WEIRDLAND: November 2020

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Happy 60th Anniversary, John Kennedy Jr!

In a week where John F. Kennedy Jr. would have celebrated his 60th birthday (on 25th November), his friends are lamenting that the world never got to see what the dashing presidential son would have become. His death marked the latest big loss in a family that has experienced much of it over the generations. "His legacy was really about who he would've become," friend Brian Steel, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan with Kennedy, said to Today News. "But I just think America and also the world would have been a better place. Now you look back, and you think of what might have been." This past Sunday marked the 57th anniversary of his father's assassination. John Kennedy Jr. had been mulling over a foray into politics, the stock in trade of his famous family, but had not yet made the leap. He had become a New York City fixture as one of the most debonair bachelors before marrying Carolyn Bessette in a fairy tale wedding in 1996. A run for high-profile political office in New York was most likely in his future with an eye on one day returning the Kennedy family to the White House. "There's no doubt he was thinking about running for governor," Steel said. "We had that discussion a couple times in the months before he passed away. He also had given sort of fleeting thought for running for that Senate seat in 2000. The White House could have been his destiny." "I think anytime you go into politics, you have to make sure the rest of your life will accommodate that decision," John Kennedy Jr. told NBC's Tom Brokaw in 1995. "There is a whole generation that has now grown up without knowing Kennedy Jr. as a public figure, but his memory lives on. I mean, there was no one that compared in the world to John," Steel added. "Everything that he did with his power, his fame, it was all about some greater good," Rose Marie Terenzio (his former executive assistant at George magazine) said. "He's truly missed for the way that he gracefully took that mantle of responsibility and lived an honorable life full of integrity—and he's missed for what we all want, which is somebody to look up to and to be proud of." 

JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette had been married for less than three years when they were killed in a plane crash on July 16, 1999, but their romance remains the stuff of legend. According to America's Reluctant Prince by historian Steve Gillon, Carolyn's mother, Ann Freeman, had openly questioned during her wedding toast whether John Kennedy Jr was the right man for her daughter. Anthony Radziwill tempered the awkwardness with his best man toast. "We all know why John would marry Carolyn," he said. "She is smart, beautiful and charming... What does she see in John? Well, some of the things that I guess might have attracted Carolyn to John are his caring, his charm, and his very big heart of gold." Carolyn had become increasingly involved with George magazine, much to the consternation of John's partner, Michael Berman, who ended up selling his half of the magazine in 1997 after exchanging some bitter arguments. Incidentally, Carolyn had left her own career, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to do next. According to Stephen Styles, a friend of John and Carolyn, in April 1997, a female reporter attended a luncheon at the Robin Hood Foundation, and tried to pry into Bessette's plans: "As for the job prospects Carolyn might have considered, she shook her head and simply said 'I can`t comment on that.' John then interrupted this conversation to say with his peculiar brand of humor: 'I won't let her work!' Asked  by the reporter about his seemingly dominance, John shrugged it off, and Carolyn laughed while rolled her eyes in amusement." 

Carolyn loved John, but in what would become a point of contention for the rest of their lives, she didn't particularly enjoy going to spend holidays with his sprawling family on the Cape, formally presided over by matriarch Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy's widow, and the Kennedy men, who with their touch football games and clambakes seemed lifted from a Ralph Lauren ad. John had officially met Carolyn in 1994 at a Calvin Klein-hosted event and was instantly smitten. "Early on, he would be frustrated with Carolyn," attorney Brian Steel, who met John when they both worked in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, recalled. "He would say, 'I called her and she hasn't called me back.' And John did not like that." Gustavo Paredes told People magazine that "Carolyn didn't think he was serious. And he couldn't believe she had turned him down. It had never happened to him before." "She was exactly the kind of girl I imagined would date someone like John Kennedy Jr.," Rose Marie Terenzio recalled in her 2012 memoir Fairy Tale Interrupted, "she actually intimidated the hell out of me." When she first met Carolyn, Terenzio realized Carolyn "was different from the typical trendy girls you see around Manhattan. She wasn't trying too hard to be cool. She wasn't trying at all." 

Although numerous issues would plague John and Carolyn's relationship in the years to come, by all accounts infidelity wasn't one of them—though, according to some rumors, Carolyn would hint John during their fights that she was thinking of seeing her ex-boyfriend. Her friends didn't think she would actually cheat on John, though. "Carolyn, more than anyone who John had been with, would stand up to him, and confront him, and I think that John to an extent needed that," historian Steven M. Gillon, a classmate of John's at Brown University who was later a contributing editor at George, told InStyle in 2019. That being said, John was still a headstrong Kennedy, and sometimes possessed an explosive temper that wasn't usually mentioned in the usual accounts—though his friends and ex-girlfriends knew better. "I knew that John had a temper and that Carolyn was no shrinking violet," Richard Blow recalled in American Son:A Portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr. "But the violence and their rage of the video presented a harsh contrast to the tenderness I'd seen between them. John was a nice, compassionate and warm guy." Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy after the plane crash at a memorial service held on July 23 at the Church of St. Thomas More, New York City: "John was a devoted son and brother, and he was a husband who adored the wife who became his perfect soul mate," the senator, who later died in 2009, said. "John's father taught us all to reach for the moon and the stars. John did just that in all he did—and he found his shining star when he married Carolyn Bessette—the new pride of the Kennedys. We loved John and Carolyn. The Bessettes and Freeman families will always be part of ours." In Ted Kennedy's assessment, Carolyn had always fit right with the Kennedy clan. And that's certainly how John had wanted her to feel. Source: www.today.com

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Style Icons: Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Pam Courson (Love Her Madly)

 
Most people would jump at the chance to spend any time at all at the Kennedy compound with one of America’s most prominent families. But Carolyn Bessette was not like most people. According to The Kennedy Heirs by J. Randy Taraborrelli, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife resisted visiting his relatives in Hyannis Port often when the topic was broached. Taraborrelli described Bessette’s reluctance to visit the compound and Kennedy’s insistence that she do so as the “recurring argument” the couple “just couldn’t seem to settle no matter how many times they tried.” Part of the reason Bessette objected to these visits was because she didn’t feel that she fit in with the athletic Kennedy crew. But perhaps the more pressing reason she wanted to avoid the Cape compound was to avoid the paparazzi. Bessette and Kennedy were hounded by the photographers almost constantly, and Carolyn was deeply affected by the invasion of privacy. Though at first she thought the Kennedy compound was a hideaway from the media, she changed her mind after seeing a photographer shoot her from the pier one day. “Now she felt she had to put on an act for public consumption, which added a new level of angst to going to the compound,” Taraborrelli wrote. “She was taking antidepressant pills just to get through it, she confided in her friends.” 

And John wasn’t always understanding of Carolyn’s objections. According to Taraborrelli, Kennedy once brought up their recurring disagreement at dinner with friends, telling her, “Fine. Don’t come with me, hell if I care.” When she began to cry, he told her, “You’re crying because you don’t want to have fun on the beach with my family? I don’t understand you, Carolyn.” He thought she’d at least appeared to be having a good time during their family trips. Other friends think another reason was the resistance of Carolyn to accept the future role in politics his husband would have adopted at last. The most improbable source of their rows was romantic jealousy - although some not very credible acquaintances insisted Carolyn was very jealous of John's former girlfriend Julie Baker, whom she forbade of visiting their apartment. In fairness, Baker had been disrespectful when she was seen sitting one evening on John's lap in a quite inappropriate way. Longtime friends Sasha Chermayeff and Santina Goodman found Julie Baker's behaviour rude. On the other hand, the mere mention of Michael Bergin's name could unearth intense rage from John, according to these same anonymous friends. Source: www.instyle.com

John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette were married at a Baptist church illuminated by candlelights, so dim inside that the Reverend Charles J. O’Byrne of Manhattan’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s funeral was held, had to read the service by flashlight. John’s cousin and closest friend, Anthony Radziwill, served as best man (as John had served as best man at Anthony’s wedding to Carole Ann Radziwill), and at the end of the ceremony John turned to Anthony to tell him that he had never been happier in his life. The man who could have had many women of high caliber had chosen as his bride one who was not rich or famous or ennobled by family background or particularly distinguished by any professional accomplishment. What Carolyn Bessette had were certain charismatic qualities—remarkable beauty, a unique sense of style, and a sharp intelligence. The media played the marriage as a Cinderella story, casting Carolyn as the commoner who had found true love with Prince Charming. —"The Newest Kennedy, the Stylish Carolyn Bessette" (September 29, 1996) by Elisabeth Bumiller 

