to turn. That’s why I emphasize the term “turn,” and I originally had the subtitle for the book “a story of turning,” but that seemed too oblique for book sellers. And then I had a subsequent effort called the “assassination of a vision,” and that too was not something that could be picked up quickly, and it was sort of negative, because the vision didn’t die with him. But we ended up with “Why He Died & Why It Matters,” and it is a story of turning, Kennedy turned towards peace and was therefore assassinated. LO: And then we got LBJ, who….. JD: Who had a different vision and was hopelessly compromised from day one, and who saw that, if you were to go behind the “evidence” that he was being given by the CIA, you see the CIA itself was the source of the mechanics of the assassination. I’m not saying they were the source of the order, they carried out the mechanics. And Johnson was unwilling to confront that, and he didn’t on the other hand, he didn’t want to accept the evidence on face value because that would have implicated the Soviet Union and Cuba, that Oswald, actually almost certainly an impersonator of Oswald, made at the embassies of Cuba and Soviet Union in Mexico City, and would end in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The CIA was presenting all that to Johnson on the weekend of the assassination, and Johnson was not a naive person. He saw immediately that this was CIA involvement. Did Johnson have pre-knowledge of the assassination? I think he did. I don’t think he was a major player in carrying out the assassination. I think he was frightened to death by the whole thing. He went along with it, but I don’t think he was a major player in carrying it out. He had the foreknowledge of it, but he went with the lone assassin instead of the heavier direction that the CIA and the Joint Chiefs wanted. LO: Of course later in his life he had a rare interview where he said he didn’t believe in the lone assassin and the quote he said was “we were running a Murder Inc in the Caribbean.” JD: Yes, he was aware of all of that, and his own withdraw from the Presidency was a recognition; he was in deep waters all around him. Then when King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Johnson was way over his head. And for him having been so profoundly complicent with the Vietnam War, he had to get out of there himself before it was too late. LO: You could draw those conclusions as he dropped out. People have mentioned that he was four cars back and the bullets must have gone over his head maybe eighteen inches, he heard the shots and he saw how easy he could removed. JD: I didn’t put the information from Madelyn Brown in my book because I tried to anchor everything as firmly as possible with corroboration and documents and such things, but I think that its very feasible hypothesis that Madelyn Brown’s information is correct and Johnson knew about it the night before. LO: It’s possible, as some people in the research community are skeptical about it, fair enough. JD: I think it’s wise to be skeptical about everything, and its best to seek out the best sources. There are all kinds of information that were probably true but were left out of JFK & the Unspeakable because it either didn’t have a solid enough source as far as corroboration, or it didn’t easily fit into the story. The book could have been 2,000 pages long, but that wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was to write JFK’s story and to explain why he died, and not to write an exhaustive analysis of the assassination. That’s not what it is. The only reason the assassination itself is in there is because of the consequences of what he was doing. But everything that is in there, whether it is Kennedy’s story or the story of the assassination, it is backed up by as much confirmation as I could find. LO: You mention we have a new President, and Kennedy represented hope, and you say how many people are hopeful that this new president can turn things around after the fraud of the last eight years. JD: Yes. Well, it is a hope full moment, but only if we understand it in the context of Kennedy for example, and his story. It’s become possible for Obama do something hope full, say carry out the American University vision, only if there is a movement that’s pushing very, very hard to bring about that kind of realization. And if we are aware, and I’m talking more about more than just we in the research community – it must go Way Way beyond the research community, it must go into the movement that brought about Obama’s election victory. Unless we have an understanding of the Kennedy story, IT WILL BE REPEATED, and be repeated in the worst consequences of Obama being assassinated or being pushed by advisors into war or into decisions he will have to either resist at the risk of his life, or has to carry it out at the risk of everybody’s else’s life. If we can understand Kennedy’s story, and raise the kind of support for bringing about Kennedy’s vision under Obama, that’s one possibility. But if we walk around with some kind of idea thinking Barrack Obama will save the world, that’s nonsense, that’s not going to happen. An understanding of our redemption of us from the powers of war, from oppression, manipulation, and lying, as the CIA has been doing and our propaganda forces have been doing for decades, if we are going to be liberated from those forces, it is up to us. And Obama can’t do it as President of the United States. It has to be a movement, an international movement, especially a movement of consciousness of the past, an education as to what happened to John F. Kennedy, so it won’t be repeated. And I believe it WILL be repeated unless we understand and educate ourselves about the past. And we are way short with that right now with disinformation books getting far much more attention than we will get from this program. \ I don’t think it’s about getting new information on the Kennedy assassination, it’s telling the story of what we already know. That’s the task and it’s a task that’s very urgent at this moment in history…

JFK act oversight petition

politicalassassinations — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:56:30 +0000

William Kelly has started a petition to have oversight hearings on the JFK act. Details here Petition can be found here

Excerpts From the White House Situation Room on the Day Reagan Was Shot

politicalassassinations — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:57:23 +0000

Excerpts From the White House Situation Room on the Day Reagan Was Shot NewsMax.co http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/26/202623.shtml Excerpts From the White House Situation Room on the Day Reagan Was Shot NewsMax.com Tuesday, March 27, 2001 Transcript of recordings made by National Security Adviser Richard Allen on the day Ronald Reagan was shot, March 30, 1981. COLSON: Someone out there wants to know if you want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. ALLEN: I don't think we need him here ... Cap is the – Cap is here. HAIG: Cap is the – and the football is near the Vice President – so that's fine. ALLEN: We should get one over here. We have a duplicate one here. HAIG: Get the football over here. ALLEN: There is one at the military aide's office. The football is in the closet ... I don't think we need the Chair of the Joint Chiefs over here, do you? Let's leave him over at the NMCC [National Military Command Center, at the Pentagon]. This is a draft statement, but I want to put something else in it. FIELDING: Do you want any other Cabinet members? ALLEN: No, they should all be told to stand by. Here's the copy of that draft statement [on the President's condition]. You don't want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs over here? WEINBERGER: Well, I want ... not over here, I want him ... ALLEN: At the NMCC. WEINBERGER: Yeah, and they should go on alert or be ready to go on alert. SAC [the Strategic Air Command] went on alert with Kennedy's assassination. *** HAIG: We'll be on a straight line from the hospital. So anything that is said, before it's said, we'll discuss at this table ... and any telephone calls that anybody is getting with instructions from the hospital come to this table first [raising voice] ... RIGHT HERE! And we discuss it and know what's going on. WEINBERGER: I have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming on, Jones, in just a second. We're going to tell him to get alerts to the Strategic Air Command and such other units that seem to him to be desirable at this point. HAIG: What kind of alert, Cap? WEINBERGER: It's a standby alert ... just a standby alert. HAIG: You're not raising readiness? WEINBERGER: No, but the main thing is that he should stay there in the Command Center. Not here. HAIG: Right. DARMAN: Is that information not to be released up till ... ALLEN: It'll leak ... WEINBERGER: Well, until we know more about it. The alert, they'll probably put themselves on alert, but I just want to be sure. HAIG: Do we have a football here? Do we? ALLEN: Right there. REGAN: Al! Don't elevate it! Be careful! HAIG: Absolutely! Absolutely! That's why I toned down the message that was going out ... there's no reason for that. WEINBERGER: Yeah, I don't think anything that talks about continuity of government or anything ... that sounds like we know a lot more than we do. REGAN: This is apt to turn out to be a loner. WEINBERGER: I think it was! MURPHY: Cap, what do they mean by "alert"? WEINBERGER: Well, an alert is ... MURPHY: We've been down this path once before with Henry [Kissinger]. WEINBERGER: That's right. The alert simply is that there are conditions which may require very quick actions. MURPHY: Are you sure that doesn't mean Defcon Three ... or Four? WEINBERGER: No, no ... I'll fill in ... It's a matter of being ready for some later call ... HAIG: Yeah, I think the important thing, fellows, is that these things always generate a lot of dope stories, and everybody is running around telling everybody everything that they can get out of their gut ... and I think it's goddamn important that none of that happens. The President, uh, as long as he is conscious and can function ... WEINBERGER: Well, that's right ... the Vice President's in an Air Force plane. ALLEN: Well, just let me point out to you that the President is not now conscious. HAIG: No, of course not. *** FIELDING: A rather technical thing is that the President can pass the baton temporarily under the law, and we're preparing that right now ... toward the eventuality ... HAIG: That's what I was going to ask next. What are the legal ... FIELDING: It's being prepared right now. HAIG: That's the pass the baton to the Vice President ... FIELDING: On a temporary basis. It passes to him in writing from the President until the President rescinds it. HAIG: Has somebody gone into the Eisenhower precedent on this? I think we need that from a public-relations point of view. FIELDING: Well, we may not want to put it out. HAIG: No, the things you want to make note of are first, precisely what happened, notification of the Vice President, assembly of the key crisis Cabinet, preservation of continuity of command, and that it was handled. WEINBERGER (on the telephone to the Pentagon): No, I think what we want to do is increase the degree of alertness so that in the event there should be anything required shortly, that could be done within a minimum amount of time ... Gergen interrupted to ask a question, and Haig declared that he himself was constitutionally the person in charge. GERGEN: Al, a quick question. We need some sense, more better sense of where the President is. Is he under sedation now? HAIG: He's not on the operating table. GERGEN: He is on the operating table! HAIG: So the ... the helm is right here. And that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the Vice President gets here. GERGEN: I understand that. I understand that. HAIG: Yeah. *** WEINBERGER: We've got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Chiefs in the Military Command Center. The alert has been raised from a normal condition to a standby condition under which they can move to a much higher degree very quickly. There is no, there will be no publicity about it. And the degree of alertness at the moment is going to commanders only, so that there would not be a lot of leaks right away from the men. All of that on the basis that at this point it looks like an isolated incident, but there isn't enough information and we want to remain alert. So that's where the armed forces stand. *** HAIG: Why don't you come with me? Allen (to staff): Okay, I'll be back later ... HAIG: How do you get to the press room? ALLEN: Up here. HAIG: Yeah ... he's just turning this into a goddamned disaster! ALLEN: Who has? HAIG: How can he walk into the press room ... Speakes ... ALLEN: Did he walk in up here? HAIG: He's up there now. ALLEN: Christ almighty, why's he doing that? PRESS STAFFER: They want to know who's running the government. ALLEN: Oh, well, just a minute ... HAIG: We'll assemble them ... we'll ... STAFFER: You're coming back? [shouting] They're coming back again ... The Secretary of State! The Secretary of State! *** PRESS REPRESENTATIVE: Who is making the decisions for the government right now? Who is making the decisions? HAIG: Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State, in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course. *** REGAN: Preliminary investigation by the FBI and the Secret Service, no plot, no reason why the suspect shouldn't be in the area. They're conducting a background investigation in Lubbock, Texas. He stayed at the Park Central Hotel here, which is one block from the Executive Office Building. WEINBERGER: We have the SAC bases ... we have the crews who are normally on alert twenty-four hours a day move from the base to their planes. The nearest submarine is [redacted] minutes, forty-seven seconds off, which is about two minutes closer than normal. ALLEN: Nearest Soviet sub. Al, are you listening? [Redacted] minutes, forty-seven seconds – the nearest Soviet sub. WEINBERGER: Yeah. Not enough to worry about. They're in and out there all the time, but it is a close approach. And the bomber crews of the Strategic Air Command, they are always on the alert, certain numbers, and those that are on alert now are moving from alert in their quarters and on the post to their planes. Simply stated, that's all ... HAIG: That's based on the Soviet situation and not on anything here? WEINBERGER: Well, that's based on the idea that until we know a little bit more about it, it is better to be in the plane which saves three and a half to four minutes than it is to stay in their quarters. HAIG: I said up there, Cap ... I'm not a liar. I said there had been no increased alert. WEINBERGER: Well, I didn't know you were going up, Al. I think if ... HAIG: I had to, because we had the question already started and we were going to be in a big flap. WEINBERGER: Well, I think we could have done a little better if we had concerted on a specific statement to be handed out. When you're up there with questions, why then it's not anything you can control, and ... HAIG: Well, we had just discussed that here at the table, and we said we were not going to increase alert. WEINBERGER: It may not be increasing the alert from a technical point of view, but once you get the additional information which I got about the one sub being closer than they've been before, then it seemed prudent to me to save three or four minutes. HAIG: Yeah, but I think we could have discussed it. WEINBERGER: Yeah, well, you were not here. I didn't know that you were going to make any statement, and I don't think it was a good idea to make a statement when you are with a question period. I think the best thing ... HAIG: Well, you have the right to say that when we discuss it, and we did talk about it and everyone agreed there wouldn't be an increased alert. WEINBERGER: I didn't know you were going up. I didn't have the information about the sub at that time. The stuff is coming in every three or four minutes. HAIG: Well, you're not telling me we're on increased alert. WEINBERGER: We have changed the condition to the extent I indicated. HAIG: Is that a Defcon increase? WEINBERGER: No, I don't think it is formally classified as such. ALLEN: It's a change of degree, is it not? It's a change ... WEINBERGER: It's an increased degree of alertness, yes. ALLEN: Within Defcon Five, I presume. WEINBERGER: Yes. *** HAIG: Let me ask you a question, Cap. Is this submarine approach, is that what's doing this, or is it the fact that the President's under surgery? WEINBERGER: What's doing what, Al? HAIG: That we are discussing whether or not to put the NEACP bird up in the air. WEINBERGER: Well, I'm discussing it from the point of view that at the moment, until the Vice President actually arrives here, the command authority is what I have ... and I have to make sure that it is essential that we do everything that seems proper. HAIG: You'd better read the Constitution. WEINBERGER: What? HAIG (laughing): You'd better read the Constitution. We can get the Vice President any time we want. WEINBERGER: Well, one way or another, the initial steps, because he's not in a position there to take all of them without consultation, one way or another we ought to prepare at least enough so that we can move more rapidly than we could otherwise. HAIG: Is it because of the submarine or because of the incident, that's the question I'm asking. WEINBERGER: The reason that I asked to have them move to the planes is because of the incident, and I would continue to take that position until I know absolutely definitely that it's an isolated incident, which I think it is. But I don't know that yet, and I don't want to take any kinds of risk. The risk of some newspaper story or some rumor is a hell of a lot less than not having things in place.http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/26/202623.shtml

COPA Dallas 2009 speakers announced

politicalassassinations — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:04:28 +0000

The list of speakers for Dallas in 2009 is as follows, Walt Brown, Jim Douglass, Lisa Pease, Jim DiEugenio, John Armstrong, T Carter, Ben Rogers, Robert Groden. Full details can be found at the COPA conferences page

John Judge interview

politicalassassinations — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:25:27 +0000

A new audio interview with COPA director John Judge can be found here

C.I.A. Al Qaeda assassination plans

politicalassassinations — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:32:31 +0000

It will come as no surprise to students of the Kennedy assassination that the C.I.A. has been running an illegal assassination programme outside the U.S. during the Bush presidency. (Also quite possibly inside the U.S. if Seymour Hersh's first words on the subject are correct.) What is not reported is that these assassination plans involving the C.I.A. and the military have been on going for decades and have constantly been withheld from Congress. The 1970's revelations about assassination attempts on Fidel Castro are proof enough of that, yet these revelations about Cheney and the C.I.A. seem to be shocking to most establishment journalists. Historical analysis and honesty is lacking from these new developments. It seems that Diane Feinstein is now looking for a formal investigation in these matters. It is incumbent upon those of us who are informed on C.I.A. assassination programmes to encourage that investigation to delve more deeply into the very nature of the C.I.A.'s operations stretching back to the 1950's. Source

Oliver Stone on JFK and the unspeakable

politicalassassinations — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:53:31 +0000

Oliver Stone penned a very significant article for the Huffington Post on James Douglass book 'JFK and the unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters'. James will be speaking at the COPA conference in Dallas this November. Visit http:www.politicalassassinations.com for details. The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. It put an abrupt end to a period of a misunderstood idealism, akin to the spirit of 1989 when the Soviet bloc to began to thaw and 2008, when our new American President was fairly elected. Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it. The subtitle sums up Douglass's purpose: Why He Died and Why it Matters. In his beautifully written and exhaustively researched treatment, Douglass lays out the "motive" for Kennedy's assassination. Simply, he traces a process of steady conversion by Kennedy from his origins as a traditional Cold Warrior to his determination to pull the world back from the edge of destruction. Many of these steps are well known, such as Kennedy's disillusionment with the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and his refusal to follow the reckless recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. (This in itself was truly JFK's shining moment in the sun. It is likely that any other president from LBJ on would have followed the path to a general nuclear war.) Then there was the Test Ban Treaty and JFK's remarkable American University Speech where he spoke with empathy and compassion about the Soviet people, recognizing our common humanity, the fact that we all "inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal." But many of his steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy's back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964. All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination. Kennedy himself said, in 1962, after he read Seven Days in May, which is about a military coup in the United States, that if he had another Bay of Pigs, the same thing could happen to him. Well, he did have another "Bay of Pigs"; he had several. And I think Kennedy prophesied his own death with those words. Why does it matter? The death of JFK remains a critical turning point in our history. Those who caused his death were targeting not just a man but a vision -- a vision of peace. There is no calculating the consequences of his death for this country and for the world. Those consequences endure. To a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by the shadowy forces of what Douglass calls "the Unspeakable." Only by unmasking these forces and confronting the truth about our history can we restore the promise of democracy and lay claim to Kennedy's vision of peace. But don't take my word for it. Read this extraordinary book and reach your own conclusions.

McNamara, the gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam

politicalassassinations — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:17:31 +0000

A video from the real news network following the death of former secretary of defense under President Kennedy. The video details McNamara's role in the gulf of Tonkin incident and the escalation of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Egke36qtz4&hl=en&fs=1&]

New MLK speech found

politicalassassinations — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:13:10 +0000

A speech made by Dr. Martin Luther King junior given at the University of Dayton, Ohio, has been found. To listen to the speech or read the text, follow this link

Castro feared U.S. invasion after Kennedy assassination

politicalassassinations — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:48:29 +0000

Documents released to the National Security Archive at George Washington University reveal that Fidel Castro feared an invasion of Cuba by the United States immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy. Castro mobilized his armed forces in preparation.

"This caused Castro to wonder whether the assassin was ... the mere instrument of a monstrous plot of American militarists, who, by eliminating Kennedy, would put (President) Johnson in a position from which there would be only one way out: to drain off anti-Cuba hysteria by an action of declared war," the NSA reported.

It seems Castro came to this conclusion long before the bulk of assassination research had begun.

"Castro feared that the assassination would unleash passions and violent and blind hysteria of the American people against Cuba and Russia," the NSA reported.

Castro seemed to have shared concerns with authors and researchers publishing years later that the assassination of Kennedy was a pretext for an invasion of Cuba, an escalation of tensions in Vietnam and the continuation of the cold war with the Soviet Union. An invasion of Cuba never materialized, but evidence exists that this may have been a goal of some of the players within the coup. Full article here The Soviet reaction is almost exactly the same, as is reported by Walter Cronkite [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yU3wlv2rY&hl=en&fs=1&]

New 11/22/1963 photos

politicalassassinations — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:07:59 +0000

These photographs may be new to many of us. Original here These may be more familiar Original from the Mary Ferrell foundation Original

Russ Baker to speak at COPA 09

politicalassassinations — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:41:28 +0000

Investigative journalist and author of 'Family of Secrets', Russ Baker will speak at this years COPA conference in Dallas this year. Baker's book dicusses the Bush family and heavily involves the Kennedy assassination. Here is a video of Russ from book tv Russ' website

Peter Dale Scott JFK and 9/11

politicalassassinations — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:17:45 +0000

Here is part 1 of a talk given by Professor Peter Dale Scott at COPA in 2006 on the topic 'JFK and 9/11: Insights gained from studying both'. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBozfOm9ngY&hl=en&fs=1&]

Squeaky Fromme released

politicalassassinations — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:57:53 +0000

Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme has been released after 30 years for her attempted assassination attempt on Gerald Ford. Fromme was a member of the Manson family. More here Video footage of the attempted assassination [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHFL6RbUuDI&hl=en&fs=1&]

James Galbraith- Kennedy was pulling out of Vietnam

politicalassassinations — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:32:29 +0000

Pertinent JFK and Vietnam information begins at 2 minutes 30 seconds. Economist and son of John K. Galbraith, James Galbraith dicusses the matter of historical fact that President Kennedy had set in motion a plan to remove all U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of 1965. Galbraith's father was serving as ambassador to India at the time. Here is Galbraith's article on the subject, http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/ga... This is taken from Nightly News with Vincent Browne, TV3 Ireland. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPNd8Y-3-jM&hl=en&fs=1&]

CIA funding of the American media

politicalassassinations — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:34:10 +0000

Some footage from the Church Committee revealing the extent of CIA infiltration of American news media. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzUsvUkvvQM&hl=en&fs=1&]

Belli vs Lane- Village Voice archives

politicalassassinations — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:37:19 +0000

Village Voice are publishing articles from their archives on their blog. By chance the latest edition features on article on a debate between Mark Lane and Melvin Belli in 1964. It seems that even then the audience knew that all was not as it seemed. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/08/clip_job_melvin.php Clip Job: Melvin Belli Takes on the JFK Conspiracy Theorists By Tony Ortega in Clip Job, Featured Wednesday, Aug. 12 2009 @ 6:00AM Lochinvar.png Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives October 22, 1964, Vol. X, No. 1 Lane & Audience TKO Middle-Aged Lochinvar By Stephanie Harrington A middle-aged Lochinvar came out of the West on Monday night and walked right into an ambush. At their black-tie debate on whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy, Melvin Belli, the silver-haired San Franciscan who represented Jack Ruby, looked more at home in his dinner jacket, but Mark Lane was unquestionably more at home with the capacity audience at Manhattan Center. In fact he was home. As at Lane's Town Hall appearance with Oswald's mother some months ago, it was a gathering of the mespuchah. No one really needed to be convinced that something was rotten with the Warren Commission, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Dallas police, and the liberal press. And as soon as it realized that Belli was not merely there as a foil for its hero, but that he really did have some views that ran counter to Lane's, the audience's tolerance for the debate format came under evident strain. As soon as he stepped up to the lectern for his 40-minute presentation and said that he was happy to hear -- indeed, that he thanked God -- that his opponent agreed that there was no evidence of a conspiracy in the assassination, Belli was hissed. And throughout his presentation, the audience, which had sat in rapt silence during Lane's opening argument, rustled with displeasure, setting up a sound as if it were collectively sucking in its breath, and toward the end began shouting objections. Belli's apple-pie attitude toward the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas police did nothing to improve his relations with his listeners. "I hope it will never come to pass," he said at one point, "that we cannot believe the integrity of our law enforcement officials." ...Throughout his remarks Lane charged that the Warren Commission had in fact set out to convict Oswald and that it manipulated the evidence to do so, disregarding things that would contradict Oswald's guilt and accepting whatever would support it -- no matter how flimsy. ...Belli noted that Oswald's brother said he was satisfied that Lee was guilty. Belli asked if he was brainwashed too. When the audience indicated that it thought that was probably the case, Belli said, "How you must fear them (the FBI) and tremble in your own beds." The audience drowned him out with applause and cries of "Yes!" It was not Belli's night. Even his book, "Dallas Justice: the Real Story of Jack Ruby and His Trial," which made its debut here on Monday, was selling for 45 cents less than the recording (put out on the Broadside label) of Lane's testimony to the Warren Commission. [Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956. Go here to see this article as it originally appeared in print.]

High quality Zapruder footage

politicalassassinations — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:29:12 +0000

Please be warned that this clip shows material of a graphic nature. Embedding the video is not working, so please click on the link to be taken to the video.

JFK Assassination Digitally Remastered
Uploaded by suprafly - Watch the latest news videos.

Ted Kennedy's eulogy for RFK

politicalassassinations — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:16:58 +0000

Here is Ted Kennedy's eulogy for his brother, Robert, following his untimely assassination in 1968. One of his best speeches. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JTYnMpRyg&hl=en&fs=1&]

How Nixon gave Ted Kennedy bodyguards- to spy on his personal life

politicalassassinations — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:06:43 +0000

From the associated press via truthout, http://www.truthout.org/082809J?print "Too damn bad if he gets shot" was attitude of president who wanted agents to dig into potential rival's "super-swinger" lifestyle. Washington - Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch him cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to plant secret service bodyguards to spy on the senator's behaviour. "Do you have anybody in the secret service that you can get to?" the US president asked his aide John Ehrlichman in a stark series of Oval Office conversations about Kennedy before the 1972 election. "Yeah, yeah," Ehrlichman replied. "Plant one," Nixon said. "Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful." Nixon made clear that the secret service protection afforded Kennedy before the 1972 election would be rescinded after. Then, said the president, "if he gets shot, it's too damn bad". His aides disdainfully referred to Kennedy supporters as "super-swinger jet-set types". Tape recordings from the Nixon White House betray a preoccupation with the Kennedy mystique and how that might be used against the Republican president by the last surviving brother, who died on Tuesday aged 77. Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Kennedy's movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal, hoping to catch him with a woman other than his wife, Joan. Nixon's men had investigators tail Kennedy on a Hawaii vacation and when he was at his Martha's Vineyard haunts. Mortified, they told Nixon that Joan Kennedy wanted to wear "hot pants" to a White House function until her husband talked her out of it. But Ted's behaviour? In the aftermath of his scandal he was careful not to step out of line, the tapes suggest. "Does he do anything?" Nixon asked in a September 1971 meeting. "No, no, he's very clean," Ehrlichman replied. "He was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying in some guy's villa. He was just as nice as could be the whole time." Nixon shot back: "The thing to do is watch him." All this was from an era of brass-knuckle politics and backroom intrigue that finally consumed Nixon's presidency in the Watergate affair. Kennedy overcame his own scandal to serve nearly a half-century in the Senate. But the presidency remained out of his reach. "President Nixon never forgot his humiliating defeat in the 1960 presidential election to John F Kennedy," said Luke Nichter, a leading authority on the Nixon White House recordings and assistant history professor at Texas A&M University. "Nixon did not intend to simply win in 1972; he wanted to destroy his opponent. "If that opponent was a Kennedy, Nixon cautiously welcomed that opportunity but left nothing to chance," Nichter said. "That is what these long-obscured recordings show us." Nichter features and analyses the recordings at his website, nixontapes.org. The material has been released by the government over the years. By April 1971, when the first of these exchanges was captured by the White House taping system, Kennedy was a damaged political figure. On the night of 18 July 1969 he had driven off a bridge into the water at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, swimming to safety while the young woman with him, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and a judge said his actions probably contributed to her death. He got a suspended sentence and probation. Despite that episode, Nixon was plainly worried about Kennedy's political potency yet confident the Democrat could not restrain a philandering impulse. "I predict something more is going to happen," he said. "The reason I would cover him is from a personal standpoint - you're likely to find something." Nixon pressed for more wiretaps and a combing of tax records, not only on Kennedy but other leading Democrats. "I could only hope that we are, frankly, doing a little persecuting," he said. At one point, he expressed hesitation about whether his actions were proper. The moment quickly passed. "I don't know," Nixon mused to HR Haldeman, his chief of staff. "Maybe it's the wrong thing to do. But I have a feeling that if you're going to start, better start now." Beyond the politics, Nixon and his aides considered themselves cultural defenders of middle America and the Kennedys anathema to that. In a conversation with Nixon on 9 April 1971, Haldeman cites "super-swinger jet-set types" and press secretary Ron Ziegler picks up on the phrase. The three discuss an apparently provocative outfit that Joan Kennedy wore to a senate wives' lunch at the White House. "Some leather gaucho, with a bare midriff or something," Haldeman said. "She was going to wear hot pants but Teddy told her she couldn't." "It's crude," Nixon said. And they talked about extramarital affairs in the Kennedy family. "They do it all the time," Nixon said. Because Kennedy was not a presidential candidate in 1972 he did not qualify for full-time secret service protection. But Nixon offered it to him, given the assassinations of his brothers, President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy.The Alabama governor, George Wallace, was shot in May 1972. The offer was conveyed by the treasury secretary, John Connally, who was in charge of the secret service, in a phone call with Kennedy. The former Texas governor was riding in the car with JFK and was wounded when the president was assassinated in Dallas. "Very frankly," Connally said, "I don't know that they could save you but there's a damn good chance they could if some nut came up. And you ought not to be reluctant about it. I know you're not a candidate but you're exposed." Ted Kennedy expressed thanks and asked for protection at his home for a start. But Nixon's motives for the offer were not pure. He worried about being blamed if a third Kennedy was shot while not having secret service protection. Plus he wanted dirt. And the best way to get it was to have a secret service agent rat on the senator. There is no evidence an agent turned into such an informer. "You understand what the problem is," Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman on 7 September 1972. "If the [son of a bitch] gets shot they'll say we didn't furnish it [protection]. So you just buy his insurance. "After the election he doesn't get a ... thing. If he gets shot it's too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the secret service men. "Understand what I'm talking about?"

Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy had lived

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:17:25 +0000

A new look at History had JFK lived. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqEJnVly8Jc&hl=en&fs=1&]

Robert Tanenbaum, HSCA counsel

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:13:30 +0000

Here are two videos from Robert Tanenbaum's speech to the JFK symposium in Pittsburgh in 2003. With thanks to JFKMI for uploading the video and Cyril Wecht for hosting the conference. Tanenbaum on JFK- Part 1
Tanenbaum on JFK- Part 2

Latest on Morley vs CIA

politicalassassinations — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:25:15 +0000

This is an update from Jefferson Morley via the facebook cause 'Stop the CIA stonewalling on JFK records' This afternoon I am awaiting the CIA's latest filing in my lawsuit seeking JFK assassination files. The filing is due in federal court in Washington today, Friday Sept. 11. The CIA will be responding to my Aug. 7 motion calling for full disclosure of files of deceased CIA officer George Joannides. I hope that by midnight I will be pleasantly surprised to learn that the CIA has decided to comply with the spirit of President Obama's executive order on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and will announce its intention to release the long-suppressed files. But I doubt it. On related noted, I just got a link to a commentary by Jacob Hornberger, president of the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation, who makes the case in a new Web ommentary that a special prosecutor should investigate Joannides' role in the assassination of President Kennedy. (See http://www.fff.org/comment/com0908e.asp) Hornberger notes a key point about the Joannides story: "A common misconception regarding the law of fraud is that fraud requires an affirmative misrepresentation of a material fact. Not so. Fraud also occurs when there is an intentional failure to disclose a material fact" Thus, Hornberger reasons, the failure of the CIA to disclose to JFK investigators in 1964 and 1978 that George Joannides had a financial relationship to Oswald's anti-Castro antagonists at the time of JFK's murder, constitutes fraud and obstruction of justice. Hornberger is right. There is compelling evidence of criminal misconduct in Joannides' actions related to JFK's assassination. He is right that the Obama administration needs to take some action to clarify the record. Hornberger's commentary is welcome and deserves wider circulation. But I'm not prepared to endorse the special prosecutor remedy--at least not yet. Joannides is dead, leaving no obvious suspect for such a special prosecutor to investigate. On there other hand, there are living people who have first-hand knowledge of Joannides' covert operations in 1963. Their testimony could shed light on criminal activities related to JFK's assassination. My view that we may need a JFK "truth commission." I'll keep you posted on what the CIA says. Thanks for your support and interest. Get your friends to join this FB Cause and we will prevail. best, Jeff

Chavez references JFK assassination at the UN

politicalassassinations — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:11:25 +0000

"I hope god will protect Obama from the bullets that killed Kennedy" [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlvHlN4BJzY&hl=en&fs=1&]

COPA mentioned in Wired magazine

politicalassassinations — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:15:47 +0000

Wired is the premier technology magazine and website. The article isn't particularly favorable, but then again the article is only one line long and the rest of the page advertises the COPA conference. http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/09/the-coalition-on-political-assassinations-presents/

Assassin offered $25 million to kill Hugo Chavez

politicalassassinations — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:24:18 +0000

Al Jazeera English have screened footage of a Colombian man who claims to have been offered $25 million in 1999 by businessman Manuel Rosales. Colombian paramilitary forces were also present at the meeting. Rosales would not be personally paying the bounty out of his own money, but was rather the one to make payment, presumably as a bag man for other co-conspirators. The paramilitary force took up the offer. In 2004 100 Colombian paramilitaries were arrested outside Caracas. The Colombian man is being interviewed by the Colombian attorney general, as he is held as a member of the paramilitary group. Rosales now lives in Chile following corruption charges leveled against him in Venezuela. The interviewee claims there are 2500 Colombian paramilitaries now inside Venezuela 'with the objective of taking down Chavez'. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGprwzQ5UoU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=de&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

New assassination documentary on history channel

politicalassassinations — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:45:58 +0000

The History Channel’s Kennedy Declassified Week starts Sunday. And for Kennedy obsessives, there will be plenty to watch. On Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m., the channel will debut its two-part series “JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America.” The films are without narrators or experts. Instead, the documentaries let the newsreels tell the tragic story of the only presidential assassination in the television era. The footage is arranged to present a range of conspiracy theories that go far beyond Lee Harvey Oswald. But the judgment is left up to the viewer. A number of people prominent in public life today show up on screen. There’s Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), then a young, whip-smart Warren Commission attorney. Dan Rather, a cub reporter in Dallas, also makes an appearance. Reporting on Oswald’s killing and reflecting on Kennedy’s assassination, the future “CBS Evening News” anchor nearly tears up on camera, an eerie precursor to his post-Sept. 11 response on “Late Show With David Letterman” almost four decades later. The documentaries include not only the oft-seen video of the president and first lady (dressed in a pink dress and hat) descending the steps of Air Force One at Love Field but also rare footage of witnesses on the parade route standing on the street, dazed and in shock, hours after the shooting at 12:30 p.m. Knowing how the story will end, the most achingly painful footage comes before the violence in Dallas. Watching the couple descend from airplane to motorcade, viewers will be tempted to yell at the screen, “Don’t go!” in the vain hope that history might turn out differently. Laced throughout the film are questions about the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone. Doubts about the official story sprout up in the immediate aftermath of Oswald’s murder, two days after the Kennedy assassination, to the point that newly minted President Lyndon B. Johnson feels compelled to appoint an investigative commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. The conspiracy theme picks up with footage of the killings five years later of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Those who saw Oliver Stone’s “JFK” will find much of the material familiar, particularly the documentary’s section on New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (played in the movie by Kevin Costner), who failed in his efforts to implicate a local businessman in the assassination plans. The Warren Commission operated mostly out of public view, which fed further suspicion about its findings. The film offers a cautionary tale about what happens when government officials leave information gaps that can be too easily filled in by conspiracy theorists — a major problem 45 years ago and one magnified in the Internet age. For those history buffs and political junkies who think they have seen all the footage out there about the Kennedy assassination, the History Channel offers fresh and insightful, if sad, material. http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/jfk_conspiracy_theories_redux.html

Mural of Ruby in Dallas

politicalassassinations — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:51:19 +0000

John Judge replies to this article which discusses plans to create a mural of Jack Ruby in Dallas. TO: CBS 11, Dallas, TX I am writing to comment on the story posted October 2 about honoring Jack Ruby with a mural in downtown Dallas written by your "award winning" reporter J.D. Miles. I don't think Ruby should be honored, even if some of his nightclub strippers have fond memories of him. If your reporter had done some background work on who Ruby was it might have helped balance the piece, though I know it's not done anymore. Newspapers used to keep clipping morgues for that purpose, now they throw them away and we live without historical or political context. I would recommend local Dallas reporter Seth Kantor's book on Ruby for a start. Born Jacob Rubenstien, Jack worked for the Capone mob in Chicago and eventually rose to second in command of the corrupted Waste Handler's Union under his capo, Sam Giancana, a crimelord whose career spanned several presidents, including JFK. Both Giancana and Ruby had ties to covert US intelligence projects. Ruby was ONI during WWII and ran guns to Castro for the CIA prior to the fall of Batista. Giancana and other key mobsters were approached by both ONI and CIA for jobs during WWII and to set up a domestic assassination squad under the cover that they were plotting to kill Castro. Bobby Kennedy went after both of them over the years. On the Kefauver Commission, RFK was part of the decision to subpoena Giancana for union racketeering, and when Sam refused to testify he was held in contempt of Congress. They began to move on calling Jacob Rubenstein instead when a letter from the Vice President's office arrived, signed by Richard Nixon, telling them not to subpoena this individual since he had assisted them on the House Un-american Activities Committee. In fact, there is a picture of Ruby in the weather tunnel exhibit of Dallas history leading from Union Station to the Hyatt Regency, he is standing directly behind Dwight Eisenhower during his campaign visit in 1954, the same year Nixon shields him from testifying. Ruby was no hero in the Kennedy assassination and there was no passion in his crime. He was still tied to both organized crime and the FBI, and was performing the time honored Mafia tradition known as Omerta, silencing Oswald before trial, and he did it with the help of the corrupted Dallas Police Department. Ruby was seen in the old Dal-Tex Building that morning, a possible source for some of the assassination shots. He was seen by one witness taking a rifle up the back of the now infamous Grassy Knoll, prior to the shooting. He met the description of gunman given by all but one witness to the shooting of Officer J.D. Tippit, who knew both Ruby and Oswald and frequented the Carousel. The shoe store employee who tipped the police to arrest Oswald at the Texas Theater lived above Ruby and knew him. Ruby was at Parkland Hospital when JFK died. He attended a press conference in the Dallas jail when Oswald was introduced as a member of the Free Cuba Committee, and Ruby corrected Captain Fritz, saying it was Fair Play for Cuba Committee. How would he know? Upon arrest, Ruby showed signs of being in a hypnotized state, which broke when he heard Oswald had died. He later tried to tell the Warren Commission about a larger conspiracy in the case and begged to be removed from the Dallas jail, where he would be killed if he spoke. There is much more to be told about Jack Ruby if your reporter cared to check. His background and Oswald's extensive ONI and FBI connections tell us more about who killed Kennedy than the Warren Commission ever did. A mural to Jack Ruby should not show him with his strippers but with the Mafia and intelligence assassins of JFK who really ran his life. If you want to know who did kill the president in Dallas, read Jim Douglass' new JFK and the Unspeakable. He will speak at our COPA conference November 20-22 this year. Perhaps your reporter should come and hear some history at our events. John Judge Coalition on Political Assassinations Washington, DC www.politicalassassinations.com ter

NY Times- C.I.A. is still cagey about Oswald mystery

politicalassassinations — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:21:38 +0000

From the NY Times October 17, 2009 C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery By SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior. For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance. The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role. That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’s real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, who has doggedly pursued the files ever since, represented by James H. Lesar, a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. “The C.I.A.’s conduct is maddening,” said Mr. Morley, 51, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After years of meticulous reporting on Mr. Joannides, who died at age 68 in 1990, he is convinced that there is more to learn. “I know there’s a story here,” Mr. Morley said. “The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive.” Mr. Morley’s quest has gained prominent supporters, including John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minnesota who served in 1994 and 1995 as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress to unearth documents related to the case. “I think we were probably misled by the agency,” Judge Tunheim said, referring to the Joannides records. “This material should be released.” Gerald Posner, the author of an anti-conspiracy account of the Kennedy assassination, “Case Closed” (Random House, 1993), said the C.I.A.’s withholding such aged documents was “a perfect example of why nobody trusts the agency.” “It feeds the conspiracy theorists who say, ‘You’re hiding something,” ’ Mr. Posner said. After losing an appeals court decision in Mr. Morley’s lawsuit, the C.I.A. released material last year confirming Mr. Joannides’s deep involvement with the anti-Castro Cubans who confronted Oswald. But the agency is withholding 295 specific documents from the 1960s and ’70s, while refusing to confirm or deny the existence of many others, saying their release would cause “extremely grave damage” to national security. “The methods of defeating or deterring covert action in the 1960s and 1970s can still be instructive to the United States’ current enemies,” a C.I.A. official wrote in a court filing. An agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the C.I.A. had opened to Judge Tunheim’s board all files relevant to the assassination and denied that it was trying to avoid embarrassment. “The record doesn’t support that, any more than it supports conspiracy theories, offensive on their face, that the C.I.A. had a hand in President Kennedy’s death,” Mr. Gimigliano said. C.I.A. secrecy has been hotly debated this year, with agency officials protesting the Obama administration’s decision to release legal opinions describing brutal interrogation methods. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, came under attack from Republicans after she accused the C.I.A. of misleading Congress about waterboarding, adding, “They mislead us all the time.” On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963. In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station. In the years since Oswald was named as the assassin, speculation about who might have been behind him has never ended, with various theories focusing on Mr. Castro, the mob, rogue government agents or myriad combinations of the above. Mr. Morley, one of many writers to become entranced by the story, insists he has no theory and is seeking only the facts. His lawsuit has uncovered the central role in overseeing directorate activities of Mr. Joannides, the deputy director for psychological warfare at the C.I.A.’s Miami station, code-named JM/WAVE. He worked closely with directorate leaders, documents show, corresponding with them under pseudonyms, paying their travel expenses and achieving an “important degree of control” over the group, as a July 1963 agency fitness report put it. Fifteen years later, Mr. Joannides turned up again as the agency’s representative to the House assassinations committee. Dan Hardway, then a law student working for the committee, recalled Mr. Joannides as “a cold fish,” who firmly limited access to documents. Once, Mr. Hardway remembered, “he handed me a thin file and just stood there. I blew up, and he said, ‘This is all you’re going to get.’ ” But neither Mr. Hardway nor the committee’s staff director, G. Robert Blakey, had any idea that Mr. Joannides had played a role in the very anti-Castro activities from 1963 that the panel was scrutinizing. When Mr. Morley first informed him about it a decade ago, Mr. Blakey was flabbergasted. “If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath — he would have been a witness, not a facilitator,” said Mr. Blakey, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “How do we know what he didn’t give us?” After Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “J.F.K.” fed speculation about the Kennedy assassination, Congress created the Assassination Records Review Board to release documents. But because the board, too, was not told of Mr. Joannides’s 1963 work, it did not peruse his records, said Judge Tunheim, the chairman. “If we’d known of his role in Miami in 1963, we would have pressed for all his records,” Judge Tunheim said. No matter what comes of Mr. Morley’s case in Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Tunheim said he might ask the current C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, to release the records, even if the names of people who are still alive must be redacted for privacy. What motive could C.I.A. officials have to bury the details of Mr. Joannides’s work for so long? Did C.I.A. officers or their Cuban contacts know more about Oswald than has been revealed? Or was the agency simply embarrassed by brushes with the future assassin — like the Dallas F.B.I. officials who, after the assassination, destroyed a handwritten note Oswald had previously left for an F.B.I. agent? Or has Mr. Morley spent a decade on a wild goose chase? Max Holland, who is writing a history of the Warren Commission, said the agency might be trying to preserve the principle of secrecy. “If you start going through the files of every C.I.A. officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end,” Mr. Holland said. Mr. Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it would not be in the files — not even in the documents the C.I.A. has fought to keep secret. “Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this,” Mr. Posner said. “But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

Entangled Giant, by Gary Willis

politicalassassinations — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:25:17 +0000

From the NY review of books Volume 56, Number 15 · October 8, 2009 Entangled Giant By Garry Wills George W. Bush left the White House unpopular and disgraced. His successor promised change, and it was clear where change was needed. Illegal acts should cease—torture and indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus and legal representation, unilateral canceling of treaties, defiance of Congress and the Constitution, nullification of laws by signing statements. Powers attributed to the president by the theory of the unitary executive should not be exercised. Judges who are willing to give the president any power he asks for should not be confirmed. But the momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked, or even slowed. It was not created by the Bush administration. The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander in chief, the worldwide network of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the entire national security state, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the "war on terror"—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order. Little Bookroom / Sonoma The truth of this was borne out in the early days of Barack Obama's presidency. At his confirmation hearing to be head of the CIA, Leon Panetta said that "extraordinary rendition"—the practice of sending prisoners to foreign countries—was a tool he meant to retain.[1] Obama's nominee for solicitor general, Elena Kagan, told Congress that she agreed with John Yoo's claim that a terrorist captured anywhere should be subject to "battlefield law."[2] On the first opportunity to abort trial proceedings by invoking "state secrets"—the policy based on the faulty Reynolds case—Obama's attorney gen- eral, Eric Holder, did so.[3] Obama refused to release photographs of "enhanced interrogation." The CIA had earlier (illegally) destroyed ninety-two videotapes of such interrogations—and Obama refused to release documents describing the tapes.[4] The President said that past official crimes would not be investigated—certainly not for prosecution, and not even by an impartial "truth commission" just trying to establish a record. He said, on the contrary, that detainees might be tried in "military tribunals." When the British government, trying a terrorist suspect, decided to use some American documents shared with the British government, Obama's attorney general pressured it not to do so. Most important, perhaps, was the new president's desire to end the nation-building in Iraq while substituting a long-term nation-building effort in Afghanistan, run by a government corrupted by drug trafficking and not susceptible to our remolding. Even in areas outside national security, the Obama administration quickly came to resemble Bush's. Gay military personnel, including those with valuable Arabic-language skills, were being dismissed at the same rate as before. Even more egregiously, the Obama administration continued the defiance of the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, which requires states to recognize laws passed by other states, when it defended the Defense of Marriage Act, which lets states refuse to recognize gay marriages legally obtained in another state. Many objected when Dick Cheney would not name energy executives who came to the White House in 2002, though Hillary Clinton, as First Lady, had been forced to reveal which health advisers had visited her. Yet the Obama team, in June 2009, refused to release logs of those who come to the White House. (It later reversed itself, but only in response to a lawsuit.) Some were dismayed to see how quickly the Obama people grabbed at the powers, the secrecy, the unaccountability that had led Bush into such opprobrium. Leon Panetta at the CIA especially puzzled those who had known him during the Clinton years. A former CIA official told The Washington Post, "Leon Panetta has been captured by the people who were the ideological drivers for the interrogation program in the first place." A White House official told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, "It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Perhaps it should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task. After most of the wars in US history there was a return to the constitutional condition of the pre-war world. But after those wars there was no lasting institutional security apparatus of the sort that was laboriously assembled in the 1940s and 1950s. After World War I, for instance, there was no CIA, no NSA, no mountain of secret documents to be guarded from unauthorized readers, no atomic bomb to guard, develop, deploy, and maintain in readiness on land, in the air, and on (or in) the sea. Now a new president quickly becomes aware of the vast empire that is largely invisible to the citizenry. The United States maintains an estimated one thousand military bases in other countries. I say "estimated" because the exact number, location, and size of the bases are either partly or entirely cloaked in secrecy, among other things to protect nuclear installations.The secrecy involved is such that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy did not even know, at first, that we still had nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey. An example of this imperial system is the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.[5] In the 1960s, to secure a military outpost without fear of any interference from indigenous peoples, the two thousand Chagossian inhabitants were forcibly expelled, deprived of their native land, and sent a thousand miles away. (It is the same ploy we had used in removing native peoples from the Bikini and Enewetak atolls and Lib Island, so that we could conduct our sixty-eight atomic and hydrogen bomb tests there.) Though technically Diego Garcia is leased from the British, it is entirely run by the United States. It was the United States that expelled the Chagossians and confiscated their property. Diego Garcia has become a vast armory, as well as a storage and staging area and harbor and launch site, from which supplies and air strikes are fanned out over the Middle East, especially to the Persian Gulf and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. No journalists are allowed to visit it. It was funded on a vast scale by various deceptions of Congress. Even the leasing terms with Great Britain were kept secret, to avoid congressional oversight. That is just one of the hundreds of holdings in the empire created by the National Security State. A president is greatly pressured to keep all the empire's secrets. He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command. Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments. He becomes the prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the bomb, a modern president cannot not use the huge powers at his disposal. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant. On January 25, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales signed a memo written by David Addington that called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete." Perhaps, in the nuclear era, the Constitution has become quaint and obsolete. Few people even consider anymore Madison's lapidary pronouncement, "In republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates." Instead, we are all, as citizens, asked to salute our commander in chief. Any president, wanting leverage to accomplish his goals, must find it hard to give up the aura of war chief, the mystery and majesty that have accrued to him with control of the Bomb, the awesome proximity to the Football, to the Button. Nonetheless, some of us entertain a fondness for the quaint old Constitution. It may be too late to return to its ideals, but the effort should be made. As Cyrano said, "One doesn't fight in the hope of winning" (Mais on ne se bat pas dans l'espoir du succès). — September 10, 2009 Notes [1]Jane Mayer, "The Secret History," The New Yorker, June 22, 2009. [2]Charlie Savage, "Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in Some Areas," The New York Times, February 18, 2009. [3]John Schwartz, "Obama Backs Off a Reversal on Secrets," The New York Times, February 10, 2009. See also my recent discussion of the Reynolds case, "Why the Government Can Legally Lie," The New York Review, February 12, 2009. [4]Evan Perez and Siobhan Gorman, "Obama Tilts to CIA on Memos," The Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2009; R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick, "CIA Fights Full Release of Detainee Report," The Washington Post, June 17, 2009. [5]See David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009). See also the review by Jonathan Freedland, "A Black and Disgraceful Site," The New York Review, May 28, 2009.