In Love Her Madly, Jim Morrison, Mary, and Me, author Bill Cosgrave talks about the summer he spent hanging out with the future Lizard King a couple of years before The Doors achieved stardom. “He was so shy you would not believe it was the same guy who would romp and scream around the stage,” Cosgrave remembers. “He was a gentle, lovely human being.” The “Mary” the title of the book refers to is Mary Werbelow. “I left home when I was 15 [and] ended up in Clearwater, Florida. I was staying with some friends. Mary was three years older than me. Long story short, I couldn’t get my eyes off her,” explains Cosgrave. Fast forward a few years and Mary lures him away from college in Montreal and out to Los Angeles where she’s living with her then-fiancĂ©. “An hour later, Jim walked in. And we became fast friends.” Soon Mary would throw Jim out of their shared Venice apartment and he ended up sleeping under the Santa Monica Pier. When he wasn’t doing that, he was hanging out with Cosgrave or another pal, Dennis C. Jakob. A couple of years go by, Bill is in Canada in the travel business, and Jim is world-famous. “Without Mary Werbelow, let’s face it, you wouldn’t have The Doors,” he says. “He wrote The End, one of his most famous songs, about his break-up with Mary. I was particularly in love with Mary. She was my dream girl,” he admits. “I spent many years trying to find her and I did find her 43 years later. In 1965, I was totally OK with our platonic relationship, because there was no other option. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t find her unbearably desirable. Jim Morrison was a welcoming, kind, and open person. He was courteous, respectful, and very polite with Mary. We clicked, we quickly bonded. I think that Jim was particularly open to me because Mary and I were good friends. After his break-up with Mary, he had met a wild child named Pam Courson. I know the official version of Jim's death is he died of a heart attack. But there are many theories for how he ended up in that bathtub. One theory is that he mistook Pamela’s heroin for cocaine, and that the heroin killed him." Source: www.forewordreviews.com 

Once Pam Courson and I left Jim Morrison and his ex-girlfriend Mary Werbelow alone for awhile, and Pam said something I will never forget: “I feel sorry for Mary.” I knew it meant she was not threatened by the emergence of Mary. I knew that something had long been settled between her and Jim. Their relationship was deeper than either one of them had ever had before. I’d begun to suspect that something had been settled between the two of them – something unbreakable except by death itself. —"Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison, A Memoir" (2011) by Dennis C. Jakob

Monday, November 23, 2020

57th Anniversary of JFK's death, "Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy" (2020) by Anton Chaitkin

 
James Murray (22 November, 2020): The terrible event was captured by Abraham Zapruder on a Super 8 Movie Camera. It was a moment that for millions of people the world seemed to stop. People remembered for the rest of their lives where they were when they heard the news of the shooting of President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally. It is also a moment when the sheer horror of the event changed history. The Irish-American President’s death has spawned many conspiracy theories on exactly who was involved, and who was interested in killing the President. Even today, years later, and after the release by President Trump of many of the previously sealed documents still has many Americans doubting the findings of the Warren Commission the official report and investigation into the assassination. The shooting happened in Dallas, and the alleged assassin arrested a short time later was a disaffected former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald. A majority of people in the United States believe President Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy. Oliver Stone’s JFK pointed to involvement by the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex. Despite all the documents which have been released, with all the time that has passed, it is difficult to say if the full story will ever be told. President Kennedy was only in office for about 1000 days. But it was an era that changed America and changed the world. Many wonder what our world would have been like today had the assassination in Dallas never happened. The world will never know. What we do know is that our world did change that day. The death of President John F. Kennedy was seen by many observers as the end of a shining era. Source: www.netnewsledger.com

A half century ago, the Anglo-American Establishment reversed the policies that made America rich, powerful, and humane. They erased our former way of thinking from public memory. They took away from us our original national mission: gaining scientific control over nature to uplift mankind. They falsely inserted their own goals, so that no remedy from our real heritage seemed possible. This new book by the masterful investigative historian Anton Chaitkin, restores that stolen American legacy. The secret to modern history is the great breakthroughs in technology were deliberate projects for the improvement of humanity. Chaitkin takes you behind the scenes, to see the two sides struggling to control American policy: nationalist statesmen and industrial innovators, versus the British empire, Wall Street and the southern slave owners. Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy Volume 1: 1750s to 1850s by Anton Chaitkin has been published on November 19, 2020. Some startling details from Who We Are: Benjamin Franklin guides his friends in England who develop the steam engine, canals, and steelmaking—and discover biochemical laws of nature. Franklin and his close allies guide America’s revolt against the empire, write the Constitution, and strategize for a strong industrial nation-state. Lord Shelburne’s British Intelligence system acts to prevent other countries from acquiring the new technical powers, by fake insurrections and the “free trade” dogmas. Alexander Hamilton’s founding development program is sabotaged by Shelburne. The British turn the French Revolution to anarchy and mass bloodshed. America’s founding program remains blocked, until a new generation of nationalist leaders fight the British again and start industrialization. Finally, in the 1820’s, acting as a team in government and the military, an idealistic core group builds U.S. canals, coal and iron industries, and railroads. They bring on modern times, and actively aid other countries’ industrial progress—all this against the violent opposition of the British imperial interests. Volume 1 takes us to the Civil War. Volume 2 (planned for 2021) carries the story of progress versus empire, from Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy.

Historian and investigative journalist Anton Chaitkin was the History Editor for Executive Intelligence Review. For 40 years, he has made groundbreaking discoveries about the intentions of those pioneers who fought for the US citizens improvement, and of their imperial opponents. His 1985 book {Treason in America: from Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman} documented from "blue-blood" family archives the takeover of U.S. policy making by agents and allies of the British empire. This classic with 100,000 copies sold, long out of print, is now in a Kindle edition. His father, a New York attorney, fought in the courts to break Wall Street and London sponsorship of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship in Germany. Many of the lawsuits were against international Nazi interests managed by Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of the two Bush Presidents. The author comments, "The only people who can seriously criticize the real evils of America today, are those who seriously appreciate what America—uniquely—did right in the past. That's the purpose of the book." Source: www.amazon.com

Sunday, November 22, 2020

JFK Jr: Cover-Up and Conspiracy

As Richard Salant, Former President of CBS News stated, the media's job is to feed the public what media thinks the public ought to know. Anything that happens that the media doesn't think the public needs to know about will simply not be reported. Previously, I discussed Operation Mockingbird, a secret, joint CIA-press-disinformation apparatus which successfully managed to cover-up the JFK-assassination conspiracy. Operation Mockingbird was co-founded and run by Cord Meyer, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Frank Wisner, and Philip Graham. Caught by his handwritten notes uncovered in the National Archives, Warren Commission member Gerald Ford admitted that the Warren Report altered the official location of the entry wound in JFK's back. While the admission seemed trivial in the media, a moment's consideration reveals that this confession triggers some critical consequences. The few times the media has appeared to expose government wrongdoing has later been revealed in historical hindsight as one faction using the media against another camp. For those issues, which all factions agree must hide from the public, the press operates with total unanimity. Fulfilling the disinformation role was the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, the harsh reality behind the polished public image. Originally started back in the 60s to sabotage opposition to the war in Vietnam, the FBI's COINTELPRO operation was exposed in the 70s and led to Congressional Hearings. The official story of JFK Jr.’s plane crash evolved and was suspect. Initially, UPI (United Press International) reported that JFK Jr. approached Martha’s Vineyard in 8-mile visibility, made radio contact with the ground, and said he intended to drop off a passenger. He was then going to go on to Hyannis airport. ABC News later claimed that JFK Jr.’s plane suddenly went into a steep dive and crashed. Now in fairness, various media sources often differ in reporting news stories for innocent reasons such as differing eyewitness testimony, misunderstandings, and changing conditions. But before the wreckage was found, the news stories were already changing. The reported radio conversation with ground personnel between JFK Jr. and the local airport was gone. The NTSB said JFK Jr. had not used the radio at all. Also missing was the report that there was an 8-mile visibility. The media then pounded away that Martha’s Vineyard was blanketed with a blinding haze, which was so heavy that pilots flying in would be visionless and dependent on an instrument landing. Yet as the conflicting stories were broadcast, they began to crumble as not credible to astute observers. When JFK Jr. radioed controllers on the Cape (as reported on Boston TV News) to announce his approach to Martha's Vineyard, radar showed him not to be just lost and at the correct altitude for the airport approach. JFK Jr.'s conversational tone on the radio reveals that he was calm. Was he disoriented? He didn't ask for directions. He didn't indicate he had any problem at all. He was confident he was going to find the airport and land. He was lined up with the main runway at Martha's Vineyard airport. The fact that the radar was getting useful data from his encoding altimeter proves his instruments were operating. Several reporters, among them Cindy Adams at the New York Post, and Andrew Goldman at the New York Observer had cause to suspect they had been lied to. Interviews with individuals directly familiar with JFK Jr.'s flying ability shown on Inside Edition confirmed that he was a highly skilled and careful pilot. His total experience was about 300 hours, more than enough to qualify him for a commercial pilot's license. According to FAA statistics, 300 hours made him a more careful and safer pilot than one with 1000 hours, who may be more complacent. Kennedy’s plane had autopilot, capable of flying itself to within 100 feet of the airport. All a “cautious and methodical” pilot had to do was sit back and let the plane fly itself.  In his final approach message, WCVB-TV said Kennedy told controllers at the airport that he planned to drop off his wife's sister and then take off again between 11 PM and 11:30 PM for Hyannis Airport.  Kennedy's family then called Hyannis Airport - around 2:15 AM, reports say - when he failed to arrive. The airport then checked with the Martha's Vineyard airport, and the search began. The plane took off from Essex County Airport in Caldwell, N.J., at 8:38 PM Friday and lost contact with the FAA on its final approach to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., said Coast Guard spokesman Steve Carleton. 