NY Times and Kennedy in Vietnam

politicalassassinations — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:28:55 +0000

The following is quoted from an op-ed piece in the New York Times written by Gordon M. Goldstein, author of 'Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam'. The piece discusses comparisons and diversions in Kennedy's policy towards Vietnam and Obama's policy towards Afghanistan.

The emerging picture is of a commander in chief trying to chart a middle way through one of the most complex challenges of his young presidency. If so, instructive lessons can be found in the contrasting ways two of his predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, navigated a perilous way ahead in Vietnam. Kennedy’s Vietnam strategy was informed by a pair of harrowing foreign policy crises in 1961 that sobered him to his responsibilities as commander in chief. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion was a humiliation that Kennedy believed would have driven him from office if he had been a British prime minister. He vowed never again to be “overawed by professional military advice.” That same year, Kennedy was shocked by the half-baked recommendation of his generals to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Communist Pathet Lao movement in Laos, a proposal he decisively dismissed. In this context, Kennedy was deeply skeptical when his most senior advisers argued in the fall of 1961 that only substantial numbers of American forces could prevent the government of South Vietnam from collapsing. Kennedy nonetheless rejected the deployment of combat troops. But he also rejected the notion of abandoning Saigon. Instead, he chose to chart a middle course. Kennedy favored a strategy of arming and reinforcing the South Vietnamese Army, and of teaching them new counterinsurgency tactics. He increased the number of military advisers assigned to Saigon but maintained a ceiling of about 16,000 men. By October 1963, operations were deemed sufficiently successful for the White House to announce the withdrawal of 1,000 advisers and its expectation that the advisory mission would be concluded by the end of 1965. At the time of Kennedy’s assassination the following month, the Pentagon had recorded only 108 American military personnel killed. Lyndon Johnson maintained Kennedy’s middle way until after his huge presidential victory in 1964, which gave him new latitude. He was also confronted in January 1965 with the most dire assessment yet of America’s prospects in Vietnam, delivered by two of his most influential counselors, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy. In what came to be known as the “fork in the road” memo, they insisted that the United States was on a “disastrous” losing course in Vietnam. Combat forces soon poured in, approved and progressively enlarged with staggering speed. An initial deployment in March of 3,500 Marines grew to 33,500 and then to a force of 82,000, approved by late April. On June 7, the top American general in Vietnam, William Westmoreland, asked for an immediate increase of 41,000 combat troops, to be followed by 52,000 later. In all, he wanted a combined command of 175,000 soldiers, equivalent to 44 battalions “to give us a substantial and hard-hitting offensive capability on the ground to convince” the Vietnamese insurgent forces “they cannot win.”

Tunheim: C.I.A misled ARRB

politicalassassinations — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:00:24 +0000

http://minnesotaindependent.com/47464/morley-tunheim-joannides-kennedy-oswald-cia U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim says the Central Intelligence Agency “probably misled” a panel he led in the 1990s seeking documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s because the CIA didn’t tell Tunheim that its liaison to a panel that preceded his Assassination Records Review Board had been involved with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who tangled with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. The New York Times reported Tunheim’s remarks in a front-page story Saturday on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by Minneapolis-born journalist Jefferson Morley, formerly an editor at the Washington Post and past national editorial director for the Center for Independent Media, the Minnesota Independent’s nonprofit parent. After years of pressing the CIA to release its records, Morley got an appeals court earlier this year to force the agency to ‘fess up to George Joannides’ role as case officer in Miami at the time of Kennedy assassination. But the CIA still has nearly 300 documents about Joannides it won’t reveal, citing “grave” national security concerns. Tunheim told the Times he may ask the CIA for redacted versions of the documents even if Morley is ultimately stymied by the Washington, D.C., federal court. Jefferson Morley's blog on the subject.

The Harvey and Lee theory

politicalassassinations — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:54:13 +0000

Here we link to an abridged version of John Armstrong's theory of two Oswald's as written by researcher John Kelin. Armstrong discussed his theory at great lenght in his book 'Harvey and Lee'. John Kelin spoke at last years Dallas conference and John Armstrong will be present this Novemer in Dallas. Here is the article in question, which was first publshed in probe magazine in 1997. http://spot.acorn.net/JFKplace/09/fp.back_issues/25th_Issue/armstrong.html

Peter Dale Scott on NY Times and JFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:49:22 +0000

First published on Global research The New York Times, on October 17, published a page-one story by Scott Shane about the CIA’s defiance of a court order to release documents pertaining to the John F. Kennedy assassination, in its so-called Joannides file. George Joannides was the CIA case officer for a Cuban exile group that made headlines in 1963 by its public engagements with Lee Harvey Oswald, just a few weeks before Oswald allegedly killed Kennedy. For over six years a former Washington Post reporter, Jefferson Morley, has been suing the CIA for the release of these documents. [1] Sometimes the way that a news item is reported can be more newsworthy than the item itself. A notorious example was the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers (documents far too detailed for most people to read) on the front page of the New York Times. The October 17 Times story was another such example. It revealed, perhaps for the first time in any major U.S. newspaper, that the CIA has been deceiving the public about its own relationship to the JFK assassination. On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963. In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station. That the October 17 story was published at all is astonishing. According to Lexis Nexis, there have only been two earlier references to the CIA Joannides documents controversy in any major U.S. newspaper: a brief squib in the New York Daily News in 2003 announcing the launching of the case, and a letter to the New York Times in 2007 (of which the lead author was Jeff Morley) complaining about the Times’ rave review of a book claiming that Oswald was a lone assassin. (The review had said inter alia that “''Conspiracy theorists'' should be ''ridiculed, even shunned... marginalized the way we've marginalized smokers.'' The letter pointed out in response that those suspecting conspiracy included Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and J. Edgar Hoover.) The New York Times has systematically regulated the release of any facts about the Kennedy assassination, ever since November 25, 1963, when it first declared Oswald, the day after his death, to have been the “assassin” of JFK. A notorious example was the deletion, between the early and the final edition of a Times issue, of a paragraph in a review of a book about the JFK assassination, making the obvious point that “MYSTERIES PERSIST.” [2] Apparently there was similar jockeying over the positioning of the Scott Shane story. In some east coast editions it ran on page eleven, with a trivializing introductory squib, "Food for Conspiracy Theorists." In the California edition, headlined “C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery,” it was on page one above the fold. One can assume that the Times decision to run the story was a momentous one not made casually. The same can probably be said of another recent remarkable editorial decision, to publish Tom Friedman’s op-ed on September 29 about the “very dangerous” climate now in America, “the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.” Friedman did not mention JFK at all, and his most specific reference was to a recent poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” [3] Four days later the Wall Street Journal expressed similar concern, adding to the “poll on Facebook asking whether the president should be assassinated, a column on a conservative Web site suggesting a military coup is in the works.” [4] Friedman’s column broke a code of silence about the threats to Obama that had been in place ever since two redneck white supremacists (Shawn Adolf and Tharin Gartrell) were arrested in August 2008 for a plot to assassinate Obama with scoped bolt-action rifles. Andrew Gumbel’s story about them ran in the London Independent on November 16, 2008; of the fifteen related news stories in Lexis Nexis, only one, a brief one, is from a U.S. paper. It is possible to take at face value the concern expressed by Friedman in his column. The Boston Globe, a New York Times affiliate, reported on October 18 that “The unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service.” [5] But there may have been a higher level of concern in the normally pro-war Wall Street Journal’s reference to a military coup. Such talk on a conservative web site is hardly newsworthy. More alarming is the report by Robert Dreyfuss in the October 29 Rolling Stone that Obama is currently facing an ultimatum from the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs: either provide General McChrystal with the 40,000 additional troops he has publicly demanded, or “face a full-scale mutiny by his generals...The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals.” [6] One can only guess at what led the New York Times to publish a story about CIA obstinacy over documents about the JFK assassination. One explanation would be the similarities between the painful choices that Obama now faces in Afghanistan – to escalate, maintain a losing status quo, or begin to withdraw – and the same equally painful choices that Kennedy in 1963 faced in Vietnam. [7] More and more books in recent years have asked if some disgruntled hawks in the CIA and Pentagon did not participate in the assassination which led to a wider Vietnam War. [8] Six weeks before Kennedy’s murder, the Washington News published an extraordinary attack on the CIA’s “bureaucratic arrogance” and obstinate disregard of orders... “If the United States ever experiences a `Seven Days in May’ it will come from the CIA...” one U.S. official commented caustically. (“Seven Days in May” is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.) [9] The story was actually a misleading one, but it was a symptom of the high-level rifts and infighting that were becoming explosive over Vietnam inside the Kennedy administration. The New York Times story about the CIA on October 17 can also be seen as a symptom of rifts and infighting. One must hope that the country has matured enough since 1963 to avoid a similarly bloody denouement. Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. He was born in Montreal in 1929, the only son of the poet F.R. Scott and the painter Marian Scott. His prose books include The War Conspiracy (1972), The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (in collaboration, 1976), Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (1977), The Iran-Contra Connection (in collaboration, 1987), Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (in collaboration, 1991, 1998), Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993, 1996), Deep Politics Two (1994, 1995, 2006), Drugs Oil and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, March 2003), The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008). Notes 1. “C.I.A. Is Cagey About '63 Files Tied to Oswald,” New York Times, October 17, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html. 2. Jerry Policoff, The Media and the Murder of John Kennedy,” in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch, and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1976), 268. 3. Friedman, in decrying attacks on presidential legitimacy, recalled that “The right impeached Bill Clinton and hounded him from Day 1 with the bogus Whitewater “scandal.” It is worth recalling also that the public outcry about Whitewater was encouraged initially by a series of stories by Jeff Gerth, since largely discredited, in the New York Times. See Gene Lyons, “Fool for Scandal: How the New York Times Got Whitewater Wrong,” Harper’s, October 1994. 4. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125452861657560895.html. 5. Bryan Bender, “Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats Report questions its role in financial investigations,” Boston Globe, October 18, 2009, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/10/18/secret_service_under_strain_as_leaders_face_more_threats/. 6. Robert Dreyfuss, “The Generals’ Revolt: As Obama rethinks America’s failed strategy in Afghanistan, he faces two insurgencies: the Taliban and the Pentagon.” Rolling Stone, October 29, 41. Several other articles entitled “The Generals’ Revolt” have been published since 2003, including at least two earlier this year and a number in 2006, when retired generals’ pushed successfully for the removal of Rumsfeld over his handling of the Iraq War. 7. Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 266. 8. See for example James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008). 9. Washington Daily News, October 2, 1963; discussed in Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008), Peter Dale Scott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Peter Dale Scott

Obama threats strain secret service

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:31:51 +0000

http://www.military.com/news/article/obama-threats-strain-secret-service.html?col=1186032325324 Obama Threats Strain Secret Service October 22, 2009 United Press International WASHINGTON -- Rising death threats against President Barack Obama are prompting a debate about the Secret Service's resources and duties, officials say. Some within the Secret Service are advocating the agency be relieved of its duties to investigate financial crimes and concentrate instead on protection of government leaders in the wake of growing anti-government sentiment, The Boston Globe reported Sunday. "If there were an evaluation of the service's two missions, it might be determined that it is ineffective ... to conduct its protection mission and investigate financial crimes," an internal report issued in August by the Congressional Research Service and obtained by the newspaper said. A government official whose named was not reported told the newspaper Secret Service leaders are discussing making changes. "This is a discussion going on not only in some quarters in Congress, but inside the Secret Service," the official said. "Should there be a re-look at the mission?" Secret Service spokesman Special Agent Edwin Donovan told the Globe that though "there is no doubt the protection mission has grown" the agency can fulfill its missions.

Castro's sister spied for C.I.A.

politicalassassinations — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:46:42 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8327163.stm

Castro's sister 'spied for CIA'

A sister of Cuba's former long-time leader, Fidel Castro, has admitted spying for the CIA in the 1960s. Juanita Castro, who now lives in Miami, said she had gathered sensitive information for the US for three years. In her memoirs, she said she had fallen out with Fidel and her other brother Raul - Cuba's current president - over the killing of their opponents. Ms Castro, 76, said she had helped to warn and hide Cuban dissidents before finally fleeing the island in 1964.

There has been no immediate reaction from the US or Cuban governments. 'Donna' In her memoirs - Fidel and Raul, My Brothers, the Secret History - Ms Castro says she was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency in Havana two years after the 1959 revolution brought Fidel Castro to power.

“ I didn't betray him. He betrayed me ” Juanita Castro

She agreed to help because she had become disenchanted when Fidel abandoned the nationalist democratic revolution he promised and instead imposed a one-party Marxist state "simply out of the need to hold power", she said. "Did I feel remorse about betraying Fidel by agreeing to meet with his enemies? No, for one simple reason: I didn't betray him. He betrayed me," she wrote. "He betrayed the thousands of us who suffered and fought for the revolution that he had offered, one that was generous and just and would bring peace and democracy to Cuba, and which, as he himself had promised, would be as 'Cuban as palm trees'," she wrote. Ms Castro said that at a meeting with a CIA officer called "Enrique" at a hotel in Mexico City in 1961, she was given the codename "Donna" and codebooks so she could receive instructions. She agreed on the condition that she received no money and was not asked to participate in any violent acts against the Cuban government. She would help people persecuted by the Cuban secret police escape capture, imprisonment and possible execution, often by sheltering them at the home of her mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, she added. Ms Castro fled Cuba a year after her mother died, believing she would no longer be protected from the attention of the secret police, and settled in Miami, where she ran a pharmacy until 2007. Raul helped her get a visa to leave. Fidel relinquished power to Raul in February 2008. He has not been seen in public since falling ill in July 2006.

Oliver Stone plans secret history of America documentary

politicalassassinations — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:22:19 +0000

From the press release,

SHOWTIME AND OLIVER STONE UNCOVER AMERICA’S SECRET HISTORY New 10-Episode Documentary Series From Academy Award®-Winning Director Oliver Stone Entitled OLIVER STONE’S SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICA To Debut On SHOWTIME in 2010 LOS ANGELES, CA – (August 18, 2009) – As Americans, do we really know and understand our shared and complicated history? How do we recall the small details and forgotten players that influenced some of the biggest events from America’s past? Will our children actually get the “real” or whole story from reading history books? And how will it affect the future of our country? Academy Award®-winning director Oliver Stone is creating and executive producing a new, ten episode documentary series entitled OLIVER STONE’S SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICA, which will premiere on SHOWTIME in 2010. The announcement was made today by Robert Greenblatt, President of Entertainment, Showtime Networks Inc. "We are very happy that Oliver Stone has chosen SHOWTIME as the home for his provocative series about key unknown moments of American history,” said Greenblatt. “Not only has his name become synonymous with visionary filmmaker, but Oliver is also a fascinating storyteller always striving to shed new light on the human experience. His continuing curiosity about real events of the 20th Century has now led him to a documentary series unlike any other, which is why it's perfect for our premium audience." Narrated by Stone, the new one-hour series will feature episodes that focus on human events, that at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history over the last 60 years. Stone and a small group of historians and archivists have meticulously combed through the national archives of the U.S., Russia, South Africa, England, and Japan in search of papers, letters, memoranda, film, and photographs to assist in their documentation of unknown historical figures and events that have rarely, if ever, been revealed. Topics range from President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan to the origins and reasons for the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to the fierce struggle between war and peace in America’s national security complex. Newly discovered facts and accounts from the Kennedy administration, the Vietnam War, and the great changes in America’s role in the world since the fall of Communism in the 1980s will be presented. Oliver Stone, who has worked on the series for almost 2 years, said today, “Through this epic 10-hour series, which I feel is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation, I can only hope a change in our thinking will result.”

Dallas conference promotional video

politicalassassinations — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:09:26 +0000

Please send this video to friends. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvWvM2MwmHE&hl=en&fs=1&]

Speer, Haslam and Valentine to speak at COPA

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:15:30 +0000

COPA has a revised list of speakers for the conference in Dallas this year. Medical researcher Pat Speer, http://www.patspeer.com Edward Haslam, http://doctormarysmonkey.com/ Doug Valentine, http://www.douglasvalentine.com/

A summary of Jim Douglass' book

politicalassassinations — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Candace Talmage in the North Star National gives an excellent summary and account of Jim Douglass' work, 'JFK and the unspeakable' http://www.northstarnational.com/2009/11/02/challenging-empire-part-1-book-explores-cia-conspiracy-kill-jfk/ Challenging Empire, Part 1: Book Explores CIA Conspiracy to Kill JFK November 2nd, 2009 Candace Talmadge Candace Talmadge There is no scorn like that heaped upon those who dare suggest that the official explanation for the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is worthless. For decades now, the mainstream media have derided as a tinfoil-hat nut anyone who questions the 1964 Warren Report’s “lone gunman” thesis, despite the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives 15 years later determined that Kennedy most likely was the victim of a deadly conspiracy.JFK_Unspeakable Congress reached this disturbing conclusion three decades ago, yet pursued it no further, a reticence echoed in the Barack Obama administration’s utter lack of enthusiasm for investigating, let alone prosecuting, the previous administration’s wholesale trampling of the U.S. Constitution. There’s a good reason for this hesitation, according to James W. Douglass, who penned JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008). Backed by extensive research, Douglass argues eloquently that Kennedy was slain as a warning to future presidents and members of Congress not to challenge what President Dwight Eisenhower labeled the “military-industrial complex.” Think of it as a murderous melding of vested mutual interests between those on the warrior right who favor might-makes-right foreign policies and their business underwriters who profit handsomely from providing the hardware and outsourced support services to implement and sustain these policies. Kennedy’s so-called crimes in the eyes of this longstanding cabal, Douglass contends, were thwarting top military officers who urged a first nuclear strike on the Soviet Union and opposing the CIA’s expansion of conflict in Vietnam. There were also the president’s transgressions of not backing up the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, of withdrawing defense contracts in 1962 from U.S. steel companies that reneged on their promises not to raise prices, and of the 1963 treaty with the Soviet Union to ban atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Kennedy’s worst sin? Secretly reaching out to Russian leader Nikita Kruschev to explore ways to make peace between the post World War II superpowers. Douglass shows how a series of letters between the men humanized the “enemy” for each side, a highly subversive act for those who peddle and exploit hate and fear, both in this country and abroad. The cold warriors who ordered (and still run) the U.S. intelligence community and their corporate allies would not stand for a president actually using the power of his office to reign in their war-making activities and curb their profits. Peace? Absolutely out of the question! “Those who designed the plot to kill Kennedy were familiar the inner sanctum of our national security state,” Douglass writes. “Their attempt to scapegoat the Soviets for the president’s murder reflected one side of a secret struggle between JFK and his military leaders over a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union. The assassins’ purpose seems to have encompassed not only killing a president determined to make peace with the enemy but also using his murder as the impetus for a possible nuclear first strike against that same enemy.” There’s a familiar ring to exploiting a national tragedy to propel pre-emptive strikes against an enemy that had nothing to with the calamity. Its contemporary counterpart was the Bush administration’s post Sept. 11, 2001 modus operandi. The bloody debacle in Iraq is one of the reasons that Douglass’s take on the Kennedy murder is essential reading. This book helps us recognize and understand the darker side of our nation’s past, present, and likely future course. The pointless loss of life, enormous tax-payer burden, and pitting of American against American are all the poisonous effects of the endless-war profit cycle. Douglass calls this “the unspeakable,” and argues compellingly that it corrodes this nation’s very soul. He does not hesitate to pose difficult questions that our national dialogue since the end of World War II has avoided even asking, let alone answering. One of the toughest: Can the United States be a military and financial empire and still be a representative democracy?

Sirhan moved to new prison

politicalassassinations — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:02:08 +0000

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OLERIL8tM&hl=en&fs=1&] LOS ANGELES (Nov. 2) - An attorney for the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy said Monday his client was transferred from a prison that houses high-risk offenders to a new facility where his life could be in danger. Attorney William F. Pepper said Sirhan Sirhan opposed the move from the state prison in Corcoran, which houses high-risk prisoners such as Charles Manson, to Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga. "Our main concern is for his safety," said Laurie Dusek, an associate of Pepper. "We are not sure that Pleasant Valley has the ability to protect him. He is a target." Pepper said he has new evidence and wants to reopen Sirhan's case. Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said Sirhan had requested the transfer and wants to stay in Pleasant Valley. "After discussing his hesitation with prison officials at Pleasant Valley, Sirhan Sirhan indicated he wanted to stay at the new facility after all," Hidalgo said. "He can indicate if he feels unsafe at any point and the department will respond appropriately." Sirhan is serving a life sentence for the 1968 killing of Kennedy. He had been housed for years in the protective unit at Corcoran, one of the most isolated units in the state prison system. Pepper said neither he nor Sirhan had requested the move and neither had received notice until Sirhan was actually moved last Thursday. Hidalgo countered in a written statement that the move followed numerous requests by Sirhan to be transferred from Corcoran. "His movements there have been extremely controlled and his exposure to others extremely limited," Hidalgo said. Hidalgo said Sirhan's lawyers were notified of the move, but both Pepper and Dusek said in telephone interviews they were not told of the transfer. Dusek said she had contacted prison officials, checking on a report from Sirhan's brother that he might be moved. Authorities denied any knowledge of such a change, she said. Munir Sirhan confirmed in a phone interview that he had notified the lawyer about the transfer. Pepper said he wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger protesting the move. The governor's office said it had not received any communication on the matter.

New tapes of JFK discussing Diem coup released

politicalassassinations — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:54:13 +0000

Full details found here, http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK+Library+and+Museum/News+and+Press/White+House+Recordings+of+President+Kennedy+Debating+Vietnam+Coup+Released+by+JFK+Presidential+Libra.htm BOSTON–The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum announced today that it has declassified and made available for research presidential recordings of four meetings between President Kennedy and his highest level Vietnam advisors during the days after the highly controversial “Cable 243” was sent. The cable, which was dispatched on August 24, 1963 when President Kennedy and three of his top officials were away from Washington, set a course for the eventual coup in Vietnam on November 1, 1963, leading to the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his assassination the following day on November 2, 1963 – 46 years ago this week. The tapes offer unprecedented insight into President Kennedy’s thoughts on the unfolding conflict in Vietnam and reveal his reservations about U.S. support for a military coup in South Vietnam. During a meeting on August 28, President Kennedy states: “I don’t think we’re in that deep. I am not sure the [Vietnamese] Generals are - they’ve been probably bellyaching for months. So I don’t know whether they’re - how many of them are really up to here. I don’t see any reason to go ahead unless we think we have a good chance of success.” “These recordings provide a fascinating snapshot of a key event in the history of Vietnam,” said Kennedy Library Archivist Maura Porter. “The August meetings highlight the uncertainty that existed in the White House over what steps to take toward the government of South Vietnam. Of particular interest are the numerous conflicting views presented from the President's top Vietnam advisors.” These meetings are the first ones to take place after the sending of Cable 243, which has been described by historian John W. Newman as the “single most controversial cable of the Vietnam War.” The telegram was drafted on Saturday August 24, 1963 when President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and CIA Director John McCone were all out of town. Without direct approval from President Kennedy’s senior advisors and despite mixed feelings in the administration over the effectiveness of Diem’s regime, the cable called for Diem to remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from a position of power and threatened U.S. support of a military coup in South Vietnam if he refused. After the cable was sent and during the course of four days of meetings, President Kennedy met with his advisors to discuss the evolving situation in Vietnam and what steps should be taken in the wake of the cable’s policy-changing message. There was considerable disagreement between the State Department advisors who had drafted Cable 243 and the President’s military and intelligence advisors on whether the coup was advisable and what support it would have in Vietnam with the Vietnamese military. In his book Robert Kennedy and His Times, White House Historian Arthur Schlesinger quoted Robert Kennedy’s recollections of the cable: “[President Kennedy] always said that it was a major mistake on his part. The result is we started down a road that we never really recovered from.” The President asked several times for straight assessments from his two top advisors in Vietnam, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and General Paul Harkins. At the August 27, 1963 meeting the President inquired about whether General Harkins agreed with the present plan:

President Kennedy: What about - in the wire that went Saturday, what’s the degree of -- My impression was that based on the wire that went out Saturday, asked General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge recommending a course of action unless they disagreed. (General Taylor then states that Harkins concurred). That’s right, so I think we ought to find out whether Harkins doesn’t agree with this - then I think we ought to get off this pretty quick. During the on-going discussions, State Department officials claimed that they felt it was too late to step back from the coup support, an opinion not accepted by the President. The President comments: President Kennedy: I don’t think we ought to take the view here that this has gone beyond our control ‘cause I think that would be the worst reason to do it. … … Well I don’t think we ought to just do it because we feel we have to now do it. I think we want to make it our best (sitting) judgment (is to date) because I don’t think we do have to do it. At least I’d be prepared to take up the argument with lawyers, well let’s not do it. So I think we ought to try to make it without feeling that it’s forced on us. The President goes on to state: President Kennedy: I don’t think we ought to let the coup…maybe they know about it, maybe the Generals are going to have to run out of the country, maybe we’re going to have to help them get out. But still it’s not a good enough reason to go ahead if we don’t think the prospects are good enough. I don’t think we’re in that deep. I am not sure the Generals are - they’ve been probably bellyaching for months. So I don’t know whether they’re - how many of them are really up to here. I don’t see any reason to go ahead unless we think we have a good chance of success. Ambassador Nolting, who had been recently relieved of his duties in Saigon and replaced by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, was asked by the President to be present at these meetings. Nolting’s advice and opinions were pointed, candid and very often at odds with State Department officials in the room, especially Roger Hilsman and Averell Harriman. At the August 28th meeting, Ambassador Nolting and the President began a discussion on a post-coup Vietnam: President Kennedy: What about Diem - Diem and Nhu would be ( unclear )? Exile them, is that it? That’s what we would favor of course, but. Roger Hilsman: We know, we know no information. President Kennedy: But I think it would be important that nothing happen to them if we, if we have any voice in it. Is that your view Ambassador? Frederick Nolting: With all the humility again, Mr. President, my view is that there is no one that I know of who can - who has a reasonably good prospect of holding this fragmented, divided country together except Diem.

Further information provided in link

Dartmouth scientist says Oswald photo real

politicalassassinations — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:00:26 +0000

Article follows after commentary During interrogation by the Dallas police, Oswald was shown the photo, which allegedly had been found in the Payne's garage where Marina was staying, and he said, "That's my head on someone else's body." None of the evidence "discovered" there has proper chain of custody, since Marina Oswald and Ruth Payne left the house when the police arrived to search and Ruth Payne signed for what was found much later in the day at the police office. Marina suggested that the Oswald's hid weapons from Payne since she was a Quaker. Michael Payne reportedly came home during the police search and was upset to find them going through his personal belongings, and he led them to the garage to see Oswald's materials instead. The blanket that the gun was supposedly wrapped in showed no oil or stretch marks from the rifle and the rifle had no hairs from the blanket. Marinia Oswald at a research conference in Cambridge, MA said that Oswald had asked her to take pictures of him holding a rifle and a pistol behind the house in Irving, TX where they shared a room, but she said she stood in the alleyway and Oswald stood in the back yard, the opposite orientation from the released pictures. Photo experts have pointed not only to the shadow discrepancies between his body and nose but also to cut lines across his chin and a differently shaped lower face and jaw than in other photos of Oswald. FBI photographer Lynne Chaney staged a picture to support the authenticity of the photo and recreate the shadows, and it appears in the Warren Commission volumes. However, the FBI man holding a rifle and a pistol at a somewhat similar angle to Oswald and with a body shadow at a similar angle from the sun, inexplicably also has a paper bag over his head, totally obscuring facial shadows. Different prints and negatives of the "backyard photo" were found over the years, all of which have discrepancies that led researchers to question their authenticity. The angle at which the body is leaning over seems unusual as well, almost to the point of being off balance. There is an additional issue, which is that the person in the picture is holding at the same time a copy of the Communist Party Daily Worker and the Socialist Worker's Party newspaper, a Trotskyist journal, with conflicting views about communism, socialism and history. Few leftists would have been subscribing to both publications, based on their ideological views. The rifle and pistol depicted seem to match the Mannlicher-Carcano allegedly the JFK murder weapon found at the Texas School Book Depository building after the shooting, and the pistol that Oswald allegedly used to shoot Dallas police officer Tippit. Both these guns were ordered from a post office box in Dallas that could not be linked to Oswald, in fact a letter addressed to Oswald's name at that box ended up in the dead letter as a bad address for him. The signatures on the order forms for both guns do not match Oswald's handwriting. Thus it is unlikely that Oswald would have had his picture taken with these guns that clearly were not owned or ordered by him, but which were used to incriminate him in the murder of JFK. Even if the photo were legitimate, it proves nothing about whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy, though it might in fact have proven that he was being railroaded and framed instead as the "patsy" he referred to himself as. Oswald was clearly not a shooter at either the Dealey Plaza assassination of JFK nor at the Irving, TX shooting of Officer Tippit. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gZUZI3bvhZ6iPwjcKIKp_zPaUzFgD9BPJO681 Dartmouth scientist says Oswald rifle photo real

By HOLLY RAMER (AP) – 1 day ago CONCORD, N.H. — The infamous photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle in his backyard would have been nearly impossible to fake, according to a new analysis by a Dartmouth College professor. Oswald, who was shot to death days after being charged with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, claimed the photo of him holding a rifle in one hand and Marxist newspapers in the other had been doctored. Over the years, many others have pointed out what appear to be inconsistent lighting and shadows. But Hany Farid, director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth, said the shadows are exactly where they should be. "You can never really prove an image is real, but the evidence that people have pointed to that the photo is fake is incorrect," Farid said Thursday. "As an academic and a scientist, I don't like to say it's absolutely authentic ... but it's extremely unlikely to have been a fake." Farid, whose work using digital forensic tools to analyze images often has been used by law enforcement, said he has been getting requests from conspiracy theorists to analyze the photo for years. He said he held off until he had the appropriate software to create three-dimensional models of Oswald's head and surroundings. With the modeling software, he was able to show that a single light source could create both a shadow falling behind Oswald and to his right and one directly under his nose. Farid admits even he was skeptical before starting his research. "When I looked at the photo, I didn't understand it. I didn't understand the shadows, and I do this for a living," he said. But Farid's latest finding, which will be published in the journal Perception, is in keeping with his earlier research that showed the human visual system does a poor job at judging whether cast shadows are correct, he said. "It turns out we're really bad at it. Even though our visual system is very, very good ... we are really bad at judging shadows," he said. "I'm bad at it and this is what I do for a living." He spent about two months off and on analyzing the Oswald photo. "I felt because it's the Kennedy assassination and because there's so much history about this, you really want to answer this correctly," he said. "You don't want to make a mistake on something of this magnitude." Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Full speaker list for COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:58:02 +0000

The Coalition on Political Assassinations presents:

OPEN SECRETS: THE ASSASSINATIONS OF THE ‘60s 15th Annual Regional Conference, November 20-22, Dallas, TX

Latest evidence and research, authors, medical and ballistic experts, academics and researchers into modern political assassinations, including Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Resource room with books, DVDs and digital collections. Films and presentations. Join us.

Speakers: Dr. Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., former president American Academy of Forensic Sciences Jim Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable Walt Brown, author of Master Analytic Chronology: The Death of President Kennedy Russ Baker, author of Family of Secrets Ronnie Dugger, former editor of The Texas Observer John Armstrong, author of Harvey & Lee will be available to sign his book Randy Benson, award-winning filmmaker, showing excerpts from The Searchers T Carter, author an upcoming book Jerry Ray: A Memoir of Injustice Ben Rogers, curator of the Penn Jones collection at Baylor University's Poague Library Jim DiEugenio, author of Destiny Betrayed and editor of Probe Lisa Pease, co-author of The Assassinations and editor of Probe Robert Groden, author of The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald and Absolute Proof Doug Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and The Strength of the Pack Ed Haslam, author of Dr. Mary’s Monkey and Mary, Ferrie and the Money Virus Pat Speer, producer of "The Mysterious Death of Number 35” Chris Pike, researcher into Operation Northwoods and critic Penn Jones, Jr. Schedule: Friday, November 20 Early Bird Lunch, 12:00 pm Founder’s Grill, lobby, Hotel Lawrence (214) 761-9090 Dinner, 5:30 pm, Rodeo Grill, Adolphus Hotel, 1321 Commerce Street, (214) 651-3588 COPA keynote speaker, 7:00 pm, Mezzanine level, Adolphus Hotel Movies, 10:00 pm, Second floor Rear, Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts. Resource room open on 2nd floor rear Friday to Sunday, books and DVDs, authors Saturday, November 21 Speakers 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, Second floor Rear, Hotel Lawrence Movies 10:00 pm, Second floor Rear Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts. Sunday, November 22 46th anniversary Speakers and discussions 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Second floor Rear Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts. 12:30 pm Moment of Silence Commemorating the Assassination of President Kennedy Grassy Knoll, Dealey Plaza, speakers following Union Station and West End stations on DART rail. All events open to public. Registration at door - $60 for all events, $25 Saturday, $20 Friday and Sunday Coalition on Political Assassinations, PO Box 772, Washington, DC 20044 copa@starpower.net www.politicalassassinations.com

Doug Horne's book on ARRB out soon

politicalassassinations — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:40:56 +0000

Doug Horne was Chief Analyst for Military Records with the Assassination Records Review Board. His new book 'Inside the Assassination Records Review Board' will be 5 volumes in size and be concerned principally with the medical coverup in the assassination. The Mary Ferrell Foundation has more information, including a short word from the author himself. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Featured_Inside_The_ARRB_Coming_Soon

New DPD investigation photos online

politicalassassinations — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:45:24 +0000

Photos from the Dallas Police Department's investigation into the murder of President Kennedy have been made available on the website of the University of North Texas. Full news story link Link to the archive

COPA conference to broadcast Jim Douglass' speech

politicalassassinations — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:37:55 +0000

COPA will broadcast the speech to be made by Jim Douglass at the Adolphus hotel tonight, November 20th from 7pm EST. Jim Douglass is the author of 'JFK and the unspeakable' . A review by COPA member Bill Kelly can be found here, http://politicalassassinations.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-review/ To view the stream, visit http://www.politicalassassinations.com

Video of Russ Baker at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:59:50 +0000

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIkfGLA47E&hl=en_GB&fs=1&] Russ Baker is an investigative journalist and founder of the nonprofit reporting web site whowhatwhy.com. His heavily sourced and footnoted 2009 book, "Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years," has several chapters with copious new material on the JFK assassination, focusing on the story behind George H.W. Bush's claim not to remember where he was Nov. 22, 1963. Gore Vidal calls it "one of the most important books of the past ten years." The book website is www.familyofsecrets.com

Doug Valentine video from COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:23:38 +0000

Apologies, this video is still being processed on ustream.tv for embedding. It will be available to embed shortly. In the mean time, please follow this link to the video, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2611498 Doug Valentine is the author of five books. This new book, The Strength of the Pack, is an expose of the DEA. His previous book, The Strength of the Wolf (about the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), devotes a chapter to the possible drug trafficking aspects of the JFK assassination. In his second book, The Phoenix Program, Valentine revealed that members of a US Army military intelligence group may have taken photographs of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Valentine worked as an investigator for Dr William Pepper and testified in Memphis in 1999 at the King v Jowers trial. See http://www.douglasvalentine.com/

Cyril Wecht video at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:26:07 +0000

Video not yet available to embed, but you can watch the video here, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2609303 Dr. Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. is a nationally renowned forensic pathologist, attorney and medical-legal consultant. Dr. Wecht received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and his law degree from the University of Maryland, and is also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists. He has served as President of the American College of Legal Medicine, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.The author of more than 500 professional publications, Dr. Wecht is also an editorial board member of more than 20 national and international medical-legal and forensic scientific publications. He has performed approximately 14,000 autopsies and has supervised, reviewed or has been consulted on approximately 30,000 additional postmortem examinations. Dr. Wecht has frequently appeared on several nationally syndicated programs discussing various medicolegal and forensic scientific issues, including medical malpractice, drug abuse, the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the death of Elvis Presley, the O.J. Simpson case, and the JonBenet Ramsey cases. His expertise has also been utilized in high profile cases involving Mary Jo Kopechne, Sunny von Bulow, Jean Harris, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, the Waco Branch Davidian fire, and Vincent Foster. A comprehensive study of these cases are discussed from the perspective of Dr. Wecht's own professional involvement in his books, Cause of Death, Grave Secrets, and Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey? He also directs the The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. See http://www.cyrilwecht.com/institute.php

John Armstrong talks at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:14:09 +0000

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxn_nZlKuPg&hl=en_GB&fs=1&] John Armstrong is an independent researcher and author of Harvey & Lee and co-author of Dead Witnesses. His main work outlines the evidence that there were two people using the name of Lee Harvey Oswald who are both linked to the Kennedy assassination. See http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200311/1068503919.html

Jim Douglass speaks at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:33:48 +0000

We intend to have a better version up soon. http://vimeo.com/7768119

Audio of John Judge in Dealey Plaza on 22/11/2009

politicalassassinations — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:28:19 +0000

http://www.n5gar.com/JFK_11-22-2009-JohnJudgeMomentSilence.mp3 John Judge is the director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations

The assassination of Victor Jara

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:00:06 +0000

From the associated Press November 26, 2009 Chile murder mystery: Who killed Victor Jara? By MICHAEL WARREN Associated Press Writer Who killed Victor Jara? The notorious murder of the popular folk singer — who became a symbol of resistance after he was tortured and shot to death in the chaotic first days of Chile's 1973 coup — has never been solved. The soldiers involved were ordered long ago to carry their secrets to their graves or face a similar fate. Jara's brutal death — he was beaten badly before his body was pumped with bullets — was meant as a warning to anyone who challenged Gen. Augusto Pinochet's authority during the long, dark years of Chile's dictatorship. The climate of fear remains, even with two decades of democracy and Pinochet dead and buried. But some facts are finally emerging after 36 years of silence, institutional resistance, blind turns and myth-making about Jara, who was detained in a stadium with 5,000 other supporters of ousted President Salvador Allende. His struggle and death have been immortalized by everyone from American folk singer Pete Seeger to Argentina's Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and the Irish rockers U2. Continue reading the story here

Dallas Morning News coverage of minutes silence

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:05:19 +0000

The article can be found here. What follows is COPA director John Judge's response to the piece. Beginning in 1964, newsman and Midlothian (TX)Mirror editor Penn Jones, Jr. and early critic of the Warren Commission's conclusion of a lone gunman, began a vigil and a Moment on Silence on the Grassy Knoll to commemorate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and to remind the public that the case was still unsolved, that the evidence led to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that the government and press were still covering up the reality of that political murder. I stood with Penn Jones for almost all of the years that followed, sometimes with only a handful of people present. The crowds swelled after the release of Oliver Stone's film, JFK to hundreds, and on the 40th anniversary there were 5,000 people in Dealey Plaza. Penn fell ill with Altzheimer's and when he was unable to carry on the tradition, he asked me to keep the Moment of Silence alive, which I have done each year, as a legally permitted event. In 1994 I co-founded the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) which sponsors the Moment of Silence and holds an annual conference in a hotel near the site, bringing the best new forensic, medical, and documenatry evidence and research into the murders of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, among others. Our organization was formed to push for implementation of the JFK Assassination Recores Act, which to date has released over 6.5 million classified pages about JFK's administration and death, rewriting the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs and the assassination itself. We were on the Grassy Knoll again this year, along with some unpermitted events, but we are not mentioned in your reportage as the initiator of the event and this tradition. The Dallas Morning News and other press are welcome to cover our conferences. Your reporters should not be surprised that there is a substantial public presence at the site of Kennedy's assassination each year, since in the mind of the majority of Americans, the case has yet to be resolved and the damage done to the country reverberates into the current policies and crises that we face.

Blackwater assassination squads in Pakistan

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:11:30 +0000

Jeremy Scahill's important work on Blackwater security has now unearthed evidence that reveals the existence of the private security firms participation in assassinations inside Pakistan.

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

The full rticle can be found at this link

JFK and the Unspeakable on global research

politicalassassinations — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:48:55 +0000

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16273 A fantastic review and summary of James Douglass' book has been posted on the global research website. If you are trying to tell this story to someone with little or no background knowledge, this is a great start.

abraham bolden

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:23 +0000

COPA knoll

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:24 +0000

ed tatro

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:26 +0000

jim dieugenio

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:28 +0000

Jim Douglass

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:29 +0000

john armstrong

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:30 +0000

pat speer

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:32 +0000

russ baker

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:43:33 +0000

Photos of COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:44:31 +0000

[gallery orderby="title"]

JFK assassination, a good starting point

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:53:18 +0000

The Mary Ferrell foundation has created a beginners guide or starting point on the assassination on their website. The run through includes investigations, evidence, theories and perspectives, people, organizations, the Kennedy presidency and other assassinations and plots. If you know someone who is interested in the assassination, this is probably a good starting point for them, along with the review/summary of Jim Douglass' work referenced on this blog 2 stories below this post. You can avail of the material here, http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/JFK_Assassination

Scahill on Blackwater assassination squads

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:23:38 +0000

Here is another article by Jeremy Scahill on the Blackwater assassination squads, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/scahill1

Ways to keep in touch with COPA

politicalassassinations — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:33:07 +0000

Rather than make a one off visit to the COPA blog and website, why not keep in touch with us and receive regular updates. If you use a feed reader, simply add http://politicalassassinations.wordpress.com to you feed. If you are on facebook, become a fan and receive news as it happens. Search for 'coalition on political assassinations' Alternatively, send an email to copa@starpower.net and ask to be put on the mailing list. Whatever way you choose, please keep in touch and help us grow.

New book on transfer of power from JFK to LBJ

politicalassassinations — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:19:37 +0000

*The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson’s Pivotal First Day as President */Steven M. Gillon/. Basic, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 9780465018703 In this fresh take on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, history professor Gillon probes the chaos that surrounded Vice President Johnson’s ascension to power as he coped with both the trauma of Kennedy’s murder and the enmity of Kennedy’s inner circle. At Parkland Hospital in Dallas, a battle of wills between Johnson and JFK’s inner circle—including appointments secretary Kenneth O’Donnell and military aide Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh—contributed to the confusion then (and now) over the timeline of Kennedy’s death and Johnson’s assuming the presidency. Leading the anti-Johnson contingent was the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who tussled with LBJ over the swearing-in details (both disagreed bitterly about the episode afterwards). Johnson faltered as he moved into the spotlight, trying in vain to adopt Camelot as his own by trying (unsuccessfully) to console Jackie and persuading (with varying degrees of success) Kennedy staffers to stay on. Gillon captures the two faces of Johnson—the insecure second-guesser and the brilliant politician—as well as the earliest signs of the Johnson presidency’s eventual failure. /(Oct.) http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6709174.html?industryid=47159

Jim Douglass keynotes at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:26:59 +0000

http://vimeo.com/7768119

Here is a repost for those that haven't seen it before.Technorati Tags: jim douglass, jfk and the unspeakable,

High quality video of Jim Douglass at COPA 2009

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:18:41 +0000

http://vimeo.com/7998874

NY Times on the threats to Obama's life

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:28:03 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/us/06threat.html

An airport security guard in New Jersey, who had 43 guns and allegedly hollow-point bullets at home, was charged with making threats against a president after co-workers told the authorities that he had talked about cutting a hole in a fence to shoot Mr. Obama on the day before the president was to land at Newark International Airport... An Arizona pastor drew the attention of agents after he delivered a sermon that included pleas for Mr. Obama’s death at the very time he and his family visited the state. While cases involving heated political rhetoric are seldom prosecuted, they are often investigated by the authorities, including the case of a Republican candidate for governor in Idaho who made a hunting-season joke about “Obama tags.” “We’d buy some of those,” he said. The Secret Service also checked in with a Pennsylvania newspaper that ran a classified advertisement placed by a customer, which declared: “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy,” and with a Florida radio talk show host who bantered with an anti-Obama listener, who allegedly discussed his frustration with Mr. Obama by saying he was practicing his shooting skills.

Jim Douglass interview on anti war radio

politicalassassinations — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:05:02 +0000

Jim Douglass was interviewd by an unconvinced Angela Keaton on anti war radio recently.

Douglass talks to Keaton about his conflict with the CIA and military and generally how it is not about how the left view Kennedy, but how the reactionary militarists did.

Keaton takes the opinion that Kennedy was no peace lover and was not in the process of pulling out of Vietnam. Douglass presents the evidence to the contrary.

http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/12/02/james-w-douglass/

Dr Malcolm Perry dies

politicalassassinations — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:42:22 +0000

From the AP

DALLAS — Dr. Malcolm Oliver Perry II, who attended to President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, has died. He was 80. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the teaching hospital for Parkland, said Monday that Perry died Saturday in Tyler after a battle with lung cancer. Perry was an assistant professor of surgery at UT Southwestern and a vascular surgeon on the Parkland staff when he became the first staff surgeon to treat Kennedy. In an extensive interview by the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination, Perry recalled taking the case over from the senior resident, checking the president's vital signs and finding none but noting a convulsive effort to breath. He performed a tracheotomy on the president while other staff doctors and surgeons gathered to help. Perry and another surgeon performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Kennedy until no brain activity was detected on the trauma room instruments. At 1 p.m., Kennedy was declared dead by Dr. Kemp Clark, the UT Southwestern neurosurgery chairman, from a catastrophic head wound. Dr. Robert McClelland was the last surgeon to attend Kennedy in Trauma Room 1. McClelland, a longtime friend and Parkland and UT Southwestern colleague of Perry's, remembers that the shock of realizing whom they were treating faded quickly when they entered the trauma room. "At Parkland we're accustomed, all of us are, to treating many different cases," McClelland told The Associated Press on Monday. "Of course, it's the president," he said. Was it hard to put that aside? "No, not really. Everything was so rapidly happening that we were called on the peak of the moment." Perry told the commission that the neck wound Kennedy suffered from the sniper's first rifle shot would likely have not been fatal. However, he testified that neither he nor Clark could tell from their examinations from where the bullets came. The vascular surgeon also was one of the doctors to operate on presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who was shot two days after Kennedy's death by Jack Ruby. After a long career, Perry retired in 2000 as professor emeritus of surgery at UT Southwestern. But McClelland, now 80, said that after the assassination his friend never mentioned their role in the case, and that they never discussed it even among themselves. "No, we didn't, for reasons he kept to himself. Immediately after, he had a bad experience with interviews that hurt him deeply. Whenever the subject threatened to come up, he'd raise an eyebrow and that would be that," he said. Perry was born in Allen, Texas, a once-tiny farming-and-railroad town about 20 miles north of Dallas that is now one of the city's fastest-growing suburbs. He was raised by his grandfather and namesake, Dr. Malcolm O. Perry I, a general

practitioner in the small town.

Article: National Security State killing John Kennedy

politicalassassinations — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:27:21 +0000

Originally published at http://www.opednews.com/articles/National-Security-State-ki-by-pete-johnson-091210-612.html By Pete Johnson On the 46^th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy, it would appear that the National Security State finds it necessary to kill the facts surrounding his death. The Discovery Channel aired three misleading shows in November, “Did the Mob Kill JFK”, “JFK: The Ruby Connection” and “Inside the Target Car.” I will focus on “Did the Mob Kill JFK” which is based on Lamar Waldron's book titled “Legacy of Secrecy" which is co-written, or at least co-promoted, by well respected Thom Hartmann. “Did the Mob Kill JFK” concludes that the Mafia assassinated Kennedy. Thom Hartmann tells us that the Mafia orchestrated the assassination in a way that “the National Security State would cover for them for years, maybe decades, maybe centuries”. Clearly, the National Security State is still distorting the facts of the assassination, giving me the title of this article. “Did the Mob Kill JFK” starts with emphasis on mobster Carlos Marcello's alleged prison confession to FBI informant Jack Van Lingham, a character not prominent in the book. It features talking heads G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, who has been blaming the assassination on the mob for years. Blakely has acknowledged that the CIA lied to him, but that was not revealed on this show. The show follows Waldron's book, but the narrative is interspersed with commentary by Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed” who claims Oswald alone killed President Kennedy, despite the evidence. This has the effect of creating confusion and presenting two possible scenarios....Oswald as the lone nut, or the Mafia, did it. The possibility that the National Security State itself eliminated Kennedy is not presented, but that is no surprise. The guts of the show correctly point out that the Mob was working with the CIA in an attempt to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro, and that the mob had lost their casino business in Havana and so wanted Castro eliminated. Also accurate is that John and Robert Kennedy were pressing the Mafia hard, including deportation of Carlos Marcello, and that the mafia would have considered the Kennedys as major threat. The show agrees that the Warren Commission was tasked with convicting Oswald rather than finding the truth, with the well worn reason of preventing another World War. The conclusion that the Mafia did it has long been problematic, since it does not explain the subsequent cover up. This is what Waldron's book seeks to do...explain the cover up as a result of a web of deceit and secrecy surrounding another plot to kill Castro. The show accurately depicted the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, without mentioning that Kennedy's actions here could have been a motive in his murder. In fact, James Douglass' book “JFK and the Unthinkable” describes in excellent detail Kennedy's firing of CIA leadership following the Bay of Pigs, his refusal to engage in nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his refusal to fight the Vietnam War. Douglass documents off channel communications between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Castro. Kennedy threatened the military industrial complex in his quest to end the cold war. According to “Did the Mob Kill JFK” this intrigue spiraled into another Kennedy led coup plot against Castro called AMWORLD, which was outside of the CIA/Mafia plotting but was learned of by the mafia. The allegation that AMWORLD was outside CIA/Mafia control is false, but it is stated in the show. At this point, the mafia decided that they could kill Kennedy and that the National Security State (again, Thom Hartmann's words) would cover the event, because if the world learned that the Kennedy brothers were working to kill Castro, then World War III would erupt. The tenuous conclusion that a failed Castro assassination plot would somehow lead to war is simply not explained. The reasoning so far is somewhat plausible, but now we must believe that the mafia, who with the CIA had tried and failed to kill Castro 17 times, would give up their goal of regaining their business in Havana via support of the newest coup initiative AMWORLD, and instead would assassinate Kennedy because he was a direct threat. The mafia would have needed to wait only one week for the AMWORLD plot to unfold. Although the mafia wanted Kennedy dead we are supposed to believe that their knowledge of the Castro plot was enough to grant the mafia a get-out-of-jail card for killing a President. A get-out-of-jail card which is still being used, 46 years later. The show accurately linked Marcello to Jack Ruby, noting that Marcello used him to silence Oswald. This is believable and well documented, but this conclusion is challenged in the subsequent Discovery Channel show, “JFK: The Ruby Connection” leaving any viewer of both shows confused, which is the point of this type of presentation. It went on to describe a very tenuous link between Marcello and Oswald, without any mention of Oswald's connections to the CIA, the FBI, or his defection to Russia, among other details. The show briefly regains some level of credibility by allowing forensic pathologist and Warren Commission critic Cyril Wecht to forcefully demonstrate the fact of two shots, two shooters, and a fatal head shot from the front. The frontal shot is evident for all to see on the Zapruder film, which was kept from the public for 7 years. Posner then points out that he believes all shots came from behind, but that Oswald still could have been part of a conspiracy. If you are not confused yet, it is not because they did not try. But that did not prevent the show from concluding with Posner noting that people want to believe in a Kennedy conspiracy, not because the evidence is overwhelming, but instead because it is hard for people to balance the importance of Kennedy's unfinished Presidency with a “sociopathic loser with a $12 rifle.” A more meaningless utterance is difficult to imagine. I suspect that Waldron and Hartmann were not pleased by the constant disruption of the flow of their misleading narrative and conclusion with Posner's lone-nut ramblings, or by the heavy reliance on an FBI informant who was not prominent in their book. The show could have been misleading and dishonest without being confusing at the same time. If the reader is interested in learning more about the Kennedy assassination, read “JFK and the Unspeakable” by James Douglass, or view his comments at http://vimeo.com/7768119. His presentation at least makes sense. Douglass concludes that Kennedy was killed because he pushed back against the military and the cold warriors. His American University speech in June of 1963 represented a change in US foreign policy and an attempt to end the cold war. For this, the military-industrial-Congressional complex (President Eisenhower's words) or the National Security State (Hartmann's words) executed the American President in broad daylight at high noon, forever limiting the power of the President to resist war and violence.

Pharmacist. Member, Coalition on Political Assassinations Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Common Cause, Amnesty International, ACLU

Hypnotist in RFK case dies

politicalassassinations — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:41:54 +0000

January 10, 2010 Herbert Spiegel, Doctor Who Popularized Hypnosis, Dies at 95 By BENEDICT CAREY Dr. Herbert Spiegel treated pain, anxiety and addictions by putting people into a trance. Broadway actors sought his help to overcome stage fright, singers to quit smoking, politicians to overcome fear of flying. For years he had a regular table at Elaine’s, as well as his own place on the national stage. A New York psychiatrist, Dr. Spiegel, who died on Dec. 15 at the age of 95, was far and away the country’s most visible and persuasive advocate for therapeutic hypnosis, having established it as a mainstream medical technique. Beginning in the 1950s, he described the technique, both its uses and misuses, in magazine articles and in courtrooms. In the 1960s, he developed the first quick and practical test for individual susceptibility to hypnosis; it is still widely used. In later decades he appeared on television programs like “60 Minutes” and he helped treat the woman known as Sybil, whose controversial case became the subject of a book and inspired two television movies. In a famous course at Columbia University, Dr. Spiegel taught generations of doctors the art and science of hypnosis — how concentrated relaxation and suggestion can have a powerful effect on thinking and behavior. His son, Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, said his father had died in his sleep at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, not far from Elaine’s, where Dr. Herbert Spiegel’s regular table was near Woody Allen’s at what was a fixture of the New York intellectual and creative scene in the 1960s and ’70s. For the rest of the story, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/health/10spiegel.html?pagewanted=print

Lisa Pease on Cass Sunstein

politicalassassinations — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:49:16 +0000

Cass Sunstein, Obama advisor and academic recently wrote a paper on conspiracy theories and what should be done about them. Sunstein advocated infiltrating groups that promote conspiracy theories to disrupt their work. Mr. Sunstein is obviously not very good at his job considering the FBI's COINTELPRO operations have been running for decades now and he did not reference them. Here is CTKA's Lisa Pease responding to Sunstein's co-author. Dear Professor Vermeule: I’m reading the paper you and Cass Sunstein wrote about Conspiracy Theories (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084585), and had a few questions I hope you can answer.

Who wrote which parts? Did one of you write most of it and if so, who was that?

Why do you say “as a general rule, true accounts [of conspiracies] should not be undermined.” Which true accounts should be undermined, and under which circumstances?

If we say “all Asian people” do something, aren’t we being racist? When you generalize about conspiracy theorists as if they are a homogenous set of people (and trust me, that’s far from the truth), aren’t you being, shall we say, labelist? Assigning characteristics of some individuals to an entire group, without justification?

Which statement would you agree with more, and why?
1. All conspiracy theories should be dismissed at first glance.
2. All conspiracy theories should be investigated, and evaluated on the evidence.

There was a time when the Watergate affair was characterized as a “third-rate burglary.” Would the public have been better served by not pursuing what really happened?

If a conspiracy theory becomes consistently predictive, does that make it valuable? Isn’t that how we judge scientific theories, by their consistently predictive value?

Did you ever consider the possibility that it is not a lack of information, but rather a supply of information, that gives birth to some conspiracy theories? That conspiracy theory is sometimes simply pattern recognition?

There was a time when the notion of an arms-for-hostages deal, i.e., Iran-Contra, was considered a crazy conspiracy theory, until, of course, it was proven to be true. Some people had the information before others, and were denigrated as conspiracy theorists. Should we then acknowledge that some conspiracy theorists can be very good researchers?

If the CIA really did kill Kennedy, isn’t that worth investigating? As someone who knows for fact that the CIA lied about what they knew about Oswald, because I have the records from the CIA to prove it, isn’t it worth pursuing WHY they lied about Oswald? Isn’t that an act of patriotism, not paranoia?

Why do your talking points sound so similar to the ones published in this CIA memo? (http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/assassinations/jfk/cia-inst.htm ) (And yes, I have a copy of this memo from the National Archives. I’m not relying on some Internet page. I typed this in from the document myself.)

How can you say that we can’t keep secrets in this “open society” when CIA people know they lose their job, their pension, and can be sent to jail for revealing them?

What is redacted here, or is this still a secret, nearly forty years after the document was first shown to members of Congress? Why can’t I know what’s redacted in this “declassified” report of the CIA’s “family jewels”? This is jewel #1, of all things. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=60409&relPageId=5)

For the record, I too am frustrated with how gullible people are, and how quickly they can jump to unsupported conclusions. Why do some people refuse to believe a conspiracy happened, even when the evidence is there (e.g., Holocaust deniers)? Some conspiracy theorists are indeed too gullible, are not skilled in the evaluation of evidence, and see shadows where none exist. But to group all conspiracy theorists into this bucket is to miss the fact that there are serious people—professors, lawyers, judges, presidents, who believe these theories precisely because of the evidence, not in spite of it. As someone who has spent nearly twenty years studying the actual conspiracies of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Smedley Butler’s account of the plot to overthrow FDR, and in great detail, the CIA’s full history (mind control, infiltration and manipulation of the media, using academics to promote practices favorable to the agency, etc., bugging schemes, exotic weaponry, coups and assassinations and yes, the CIA’s curious obfuscations regarding its potential role in the assassination of President Kennedy), it seems that an honest investigation of conspiracy theories is the only way to dispel false conspiracy theories. Dismissing them out of hand without a proper hearing is anti-intellectual and simply compounds the problem. Opening records, providing access to witnesses, conducting an honest inquiry – isn’t that the simple way to either prove or disprove conspiracy theories? The trick is to find an honest group to hold an honest investigation. I’ve known very few truly honest people in my life. This will forever be a challenging task, especially when money and power are at stake. Conspiracy theories aren’t the problem; they’re the symptom. And they’re not the symptom of “mental illness, such as paranoia or narcissism” that you suggest. They are the symptom of a government that lies to the people, often through the mainstream media. Most people aren’t stupid. And you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. We know the CIA lied about what they knew about Oswald to other agencies of the government just a month before the assassination because we have two communications drafted within hours of each other, by the same people, with one describing Oswald as older, fat and balding, and one describing him accurately. That’s not an accident, because the inaccurate description was escalated to nearly the Deputy Director’s level for approval, indicating, as one of the signees said on the record, sensitive information that was closely held and revealed only on a “need to know” basis. Those were the CIA officer’s words, not some screenwriter’s. Does that prove the CIA killed Kennedy? Of course not. But it proves people are not crazy to suspect such. And it proves people who automatically discount that either haven’t seen the CIA’s own records to this effect for themselves, and understood them, or that they are suffering from, to borrow your words, a “crippled epistemology.” What we really need is conspiracy literacy. People need to be taught how to evaluate evidence. There’s a hierarchy of evidence. For example, most people should believe sworn testimony over unsworn testimony, for example, if there’s a very real chance the person not only could but would be prosecuted for perjury. And to demonstrate why that caveat is needed, since there was no chance Richard Helms was going to be prosecuted for perjury when he lied about the CIA’s role in overthrowing Allende in Chile, he lied in his testimony. And while he was initially charged, it was dismissed, despite his outright admission of lying – calling it a “badge of honor.” Is it any wonder people imagine hidden conspiracies when they see this kind of behavior flaunted openly, instead of punished? What we really don’t need is what you suggested: “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. Been there, done that. It was called COINTELPRO when the FBI did it and Operation Chaos when the CIA did it. And neither worked. Which leads to my final question:

Why would you suggest the conspiratorial infiltration of groups by government operatives as a means to combat conspiracy theory? Can you appreciate the irony there?

I’m cc’ing this to many people, and will post this publicly. I will do the same with any response you provide. Thank you for your time. Lisa Pease Conspiracy Realist http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com

Martin Luther King talks economic justice at Stanford U

politicalassassinations — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:54:41 +0000

Linked is a panel discussion on Dr. King's speech on economic justice in Stanford University in 1967, as well as the speech itself. http://auroraforum.stanford.edu/event/martin-luther-king-and-economic-justice#related_event_information

Stone says US in denial over JFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:51 +0000

Stone says US in denial over JFK assassination

By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press

American film director Oliver Stone talks with students at an international school as part of a one-day visit to promote world peace in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Photo by: Sakchai Lalit

Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said Monday the United States remains in denial over the possibility that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F. Kennedy, calling it a "national fairy tale." Speaking to 300 high school students in the Thai capital, Bangkok, Stone said exploring alternative theories over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for those in the media or academia who "would be endangering their careers and their position." "To this day, many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story," Stone said. "They don't even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale." Stone was in Bangkok to talk about filmmaking and peace as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation. His 1991 film "JFK," which he acknowledged was his most controversial, ridicules the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald acted alone and suggests a massive conspiracy. Stone's film centered on a theory by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that a CIA-led mutiny killed the president and the plotters walked away unscathed. Garrison's theories went to court in 1967, but Clay Shaw, the alleged "evil genius" behind the assassination, was acquitted. Stone said Monday he thought it was "a good thing" to revisit the JFK assassination. But he came under fire from the historians and film reviewers who contended Stone had fudged facts, invented characters and elevated speculation to truth to support his burning belief that the killing was a high-level conspiracy. "It's an amazing story and I did it," Stone said. "I thought I would be respected for it, and I was lambasted in the establishment press. I was called a myth-maker, a propagandist. I didn't see it coming. I thought the Kennedy murder was safe." Stone is famous for several other movies, including the Vietnam War films "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Platoon," and "World Trade Center," about two policemen buried in the rubble of the twin towers after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Platoon" won four Oscars, including best picture and best director.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/entertainment/ap/movies/article_2cb70d5e-e2ff-59d6-aabd-b58bc78da51f.html

COPA NYC Malcolm X event- February 21st

politicalassassinations — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:03:26 +0000

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

The Threat of a Black Messiah

on the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X

February 21, 2010 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Judson Memorial Church

239 Thompson Street

(enter at 55 Washington Square South)

New York City, NY

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS306&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=judson+memorial+church+nyc&fb=1&gl=us&hq=judson+memorial+church&hnear=nyc&cid=0,0,648939024218963938&ei=mUd3S4-pCM2QtgeXuLnNCg&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAwQnwIwAA

The Coalition on Political Assassinations will host a panel with new speakers and revelations about the assassination of the rising “Black Messiah” so feared by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO program and by the CIA’s Operation Chaos, as well as by elements of military intelligence. The panel will also address the efforts of the FBI and other agencies to disrupt civil rights and Black power movements by attacking and killing their leadership. Our confirmed panel speakers include: MODERATOR: Dowoti Desir, director Durban Declaration and Action Programme - Watch Group ddpa-watchgroup.org Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, with a focus on COINTELPRO. Roland Sheppard an eyewitness to the assassination events. Dr. William Pepper, Esq., author of Orders to Kill and Act of State on the King assassination. Wynne Alexander, radio journalist at WDAS, Philadelphia, the scene of an earlier murder attempt. Kwame Somburu, member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and witness to the assassination. John Judge, director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations and independent researcher into political assassinations. Other speakers TBA Admission $10 or $7 for seniors, students and unemployed.

Coalition on Political Assassinations

WBAI-FM – Pacifica, NYC

Durban Declaration & Programme of Action Watch Group

Jim Douglass COPA Keynote, November 20 Dallas

politicalassassinations — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:36:01 +0000

Thanks to Bill Kelly for this transcript of Jim Douglass' incisive talk at our COPA regional meeting in Dallas last November. I want to speak tonight about the hope that comes from our confronting the truth of the assassination of President Kennedy. Concerned friends have asked me over the years if engaging in such a probe into darkness hasn’t made me profoundly depressed. On the contrary, it has given me great hope. As Martin Luther King said, the truth crushed to earth will rise again. Gandhi spoke hopefully of experiments in truth, because they take us into the most powerful force on earth and in existence – truth-force, satyagraha. That is how I think of this work, as an experiment in truth – one that will open us up, both personally and as a country, to a process of nonviolent transformation. I believe this experiment we are doing into the dark truth of Dallas (and of Washington) can be the most hopeful experience of our lives. But as you know, it does require patience and tenacity to confront the unspeakable. We, first of all, need to take the time to recognize the sources in our history for what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The doctrine of “plausible deniability” in an old government document provides us with a source of the assassination of President Kennedy. The document was issued in 1948, one year after the CIA was established, 15 years before JFK’s murder. That document, National Security Council directive 10/2, on June 18, 1948, “gave the highest sanction of the [U.S.] government to a broad range of covert operations” – propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, subversion of all kinds – that were seen as necessary to “win” the Cold War against the Communists. The government’s condition for those covert activities by U.S. agencies, coordinated by the CIA, was that they be “so planned and executed that…if uncovered the US government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” In the 1950’s, under the leadership of CIA Director Allen Dulles, the doctrine of “plausible deniability” became the CIA’s green light to assassinate national leaders, conduct secret military operations, and overthrow governments that our government thought were on the wrong side in the Cold War. “Plausible deniability” meant our intelligence agencies, acting as paramilitary groups, had to lie and cover their tracks so effectively that there would be no trace of U.S. government responsibility for criminal activities on an ever-widening scale. The man who proposed this secret, subversive process in 1948, diplomat George Kennan, said later, in light of its consequences, that it was “the greatest mistake I ever made.” President Harry Truman, under whom the CIA was created, and during whose presidency the plausible deniability doctrine was authorized, had deep regrets. He said in a statement on December 22, 1963: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. “We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.” Truman later remarked: “The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the president. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.” President Truman’s sharp warning about the CIA, and the fact that warning was published one month to the day after JFK’s assassination, should have given this country pause. However, his statement appeared only in an early edition of The Washington Post, then vanished without comment from public view. What George Kennan and Harry Truman realized much too late was that, in the name of national security, they had unwittingly allowed an alien force to invade a democracy. As a result, we now had to deal with a government agency authorized to carry out a broad range of criminal activities on an international scale, theoretically accountable to the president but with no genuine accountability to anyone. Plausible deniability became a rationale for the CIA’s interpretation of what the executive branch’s wishes might be. But for the Agency’s crimes to remain plausibly deniable, the less said the better – to the point where CIA leaders’ creative imaginations simply took over. It was all for the sake of “winning” the Cold War by any means necessary and without implicating the more visible heads of the government. One assumption behind Kennan’s proposal unleashing the CIA for its war against Communism was that the Agency’s criminal power could be confined to covert action outside the borders of the United States, with immunity from its lethal power granted to U.S. citizens. That assumption proved to be wrong. During the Cold War, the hidden growth of the CIA’s autonomous power corresponded to the public growth of what was called a fortress state. What had been a struggling post-war democracy in our country was replaced by the institutions of a national security state. President Truman had laid the foundations for that silent takeover by his momentous decision to end the Second World War by a demonstration of nuclear weapons on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to stop a Soviet advance to Japan. Truman’s further, post-war decision for U.S. nuclear dominance in the world rather than allowing for international control of nuclear weapons was his second disastrous mistake, in terms of initiating the nuclear arms race in the world and subverting democracy in the U.S.A. A democracy within a national security state cannot survive. The president’s decision to base our security on nuclear weapons created the contradiction of a democracy ruled by the dictates of the Pentagon. A democratic national security state is a contradiction in terms. The insecure basis of our security then became weapons that could destroy the planet. To protect the security of that illusory means of security, which was absolute destructive power, we now needed a ruling elite of national security managers with an authority above that of our elected representatives. So from that point on, our military-industrial managers made the real decisions of state. President Truman simply ratified their decisions and entrenched their power, as he did with the establishment of the CIA, and as his National Security Council did with its endorsement of plausible deniability. His successor, President Eisenhower, also failed to challenge in his presidency what he warned against at its end -- the military-industrial complex. He left the critical task of resisting that anti-democratic power in the hands of the next president, John Kennedy. When President Kennedy then stood up to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the military-industrial complex, he was treated as a traitor. His attempt to save the planet from the weapons of his own state was regarded as treason. The doctrine of plausible deniability allowed for the assassination of a president seen as a national security risk himself. The CIA’s “plausible deniability” for crimes of state, as exemplified by JFK’s murder, corresponds in our politics to what the Trappist monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton called “the Unspeakable.” Merton wrote about the unspeakable in the 1960’s, when an elusive, systemic evil was running rampant through this country and the world. The Vietnam War, the escalating nuclear arms race, and the interlocking murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were all signs of the unspeakable. For Merton, the unspeakable was ultimately a void, an emptiness of any meaning, an abyss of lies and deception. He wrote the following description of the unspeakable shortly after the publication of The Warren Report, which he could have been describing: “[The Unspeakable] is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.” The void of the unspeakable is the dark abyss, the midnight reality of plausible deniability, that we face when we peer into our national security state’s murder of President Kennedy. And that is precisely where hope begins. Why President Kennedy was murdered can be, I believe, a profound source of hope to us all, when we truly understand his story. Now how can that possibly be? The why of his murder as a source of hope? Let’s begin with the way Kennedy himself looked at the question. One summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, President Kennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-selling novel that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK said he would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coup in the U.S. These words were spoken by him after the Bay of Pigs and before the Cuban Missile Crisis: “It’s possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, ‘Is he too young and inexperienced?’ The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment.” Pausing a moment, he went on, “Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen.” Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concluded with an old Navy phrase, “But it won’t happen on my watch.” Let’s remember that JFK gave himself three strikes before he would be out by a coup, although he bravely said it wouldn’t happen on his watch. As we know, and as he knew, the young president John Kennedy did have a Bay of Pigs. The president bitterly disappointed the CIA, the military, and the CIA-trained Cuban exile brigade by deciding to accept defeat at the Bay of Pigs rather than escalate the battle. Kennedy realized after the fact that he had been drawn into a CIA scenario whose authors assumed he would be forced by circumstances to drop his advance restrictions against the use of U.S. combat forces. He had been lied to in such a way that, in order to “win” at the Bay of Pigs, he would be forced to send in U.S. troops. But JFK surprised the CIA and the military by choosing instead to accept a loss. “They couldn’t believe,” he said, “that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.” We know how JFK reacted to the CIA’s setting him up. He was furious. When the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, he said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He ordered an investigation into the whole affair, under the very watchful eyes of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Richard Bissell, Jr., and Deputy Director General Charles Cabell. That was a huge decision – firing the top of the CIA’s hierarchy, including the legendary leader who had come to personify the agency, Allen Dulles. The president then took steps “to cut the CIA budget in 1962 and again in 1963, aiming at a 20 per cent reduction by 1966.” John Kennedy was cutting back the CIA’s power in very concrete ways, step by step. We know how the CIA and the Cuban exile community regarded Kennedy in turn because of his refusal to escalate the battle at the Bay of Pigs. They hated him for it. They did not forget what they thought was unforgivable. In terms of JFK’s own analysis of the threat of an overthrow of his presidency, he saw the Bay of Pigs as the first strike against him. It was the first big stand he took against his national security elite, and therefore the first cause of a possible coup d’etat. However, in terms of our constitution, our genuine security, and world peace, the position Kennedy took in facing down the CIA and the military at the Bay of Pigs, rather than surrendering to their will, was in itself a source of hope. No previous post-war president had shown such courage. Truman and Eisenhower had, in effect, turned over the power of their office to their national security managers. Kennedy was instead acting like he really was the president of this country – by saying a strong no to the security elite on a critical issue. If we the people had truly understood what he was doing then on our behalf, we would have thought the president’s stand a deeply hopeful one. In terms of his Seven Days in May analysis of a coming coup, John Kennedy did have a second “Bay of Pigs.” The president alienated the CIA and the military a second time by his decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK had to confront the unspeakable in the Missile Crisis in the form of total nuclear war. At the height of that terrifying conflict, he felt the situation spiraling out of control, especially because of the actions of his generals. For example, with both sides on hair-trigger alert, the U.S. Air Force test-fired missiles from California across the Pacific, deliberately trying to provoke the Soviets in a way that could justify our superior U.S. forces blanketing the USSR with an all-out nuclear attack. As we know from Kennedy’s secretly taped meeting with his Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 19, 1962, the Chiefs were pushing him relentlessly to launch a pre-emptive strike on Cuba, and ultimately the Soviet Union. In this encounter the Chiefs’ disdain for their young commander-in-chief is summed up by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay when he says: LeMay: “This [blockade and political action] is almost as bad as the appeasement [of Hitler] at Munich…I think that a blockade, and political talk, would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too. “In other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.” President Kennedy responds: “What did you say?” LeMay: “I say, you’re in a pretty bad fix.” President Kennedy: [laughing] “You’re in with me, personally.” As the meeting draws to a close, Kennedy rejects totally the Joint Chiefs’ arguments for a quick, massive attack on Cuba. The president then leaves the room but the tape keeps on recording. Two or three of the generals remain, and one says to LeMay, “You pulled the rug right out from under him.” LeMay: “Jesus Christ. What the hell do you mean?” Other General: “…He’s finally getting around to the word ‘escalation.’ If somebody could keep ‘em from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal, that’s our problem…” The White House tapes show Kennedy questioning and resisting the mounting pressure to bomb Cuba coming from both the Joint Chiefs and the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. At the same time, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, the two men most responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis, seemed locked in a hopeless ideological conflict. The U.S. and Soviet leaders had been following Cold War policies that now seemed to be moving inexorably toward a war of extermination. Yet, as we have since learned, Kennedy and Khrushchev had been engaged in a secret correspondence for over a year that gave signs of hope. Even as they moved publicly step by step toward a Cold War climax that would almost take the world over the edge with them, they were at the same time smuggling confidential letters back and forth that recognized each other’s humanity and hoped for a solution. They were public enemies who, in the midst of deepening turmoil, were secretly learning something approaching trust in each other. ‘ On what seemed the darkest day in the crisis, when a Soviet missile had shot down a U2 spy plane over Cuba, intensifying the already overwhelming pressures on Kennedy to bomb Cuba, the president sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, secretly to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. RFK told Dobrynin, as Dobrynin reported to Khrushchev, that the president “didn’t know how to resolve the situation. The military is putting great pressure on him…Even if he doesn’t want or desire a war, something irreversible could occur against his will. That is why the President is asking for help to solve this problem.” In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalled a further, chilling sentence from Robert Kennedy’s appeal to Dobrynin: “If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.” Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita’s son, has described his father’s thoughts when he read Dobrynin’s wired report relaying John Kennedy’s plea: “The president was calling for help: that was how father interpreted Robert Kennedy’s talk with our ambassador.” At a moment when the world was falling into darkness, Kennedy did what from his generals’ standpoint was intolerable and unforgivable. JFK not only rejected his generals’ pressures for war. Even worse, the president then reached out to their enemy, asking for help. That was treason. When Nikita Khrushchev had received Kennedy’s plea for help in Moscow, he turned to his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko and said, “We have to let Kennedy know that we want to help him.” Khrushchev stunned himself by what he had just said: Did he really want to help his enemy, Kennedy? Yes, he did. He repeated the word to his foreign minister: “Yes, help. We now have a common cause, to save the world from those pushing us toward war.” How do we understand that moment? The two most heavily armed leaders in history, on the verge of total nuclear war, suddenly joined hands against those on both sides pressuring them to attack. Khrushchev ordered the immediate withdrawal of his missiles, in return for Kennedy’s public pledge never to invade Cuba and his secret promise to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey – as he would in fact do. The two Cold War enemies had turned, so that each now had more in common with his opponent than either had with his own generals. As a result of that turn toward peace, one leader would be assassinated thirteen months later. The other, left without his peacemaking partner, would be overthrown the following year. Yet because of their turn away from nuclear war, today we are still living and struggling for peace on this earth. Hope is alive. We still have a chance. What can we call that transforming moment when Kennedy asked his enemy for help and Khrushchev gave it? From a Buddhist standpoint, it was enlightenment of a cosmic kind. Others might call it a divine miracle. Readers of the Christian Gospels could say that Kennedy and Khrushchev were only doing what Jesus said: “Love your enemies.” That would be “love” as Gandhi understood it, love as the other side of truth, a respect and understanding of our opponents that goes far enough to integrate their truth into our own. In the last few months of Kennedy’s life, he and Khrushchev were walking that extra mile where each was beginning to see the other’s truth. Neither John Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev was a saint. Each was deeply complicit in policies that brought humankind to the brink of nuclear war. Yet, when they encountered the void, then by turning to each other for help, they turned humanity toward the hope of a peaceful planet. John Kennedy’s next “Bay of Pigs,” his next critical conflict with his national security state, was his American University Address. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins summed up the significance of this remarkable speech: “At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.” I believe it is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance of President Kennedy’s American University address. It was a decisive signal to both Nikita Khrushchev, on the one hand, and JFK’s national security advisers, on the other, that he was serious about making peace with the Communists. After he told the graduating class at American University that the subject of his speech was “the most important topic on earth: world peace,” he asked: “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek?” He answered, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” Kennedy’s rejection of “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war” was an act of resistance to the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex was totally dependent on “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” That Pax Americana policed by the Pentagon was considered the system’s indispensable, hugely profitable means of containing and defeating Communism. At his own risk Kennedy was rejecting the foundation of the Cold War system. In its place, as a foundation for peace, the president put a compassionate description of the suffering of the Russian people. They had been our allies during World War Two and had suffered mightily. Yet even their World War Two devastation would be small compared to the effects of a nuclear war on both their country and ours. In his speech, Kennedy turned around the question that was always asked when it came to prospects for peace – the question, “What about the Russians?” It was assumed the Russians would take advantage of any move we might make toward peace. Kennedy asked instead, “What about us?” He said, “Our attitude [toward peace] is as essential as theirs.” What about our attitude to the nuclear arms race? Within the overarching theology of our country, a theology of total good versus total evil, that was a heretical question, coming especially from the president of the United States. Kennedy said he wanted to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union in Moscow – in their capitol, not ours – as soon as possible. To clear the way for such a treaty, he said he was suspending U.S. atmospheric tests unilaterally. John Kennedy’s strategy of peace penetrated the Soviet government’s defenses far more effectively than any missile could have done. The Soviet press, which was accustomed to censoring U.S. government statements, published the entire speech all across the country. Soviet radio stations broadcast and rebroadcast the speech to the Soviet people. In response to Kennedy’s turn toward peace, the Soviet government even stopped jamming all Western broadcasts into their country. Nikita Khrushchev was deeply moved by the American University Address. He said Kennedy had given “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt.” JFK’s speech was received less favorably in his own country. The New York Times reported his government’s skepticism: “Generally there was not much optimism in official Washington that the President’s conciliation address at American University would produce agreement on a test ban treaty or anything else.” In contrast to the Soviet media that were electrified by the speech, the U.S. media ignored or downplayed it. For the first time, Americans had less opportunity to read and hear their president’s words than did the Russian people. A turn-around was occurring in the world on different levels. Whereas nuclear disarmament had suddenly become feasible, Kennedy’s position in his own government had become precarious. President Kennedy’s next critical conflict with his national security state, propelling him toward the coup d’etat he saw as possible, was the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that he signed with Nikita Khrushchev on July 25, 1963, six weeks after the American University Address. The president had done an end run around the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He negotiated the Test Ban Treaty without consulting them, because they opposed it. Kennedy was fiercely determined but not optimistic that the Test Ban Treaty be ratified by the defense-conscious Senate. In early August, he told his advisers that getting Senate ratification of the agreement would be “almost in the nature of a miracle.” He said if a Senate vote were held right then it would fall far short of the necessary two-thirds. Kennedy initiated a whirlwind public education campaign on the treaty, coordinated by Saturday Review editor Normal Cousins, who directed a committee of activists. By the end of August, the tide of congressional mail had gone from fifteen to one against a test ban to three to two against. In September public opinion polls showed a turnaround. 80 percent of the American people were now in favor of the Test Ban Treaty. On September 24, 1963, the Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 80 to 19 – 14 more than the required two-thirds. No other single accomplishment in the White House gave Kennedy greater satisfaction. On September 20, Kennedy spoke to the United Nations. He suggested that its members see the Test Ban Treaty as a beginning and engage together in an experiment in peace: “Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposed, and was willing to sign, a Limited Test Ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: ‘Give me a place where I can stand – and I shall move the world.’ “My fellow inhabitant of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.” When he said these words, John Kennedy was secretly engaging in another risky experiment in peace. That same day at the United Nations, Kennedy told UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson that his assistant William Attwood should go ahead “to make discreet contact” with Cuba’s UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga. Was Fidel Castro interested in a dialogue with John Kennedy? A strongly affirmative answer would come back from Castro, who had been repeatedly urged by Khrushchev to begin trusting Kennedy. Kennedy and Castro actually began that dialogue on normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations, through the mediation of French journalist Jean Daniel who personally visited both men in the month leading up to the assassination. Daniel was actually eating lunch with Castro in his home on November 22, conveying Kennedy’s hopeful words, when the Cuban premier was phoned with the news of Kennedy’s death. Castro’s somber comment to Daniel was: “Everything is changed. Everything is going to change.” On October 11, 1963, President Kennedy issued a top-secret order to begin withdrawing the U.S. military from Vietnam. In National Security Action memorandum 263, he ordered that 1,000 U.S. military personnel be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of 1963, and that the bulk of U.S. personnel be taken out by the end of 1965. Kennedy decided on his withdrawal policy, against the arguments of most of his advisers, at a contentious October 2 National Security Council meeting. When Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was leaving the meeting to announce the withdrawal to the White House reporters, “the President called to him, ‘And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too.’” In fact, it would not mean that at all. After JFK’s assassination, his withdrawal policy was quietly voided. In light of the future consequences of Dallas, it was not only John Kennedy who was murdered on November 22, 1963, but 58,000 other Americans and over three million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians. In his reflections on Seven Days in May, John Kennedy had given himself three Bay-of-Pigs-type conflicts with his national security state before a possible coup. What about six? (1) The Bay of Pigs. (2) The Cuban Missile Crisis. (3) The American University Address. (4) The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (5) The beginning of a back-channel dialogue with Fidel Castro. (6) JFK’s order to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam. This, however, is a short list of the increasing conflicts between Kennedy and his national security state. We can add to the list a seventh Bay of Pigs – the steel crisis, in which he profoundly alienated the military industrial complex before the Cuban Missile Crisis even took place. The steel crisis was a showdown the president had with U.S. Steel and seven other steel companies over their price-fixing violations of an agreement he had negotiated between U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers’ union. In a head-on confrontation with the ruling elite of Big Steel, JFK ordered the Defense Department to switch huge military contracts away from the major steel companies to the smaller, more loyal contractors that had not defied him. After the big steel companies bitterly backed down from their price raises, JFK and his brother, Robert, were denounced as symbols of “ruthless power” by the Wall Street power brokers at the center of the military industrial complex. By an editorial titled, “Steel: The Ides of April” (the month in which Kennedy faced down the steel executives), Henry Luce’s Fortune magazine called to readers’ minds the soothsayer’s warning in Shakespeare of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Fortune was warning Kennedy that his actions had confirmed the worst fears of corporate America about his presidency, and would have dire consequences. As interpreted by the most powerful people in the nation, the steel crisis was a logical prelude to Dallas. It was a seventh Bay of Pigs. An eighth Bay of Pigs was Kennedy’s diplomatic opening to the fiery third-world leadership of President Sukarno of Indonesia. Sukarno was “the most outspoken proponent of Third World neutralism in the Cold War.” He had actually coined the term “Third World.” The CIA wanted Sukarno dead. It wanted what it saw as his pro-communist “global orientation” obliterated. During Eisenhower’s presidency, the CIA repeatedly tried to kill and overthrow Sukarno but failed. JFK, however, chose to work with Sukarno, hoping to win him over as an ally, which he did. Sukarno came to love Kennedy. The U.S. president resolved what seemed a hopeless conflict between Indonesia and its former colonial master, the Netherlands, averting a war. To the CIA’s dismay, in 1961 Kennedy welcomed Sukarno to the White House. Most significantly, three days before his assassination, President Kennedy said he was willing to accept Sukarno’s invitation to visit Indonesia the following spring. His visit to Indonesia would have dramatized in a very visible way Kennedy’s support of Third World nationalism, a sea change in U.S. government policy. That decision to visit Sukarno was an eighth Bay of Pigs. Kennedy’s Indonesian policy was also killed in Dallas, with horrendous consequences. After Lyndon Johnson became president, the CIA finally succeeded in overthrowing Sukarno in a massive purge of suspected Communists that ended up killing 500,000 to one million Indonesians. Last Sunday I interviewed Sergei Khrushchev about an important late development in the relationship between his father and President Kennedy. In his interview, Mr. Khrushchev confirmed that his father had decided in November 1963 to accept President Kennedy’s repeated proposal that the U.S. and the Soviet Union fly to the moon together. In Kennedy’s September 20, 1963, speech to the United Nations, he had once again stated his hope for such a joint expedition to the moon. However, neither American nor Soviet military leaders, jealous of their rocket secrets, were ready to accept his initiative. Nikita Khrushchev, siding with his own rocket experts, felt that he was still forced to decline Kennedy’s proposal. JFK was looking beyond the myopia of the generals and scientists on both sides of the East-West struggle. He knew that merging their missile technologies in a peaceful project would also help defuse the Cold War. It was part of his day-by-day strategy of peace. Sergei Khrushchev said his father talked to him about a week before Kennedy’s death on the president’s idea for a joint lunar mission. Nikita Khrushchev had broken ranks with his rocket scientists. He now thought he and the Soviet Union should accept Kennedy’s invitation to go to the moon together, as a further step in peaceful cooperation. In Washington, Kennedy acted as if he already knew about Khrushchev’s hopeful change of heart on that critical issue. JFK was already telling NASA to begin work on a joint U.S.-Soviet lunar mission. On November 12, 1963, JFK issued his National Security Action Memorandum 271, ordering NASA to implement his “September 20 proposal for broader cooperation between the United States and the USSR in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programs.” That further visionary step to end the Cold War also died with President Kennedy. The U.S. went to the moon alone. U.S. and Soviet rockets continued to be pointed at their opposite countries rather than being joined in a project for a more hopeful future. Sergei Khrushchev said, “I think if Kennedy had lived, we would be living in a completely different world.” In the final weeks of his presidency, President Kennedy took one more risky step toward peace. It can be seen in relation to a meeting he had the year before with six Quakers who visited him in his office. One thousand members of the Society of Friends had been vigiling for peace and world order outside the White House. President Kennedy agreed to meet with six of their leaders. I have interviewed all three survivors of that meeting with the president 47 years ago. They remain uniformly amazed at the open way in which President Kennedy listened and responded to their radical Quaker critique of his foreign policy. Among their challenges to him was a recommendation that the United States offer its surplus food to the People’s Republic of China. China was considered an enemy nation. Yet it was also one whose people were beset by a famine. Kennedy said to the Quakers, “Do you mean you would feed your enemy when he has his hands on your throat?” The Quakers said they meant exactly that. They reminded him it was what Jesus had said should be done. Kennedy said he knew that, and knew that it was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t overcome the China lobby in Washington to accomplish it. Nevertheless, a year and a half later in the fall of 1963, against overwhelming opposition, Kennedy decided to sell wheat to the Russians, who had a severe grain shortage. His outraged critics said in effect to him what he had said to the Quakers: Would you feed an enemy who has his hands on your throat? Vice President Lyndon Johnson said he thought Kennedy’s decision to sell wheat to Russia would turn out to be the worst political mistake he ever made. Today JFK’s controversial decision “to feed the enemy” has been forgotten. In 1963, the wheat sale was seen as a threat to our security – feeding the enemy to kill us. Yet JFK went ahead with it, as one more initiative for peace. The violent reaction to his decision was represented on Friday morning, November 22, 1963, by a threatening, full-page advertisement addressed to him in the Dallas Morning News. The ad was bordered in black, like a funeral notice. Among the charges of disloyalty to the nation that the ad made against the president was the question: “Why have you approved the sale of wheat and corn to our enemies when you know the Communist soldiers ‘travel on their stomach’ just as ours do?” JFK read the ad before the flight from Fort Worth to Dallas, pointed it out to Jacqueline Kennedy, and talked about the possibility of his being assassinated that day. “But, Jackie,” he said, “if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?” President Kennedy’s courageous turn from war to a strategy of peace provided many more than three Bay-of-Pigs-type causes for his assassination. Because he turned toward peace with our enemies, the Communists, he was continually at odds with his own national security state. Peacemaking was at the top of his agenda as president. That was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military industrial complex wanted in the White House. Given the Cold War dogmas that gripped those dominant powers, and given Kennedy’s turn toward peace, his assassination followed as a matter of course. That is how he seemed to regard the situation – that it would soon lead to his own death. JFK was not afraid of death. As a biographer observed, “Kennedy talked a great deal about death, and about the assassination of Lincoln.” His conscious model for struggling truthfully through conflict, and being ready to die as a consequence, was Abraham Lincoln. On the day when Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the missile crisis, JFK told his brother, Robert, referring to the assassination of Lincoln, “This is the night I should go to the theater.” Robert replied, “If you go, I want to go with you.” Kennedy prepared himself for the same end Lincoln met during his night at the theater. Late at night on the June 5, 1961, plane flight back to Washington from his Vienna meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, a weary President Kennedy wrote down on a slip of paper, as he was about to fall asleep, a favorite saying of his from Abraham Lincoln – really a prayer. Presidential secretary Evelyn Lincoln discovered the slip of paper on the floor. On it she read the words: “I know there is a God – and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.” Kennedy loved that prayer. He cited it repeatedly. More important, he made the prayer his own. In his conflicts with Khrushchev, then more profoundly with the CIA and the military, he had seen a storm coming. If God had a place for him, he believed that he was ready. For at least a decade, JFK’s favorite poem had been Rendezvous, a celebration of death. Rendezvous was by Alan Seeger, an American poet killed in World War One. The poem was Seeger’s affirmation of his own anticipated death. The refrain of Rendezvous, “I have a rendezvous with Death,” articulated John Kennedy’s deep sense of his own mortality. Kennedy had experienced a continuous rendezvous with death in anticipation of his actual death: from the deaths of his PT boat crew members, from drifting alone in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean, from the early deaths of his brother Joe and sister Kathleen, and from the recurring near-death experiences of his almost constant illnesses. He recited Rendezvous to his wife, Jacqueline, in 1953 on their first night home in Hyannis after their honeymoon. She memorized the poem, and recited it back to him over the years. In the fall of 1963, Jackie taught the words of the poem to their five-year-old daughter, Caroline. I have thought many times about what then took place in the White House Rose Garden one beautiful fall day. On the morning of October 5, 1963, President Kennedy met with his National Security Council in the Rose Garden. Caroline suddenly appeared at her father’s side. She said she wanted to tell him something. He tried to divert her attention while the meeting continued. Caroline persisted. The president smiled and turned his full attention to his daughter. He told her to go ahead. While the members of the National Security Council sat and watched, Caroline looked into her father’s eyes and said: I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air – I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath – It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows ‘twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear…. But I’ve a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. After Caroline said the poem’s final word, “rendezvous,” Kennedy’s national security advisers sat in stunned silence. One of them said later the bond between father and daughter was so deep “it was as if there was ‘an inner music’ he was trying to teach her.” JFK had heard his own acceptance of death from the lips of his daughter. While surrounded by a National Security Council that opposed his breakthrough to peace, the president once again deepened his pledge not to fail that rendezvous. If God had a place for him, he believed that he was ready. So how can the why of his murder give us hope? Where do we find hope when a peacemaking president is assassinated by his own national security state? The why of the event that brings us together tonight encircles the earth. Because John Kennedy chose peace on earth at the height of the Cold War, he was executed. But because he turned toward peace, in spite of the consequences to himself, humanity is still alive and struggling. That is hopeful, especially if we understand what he went through and what he has given to us as his vision. At a certain point in his presidency, John Kennedy turned a corner and didn’t look back. I believe that decisive turn toward his final purpose in life, resulting in his death, happened in the darkness of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although Kennedy was already in conflict with his national security managers, the missile crisis was the breaking point. At that most critical moment for us all, he turned from any remaining control his security managers had over him toward a deeper ethic, a deeper vision in which the fate of the earth became his priority. Without losing sight of our own best hopes in this country, he began to home in, with his new partner, Nikita Khrushchev, on the hope of peace for everyone on this earth – Russians, Americans, Cubans, Vietnamese, Indonesians, everyone – no exceptions. He made that commitment to life at the cost of his own. What a transforming story that is. And what a propaganda campaign has been waged to keep us Americans from understanding that story, from telling it, and from re-telling it to our children and grandchildren. Because that’s a story whose telling can transform a nation. But when a nation is under the continuing domination of an idol, namely war, it is a story that will be covered up. When the story can liberate us from our idolatry of war, then the worshippers of the idol are going to do everything they can to keep the story from being told. From the standpoint of a belief that war is the ultimate power, that’s too dangerous a story. It’s a subversive story. It shows a different kind of security than always being ready to go to war. It’s unbelievable – or we’re supposed to think it is -- that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons. It’s unspeakable. For the sake of a nation that must always be preparing for war, that story must not be told. If it were, we might learn that peace is possible without making war. We might even learn there is a force more powerful than war. How unthinkable! But how necessary if life on earth is to continue. That is why it is so hopeful for us to confront the unspeakable and to tell the transforming story of a man of courage, President John F. Kennedy. It is a story ultimately not of death but of life – all our lives. In the end, it is not so much a story of one man as it is a story of peacemaking when the chips are down. That story is our story, a story of hope. I believe it is a providential fact that the anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination always falls around Thanksgiving, and periodically on that very day. This year the anniversary of his death, two days from now, will begin Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving is a beautiful time of year, with autumn leaves falling to create new life. Creation is alive, as the season turns. The earth is alive. It is not a radioactive wasteland. We can give special thanks for that. The fact that we are still living – that the human family is still alive with a fighting chance for survival, and for much more than that – is reason for gratitude to a peacemaking president, and to the unlikely alliance he forged with his enemy. So let us give thanks this Thanksgiving for John F. Kennedy, and for his partner in peacemaking, Nikita Khrushchev. Their story is our story, a story of the courage to turn toward the truth. Remember what Gandhi said that turned theology on its head. He said truth is God. That is the truth: Truth is God. We can discover the truth and live it out. There is nothing more powerful than the truth. The truth will set us free. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/jfk-at-american-university.html http://zh-tw.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=193389907209&comments&ref=mf