Cindy Adams said deliberate false information was planted with the media before the wreckage of the airplane had been found. C. David Heymann was Cindy's source for the early story that JFK was worried about landing at Martha's Vineyard but reckless enough to try it. After the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, Kennedy returned to New York. He earned $20,000 a year in a position at the Office of Business Development, where his bosses reflected that he'd worked "in the same crummy cubicle as everybody else. I heaped on him the work and was always pleased with the results." From 1984 to 1986, JFK Jr worked for the New York City Office of Business Development. He served as deputy director of the 42nd Street Development Corporation in 1986, conducting negotiations with city developers and agencies. The report of the NTSB came out on August 8, 2000, 13 months after the plane crash of JFK Jr. It contradicts many of the lies or assumptions pushed in the media. For example, the L.A. Times reported: “An inexperienced pilot caused the accident that killed JFK Jr. the NTSB concluded in its final report." The NTSB report shows that Kennedy was highly experienced (he had more than enough hours for an instructor’s license), he was described by his trainers as “excellent,” “methodical,” and “very cautious.” The media say the visibility was poor. But the NTSB quotes the Tower manager at Martha’s Vineyard, where the plane went down, meaning that there were “stars out” and visibility was “between 10 and 12 miles.” Why did the media lie? Why have they always lied about the murder of his father? Kennedy’s plane had a black box. I think he knew they wanted to kill him, and he tried to make it hard for them. The NTSB, said the battery had been removed, destroying all records of conversation in the cockpit. All planes have an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), which sends out a beacon signal in case of a crash. It took five days to locate Kennedy’s plane. Why? Was it missing? Disabled? The report says nothing. According to the NTSB report, the fuel valve had been turned to off. This valve had a safety device on it so that it could not accidentally be turned to off. Turning it off during flight would be suicide since, at top speed, the engine will die in 45 seconds! Because the results are potentially deadly, the valve cannot be turned by accident. A safety release button must be pushed down and held while turning the valve. This piece of evidence is the smoking gun. It is definite proof of foul play. Was Kennedy committing suicide? If he wasn’t, there could scarcely be any question but that he was murdered. So, who turned the valve? That's the key mystery.

Besides Kennedy’s flight logbook was missing. This is critical because the logbook would have recorded the presence of a flight instructor on the plane. The media talked about a “graveyard spiral” and various forms of disorientation. The NTSB report describes Kennedy’s plane making two mild explainable maneuvers, and then the plane plunged drastically to the right and plummeted straight down, crashing 2600 feet in 45 seconds. It sounds like someone grabbed the controls and suddenly shoved the aircraft into the water. But this description of a suicide plunge is consistent with the “suicide” position of the fuel valve. The flight instructor: All of the early reports said there was a flight instructor on the plane. Then the flight instructor disappeared from the news. Kennedy very rarely flew at night without a flight instructor. His father, John F. Kennedy, in his own very unique way, made an enemy of mobsters, CIA operators, and military-industrial power-players. By acting according to his conscience, Kennedy was destined to turn these men into his arch enemies. That is the way it was meant to be. Victor Lazlo, the JFK-like character in the movie “Casablanca,” aptly describes the predicament that Jack Kennedy found himself in during the tumultuous early 1960s which led to the inescapable fate that he suffered. “Each of us has a destiny. For good or evil.” Unfortunately for Jack Kennedy as well as the nation, the highest levels of the U.S. Government included some evil and psychopathic men. And didn’t this huge psyop give rise to precisely the type of herd mentality which now predominates throughout the USA? Who has not been exposed to the barrage of false news reports, to the ever-growing number of alleged liaisons that JFK purportedly had with the beautiful women in his life? Why would the CIA and MSM relentlessly introduce fictitious news stories about these non-existent affairs over the past 50 years?  

JFK took up the torch of civil rights in a way that no other President did throughout the 20th century. His embrace of the Civil Rights Movement drew close to him many who would try to sabotage his efforts “by all means necessary”. As the Great White Hope, JFK and RFK were considered to be a threat to those who would divide and rule through stoking racial hatreds. The Deep South was, therefore, a conducive environment to stage the assassination, just as southerners murdered Abraham Lincoln post-Civil War. JFK had enemies such as: Lyndon B. Johnson; J. Edgar Hoover; Allen Dulles; Dean Acheson; and the US Military Industrial Complex. Roswell Gilpatric, who was the Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1964 was considering writing a book which would have focused on a conspiracy to assassinate Jack Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. He told me the story of why the president was murdered. I wanted to hear what happened from his viewpoint because he had been an insider, adviser to President Kennedy, and was aware of national security issues. Roswell was Under Secretary of the Air Force from 1951 to 1953. He was brought in because he had the experience to advise McNamara and President Kennedy. When JFK became president in January 1961, there were 600 military advisers in Vietnam. When he was killed in November 1963, 16,000 combat troops were being prepared. On the night of New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 1963, at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, Lyndon Johnson and Madeleine Brown, a longtime mistress and the mother of his only son, Steven, had an interesting conversation. LBJ told her: it had been Dallas, TX oil executives and renegade intelligence agents who were behind the JFK assassination. LBJ later also told his chief of staff, Marvin Watson, that the CIA was involved in the murder of John Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson would often stay at the Driskill, and his presidential schedule confirmed LBJ as being present at the Driskill Hotel the night of December 31st, 1963. Evelyn Lincoln (JFK’s secretary for 12 years) observed one day Jack Kennedy sitting in the chair in her office. JFK said to her, “I am going to advocate changing some of the out of date regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this, I will need as a running mate in 1964 a man who believes as I do.” He spoke in a slow-solemn voice. Mrs. Lincoln went on to write, “I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary.” She asked, “Who is your choice as a running mate?” He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating, he replied, “At this time, I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.” Jack Kennedy also planned to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1965 after the election. 

James Files, who worked for the CIA from 1960 until 1977, was asked why Vince Foster and John F. Kennedy Jr. were murdered. James Files replied: “When you’re in the game against an intelligence organization, you’re never safe from anyone. There are times when no one can protect you. As for Vince Foster  (Deputy White House Counsel) and John F. Kennedy Jr., they both died for different reasons. Foster, because he knew too much about the Clintons, and JFK Jr. because he was thinking about politics and had he run against Hillary Clinton, he would have won with a landslide. She would have had no chance at all to win, and everybody knows that.” -"JFK Jr. Murdered - Cover-Up and Conspiracy" (2018) by Dr. Paul Dawson

Inigo Thomas: I had worked for John Kennedy Jr as an editor on his magazine, the glossy and terrifically good George magazine, after Michael Berman left in mid 1997. John was a great guy, a very polite man who came to symbolize hope and reconciliation against all odds. His main passions were to serve the people of USA, his lovely wife Carolyn (she was his bedrock in more ways than the obvious) and his wish for social unity. John was afraid than America would devolve into a kakistocracy, into acute despair and resentment. I think resentment toward the rich in a society obsessed by wealth and how to get it at all cost is not a new phenomenon in the US, but it’s adopted Schadenfreude levels now. Right-wing presenters on Fox TV, such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, make fortunes every year by complaining about the perceived flaws and sins from the liberal faction. One reason their rhetoric works is the Kennedys were in favour of almost everything Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly say they are against. ‘For five decades,’ Barack Obama said the day the senator Ted Kennedy died, ‘virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.’ Conservatives, when they’re being philosophical, say they believe in human imperfections and that no government measure can change that. The problem is they tend to leave themselves out of their own philosophy, and see only the imperfections in others. The Kennedys were of course imperfect but that doesn’t mean that they weren't, overall and generally, a force for good. Source: www.lrb.co.uk 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