LAPD apologizes to Kennedy family for items in museum exhibit

politicalassassinations — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:38:20 +0000

Every botched homicide case and police action the LAPD participated in, celebrating their brutality and their cover-ups is mentioned here. Have they no shame? If RFK's shirt and jacket had been shown they would have revealed shots from behind into the cloth, inconsistent with Sirhan's position. Maybe they can't even remember what to cover up. Marilyn Monroe was injected with something lethal according to Dr. Noguchi, the same coroner who did a real autopsy on RFK and undermined the LAPD's case. The SLA shootout involved 4,000 rounds, many of them into neighbor's houses. They almost raided the wrong house moments before. Vincent Bugliosi's prosecution of Charlie Manson for "hard core charisma without a license" (Paul Krassner) avoided the deeper questions of who was protecting him and why, and contradicted his prosecution of the real killer, Tex Watkins in Texas for acting alone. John Judge LAPD apologizes to Kennedy family for items in museum exhibit

By Andrew Blankstein / L.A. Times | Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

Photo by AP /Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Department has apologized to the family of the late Robert F. Kennedy and removed items from a homicide exhibit in Las Vegas that included the dress shirt worn by the senator when he was assassinated in 1968, officials said Tuesday night. The shirt was among a number of items included in the highly publicized display at the 2010 California Homicide Investigators Association Conference, which is being hosted by the LAPD. The crime-scene evidence can be seen by the general public for the next two days. The multimedia exhibit at the Palms Casino Resort features photographs, videos and evidence from the vaults of the LAPD and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The department bills the 8,000-square-foot display as a first-ever look at homicide evidence from some of the city’s most notorious cases. "Behind the-Scenes: The LAPD Homicide Experience" was publicized by the department as including materials that have never been seen in or outside a courtroom. The showcased items were gleaned from the last 100 years. They include the 1997 Bank of America shootout in North Hollywood, the Black Dahlia slaying, the investigation of actress Marilyn Monroe’s death, the O.J. Simpson case, the SLA shootout, the "Onion Field" killing and the bloody Manson family murders. Also on display was evidence connected to the assassination of Sen. Kennedy, who was shot to death by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. Kennedy was mortally wounded in a kitchen pantry moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Members of the Kennedy family and others were offended that items — including a shirt, tie and jacket — worn by the late senator would be displayed, LAPD officials said. Those items, which were on display to the media most of Tuesday, were removed, and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck apologized to the family. Reached by phone Tuesday night, Beck said the Kennedy items were removed immediately after he was contacted by a family member. "The last thing we want to do is traumatize a victim’s family and I am very sensitive to that," Beck said. "But at the same time, we want to preserve the history of the city of Los Angeles and improve the quality and understanding about our homicide investigations." He said there were "significant lessons" that law enforcement experts around the world could learn from examining not only the high-profile crimes themselves but the resulting media attention and notoriety connected to them. ___ Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/ Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1236888

How Tom Hanks Became America's Historian in Chief

politicalassassinations — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:18:02 +0000

This article appeared in Time this week, my commentary follows - John Judge How Tom Hanks Became America's Historian in Chief By Douglas Brinkley Time Magazine Saturday, Mar. 06, 2010 To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation. For Hanks — a classic baby boomer, born in 1956 — World War II was just a string of long-ago muzzle flashes in black-and-white. Yet he did have a more direct connection to the global cataclysm. His father had been a U.S. Naval mechanic (second class) in World War II. But Amos Hanks wasn't the type to tell his son tales of bravery and sacrifice. "Growing up, I always knew Dad was somewhere in the Pacific fixing things," Hanks says. "He had nothing nice to say about the Navy. He hated the Navy. He hated everybody in the Navy. He had no glorious stories about it." (See pictures of Tom Hanks' career in film.) Occasionally, Hanks enjoyed a war thriller like Battle of the Bulge, but he much preferred the Three Stooges, James Bond and any film with Sophia Loren. Like a lot of Americans, he found memorizing historical facts boring. Because his family was directly related to Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of the 16th U.S. President, he routinely recycled the same short paper he had written about her for easy classroom grades. "My idea of American history was just a course you were forced to take," Hanks says, laughing. (See the top 10 Tom Hanks hairstyles.) Yet over the past two decades — from his movies Saving Private Ryan and Charlie Wilson's War to the HBO miniseries he has produced, From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific, which begins March 14 at 9 p.m. — Hanks has become American history's highest-profile professor, bringing a nuanced view of the past into the homes and lives of countless millions. (HBO is owned by TIME's parent company, Time Warner.) His view of American history is a mixture of idealism and realism, both of which have characterized all the work he has produced; he's a Kennedy liberal with old-time values, the kind that embraces Main Street on the Fourth of July. The success of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers turned him into a Tom Brokaw–like spokesperson for the Greatest Generation. When he visits Johnson Space Center in Houston or Fort Bragg in North Carolina, he is feted as if Neil Armstrong had entered the room. He's the visual David McCullough of his generation, framing the heroic tales of explorers, astronauts and soldiers for a wide audience. (McCullough's John Adams has sold about 3 million copies; Hanks' John Adams brought in 5.5 million viewers per episode.) And in the history world, his branding on a nonfiction title carries something like the power of Oprah. (Comment on this story.) But the context for Hanks' history lessons has changed. Band of Brothers, HBO's best-selling DVD to date, began airing two days before 9/11; The Pacific, his new 10-hour epic about the Pacific theater in World War II, plays out against a very different backdrop, when the country is weary of war and American exceptionalism is a much tougher sell. World War II in the European theater was a case of massive armies arrayed against an unambiguous evil. The Pacific war was mainly fought by isolated groups of men and was overlaid by a sense that our foes were fundamentally different from us. In that sense, the war in the Pacific bears a closer relation to the complex war on terrorism the U.S. is waging now, making the new series a trickier prospect but one with potential for more depth and resonance. "Certainly, we wanted to honor U.S. bravery in The Pacific," Hanks says. "But we also wanted to have people say, 'We didn't know our troops did that to Japanese people.' " He wants Americans to understand the glories — and the iniquities — of American history. How did this shrug-prone comedic actor transform himself into our most ambitious champion of U.S. history? And how is his vision of history shaping the way the past informs and, yes, entertains us? Island-Hopping in the Pacific At school, all Hanks remembers learning about World War II was that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, and that the American revenge came on August 6, 1945, when Army pilot Paul Tibbets dropped an atomic bomb from the Enola Gay on Hiroshima. For Hanks, the U.S. armed forces' island-hopping — Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, among other bloody military engagements — was just a blur on a map that seemed impossibly exotic and faraway. "Strange to think that I've become the World War II guy," Hanks laughs. "All my friends had dads who were on the U.S.S. Nimitz or U.S.S. Enterprise or U.S.S. Coral Sea. They lived in naval housing, and everybody who was like a primary caregiver to me talked about the war. But when it came to understanding the history, I nodded off." Hanks first comprehended just how immense his own deficit in Pacific-theater history was while making Saving Private Ryan. Around that time, novelist Nora Ephron (who wrote the screenplay for Sleepless in Seattle, which starred Hanks) sent him the two-volume, 1,882-page Library of America Reporting World War II: American Journalism (1938 to 1946) as a gift. Hanks grew intensely interested in all things related to the Pacific campaign — not necessarily the big names like Tojo or Ernest King, but the 3rd Marine Division, which was ambushed by snipers at Guam, or the intricacies of Operation Detachment at Iwo Jima. Print journalists like Robert Sherrod (on Tawara) and Ted Nakashima (on U.S.-Japanese concentration camps) were eye-openers. "I went on a reading rampage," he recalls. "There is a fabulous book called The Fall of Japan. I got heavily into William Manchester and John Hersey." (See pictures of World War II re-enactors.) What Hanks absorbed from those caffeinated reading bouts informs The Pacific, which starts with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and moves straight into the murderous Guadalcanal campaign (August 1942 to February 1943), depicting the harrowing details right down to the dysentery and malaria. Cameras zoom down vulture-like on maps of flyspeck islands; the contrivance provides a nautical atlas for globe-challenged viewers. The true-life stories of Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller and Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone are incorporated into the narrative's bloodstream. Eight of its 10 hours rain valor worthy of a Medal of Honor. (If the roughly two hours of romantic sequences of Marines falling head over heels in love seem hokey by comparison, chalk it up to the demands of serial entertainment.) Nearly every prop used in the miniseries is an exact replica. "Steven [Spielberg] and I wanted to provide people with an accurate visual sense of time and geography," Hanks says. In Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg had vividly captured ghostly, pockmarked European ruins in elegantly warped shades of brown, grey and beige. Those drab colors wouldn't do for a miniseries set in the blindingly blue Pacific Basin. Together, Spielberg and Hanks did tests at a Universal Studios back lot to conjure up a faded Hawaiian postcard look. Palm fronds, ripe coconuts and white clouds pop out from the TV screen in a tamped-down Day-Glo way. The cinematic effect is mesmerizing. (See the best movies of the decade.) Public education was an integral component of Hanks' vision. "We wanted to explain the arc of the Pacific war, the motivation within from the strategic perspective," he says. "So we start with the vast Pacific Ocean from Hawaii, and you just keep going farther and farther west. You get a dramatic sense of what it must have been like to be on one of those battleships. I used to wonder why in hell little Peleliu was in any way, shape or form so damn important. But then when you see how close Okinawa is, well, you immediately understand. Peleliu was a stepping-stone." Much of the miniseries is based on two evocative World War II memoirs, Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed and Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow, but the imaginative energy comes straight from novels like Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones' The Thin Red Line. The result is like Herman Wouk's The Winds of War (both the novel and the made-for-TV movie) on steroids. Hanks and fellow executive producers Spielberg and Gary Goetzman are wrestling with age-old — and current — questions about the barbarity of war: How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives Stateside? "It's even worse for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," Hanks says. "At least the Pacific-war soldiers coming back from World War II decompressed on ships for weeks. And then once the troops arrived portside, it was often a long train ride home to Peoria. Today these guys in Afghanistan fight in bloody hell and are flown back in 18 hours. How can they cope with that? How can they suddenly go from Tora Bora to Peyton Place?" Even the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II, suffered posttraumatic stress disorder after his return from the European theater. During one meltdown, a deranged Murphy held his wife hostage at gunpoint. For the past decade, Hanks has worked overtime to support the National World War II Museum in New Orleans — a pet project of the late historian Stephen Ambrose, on whose book Band of Brothers was based. On March 2, the museum, which will soon open a Pacific-theater wing, hosted a reception after a local screening of The Pacific, attended by the last wave of old-timers who consider V-J day a personal accomplishment. Wherever Hanks travels, veterans accost him with thank-yous. "It's pretty heady," Hanks says. "But now the Korean War guys have started coming up to me, saying, 'Hey, what about us?' I get good-natured guff from so many veterans saying things like, 'When you going to do something on Vietnam?' And the fact that I hadn't worked on a Pacific War project — forget about it! Those guys would say to me things like, 'If you ain't telling the story of Saipan, you ain't tellin' the story of World War II.'" (See pictures of Tom Hanks' roles.) History as Entertainment For an old Saturday Night Live–style comedian, there is a seriousness of purpose about Hanks as history maker. At 53, he has a repertoire that doesn't include anarchy; he's no longer the romantic-comedy clown. In fact, he exhibits a crabbed resentment toward historical amnesia — most notably his own. Echoing McCullough, who rails against American historical illiteracy, the self-deprecating goof in Hanks nevertheless makes light of his own campaign against historical ignorance. While gag lines are still his forte, his new rallying cry is a palm smacking the forehead: "Why didn't somebody tell me that!" He eventually taught himself. As a teenager, Hanks was a straight arrow wanting to earn a decent paycheck. He believed in the American Dream, and the Vietnam War made him uneasy. The closest Hanks got to protesting Vietnam, however, was privately rooting for the Smothers Brothers, whose show was eventually canceled by CBS because of their antiwar banter. Immune to Berkeley radicalism and too "unhip" — his word — for Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce, Hanks' comedic sensibility tilted more toward Bob Hope. Hanks was so square that he remembers rebuking a peer in his high school government class for saying in April 1974 that President Richard Nixon would be forced to resign. "I was historically smart enough to know that Presidents didn't just quit," Hanks says. "Not in America! That just doesn't happen!" (See the top 10 movies of 2009.) The horrors of Nixon's Vietnam War strategy hit Hanks while he was working as a bellman for the Oakland Hilton in the mid-'70s. He was often tasked with shuttling guests to and from the nearby airport. Back then he saw the charter planes that periodically arrived filled with frightened Vietnamese orphans escaping totalitarianism. Once Hanks' movie career took off with Big (1988), he desperately wanted to make a first-class Vietnam War film. But by then, a second wave of Vietnam movies was in full swing (Full Metal Jacket and Good Morning, Vietnam came out in 1987), and he couldn't see how to deal with the subject more skillfully than Francis Ford Coppola had in Apocalypse Now or Oliver Stone had in Platoon — or more thoroughly than in PBS's 11-hour 1983 documentary history. In 1994, however, Hanks brought to the screen the impact of Vietnam on his generation in the tragicomic Forrest Gump. While the role earned him an Academy Award, Gump hardly epitomized the brutal nature of Vietnam, about which reporter Michael Herr had written so devastatingly in Dispatches. (See the top 10 fiction books of 2009.) But the movie did give Hanks his eureka moment. During filming on Parris Island, he toured the Marine Corps training facilities and was impressed by the rigorous discipline the young Marines followed and the way it drew them together as a group. "Astronauts, test pilots, Army Rangers all adhere to a kind of self-government that is infectious," he says. "They become a spiritual class — part family and part competitive — that's undeniable." These are the attributes Hanks admires — and envies. "The fact is, I have no inner discipline," he says, "and Americans rigorously training to perform public service is inspiring to me." Depicting their service became the focus of his productions — and if it tended to accompany the big victories in American history, so much the better for each story's appeal. After Apollo 13 came out in 1995, Hanks pitched From the Earth to the Moon to HBO as a hybrid of nonfiction and entertainment, and the network gave him a green light. A couple of years ago, comedian Conan O'Brien presented Hanks with the perfect spoof gift: a painting of Apollo astronauts landing in Normandy. What differentiates Hanks from the academic past masters is his conviction that the historical experience should be a very personal one. He harbors a pugnacious indignation against history as data gathering, preferring the work of popular historians like McCullough, Ambrose, Barbara Tuchman and Doris Kearns Goodwin. He wants viewers to identify with their ancestors, allowing them to ponder the prevalence of moral ambiguity, human willpower and plain dumb luck in shaping the past. And he wants to be transported back in time, with a Sousa band banging the drum loudly. As Hanks' star rose in the 1990s, he sought out new sources of what he calls "entertainable historical knowledge." Leon Uris' fact-anchored novels — Mila 18, Armageddon and Exodus — taught Hanks to feel history in a way no high school teacher ever did, but the entertainment level had to be hyperkinetic to hold his attention. It was the same with most academic histories. "The writing is often too dull to grab regular people by the lapel," he says. Ken Burns' miniseries The Civil War, which aired on PBS in the fall of 1990, gave him a sense of how he might bridge that gap. "I watched that with my son," Hanks recalls. "There was nothing but great music married with talking heads, pan and scan of old photographs and get to the creeks at sunset. But I wept at the end of almost every hour of that incredibly powerful entertainment. So I thought there might be some other ways that HBO could also make history interesting for people." (See the top 10 movie performances of 2009.) The way he found was to make it a mix of spectacle and drama, drawing on his own cultural influences. It was Jacques Cousteau who first lured a TV-obsessed teenage Hanks to take biology seriously. Cousteau's art was to have the curious viewer ask, How would I fare 20,000 leagues under the sea with a steel scuba tank on my back and a tiger shark circling my underwater cage? "Cousteau was unlike anything else that was on TV, and I was sad when the hour was up," Hanks recalls. "I was uninterested in science class. But boy, did I search the TV-guide listing to find out when Cousteau would be back on the air." His favorite book as a teen was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which he thought was far scarier than any Hitchcock psychodrama because it had actually happened to a particular family in Holcomb, Kans. "Capote's horror," Hanks says, "has stuck with me." Capote called his work a nonfiction novel — informed by reporting but drawing on the techniques of fiction for its dramatic power. It's a fair description of Hanks' productions, in which historical events and figures are drawn together along fictionalized story arcs, and characters have the psychological interiority of characters in novels. For an upcoming project, Hanks has obtained the rights to Vincent Bugliosi's controversial Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is eager to weigh in on America's quintessential murder mystery. (Bugliosi is best known for having put Charles Manson in prison for the Tate murders.) Hanks and Gary Goetzman will act as executive producers, and Hanks hopes the adaptation will air in 2013. He believes the public has been snookered into believing that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed. "We're going to do the American public a service," Hanks says. "A lot of conspiracy types are going to be upset. If we do it right, it'll be perhaps one of the most controversial things that has ever been on TV." (See the top 10 Tom Hanks hairstyles.) The Kennedy assassination is the fire-breathing dragon of U.S. history, and Hanks seems singularly hubristic about grabbing its tail. Once, when I interviewed Gerald Ford at his home office in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for a book, the ex-President pulled me aside, pointing to that week's incoming correspondence. Mail about his role in the Warren Commission was three or four feet high compared with a measly inch pertaining to his White House tenure. But Hanks is perfectly aware of the beehive he is about to kick over. He seems to relish the prospect. And he is pleased that The Pacific has fulfilled an obligation to our World War II vets. He doesn't see the series as simply eye-opening history. He hopes it offers Americans a chance to ponder the sacrifices of our current soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. "From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place," Hanks says. "How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" There's no such thing as a definitive history. But what was once a passing interest for Hanks has become an obsession. He's a man on a mission to make our back pages come alive, to keep overhauling the history we know and, in the process, get us to understand not just the past but the choices we make today. Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and a CBS News historian. His most recent book is The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1969606-4,00.html#ixzz0hoA0lBiI It's clear that Tom Hanks never liked studying history or doing the hard research it takes since he is convinced by the illogical and intellectually dishonest work of Vincent Bugliosi on the assassination of JFK. Unlike Oliver Stone, whose film JFK was based on exhaustive research into the hard forensic, ballistic and historical evidence of the assassination and the case for conspiracy made my New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison which has been supported and verified by the release of millions of pages of classified records on the Kennedy assassination due to the efforts of my organization, the Coalition on Political Assassination, Hanks plans to do an HBO series based on the specious and twisted conclusions of one book which he himself has doubtless never read (since it is over 1,500 pages long with the enclosed CD). Every line of Stone's script was footnoted to its historical source or public testimony in JFK: The Book of the Movie. Having read the entire Warren Commission Report and 26 volumes of evidence, thousands of records at the National Archives and hundreds of critical books myself, I know what most of the American public believe, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "patsy" he claimed to be, one with extensive ties to military intelligence (ONI) and the FBI, and there was a high-level conspiracy to kill President Kennedy for political reasons. Of course, Garrison's case and Stone's film were vilified and attacked in the mainstream media and press, just as Hank's upcoming distortion of the historical record on the JFK assassination will be praised by them. The establishment that relies on the perpetuation of this denial of the obvious has to make every effort to divert the population that have to live under its effects, and failing to get us to forget they must make a renewed effort annually to hope that a new generation can be convinced by their old canard, using a corporate controlled media conglomerate which is much happier to close a case they never properly investigated. If there was no conspiracy, then the press is off the hook as well for not exposing it. However, the facts then and the historical record unearthed since will not allow the official version of events to stand or be believed. Thanks to the efforts of historicans, medical and forensic experts, ballistics and acoustic science, and meticulous researchers over the ensuing 46 years we are closer to the real truth about the assassination, it's roots in the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us of, and the role of the national security state and intelligence community that grew to absolute power since the end of WWII. Hanks would do himself honor and truly inform the public on who killed Kennedy and why by making a series based on Jim Douglass's excellent new book, JFK and the Unpeakable, which marshalls the real evidence without distortion, than the sorry sophistry of Bugliosi. Instead, Hanks will fill the role of what the establishment needs, a dramatic actor willing to fill the role of "America's historian" since it's history has been reduced to propaganda and disinformation. Like some sad buffoon in the black-face Minstrel parodies of the past, Hanks serves us more falsehood in the name of "living history" which is really the death of democracy itself reduced to an entertainment show. Those of us who would rather face the truth, however unpleasant, will prevail without the fanfare this series will doubtless garner. John Judge, Coalition on Political Assassinations, Washington, DC

An Imperialist Comedy - Charlie Wilson's War

politicalassassinations — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:05:17 +0000

Another example of Tom Hanks' version of "history" by noted analyst Chalmers Johnson - John Judge

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, An Imperialist Comedy

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 4:41pm, January 6, 2008.

Open Steve Coll's aptly titled book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, at almost any page and you're likely to find something that makes a mockery of the film Charlie Wilson's War. There, on p. 90, for instance, is the larger-than-life CIA director of the era, William Casey, the "Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits," who "believed fervently that by spreading the Catholic Church's reach and power he could contain Communism's advance, or reverse it." And, if you couldn't have the Church do it, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then second best, Casey believed, were the Islamic warriors of jihad, the more extreme the better, with whom, in his religio-anticommunism, he believed himself to have much in common. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.) Casey was, in fact, an American jihadi, eager in the 1980s not just to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, but to push "the Afghan jihad into the Soviet Union itself." His CIA, while funding activities like translating the Koran into Uzbek (Uzbekistan being, then, an SSR of the Soviet Union), was also, through Pakistan's intelligence service, funneling a vast flow of advanced weaponry regularly to the most extreme (and, even then, anti-American) of Afghan jihadis. I could go on, starting perhaps with the president Casey served, Ronald Reagan, who declared the Afghan anti-Soviet fighters his CIA director was running, partly with Saudi money, to be "the moral equal of our founding fathers." None of this was exactly secret information, or even hard to find, at the time that the movie Charlie Wilson's War was being made -- which makes it a top candidate for the most politically bizarre, consciously dumb film of our era. Two well-known entertainment-industry liberals, director Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin (the man responsible for "The West Wing"), have tried to take possession of part of that great anti-Soviet Afghan jihad for well, whom? The Democratic Party? As hopeless an undertaking as this was, there was only one way to turn it and its horrific aftermath into a feel-good, celebratory liberal film. So they wrote all the Reaganauts out of the picture, which meant excising history from history. They created a movie in which neither Ronald Reagan, nor William Casey even exists. You could easily think that the Afghan operation had simply been run by Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson and a low-level CIA agent more or less on their own. Leaving out the crucial cast of characters was, in this case, comparable to, but far stranger than, what the propagandists of the former Soviet Union used to do in airbrushing discredited leaders out of official photos. Ronald who? Coll's book was published in 2004. Chalmers Johnson's Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire came out in 2000, 18 months before the attacks of 9/11. Its prescient analysis made it a prophetic text -- and propelled it onto bestseller lists after the 9/11 attacks (and "blowback," a CIA term of trade, into popular culture). Even though he wrote that book well before those towers came down, Johnson saw clearly that, while "American policies helped ensure that the Soviet Union would suffer the same kind of debilitating defeat in Afghanistan as the United States had in Vietnam in Afghanistan the United States also helped bring to power the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement." Even more important, he noted that the "mujahideen, who only a few years earlier the United States had armed with ground-to-air Stinger missiles, grew bitter over American acts and policies" -- with consequences that were, even then, becoming apparent and would soon enough culminate in a horrific blowback from a CIA-run operation that had been deemed a great success. Thank heavens, then, that Chalmers Johnson, whose magisterial book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy) will be appearing in paperback this month, puts a little history back into Charlie Wilson's War in his own inimitable manner. Tom

Imperialist Propaganda Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War By Chalmers JohnsonI have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives -- the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee -- from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.

I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives -- the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee -- from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents. Both men flagrantly abused their positions -- but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system -- retire and become a lobbyist -- whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service's first "honored colleague" award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan. In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency's least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: "The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition." One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson's activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current status as the most hated nation on Earth. On May 25, 2003, (the same month George W. Bush stood on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln under a White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner and proclaimed "major combat operations" at an end in Iraq), I published a review in the Los Angeles Times of the book that provides the data for the film Charlie Wilson's War. The original edition of the book carried the subtitle, "The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History -- the Arming of the Mujahideen." The 2007 paperbound edition was subtitled, "The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times." Neither the claim that the Afghan operations were covert nor that they changed history is precisely true. In my review of the book, I wrote,

"The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every 'secret' armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the rape of Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the 'secret war' in Laos, aid to the Greek Colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of President Allende in Chile, and Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra war against Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the Agency's activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States and devastating to the people being 'liberated.' The CIA continues to get away with this bungling primarily because its budget and operations have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to its Constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest."According to the author of Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan mujahideen ("freedom fighters"). The Agency flooded Afghanistan with an incredible array of extremely dangerous weapons and 'unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower [in this case, the USSR].' "The author of this glowing account, [the late] George Crile, was a veteran producer for the CBS television news show '60 Minutes' and an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues that the U.S.'s clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was 'the largest and most successful CIA operation in history,' 'the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time,' and that 'there was nothing so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire.' Crile's sole measure of success is killed Soviet soldiers (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period 1989 to 1991. That's the successful part. "However, he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

Where Did the "Freedom Fighters" Go? When I wrote those words I did not know (and could not have imagined) that the actor Tom Hanks had already purchased the rights to the book to make into a film in which he would star as Charlie Wilson, with Julia Roberts as his right-wing Texas girlfriend Joanne Herring, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos, the thuggish CIA operative who helped pull off this caper. What to make of the film (which I found rather boring and old-fashioned)? It makes the U.S. government look like it is populated by a bunch of whoring, drunken sleazebags, so in that sense it's accurate enough. But there are a number of things both the book and the film are suppressing. As I noted in 2003,

"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director [today Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all that grateful to the United States."

In the bound galleys of Crile's book, which his publisher sent to reviewers before publication, there was no mention of any qualifications to his portrait of Wilson as a hero and a patriot. Only in an "epilogue" added to the printed book did Crile quote Wilson as saying, "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame." That's it. Full stop. Director Mike Nichols, too, ends his movie with Wilson's final sentence emblazoned across the screen. And then the credits roll. Neither a reader of Crile, nor a viewer of the film based on his book would know that, in talking about the Afghan freedom fighters of the 1980s, we are also talking about the militants of al Qaeda and the Taliban of the 1990s and 2000s. Amid all the hoopla about Wilson's going out of channels to engineer secret appropriations of millions of dollars to the guerrillas, the reader or viewer would never suspect that, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, President George H.W. Bush promptly lost interest in the place and simply walked away, leaving it to descend into one of the most horrific civil wars of modern times. Among those supporting the Afghans (in addition to the U.S.) was the rich, pious Saudi Arabian economist and civil engineer, Osama bin Laden, whom we helped by building up his al Qaeda base at Khost. When bin Laden and his colleagues decided to get even with us for having been used, he had the support of much of the Islamic world. This disaster was brought about by Wilson's and the CIA's incompetence as well as their subversion of all the normal channels of political oversight and democratic accountability within the U.S. government. Charlie Wilson's war thus turned out to have been just another bloody skirmish in the expansion and consolidation of the American empire -- and an imperial presidency. The victors were the military-industrial complex and our massive standing armies. The billion dollars' worth of weapons Wilson secretly supplied to the guerrillas ended up being turned on ourselves. An Imperialist Comedy Which brings us back to the movie and its reception here. (It has been banned in Afghanistan.) One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of light to "primitives" and "savages" (largely so identified because of their resistance to being "liberated" by us), the carriers of science and modernity to backward peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of the "underdeveloped world." Such attitudes are normally accompanied by a racist ideology that proclaims the intrinsic superiority and right to rule of "white" Caucasians. Innumerable European colonialists saw the hand of God in Darwin's discovery of evolution, so long as it was understood that He had programmed the outcome of evolution in favor of late Victorian Englishmen. (For an excellent short book on this subject, check out Sven Lindquist's "Exterminate All the Brutes.") When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such as those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a "comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious. Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing." Similarly, we are told by another insider reviewer, James Rocchi, that the scenario, as originally written by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame, included the following line for Avrakotos: "Remember I said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if [Afghanistan] were overrun with Godless communists'." This line is nowhere to be found in the final film. Today there is ample evidence that, when it comes to the freedom of women, education levels, governmental services, relations among different ethnic groups, and quality of life -- all were infinitely better under the Afghan communists than under the Taliban or the present government of President Hamid Karzai, which evidently controls little beyond the country's capital, Kabul. But Americans don't want to know that -- and certainly they get no indication of it from Charlie Wilson's War, either the book or the film. The tendency of imperialism to rot the brains of imperialists is particularly on display in the recent spate of articles and reviews in mainstream American newspapers about the film. For reasons not entirely clear, an overwhelming majority of reviewers concluded that Charlie Wilson's War is a "feel-good comedy" (Lou Lumenick in the New York Post), a "high-living, hard-partying jihad" (A.O. Scott in the New York Times), "a sharp-edged, wickedly funny comedy" (Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times). Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post wrote of "Mike Nichols's laff-a-minute chronicle of the congressman's crusade to ram funding through the House Appropriations Committee to supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen"; while, in a piece entitled "Sex! Drugs! (and Maybe a Little War)," Richard L. Berke in the New York Times offered this stamp of approval: "You can make a movie that is relevant and intelligent -- and palatable to a mass audience -- if its political pills are sugar-coated." When I saw the film, there was only a guffaw or two from the audience over the raunchy sex and sexism of "good-time Charlie," but certainly no laff-a-minute. The root of this approach to the film probably lies with Tom Hanks himself, who, according to Berke, called it "a serious comedy." A few reviews qualified their endorsement of Charlie Wilson's War, but still came down on the side of good old American fun. Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail, for instance, thought that it was "best to enjoy Charlie Wilson's War as a thoroughly engaging comedy. Just don't think about it too much or you may choke on your popcorn." Peter Rainer noted in the Christian Science Monitor that the "Comedic Charlie Wilson's War has a tragic punch line." These reviewers were thundering along with the herd while still trying to maintain a bit of self-respect. The handful of truly critical reviews have come mostly from blogs and little-known Hollywood fanzines -- with one major exception, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. In an essay subtitled "'Charlie Wilson's War' celebrates events that came back to haunt Americans," Turan called the film "an unintentionally sobering narrative of American shouldn't-have" and added that it was "glib rather than witty, one of those films that comes off as being more pleased with itself than it has a right to be." My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical: "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia." Chalmers Johnson is the author of the Blowback Trilogy -- Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (paperbound edition, January 2008).

Oversight Hearings on JFK Assassination Records Act, Future Legislation for Release of Historic Records

politicalassassinations — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:28:43 +0000

COPA members are currently visiting Congressional members and Committee Staff members to lobby for oversight hearings on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. Here are our talking points. We are also promoting passage of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act about to be introduced by Rep. John Lewis (GA) and Senator John Kerry (MA). The oversight hearings may be combined. The points and the Subcommittee members and contact information follow. If you are in the Member's district please contact them to urge them to call for hearings and introduction of the MLK Act. OVERSIGHT HEARINGS ON JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT FUTURE LEGISLATION FOR RELEASE OF HISTORIC RECORDS Why we need oversight hearings: · The JFK Records Collection Act (Public Law No. 102-526) mandated oversight hearings following termination of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to implement ongoing release of records by all agencies and to review the effectiveness of the Review Board process. Section 5, (g) PERIODIC REVIEW OF POSTPONED ASSASSINATION RECORDS -- (1) All postponed or redacted records shall be reviewed periodically by the originating agency and the Archivist consistent with the recommendations of the Review Board under section 9(c)(3)(B). Section 7 (l) OVERSIGHT -- (1) The Committee on Government Operations of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Senate shall have continuing oversight jurisdiction with respect to the official conduct of the Review Board and the disposition of postponed records after termination of the Review Board; and shall have access to any records held or created by the Review Board. · The stated purpose of the JFK Records Act is as follows: Section 2, (a) FINDINGS AND DECLARATIONS -- The Congress finds and declares that -- (1) All government records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be preserved for historical and governmental purposes; (2) all government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure, and all records should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination; · A range of executive agencies have not yet complied or have failed to fully implement the provisions of the JFK Records Act in the following ways: The Assassination Records Review Board, prior to its termination in 1998, released a Final Report which names the specific agencies that failed to comply in any substantial way with transfer of JFK assassination related files before the Review Board’s termination. These agencies have not subsequently complied with additional releases. Other agencies failed to carry out their responsibilities in effecting and securing release of records of foreign governments, preventing their release. Certain records and categories of files were never initially transferred to the ARRB for review because they were not recognized as meeting the definition of “related records”, they were missing from record files, or they had been destroyed both in the past and illegally after passage of the Act. Attempts to garner more information or release of such files has been obstructed in large part by the originating agencies following the termination of the ARRB. In cases where newly discovered related records have been found or acknowledged to exist their requested release has been evaluated by the standards of the Freedom of Information Act rather than the presumption of release and limited options for postponement under the guiding legislation of the JFK Records Act, usually resulting in denial of access. While mandated annual reviews of records for release by various agencies has continued to result in additional disclosures over time, it is also the case that many postponed records, some never reviewed, have not been released by dates certain specified by the JFK Records Act. All related records are to be released in 2017. Additional issues include digitization of the collection, ease of public access in its current location, provision for copies of the record in NARA regional offices, incomplete releases of records or empty file folders without postponement slips and appeal procedures for additional review by the Archivist when new records or categories are discovered. Recently, Senator John Kerry and Rep. John Lewis announced their intention to introduce legislation originally drafted in 2005 to release files on the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This Records Act is modeled after and hopes to improve upon the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, and to broaden the scope of the related records to include both the life and the murder of Dr. King. Since the two pieces of legislation are closely related, it might make sense to combine an oversight hearing when the King Records Act is introduced to consider both. In addition, President Obama initiated an Open Government Directive in January (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-06.pdf) through the Office of Management and Budget that requires all government agencies to identify at least one “high value data set” of records for release to the public. These are being stored at www.data.gov and hundreds of thousands of sets are already online. In our view, records that qualify as related records in the JFK assassination history qualify as a high value data set both historically and because the JFK Assassination Collection at the National Archives is still the most requested record set since it’s early releases. President Obama also issued an Executive Order on Classified National Security Information on December 29, 2009 (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information.) The following section appears to apply directly to both JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. records still held by federal agencies, as well as those segregated for the House Select Committee on Assassinations: Sec. 3.3. Automatic Declassification. (a) Subject to paragraphs (b)–(d) and (g)–(j) of this section, all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value under title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed. All classified records shall be automatically declassified on December 31 of the year that is 25 years from the date of origin, except as provided in paragraphs (b)–(d) and (g)–(i) of this section. If the date of origin of an individual record cannot be readily determined, the date of original classification shall be used instead. In our view and in practice the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and a similar Nazi War Crimes Record Release Act, using independent review boards and a presumption of release standard have worked far better than the Freedom of Information Act regarding historical records of extensive public interest and should be replicated and form a new method for encouraging government transparency and declassification. Introduction and passage of the proposed Martin Luther King. Jr. Records Act will be an important step in that direction. Finally, the JFK Assassination Records Review Board in its Final Report laid out a set of recommendations for the future: 1. The Review Board recommends that future declassification boards be genuinely independent, both in the structure of the organization and in the qualifications of the appointments. 2. The Review Board recommends that any serious, sustained effort to declassify records requires congressional legislation with (a) a presumption of openness, (2) clear standards of access, (3) an enforceable review and appeals process, and (4) a budget appropriate to the scope of the task. 3. The Review Board recommends that its "common law" of decision, formed in the context of a "presumption of disclosure" and the "clear and convincing evidence of harm" criteria, be utilized for similar information in future declassification efforts as a way to simplify and speed up releases. 4. The Review Board recommends that future declassification efforts avoid the major shortcomings of the JFK Act: (a) unreasonable time limits, (b) employee restrictions, (c) application of the law after the Board terminates, and (d) problems inherent with rapid sunset provisions. 5. The Review Board recommends that the cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive problem of referrals for "third party equities" (classified information of one agency appearing in a document of another) be streamlined by (A) requiring representatives of all agencies with interests in selected groups of records to meet for joint declassification sessions, or (B) devising uniform substitute language to deal with certain categories of recurring sensitive equities. 6. The Review Board recommends that a compliance program be used in future declassification efforts as an effective means of eliciting full cooperation in the search for records. 7. The Review Board recommends the following to ensure that NARA can exercise the provisions of the JFK Act after the Review Board terminates: a. that NARA has the authority and means to continue to implement Board decisions, b. that an appeals procedure be developed that places the burden for preventing access on the agencies, and c. that a joint oversight group composed of representatives of the four organizations that originally nominated individuals to serve on the Review Board be created to facilitate the continuing execution of the access provisions of the JFK Act. 8. The Review Board recommends that the Review Board model be adopted and applied whenever there are extraordinary circumstances in which continuing controversy concerning government actions has been most acute and where an aggressive effort to release all "reasonably related" federal records would serve usefully to enhance historical understanding of the event. 9. The Review Board recommends that both the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Executive Order 12958 be strengthened, the former to narrow the categories of information automatically excluded from disclosure, the latter to add "independent oversight" to the process of "review" when agency heads decide that records in their units should be excluded from release. 10. The Review Board recommends the adoption of a federal classification policy that substantially: a. limits the number of those in government who can actually classify federal documents, b. restricts the number of categories by which documents might be classified, c. reduces the time period for which the document(s) might be classified, d. encourages the use of substitute language to immediately open material which might otherwise be classified, and e. increases the resources available to the agencies and NARA for declassifying federal records. (for full text see: http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part12.htm). These recommendations should be considered and guide any oversight hearings and should lead to implementation of some if not all recommendations. There is also public support for this effort reflected in over 275 signatures on an online petition for oversight hearings at http://www.petitiononline.com/JFKACT/petition.html Contacts: John Judge, Coalition on Political Assassinations, copa@starpower.net William Kelly, billykelly3@yahoo.com Information on House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Contact Information Majority (Democrats) Minority (Republicans) Committee Office: Rayburn House Office Building 2157 Committee Phone: 202-225-5051 202-225-3741 Committee FAX: 202-225-4784 202-225-2544 Committee WWW Homepage:http://oversight.house.gov Parent Committee: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee Membership Majority Members (Democrats) William Lacy Clay, Jr. (D-MO) [Chair] 202-225-2406 202-226-3717 Paul E. Kanjorski (D-PA) 202-225-6511 202-225-0764 Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) 202-225-7944 202-225-4709 Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) 202-225-8050 202-225-3002 Danny Davis (D-IL) 202-225-5006 202-225-5641 Steve Driehaus (D-OH) 202-225-2216 202-225-3012 Diane Watson (D-CA) 202-225-7084 202-225-2422 Judy Chu (D-CA) 202-224-3121 (new Member) Minority Members (Republicans) Patrick McHenry (R-NC) [Ranking Member] 202-225-2576 202-225-0316 Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) 202-225-5901 202-225-2515 John L. Mica (R-FL) 202-225-4035 202-226-0821 Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) 202-225-7751 202-225-5629 For more see http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4449&Itemid=19

Killer of Malcolm X Granted Parole

politicalassassinations — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:21:57 +0000

Killer of Malcolm X Granted Parole New York Times March 19, 2010, 3:03 pm By ANDY NEWMAN AND JOHN ELIGON After being turned down for parole 16 times, Malcolm X’s only confessed assassin is about to gain his freedom. Thomas Hagan has been held since moments after shots rang out in the Audubon Ballroom in 1965. He has been on work release for more than two decades, but he still spends two days a week locked up at the Lincoln Correctional Facility on West 110th Street in Manhattan. On March 3, however, on his 17th try, Mr. Hagan was granted parole, the State Division of Parole said. His final release date is tentatively scheduled for April 28. The news was reported Thursday on The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog. Mr. Hagan, who turned 69 in jail on Tuesday, was a militant member of the Nation of Islam on Feb. 21, 1965, when Malcolm X was shot while giving a speech at the Audubon, in Washington Heights. Mr. Hagan, then known as Talmadge X. Hayer, was captured by the crowd and shot at and beaten before being rescued by the police. Two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (then known as Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (then Thomas 15X Johnson), were also charged with the murder. They maintained their innocence. Mr. Hagan did not, testifying at his trial in 1966 that he was responsible for the murder and that his co-defendants were innocent. Thomas HaganAssociated Press/New York Daily News Mr. Hagan in an emergency room after being beaten by the crowd at the Audubon Ballroom. All three men were sentenced to 20 years to life. Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices (not Mr. Aziz or Mr. Islam) decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite” who had “gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest with a shotgun, he and another man fired several more rounds at him. Mr. Aziz was paroled in 1985, and in 1998 was named by Louis Farrakhan to be chief of security for the Harlem mosque that Malcolm X once headed. Mr. Islam was paroled in 1987. Mr. Hagan, who earned a master’s degree while in prison, according to a 2008 profile in The New York Post, was placed on work release in 1988. In 2008, he was spending his free days with his wife and children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and working in a fast food restaurant. “I’ve been incarcerated for 40 years, and I’ve had a good record all around,” he told The Post. “I don’t see any reason for holding me.” Malcolm X Assassin Granted Parole in New York March 19, 2010 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:14 p.m. ET ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- One of three men convicted of killing Malcolm X 45 years ago was granted release from weekends in prison in his 17th appearance before a state parole board. Thomas Hagan, 69, appeared before a parole panel March 3 and was granted release effective April 28, state Division of Parole spokeswoman Carole Weaver said Friday. Until then, he'll remain at the Lincoln Correctional Facility in New York City, where he has been locked up two days a week for 22 years. The other five days, he's been allowed to work and live with his family. Linda Foglia, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the agency doesn't release information on where work-release inmates are employed or where they live. While they're out of the prison, inmates are subject to unannounced workplace and home visits by a parole officer. Hagan was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison in April 1966 on a first-degree murder charge for shooting the civil rights activist with a .45-caliber pistol at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan in 1965. Hagan, then known as Talmadge X. Hayer, was beaten by the crowd after the shooting. Muhammad Abdul Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, and Kahlil Islam, then Thomas 15X Johnson, were also convicted of murder, but they maintained their innocence. They were paroled about 20 years ago. Hagan said there were two other gunmen, but they were never identified. Hagan's court papers say he ''confessed to having fired shots into Malcolm's body.'' Hagan testified at trial that his two co-defendants, convicted with him, were not present at the shooting. After he was denied parole in 2007, Hagan filed an appeal saying the denial was arbitrary and capricious. His court papers said he had ''taken advantage of each and all of the programs and support systems that enable him to lead a law-abiding lifestyle,'' and that he had repeatedly expressed remorse for the shooting. The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment on Hagan's parole.

MLK: A Call to Conscience, Tavis Smiley to air show on Dr. King on PBS

politicalassassinations — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:21:26 +0000

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday night, PBS will air Tavis Smiley’s special MLK: A Call to Conscience. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/29/as_obama_visits_afghanistan_tavis_smiley Democracy Now! March 29, 2010

As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War

As the President renews his commitment to expand the American military presence in Afghanistan, we turn to a man he is sometimes compared to: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A new special on PBS from TV host and author Tavis Smiley delves into this comparison and looks at a speech that has a particular resonance today with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Dr. King’s famous antiwar speech of April 4, 1967 titled “Beyond Vietnam.” [includes rush transcript]

Tavis Smiley, host of the Tavis Smiley Show. Tonight at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN2 will air ‘We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda’, the gathering of black leadership he recently hosted in Chicago. On Wednesday night, PBS will air Tavis Smiley’s special “MLK: A Call to Conscience”:http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/reports/episode-two.html.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama made a very brief unannounced visit to Afghanistan Sunday night. It was his first trip as president to the war zone he’s expanded and remade over the past year. In his six-hour visit, he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his aides in Kabul and addressed a crowd of US soldiers at Bagram Air Base before flying out of the country before daybreak. President Obama told US troops, quote, “We did not choose this war.” He added, quote, “If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.” Well, as the President renews his commitment to expand the US military presence in Afghanistan, we turn to a man he’s sometimes compared to: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A new special on PBS from TV host and author Tavis Smiley delves into this comparison and looks at a speech that has a particular resonance today with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. King’s famous antiwar speech of April 4th, 1967 was called “Beyond Vietnam.” Well, here’s an excerpt of the upcoming PBS primetime special episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. It’s called MLK: A Call to Conscience. It premiers on Wednesday night.

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:

CLAYBORNE CARSON:

SUSANNAH HESCHEL:

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:

VINCENT HARDING:

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of Tavis Smiley’s PBS film “Beyond Vietnam” [MLK: A Call to Conscience] that will air on Wednesday night. Tavis Smiley, joining us now from Burbank, California, welcome to Democracy Now! This is extremely powerful and relevant, as President Obama just made this surprise trip to Afghanistan. You go back to a time when another African American leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, broke ranks not only with the president that he had worked with on civil rights and voting rights, but with many in his own circles, to speak out against the war in Vietnam. TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, Amy, first of all, always an honor to be on your program. The timing of this special, airing on Wednesday night, to your point, could not be more propitious, given that the President has just made this surprise visit to Afghanistan. Of course, we never know these things when we schedule these kinds of specials, what the news will bring us, but the timing, again, couldn’t be any better. But this speech, “Beyond Vietnam: Breaking the Silence,” is given by Dr. King on April 4, 1967, literally one year to the day later he’s assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968. But to your point, it is the speech that caused him the greatest deal of controversy and consternation, quite frankly. Most Americans, I think, know the “I Have a Dream” speech. Some Americans, Amy, know the “Mountaintop” speech given the night before he was assassinated in Memphis. But most Americans do not know this “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which got King, again, in a world of trouble. He comes out very clearly and talks about three things that are causing him consternation: militarism, racism and poverty. And he links all three of those things in this “Beyond Vietnam” speech. And the speech is so—it so rankles and angers the country that 168 major newspapers the next day—168 the following day—all did editorials denouncing him. The New York Times, the liberal New York Times, called the speech “wasteful” and “self-defeating.” The Washington Post goes on to aver that he has done himself, his country and the world, quite frankly, a disservice, and he would never be respected again—paraphrasing it, but that’s what the Washington Post says the next day. But in most major newspapers he was denounced the next day, because the night before, in the speech, he had referred to the US, Amy, as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” And for saying that, he gets demonized by most major newspapers; he gets disinvited, as you said earlier, by LBJ to the White House; indeed, black leaders—Roy Wilkins, the head of the NAACP, Whitney Young, the head of the Urban League—black leaders turned against him. And finally, over the next year of his life before he’s killed in Memphis, the last poll taken about his popularity, a Harris poll, Amy, found that almost three-quarters of the American people had turned against King. Fifty-five percent of his own people, black folk, had turned against King. The last years of his life were very, very lonely, in part because he was so adamant about the war in Vietnam. AMY GOODMAN: Tavis, I want to go to that very place in Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech that he gave at Riverside Church, April 4th, 1967.

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that was Dr. King, April 4th, 1967. A year later to the day, he would be assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Time Magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” But he wouldn’t stop, Tavis Smiley. TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, he would not stop. And what’s fascinating, Amy—and I think this will come through Wednesday night, when the special airs on PBS—what will come through is that if you replace the words “Iraq” for “Vietnam,” “Afghanistan” for “Vietnam,” “Pakistan” for “Vietnam,” this speech is so relevant today. There’s a powerful part of the special. We talk to so many of King’s closest aides, advisers, scholars across the country who are part of this conversation. You played the piece from Clayborne Carson a moment ago who’s in charge of the King papers. And so many in King’s circle, so many of King’s devotees were disappointed when President Obama—himself, of course, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. So you have King, the youngest ever, then and now, to receive the Peace Prize, of black men from the United States, you have Barack Obama, a young African American man, President of the United States, both now with these Nobel Peace Prizes. And in President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech, we wrestle with a particular part of that text that nobody in the mainstream media seems to have wrestled with, and that is the part in the speech—King and Obama, of course, already locked together in history, I think, as the two most iconic African Americans now, during the campaign black folk everywhere wearing T-shirts with King and Obama’s face on the T-shirt. So they’re already linked in history. But then Obama steps to the podium in Oslo and starts out with a particular part of his speech where he’s giving Dr. King his just respect. It’s impossible for, again, this second, this black man, Obama—the other black man, of course, to receive the prize, Ralph Bunche—but impossible for President Obama to give this speech, I think, in Oslo without referencing Dr. King. So he talks about King and gives him the requisite respect he deserves. But then, in that speech, Amy, he makes a turn and talks about the fact—and I’m paraphrasing here—that he can’t be guided by King’s notion of nonviolence in today’s world. And he suggests he couldn’t do that because King didn’t know al-Qaeda. And that really—and he goes deeper than that, but he really starts to rankle some who have been—you know, who worked with and advised Dr. King. Harry Belafonte and others talk in this special about how that really pricked them, and some of them felt insulted by that, as if Dr. King did not know violence in his lifetime and as if he could not intellectually wrestle with the violence, the terrorism that we’re up against today, but most importantly, the notion that nonviolence in today’s world is irrelevant and could not make a difference. So it’s a fascinating conversation about the parallels, and yet, at the same time, the tension, on the issue of war and peace between King and Obama. AMY GOODMAN: Tavis, let’s go, in your special, your PBS special that’s airing on Wednesday night, to your colleague, our colleague, Cornel West, the professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University.

CORNEL WEST:

AMY GOODMAN: That was Professor Cornel West of Princeton University. Tavis Smiley? TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, Dr. West, as always, is powerful and provocative, in terms of raising unsettling questions for us to wrestle with. We go on to talk to Dr. West and others in this special, Amy, about how it is that the world can be made safe for the legacy of Dr. King when you have this tension between an African American president, who’s linked with King on the world stage, as Dr. West just suggested, if not intentionally, certainly unintentionally, diminishing King and his philosophy, that Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha, of nonviolence. And so, it’s again a fascinating tension point here in the conversation. What King was trying to get across, as you know, Amy, in that speech in ’67 at Riverside was not just that the war was wrong, but that the war was distracting us. The war in Vietnam was distracting us from the war on poverty here at home. And one could make, again—and it’s going to be fascinating for viewers to see this on Wednesday and to see, again, how similar conditions are that King was addressing in ’67 and where we are, believe it or not, in 2010. So many—so much of our resource in this country has been sent to these wars abroad, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and now to Pakistan. And those resources being sent abroad make it very, very difficult to focus in on the issue of poverty, escalating poverty, quite frankly, in this recession right here at home. And you talk about these drones. Danny Glover got in trouble some months ago for suggesting that he didn’t see much difference between Obama’s war policy and Bush’s war policy. And people tried to castigate and demonize Danny Glover for making those comments. Well, when you look at the facts, we’re escalating our troop presence in Afghanistan. And here we should say that this is a campaign promise kept by President Obama. No surprise here. He promised to do that. But there’s some real questions here about what cost that we are doing this at and whether or not this is now a war of necessity or a war of choice. But he did promise to do this. And there were some of us who were disturbed by it then, but campaign promise kept. But in Pakistan, he has increased, as you know, the use of these US drones. And every time one of these drones goes awry, it goes askew, it doesn’t hit the intended target, it kills innocent women and children. And that turns future generations of young folk against America. So this stuff is a never-ending cycle of violence. King came to the point, even though, as you mentioned earlier, those in his own camp, many of them, advised him not to give this speech—they said, “How can you offend President Johnson, who’s been our best friend on civil rights and human rights and voting rights? How can you do this? Martin, this is going to cause problems.” And I said earlier, black leaders turned against him. But what pulled Dr. King in to address this issue so directly and so strongly, Amy, was the children. When he saw the photos of the children being victimized by the napalm, he could no longer be silent. His conscience called him to Riverside because of the children. So here we are now in 2010, forty-some years later, almost forty-five years later, turning future generations of children against us every time we innocently kill their mother, their father, their loved ones, their sisters, their brothers. So the parallels—I sound like a broken record here, because it’s even mind-boggling for me, having produced the piece, to just look at America then, look at America now, and really ask, on the question of war and peace, how much progress have we really made? AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to your documentary, “Beyond Vietnam” [MLK: A Call to Conscience], to another clip of Professor Cornel West talking about President Obama.

CORNEL WEST:

AMY GOODMAN: Strong words, Professor West calling Obama the face of empire, as we look at him addressing the troops and then meeting with President Karzai in Afghanistan, when—what many are now calling Obama’s war. TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, again, back to this word, “parallels,” the parallels of what this president is doing on the issue of war and peace. And again, we could not have known that President Obama was going to touch down in Afghanistan, but the timing is on point. We hope this special is going to raise some powerful questions about US foreign policy. And again, at what cost? At what cost, number one, are these wars wars of necessity, at this point, or are they wars of choice? And what agency? What agency does the American people have in trying to redirect this president on the question of war and peace? I want to go back to King, though, to Dr. West’s comparison of Obama and King. King understood very clearly that there was a cost, Amy, to being a truth teller. Being in—these are my words now, but being in the public square—put another way, being in the public eye—being a leader of people in America, means that you find yourself every day, I think, in a battle of truth versus power. Truth versus power. And the question is whether or not you’re going to be a truth teller or a power grabber. But if you are going to be committed to telling truth, King understood, as we must understand today, that there consequences to being a truth teller. And Martin King endured those consequences in the latter years, latter days of his life. He had to endure that. And yet, one of the pieces that comes out in this special on Wednesday night that, again, I think will shock most Americans is that even though King had almost three-quarters, Amy, of the American people turned against him, 55 percent of his own people turned against him, one of the last calls—we lay this out in the special Wednesday night—one of the last calls, Amy, he made from Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, where he was staying, as we know, in Memphis, one of the last phone calls he made was back to his church in Atlanta, Ebenezer, which he co-pastored, as you know, with his father, Daddy King, and King told his father that when he got home Sunday from Memphis, so they could type it in the Sunday morning church bulletin, King told his father that his sermon topic was going to be, had he lived, why America may go to Hell. Why America may go to Hell. He was going to tie that speech to those three points he had raised a year earlier: escalating militarism, increasing poverty and damning racism in this country. And we think of Dr. King—Dr. West, in this special, Amy, uses this phrase that only West could use it—I call it, it’s Westian to the core—but he talks, Amy, about the Santa Clausification, the Santa Clausification of Dr. King. I’ll let him unpack that Wednesday night. What he means by that, though, is that we have tamed and defanged and manicured and deodorized Dr. King so much that we’ve reduced him to a dreamer, in many ways the same things—the same thing that’s being done to Mandela now in South Africa, as if these men, Mandela and King, were not freedom fighters who were willing to pay a cost—indeed, in Martin’s case, the price of death, for standing in his truth. But to have that kind of pushback for being a truth teller and then to tell to your daddy, your co-pastor, that on Sunday morning you’re going to preach a sermon, with all the hell you’re catching still, entitled “Why America May”—emphasize the word “may”—“Go to Hell,” speaks again to how powerful Martin’s work and witness was. And I think, as Americans, some of us have lost sight of that in the age and the era of Obama. And some of us have never really wanted to wrestle with who Martin King really was. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Tavis, something I learned from your documentary about the media at that time, aside from, in the mainstream media, the universal condemnation of Dr. King’s address, was that only—what was it?—ten minutes of this extended speech was actually filmed? TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah. It’s a rare—first of all, it’s rare for King to give a speech where he basically read the entire text. And he did that because they wanted to make sure—knowing that he was going to get in some trouble, they wanted to make sure that—and Taylor Branch, in this special, explains this in detail, the great King historian of that wonderful Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, America in the King Years—Taylor Branch lays out the fact that the reason why Dr. King ended up having his dear friend Dr. Vincent Harding, who you saw and heard in a clip here earlier—his friend Vincent Harding helps to write this “Beyond Vietnam" speech, because they wanted to make sure that, in advance, newspapers across the country could get it, so that King would not be misquoted, so he would not be misunderstood, so he’d not be demonized by the media. Of course, that’s the exact opposite—as you just mentioned, the exact opposite happened. But the media comes after him, again, because they didn’t like what he had to say. But it was—it was darn near universal. But the point was, again, to get it out early enough so that he would not be misquoted, misunderstood, and yet that happens anyway. So it’s fascinating how the media at that time didn’t want to wrestle with the speech. And again, the media had been slow to understand and to accept what he was up to, in terms of his motives and his reasons for being so central to the civil rights movement. They were slow to get that. But when it came to talking about foreign policy, they said to him very clearly, “Brother, you are out of your lane. You have no business discussing foreign policy. You are a civil rights leader. Stay over there. We have not given you permission to be addressing these issues.” So it was a serious smack-down for Dr. King. And Taylor Branch points out Wednesday night in the special that this kind of pushback, Amy, was so intense that on more than one occasion it literally brought Dr. King to tears. He was troubled by this. He didn’t stop fighting, didn’t change his point of view, but it really emotionally broke him down. And we talk about that, as well. AMY GOODMAN: And tonight on C-SPAN, they are going to be playing the event that you did, the gathering at Chicago last week, a gathering of black leadership. The level of criticism you feel, Tavis Smiley, is acceptable of President Obama in the black community right now, among the black leadership? TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, it’s a good question, Amy. Let me tweak it, if I might. It’s not so much about a level of criticism, as much as it is holding him accountable to doing those things that he said he would do, number one. And he’s done some of those things, to be sure. But I’ve said many times in our conversations that I don’t think great presidents are born. Great presidents are made. If he’s going to become a transformational president, the progressive community—and I think that includes black folk, by and large—is going to have to help push him, to help usher him into his greatness. I believe there’s honor in accountability. And so, it starts not just with this notion of criticizing or critiquing him, but, number one, holding him accountable to what he said he was going to do; number two, recognizing that the black constituency is the most loyal constituency in his entire base; recognizing, number three, that while most Americans are being challenged and being—find themselves between a rock and a hard place, as it were, because of this economy, the numbers are clear: black folk in America are getting crushed. And when there are certain black leaders, as there have been over the last month or two, who suggest trying to give the President some cover, sort of walking on eggshells, but suggesting publicly in the media that he doesn’t have to have a black agenda, that he need not uniquely address the concerns of black folk, I said, wait a minute, we need to have a “come to Jesus” meeting about this, because there are some of us who believe that disproportionate pain requires a disproportionate response. And so, a large group of African American thought leaders, opinion makers, policy makers, influencers met us around a—literally around a big round table at Chicago State just a week or so ago. Thousands of people packed into the auditorium at Chicago State for a conversation about how it is that we fashion and form and hold the President accountable to an African American agenda in this era of Obama, in this so-called post-racial America. AMY GOODMAN: PBS host Tavis Smiley. Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, C-SPAN will air his We Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda, the gathering of black leadership he recently hosted in Chicago. On Wednesday night, PBS will air Tavis Smiley’s special MLK: A Call to Conscience.

FBI Releases Most Secret Files - New RFK Material?

politicalassassinations — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:00:45 +0000

Note: New materials on assassination of Robert F. Kennedy? FBI Releases Files Kept in Room Filled with Secrets Wednesday, March 31, 2010

After concealing highly-secretive investigations for more than 60 years, the FBI has released a small volume of documents from its little known “special file room” in Washington, DC. The room, created by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was first established in 1948 and has held files containing information on threats to the nation…as well as domestic spying on Americans.

The confidential documents include information about American radar designed to spy on the Soviet military and evacuation plans for Washington in case of attack. Other records cover potential threats to smuggle nuclear weapons into the U.S.

Some files have details about spying on U.S. allies during the Cold War, including Greece, Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Sweden. The FBI also spied on gay rights groups in the 1950s and 1960s,

Other files refer to Adlai Stevenson, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Hoffa, Adolph Coors, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the still-unexplained crash of a Pan Am flight on November 8, 1957, “Proposed Plan for Intelligence Coverage in Alaska in the Event of an Invasion,” and “Sex Perverts in the Gov’t.”

The secret file room is still in use today. Only a small portion of its records have been revealed, thanks to an anonymous researcher who turned over hundreds of documents to the Boston Globe. They are now available online at GovernmentAttic.org.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

FBI Gives a Glimpse of Its Most Secret Layer (by Bryan Bender, Boston Globe)

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records relating to Confidential Files Maintained In Room 6527 (pdf)

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/FBI_Releases_Files_Kept_in_Room_Filled_with_Secrets_100331

Boston Globe

FBI gives a glimpse of its most secret layer

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | March 29, 2010 WASHINGTON — It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States. It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups. It is the FBI’s “special file room,’’ where for decades sensitive material has been stored separately from the bureau’s central filing system to restrict access severely and, in more sinis ter instances, some experts assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it. Established in 1948 under the reign of notoriously secretive FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, it remains in use today at FBI headquarters in Washington to safeguard what the bureau considers its most highly sensitive information. But now, for the first time, the FBI has opened its doors — at least a crack — by releasing hundreds of pages of memos outlining why bureau officials have deemed certain information too hot to handle even for most top-level officials. The memos, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, were approved for release under the Freedom of Information Act and provided exclusively to the Globe by a researcher outside the FBI who wished to remain anonymous. Many of the files that were kept there over the years, some designated with cryptic titles such as “raindrop’’ and “snitch-jacketing,’’ remain secret — if they haven’t been destroyed, as one former FBI official speculated. Yet the internal memos discussing the file room and its contents provide a unique window into what the FBI considered some of the most serious domestic security threats, both real and imagined. On several occasions, the room, which only designated officials could access, became so overcrowded that the contents had to be moved to a larger space out of fear that the Justice Department building where it was first housed could not withstand the weight. “These 26 cabinets are presently in one room and because of this weight factor must be moved immediately,’’ one Sept. 13, 1961, memo warned. Several years later, another memo reveals, it grew to 79 file cabinets. Indeed, in the opinion of FBI officials, the room was quickly abused. “Some of these files contain no indication as to why, when, or by whom they were placed in this restricted status,’’ one memo, dated May 15, 1952, stated. “This was a collection of things that the bureau didn’t want to be part of the regular filing system because it was considered highly sensitive,’’ John Fox, the FBI’s official historian, said in an interview. Others who have studied the FBI say the special filing location, at times also referred to as the “confidential file room,’’ has also served as a way to protect information about bureau activities that may have been unlawful, such as spying on Americans without probable cause. “This was a system that allowed FBI officials to say we have searched our central records system and there is no record of illegal conduct’’ by the bureau, said Athan G. Theoharis, a former professor at Marquette University and a specialist on the reign of Hoover, who served as the agency’s first director, from 1924 to 1972, and who is known to have maintained his own files that he ordered destroyed after his death. “It was a pretty efficient system Hoover devised,’’ Theoharis said. “If you can minimize who knew what the bureau is doing, you can minimize any legal action’’ against the bureau if it operated outside of the law. A majority of the files appear to be related to highly classified activities. Many are excluded from guidelines that require the government to declassify documents after a certain period of time. Some subjects are considered so secret that even the bureaucratic machinations for putting them into the secret file room were blacked out — such as memos discussing the files about potential spies for China operating in the United States. In the early years of the Cold War, the FBI began placing thousands of other documents relating to security matters into the special file room, according to Fox and other specialists. Stashed away were plans to conceal US radars designed to spy on the Soviet military, details of American war plans, and evacuation plans should Washington be attacked. There were several files on the possible threat of smuggled nuclear weapons, including one labeled “Atomic Bomb in Unknown Consul.’’ The room was filled with files on Americans believed to be spying for Russia, including Julius Rosenberg, who was executed for selling atomic bomb secrets, and Morton Sobell, an American engineer who spent nearly 18 years in prison for spying for the Soviet Union. Some of the documents, meanwhile, indicate that the United States was spying on friends during the height of the Cold War. A number of files contained the diplomatic codes of Greece, Panama, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Sweden, and even neutral Switzerland, allowing the United States to read secret communications between their diplomats. Others were more questionable in nature, such as numerous files from the 1950s and 1960s detailing the FBI’s spying on early gay rights groups such as The Mattachine Society, which in one 1958 memo was categorized under “internal security.’’ Homosexuality, in fact, was for a lengthy period an obsession of the bureau and the focus of multiple domestic intelligence operations, the memos show. Another file was spirited out of the regular bureau filing system because it involved “allegations of homosexuality of some very prominent individuals.’’ It added: “In view of the obscene nature of the allegations and the prominence of some individuals mentioned, therein, it is felt that this file should be retained in the Special File Room.’’ Other files on domestic spying that were routed to the special file room involved “black nationalist extremists.’’ There were also files about an “extremely sensitive counterintelligence technique’’ called snitch-jacketing, which apparently involved the FBI spreading false information that members of a targeted group were government informants in order to sow conflict within their membership. “Secrecy was the key,’’ Theoharis said. “Knowledge is power.’’ The special filing location was even used to protect information about politicians believed to be involved with criminals. “The information is of a very sensitive nature in that it contains frequent reference to highly placed persons in Chicago law enforcement as well as city, county, and state political figures and their relations with the hoodlum element,’’ one 1960 memo stated, requesting a file be routed to the special room. “References are also made to prominent businessmen and occasionally newspaper reporters.’’ Longtime observers of the FBI say the memos are not just historically valuable, but also provide a roadmap for researchers who can now request some of the files cited in them, at least those with titles or file numbers that appear in the newly released documents. The memos will be posted at governmentattic.org, a website run by volunteers that publishes hundreds of government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. But according to Susan Rosenfeld, former FBI historian, many of them have been destroyed as part of regular housekeeping or are no longer stored at the FBI but at other government records centers. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com

RFK Autopsy Photos and Report Hidden in FBI Secret File Room

politicalassassinations — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:31:04 +0000

An FBI Memorandum dated October 25, 1968 has recently been released regarding their intention to prevent public access to autopsy photographs and a neuropathology report from the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968. All copies are to be collected and secured following the trial of Sirhan Sirhan in December, 1968. Note that Cartha Deke DeLoach of Division V, which ran COINTELPRO, says that these materials are to be kept in "my office - per instructions of Mr. Toland. See page 372 of this PDF for original document - http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/FBI-CFR-With-Appx.pdf. I have transcribed what I could below. Brackets [ ] denote handwritten or stamped text. There is a topic and name index at the end of the document starting with page A-1 - JJ http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/FBI-CFR-With-Appx.pdf - Page 372 US Government Memorandum (FBI) Date: October 25, 1968 To: Mr. DeLoach From: A. Rosen 1 - Mr. DeLoach 1 - Mr. Rosen 1 - Mr. Malley 1 - Mr. Shroder 1 - Mr. Schutz 1 - Mr. Bishop 1 - Mr. Sullivan 1 - Mr. Mohr 1 - Mr. Tavel Subject: ASSASSINATION OF SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [Conf. File Room] Los Angeles Authorities have provided our Los Angeles Office with the photographs of the autopsy of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy as well as the neuropathology report pertaining to the post-mortem examination. This material has been forwarded to the Bureau. [See LA airtel 10/1/68 (62-587-989) Legislation is currently pending in the State of California which would restrict this material from the general public. ACTION: In view of the sensitive nature of this material it is recommended that it should be maintained in the Special File Room of the Records Branch and should be charged out only upon the special authority of the Assistant Director, General Investigative Division. Los Angeles has a set of these photographs and report which they are affording top security. Upon conclusion of Sirhan's trial set for 12/9/68, at which time it would appear Los Angeles would have no need for such material, all photographs and related material will be forwarded to the Bureau for safe keeping. HAS:jls (10) [See Mr. DeLoach 10-28-68 R] [66-17404-NOT RECORDED OCT 31 1968] [ORIGINAL FILED IN 62-587-988] [To be kept in my office - per Mr. Tolson's instructions - D (DeLoach)] ALL INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS UNCLASSIFIED DATE 3/19/08 BY 60324 UC BAW/RS/MW [67 OCT 31 1968]

Did this 1967 anti-war speech get Dr. King killed?

politicalassassinations — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 06:38:56 +0000

Tavis Smiley and others who knew King at the time explore the significance of his Riverside Church address against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967 in this PBD special, just aired http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/reports/episode-two.html Here is the audio and text of the actual speech in full: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Martin Luther King national memorial on pace for 2011 debut

politicalassassinations — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 01:11:37 +0000

Martin Luther King national memorial on pace for 2011 debut By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY Forty-two years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, a memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring his legacy is a year and a half from completion. Rica Orszag, spokesperson for The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, said the 4-acre space on the National Mall will open in fall 2011. After 14 years of fundraising, the memorial is now $14 million from its $120 million goal, said Harry Johnson, president and CEO of the foundation. "It's just exhilarating knowing that we have come this far," Johnson said. The road to reaching the fundraising goal has been long, Johnson said, as world events including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 2005's Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquake in Haiti have all taken some focus away from the project's fundraising efforts. "We have learned that every 18 months, something is going to happen to take up the attention span of Americans, and rightly so," he said. "But Americans are very giving, and so we still managed." Multimillion dollar donations from organizations including the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, of which King was and Johnson is a member; and the foundations for General Motors, Tommy Hilfiger, Bill and Melinda Gates and others have helped. A $12.5 million letter of credit from the Wal-Mart Foundation announced in November allowed organizers to buy a construction permit from the National Park Service and begin building, Orszag said. The National Capital Planning Commission approved the site for the King memorial in 1999, amid concerns about building too much on the National Mall and using up too much of its green space from the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a nonprofit based in Rockville, Md. Bernice King, one of King's four children and a minister, said she hopes the memorial serves as a reminder for the necessity of helping others. "As the last born of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, my family is honored to see a memorial built in our nation's capital in honor of the freedom fighters of a critical era in America's history," said King, who was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadershp Conference in October. "It is imperative that we never forget the past while keeping a mindful eye on the future of the global 'World House' we have inherited," she continued. "As my father warned, we must not sleep through the revolutions necessary to bring about true, sustainable social change for the global disinherited masses. Let the King Memorial in Washington D.C. stand as a beacon of hope, truth and justice for all, especially generations unborn. The memorial is a fitting symbol of the progressive struggle of a people and the promise of our nation and the world." Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador, Atlanta mayor and congressman who was among civil rights activists in Memphis on April 4, 1968, for rallies to support striking sanitation workers and at the Lorraine Motel the evening when King was shot through the jaw and neck while on a balcony outside his room, says it's time for a King memorial on the Mall in D.C. Young helps oversee the foundation's executive leadership group and notes that even among monuments to former presidents, "there's nothing in Washington that speaks of non-violence." "Maybe Jefferson, but Washington and Lincoln were both heroes who achieved America's independence and had to resort to violence," Young said. "Martin pushed for the liberation of America without killing anybody and without destroying any person or property. I think that's ideal and that's the goal that we have to work toward — a peaceful and prosperous world." According to the foundation's website — www.mlkmemorial.org — the memorial, located on the Tidal Basin between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, will feature water, trees and stone that create niches throughout the space. Each niche will include writing on stone detailing contributions of civil rights martyrs, such as slain NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers or the four little girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., says the website, which features a virtual tour of the site. Also according to the website: • A 28.5-foot-tall centerpiece sculpted by Lei Yi Xin, a master artist from China, will feature King's likeness. Large stones will mark the entrance and feature King's words. One stone will read, "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." • Another will feature the words also carved into the Civil Rights Memorial near Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, King's old congregation in Montgomery, Ala.: "Let justice roll down like the mighty waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Organizers will place 200 cherry trees at the site, Johnson said, adding to the many trees around the Tidal Basin donated to Washington by Japan in 1912. The annual white blossoms mark spring in the capital. "Knowing that the cherry blossoms happen to bloom the same week Dr. King gave up is life is kind of metaphorical," Johnson said. He believes the water, trees and King's words will make visitors feel the leader's spirit of non-violence. "There will be a sense of peace," Johnson said. "A sense of tranquility will come over you as you think about what Dr. King really meant not just to this country but to the world."

White House approves assassination of cleric linked to Christmas bomb plot

politicalassassinations — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:13:13 +0000

Using the Authorization of Use of Military Force passed in 2001, as well as ongoing Executive Orders renewing a declaration of a State of Emergency, the Executive Branches of both the Bush and Obama administrations have continued to escalate violations of Constitutional principles, domestic and international laws. Now targeted "enemies" will be assassinated based on suspicion without evidence or trial with official and public sanction. President Ford's Executive Order, motivated by the revelations of the Church Committee that the U.S. government was plotting to assassinate foreign and domestic "enemies", still included an exemption from the ban based on "issue of national security". Congress can and should reverse or modify both the authorization of use of military force and review the declaration of emergency every six months as legally mandated. Every excess since 9/11 in terms of civil liberties, militarization of justice and violations of treaty and international law has used these authorities as sanction and permission, despite no specific statements in either one authorizing any such actions. Sadly, we are still back in 2001, when Bush said he liked the law of the Old West and the posters that depicted targeted criminal suspects as "Wanted Dead or Alive", or as the Red Queen said in Alice in Wonderland, "Sentence first, then the evidence" John Judge White House approves assassination of cleric linked to Christmas bomb plot Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki placed on hit list in unprecedented move backed by Congress Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric said to have met the Nigerian accused of the The Obama administration has taken the rare step of authorising the killing of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric linked to the attempt to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day. The decision to place Awlaki on a US hit list followed a national security council review because of his status as an American citizen. "Awlaki is a proven threat," a US official told Reuters. "He's being targeted." Born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, Awlaki has been accused of encouraging terrorism in his sermons and writings. He is believed to be in hiding in Yemen's rugged Shabwa or Mareb regions, an area that has become a haven for jihadis. He has been linked to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for "targeted killing", officials told the New York Times. A former senior legal official in the Bush administration said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president. The decision to place Awlaki on a hit list took place this year, the paper said, as US counterterrorism officials judged he had moved beyond inciting attacks against the US – he has a large following among English-speaking Muslims – to participating in them. "The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," an official told the New York Times. "He's gotten involved in plots." The policy of targeted killings is controversial. President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning political assassinations in 1976. However, Congress approved the use of military force against al-Qaida after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the US and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination. In February, the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blairan, alarmed civil liberties groups when he told Congress that the US may, with executive approval, deliberately target and kill US citizens suspected of being involved in terrorism. Under Obama's watch, the US has stepped up attacks on al-Qaida figures around the world from Somalia to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border through the use of Predator drones or other aircraft. The Pakistani government tacitly permits CIA-operated unmanned aircraft to target terrorist sites and militants up to 50 miles inside the country, and there have been reports of helicopter-borne raids into Pakistani territory.