JFK's Quest for Peace, The Road to Dallas

James Harmon (2013): There is a very fine distinction between top general officers within the Department of Defense (with and without the Chiefs of Staff), that wished for an actual winner-take-all war against the Soviet Union and those who wished for a Cold War against the hated "Godless communists." Many general officers, at the conclusion of World War II and even in the 1960's were convinced that we were going to be engaged in a shooting war against the "Red Hoard" and thus it would be better to "get it over with" while Allied victory was a certainty. However, the peace seekers held great influence before World War II and in most years since. The "doves" have long been the bane of the "hawks" of our society, as they are regarded as "sell outs," "communist placators," "traitors" and "communists' infiltrators." Since 1945, there have been many individuals akin to Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Cheney who ignorantly see the vast United States army as the ultimate punisher against those who disagree with Americana. Yet, there have been many soldiers, many housewifes, even many wealthy professionals, who have understood the ultimate suffering caused by war and choose to seek peace and global co-existence rather than world domination. Now, if you are a top ranked, influential general, who has risen to rank (such as World War II, Vietnam, or Iraq), then it also makes sense to maintain that economic and political influence by maintaining a war. As well, if you are a billion dollar weapons manufacturer that has seen its profitability soar due to the same bloated manufacturing and purchasing levels due to an engaged war, then it makes sense to do whatever is possible to maintain that wealth and political influence, by maintaining a war (hot or cold.) Why would such influential people want peace, when peace would mean their lost power status? The truth is business leaders will engage in fraud, politicians will lie to constituents, and some billionaires would rather see a world die rather than surrender their socio-economic status. [Purdue Pharma just got fined $8 billion, and forced to dissolve on 3 federal charges for its role in the opioid epidemic.] Thus, since 1945, the United States has maintained an armed force of global proportions unlike any nation in history (not even the Roman legion can compared to the deadliness of our modern warfare machine.) We have maintained that war fighting machine, as a direct response to the purported threat of the Soviet empire and then once that collapsed, assorted international terrorists.

The first president to show direct effort to oppose the continuation of the Cold War was assassinated; a lone assassin was accused but could never be tried. Almost every president since Harry S. Truman has had incredibly tense relations with one or more of the leading intelligence agencies. An intelligence operative like Ruth Paine never would ask why she would be ordered to secure a job for Lee Harvey Oswald, or why she would be ordered to offer her home to his wife, as all she needed to know is that it is ordered by her superiors on the basis of "national security." Lee Harvey Oswald's dedication to his country would lead him to be a faithful servant, even in the face of illegalities and unethical activities. He could be ordered into events without ever knowing who else would be involved or why he was involved. He only needed to know that he is serving in the interests of "National Security" and that his wife and family would be proud of his unflinching service. Even high level intelligence officials are compartmentalized and excised from any access to information immediately upon routine reassignment. If an operator talks or complains, they are threatened. They are manipulated into capitulation and obedience. The Joint Chiefs of Staff need not be united in desire to eliminate a president, for such an event to occur. Just as a politician determines allies and enemies before presenting a bill before Congress, a Cassius or a Brutus communicates only with like-minded "Senators" to plot the demise of a Caesar. They all consider themselves honorable and have convinced themselves that their deeds are for the best for their country. They cannot see the long-term ramifications of their misdeeds.

Ronald Goldfarb (The Washington Post, 1993): The link between Carlos Marcello and the murder of John F. Kennedy is based on more than idle speculation. Robert Kennedy's chief and abiding interest as attorney general was organized crime. As soon as he took office, he sought legislation and resources to wage an unprecedented legal war on racketeers. He set up a special organized crime section in the criminal division and recruited an elite staff of lawyers to fight the battle. The Kennedy Justice Department was not the first to target Marcello. The U.S. government had been trying to deport him as an undesirable alien since 1952 because of a conviction for a drug violation. Italy eventually agreed to admit him, but Marcello arranged to get phony proof of citizenship in Guatemala. A Marcello intermediary, Carl Noll, negotiated a deal with a local fixer to enter Marcello's birth in the ledger of a small Guatemalan village. This information was tracked down in Guatemala by Diuguid, who recalls that he was followed by Marcello associate David Ferrie. If Marcello was going to be tough and ingenious, Kennedy would be the same. In 1961, Kennedy moved to deport Marcello as a Guatemalan -- a decision carried out in a highly questionable manner. On April 4, 1961, Marcello was arrested, handcuffed, whisked away to the New Orleans airport, not allowed to call anyone, and flown to Guatemala City on a government plane. He had been shanghaied -- denied notice or hearing. Within two months, Marcello worked and paid his way back to the United States through Central America; he said it cost him more in Guatemalan payoffs than he ever paid in the United States. In October 1961, after Marcello had returned to the United States, he and his brother Joseph were indicted in the federal court in Louisiana for perjury and for conspiring to defraud the IRS. In a plea-bargain arrangement, the government had gotten Noll to testify about his work obtaining the false Guatemalan birth certificate. In effect, Marcello had defrauded three governments -- Italy, Guatemala and the United States -- by creating the phony document, relying on it and disclaiming it to suit his purposes, in different courts at different times. Marcello's base of operations was a room in the Town and Country Motel in Jefferson Parish, New Orleans. During Marcello's trial, his associate David Ferrie was often in the courtroom. The same David Ferrie who was charged by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison for have been involved in the events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. On Nov. 22, 1963, the day Marcello was acquitted and Kennedy was killed, Ferrie and two unidentified friends drove 400 miles to Houston, Texas, supposedly on a hunting trip. Ferrie (a memorable character in Oliver Stone's "JFK") died in February 1967. In the end, Marcello fell in the flukiest way -- he threw a punch at an FBI agent who had made a provocative personal remark. Marcello ended up serving six months for assaulting a federal officer. In 1981, Marcello was convicted in California of a racketeering conspiracy to bribe a federal judge. There is no question Marcello hated Robert Kennedy's persistency and commitment to fight hard. In 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations disagreed with the Warren Commission's official history and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone. The Committee report stated that Marcello, along with Tampa mobster Santos Trafficante and Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, "had the motive, means and opportunity to plan and execute a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy." 

An FBI informant in 1976 said Trafficante had told him Kennedy was "not going to make it to the election. He was going to be hit." When this FBI informant later recanted; in 1978, he was murdered. Three former senior members of the National Security Agency waited until their retirement to divulge their severe concerns over violations of civil rights of American citizens by the Patriot Act intelligence practices. All three were widely ignored by the media and the public, although two were threatened with accusations of treason. Only a currently serving NSA employee was able to obtain copies of these files. Only when the actual documents could be read and published by the media, did the American public listened to the illegal conduct of the various intelligence agencies. As a political leader, one only needs to understand that any presented opposition to proposed or funded counter-terrorism efforts will be met with widespread, coordinated effort to be ridiculed as a "traitor". Both Democrats and Republicans will coordinate their funds and operations in effort to have the oppositional politician defeated in the "best interests" of "the American way." Subservience is built into our socio-economic structure, to never tell the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and others. After all, ignorance is not only blissful; it is secure from threats of death. Whether a supporter of or one who opposed Dan Rather as a news reporter... consider what happened to him after his News Magazine television report about George W. Bush's Air National Guard service in which Dan Rather reported what many surmised as being nepotism and favoritism that maneuvered him to avoid being transferred to Vietnam and even to terminate his commitments without completing his service. Dan Rather was vilified and was forced out from CBS for his report (as it came at the height of militarism after the invasion of Iraq)... and his forced retirement was because of an "unauthenticated report" in which of the 1300 documents revealed, only one single document was not proved as being authentic and was questionable evidence. But Dan Rather incurred the wrath of the Military Industrial Complex at the highest level and was forced into silence... and he was one of the most powerful news reporters in the country. The MOSSAD does not rule our government, instead the opposite is true. MOSSAD cannot operate too far away from America's power elite, or else the US government will clamp down on Israel and its MOSSAD (see Jonathan Pollard spy case). Mossad did not assassinate John Kennedy. The CIA controls Mossad, not the other way around. The mayor of Dallas's brother was one of three top CIA officials that JFK had fired the year before. But the Cold War was essential to support the Military-Industrial complex and Kennedy was attempting to wind that down by his approaches to Khrushchev. What Mr Posner doesn't mention is that Oswald was seen by Depository secretary Carolyn Arnold in the lunchroom at 12:25. FBI altered her statement to 12:15 when they realized it exonerated Oswald. This is exactly where Dallas Police officer Baker saw Oswald 90 seconds after the shots. He was there the whole time as his paraffin test at the Dallas Police station proved. That test showed that Oswald had no gunpowder nitrate residue on his cheek. FBI agent Turner proved that it was impossible to fire the notoriously-leaky Carcano rifle and not get heavy deposition of nitrate residue on your cheek. Lastly, Depository employee Victoria Adams was on the staircase Oswald allegedly used to flee from the 6th floor. She never saw or heard Oswald on that creaky staircase. RFK Jr's endorsement of James Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable on two national TV shows resulted in one of the shows not airing and the other show being entirely cancelled. (PBS Charlie Rose Show taped in Dallas Jan. 11, 2013) and MSNBC's show hosted by Alec Baldwin, whose show was eliminated while Baldwin was taping a special scheduled for 11-22-14, featuring RFK, Jr, the author, and Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers who also endorsed JFK and the Unspeakable. Source: www.washingtonpost.com 

Saturday, November 14, 2020

What Remains: A Memoir of JFK Jr.