Is the CIA Assassination Order of a US Citizen Legal?

politicalassassinations — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:40:41 +0000

Is the CIA Assassination Order of a US Citizen Legal? Democracy Now! April 8, 2010 US officials have confirmed a Yemen-based Muslim cleric has become the first US citizen added to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing. Anwar al-Awlaki is a US-born cleric accused of having ties to the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the shooting at Fort Hood. Many legal experts have questioned the legality of the assassination order under US and international law. We speak with Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions. [includes rush transcript] Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions. He is also a professor of law at New York University and co-chair of the law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. JUAN GONZALEZ: US officials have confirmed a Yemen-based Muslim cleric has become the first US citizen added to a CIA list of targets for capture or killing. Anwar al-Awlaki is a US-born cleric accused of having ties to the failed Christmas Day airline bombing and the shooting at Fort Hood. Officials said it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for a US citizen to be approved for assassination. Earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, told the House Intelligence Committee US forces can assassinate citizens believed to be involved in a terrorist activity against the United States. Blair said, quote, “Being a US citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.” He added, “We don’t target people for free speech; we target them for taking action that threatens Americans.” AMY GOODMAN: Many legal experts have questioned the legality of the assassination order under US and international law. We’re joined here in New York by Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions. Philip Alston is also a professor of law at New York University and co-chair of the school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Alston. What about this policy targeting al-Awlaki? PHILIP ALSTON: Well, there’s a lot we don’t know about this particular case. We don’t know exactly what this man is accused of, which would make a very big difference in terms of working out what his role is, whether he can be considered to be actually engaged in some sort of armed conflict with the United States, whether he’s taken an active part in those hostilities. The US government has merely indicated that, first, he is working with a group that is said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. Now that raises fairly big problems already, but I’ll come back to that. Secondly, is he actually taking some sort of active part in hostilities? Is he just a propaganda man, or is he in fact doing the planning and really someone who is in the chain of command, as it were? If the latter, if he’s in the chain of command, then it becomes more feasible. If we then get to the situation that we agree that we’re in an armed conflict situation, that then takes us back, unfortunately, to the whole big question of what sort of conflict, what sort of war, is the United States engaged in, which would then justify targeting this individual, leaving aside his nationality, at least for a moment. The administration, as we know, has come out in the last week or so with a new rationale. We have now dropped the global war on terror. That’s no longer being fought. Instead, the rationale is that this is the United States acting in self-defense post-9/11. So it’s invoking an international law doctrine which is designed to provide a single exception to the prohibition on the use of force. Post-World War II, the rule was a country cannot make war on another country. The exception is if it’s in self-defense. Now that’s usually defined as some sort of imminent attack going on, that you then are able to respond to. Clearly, that’s not really happening here, and it’s rather odd to invoke it for the first time some ten years after, nine years after 9/11. But even then, if we accept that the United States is involved in some sort of armed conflict, the question is, can we attack Yemen? Well, the first issue, is there a request by the government of Yemen? The US seems to imply that they will not object, and that would get around that particular dilemma. But then you come to this particular individual. The big issue there is, is there an armed conflict going on in Yemen in which the United States is engaged? If there is, then if he’s taking part in hostilities, he would be a legitimate target. But if there’s not an armed conflict—and most observers would question whether there is a sort of ongoing armed conflict—then one would need to deal with him through other means. It’s not to say that the guy should be let to, you know, do what he’s doing, etc. We need to take every step that can be taken, but short of a targeted assassination, which is a really dramatic step. JUAN GONZALEZ: But if the reports are accurate that have come out in the last few days, the President has said that he should be killed wherever he is found at any time in any situation, which would actually preclude him just being involved in an imminent attack situation on the United States. PHILIP ALSTON: Right. I think what worries me most is that if you take it in the way that you’ve put it, you then get the United States government coming up with a list of people who can be killed anywhere, anytime, simply because that determination has been made. Now, that is very questionable, when there’s no evidence on the table. The United States has made a number of assertions, but it hasn’t tried try to spell those out. But more importantly, and this gets us back in some ways to the Baghdad videotape that you showed earlier, the question is, should the United States go easily and readily into a general policy of assassinating people across the globe wherever they may be? And the al-Awlaki case is pretty significant in terms of breaking through some of the final barriers. The issue that concerns many Americans, of course, is, hey, this guy is different. He’s an American citizen. You can shoot others, but you can’t shoot an American. We’ve got due process rights, etc. Well, that, in a way, highlights the whole problematic nature of targeted assassinations, because the fact that he’s an American actually makes no difference in terms of the international law that’s being invoked. No matter what nationality, you have certain due process rights, under international law, as well as domestic law. So if Americans have a great concern that an American should not be targeted without some sort of due process, why is it that that practice, that policy, can be applied to virtually anyone else? AMY GOODMAN: This US-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki recently issued an audio message to American Muslims. This is a small part of what he had to say. ANWAR AL-AWLAKI: I, for one, was born in the US. I lived in the US for twenty-one years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam involved in nonviolent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued US aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the US and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim. I invite you to read the book of Allah, the Koran. You do not have to take anyone’s word for it. Decide for yourself whether it is the truth or not. To the Muslims in America, I have this to say. How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful coexistence with the nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brothers and sisters? How can you have your loyalty to a government that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims? AMY GOODMAN: That’s the US-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. I’d like you to respond to that and then, very briefly, the WikiLeaks video footage that you saw and the implications of that, but this— PHILIP ALSTON: Well, clearly, that’s abhorrent to be calling for a jihad against the United States or against any country in that way. There’s no question of that. But there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people who have made jihad calls against the United States. Where do we draw the line? There surely has to be some clear legal basis for singling this guy out and then for engaging in a policy which, as we said before, is going to lead to the United States, perhaps the CIA, which is not actually covered by combatant status and which would then be liable for murder charges if a CIA operative is arrested in Yemen and charges were pressed—it’s a very dangerous policy, despite the abhorrent nature of the claim made by the cleric. AMY GOODMAN: And the WikiLeaks footage, the US military footage from the Apache helicopter that also captures the audio track of the soldiers laughing and talking about targeting these Iraqis below, that happen to include two Iraqi Reuters employees, would you call that assassination? PHILIP ALSTON: Well, it’s horrendous footage, so forgive me for sort of extracting myself from the situation and being a little bit more analytical, as it were. The question is, is the United States government actually going to provide more details on the circumstances in which that engagement took place? The US government has said, “Ah, but there was a combat situation going on.” If that was true, then you give more leeway. But the US has not revealed other footage which would show that this was really in the heat of the moment. So if it wasn’t in the heat of the moment, then you’ve got a situation where the helicopter comes in, sees a group of individuals, doesn’t actually clarify whether they’re carrying arms or behaving in any other suspicious way, and simply takes them out. That’s very problematic. It then raises the question of, what are the rules of engagement? Are they tight enough? Is the military actually following up with effective post-mortems in these situations? And, of course, finally, there are many allegations against the US military, we never really hear anything about the proceedings that actually take place. All we hear is a few lines at the end saying, “No, we reviewed this, and we decided not to press any charges.” It’s time that there was more transparency in relation to incidents where these sort of things happen, and there are serious concerns about the legality. AMY GOODMAN: Should the UN investigate? PHILIP ALSTON: The UN would not be in a position to investigate without the full cooperation of the United States. And the UN has been calling on the US for a very long time to be much more transparent on these issues. AMY GOODMAN: Philip Alston, we want to thank you for being with us, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and a professor at New York University.

Kissinger Blocked Warning Against Assassination of Letelier

politicalassassinations — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:32:56 +0000

Cable ties Kissinger to Chile controversy By PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Apr 10, 8:21 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington's Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows. Whether Kissinger played a role in blocking the delivery of the warning against assassination to the governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay has long been a topic of controversy. Discovered in recent weeks by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization, the Sept. 16, 1976 cable is among tens of thousands of declassified State Department documents recently made available to the public. In 1976, the South American nations of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay were engaged in a program of repression code-named Operation Condor that targeted those governments' political opponents throughout Latin America, Europe and even the United States. Based on information from the CIA, the U.S. State Department became concerned that Condor included plans for political assassination around the world. The State Department drafted a plan to deliver a stern message to the three governments not to engage in such murders. In the Sept. 16, 1976 cable, the topic of one paragraph is listed as "Operation Condor," preceded by the words "(KISSINGER, HENRY A.) SUBJECT: ACTIONS TAKEN." The cable states that "secretary declined to approve message to Montevideo" Uruguay "and has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter." "The Sept. 16 cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots," Peter Kornbluh, the National Security Archive's senior analyst on Chile, said Saturday. Kornbluh is the author of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability." Jessica LePorin, a spokeswoman for Kissinger, says that the former secretary of state dealt many years ago with questions concerning the cancellation of the warnings to the South American governments and had no further comment on the matter. Kissinger has dealt with the issue indirectly. Writing in defense of Kissinger in 2004 when the issue arose, William D. Rogers, Kissinger's former assistant secretary of state, said Kissinger "had nothing to do with" a Sept. 20, 1976 cable instructing that the warnings to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay be canceled. Rogers died in 2007. "You can instruct" the U.S. ambassadors "to take no further action" on the subject of Operation Condor, said the Sept. 20 cable by Harry Shlaudeman, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, to Shlaudeman's deputy. The next day, on Sept. 21, 1976, agents of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet planted a car bomb and exploded it on a Washington, D.C., street, killing both former Ambassador Orlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Letelier was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet government. Nearly a month before the blast, the State Department seemed intent on delivering a strong message to the governments engaged in Operation Condor. An Aug. 23, 1976 State Department cable instructs the U.S. embassies in the capitals of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay to "seek appointment as soon as possible with highest appropriate official, preferably the chief of state." The message that was to be conveyed: the U.S. government knows that Operation Condor may "include plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain ... countries and abroad." "What we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved," Shlaudeman wrote in a memo to Kissinger dated Aug. 30, 1976. That memo is referenced in the newly disclosed Sept. 16, 1976 cable containing Kissinger's name. Concerns among the ambassadors may have led to cancellation of the planned warning. In the Aug. 30, 1976 memo, Shlaudeman discussed a possibility that the U.S. ambassador in Uruguay might be endangered by delivering a warning against assassination. The U.S. ambassador to Chile said that Pinochet might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with assassination plots. On the Net: National Security Archive: http://www.nsarchive.org

Kennedy Family Gets Say on Ted's FBI File Release

politicalassassinations — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:22:25 +0000

This approach could be used in regard to the Martin Luther King Jr. Records Act file releases on Dr. King Family Gets A Say on FBI Kennedy File Courtesy given to protect kin's rights before release By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | April 12, 2010 WASHINGTON — Edward M. Kennedy’s family will be given a rare opportunity to raise objections before the public disclosure of thousands of pages of the late Massachusetts senator’s exhaustive and secret FBI file, according to bureau officials and advisers to the family. The accommodation, though uncommon, will help ensure that the release of material on Kennedy gathered by agents throughout much of his life will not violate the privacy rights of his surviving relatives, those involved in the process said. “In certain circumstances [such as] the family of victims of crimes or, as in this case . . . a public official, [the FBI] may coordinate the release of certain material with the family,’’ said Dennis Argall, an FBI spokesman, adding that the practice was rare. “The family of a deceased person may have a privacy interest.’’ Three FBI officials said the bureau has nearly completed its review of 3,000 pages of Kennedy’s FBI file. Those pages constitute only the first installment in an unusually large collection of FBI documents about one of the most famous politicians in modern history, the heir to one of America’s most storied political dynasties, and the frequent source of fodder for the tabloids. The FBI’s Record Information Dissemination Section, in Winchester, Va., began expediting requests for the file soon after Kennedy’s death at age 77 from brain cancer in August. Those requests were filed by the Globe and other news media under the Freedom of Information Act. Before releasing the documents, however, the FBI says it will give the Kennedys a chance to weigh in. And while the family will not have any legal power to demand that information be withheld, the bureau said it will take into consideration any privacy concerns. “But the reason [for objecting] can’t simply be that it is embarrassing’’ information about Kennedy himself, Argall noted, adding that he does not expect the process to cause significant delays in releasing the information. There are no formal guidelines for consulting family members on the release of FBI files about individuals; Argall said the move is made on a case by case basis. But he pointed to a 2004 case in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that photos of former White House adviser Vince Foster taken by law enforcement officers after he killed himself in 1993 could be withheld from the public to protect the privacy of loved ones. “Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own,’’ Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the high court’s opinion in the Foster case. Consultation with family members is not only reserved for high-profile individuals such as politicians or celebrities. One recent example, according to the FBI, involved the family of a young woman killed in a shooting at a Utah shopping mall. When local media requested the killer’s FBI file, the family persuaded the FBI to withhold certain information. Several Kennedy family advisers have already been consulted about the pending release of the late senator’s file, according to two individuals with longtime ties to Kennedy who were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. One informal adviser at this stage is Kenneth Feinberg, a former chief of staff to the late senator who managed the US fund to compensate the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Now Feinberg is the Treasury Department’s “pay czar,’’ overseeing the compensation of executives at companies that have received federal bailout money. Feinberg, who is also chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, confirmed that he has had private discussions about the Kennedy family’s potential role in the release of the FBI file but said he was not authorized to discuss publicly any details. Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the senator’s widow, and other family members, including his son, Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, also declined to comment. The other sources knowledgeable about the process said it is not clear whether the FBI will allow the Kennedys to review all the documents set for release or only information the agency deems most likely to upset the family. Several said they believe the senator himself, as permitted by law, requested periodic updates of his FBI file. Speculation is growing among Kennedy family members and associates, historians, and the news media about what may be contained in the file — and how much will be made public. Experts on the FBI say the bureau is likely to remove specific references to individuals still living and to any sensitive national security data, including details related to Kennedy’s involvement in or oversight of intelligence matters. Some historians expect, however, that the files will reveal substantial information about the FBI’s investigations of threats to Kennedy in the decades after his older brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, were assassinated, particularly when Edward M. Kennedy ran for president in 1980. Like files on other famous people, there could also be information about possible extortion attempts against Kennedy, they said, as well as a variety of reports the FBI may have compiled about his private life. Several suggested the FBI could possess previously undisclosed information about the 1969 tragedy in which a passenger in Kennedy’s car, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned after the senator drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island after a party. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and served a suspended sentence. “It’s impossible for me to say what is in the file, though one can speculate that it will contain material about Senator Kennedy’s private life, including Chappaquiddick,’’ said Robert Dallek, a former professor at Boston University and author of several biographies of politicians. “I will be interested to see what will be released.’’ Previously disclosed government files show that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Richard M. Nixon, longtime Kennedy adversaries, unlawfully sought information to either discredit Kennedy or gain political leverage. Previously unknown details about these activities — and what was reported to them — could be revealed in Kennedy’s file. Embarrassing information about Kennedy, however, could be withheld if the bureau doubts its factual basis, it is part of an ongoing investigation, or officials determine there is no reasonable need for the public to know it. In addition, the family, possibly on the advice of its lawyers, could persuade the FBI to remove it. “When the FBI is actually investigating something they are great,’’ said David Kaiser, a history professor at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., who has written several books about the Kennedy brothers. “Everything gets written down and followed up and everyone who is supposed to see it sees it,’’ Kaiser said. “When it comes to Teddy, I don’t think that is going to be the case. There is also going to be a lot of unsubstantiated stuff from out of the blue. And there is no reason why we should see that.’’ Former senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania said that when he requested his own FBI file it contained a memo from Hoover reporting that the former civil rights aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy was overheard in “a darkened room full of Negroes’’ in 1951 expressing support for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Wofford said the incident in question, which took place when he was a student at Howard University in Washington, was during a slide show presentation he gave to fellow students in an apartment — with the lights turned off — that included descriptions of Communist propaganda posters he saw on a recent trip to India. “The FBI was really awful on key facts,’’ said Wofford. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Kennedy lived one of the most exhaustively chronicled lives, his FBI file is still expected to reveal some new facts about a national figure who was involved in nearly every major political debate — and controversy — of the second half of the 20th century. New information, specialists said, could cover Kennedy’s meetings with world leaders or with Soviet dissidents during the Cold War. But Kaiser said that should embarrassing episodes involving the late senator be revealed, how and why that information was gathered by the FBI may be most telling. If he were still living, “the person I suspect would be very embarrassed is Richard Nixon,’’ Kaiser said. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/04/12/family_gets_a_say_on_fbi_kennedy_file/

1964 Jackie Kennedy interviews to be published, ending 50 year ban

politicalassassinations — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:38:12 +0000

1964 Jackie Kennedy interviews to be published

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Hillel Italie, Ap National Writer Tue Apr 13, 2:54 pm ET

NEW YORK – During the first half of 1964, just months after her husband was assassinated, Jacqueline Kennedy sat for seven interviews with historian and family friend Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. They met at her home in Washington, D.C., where the former first lady discussed her marriage, her White House years, election-year campaigning and her husband's thoughts about a second term. The interview is part of what became the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library's Oral History and, at Jacqueline Kennedy's request, was kept sealed for an indefinite time. She died in 1994. Now, with the 50th anniversary of her father's inauguration coming next year, daughter Caroline Kennedy is allowing the conversations to be widely released. In September 2011, Hyperion will publish the transcripts and release six and one half hours of audiotape, providing a new and extended opportunity to hear the famously breathy voice of Jacqueline Kennedy discuss topics she rarely touched upon in public. Caroline Kennedy will serve as editor and write an introduction for the book, currently untitled, and a historian will provide annotation. (Schlesinger, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died in 2007.) "My mother's passion for history guided and informed her work in the White House," Kennedy, president of the Kennedy Library Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday issued by Hyperion. "She believed in my father, his vision for America, and in the art of politics, and felt it was important to share her knowledge and excitement with future generations. It is a privilege for me to honor the memory of my parents by making this unique history available." According to Hyperion, the interviews will cover everything from early campaigns to the Cuban Missile Crisis to Jacqueline Kennedy's role as first lady. "In these conversations, Mrs. Kennedy shares revealing insights into the politics and personalities of the day," Hyperion said in a statement. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who knew both Jacqueline Kennedy and Schlesinger, said the interviews might be as close as we'll ever get to a memoir from the late first lady. She noted that Kennedy did cooperate with biographer William Manchester around the same time (Kennedy later reportedly forced Manchester to remove some passages about the family from his "The Death of a President"), but said that she was likely more candid with Schlesinger because he was a friend and because Kennedy knew she had control of the transcripts. "The times I met Jackie, I found that she had an incredibly straightforward, analytical understanding of the family," said Goodwin, whose husband, Richard Goodwin, was a speechwriter for President Kennedy. "So my guess is that these interviews are going to be really interesting. She probably felt freer talking to Arthur and I would expect the conversations were more freewheeling and insightful." Caroline Kennedy has published several books with Hyperion, including a collection of her mother's favorite poems, and has worked for years with editor Gretchen Young, who acquired the book and audio and electronic rights. Kennedy's literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, declined to discuss specific financial terms, but said there was no auction for the book. Proceeds will be shared with the Kennedy library foundation, based in Boston. "These interviews offer a remarkable window into the intelligent, courageous and keen observer that Jacqueline Kennedy was," Hyperion president and publisher Ellen Archer said in a statement. "Readers will be riveted." The interviews are a key part of the library's planned celebration of the anniversary of the Kennedy inaugural. Other materials expected to be made public include "memos and correspondence from the White House relating to Mrs. Kennedy's White House restoration project, White House entertaining, travels abroad, relationship with the press and historic preservation." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100413/ap_on_en_ot/us_books_jacqueline_kennedy/print

Cutting-edge architecture in Dallas

politicalassassinations — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:01:35 +0000

This is an interesting excerpt from Financial Times online, an architecture critic looks at Dealey Plaza and what it conveys - dark days indeed. A photographer caught a contrasting alignment of architecture, displayed at the Hotel Lawrence where we meet annually, of the John Neely Bryan Cabin, the Gothic gargoyled roof of the Dallas Courts Building (now Old Red Visitors Center) and the space needle that looks over Dealey Plaza. But until we address the frozen and unresolved past in Dallas it will never reach the future - John Judge Cutting-edge architecture in Dallas By Edwin Heathcote Financial Times, FT.com Published: April 9 2010 23:52 The heart of Dallas is demarcated by a pair of small structures, a few footsteps apart. Both are empty, both are symbolic rather than functional. The first is a tiny log cabin, a simulacrum of the dwelling of John Neely Bryan, the city’s founder. The second is a cube defined by a curtain of concrete containing not much more than fresh air. This is the memorial to the city’s most notorious moment, the assassination of JFK, designed by Philip Johnson, a friend of the Kennedy family. Both monuments celebrate a kind of existential emptiness, one the memory of a place set up in the middle of nowhere, desolate, harsh, featureless. The other, a silent cenotaph commemorating a moment of national despair and crisis. The two boxy monuments themselves sit in a strange, bleak kind of centre. In fact, it’s no kind of centre at all. The road swerves away towards the railroad tracks and the nearly silent Union Station, a once grand building celebrating the city as a national transit centre but that now lacks even a ticket office. A small park punctuated with funereal art-deco structures segues into a grassy knoll. It’s all vaguely familiar, a view of the city as film set, the metaphorical camera set six floors up an anonymous brick book depository, the timer stuck on November 22 1963. Back in the other direction is the anonymous skyline of blank skyscrapers that signals the business district... The kind of solid urban fabric swept away to make too much space for the City Hall can still be seen in what is known as the West End Historic District. Here, mountainous iron-framed structures rise from the oddly deserted streets. Some of the structures are wonderful: the hulking proto-twin-towers of the 1922 Magnolia Building, the chunky civic heft of the very first Neiman Marcus store (1914), the soaring verticality of the 1931 Tower Petroleum Building and the delicately decorated grid of the 1910 building now inhabited by El Centro College. But the one building from the old days the city is known for is the one it’s known for for all the wrong reasons. The Texas School Book Depository Building of 1901 is a generic brick cliff of a warehouse, a bit Roman, a bit Chicago. Its ground floor is now inhabited by a JFK bookshop and on the sixth floor by an assassination museum. Dark, sober and compelling, the museum has a good crack at outlining a dark day for the city, and the infinite tentacles of conspiracy theory that grew in its wake. The zenith, though, the window from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot (or not) the president, is frustratingly glazed off, rendered inaccessible. The stacks of replica boxes are there, the window is there, and you can peer out of its neighbours, but the reliquary of the city’s view surely should be accessible. Edwin Heathcote is the FT’s architecture critic

The Price of Assassination

politicalassassinations — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:12:12 +0000

Reality is finally sinking in about assassinations, even at the New York Times. Of course they have worked so well here, who could blame them for thinking they'd have the same effect abroad? - John Judge "America... routinely firing missiles into countries it's not at war with"? Mr Wright has clearly never heard of the South East Asian nation of Laos then. America bombed that country around the clock for 9 years, dumping more ordinance than the whole of WWII combined, without ever being at war with them. [Comment from E.J. Daly who sent the article]

April 13, 2010

The Price of Assassination

By ROBERT WRIGHT

Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.

I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me 20 years ago that America would someday be routinely firing missiles into countries it’s not at war with. For that matter, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me a few months ago that America would soon be plotting the assassination of an American citizen who lives abroad. Shows you how much I know. President Obama, who during his first year in office oversaw more drone strikes in Pakistan than occurred during the entire Bush presidency, last week surpassed his predecessor in a second respect: he authorized the assassination of an American — Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Imam who after 9/11 moved from Virginia to Yemen, a base from which he inspires such people as the Fort Hood shooter and the would-be underwear bomber. Students of the law might raise a couple of questions: 1) Doesn’t it violate international law to fire missiles into Pakistan (especially on a roughly weekly basis) when the Pakistani government has given no formal authorization? 2) Wouldn’t firing a missile at al-Awlaki in Yemen compound the international-law question with a constitutional question — namely whether giving the death penalty to an American without judicially establishing his guilt deprives him of due process? I’m not qualified to answer these questions, and, besides, it doesn’t really matter what the correct answers are. The Obama administration has its lawyers scurrying to convince us that the answers are no and no, somewhat as the Bush administration dispatched John Yoo to justify its torture policy. And these answers, regardless of their legal merit, will be accepted so long as Americans are convinced that being safe in the post-9/11 world requires accepting them. So maybe the question to ask is whether Americans should be convinced of that — whether assassinating terrorists really helps keep us safe. There’s no way of answering this question with complete confidence, but it turns out there are some relevant and little-known data. They were compiled by Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago, who published her findings last year in the journal Security Studies. She studied 298 attempts, from 1945 through 2004, to weaken or eliminate terrorist groups through “leadership decapitation” — eliminating people in senior positions. Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect. Particularly ominous are Jordan’s findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent. Of course, that’s better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group fading away when there’s no decapitation are 33 percent. In other words, killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase the group’s chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent. Of course the usual caveat applies: It’s hard to disentangle cause and effect. Maybe it’s the more formidable terrorist groups that invite decapitation in the first place — and, needless to say, formidable groups are good at survival. Still, the other interpretation of Jordan’s findings — that decapitation just doesn’t work, and in some cases is counterproductive — does make sense when you think about it. For starters, reflect on your personal workplace experience. When an executive leaves a company — whether through retirement, relocation or death — what happens? Exactly: He or she gets replaced. And about half the time (in my experience, at least) the successor is more capable than the predecessor. There’s no reason to think things would work differently in a terrorist organization. Maybe that’s why newspapers keep reporting the death of a “high ranking Al Qaeda lieutenant”; it isn’t that we keep killing the same guy, but rather that there’s an endless stream of replacements. You’re not going to end the terrorism business by putting individual terrorists out of business. You might as well try to end the personal computer business by killing executives at Apple and Dell. Capitalism being the stubborn thing it is, new executives would fill the void, so long as there was a demand for computers. Of course, if you did enough killing, you might make the job of computer executive so unattractive that companies had to pay more and more for ever-less-capable executives. But that’s one difference between the computer business and the terrorism business. Terrorists aren’t in it for the money to begin with. They have less tangible incentives — and some of these may be strengthened by targeted killings. One of the main incentives is a kind of local prestige grounded in grievance. When people feel aggrieved — feel that foreigners have wronged them or exploited them or disrespected them — they may admire and appreciate those who fight on their behalf. Terrorists are nourished ultimately by a grass-roots sense of injustice. And one good way to stoke a sense of injustice is to fire missiles into cars, homes and offices in hopes of killing terrorists, while in fact killing no few innocent civilians. Estimates of the ratio of civilians to militants killed are all over the map — 50 to 1 or 10 to 1 or 1 to 2 or 1 to 10 — but the estimate of the Pakistani people, which is all that matters, tends toward the higher end. And the notion that these strikes are a kind of national humiliation long ago entered Pakistani culture. A popular song from a couple of years ago says Americans “kill people like insects.” You can imagine why, as Jordan’s data suggest, this counterproductive effect of decapitation might be stronger for religious groups than for groups driven by a secular ideology. To the intensely religious even the harshest adversity can seem like a test administered by a God who will reward faithful perseverance. And the belief that death in a holy war gets you to heaven can’t hurt when you’re looking for someone to replace an assassinated leader. Obviously, drone strikes must do some short-term good by disrupting the operations of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. And there’s no way of knowing for sure that this short-term good is outweighed by a long-term recruiting boost. But Jordan’s data, combined with common-sense analysis, make the merits of our current strategy far from clear. By itself that wouldn’t be a damning indictment. You have to choose some strategy in the face of uncertainty, and if this turns out to be the wrong one — well, that’s life; strategic failure happens. But in this case the price we pay goes far beyond failure. If Harold Koh — the state department lawyer assigned the job of justifying Obama’s strategy — carries the day, America will be telling the world that it’s O.K. to lob missiles into countries that haven’t attacked you, as long as you think a terrorist may live there. Do we really want to send that message to, for example, Russia and China, both of which have terrorism problems? Or India or Pakistan? And are we sure we want to say that, actually, due process of law isn’t really guaranteed all American citizens so long as there’s a war on terrorism — which, remember, is a war that may continue for eternity? I’m not sure I’d want to pay these prices even for a strategy that helped us in the war against terrorism. To pay them for a strategy that may be hurting us is even less appetizing.

Benazir Bhutto murder 'avoidable'

politicalassassinations — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:37:04 +0000

Benazir Bhutto murder 'avoidable'

A long-awaited UN report into the killing of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto two years ago has been highly critical of the government of the day. It says Bhutto's death at a rally near Islamabad could have been prevented if proper security measures had been taken by Gen Pervez Musharraf's government. The subsequent investigation into the crime was also sharply criticised. It was noted that the crime scene in Rawalpindi was hosed down immediately after the explosion.

This, the report says, could not have happened without the knowledge of higher authorities. The report, compiled by an independent commission appointed by the UN, concludes that the pervasive presence of Pakistan's politicised intelligence agencies hampered the investigation. The commission was set up in July last year in response to a request from Pakistan. 'Profound failure ' Speaking at a news conference at the UN in New York, the head of the commission, Heraldo Munoz, said the authorities had failed to protect Bhutto and to investigate her assassination properly.

“ The collection of 23 pieces of evidence was manifestly inadequate in a case that should have resulted in a collection of thousands of pieces of evidence ”

Heraldo Munoz head of commission which compiled the UN report

"A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts, first to protect Ms Bhutto and second to investigate with vigour all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack but also in its conception, planning and financing," he said. "Responsibility for Ms Bhutto's security on the day of her assassination rested with the federal government, the government of Punjab and the Rawalpindi district police," he continued. "None of these entities took the necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced." Better protection, Mr Munoz said, had been given to two other former prime ministers who belonged to the main political party supporting Gen Musharraf. Mr Munoz said Bhutto would have not been killed had the Rawalpindi district police taken adequate security measures.

"The security arrangements for Ms Bhutto by the Rawalpindi district police were ineffective and insufficient," he said. Nor, the commission head added, had the police chief acted independently of higher authorities when the decision to hose down the crime scene was taken. "The Rawalpindi district police actions and omissions in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Ms Bhutto, including the hosing down of the crime scene, and failure to collect and preserve evidence inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation," he said. "The collection of 23 pieces of evidence was manifestly inadequate in a case that should have resulted in a collection of thousands of pieces of evidence." Publication delay The UN report had been due to be published at the end of March but was delayed for two weeks at the request of Bhutto's widower, Pakistani President Asif Zardari, who had called for the investigation. The government said it wanted extra time to include input from Afghanistan, the US and Saudi Arabia, three countries that had apparently warned Bhutto of a death threat. The three-member panel was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances of Bhutto's death, not assign criminal responsibility. Gen Musharraf declared that the late head of the Pakistani Taliban, Beitullah Mehsud, organised the assassination. Bhutto herself wrote that four suicide squads were after her, some linked to al-Qaeda. But she also accused a group of senior politicians and intelligence officials of plotting to kill her, and many of her followers blame elements of the military establishment and Gen Musharraf's government for her death.

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8623175.stm Published: 2010/04/16

U.N. investigators blame Musharraf government, security lapses for Bhutto death

politicalassassinations — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:03:59 +0000

United Nations report asks the same questions that "conspiracy theorists" do here about political assassinations, but theirs are taken seriously and believed about foreign governments. Our questions are dismissed out of hand because we believe our government to be benign or at worst only incompetent. Note the commentary at the end about the role of the Pakistani ISI, a close affiliate of our own CIA which was the funnel for illegal covert operations against Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s, money that went to Osama bin Laden and the leading opium dealer at the time, Hekmyatar. ISI funds passed to Mohammed Atta in August, 2001 in Florida were the initial "smoking gun" mentioned by the FBI, but never fully pursued. The parallels to our own flawed investigations of political murders here are rampant - John Judge U.N. investigators blame Musharraf government, security lapses for Bhutto death By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 16, 2010; A14 UNITED NATIONS -- The military government of then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf failed to fulfill its responsibility to protect former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in the hours leading up to her December 2007 assassination or to vigorously investigate her killing by a 15-year-old suicide bomber, according to a U.N. fact-finding commission report released Thursday. The three-member commission, headed by Chilean diplomat Heraldo Muñoz, also accused unnamed high-ranking Pakistani authorities of obstructing the commission's access to military and intelligence sources. The 65-page report -- which relied on interviews with 250 people -- provided a blistering account of government lapses that led to one of the most significant political assassinations in a generation. It said a police investigator deliberately sought to avoid solving the case out of fear of discovering the possible involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. "Bhutto's assassination could have been prevented if adequate security measures had been taken," the report said. None of Pakistan's local or national security authorities "took the necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced." The Dec. 27, 2007, attack took place as Bhutto was leaving a campaign rally in a neighborhood in the city of Rawalpindi. She died after the explosion forced her head into the handle of an escape hatch of a campaign vehicle. Twenty-four other people were killed in the attack and 91 were injured The report also provides a damning account of the role of Bhutto's political party, Pakistan People's Party, in providing backup security for her. Many of those individuals are now in the government of Bhutto's husband, President Ali Asif Zardari, who was partly involved in overseeing his wife's security. The report charges Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who was responsible for providing supplemental security on the day of the attack, with fleeing the scene of the explosion, leaving Bhutto's vehicle isolated -- a decision that amounted to "a serious security lapse." "The commission recognizes the heroism of individual PPP supporters, many of whom sacrificed themselves to protect her; however, the additional security arrangements of the PPP lacked leadership and were inadequate," the report said. The harsh tone of the report appeared to take Pakistani authorities by surprise. Minutes after a copy of the report was presented to Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, he cancelled a scheduled news conference and announced that he would be traveling back to Pakistan to personally deliver the information to his government. The report says local police "inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation" by failing to collect evidence and by hosing down the crime scene hours after Bhutto's assassination. It also challenged the Pakistani government's assertion, made in a news conference shortly after Bhutto's assassination, that a Taliban militant, Baitullah Mehsud, was the mastermind behind the killing. The report said that telephone intercepts provided by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency were too ambiguous to prove Mehsud's role in the attack. The U.N. commission said police investigators focused primarily on low-level operatives and ignored potential suspects "further up the hierarchy in the planning, financing and execution of the assassination."

The freedoms afforded would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr.

politicalassassinations — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 05:56:03 +0000

The freedoms afforded would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr. By Annys Shin Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 23, 2010; 5:03 PM John W. Hinckley Jr. is a man of routine. On warm days, he likes to sit on a bench outside the John Howard Pavilion on the grounds of St. Elizabeths hospital, and work his way through a stack of newspapers and magazines. He's often seen walking alone on the hospital grounds or ducking into Martin's, a nearby carryout, to pick up four-packs of 9 Lives to feed stray cats. At 54, the one-time presidential assailant lives like a kid on perpetual spring break. The closest thing he has to a 9-to-5 job is a volunteer gig at the hospital library. He fills his free time strumming on his guitar, crafting pop songs about ideal love or going on supervised jaunts to the beach or a bowling alley. After 28 years at St. Elizabeths, however, the realities of middle age have begun to set in. His father, Jack Hinckley, died in 2008, inspiring the son to pen a tribute song titled "Hero." His mother, Jo Ann, is 84. His siblings, Scott and Diane, live in Dallas. Over the government's steadfast objections, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman, who oversees his case, and Hinckley's doctors are slowly preparing him for what they see as inevitable: His release from St. Elizabeths -- life on his own. Toward that end, Friedman four years ago let Hinckley make overnight trips to his parents' home in Williamsburg. As the visits passed without incident, the judge gradually increased their duration. Last June, Friedman upped the stays from seven to 10 days each, 12 times a year. He also let Hinckley obtain a driver's license. Hinckley now enjoys the most freedom he has had since his 1981 arrest for shooting and wounding President Ronald Reagan, two law enforcement officers and White House press secretary Jim Brady. Brady suffered brain damage and remains partially paralyzed. * * * Friedman concluded that the depression that drove Hinckley, then a 25-year-old college dropout, to stalk the actress Jodie Foster and to try to impress her by killing a president has been in remission for at least 15 years. The judge said Hinckley still suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, but to a much lesser extent, thanks in part to a court order that forbids him from talking to the press. That order, in place for two decades, ended a stream of letters to news outlets, including one in which Hinckley claimed to be a political prisoner and offered to trade places with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. Hinckley now splits his time between two very different gated communities: the crumbling campus of St. Elizabeths and Kingsmill, the 2,900-acre luxury resort community to which his parents relocated from Denver in the late 1980s to be closer to him. One has a shelter for the homeless, knee-high weeds and boarded-up buildings; the other boasts three championship golf courses, a yacht club and a spa. Around St. Elizabeths, the fatal shooting of a resident might earn a brief in the local paper. Around Kingsmill, the fatal shooting of a pet cat is front-page news. Hinckley has voiced his preference. If released, he hopes to settle in Williamsburg. And who can blame him? Instead of Martin's, he has the Pottery Wine and Cheese Shop, where Hinckley and his mother are a frequent sight. Instead of carryouts, he has the Mill, a gourmet coffee shop overlooking tennis courts, where the manager says Hinckley sat recently with a small group of people drinking coffee. Even the state mental hospital in Williamsburg, Eastern State, where he volunteers in a library, is more pleasant. But Williamsburg compares less favorably to Ward 8 in one crucial way: The residents are not quite as accommodating. While Hinckley was accosted at least once during an outing in the District by an angry citizen who recognized him, he has ventured out undisturbed on hundreds of other occasions, with hospital staff or on his own. In Williamsburg, by contrast, his social worker Carl Beffa found it nearly impossible to find Hinckley a volunteer job. The Humane Society, a local foundation, a homeless services group, a retirement home, a prison, and the Salvation Army, among others, turned him down. "I could not believe the response," Beffa testified at the 2008 hearings on Hinckley's request for more privileges. "Raising my children in that community . . . it totally shocked me." Dennis Grannan, who runs Vibrant Life Ministries, a homeless-services organization, was open to hiring Hinckley. "It was in my heart to help him," he says. But his board didn't want to invite controversy. Hinckley got an even colder reception from a local singles group. His sister, Diane Sims, testified in 2008 that as soon as they arrived at the potluck event, the group leader told them Hinckley's presence made her uncomfortable. Hinckley has had better luck with clergy. Over the past year, he met several times for about an hour with the Rev. Harry Warren, a 74-year-old Baptist minister who has counseled murderers and mental patients. "We talked easily," says Warren, describing Hinckley as reserved and pleasant. "We didn't go into great depth about anything. I was there just to listen." The Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists have also welcomed Hinckley, offering a volunteer job in their library. The Rev. Jennifer Ryu says her board agreed after being assured by Hinckley's minders and his brother that Hinckley posed no danger to himself or others. "He needs a community," Ryu says. "He needs to socialize. We believe in leaving no one out of our circle." Hinckley has not taken the Unitarians up on their offer. And prosecutors are likely to use that to ding him for laziness. In 2008, they argued that he would "go to great lengths to contact women, play and record his music, and arrange for art lessons," but lacked initiative when it came to finding a job. "Well, what's new about that?" countered Hinckley's lawyer, Barry Levine. "Many people prefer art and music and social relationships to hard work. Can it be said that . . . that makes them dangerous?" In Kingsmill, Hinckley's regular visits have managed to put some residents at ease. "As far as I am concerned, he was always welcome," says a woman who lives at the end of Joanne Hinckley's block and declined to give her name. Before Jack Hinckley died, she frequently saw father and son walking. These days, she is more likely to see the younger Hinckley behind the wheel with his mother at his side. A few blocks away, some homeowners express concern about what will come next. "The question is what is it going to be like when he is unsupervised 24-7?" says longtime resident John Shulson. "In the back of my head, I have doubts." * * * For now, Friedman has addressed such concerns by imposing a slew of restrictions. At least four days before going to Williamsburg, Hinckley must give the court the names and addresses of places he plans to go. Whenever he leaves his mother's subdivision, he must bring her or a sibling. After each excursion, his family has to fill out a report on his behavior. Hinckley can only surf the Internet with family supervision or with controls that limit his access to certain sites. Hinckley must also meet with Beffa and a psychiatrist every trip. He has to carry a GPS-enabled cellphone so hospital officials and the Secret Service can verify his whereabouts. The Service also dispatches agents to keep an eye on him. All that surveillance makes it hard for Hinckley to achieve a main therapeutic objective of the trips: making friends and meeting women, or, as the court order put it, "integrating himself into his mother's community." Hinckley hasn't had a steady girlfriend since Leslie deVeau, a former patient at St. Elizabeths. After more than a decade together, the relationship ended in 2007. His doctors testified that deVeau could no longer take the constant scrutiny from the Secret Service, reporters, the hospital and the court. Since Hinckley's obsession with Foster inspired his attack, psychiatrists and lawyers devote much energy to dissecting his interactions with women. In 1997, a judge denied his request for more time with his parents because of the intense attention he began paying to St. Elizabeths chief pharmacist Jeannette Wick. More recently, the government and his lawyers have debated whether his behavior toward women is concerning or merely hapless. For a guy who spends most of his time confined to an institution or chaperoned by his elderly mother, Hinckley has a busy love life. He has been romantically involved with at least two women and befriended several others. Nicole Rafanello, one of his doctors, testified that he tended to "stockpile" women because he was starved for female attention and needed "backups." He had a rocky relationship with a woman identified in court papers as "Ms. M," who started as a friend but at some point granted him what Hinckley called "fondling privileges." Ms. M, who was not a St. Elizabeths resident, suffered from bipolar disorder and Hinckley's doctors said she could be unpredictable and say hurtful things about his family. Hinckley was also involved with a woman identified as "Ms. G," whom his sister described as "energetic," "vivacious" and taken. She had a live-in boyfriend. Prosecutors cited both liaisons as evidence of Hinckley's poor judgment and troubling tendency to pursue unrealistic romances. The judge didn't buy it. At one point during the hearings, Levine asked rhetorically whether people should be locked up for bad judgment in romantic relationships. Friedman interjected: "We don't have enough room." Back at St. Elizabeths, Hinckley is spending his last days at John Howard doing what he always does: sitting outside reading. In the coming weeks, he will move next door into a new glass-sheathed, grass-topped facility. Its "therapeutic design" offers airy living spaces and enclosed courtyards -- a welcome change of scene. On a recent afternoon, he parked himself on a bench with a plastic bag filled with magazines and newspapers. (He gave up books about 10 years ago after prosecutors said his reading list proved he was still into violence-themed books and music. The list was never made public.) His outfit -- T-shirt, shorts and baseball cap -- befit a man with no pressing appointments. After a while, he got up and relocated to a bench beneath some trees. From his new spot, he sat quietly looking out at the parking lot. A few minutes later, a hospital worker appeared by the entrance. While she said nothing, he seemed to take it as his cue to go. Toting his plastic bag, he ambled past her without a word and disappeared through the glass doors. Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

John Carl Warnecke, Architect to Kennedy, Dies at 91

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:37:38 +0000

John Carl Warnecke, Architect to Kennedy, Dies at 91

April 23, 2010

New York Times

By WILLIAM GRIMES

John Carl Warnecke, the court architect of the Kennedy administration and the designer of John F. Kennedy’s grave site at Arlington National Cemetery, died on Saturday at his home in Healdsburg, Calif. He was 91 and also had homes in San Francisco and Manhattan. The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his daughter, Margo Warnecke Merck, said. Mr. Warnecke, the son of the prominent Bay Area architect Carl I. Warnecke, established a flourishing architectural practice in San Francisco noted for its commitment to contextualism — a respect for local surroundings when designing a building. He came to national attention in the late 1950s with his model for a new United States Embassy in Bangkok. His proposal for a light pagoda-like building with slender white stilts that seemed to rise, miragelike, from a lake was never built, but won wide critical attention for its ingenious blending of Western and Eastern forms. In 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy became dismayed at plans to raze several historic Federal-style houses in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, and erect outsize marble and glass government office buildings in their place. She persuaded her husband to start anew with a more preservation-minded plan. Mr. Warnecke won the commission, which was not entirely surprising. He had recently taken on a historically sensitive project when he designed a civic center and capitol building for the new state of Hawaii that incorporated the 19th-century Iolani Palace. Just as important, Kennedy had known him since 1940, when Kennedy spent a few months auditing business courses at Stanford and Mr. Warnecke played left tackle on Stanford’s undefeated “Wow Boys” team that beat Nebraska in the 1941 Rose Bowl. Later, Mr. Warnecke was drawn into Kennedy’s circle by an old Stanford friend, Paul B. Fay Jr., who had become close to Kennedy when they went through PT boat training together; Kennedy appointed him under secretary of the Navy. In Lafayette Square, a project that unfolded over the remainder of the decade, Mr. Warnecke preserved the old row houses, and the character of the square, and integrated two large office buildings, the National Courts Building and the New Executive Office Building, by setting them well back from the street in courtyards behind the row houses. In 1963 Kennedy appointed Mr. Warnecke to serve on the Commission of Fine Arts, which approves all federal building projects in Washington. That fall, the two men went to Boston to review a potential site and plans for a presidential library. Mr. Warnecke also developed a new master plan for the Naval Academy in Annapolis that included a new library and three math and science buildings. The assassination of the president gave Mr. Warnecke his most visible project, the Kennedy grave site at Arlington, on a grassy slope overlooking the Potomac. Mr. Warnecke proposed a four-part landscape design. In the model, a circular walk led to an elliptical granite overlook, where steps ascended to the marble grave platform. At the center of the platform, backed by a wall with the presidential seal, a triangular brass font cupped the Eternal Flame, which had been lit by Mrs. Kennedy at her husband’s funeral. In a memo to Mrs. Kennedy explaining his design, Mr. Warnecke wrote that the flame “was stronger than any sculpture or any structure that might be added to it.” When the model was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in November 1964, Ada Louise Huxtable, the architecture critic of The New York Times, wrote, “Never have the complexities of a design problem and the difficulties of a site been so painfully and publicly clear, and rarely have results been greeted with such general praise obviously motivated by relief.” She had already deemed Mr. Warnecke “the architect who has done the most to bring a new design frontier to Washington.” When the grave site was consecrated on March 15, 1967, the wall had been eliminated, and the bronze font had been replaced by a beige circular stone, five feet in diameter, from Massachusetts. “The total design and composition must be simple,” Mr. Warnecke wrote to Mrs. Kennedy, “and out of its simplicity and dignity will come its beauty.” In an unpublished memoir, Mr. Warnecke wrote that his work with Mrs. Kennedy on the grave site developed into a romantic relationship, according to Kathryn Livingston, who is editing the book. He also discussed the relationship briefly in two books, Edward Klein’s “Just Jackie: Her Private Years” (1998) and Sarah Bradford’s “America’s Queen” (2000). Mr. Klein’s account was widely reported at the time, after People magazine published long excerpts from the book. John Carl Warnecke was born on Feb. 24, 1919, in Oakland. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1941, he enrolled in Harvard’s architecture school, where he studied with Walter Gropius and completed the three-year course in one year, receiving his master’s degree in 1942. A football injury made him ineligible to serve in the military. After working for the housing authority in Richmond, Calif., and as a draftsman in his father’s firm, he set up his own architectural practice and developed a reputation for his environmentally sensitive designs for buildings at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. His contextual approach was applied at the Mira Vista Elementary School in El Cerrito, Calif. (1951), which appeared to grow organically out of the hills behind it. His open-space design for the Mabel McDowell Elementary School in Columbus, Ind. (1960) — designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001 — addressed the flat landscape, with its silos, barns and Victorian houses. “Not many large architectural firms in the United States would spend time worrying about the special qualities of the San Francisco Bay region, the cultural heritage of the Hawaiian Islands or the landscape of southern Indiana,” the architectural critic Peter Blake wrote in 1975 in the Russian-language magazine Amerika. “Warnecke’s firm did.” By 1977 Mr. Warnecke was running the largest architectural firm in the United States, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington and Honolulu. His large-scale projects included the AT&T Long Lines Building on Thompson Street in Manhattan (1974), the Soviet Embassy (1975) and the Hart Senate Office Building (1982) in Washington, and the South Terminal at Logan Airport in Boston (1977). In addition to his daughter, Margo, of Healdsburg, Mr. Warnecke is survived by a sister, Margaret Putnam, of Windsor, Calif.; his sons Rodger, of Santa Rosa, Calif., and Fred, of San Rafael, Calif.; and four grandchildren. After 1977 he began scaling down his practice. In retirement, he grew grapes on his ranch in the Alexander Valley and worked on his memoirs, which he completed shortly before his death.

An obituary on Friday about the architect John Carl Warnecke referred incorrectly to the publication Amerika, in which the critic Peter Blake wrote about Mr. Warnecke’s work. It was a Russian-language magazine for readers in the Soviet Union; it was not a “Soviet magazine.” The obituary also misstated the location of the AT&T Long Lines Building in Manhattan, one of Mr. Warnecke’s large-scale projects. It is on Thomas Street, not Thompson Street.

Conservative Republican William McKenzie befriended Gerald Ford while representing Marina Oswald

politicalassassinations — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:41:17 +0000

Conservative Republican William McKenzie befriended Gerald Ford while representing Marina Oswald Dallas Morning News, April 23, 2010 http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=william-mckenzie&pid=142160063 WILLIAM ALLEN McKENZIE, 87, died on Sunday morning, April 18, 2010, four weeks after the death of his beloved wife of 55 years, Sally Freeman McKenzie. Born March 13, 1923, in Columbus, Georgia, William A. McKenzie, was the only child of William A. and Mattye Maye McKenzie. A lifelong Christian and lifelong Member of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church, known to all as "Billy Mac", he and his mother moved to Houston, Texas, when he was very young. During the Depression, his devoted Mother took a secretarial job in Washington, D.C., and young Bill split his time through his teenage years with his Mother in Washington, D.C. and family in Houston. He graduated from Houston's Reagan High School in 1939. Six hours short of his college graduation, Billy Mac joined 1,300 other classmates from Texas A&M University and joined the United States armed services. An engineer, he was a Captain and company commander in a combat engineer battalion with General George S. Patton's Third Army. One of his most moving memories of his wartime service occurred at 3:00pm on April 11, 1945. It was that hour when he and other U.S. Army officers liberated the notorious Buchenwald Concentration Camp. McKenzie loved General Patton and with good reason. One of Patton's favorite quotations was: "Give me an army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battlegive me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war." After his return from Europe, Captain McKenzie completed his degree at his beloved Texas A&M University in 1946, working his way through school waiting tables at the mess hall. Military experience and an interest in the law brought him to Dallas and the SMU School of Law. While at SMU, McKenzie forged many lifelong friendships through his membership in the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. Upon graduating from the SMU School of Law in 1949, he worked as an Assistant District Attorney in the Dallas District Attorney's office, and later joined the law firm of well known and respected trial attorney, Angus G. Wynne, Sr. Bill McKenzie led a charmed and remarkable life. He practiced law for over fifty years in Dallas. His reputation was unblemished and he prided himself in serving as a mentor for young lawyers. Beginning with the Wynne Law Firm, the firm became Wynne & McKenzie and ultimately, he was joined by exceptional corporate attorney, Henry Baer, and they formed McKenzie and Baer. His practice spanned the globe with clients in the four corners of the world. He began a lifelong friendship with former President Gerald Ford through his representation of clients, particularly Marina Oswald during her appearances and testimony before the Warren Commission. In Congress at the time, Gerald Ford, was a member of the Warren Commission. Bill and Sally McKenzie were devoted community and civic volunteers. Bill served as Dallas County Republican Chairman from 1974-1980 and was a member of the State Republican Party Executive Committee. His leadership laid the foundation for the Republican Party's dominance in Dallas County from the late 1970s until the 1990s. Bill was instrumental in recruiting judicial candidates to run as Republicans, which thereby turned party affiliation of judges at the Dallas County Court House from Democrat to Republican. For over fifty years, he was an advisor and active fundraiser for many Texas and national political leaders. Long time supporters of President George H.W. Bush, Bill McKenzie was Chairman of the Board of Regents at Texas A&M University, when former President Bush selected A&M as the home for his presidential library and museum. As Bush said in his collection of letters, All the Best, McKenzie "was instrumental in getting me to locate my library on that wonderful campus." Other than his family, nothing meant more to Billy Mac than his affiliation with Texas A&M University. Cadet, Head Yell Leader, Ross Volunteer, Regent from 1981-1993, appointed by Texas Governor Bill Clements, the 29th Chairman of the Board of Regents, and Distinguished Alumnus - all pale in comparison to his simple affection for the campus, Texas A&M's espirit de corps and the Aggie students gathered in Kyle Field on a beautiful fall day. Billy Mac credited Texas A&M with all good things which came to him, including the naming of the airport terminal building at College Station's Easterwood Airport, which was named for him in permanent recognition of his love for and devotion to the Aggies. In 2005, Mr. McKenzie, a 33 degree Mason, was recognized with the Masonic Fifty Year Service Award. He was a Life Member of the Salesmanship Club of Dallas, served as the secretary/treasurer of the Dallas Bar Association; was a member of The Texas A&M Lettermen's Association Hall of Fame; was a Board member of the Former Students' Association of Texas A&M University; and was named a Jimmy Williams Distinguished Alumni by the Dallas A&M Club. Additionally, he was active in many civic and statewide associations, including service as a Trustee of the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children; Chairman and Trustee of the Dallas Natural History Museum; the George Bush Foundation; founding member of the Thanksgiving Square Committee; founding board member of Camp Grady Spruce; Board member of the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association; Board member of Community Foundation of Texas; and Chairman of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. He, along with Henry S. Miller, Jr., co-founded the Dallas Civic Opera, where he was the initial secretary. Mr. McKenzie was a member of the Dallas Country Club, the Idlewild and Terpsichorean Clubs, a former member of the Brook Hollow Golf Club, and the Tarry House in Austin, Texas. Billy Mac enjoyed spending time at his lake house at Lake Texoma. If the flags were flying, the door was open to all. The family would like to acknowledge and thank the compassionate caregivers: Helga Mayfield, Helen Allen, Shirley Cooks, Magnolia Colwell, Lucy Githua, Willie Wolford, Mabel Chase, and many more who cared for Mr. McKenzie and his wife, Sally, during her battle with Alzheimer's disease. Mr. McKenzie is survived by his daughter, Martha Freeman McKenzie Hill and husband, J. French Hill of Little Rock, Arkansas; his son, Peter Humphries McKenzie and wife, Helen Marie Shea McKenzie of Dallas; and his four beloved grandchildren: Sarah Elizabeth McKenzie Hill; William Payne Hill; Shea Catherine Freeman McKenzie; and William Michael McKenzie.

FEDS: Armed Obama seeker at N.C. airport can go

politicalassassinations — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:01:09 +0000

from Salon.com

Feds: Armed Obama-seeker at N.C. airport can go

Joseph McVey, held in jail since Sunday, is now free to leave if he posts $100,000 bond

By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press

Authorities
say an armed man spotted at a North Carolina airport parking lot just
after Air Force One departed can get out of jail if he posts bond.

Joseph Sean McVey has been held since Sunday on a misdemeanor
charge of going armed in terror of the public. A judge said Monday that
the Ohio man was being held at the request of federal authorities. A
Secret Service spokesman says that agency is not involved.

Asheville airport public safety chief Jeff Augram says local
authorities wanted McVey held until 6 p.m. Monday and listed the Secret
Service on court papers because the agency was on the scene. Augram
also says McVey had formulas to help shooters fire rifles outfitted
with scopes, but did not have a rifle with him.

McVey is being held on $100,000 bond.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/04/26/us_obama_nc_airport_arrest_1/index.html

Malcolm X gunman freed on parole

politicalassassinations — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:03:11 +0000

The other two gunmen have been identified by Baba Zak Kondo in his work, Conspiracys: Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X. According to eyewitness Roland Sheppard, one of the gunmen was seen in the offices of the NYPD. Other Bureau of Special Services and Investigations BOSSI agents working for the NYPD penetrated Malcolm's organization and worked as security guards. Hagan still promotes the idea that he decided on his own, with two others active in the Nation of Islam to kill Malcolm X for his criticism of and defection from NOI and it's leader Elijah Mohammed. Other evidence points to the FBI, CIA. Army Intelligence and police agents who fomented the divisions within NOI and plotted to destroy Malcolm X and his Organization of Afro-American Unity, in part because he was making alliances with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., both of them considered dangerous "Black Messiah" leaders of African-Americans who would address poverty, racism and militarism. Hagan may have been totally unaware of how he was used by these elements in the plotting. At least one of the other falsely accused shooters was murdered shortly after his release from prison. Some African-American commentators have asked if he would have been paroled had he been part of the assassination an important White iconic figure. James Earl Ray, the falsely accused White assassin of Dr. King died in prison seeking release on appeal. Lee Harvey Oswald, the falsely accused assassin of President Kennedy was murdered in the Dallas jail before trial. Sirhan Sirhan has been denied numerous parole requests for his wrongful conviction in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy - John Judge Malcolm X gunman freed on parole BBC April 27, 2010 The only man to have admitted his role in the killing of controversial US black leader Malcolm X has been released from prison on parole. Thomas Hagan, 69, was released from a New York jail 45 years after the assassination, officials confirmed. Hagan said he was one of three men who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in 1965. But he has insisted that the two men who were convicted with him were not involved. They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. Hagan's release was announced by the New York State Department of Correctional Services on Tuesday. Spokeswoman Linda Foglia said he was scheduled for release on Wednesday but the date was moved forward because the paperwork had been completed. Hagan, who has repeatedly expressed regret for his actions, applied for parole 16 times before a board approved his request last month. He had been allowed to spend five nights a week at his Brooklyn home on a work- release programme for the past 22 years. In the 1960s, Hagan was a member of the militant Nation of Islam movement, in which Malcolm X was a major figure for some time. Malcolm X rose to fame for his firebrand speeches in which he espoused black rights and denounced white people. However, towards the end of his life he appeared to be taking a more conciliatory approach which made him enemies within the Nation of Islam.

2 witnesses to key events surrounding JFK assassination die

politicalassassinations — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:36:36 +0000

2 witnesses to key events surrounding JFK assassination die 11:11 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 By SCOTT PARKS / The Dallas Morning News sparks@dallasnews.com The deaths of H. Louis Nichols and Aubrey Rike probably wouldn't have been noticed outside their circle of family and friends – except for one thing: Both men were eyewitnesses to important events surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy. The assassination at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas occurred more than 46 years ago. When all eyewitnesses have died, historians will be left with no one significant to interview. The flesh-and-blood humanity found in troubled eyes and wistful faces animated by dramatic memories will be lost forever. Then, we'll be left to assemble new accounts of momentous events – as we have with Lincoln's assassination, the Titanic's sinking, the destruction at Pearl Harbor – from dusty records, old videos or sketchy secondhand accounts of friends and relatives who once talked to the eyewitnesses or who found yellowed letters in an attic trunk. J. Frank Dobie, the noted Texas author and folklorist, once said that the average Ph.D. thesis "is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another." With the deaths of Nichols, Rike and others in the past year, we move closer to the time when no one is left to testify. H. Louis Nichols: Dallas lawyer visited Oswald in jail 10:59 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 By SCOTT PARKS / The Dallas Morning News sparks@dallasnews.com H. Louis Nichols, a Dallas lawyer who died Sunday at 94, sat knee to knee with Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 23, 1963, the day after President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas. The story of how he came to share a few one-on-one moments with Oswald centers on the sense of professional responsibility Mr. Nichols felt as president of the Dallas County Bar Association in 1963. Dallas police arrested Oswald several hours after the assassination on a Friday afternoon. Once Oswald was in jail, it was unclear to the world whether he wanted or had requested an attorney. It also was unclear whether the FBI or police might be keeping him from an attorney while interrogating him. By 2 p.m. Saturday, Mr. Nichols began receiving calls from Dallas attorneys concerned that Oswald did not have an attorney. Esteemed law school deans from "back East" were calling to express concern that only a legal backwater would deny an attorney to a murder suspect, Mr. Nichols' friends told him. The situation was puzzling. Mr. Nichols was a civil lawyer unfamiliar with criminal law. Oswald, who was indigent, couldn't pay a lawyer. In 1963, criminal suspects in Texas had no right to a court-appointed lawyer before they were indicted. Still, Mr. Nichols concluded that even a pariah like Oswald deserved representation. And it was up to him as bar association president to see if the accused killer wanted a lawyer. So, Mr. Nichols cleaned up, got dressed on a Saturday afternoon and drove to the city jail. After navigating his way through a horde of reporters and television cameramen, he went to Police Department offices and announced that he was there to speak to Oswald. Accompanied by Police Chief Jesse Curry, Mr. Nichols took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Police and Courts Building, where he found the prisoner by himself in a small cell between two empty cells. A police guard sat just outside the cell door. "So, he sat on one bunk and I sat on the other. Maybe three or four feet apart," Nichols told a lawyer for the Warren Commission, a prestigious group of government officials who investigated the assassination. Nichols described Oswald, who was dressed in white T-shirt and slacks, as calm and rested. He had a bruise over one eye but appeared to be in good health. He said that police were holding him "incommunicado" and that he did not know what had happened to the president, Mr. Nichols told the Warren Commission. Oswald said he wanted a New York lawyer named John Abt or a lawyer associated with the American Civil Liberties Union to represent him. Oswald also wanted a lawyer "who believes as I believe, and believes in my innocence." "What I am interested in is knowing right now, do you want me or the Dallas Bar Association to try to get you a lawyer?" Mr. Nichols asked Oswald. "No, not right now," he replied. Mr. Nichols, who was 47 at the time, left the jail cell confident that he had done his duty as bar association president. The next morning, Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald on live national television. Mr. Nichols' family describes him as a humble man and a hard-working attorney who didn't formally retire until age 91. "As someone who sat knee to knee with Lee Harvey Oswald, he believed he was a part of history," said Martha M. Nichols, his daughter. Jennie Nichols, a granddaughter, recalled the day she brought her grandfather to her fifth-grade class for show and tell. The kids were studying the Kennedy assassination, and Mr. Nichols was happy to tell them his story. "That day, he was show and tell," Ms. Nichols said. Services for Mr. Nichols will be at 11 a.m. today at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. In addition to his daughter and granddaughter, survivors include his wife, Elaine Nichols; a son, David Nichols; and another granddaughter. Aubrey Lee "Al" Rike: Ambulance driver helped Jackie after JFK assassination 11:02 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 By JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning News jsimnacher@dallasnews.com On Nov. 22, 1963, Aubrey Lee "Al" Rike had hoped to get a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy's motorcade. Instead, the 25-year-old Dallas ambulance driver became an eyewitness to the turmoil at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he would befriend Jacqueline Kennedy, help her transfer her wedding band to her husband's finger, and place the president's body into a bronze casket. Mr. Rike, 72, died Thursday of a heart attack at LifeCare Hospitals of Plano. The emotion of that day would forever overcome Mr. Rike when he would tell his story for interviews, speeches or seminars, said his wife, Glenda Rike of Plano. Few knew of Mr. Rike's amazing story until a researcher located him in 1980, said Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. In September 2001, Mr. Rike told his story for the museum's oral history collection, choking up when he recalled helping Mrs. Kennedy place her wedding band on her husband's finger. When the ring stopped at the first joint of the president's ring finger, Mr. Rike reached for some lubricant, which helped somewhat but not much. "And she said, 'Thank you,' and then she reached out and kissed that ring," Mr. Rike said. Born in Dallas, Mr. Rike was a graduate of Crozier Tech High School. He served in the Marines before becoming an ambulance driver. The day of the assassination, Mr. Rike and his partner were called to transport a man to Parkland. He had fainted across from the Texas School Book Depository about 10 minutes before the motorcade was to pass. While filling out forms at Parkland, Mr. Rike noticed something big was happening. He saw Lyndon B. Johnson and thought the vice president might have had another heart attack. Next, Texas Gov. John Connally was brought into the emergency area, followed moments later by the president, his head covered with a coat. Mr. Rike said he spotted Mrs. Kennedy seated on a straight-back metal chair outside the trauma room. The first lady asked Mr. Rike if he was from Dallas. "And I said, 'Yes, ma'am,' " he recalled in his oral history. "And you know, it's kind of hard to make a conversation with, you know, the first lady." Mr. Rike said he wetted a towel in a nearby scrub room and gave it to Mrs. Kennedy. She cleaned blood from her hands and placed the towel under her chair. Mr. Rike said the area was chaotic, loud and crowded with officials. Out of cigarettes, Mr. Rike got permission to go to a vending machine. When Mr. Rike returned, Mrs. Kennedy asked if she could have a cigarette, he said. As Mr. Rike reached into his breast pocket, a Secret Service agent knocked the cigarettes down, scattering them across the floor. The agent retrieved one of cigarettes and handed it to Mrs. Kennedy and asked Mr. Rike if he had a light. "So I gave him my Zippo very carefully because I didn't know what he was going to do with that," Mr. Rike said. Mr. Rike said he waited with Mrs. Kennedy for the casket to arrive. After the president was given last rites, Mr. Rike and his partner transferred the body to the casket. Mrs. Kennedy wanted to ride in the back of the hearse with her husband. Mr. Rike folded down the jump seat for Mrs. Kennedy, holding her arm so that she could climb inside the hearse. "A Secret Service agent grabbed me and threw me against the door," Mr. Rike recalled. Mrs. Kennedy then said, "Leave the young man alone. This is the only gentleman I've met since I've been here," Mr. Rike recalled. "And so I said, 'Thank you, ma'am.' " He then he helped Mrs. Kennedy into the hearse. "And she said, 'Thank you very much.' " Mr. Rike went on to a 26-year career with the Highland Park Police Department. "Aubrey never embellished his story or changed it in any way – ever," Mr. Mack said. "He didn't make a big deal about what he did." Services will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Turrentine Jackson Morrow Funeral Home in Allen. Visitation will be from 7 to 9 p.m. today at the funeral home. Mr. Rike is survived by his wife, Glenda Rike of Plano; a son, Larry Rike of Plano; and a sister, Carolyn Hawkins of McKinney.

'Hellhound' Trails King Assassin James Earl Ray

politicalassassinations — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:49:55 +0000

A new book on the King assassination by an author who gets nearly every detail wrong in his acceptance of James Earl Ray as either the actual or the lone assassin. Ray, who was not in the rooming house at the time of the shooting, was exonerated in both a legal appeal that was interrupted by the State Supreme Court of Tennessee in its removal of Judge Joe Brown and in a subsequent civil suit brought by the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, had no motive or means to kill Dr. King. The alleged murder weapon, found in a bundle dropped prior to the shooting which contained evidence that exonerated Ray, was never tested that day for use. Later forensic tests revealed it was not the murder weapon, and that it's rifling did not match the bullet removed from Dr. King's body. A tree blocked the view from the bathroom window to the balcony of the Lorraine where King was standing and the tub and walls prevented a shot from that location. I challenge anyone to hit a target accurately while leaning out of a window cracked open 5 inches, or even more. The police did not approach the rooming house for at least an hour, but it was "clear where the shooting came from" to people at the scene near Dr. King, all of whom pointed to another location. The actual shooter was directly across the street, behind the commercial buildings there, and below Dr. King. The sole eyewitness on the balcony level with him said the shot lifted him off his feet and spun him to his right, the exact opposite reaction from a shot coming from above him and to the left where the rooming house was. Visit the Martin Luther King Center site to see the civil trial transcript and read the real evidence. Sadly, ill-researched versions of events like this one flood the market and dominate the media but the truth goes unreported. Only a single reporter attended the historic civil trial, Jim Douglass, who is working on a new book about Dr. King's assassination. Researcher Lyndon Barsten revealed more about how Ray was set up as a patsy in his book, Truth At Last, and researcher T Carter will reveal more about Ray in a book about his brother coming out soon. There are indeed "many unanswered questions" but this author will not ask them. The truth will out in the end - John Judge 'Hellhound' Trails King Assassin James Earl Ray April 28, 2010 Fresh Air from WHYY James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. He died in prison in 1998. Hulton Archives/Getty Images Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin By Hampton Sides Hardcover, 480 pages Doubleday List price: $28.95 Read an Excerpt Writer Hampton Sides was a 6-year-old living in Memphis when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. "I remember the tension," he says. "I remember seeing tanks, and I remember feeling that our city was ripping apart." Four decades later, Sides, an editor-at-large for Outside magazine and the author of the historical books Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder, has returned to the subject of King's assassination. In his new book, Hellhound on His Trail, Sides carefully weaves the movements of King's assassin, James Earl Ray, with those of King, who had traveled to Memphis to support sanitation workers on strike. It was public knowledge, Sides says, that King was staying at the Lorraine Hotel. Though it would be unheard of today, both King's location and his room number had been reported in the local media. "Not only that, but King had no security detail. He had no bodyguards, no entourage watching out for him," Sides says. "It's actually extraordinary how little security King had. It certainly seems ridiculous to us now ... [but] Ray was a news junkie. It would have been easy [for him to determine King's location]." Ray checked into a flophouse across the street from the Lorraine. He paid a week's rent. From the room he rented, there was no direct line of sight onto the balcony where King was shot. Instead, he went down the hall to a filthy communal bathroom, where he could see King's balcony if he leaned out the window. "After the assassination, the police found that the window in the bathroom had been jerked up 5 inches. The screen had been jimmied from the groove, and there was a palm print on the wall, and various people in the flophouse heard a shot coming from that bathroom," Sides says. "It became pretty clear that's where the shot came from." Within seconds, Memphis police officers were on the scene, trying to determine who had killed King. Remarkably, Ray was able slip away. "He ran down the stairs, took a left and turned — and he was running toward his car, which was a white Mustang parked on the street, when he saw some policemen," Sides explains. "He had to do a very impulsive thing: He ditched the weapon. Everything needed to solve that case was in the bundle with the weapons and various other belongings that he had there. But if he hadn't done that, he would have been caught immediately with the weapons in his arms. So he jumped in the car and took off." Two months later, the FBI tracked down Ray in London, where he was taken into custody and extradited back to the United States. How Ray was able to evade a worldwide man hunt, and whether he had help in doing so, are questions that linger in Sides' imagination. "I think he had some help along the way," Sides says. "How did he gather all of the alias [that he used during the manhunt]? There are plenty of unanswered questions."

U.S. targets an American abroad

politicalassassinations — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:10:04 +0000

U.S. targets an American abroad Should the executive branch be allowed to put a citizen on a CIA death list without judicial review? latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-divoll-20100423,0,3558365.story latimes.com Vicki Divoll April 23, 2010 According to media reports, the United States has taken the apparently unprecedented step of authorizing the "targeted killing" of one of its citizens outside a war zone — though the government has not officially acknowledged it. Unnamed intelligence and counter-terrorism sources told reporters that the Obama administration had added Anwar al Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico, to the CIA list of suspected terrorists who may be captured or killed. Awlaki, believed to be in hiding in Yemen, has been linked to Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood, Texas, shooter, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up an airliner in December. The reports indicate that the administration had concluded Awlaki had taken on an operational role in terrorist attacks. His addition to the CIA list shouldn't "surprise anyone," according to one anonymous U.S. official quoted in the New York Times. It is surprising, however. As a matter of U.S. law, had the administration wanted merely to listen to Awlaki's cellphone conversations or read his e-mails, it would have needed to check with another branch of government — the judiciary. But to target him for death, the executive branch appears to have acted alone. It adds up to this: Awlaki's right to privacy exceeds his right to life. Since when has the fate of an American citizen — his privacy, his liberty, his life — rested solely within the hands of the executive branch of government? Under our Constitution, life, liberty and property cannot be taken from us without due process of law. Due process means very different things in different contexts, but it usually involves judges. If the state wants to take your land for public use, it can, but you are entitled to a judicial hearing on its value. If the government wants to listen to your phones, the police must seek a warrant from a judge. If your government detains you, you are entitled to seek a judicial hearing on the lawfulness of your detention. And if you are to be punished for your actions by death, the decision is made in court, after a trial that determines your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and a second trial that determines that you deserve the ultimate punishment. In our system, even if we sometimes fail, we try to get it right before we take the life of a fellow citizen. To do that we need process and we need judges. Of course, the Constitution is primarily a territorial document. It does not apply to foreign people in foreign countries. But it protects everyone inside the United States, both citizens and foreigners, even undocumented foreigners. It is unclear, however, which of our rights as U.S. citizens travel with us when we go overseas. Because the government hasn't been in the habit of taking away the rights of its citizens while they are abroad, there haven't been a lot of legal tests of the question. And so far, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether constitutional guarantees prevent the government from killing its citizens abroad. But we don't have to rely solely on the high court for an answer. It has been the job of Congress for 220 years to pass laws that pick up where the Constitution leaves off in order to protect American citizens from the excesses of government. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, going beyond the 4th Amendment by requiring the executive to seek a judicial order before conducting electronic surveillance on individuals inside the United States to collect foreign intelligence. In 2008, FISA was amended to require a judicial order for conducting surveillance on citizens when they are overseas too. In advocating for that amendment, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) got to the heart of the issue: "No matter where an American is in the world," he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "it always means something to be an American." Which brings us back to Awlaki and his right as a U.S. citizen not to be killed by his own government. If Congress is willing to protect our cellphone conversations, it should be willing to protect our lives. The legislative branch should again step up and pass a law requiring judicial review of decisions to put Americans on a CIA death list. Even in an election year, it is not "soft" to require judges to take a hard look at whether the executive is getting it right. Vicki Divoll is a former general counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former assistant general counsel for the CIA. She teaches U.S. government and constitutional development at the U.S. Naval Academy.

CIA documents show US never believed Gary Powers was shot down

politicalassassinations — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:06:17 +0000

U-2 pilot Gary Powers, a few weeks before his suspicious death in a helicopter crash in LA, revealed that he did not believe his plane was shot down by the Soviets and indicated sabotage on the part of the CIA instead, in order to undermine the possibility of detente between Eisenhower and Kruschev. It is not a "conspiracy theory" that Lee Harvey Oswald, one of nine Office of Naval Intelligence fake defectors who went to the USSR in the same month, told ONI's Richard Snyder at the American Embassy in Moscow that he was going to reveal the U-2 secrets to the Soviets. Oswald had been stationed, as a Marine, at every base the U-2 operated from, including Atsugi, Japan and tracked it by radar. He had a Crypto clearance. Those things are in the historical record. It is not likely that he gave up any such information or would have been allowed to. Snyder kept Oswald's proffered passport and did not act on his renunciation of US citizenship. Snyder returned the passport to Oswald on his way out of Russia with his new bride Marina, transportation paid by the State Department. Nice treatment for a defector who gave secrets to the Soviets. Marina even got Oswald's story confused with another ONI defector, Robert Webster, when she testified to the Warren Commission about how her husband got to the Soviet Union and where he lived in Moscow. However if sabotage of the detente was in the planning, it would have been useful to use the Oswald deception to explain how the Soviets could track and shoot down the U-2. This article suggests that Powers himself might have been a false defector as well. What is clear is that Powers did not buy the official story. John Judge The London Times May 1, 2010 CIA documents show US never believed Gary Powers was shot down Giles Whittell, Washington Correspondent http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7113512.ece PHOTO The legendary U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers Gary Powers in his pressure suit in front of his U2 spyplane. His mission was to fly for nine hours across the Soviet Union photographing suspected nuclear weapon sites and bomber landing fields At 8.52 this morning a normally garrulous American is to observe a moment’s silence outside the Lubyanka, headquarters of what used to be the KGB in central Moscow. He will be there to honour the good name of his father, Francis Gary Powers, whose reputation has suffered for half a century by association with one of the most enduring mysteries of the Cold War. Fifty years ago today, in a full-body pressure suit and helmet, Powers was slammed forward against the canopy of his U2 spyplane 70,000ft above central Russia by a Soviet surface-to-air missile exploding close behind him. The blast wave dismembered the plane, tearing off first its tail section and then its wings, but leaving its pilot miraculously unhurt. In an outer pocket of his suit Powers carried a suicide pin that he chose not to use. He hit the ground in shock but with hardly a scratch. By that evening he was in Moscow, in the Lubyanka. The shooting down and survival of Powers changed the course of history: it wrecked a superpower summit at which President Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, had hoped to launch a new era of détente. What was not known until the recent declassification of CIA documents seen by The Times, was that top US officials never believed Powers’ account of his fateful flight because it appeared to be directly contradicted by a report from the National Security Agency, the clandestine US network of codebreakers and listening posts. The NSA report remains classified, possibly to spare the blushes of its authors. For it is now possible to piece together what really happened high over Sverdlovsk on May Day 1960 and to understand why America’s most secretive intelligence agency got it so wrong. According to a summary presented this week by Matthew Aid, the world’s leading authority on the NSA, the agency’s report described Soviet military air traffic controllers as after an aircraft that — far from breaking up at close to 70,000ft as Powers later claimed — descended slowly from 65,000 to 34,000ft, changed course and disappeared from their radar screens. If true, this would have meant that Powers was at best a liar and conceivably a traitor. According to one rumour circulated without discouragement from the CIA after the shooting down, he descended to a safe height, baled out and spent his first night as a defector in a Sverdlovsk nightclub. Newly released documents from a secret inquiry into his conduct carried out in 1962, by which time the CIA had swapped him for a Soviet spy and exhaustively debriefed him, show that some in the agency still believed that the Russians might have hypnotised, drugged or brainwashed him to force him to change his story. The truth was less bizarre but no less remarkable. Powers took off from Peshawar in northern Pakistan after three tense days spent waiting for the weather along his route to clear. His mission was to fly for nine hours, on a breakfast of steak and eggs, directly over half a dozen of the Soviet Union’s most sensitive nuclear sites, photographing them and landing hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian coast. Within minutes the entire Soviet Air Defence system was being mobilised on an order from Mr Khrushchev to bring him down at any cost. Captain Mikhail Voronov, commander of a missile battalion south of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), was woken by an alarm at 7am. “At first I thought it was a drill,” he said in an interview at his home on the Black Sea. “It was not a drill. I was planning to walk over from the barracks to give my soldiers their traditional May Day congratulations. Instead I ran. We all ran. We rushed to our positions and when we got there I told my commander that my battalion was ready to fire.” At about 8.45am Powers appeared as a dot on Captain Voronov’s radar screen. A single rocket was launched and minutes later the screen appeared to indicate a direct hit. Yet Captain Voronov could not be sure. He did not report it until word reached his control cabin half an hour later that a pilot had fallen to earth nearby under a parachute. It is now clear that in that half hour, with the U2 already strewn across the Russian countryside, two Soviet MiG pilots circling over Sverdlovsk were ordered to intercept and ram, if necessary. One of them, Lieutenant Sergei Safronov, was hit by a stray rocket from another battalion. He baled out, dying of his injuries on the way down, but the radar trace created by his plane closely matched the one described by NSA. The agency almost certainly mistook Lieutenant Safronov for Powers. Mr Aid said this week that the NSA misread its own vaunted signals intelligence. The agency has never conceded anything. In the absence of hard evidence from independent witnesses about what happened to Powers’ U2, conspiracy theories have sprouted like weeds. According to one, crucial information on his flight was passed in advance to Soviet intelligence by Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s assassin and a former junior radar operator at a U2 base in Japan. In another, advanced by James Nathan of the University of Alabama, Powers was either a pawn or an accomplice in a US plot to derail détente. Last month Professor Nathan said that he still believed the entire affair was cooked. Yesterday, in Moscow, Gary Powers Jr said that it had taken the US Government 40 years to set the record straight about his father. He was being generous. It has taken 50, and the record still has kinks in it. Giles Whittell is Washington Correspondent and the author of Bridge of Spies, an account of the U2 affair and the spy swap that followed it, published later this year. The man behind the story • Francis Gary Powers, born in Jenkins, Kentucky in 1929, was a combat pilot in the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron. He was a veteran of covert aerial reconnaissance missions • After the U2 incident he served 18 months of a ten-year sentence handed down by a Soviet military tribunal in 1960 in a prison about 160 kilometres east of Moscow • He was released in exchange for the Russian spy known as Colonel Rudolph Abel • When he returned to the US, Powers worked initially as a test pilot before becoming a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles television station. He died in August 1977 when his helicopter ran out of fuel

Jerry Ray: A Memoir of Injustice

politicalassassinations — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:44:42 +0000

No one knows Jerry Ray or the true story of James Earl Ray and the injustice of his wrongful conviction than T Carter. Her new book, A Memoir of Injustice by the Younger Brother of James Earl Ray, Alleged Assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. as told to Tamara Carter, is the result of her meticulous historical research and her years of discussions with the brother of the patsy accused of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. She also discusses the history of our efforts since 2000 to create a Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act with the help of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and it's current revival in Congress by Senator Kerry and Representative Lewis. Even if you are not a student of the King assassination this book is a first person history of people caught up in the machinery of injustice that marks far too much of our legal, media and political system. The book can be pre-ordered now on Amazon. Get a copy! http://www.amazon.com/Memoir-Injustice-Younger-Brother-Assassin/dp/1936296055/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273332713&sr=8-3 Facebook has a page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Memoir-of-Injustice/121508357868258?ref=ts

Second safe stolen from Sixth Floor Museum

politicalassassinations — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:02:34 +0000

Second safe stolen from Sixth Floor Museum by REBECCA LOPEZ WFAA Radio Posted on May 10, 2010 at 10:34 PM DALLAS — News 8 has learned that there was a second safe stolen from the Sixth Floor Museum in downtown Dallas last week. Inside that safe? Possible documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and jewelry that may have some connection to his wife, Jacqueline. The Dallas County Sheriff's Department told the public about one safe that was nearly stolen from the museum during the May 4 break-in. It was recovered almost immediately, dangling from a winch on the back of a stolen pickup truck. But during that burglary, a second safe was removed in what now appears to have been an inside job. Dallas police found it in a park in southeast Dallas. A police report said there were bags and keys from the museum inside that safe, but it also said that JFK documents and jewelry possibly related to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were missing. Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price suggested that the perpetrators had intimate knowledge of the museum that is a repository for an invaluable collection of materials related to the Kennedy assassination. "Someone would have to know, first of all, the location," he said. Police now believe that "someone" is 30-year-old Patrick Cleveland, who was arrested by Dallas County Sheriff's Department deputies last Friday. Cleveland worked for Platinum Security, the private firm that provides security at the Sixth Floor Museum. He is now free on bond. "I do believe it was an inside job, but I didn't have anything to do with this," Cleveland told News 8. He said he often saw other employees taking pictures of the museum safes and other contents with their camera phones during his seven-month stint as a security guard. "I pass by those safes every day. I know it would take a tow truck or a ton of people to even move them," Cleveland said. "The safe should have been bolted to the ground." But neither safe was bolted down and both were removed from the premises in the pre-dawn burglary. The Sixth Floor Museum had no comment about their security guard being arrested on a theft charge. Nor did it have anything to say about the second safe or its contents. Following the burglary, the museum maintained that its entire collection was "safe and secure." The Sheriff's Department says it is not making any comments on this case at this time because they plan to make other arrests. http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/Arrest-made-in-Sixth-Floow-Museum-break-in-93316154.html

Boxes of JFK assassination papers soon may be headed for Sixth Floor Museum's new reading room

politicalassassinations — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:00:49 +0000

These records are clearly JFK assassination related records under the federal law, the JFK Assassination Records Act. Such records are legally under the purview of the National Archives, not local legal or other repositories, and original copies should be part of the national collection at Archives II. They should certainly not be donated to a private museum in Dallas whose provenance and care for them is not assured over time. COPA and Judge John Tunheim, the former Chair of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board petitioned District Attorney Watkins to send them to the National Archives. I am chagrined to see that they will be kept in Dallas at a Museum that fails to tell the whole story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Boxes of JFK assassination papers soon may be headed for Sixth Floor Museum's new reading room 11:10 PM CDT on Thursday, May 13, 2010 By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News dflick@dallasnews.com http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051410dnmetjfk.3bfd64d.html A little more than two years ago, when Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins announced that 15 long-hidden boxes of materials relating to the Kennedy assassination would go to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, it seemed like a big win for the local team. Sixth Floor officials say they are still waiting to collect the prize. "We still don't have them," said museum spokeswoman Deborah Marine. "As far as I know, nothing has been finalized about when we might get them." When asked about the documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jamille Bradfield, Marine's counterpart in Watkins' office, sent a brief e-mail: "Regarding the status of our donation, the district attorney's office has made a commitment to the Sixth Floor Museum to donate the JFK memorabilia and we anticipate it will become part of the collection in the museum's new reading room." The reading room, which will allow researchers easier access to museum documents, is scheduled to open next month on the first floor of the former schoolbook depository. Bradfield did not explain why the transfer had taken two years, other than saying that timing the donation to coincide with the opening of the reading room "couldn't be more perfect." Marine said museum officials would be delighted to finally be getting the materials and were not bothered by the delay. "It sometimes takes at little bit longer to prepare something like this," Marine said. Besides, officials already know what's in the boxes. Marine noted that The Dallas Morning News posted the entire collection online within a week of Watkins' original announcement in February 2008. His announcement of the existence of the boxes, which had been stored in an old safe in the courthouse for decades, stirred nationwide attention at the time. The memorabilia was gathered by the legendary Henry Wade, district attorney at the time of the assassination, and kept from public view by his successors. The boxes included some of Wade's personal correspondence, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, and letters and photographs of both Ruby and alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Most intriguing was what appeared to be a transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president at the Mafia's behest. The "transcript" was quickly identified as part of a script for a proposed movie that Wade briefly supported. The movie was never made, but the story of its stillborn production was the most interesting revelation in the unearthed materials. The initial reaction to Watkins' announcement was a spirited competition between the Sixth Floor Museum and supporters of the National Archives to be the final repository for the materials. When Watkins announced the materials would stay in Dallas, it was interpreted as a victory for a respected local institution. By that time, however, there already were doubts about how significant the collection was. Although Watkins predicted at the time that the collection "will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy," researchers and conspiracy theorists who studied the documents were mostly unimpressed. One amateur researcher, Steve Thomas, who posted extensively about the files, said at the time that they added some insight into Wade's view of the Ruby trial, but otherwise contained no revelations. "If you're looking for a smoking gun," he said, "you're not going to find it." To view the actual documents online visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnmetjfkdocs.15b53191.html

Bullet evidence challenges findings in JFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:15:25 +0000

Bullet evidence challenges findings in JFK assassination Science Blog 18 May 2007 http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/bullet-evidence-challenges-findings-jfk-assassination-13251.html Researchers at Texas A&M University are combining statistics and chemistry to shoot holes in traditional bullet-lead analysis techniques and the accuracy of so-called "expert" testimony — specifically, calling into question critical evidence that has long supported the theory of a lone gunman in the 1963 assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. In challenging the evidence for the lone-gunman theory, Cliff Spiegelman, professor of statistics at Texas A&M and an expert in bullet-lead analysis, recently teamed with former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent and forensic scientist William A. Tobin of Forensic Engineering International in Virginia and William D. James, a research chemist with the Texas A&M Center for Chemical Characterization and Analysis (CCCA). Together, they conducted a chemical and forensic analysis of bullets reportedly derived from the same batch as those used by suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to gun down Kennedy on that fateful day at Dealey Plaza. Their findings, which show that evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed, will be published in a forthcoming edition of "Annals of Applied Statistics." The paper currently is available online at http://www.imstat.org/aoas/next_issue.html. Using new compositional analysis techniques not available in the 1960s, the team found that the bullet fragments involved in the assassination are not nearly as rare as previously reported. In addition, their findings show that one of the 10 test bullets from one box analyzed is considered a match to one or more of the five existing assassination fragments, meaning that the matching fragments could have come from three or more separate bullets and, therefore, more than one shooter. As one of the most traumatic events in U.S. history, the Kennedy assassination sparked a wave of scientific investigation, both immediately after the murder and in the decades since. One such investigation, the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, re-examined the murders of Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. With respect to the Kennedy assassination, the committee concluded, largely on the basis of comparative bullet lead analysis and expert testimony by University of California-Irvine chemist Dr. Vincent P. Guinn, that if there were another shooter or shooters — likely firing from the Grassy Knoll — they missed all limousine occupants. Ancient history — that is, until Spiegelman got a telephone call in 2004 from Stuart Wexler, a humanities and advanced placement government instructor at Highstown High School in New Jersey, who eventually served as the historian for the team’s paper. Wexler had read online about Spiegelman’s recent work on a National Research Council committee that helped the FBI assess its Compositional Analysis of Bullet Lead (CABL) procedure used as forensic evidence in hundreds of murder cases, including the Kennedy assassination. "Wexler and a friend of his had bought some bullets of the same type believed to have been used in the Kennedy assassination," Spiegelman recalls. "They were Mannlicher-Carcanos, which were only manufactured in 1954 and are now antiques, mainly because most surviving bullets have been bought up by conspiracy buffs. He was looking for someone to analyze them. I thought it was interesting and that it would be a neat project, so I agreed." To find a qualified metallurgist and forensic expert, Spiegelman had to look no further than to one of the key figures behind the NRC study in the first place — William Tobin, a decorated FBI agent who in retirement had made a veritable second career out of testifying against his former employer where its evidentiary techniques were concerned. Spiegelman and Tobin turned to Texas A&M research chemist William James and D. Max Roundhill, former head of the Department of Chemistry at Washington State University and now a consultant in Austin, for the chemical portion of their analysis. Finally, Spiegelman recruited Dr. Simon J. Sheather, professor and head of the Texas A&M Department of Statistics, at the writing stage of the project. In their study, James analyzed the chemical composition of 30 bullets — 10 from each of three boxes of Mannlicher-Carcano bullets that originated from two of the only four separate lots ever produced. Using a measurement approach similar to Guinn’s, they applied more appropriate standards, such as additional chemical elements beyond those considered at the time, as well as a known quality control procedure. They also analyzed physical samples with a known geometry. In comparing their data to Guinn’s testimony as well as to NRC report findings, the team determined that many bullets within a box of Mannlicher-Carcano bullets have similar composition, leading them to conclude that two-element chance matches to assassination fragments are not extraordinarily rare — even less rare, considering they came from the same box. Based on their findings, not to mention the international significance of the Kennedy assassination, Spiegelman and his team say it is "scientifically desirable" for the bullet fragments to be reanalyzed. Kennedy once said during a Yale commencement address, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." Spiegelman claims that "by properly reanalyzing the bullet fragments, our nation has a chance to shatter a myth about the JFK assassination." "The reanalysis should include at least the seven elements identified in the NRC report, should establish the scientific basis for matching fragments originating from a single bullet, and should address the critically important issues of bullet and source heterogeneity," he adds. Texas A&M University SOURCE: The Annals of Applied Statistics Chemical and forensic analysis of JFK assassination bullet lots: Is a second shooter possible? Cliff Spiegelman, William A. Tobin, William D. James, Simon J. Sheather, Stuart Wexler, and D. Max Roundhill Source: Ann. Appl. Stat. Volume 1, Number 2 (2007), 287-301. http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.aoas/1196438019 Abstract The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) traumatized the nation. In this paper we show that evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed. This paper discusses new compositional analyses of bullets reportedly to have been derived from the same batch as those used in the assassination. The new analyses show that the bullet fragments involved in the assassination are not nearly as rare as previously reported. In particular, the new test results are compared to key bullet composition testimony presented before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Matches of bullets within the same box of bullets are shown to be much more likely than indicated in the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ testimony. Additionally, we show that one of the ten test bullets is considered a match to one or more assassination fragments. This finding means that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets. Finally, this paper presents a case for reanalyzing the assassination bullet fragments and conducting the necessary supporting scientific studies. These analyses will shed light on whether the five bullet fragments constitute three or more separate bullets. If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely, as the additional bullet would not easily be attributable to the main suspect, Mr. Oswald, under widely accepted shooting scenarios [see Posner (1993), Case Closed, Bantam, New York]. [In 2007, access to the Annals of Applied Statistics was open. Beginning in 2008, you must hold a subscription or be a member of the IMS to view the full journal. For more information on subscribing, please visit: http://imstat.org/orders. If you are already an IMS member, you may need to update your Euclid profile following the instructions here: http://imstat.org/publications/eaccess.htm.]