December 15, 1996: Angie Coqueran was inside the Toyota car. She was the paparazzo who, along with her business partner Ken Katz, filmed and photographed John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette’s fight in Central Park in February, and they were paid a rumoured sum of $250,000 for the footage. These two paps were the ones who basically camped outside their apartment and they were the reason why John started photographing the paparazzi license plates, because they just wouldn’t leave, no matter what (John even threatened with harassment lawsuits to no avail). So one day, John saw Coqueran in her car there near their apartment again and flipped, jumped on the hood of the car and allegedly screamed repeatedly: “I’m going to get you.” He also grabbed hold of her coat through her window and tried to get her car keys. Carolyn tried to pull John away and started crying. Then Ken Katz came (the guy in the last pics) and they confronted him, saying: “Why the hell don’t the two of you leave us alone?” Ken Katz added that he apologized to John and Carolyn and he left with Coqueran.

On February 25, 1996, John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette had become involved in a publicized fight. Photographers Ken Katz and his associate Angie Coqueran captured much of the sequence. "It was a Sunday morning," Katz recalled, "and John & Carolyn had gone to the Tribeca Grill for brunch. They had their dog Friday with them. When they emerged from the restaurant, you could see and hear Carolyn yelling at John. She was saying how cold she felt, she went on and on. So John told her to go home and get another jacket. He waited for her with the dog in front of the restaurant. She must have been gone for a good half hour. When she returned, she was wearing one of his jackets. John seemed to ask her what had taken her so long. Then they hopped in a cab and headed up to Central Park. We followed the cab and caught up with them there. They appeared to have calmed down. They were talking back and forth when Carolyn suddenly ran off, leaving John with the dog. He looked pissed, but he followed her steps. They were talking again and without a warning, she belted him with a closed fist. She hit him somewhere between the chest and shoulder. John went nuts and grabbed her by the throat. He then grabbed her hand and pulled the engagement ring off her finger, storming off with the ring. Shortly after, he turned around, returned to her side and they began yelling again. Carolyn looked dazed. John looked sad. They walked for a while, they hugged each other and reconciled."

 

Adele Edisen (2012): Years ago on the Deep Politics Forum we had discussions about the death of John Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. About that time John Hankey had introduced his DVDs Dark Legacy on the assassination of JFK and one on the death of his son, John, Jr. Along with John, Jr., his wife Carolyn, his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, and possibly a flight instructor who was thought to have been aboard the Piper Saratoga plane with them perished in an unusual airplane crash in to the sea near Martha's Vineyard. They had planned to go to Hyannis Port to spend the weekend at family wedding festivities. From my readings of books written by John's friends, associates, colleagues, and his cousin's wife, Carole Radziwill, I find it entirely possible that John did have a flight instructor with him. He was not totally familiar with his Piper Saratoga, so he would very frequently fly with an instructor. Also, he was logging in more instrument-time flying for which he needed to be under the supervision of a flight instructor. Another problem was that he was still limping due to an earlier ankle injury. In order to maneuver a plane on the ground, he needed full use of the foot pedals to do this, and probably would have asked his flight instructor to perform this task. Richard Blow, an editor of George Magazine spoke with him on that Friday afternoon before he left for the airport in New Jersey where his plane was stored. John told him that he would have a flight instructor flying with him. Carole Radziwill, who was waiting at Martha's Vineyard Airport the arrival of Lauren Bessette, became greatly concerned when the plane was delayed. She called a flight instructor with whom she was familiar from previous flights to tell his wife of the delay, and was surprised when he answered the phone. Obviously, another instructor had been chosen in New Jersey. 

Carole Radziwill describes her experiences that night in her book, WHAT REMAINS: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love. John Hankey states that the the body of a flight instructor was not found. We know from the National Transportation Safety Board's Report that the seat in which the flight instructor would have been occupying next to John's pilot seat was missing from the debris found of the wreckage at the bottom of the sea, 150 feet below. The other three occupants' bodies were found strapped in their seats, all of which were bolted to the floor of the cabin. John's flight log which would record details of the flight from take-off to destination would also list passengers and any other personnel, was kept in an aqua colored flight bag. Some luggage and the flight bag washed up on shore, but the flight bag did not contain the Flight Log Book. John Hankey proposed that the flight instructor was suicidal, or rather had been programmed to be suicidal by the murderers. This was based on the crash of an Egyptian military plane, flying from the US to Egypt in which a deranged pilot had overpowered the pilots in the cabin of the plane and made the plane plunge into the sea. Hankey proposed that the body of the flight instructor had to be removed from John's plane so that it would appear that the only pilot on board was John and the crash could be described as due to pilot error. The perpetrators had plenty of time to accomplish this, as the wreckage was not found for a few days. 

However, other investigators have suggested that some kind of explosive device was placed on the plane before take-off at the New Jersey airport. Eye-witnesses on the beach overlooking the crash site saw flashes of light in the dark sky about the time of John's plane approach to the Martha's Vineyard Airport. According to the National Transportation Safety Board's Report, the distribution of debris from the plane's crash was very widespread and I would attribute that to an explosion in the air. Rich DelaRosa told me that he thought it had been done with a "pressure bomb". Investigators Sherman Skolnick, Scott Meyers, and John DiNaerdo have concluded similarly on this topic. Lisa Pease believes there are some very suspicious circumstances in this case. To my knowledge, Jim DiEugenio feels pretty much the same way as Lisa. Author Donald Jeffries became completely convinced that John Kennedy Jr.'s plane was sabotaged, and he was killed. It is both curious and suspicious that John's plane went down around 9:30 PM, Friday, July 16, 1999. Yet it took all of Saturday, Sunday, Monday until Tuesday when the wreckage was found. According to John Hankey, the Pentagon was brought in to do the searching and it seems that they were flying in a wide elliptical pattern of about two hundred miles in width along the coast from Martha's Vineyard toward New York. The site of the crash was about seven miles east of Martha's Vineyard and the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the plane just before it crashed had been radioed by John Kennedy to the Martha's Vineyard Airport Tower as was required of planes preparing to land as they drop in altitude to the required 2500 feet before beginning their final descent. There was no haze in the vicinity as reported by other pilots coming to land around that same time, and the airport lights were visible from the air. Since the Airport Tower's radar followed the descent of the plane, the wreckage should have been very easy to locate. Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Stanley Marks' JFK book Murder Most Foul!

This book features two volumes in one: Stanley J. Marks' Murder Most Foul! (1967) and Rob Couteau's biographical essay that surveys the life and work of this author of a forgotten classic. It also includes an in-depth examination of Murder Most Foul! that shows how and why it was so far ahead of its time and that places it in the context of other researchers, past and present. Couteau shares his detective work in unraveling the clues of Marks' Zelig-like biography, which touches on so many pivotal moments in 20th-century cultural and political history. This groundbreaking biography was also produced with the help of Marks' only child, Roberta Marks. JFK scholar Jim DiEugenio calls Couteau's work "important," "first-rate," and "a wonderful homage" to "one of the most important critics of the Warren Report ever ... and an unsung hero in the JFK case. Stanley Marks was rocket miles ahead of everyone. He really understood the big picture early. And not just on the JFK case." DiEugenio is the foremost scholar on the Kennedy assassination, author of Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case, and scriptwriter for Oliver Stone's documentary in the works, JFK: Destiny Betrayed (2020). With the release of Bob Dylan's ballad, "Murder Most Foul" this spring, which may have been influenced by Marks' book, interest in the author has been reawakened, largely as a result of Couteau's article on Marks. More than fifty years after the publication of Murder Most Foul! the text still resonates with a prescient vision. A fearless author who was blacklisted by HUAC, Stanley Marks was one of the first American researchers to draw a direct connection between the murders of JFK, RFK and MLK. In 1973, the JFK Library contacted Marks with a request to purchase Murder Most Foul! for their collection. In 1979, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on Assassinations cited five of Marks' assassination-related titles (including Murder Most Foul!) in its report. Marks published nineteen books on politics and religion, one of which received accolades from Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Marcuse. His first book, a bestseller titled The Bear that Walks Like a Man: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis of Soviet Russia (1943), was reviewed in over thirty mainstream newspapers and received glowing praise from John Cudahy, President Roosevelt's former ambassador to Poland and Belgium. Source: www.amazon.com

Stanley Marks’ wry irony flourishes throughout MMF, and there are many instances of the author’s trademark style of humor mixed with outrage, born from insight. And his reference to the “national interest” has been largely replaced by a term that we’ve seen with ever-increasing frequency over the last few decades: “National Security” with its concomitant erosion of civil rights; violation of human rights; and censoring of information that belongs in the hands of citizens. Although the work of early researchers has been absorbed and superseded by that of subsequent authors, Marks still remains ahead of the curve when it comes to the larger picture that he paints at the conclusion of his book, which enters into a broader philosophical speculation regarding what will happen to the collective psyche of America as a result of the assassination in Dealey Plaza in 1963. He titles his second chapter: “The Fraudulent Autopsy, Or How to Lie in a Military Manner.” His humor is also displayed in chapter four Coup d’État!, which bears the heading: “The Non-existing Paper Bag, Or How to Manufacture Evidence” (referring to a false claim that Oswald had slipped a rifle into a paper bag, then snuck it into work on the day of the assassination). In chapter seven, Marks issues a warning that even researchers today would be wise to heed: “How many ‘Hearings,’ ‘Witnesses,’ and Affidavits were produced? The FBI inundated the Commission with 25,000 reports; in fact, the FBI gave the Commission so many reports of its ‘investigations’ that the FBI created a ‘fog’ over the work of the Commission. It now seems to have been deliberate for, in a period of 9 months, no group of 14 lawyers could have read, digested, and analyzed each report to see what each report would have on an overall picture of the conspiracy.” In chapter fourteen, Stanley takes CIA Director Dulles to task. He begins by quoting Dulles from an article that appeared in Look magazine in 1966: “If they found another assassin,” says Dulles, “let them name names and produce their evidence.” Marks replies: “This contemptuous statement directed at the American citizenry revealed the attitude of the Commission. The Commission did not praise the president; they gave him a funeral and used his shroud to conceal his murderers.” Taking a further dig at Dulles, Marks rhetorically asks: “Mr. Dulles, how can other assassins be named if material is NOT in the National Archives? Was there a conspiracy, Mr. Dulles? Of course there was!” 

Next, he introduces the subject of Kennedy’s foreign policy—according to Marks, the most probable reason he was killed: “With the relaxation of tensions between the U.S. and the USSR after President Kennedy’s confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Batista Cuban exile organization, with many members on the CIA payroll, decided that Kennedy must go.” Three years later, in A Heritage of Stone, Jim Garrison would extrapolate on this theme of JFK’s attempt to end the Cold War and how it may have led to his undoing. Although Marks couldn’t have known the full extent of the connection between various assassination attempts on De Gaulle and the Kennedy assassination, his instinct—coupled with his in-depth knowledge of European history—was already leading him in this direction: “As History has shown a conspiracy spreads rumors. The various assassination attempts upon President De Gaulle were always preceded by rumors and the French Agencies took care to track them down. Yet, in spite of this, De Gaulle narrowly escaped death when the attempted killers received word one hour before the attempt.” In fact, a figure linked to the numerous attempts on De Gaulle’s life was lurking in Fort Worth and Dallas at the same time that JFK visited those two cities during his final day on earth. As Henry Hurt explains in Reasonable Doubt (1987), a man claiming to be Jean Souètre, a French army deserter and member of the Organisation ArmĂ©e Secrète (a right-wing French paramilitary group) was apprehended by American officials in Dallas shortly after Kennedy’s murder and immediately expelled from the country. In the chapter “The Rape of the American Conscience,” Marks places the blame directly up on the Commissioners: “The members of the Commission did not achieve their status in the American social, economic, and political scale by being stupid; therefore one can only conclude that these seven had some understanding, whether spoken or implied, that this Nation of 195,000,000 souls would be torn asunder if the Commission reported to them that a Conspiracy had murdered President John F. Kennedy. Yet, these seven men place their honor upon a Report that would wilt in the noonday sun.” Thus, the Commissioners—who certainly weren’t “stupid”—must have assumed that the American people were. After quoting Harry S. Truman’s dictum, “The buck stops here,” Marks concludes: “That the Commission was negligent and slothful in its responsibility has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” repeatedly emphasizes the fact that four principles enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution—justice, domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, and securing liberty were blasphemously violated by the conspirators as well as the Commissioners. The author concludes: “People, in all nations, must stand for an ideal. The United States of America was not born on the idea that its President could be shot like a dog in the street and his murderers be ‘shielded from this day on’ because it would be ‘against the National Interests.’” This line clearly resembles one from Dylan’s own “Murder Most Foul” when he sings: “shot down like a dog in broad daylight.”

With the murder of an idealistic president comes the death of our own youthful idealism: “The Spirit has in this year of 1967 been replaced by cynicism of everything ‘American’ … The Youth … which a Nation must have to exist, had a feeling within them that the nation did not care for the future. There is no Spirit today. How can there be? A Congress that passes a law which drafts only the poor, white or black? This is the Spirit of America?” Note how Stanley capitalizes both Nation and Youth, as if to highlight their equivalence and remind us that these are potentially sacred forces, crucial to society’s future well-being. Later on, he will also capitalize another term normally rendered in lower-case: Citizen. The author includes several remarks that appear to be aimed directly at Ronald Reagan, a future president of the United States who was then governor of California (where Marks currently resided): “A Governor that destroys an educational system? A Governor who believes that only the youth who has parents with money should enter the Universities and Colleges of his state? A Governor that believes mental health can be cured with pills?” Such challenges remain with us now, not just in one state but across the entire nation: racial injustice; poverty; unequal educational opportunity; and mental illness problems that are addressed with government approved pill popping, which in various other publications Marks links directly to the stress caused by lack of economic opportunities and the widespread cynicism that engulfed America. At the same time, Timothy Leary encouraged young people to use streets drugs to “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” And he specifically instructed his acolytes to avoid politics: “The choice is between being rebellious and being religious. Don’t vote. Don’t be politic. Don’t petition.” For the Establishment, Woodstock was preferable to a half million protestors showing up at the National Mall. The result of all this was that by the late Sixties and early Seventies “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” became a new opiate of the masses. Marks would later make a direct reference to such matters in his study on monotheism, Jews, Judaism and the United States, where he warns: “Both the U.S. and the USSR have been using ‘mind-controlling’ drugs since 1970! However, various states have also been using such drugs to control “unruly” children (see S. J. Marks’ Through Distorted Mirrors, 1976).” Thus, as early as the mid-1970s—decades before the widespread public indignation over the use of Ritalin to control schoolchildren—Marks was broaching the issue of the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse. We’ll never know to what extent the market for psychotropic medication came as a result of a youth culture that had been encouraged to destroy their own psychic equilibrium with street drugs… as a true “Lost” Generation. 

Very much in the spirit of Publilius Syrus (“The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted”), Marks concludes the penultimate chapter of MMF by addressing Allen Dulles; and, with a lovely touch, issues his own verdict against both Dulles and the Commission: “No, Mr. Dulles, it was not the responsibility of the American Citizen to find and name the assassins; that was your task. Your lack of responsibility to the task is the cause for your failure. You had at your disposal the entire operating machinery of the Government of the United States. We citizens have only what you and your fellow commissioners wrote. We read, we looked, we analyzed, we thought; and we, nearly 70% of us, now deliver a verdict on your work: The Warren Commission was a failure.” The Postscript of MMF is graced by the title: “Jim Garrison, ‘St. George’ Versus the ‘Dragon’!” Unlike other researchers who were snookered by the mainstream media’s drumbeat assault upon Garrison (we now know was orchestrated by the CIA), Marks realized that Garrison, as St. George, was up against a State-sponsored dragon. The author states: “By the time this book appears in print, the Kennedy Conspiracy may claim another victim; none other than Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, whose ‘lance of truth’ has pierced vital organs of the Conspiracy That Murdered President Kennedy.” On the final page of MMF, Marks makes a prediction that, sadly, comes to pass: “As the day for the Clay Shaw trial approaches, the greater the use of the media for the perpetration of the lie increases. If the forces behind the Conspiracy cannot destroy Mr. Garrison’s case, they may decide to destroy the man, either physically or by reputation.” Indeed, this proved to be the case: the powers-that-be went after Garrison’s reputation and attempted to sully it. 