FBI delays release of Ted Kennedy's FBI file

politicalassassinations — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:30:11 +0000

FBI delays release of Ted Kennedy's FBI file May 25, 2010 04:22 PM By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff WASHINGTON -- The FBI says it is delaying the release of thousands of pages of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's FBI file for at least another week. Alex Brown, an official in the bureau's Record/Information Dissemination Section, says that the first installment of the voluminous file, which the bureau previously said would be made public this Friday, "is under further review." He said it is likely to be delayed at least another week, but declined to provide any other explanation for the decision. The file on the long-serving Massachusetts senator is highly anticipated by historians who predict that it could contain new information about potential threats to his life in the wake of the assassination of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy; the investigation into Kennedy's involvement in the accidental drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne when he drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969; and a host of other previously unexplored details about what was otherwise an exhaustively chronicled political and private life. The file has has already sparked some controversy even before its release: The Kennedy family has been given the rare opportunity to raise objections to the release of certain information on privacy grounds. A spokeswoman for the Kennedy family says that Kenneth Feinberg, a former chief of staff to the late senator who managed the US fund to compensate the families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and is now the Treasury Department’s “pay czar,’ is representing the family in the matter. There was no immediate comment from the family on the reason for the delay.

Retired history professor writing third book

politicalassassinations — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:50:53 +0000

Retired history professor writing third book Originally published June 02, 2010 Frederick, MD News Post.com By Brian Englar News-Post Staff Gerald McKnight is a retired Hood College professor and JFK assassination expert. McKnight is working on his third book. For retired Hood College history professor Gerald McKnight, much of the early part of his life conditioned him to question American policy and challenge the officially recognized versions of events. Growing up in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood during the 1940s, many of his friends were avowed leftists, exposing him to a range of alternative political views. Then came his service in the Korean War, where he was assigned the grim task of removing bodies from the battlefield after massive Chinese assaults. "That was eye-opening for a 20-year-old," McKnight said. "I think what it said to me in a sense was, 'what is the history of this and how did we get involved with this?' " McKnight said these experiences helped steer him away from his plan to go into veterinary medicine and into the field of history. However, it was not until he arrived in Frederick in the mid-1970s as a part-time professor at Hood that he found what would be his life's work: attempting to call into question the official story of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and other political figures of the 1960s. While at Hood, he worked with Virginia Lewis, history department chairwoman at the time as well as a JFK enthusiast, and met Frederick resident and assassination researcher Paul [Harold] Weisberg. He and Lewis decided to put together a class about the political assassinations of the 1960s, which McKnight continues to teach. McKnight said the college provided a supportive environment where he could pursue his research without fear. "It was encouraged," McKnight said. "I wasn't regarded as the village idiot or as someone who needed counseling." McKnight has since written two books, based largely on documents obtained by Weisberg and himself. "The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI and the Poor People's Campaign" was published in 1998 and documents the bureau's campaign of harassment against King and its efforts to thwart a planned march on Washington by impoverished Americans. He had to sue the Justice Department for the documents used in the book, receiving word his Freedom of Information Act requests would be granted the day before the case was set to go to trial. "Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why" was published in 2005 and details many of the inner workings of the commission in an attempt to show its findings were based on a preordained conclusion reached by top officials almost immediately after the assassination. He is working on a new book about the Kennedy assassination he said will highlight evidence drawn from recently obtained documents. He said its scope will be more expansive than "Breach of Trust," dealing with many aspects of the case, including what he said is documented proof that the government used threats of deportation to get Marina Oswald to cooperate with its investigation, as well as evidence Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union may have been part of an Office of Naval Intelligence program to insert sleeper agents. While McKnight hopes his work will make a difference in informing the nation's understanding of the assassination, he thinks the upcoming 50th anniversary of the event is likely to spark a massive media campaign in support of the official story. "I think there is a movement on to close off this issue once and for all," McKnight said, "... to say that publishers and newspapers should treat this business of an alternative explanation for Dallas as some sort of mental disease that undermines the republic itself."

AU’s Peter Kuznick Teams Up With Filmmaker Oliver Stone

politicalassassinations — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 22:02:51 +0000

AU’s Peter Kuznick Teams Up With Filmmaker Oliver Stone History at American University newsletter 2009-2010 When Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone was in Washington in fall 2007, scouting locations for a film about the My Lai massacre, he asked AU history professor Peter Kuznick to join him, his cinematographer, and his producer for dinner. As often happens when Kuznick and Stone get together, their conversation turned to analyzing key events in history. In the midst of an animated conversation, Stone suggested that the two of them do a documentary film together. Kuznick was then spending his sabbatical year working on a book on how knowing that nuclear war could end all life on the planet had influenced public opinion and policy decisions since the start of the atomic bomb project in 1939. Still, he agreed that working on a documentary with Stone would be an intriguing possibility for the future. Kuznick should have known Stone better than that. They had been friends since 1996 when Stone made the first of many visits to Kuznick’s class which uses Stone’s films as a window into recent U.S. history, comparing Stone’s interpretations with those of scholars and participants in key events. The class is so popular with AU students that one year Kuznick let 150 students enroll instead of the customary 80. The class has brought an outstanding roster of guest speakers to the AU campus, including Robert McNamara, Daniel Ellsberg, Bob Woodward, Paul Warnke, Seymour Hersh, John Dean, Ambassador Robert White, Senator Max Cleland, Vietnam vets Bobby Muller, Ron Kovic, and Wayne Smith as well as Pham Duy Thanh, who fought for North Vietnam, Cambodian child soldier and author Loung Ung, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, JFK screenwriter Zach Sklar and leading JFK critic Max Holland, and many others. By the time Stone returned to California a couple days later, his idea for a documentary had evolved into something far grander. Stone phoned Kuznick proposing that they collaborate on a 10- part documentary series exploring lesser known aspects of U.S. history – the parts that are generally left out of high school history texts and those so often presented in a sanitized version conforming to what Kuznick and Stone consider a triumphalist and very partial view of America’s past. Their series instead plans to focus on the development of a peculiarly American form of empire and the national security state that undergirds it. Kuznick explained, “We had initially intended to begin by debunking the mythology surrounding the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then, in the second episode, go back to the roots of empire in the late 19th century. We now plan to begin with World War II and work our way to the present in a more linear fashion.” They will likely include the earlier material as an 11th episode in the box sets that are released next year. Showtime has announced that the series, “The Secret History of the United States,” will be aired in 2010. Kuznick warns that, despite the title, people who are looking for conspiracies will be disappointed: “This is solid history, based on cutting edge scholarship. The broad public, which has not been exposed to this kind of information and analysis, may be shocked by what we present, but it will come as less of a surprise to historians who have stayed on top of the latest research findings.” Stone, a decorated Vietnam vet who dropped out of Yale to serve, has won numerous Academy Awards, including two for best director. Despite an illustrious Hollywood career that includes the films Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, JFK, Nixon, Salvador, Natural Born Killers, Wall Street, The Doors, and W, he sees this documentary series as his crowning achievement. He recently proclaimed, “this epic 10-hour series…is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation.” He added, “I can only hope a change in our thinking will result.” Kuznick feels the same way: “It will be a great opportunity to reach an audience of tens of millions – here and abroad – rather than the tens of thousands who might read something I write. Oliver and I have put a lot into this project. We want to change the way people understand American history in the hopes that we, as a nation, can learn from what we’ve done wrong and build upon what we’ve done right. Our story has its share of villains, but it also has its share of heroes. We want to correct the historical record, but we also want to inspire the next generation to dream the dreams and fight the fights that will enable this country to become a force for good in the world rather than the hyper-militarized defender of an unjust and inequitable status quo.” Two of Kuznick’s students – Cindy Gueli, who received her PhD in 2006, and Eric Singer, who is currently writing a dissertation on civil defense in Baltimore – have assisted Kuznick and Stone in the research.

On Eve of California Primary, Lessons From Robert Kennedy's Assassination

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:02:04 +0000

Missing from this story as well as from the many comments is the reality that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill Robert Kennedy, a fact now further proven by the groundbreaking forensic work of Dr. Robert Joling, former president, American Academy of Forensic Sciences and audio expert Philip von Praag in their book, "Open and Shut Case", and a fact known to researchers based on the forensic and ballistic evidence of Dr. Noguchi's autopsy of RFK and witness and photographic evidence from the scene. The actual gunman and those who orchestrated the assassination of Robert and John Kennedy remain at large on this 42nd anniversary of his death. While many sincerely mourned his loss at the time, the failure of America to address the facts and seek the real killers of Robert Kennedy, not only for justice but for the course of history and the restoration of the principles of democracy, is the real tragedy. As Bob Dylan sang long ago, "Now is the time for your tears" John Judge On Eve of California Primary, Lessons From Robert Kennedy's Assassination Carl M. Cannon Senior Washington Correspondent Politics Daily.com June 5, 2010 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/05/on-eve-of-california-primary-lessons-from-robert-kennedys-assa/ On Tuesday, California's voters will go to the polls to choose their November standard-bearer for governor, an open Senate seat, and a host of other races. It's a celebration of democracy, as all elections are, but for the past four decades June primaries in the Golden State have also been sad and sobering reminders of the harm that human beings do to each other in the name of politics and sectarianism. This day, 42 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy was shot after winning the California presidential primary. He died the following day, June 6, 1968, just before 2 a.m. My job was to tell people about it. Each year, usually around Christmas time, I write one column expounding on my love of newspapers. This year, perhaps because the California primaries are so compelling, I'm going to do it early. In 1968, I was a 14-year-old paperboy the same age as Homer McCauley, the sensitive World War II-era Western Union messenger of William Saroyan's The Human Comedy. I had read that book -- Saroyan, one of California's greatest writers, was taught in school at the time -- and had wondered how Homer McCauley had managed to climb on his bicycle and deliver death notices to the Gold Star mothers in the San Joaquin Valley without crying. I was about to find out. Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, 1968As a student at Joaquin Miller Junior High School in Sacramento, I delivered the San Francisco Chronicle, which was the preferred newspaper of many politically aware Northern Californians. My route was big: 90 papers delivered seven days-a-week on a bicycle stripped down for speed and lightness: my daily trip was about five miles. Any American even slightly older than I am will always remember the national tragedy and turmoil of 1968, and the passions surrounding that year's presidential campaign. On March 12, anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy gave President Johnson a scare in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire and LBJ subsequently announced he would not seek re-election. Four days later Robert Kennedy entered the race. A month after that, Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, a debilitating blow that seemed to break McCarthy's stride, if not his spirit. I know it sapped mine. By the time of the June primary in California, the Democratic presidential contest had come down to a grinding contest between Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. I had first been a Humphrey kid, out of loyalty to LBJ, then switched to McCarthy after meeting him at Sacramento Municipal airport. But 14-year-olds can be fickle. After Robert F. Kennedy ushered in June of 1968 with a campaign swing through Sacramento and the Central Valley, I switched affections again, to RFK. It was a short-lived love affair. Like most Californians who had to get up early for school or work, I watched the election returns the night of June 4, saw that Bobby had won, and went to bed relatively early, as a paperboy will do when his alarm is set every morning at 5:45 a.m. That morning, I didn't sleep that late, however. At 4:30 in the morning, my mother came into my room, which was a first, and told me gently to get up and deliver the papers. I told her that they didn't have to be delivered this early, and she replied that today, they did. I should know, she added, that Bobby Kennedy had been shot in Los Angeles. It had happened just after midnight, she said, meaning that the out-of-town editions of the San Francisco Chronicle were not going to have the news that people needed to know: namely, that less than five years after his brother the president had been assassinated, RFK had also been wounded, and was probably going to die. "Where's dad?" I asked. The answer was that my father, a newspaperman, was still at work. "He stayed there all night," my mother told me. "But he called with the latest bulletin. He told me to write this down for you." Fighting back tears, my mother handed her oldest son a three-by-five card with the grim news from L.A. I was to read the latest news about RFK to my customers as I delivered their paper. "No one will be awake at this hour." I protested. "Yes, they will," she replied softly. "And they'll want to know what happened." She was right. At every other house, it seemed, in these pre-cable, pre-Internet days, a light was on, and through the windows I could see people at their kitchen tables, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, some with their face in their hands. At many houses, the resident -- usually the woman of the house -- came outside to meet their paperboy, who dutifully recited the information on his little card. Sometimes the women would start crying. Several of them hugged me in their grief. My paper route usually took an hour. That morning, it took three. It's far too melodramatic to say that the kid who delivered those papers began his rounds as a boy and finished them as a man, but I will say that when I was done delivering those papers, I had acquired an abiding interest in the presidency, and a searing appreciation for the power of the news. I still retain those dual passions, and over the years have also formed some judgments about the meaning of those horrifying events of 1968. One of them is that the words we use in politics and the press matter. In 1944, as Allied bombers razed German cities, George Orwell, who was then (among other things) a newspaper columnist, received a letter from a reader who was troubled by the indiscriminate nature of the lethal ordnance being rained on the German people by British and American pilots. Although he said he realized "the Hun (has) got to be beaten," the writer expressed his misgivings over civilian casualties suffered in places like Dresden and Hamburg. Replied Orwell in his newspaper column: "It seems to me that you do less harm by dropping bombs on people than by calling them 'Huns.'" Perhaps that's hyperbole, but Orwell's point was that it's the name-calling and demonization that make the bombing possible. It's a lesson for our own times as well as the 1960s. It's a lesson for any era, as the sacrifice of the Kennedy family attests. The anger and hatred expressed in our politics is troubling, and not only because it's unpleasant. World history – our own history – has shown it can be dangerous. That's one reason why Politics Daily, a newspaper for a digital age, has embraced the concept of the "civilogue," a self-explanatory term coined by our colleague Jeffrey Weiss, who lives in Dallas, a city that came for a time to be associated with the murder of a president. Yoda, the sage and diminutive Jedi master in the movie Star Wars , a cultural icon of the 1980s, put it this way: "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." Those words were not actually written by a cute little intergalactic creature, of course. They were written by George Lucas, who, like Homer McCauley grew up in the Central Valley and who was living in Los Angeles that fateful June of 1968 when hate and fear seemed to overwhelm the better angels of our natures.

Thursday, June 10, 2010, 12:00 pm "And We Are All Mortal..."

politicalassassinations — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:40:08 +0000

Thursday, June 10, 2010, 12:00 pm "And We Are All Mortal..." COPA's annual Commemorative event on the 47th anniversary of JFK's speech against the Cold War will be held at the Memorial Plaque, campus of American University (southeast end of football field), 4800 Nebraska Ave. NW, Washington, DC (entrance off New Mexico and Nebraska Aves.). Reading followed by luncheon meeting. Open to researchers and public, no cost.

FBI file shows Ted Kennedy was death threat magnet

politicalassassinations — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:40:02 +0000

This poorly researched article about the recently released FBI files on the late Senator Ted Kennedy contains two potentially explosive references to the contents of the released documents, without comprehending their context or significance as reported. One concerns an inmate who was "housed next to" Sirhan Bishara Sirhan [in a California prison], the alleged but wrongly accused assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, for 18 months, and who claims Sirhan offered him $1 million and a car to kill Ted Kennedy, presumably on his release. This story is patently false on its face given the lack of motive and the resources on Sirhan's part. It is more telling as possible proof of an orchestrated FBI attempt to both smear Sirhan through this planted informant and to provide motive for a second patsy in another Kennedy assassination. The second revelation is even more eye-opening. Division V FBI operative Cartha Deke DeLoach (COINTELPRO and Office of Naval Intelligence) was apparently asked by Nixon White House Counsel John Dean on behalf of then-Attorney General John Mitchell to check discretely into the travels of Mary Jo Kopechne, the woman found dead in Ted Kennedy's car in Chappaquiddick's Poucha Pond on Martha's Vineyard during the election year in which Ted Kennedy was a possible candidate against Nixon's second term. Dean wanted to know if Kopechne had traveled to Greece in 1968. Had this story leaked out after the incident and during Watergate testimony, it would have opened the lid on people inside the government who posed much more of a threat to Ted Kennedy than the Klu Klux Klan and other disgruntled individuals who seem to be at the center of the FBI's investigative efforts. John Dean is still alive and should be asked about when this request was initiated, what they wanted to know and why, and what they found out, since the FBI response is redacted. I am sure there is much more to be found in the thousands of records just released and that serious researchers will spend time looking at these new files to reveal more of the hidden history surrounding the Kennedy family and the loss of democracy in the United States - John Judge FBI file shows Ted Kennedy was death threat magnet Jun 15, 1:08 AM EDT By ANDREW MIGA and GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON (AP) -- For decades after gunmen shot down his brothers, Sen. Edward Kennedy lived under constant assassination threats of his own, sometimes chillingly specific, as he became a target for extremist rage, previously private FBI documents disclosed Monday. Five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed and shortly after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot, one letter warned that the third brother was next: "Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date." Nearly two decades later, in 1985, the threats continued, this time including the Republican president as well as the liberal Democratic senator: "Brass tacks, I'm gonna kill Kennedy and (President Ronald) Reagan, and I really mean it." Releasing 2,352 pages from Kennedy's FBI file, many of them concerning threats over the years, the agency said on its website: "These threats originated from multiple sources, including individuals, anonymous persons and members of radical groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, 'Minutemen' organizations and the National Socialist White People's Party." Some of the threats prompted investigations, some resulted in warnings to Kennedy or local law enforcement authorities. There is no indication any attempts were carried out. In 1977, the FBI even looked into allegations that Sirhan Sirhan - the man who assassinated Robert Kennedy - had attempted to hire a fellow prisoner to kill Edward Kennedy. The prisoner, who was housed next to Sirhan for 18 months, told the FBI he was offered $1 million and a car but declined. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Robert Kennedy died on June 6, 1968, a day after he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Their deaths cast a long shadow on the youngest brother's life, and prompted fears he, too, would be targeted by an assassin's bullet. Indeed, Kennedy wrote in his memoir "True Compass" that after his brothers were killed he was easily startled by loud sounds and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired. He died last year at 77 after fighting brain cancer. Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, declined comment on the document release through a spokesman. Most of the documents released Monday are about death threats and extortion attempts against the Massachusetts Democrat. The release had been highly anticipated by historians, scholars and others interested in the life and long public career of one of America's most prominent and powerful politicians. The Associated Press and other media organizations requested the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. There is relatively little on a major controversy, Kennedy's car accident on Chappaquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman who had been a worker in Robert Kennedy's campaign. The files do show that the FBI was told almost immediately of the accident and Kennedy's involvement, but authorities kept his identity quiet at the start. The Boston FBI office relayed word to Washington headquarters at 2:45 p.m. EDT on July 19, 1969, after being notified by Police Chief Dominick Arena in Edgartown, Mass. The advisory said that Kennedy - the vehicle's driver - was uninjured. It also said, "Stated fact Senator Kennedy was driver is not being revealed to anyone." Kopechne drowned after Kennedy drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car. Kopechne, 28, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation. In his memoir, Kennedy wrote that his actions on Chappaquiddick were inexcusable. He said he was afraid, "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt the rest of his life. Kopechne's death also caught the attention of the Nixon administration and one of the eventual Watergate conspirators. One file shows FBI Deputy Director C.D. DeLoach reporting an Oct. 17, 1969, call from John Dean, then assistant to the deputy attorney general. "He stated that both the deputy attorney general and attorney general are anxious to discreetly find out if Mary Jo Kopechne (deceased) had visited Greece in August 1968," DeLoach writes in his report. John Mitchell was attorney general at the time. Dean supplied Kopechne's passport number. The subsequent report about the results of the check on any visit to Greece was blacked out. Meanwhile, the FBI said Monday it has additional documents on threats to Kennedy, possibly thousands more pages, that it plans to make public once the agency finishes reviewing them. Kennedy family members were given a chance to review and to raise objections to the documents before they were released Monday, the FBI said. Dennis Argall, assistant section chief of the FBI's record information dissemination section, declined to specify how much time the family was given. He would only say the family was given an "appropriate" time to review the documents. The family has no legal power to keep information withheld. But the FBI does consider privacy concerns on a case-by-case basis, he said. Johnson reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Sam Hananel in Washington contributed to this report.

FBI files show Edward Kennedy's life was constantly threatened

politicalassassinations — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:48:17 +0000

In this version from the Washington Post the documents or "files" become witnesses that speak against Sirhan and are said to be the source of the accusation he was plotting to kill Senator Kennedy. We have language for a reason, but journalism seems to have left it behind long ago, along with all the other accuracy required of news reporting. Note that the FBI was monitoring Ted Kennedy, as it had both his brothers, for alleged ties to international Communism, based on informant claims, not on any real evidence, unless meeting and talking to someone with a Communist perspective automatically makes you one. The FBI are once again trying to put a positive spin on their efforts and activities, which did much more to endanger the Kennedy brothers, Dr. King, Malcolm X and many other social change leaders than to protect them. John Judge FBI files show Edward Kennedy's life was constantly threatened By Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 15, 2010; Sen. Edward M. Kennedy lived with constant threats on his life after the assassinations of his brothers and was monitored by the FBI for his possible ties to communist radicals in Latin America, according to a trove of FBI files on the late senator released Monday. The more than 2,200 pages, disclosed in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by news organizations, cover the FBI's relationship with the Massachusetts Democrat from 1961 to 1985. Kennedy died of cancer in August. The bulk of the material covers FBI investigations of threats of violence and extortion against Kennedy and other public figures, including Kennedy's political rival President Ronald Reagan. One anonymous letter sent in October 1968 threatened "assassination for Kennedy number three within twenty four hours . . . all Kennedy residents are in danger on that day." Sirhan Sirhan, who fatally shot Kennedy's brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968, even offered $1 million to a fellow inmate in California to kill Edward Kennedy, according to the files, which say the prisoner declined. Ted Kennedy was acutely aware of such threats but rarely spoke of them publicly. Then-Sen. Walter Mondale recounted that Kennedy's own fears bubbled powerfully to the surface on an infamous plane trip in April 1969, less than a year after Robert Kennedy's death. Operating on little sleep and not much food, the senator suddenly burst out loud enough for the whole plane to hear: "They killed Jack and they killed Bobby, and now they're trying to kill me. . . . They're trying to kill me!" Kennedy waited 12 years after Robert was assassinated before running for president, largely because of his family's concerns about such threats, according to a longtime aide, Robert Shrum. "You took precautions," said Shrum, Kennedy's speechwriter during his 1980 presidential campaign. "We had a doctor with us everywhere we went. We had ambulances in most places. The memory was there. But you just lived with it." Concerned about the threats, Shrum and other Kennedy aides asked President Jimmy Carter, Kennedy's rival for the Democratic nomination, for Secret Service protection two months before Kennedy officially announced his candidacy. Carter granted the request. Longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is a regular presence in the documents, which touch on some of the controversies involving Kennedy and his family -- and Hoover's own troubled legacy of spying on Americans. The FBI closely monitored Kennedy's fact-finding trip to Mexico, Central America and South America in 1961, and one document shows that Hoover received a file from an FBI employee in Mexico City that said the senator "is interested in meeting with 'leftists' to talk with them and determine why they think as they do.'' The document added that "the Kennedy party" was meeting with a university official in Mexico "on whom this office and bureau has information indicating communist sympathies.'' In a statement accompanying the document release, the FBI said that "given the Bureau's long interest in the influence of Central American revolutionaries and communists on American radicals, the Bureau took an interest in Kennedy's travels." During the trip, the documents show, the FBI recovered a notebook kept by Kennedy documenting his travels that was accidentally left on his airplane. The files include 77 pages on the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha's Vineyard in 1969. The pages are nearly all newspaper articles, but one internal FBI document informed Hoover of the accident and says the police chief in Edgartown, Mass., "confidentially" advised that Kennedy was the driver. "Stated fact Senator Kennedy was driver is not being revealed to anyone,'' the document said.

Do you remember where you were? He does: With JFK

politicalassassinations — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:16:42 +0000

Researchers will immediately notice the factual errors in this article, most of them related to the Secret Service's clear and fatal errors in the motorcade route and procedures on November 22. This apologetic piece will probably mark the tone of the documentary mentioned for airing in November. If Lawson's final conclusion is true, why even have a Secret Service protection system? Is it merely to discourage the faint-hearted? Note his Army Intelligence background and his role afterwards with protection of Vice-Presidents, which must be the equivalent of being put out to pasture for failed Presidential protectors. Given the actual circumstances one wonders why he was retained. But that begs a more important question about the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA and the DIA and other federal agencies assigned to our protection and investigations of crimes, and their actual performance and agenda over many decades now - John Judge Do you remember where you were? He does: With JFK By Bill Bartel The Virginian-Pilot News Virginia Beach June 17, 2010 http://hamptonroads.com/2010/06/do-you-remember-where-you-were-he-does-jfk#rfq (VIRGINIA BEACH) Winston Lawson remembers the shots as clearly as if it was yesterday. "I heard bang... bang-bang," he said, slapping his knee for emphasis. Lawson was riding in the front seat of an unmarked Dallas police car traveling just in front of a dark blue Lincoln convertible carrying President John F. Kennedy, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and the governor of Texas and his wife. It was 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963. An assassin's bullets mortally wounded President Kennedy and severely injured Gov. John Connally. It was a national tragedy so shocking that many Americans can remember exactly where they were when they heard of Kennedy's death. For Lawson, it was more personal. He was the Secret Service agent who had planned security for the Dallas trip. Lawson, now 81 and living in Virginia Beach, is going back to Dallas this week for a reunion with Secret Service colleagues. An Army intelligence specialist, he joined the Secret Service in 1959, working in its Syracuse, N.Y., office until being transferred to Washington in March 1961, two months after Kennedy was sworn in as president. As part of a 34-man White House detail that handled security, he often worked long hours, accompanying JFK on his many weekends at the family's compound in Cape Cod and other trips. By the fall of 1963, Lawson was experienced at planning presidential security, having organized trips both in the United States and abroad. He handled security for JFK's 1963 trip to Germany where the president told citizens of West Berlin - then surrounded by Communist-controlled East Germany - that "all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' " On Nov. 4, Lawson was told that he would be responsible for the Dallas stopover during Kennedy's trip to Texas. Kennedy wanted to boost his political standing in the state, home of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Dallas visit was to include a slow-moving 45-minute motorcade through suburbia and part of downtown, followed by a luncheon speech and a four-minute trip back to the airport. Ten days before Kennedy arrived, Lawson and other agents were in Dallas arranging security and evaluating potential hazards. Early on Nov. 22, the Dallas weather was drizzly, and as agents awaited the president's plane, they considered placing a clear plastic cover, or bubble, over the limousine. A Kennedy aide told the Secret Service to leave it off - the White House staff wanted as many people as possible to see the president without obstruction. As the motorcade eased its way through Dallas, crowds lined the route. Lawson, with another agent and the Dallas police chief and sheriff, were a few car lengths ahead of the presidential limousine. He kept looking back at the limo and the crowd, then glancing ahead to overpasses, railroads and other hazards, trading advice with the police chief as they went. The job of scanning buildings fell to agents in a car behind the limo and to local law enforcement officers. Agent Roy Kellerman, riding in the front seat of Kennedy's car, later said he looked at the Texas School Book Depository Building but saw nothing suspicious. Lawson was commenting to his colleague that it was a long trip when he heard the three bangs. He knew immediately what they were. "The president was hit. Go to the hospital," a voice on his radio ordered. They raced to Parkland Memorial Hospital just ahead of the limousine. Lawson retrieved a gurney, and after Connally was removed from the car, he helped other agents take out Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy had been cradling her husband on her lap. The president's skin was gray, and he didn't move as they placed him on the gurney. Lawson saw a huge hole in the back of the president's head. "He didn't look like he was going to make it," Lawson said. As the president was wheeled into the emergency room, Lawson followed. The agent stood at the president's head as emergency personnel tried to save him. But the damage was so severe, they didn't work for long. At 1 p.m., the president was declared dead. As the world outside the ER exploded with the news and, within two hours, the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lawson stayed with Kennedy. He and other agents transported the president's body back to the airport and loaded the casket onto Air Force One for the return to Washington. On board was the new president, Lyndon Johnson, and Mrs. Kennedy. Lawson returned home the next day to his family in Falls Church. The day after, he watched on live TV as Oswald was shot to death outside the Dallas jail by Jack Ruby. And the day after that, he stood guard down a slope from Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery, part of the detail that provided security for the burial. In the weeks that followed, he wrote detailed memos and spent hours testifying before the Warren Commission. He also returned to work. He continued to do presidential advance work, handling security arrangements for President Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey and, in the Nixon administration, Vice President Spiro Agnew. The personal support he received from other agents helped him deal with the aftermath of the assassination, he said. "Just their attitude and the way they talked to me." He grimaces when asked how much credence he gives conspiracy theories that the Kennedy assassination involved multiple shooters. "None," he said. "There's no shots from in front, kitty corner or from the side or anything like that." He has rethought his work in Dallas many times. "The biggest 'what ifs' were, 'What if the rain hadn't stopped and the bubble had been on the car?' " he said. "Because everybody thought it was bulletproof, maybe he wouldn't have tried it." Although the bubble wasn't bulletproof, it might have distorted the shooter's view or the metal frame might have deflected a shot, he said. After the assassination and investigation, significant changes were made to the Secret Service. The Warren Commission said the agency was understaffed and did not have adequate sources of information and assistance from other law enforcement agencies in reviewing threats against the president. The number of agents has grown vastly. In 1963, the 34 agents were assigned to guard the president 24 hours a day, with several hundred others on staff. Today, there are thousands. On Friday, Lawson will travel with his wife back to the Book Depository building - now a museum - where he and a handful of other agents will tell their stories. The event will be taped as part of a Discovery Channel show to air in November. At the same time, a book, "The Kennedy Detail," will be released that tells the story of the agents assigned to JFK. It's an important and strenuous trip for him. He has been living at Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital since February 2008 after suffering a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. Lawson said he's made peace with what happened in Dallas. In the end, he ascribes to a feeling, shared by many agents and the Warren Commission, that there's no way to completely protect someone. "I thought about it, but I was pretty confident that I had done everything I could do," he said. Jeff Parris, who worked with Lawson in later years, said he is an iconic figure within the Secret Service. His actions in Dallas and afterward are studied at their training academy, Parris said. "Even though it was a bad situation, he did the job the way it was supposed to be done."

Dallas police crack down on Dealey Plaza vendors

politicalassassinations — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:42:19 +0000

Our good friend and longtime researcher Robert Groden, who has sold his excellent books and films in Dealey Plaza for decades, in opposition to the official story being perpetrated by the Sixth Floor Museum, was arrested in this most recent raid, following dozens of other wrongful arrests for the same "crime" that were consistently thrown out of court. This time, he was kept in jail for nine hours. Many things are sold inside Dealey Plaza, including misleading books at the Museum, food and parking spaces. Only the truth about the Kennedy assassination seems to be disallowed for sale or permanent exhibition - John Judge Dallas police crack down on Dealey Plaza vendors who peddle maps, conspiracy theories 11:43 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Dallas News By REBECCA LOPEZ / WFAA-TV No visit to Dealey Plaza is complete without a run-in with vendors selling maps, newspapers and conspiracy theories. That may soon change as Dallas police crack down on the street peddlers, who can be ticketed and arrested if they lack the proper permits. "When a visitor is coming to ... Dallas, and the first thing they are being cussed at or spit on or harassed, that's not the image we want portrayed," Deputy Police Chief Vince Golbeck said. Michael Brownlow talks about conspiracy theories and gives tours at the downtown plaza alongside the spot where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Even Brownlow acknowledges that sometimes the vendors get out of hand. "They walk up and say, 'Would you like a tour?' and you say no and they continue on and continue on and they actually intimidate people, and some people are scared," he said. But Brownlow says not all vendors are like that. He says some, like him, simply want to spread the word about different theories on the assassination. He said he believes that police are heavy-handed when dealing with vendors, and he watched a good friend arrested last weekend. "I feel like his civil rights were violated and his constitutional rights," he said. Dallas police say the vendors can give papers away or sell them on public sidewalks, but once they enter Dealey Plaza, which is considered a park, they are committing a crime. "It is giving another perspective of that important piece of history," Golbeck said, "and that is fine if they are doing so on public property."

Cuban ex-intelligence chief recalls JFK assassination

politicalassassinations — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:47:46 +0000

This article supports the contention that Operation Northwoods, a plot by the Joint Chiefs to use a staged traumatic incident that could be plausibly linked to Fidel Castro and used to get public support for a US military invasion and toppling of the Cuban leadership, which had been rejected by President Kennedy at the time, was altered by the Joint Chiefs to make the assassination on November 22, 1963 into the triggering incident. This explains the doubling of Lee Harvey Oswald by a CIA impostor in Mexico City, trying to get into Cuba weeks before the JFK assassination, to make a plausible link to Castro for the framed patsy accused of the murder. Only Oswald's survival of his arrest in the Texas Theater made him into a talking head that could compromise the whole operation, instead of a convenient Dead Red that could be used to justify attacking Cuba. The plan was called off at the last moment, despite Army transport planes loaded with troops for the invasion that day, as well as Navy Seals waiting off shore for the green light to kill Castro. Jack Ruby, with ties to Naval Intelligence, the Mafia and CIA operations in Cuba was sent in to silence Oswald before a trail could be held or he could say more. Researcher Mae Brussell wrote "The Last Worlds of Lee Harvey Oswald" in People's Almanac #2, compiling all the public statement and reported statements of Oswald during his brief captivity. These alone tell us more about the assassination and his role as a patsy, a term he used himself, than do many of the official pronouncements by the media and the government over the last four decades. Castro's similar analysis of the events and his framing appears in a transcript of his speech, given three days after Kennedy's death, in the book History Will Not Absolve Us by Martin Schotz. Cuban ex-intelligence chief recalls JFK assassination By Martin Roberts Reuters Monday, July 12, 2010; 7:32 AM GIJON, Spain (Reuters) - Like many, Fabian Escalante remembers what he was doing when he heard U.S. President John F. Kennedy had been shot: he was trying to stop the Central Intelligence Agency from toppling the Cuban government with the help of anti-Castro exiles. Years later, when he had risen to head Cuba's Department of State Security, he was well placed to consider whether those same exiles may have had a hand in the November 22, 1963 slaying of the dashing young president in Dallas. Escalante does not claim to know who killed JFK, but says that Cuban exiles recruited by the CIA had planned to kill Kennedy twice in November 1963, because they felt the U.S. president had done too little to topple the government on the Caribbean island. "They had the capability, the means and the intent," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the Semana Negra crime writing festival in Gijon, northern Spain. "How was this meant to turn out? To assassinate Kennedy, launch a furious campaign against Cuba, blaming it for the assassination, which they did, then kill Fidel Castro a few days later, on December 12, and invade Cuba." Escalante worked with members of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations investigating the JFK killing when they travelled to Cuba in 1978 to collect data on the activities of Cuban exiles. In his retirement, he has published many of his findings in book form, along with research he has conducted since he set up the Centre for Security Studies in 1993. LIFE INSURANCE Escalante says one anti-Castro exile and former CIA operative who may hold clues to the JFK assassination is Luis Posada Carriles, who lives in Miami and is wanted in Cuba on charges of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet which killed 73 people. Posada Carriles is also accused of involvement in a 1997 wave of hotel bombings, which were aimed at destabilizing Cuba and scaring away tourists, but Escalante doubts the U.S. government will deport him to Cuba to face trial. "He has a life insurance policy, which is what he knows about the Kennedy plot," Escalante said. "He and (fellow exile) Orlando Bosch were in the thick of the Kennedy plot. Remember, both he and Posada were part of this terrorist mechanism set up in New Orleans, which is where the plot was hatched to assassinate Kennedy." POISON MILK SHAKE Now 69, Escalante was just 18 when a revolution led by Fidel Castro took power in 1959. In the next few years, he and other young novices built up a counter-intelligence service from scratch. He was invited to participate in the Spanish crime-writing festival because organizers say fiction falls short of a world Escalante has uncovered, in which the CIA plotted to make Castro's beard fall off or poison Cubans with infected coins. Escalante belonged to the Q Section in 1961, which had 50 case officers to thwart the efforts of the so-called JMWAVE CIA base in Florida assigned to conduct sabotage operations in Cuba with a $100 million budget and 4,000 agents. In his book "Executive Action," Escalante lists 634 conspiracies to kill Castro between 1959 and 2000, including 168 plots which may have succeeded. He says the closest the Cuban leader came to death was when a CIA agent working at Havana's former Hilton hotel tried to poison a chocolate milk shake Castro ordered However, a capsule containing botulin stuck to the side of the freezer compartment in the bar and broke when the agent tried to prise it loose. Escalante says the Q Section often intercepted false documents sent by the CIA to their agents in Cuba, which were as good as genuine ones, so he used one for himself. "Security measures for documents in those days were very lax. There was just ordinary paper, a photo, stamp and plastic cover. So that was how I began to drive, with a CIA license." (Reporting by Martin Roberts, editing by Paul Casciato)

Dealey Plaza vendor sues city of Dallas after police sweep

politicalassassinations — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:09:04 +0000

Robert Groden is no clown, as the comment rudely implies. He is a serious and committed researcher for decades into the truth of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the mendacity of the official version and the media that still denies reality to support it, including the Sixth Floor Museum, funded to perpetuate the lies. Groden was hired as a photographic consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and is the author of many critical and groundbreaking books on the evidence in the JFK case. He sells videos of the actual footage of the assassination as well as those works on the Grassy Knoll and has for decades now. He has not failed to fill out any paperwork, none is needed and no permit has ever been offered. He was not ticketed 80 times for harassing anyone. It has been a long campaign of harassment and each time the court threw out the charge and voided the ticket. It is a matter of free speech, free thought and the protection of dissent in the face of the propaganda, lies, cover-up and even witness murders that have marred the lack of investigation into the Kennedy assassination from the start. I come to Dealey Plaza each year on November 22 to hold a moment of silence begun in the 60s by journalist and newspaper editor Penn Jones, Jr. who also knew and respected Bob Groen. I represent the national network of serious assassination researchers based in Washington, DC, responsible for freeing 6.5 million pages of classified records on the JFK case. I do not come to honor JFK's life and record, which were impressive, but to talk about how those things got him killed, why and by what forces that are still in power in this country. I come, as Groden does, to speak truth to power in the dimming light of this democracy before darkness overtakes us all. Those who harass Groden for telling the truth are those who wish to extinguish one of the few remaining lights in this age of blind consensus. Shame on the Dallas police, and shame on the Dallas press for not searching the truth they were honor bound to pursue in the name of law and justice. Shame on a country where a man must spend his life at the scene of a murder, like the mothers of the disappeared in the foreign countries ruled by dictators we put into power, holding up the mirror to the lies incorporated at the Museum nearby. Oswald did not kill Kennedy, he did not shoot anyone that day. The forces that placed him as the patsy go to the top of the government and the Pentagon that removed him for their own venal agendas which to this day ruin our economy, our lives, our freedom and our future. Forgive my grief, as Tennyson and Penn Jones said. Forgive my refusal to bend down to a lie. Forgive the boldness of Robert Groden to spit in the eye of false history and demand the truth, much less to speak and spread it on the vile location where democracy died long ago. Dealey Plaza vendor sues city of Dallas after police sweep 06:38 AM CDT on Monday, July 12, 2010 By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News dflick@dallasnews.com http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/071210dnmetjfksuit.1d941e9.html Alone among the newspaper vendors and self-appointed guides in Dealey Plaza who for years regaled tourists with conspiracy theories, Robert Groden suddenly has the grassy knoll to himself. And he has his suspicions about the forces at work. "A security guard from the Sixth Floor Museum told me they were behind it," Groden said of the recent police crackdown. In addition, "Everybody knows they [city officials] want us out of here because of the Super Bowl." After his arrest June 13 for selling merchandise without authorization in a city park, Groden sued the city of Dallas in federal court, charging that he is being denied his constitutional right to freedom of speech. A hearing is set for Aug. 25. Until then, the city has agreed to allow him to continue to sell his newspapers and DVDs from a folding table in an obscure corner of the plaza. His competitors, who sometimes outnumbered the tourists, were gone last week. Security patrols, sponsored by the private group Downtown Dallas, had a higher-than-usual presence. Deputy Chief Vince Goldbeck said the crackdown was in response to complaints that visitors to Dealey Plaza – where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963 – were sometimes harassed and intimidated by the vendors. He acknowledged that some of the complaints have come from officials of the Sixth Floor Museum and Downtown Dallas, but said most were from individual visitors and organized tours. "We were responding to quality-of-life issues that have generated complaints for quite some time," Goldbeck said. "It's been going on for several months, but lately it's become more intense." An official at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza declined to comment on the museum's role on the crackdown, noting that it was in litigation. But she took issue with Groden's contention that officials there were motivated by fear that competition from the vendors would take tourist money away from the Sixth Floor's new museum store and cafe. "I'm surprised he would say that," said Nicola Longford, museum executive director. "We run our own business, and we only care what the Sixth Floor is doing." As for the charge that the sweep was a way to clean up a major tourist site before next year's Super Bowl in North Texas, Chris Bowers, a city attorney, was blunt. "This has nothing to do with the Super Bowl," he said. The vendors' statesman Many of the Dealey Plaza vendors frequent the site for only days or weeks before moving on. Some are homeless people trying to gain a few dollars. In that subculture, Groden has something like statesman status. Groden, 64, moved to Dallas from New York in 1995. He has been a familiar figure in Dealey Plaza ever since. Groden maintains the taped "X" along the extension of Elm Street, which marks, more or less, where Kennedy was shot. Working in a film processing company in New York, Groden copied Abraham Zapruder's famed home movie of the JFK assassination and aired it on Geraldo Rivera's late-night television show in 1975. Groden later served as a consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and to Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK, in which he also played a doctor at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He was a paid witness for the defense in the O.J. Simpson civil trial, testifying that a photo showing Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes was faked. His expertise and testimony were battered in cross-examination by a plaintiff's attorney, who demonstrated that Simpson appeared in the shoes in more than a score of other photos. Some good, some bad For his part, Groden acknowledges that there have been problems on the plaza. "Some of the people are a bit pushy, some have gotten in the face of visitors," he said. "No one is more against them than I am." He contends that the city has ticketed him 80 times for selling his newspapers over the years. But he said they agreed to tolerate his presence in the plaza after he threatened an earlier suit seven years ago. Bowers denied any such agreement existed. Beyond official circles, visitors to Dealey Plaza interviewed one day last week expressed disagreement about the vendors. "I thought it was interesting," said Matt Tanner of Kansas City, Mo., of Groden's newspaper JFK: The Case for Conspiracy. "I didn't like seeing the autopsy photos. But it was different from what you'd see up there [motioning toward the Sixth Floor museum]. It was another opinion." On the other hand, John Sekul of Biloxi, Miss., said he found the presence of newspaper vendors offensive. "This is a national monument, they shouldn't have vendors here," he said. "When I walked through the plaza and remembered that day, I had tears in my eyes. This is sacred ground." Comments: CitySlicker 5:22 PM on July 12, 2010 Is the city interfering with Groden's right to express himself, or just trying to protect tourists from another form of aggressive panhandling? Has he REALLY been ticketed 80 times? Why is he not in jail? The city is too soft with this clown.