As Gaeton Fonzi discusses in The Last Investigation, the Agency had long since perfected its craft of sullying and destroying the reputation of world leaders who refused to tow the line. Character assassination would also prove to be a second, posthumous conspiracy launched against JFK. Regarding the media’s obsequious role in all this, Marks adds: “Various members of the mass communication media bribed witnesses, hid witnesses, issued fraudulent interviews… and produced nation-wide television programs which upheld the findings of the Warren Commission. How incredible! Why? The answer to ‘why’ can be found in the fact that many of the active and inactive participants of the Conspiracy will be found in the ranks of the government and the economic strata of our Nation.” Marks now introduces the crucial subject of the ruling economic elite, which exists one level above the CIA. This concept was rarely broached by assassination researchers until Fletcher Prouty published The Secret Team (1972). Marks includes a chapter titled “The Establishment” in which he sums it up nicely: “It can be said that not more than 8,000 persons comprise the Establishment. They control every major decision, foreign and domestic, made in the nation. It is not a ‘conspiracy’ but a ‘meeting of the minds.’ They sincerely believe that ‘what is good for them is good for the country. At the foreign policy level, the ‘Establishment’ works through the following four agencies: (1) the Council of Foreign Affairs; (2) the Committee for Economic Development; (3) The National Security Council; and (4) the CIA.” Much of the rest of this chapter is comprised of lists of other organizations, foundations, and corporations funded by Establishment forces and tasked with “the movement of policy directed by the Establishment.” All this has a direct bearing on Dulles, who worked as a partner on the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell (along with his brother, John Foster Dulles), a firm that represented leading multinational corporations and interests such as those of the oligarchic Rockefellers. As a principal law partner there, Dulles was positioned at the apex of a visible pyramid of power. But above this first structure one can also imagine a second, inverted pyramid: one far less visible and inhabited by those Ă©minence grises. The Dulles brothers served as interlocutors between these two structures, via institutions such as Sullivan and Cromwell. During a discussion on the dangers of the Agency, almost as an aside, he accurately predicts what will happen next in Chile; and he does so by tying the fate of that nation to Vietnam: “After the extermination of the Indo-Chinese nations as nations, the CIA will then proceed to ‘exterminate’ another nation–Chile. The Establishment’s propaganda is already being published with the same old trite and dreary slogans: ‘The Chileans pose a threat to our security.’ A nation that is more than 5,000 miles away from the territorial mainland of the United States, with no navy, army, or air force that cannot even drop leaflets on our mainland! Thus, with the CIA ‘protecting’ the people from ‘invasions’ and the FBI maintaining its ever-vigilant status over the ‘dissenters,’ the people calmly lockstep their way into a prison of their own making.” What follows is an affirmation of this dire reality as well as an insightful remark regarding the principal motivation behind President Kennedy’s desire to lead our nation: “I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that the same forces removed everyone. Every one of these men were humanists. They were concerned about the human race. And above all, they were opposed to the evolution of America into an imperialist empire-seeking warfare state. Which it has become, I’m afraid. They’re eliminating them, one by one. Always a ‘lone’ assassin.”

On the penultimate page of MMF, Marks asks: “To whom does the mass communication system owe its loyalty? To the people who have fought, are fighting, and will continue to fight for the ideas of the ‘freedom of the press’; or to its advertisers?” In conclusion, Marks invokes a fellow lawyer and philosopher who served as the third American president and whose words Marks uses to plead his case. “Thomas Jefferson once said that the most important factor in a democracy is a free press; he did not say a ‘privileged’ press. The hideous activity of NBC, CBS, ABC, and other organs of the mass communication media can lead to a conclusion that certain members of that media know that President Kennedy was murdered by Conspirators and the Conspiracy must never be allowed to face the light of day.” Stanley ends on a note that continues to resonate, because what he calls the “light of day” has yet to emerge—for reasons we know all too well. We are still facing the same challenge. According to the census, Marks was born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1914, just three years before the birth of JFK. When he was four years old, his parents died from the 1918 influenza pandemic that infected a third of the world’s population. According to his daughter Roberta, after their death, Stanley was placed in the care of his foster parents, Sarah and Samuel Markowitz, from whom he took his surname, later changing it to “Marks.” One of the few things Roberta knows about her father’s upbringing is that Stanley often said “he never had enough food. When you see pictures of him as a youth, he was bone-thin.” One is tempted to surmise that his privations and experience on Chicago’s hardscrabble streets may have helped to mold him into a lifelong FDR New Dealer. Shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Stanley married Ethel Milgrom, a nineteen-year-old Chicago native. Ethel would served as his editor, helping to polish Stanley’s sometimes awkward, strident prose. After attending the University of Illinois in 1937, he graduated from the affiliated John Marshall Law School, which is still Chicago’s only public law school. Marks graduated during a precarious moment in history; and perhaps this explains why a law school graduate was working as a salesman. In 1969, the war machine was grossing “eighty-billion dollars a year in America.” The “resource wars” conducted in subsequent decades in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq continued in the same vein and the reasons for Kennedy’s removal can be seen just as clearly when we analyze the foreign policy agenda of most of the presidents who have followed in his wake. 

And instead of benefitting from rapacious profit, Kennedy’s foreign policy views were driven not only by idealism but by humanism. One of the Marks’ volumes on religion, Through Distorted Mirrors, received high praise from both Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Marcuse. In Toynbee’s blurb, which is printed on the back cover, he calls the work a “remarkable tour de force.” This is followed by that of Marcuse: “This book is not a history book, nor a religious book. Rather, it is one that deals with Man’s Humanity toward Man and, at the same time, dealing with Man’s inhumanity toward Man. A book that will stimulate and aggravate the reader.” A belief in what man is capable of; of what narrow-mindedness he might fall victim to; and of how change must come through visions that inspire as well as through rhetoric that provokes are all things that were also shared by the Kennedy brothers. Stanley’s story is a story of our times. An orphaned first-generation American who graduated from law school during the Great Depression, he furthered his education by accumulating a 5,000 book library, conducted research with the approval of a Secretary of State, taught at a remarkably avant-garde school, served under General MacArthur, and was rewarded for such efforts by being blacklisted by HUAC. He later settled in LA and, undaunted, proceeded to publish at least twenty-two other books. On March 28, 1979, Murder Most Foul! was included in the Library of Congress. On the same day, the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on Assassinations issued a report that cites five assassination-related titles authored by Marks. Former Newsweek correspondent Joachim Joesten  remarked: “To my knowledge, nobody but Jim Garrison (and an obscure West Coast writer named Stanley J. Marks) has ever endorsed before my unswerving contention that the murder of John F. Kennedy was nothing short of a camouflaged coup d’Ă©tat.” “MMF” is by far the most polemical of Dylan's songs, with “Masters of War” coming in a close second. Although his lyrics are usually clear in terms of narrative, they do possess an artful manner of defying a singular interpretation. Yet, atypically, the polemical “MMF” features some rather direct statements. More early JFK investigative books: The Grassy Knoll (1965) by Harold Feldman, Lee Harvey Oswald and the American Dream (1967) by Paul Sites, How Kennedy Was Killed; The Full Appalling Story (1968) by Joachim Joesten, Investigation of a Homicide: The Murder of John F. Kennedy (1969) by Judith Whitson Bonner, Plodding Toward Terror: A Personal Look At The Jack Ruby Case (1974) by Ralph M. Pabst, History's Verdict; The Acquittal Of Lee Harvey Oswald (1975) by Ross F. Ralston,  Aiming For The Jugular In New Orleans (1976) by William H. Davis, etc. Source: kennedysandking.com

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

60th Anniversary of JFK's victory

60 years ago, John Kennedy was elected President of the United States, winning back the White House for the Democrats after eight years of Republican rule. The final result showed JFK won the White House with 34,227,096 votes, to Nixon’s 34,107,646, with 303 electoral votes to 219. It was an even narrower victory than election analysts had first thought. The result made him the first Roman Catholic president in US history and the youngest elected president as well. Nixon was gracious in defeat? As Donald Trump cries fraud, a different tone took hold 60 years ago. Following initial doubt over the result, Nixon addressed the crowd gathered at republican headquarters in Los Angeles in the early hours. He told them: “I want senator Kennedy to know - I want you all to know - that if this trend does continue and he does become president, he will have my whole-hearted support”. In his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, JFK stated: "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." In the words of Robert D. Marcus: "Kennedy entered office with ambitions to eradicate poverty and to raise America's eyes to the stars through the space program."

At the news conference at Parkland Hospital, Dr. Malcolm Perry stated three times that JFK’s throat wound was an entry. Unfortunately, Perry later refused to repeat this for the WC. But recent JFK releases include a statement from Perry’s surgical colleague at the University of Washington. Perry had admitted to Dr. Donald Miller, Jr., that he had told the truth on November 22, 1963 (it was an entry wound), but then later (under pressure) he had lied to the WC.  Just one month before, Dr. Austin Griner had told Dr. Michael Chesser that federal agents had threatened Perry (born in Allen, Texas) with deportation if he did not reverse his initial report of an entrance wound. Dr. Carrico said: "There was a round bruise circle around the throat wound... as it always is." In forensic analysis, an exit wound may or may not have a bruise circle around it, but an entrance wound always has the bruise circle around. Such a tiny throat exit wound could not be duplicated in experiments by the WC; Milton Helpern, who had done 60,000 autopsies, had never seen an exit wound that small. Before political leverage was exerted, the first scenario by the CIA’s National Photographic and Interpretation Center (NPIC) included a throat shot at Z-190; During a WC Executive Session (December 18, 1963), Hale Boggs, and Gerald Ford discussed a possible frontal shot from the overpass. The alteration of the Zapruder film: The initial clue to its alteration was the limousine stop. The Zapruder film does not show such a stop, but the ten closest witnesses all recalled such a stop. Altogether, over 50 witnesses recalled a stop. Even early articles often take this stop for granted. The pre-eminent authority on the Z-film is John Costella, a PhD physicist with special expertise in the properties of light. He is also highly skilled at detecting optical distortions produced via imaging transformations, a skill that is directly pertinent to the Zapruder film. As a simple demonstration, Costella notes the impossible features of Z-232 (i.e., frame 232 of the Zapruder film), which was originally published in LIFE’s 1963 Memorial Edition. In Z-232, this blurring is grossly inconsistent, which could only occur if this frame had been altered. In 1975, Rockefeller Commission documents (notes made by the CIA's technical staff at NPIC) showed that NPIC had possessed the film the weekend of the assassination. It was unclear for decades whether the CIA at NPIC had copied the film as a motion picture (and possibly altered it), or had simply made prints. 

.  

In 2009, researcher/author Peter Janney located the NPIC official and briefing-board czar, Dino Brugioni, and then Janney and Douglas Horne together queried Brugioni about his own involvement with the Z-film during that weekend. It turned out that the two NPIC officials interviewed by Horne in 1997 were part of a second Z-film event at NPIC that same weekend (on Sunday night, November 24), but that Brugioni had been in charge of the first Z-film event (the prior evening, on Saturday night, November 23). The ARRB had not known that there had been two events. Brugioni and his team examined the original, unaltered film at the first event (and made blowup prints from individual frames); the second "briefing board" event, the next night, involved a different team of workers at NPIC, who made blowup prints of an altered Z-film. Horne's interviews in 1997 for the ARRB revealed that the Z-film delivered to NPIC for the second event had been created (i.e., altered) at Kodak's primary research and development facility, "Hawkeyeworks," in Rochester, N.Y., during a 12-hour period during Sunday, November 24, 1963. Because the CIA had a longstanding contractual relationship with Kodak at Hawkeyeworks, it is likely that Kodak performed these Z-film alterations at the behest of the CIA. The existence of two separate events, just one day apart, with neither group aware of the other one, very strongly implies an intelligence operation. Brugioni initially (to his utter amazement) had not known about this second event, as he had attended only the first event. Furthermore, he believes that the extant Z-film is not the film he saw. Early viewers of the original film had seen evidence for multiple shots—clearly more than admitted by the WC—so these subsequent alterations were essential for the official WC conclusion. In short, if the Z-film had not been altered, it would have been obvious that the WC’s scenario (of only three shots) was a myth. But there is even more. The Black Patch over the back of JFK’s head is grossly (even preposterously) apparent in a copy of the Z-film obtained directly from the Archives by Sydney Wilkinson. This is a US government authorized and certified, third generation, 35 mm, dupe negative of the “forensic version” of the Zapruder film. Moreover, many independent observers—Greg Burnham, Milicent Cranor, Scott Myers, Dan Rather, Cartha DeLoach, William Reymond, William Manchester, Homer McMahon, Dino Brugioni, Erwin Schwartz, Rich Delarosa, and others—have seen a different version of the Zapruder film. Each one of these, without conferring with anyone else, recalls a version that is clearly different from the extant one. Furthermore, their observations (of details missing from the extant film) are consistent with one another. As a further clue to the history of this puzzle, David Lifton will suggest (in his forthcoming book Final Charade) that Robert S. McNamara probably approved the Z-film alteration. 

LBJ decided to secretly tape all his telephone conversations. He told close aides that he did this for two main reasons. It would help him write his memoirs; and he could use this information to apply pressure (blackmail) on politicians and businessmen. Johnson informed his longtime personal assistant Mildred Stegall that if he died unexpectedly, she must destroy the tapes and their transcripts. However, when died of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, on 22nd January, 1973, Stegall did not carry out his instructions. Instead, she placed them in sealed boxes and sent them to the LBJ Presidential Library with the instructions that they must not be opened until at least January 2023. Johnson appointed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren to head the commission. Other members of the commission included Allen W. Dulles (the former head of the CIA who had been sacked by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster), John J. McCloy (chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank and the Ford Foundation, who at the end of the war helped recruit senior figures in the Gestapo into the security services of West Germany and the United States that made him blackmailable). This rest of the Commission were politicians that President Johnson could manipulate - Gerald Ford, Richard B. Russell, John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs. Johnson was especially close to Russell who gave him daily updates on what was being said at the Warren Commission meetings. The phone call tape to appoint Earl Warren as head of the commission has either been destroyed or has never been declassified. However, we do have several telephone conversations with Richard Russell, the Senator from Georgia and the leader in Congress resisting Civil Rights legislation. At first Russell refused to serve on the commission. Johnson said: "You've never turned your country down. This is not me. This is your country... You're my man on that commission and you're going to do it! And don't tell me what you can do and what you can't because I can't arrest you and I'm not going to put the FBI on you. But you're goddamned sure going to serve - I'll tell you that!" This is how Johnson worked. He said "I'm not going to put the FBI on you". This is a reminder that he has information about Russell that the FBI is interested in. (Johnson used a man called Bobby Baker to pay bribes to Russell.) Johnson was confident he would be the Democratic Party nomination to be their candidate in 1960. He was the Senate majority leader, the second most powerful man in American politics. As majority leader you decide on who becomes chairman of the various Senate committees. Senators or their financial backers were willing to pay large sums of money to become chairman of committees that can award highly profitable government contracts to private companies. 

John Kennedy was the first person to declare himself as a candidate. Johnson thought that Kennedy had little chance of being successful as he was a Roman Catholic and came from the north of the country. Catholics were a persecuted minority in the Deep South. The Ku Klux Klan lynched not only blacks, socialists and trade unionists, but Catholics (they disliked them because they allowed blacks to attend their services). The Democrat Party had only selected one Catholic as a prospective president (Al Smith in 1928) who lost heavily to Herbert Hoover. People in the Deep South voted for a Republican from the North rather than a Roman Catholic. Johnson was confident that Kennedy's campaign would falter, and he would arrive late in the contest to take the nomination. Johnson calculated that Kennedy would be badly beaten by Hubert Humphrey in the May primary in the solidly Protestant West Virginia. In the final days of the campaign, using both planes and cars, Joseph P. Kennedy "moved in hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly over $1 million) into the state." Kennedy defeated Humphrey by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, "a state the national press had said a Catholic could never win." By 1963 John F. Kennedy realised that Lyndon B. Johnson had become a problem as vice-president as he had been drawn into political scandals involving Fred Korth, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. According to James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager of Life, the magazine was working on an article that would have revealed Johnson's corrupt activities. "Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major newsbreak piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public." The fact that it was Robert Kennedy who was giving this information to Life Magazine suggests that Kennedy intended to drop Johnson as his vice-president. This is supported by Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary. In her book, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) she claimed that in November, 1963, Kennedy decided that because of the emerging Bobby Baker scandal he was going to drop Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election. Kennedy told Lincoln that he was going to replace Johnson with Terry Sanford, the Governor of North Carolina. On 22nd November, 1963, a businessman, Don B. Reynolds, appeared before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee. Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". Reynolds also provided evidence against Matthew H. McCloskey. 

He suggested that he'd given $25,000 to Baker in order to get the contract to build the District of Columbia Stadium. Members of the committee thought that when this information was published Lyndon B. Johnson would be forced to resign. Reynolds' testimony came to an end when news arrived that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. In September, 1975, a subcommittee under Richard Schweiker was asked to investigate the performance of the intelligence agencies concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In its final report, issued in April 1976, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities concluded: "Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied." The committee also revealed details for the first time of what the CIA called Operation Mockingbird (a secret programme to control the media). In 1976, a Detroit News poll indicated that 87% of the American population did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy. Later that year, Senator Thomas N. Downing called for a new investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Downing said he was certain that Kennedy had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. He also believed that the CIA and the FBI had withheld important information from the Warren Commission. The House Select Committee of Assassinations set up a panel of forensic pathologists to examine the autopsy materials and other medical evidence. During the investigation the committee discovered that the Dallas Police had a recording of the assassination. A microphone, mounted on one of the motorcycles escorting the motorcade, had picked up sounds in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. Acoustic experts analysed the recording and were able to distinguish four rifle shots. They concluded that there was a 95 per cent probability that the third bullet was fired from the Grassy Knoll. As a result of this acoustic evidence G. Robert Blakey was able to state that there were "four shots, over a total period of 7.91 seconds were fired at the Presidential limousine. The first, second and fourth came from the Depository; the third from the Grassy Knoll." The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that "scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy." It added that "on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy." G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings wrote an account of the HSCA investigation entitled The Plot to Kill the President (1981). In the book Blakey and Billings argue that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. In 1993 Gaeton Fonzi, the HSCA leading investigator, published The Last Investigation, a book detailing his research into the assassination. It is considered by many critics as among the best books on the Kennedy assassination and is currently recognized as an authority on those aspects of the assassination involving anti-Castro Cubans and the intelligence agencies. Fonzi became very interested in the forces that enabled the the cover-up to take place: "Could any but a totally controlling force - a power elite within the United States Government itself - call it what you will, the military-intelligence complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment - could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 50 years?" Source: spartacus-educational.com