Octafish
Octafish's Journal''ut nihil non iisdem verbis redderetur auditum.''
"Thus, nothing that has been heard can be retold in the same words."
Thank you, CanSocDem. It was amazing.
One of the important points covered in the discussion and play was Kennedy and his policy toward Vietnam. A member of the audience asked Douglas how he could be so certain that JFK would have pulled U.S. military support from South Vietnam? Douglass quoted Bobby Kennedy, who had been asked the same question by Arthur Schlessinger. RFK pounded the table and shouted:
"Because we were there!"
The Politician: In 1951, JFK (in rear right) in Vietnam on a fact finding tour with the French. Kennedy was critical of U.S. support of the French there, saying, "We have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire."
ETA Source: http://www.historyplace.com/kennedy/politician-vietnam-tour.htm
Fidel should know. CIA hired MAFIA to kill him.
Seems like the guy who signed off on the idea failed to tell the Warren Commission because he was on it.
The two are related, certainly.
While I try to shine light on the fascist crapola from 50 years ago, I also shine light on stopping it in the present day.
It's also why I vote Democratic. Our party does something about it, like standing for Peace with Tehran and standing up to the NSA-Supreme KKKort Spy Ring.
That allegation would not stand up in court.
Lt. J. C. Day, the forensic guy from Dallas PD didn't follow procedures; not even those he, himself, had followed earlier, like taking photos of each print as it came off the various parts of the Mannlicher-Carcano carbine.
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/palmprint.htm
Wrong. Why spread what Allen Dulles wants you to say, zappaman?
Going by all your replies on them, I'm not surprised you don't want DU to see these examples of what we've learned since the CIA told us to "move on, nothing to see here."
JFK Conference: Bill Kelly introduced new evidence - adding Air Force One tape recordings
JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee
JFK Conference: Lisa Pease Discussed the Real Harm of Corrupt Soft Power
JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963
JFK Conference: Mark Lane Addressed the Secret Government’s Role in the Assassination
Lots of new information there, including a lot more stuff Allen Dulles doesn't want you to know about. What a coincidence.
JFK vs. the Military
by Robert Dallek
The Atlantic, Sept. 10 2013
EXCERPT...
From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased—or understandably frightened—to know that Kennedy distrusted America’s military establishment almost as much as they did.
JFK Special Issue
The Joint Chiefs of Staff reciprocated the new president’s doubts. Lemnitzer made no secret of his discomfort with a 43-year-old president who he felt could not measure up to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former five-star general Kennedy had succeeded. Lemnitzer was a West Point graduate who had risen in the ranks of Eisenhower’s World War II staff and helped plan the successful invasions of North Africa and Sicily. The 61-year-old general, little known outside military circles, stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, with a bearlike frame, booming voice, and deep, infectious laugh. Lemnitzer’s passion for golf and his ability to drive a ball 250 yards down a fairway endeared him to Eisenhower. More important, he shared his mentor’s talent for maneuvering through Army and Washington politics. Also like Ike, he wasn’t bookish or particularly drawn to grand strategy or big-picture thinking—he was a nuts-and-bolts sort of general who made his mark managing day-to-day problems.
To Kennedy, Lemnitzer embodied the military’s old thinking about nuclear weapons. The president thought a nuclear war would bring mutually assured destruction—MAD, in the shorthand of the day—while the Joint Chiefs believed the United States could fight such a conflict and win. Sensing Kennedy’s skepticism about nukes, Lemnitzer questioned the new president’s qualifications to manage the country’s defense. Since Eisenhower’s departure, he lamented in shorthand, no longer was “a Pres with mil exp available to guide JCS.” When the four-star general presented the ex-skipper with a detailed briefing on emergency procedures for responding to a foreign military threat, Kennedy seemed preoccupied with possibly having to make “a snap decision” about whether to launch a nuclear response to a Soviet first strike, by Lemnitzer’s account. This reinforced the general’s belief that Kennedy didn’t sufficiently understand the challenges before him.
Admiral Arleigh Burke, the 59-year-old chief of naval operations, shared Lemnitzer’s doubts. An Annapolis graduate with 37 years of service, Burke was an anti-Soviet hawk who believed that U.S. military officials needed to intimidate Moscow with threatening rhetoric. This presented an early problem for Kennedy, in that Burke “pushed his black-and-white views of international affairs with bluff naval persistence,” the Kennedy aide and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later wrote. Kennedy had barely settled into the Oval Office when Burke planned to publicly assail “the Soviet Union from hell to breakfast,” according to Arthur Sylvester, a Kennedy-appointed Pentagon press officer who brought the proposed speech text to the president’s attention. Kennedy ordered the admiral to back off and required all military officers on active duty to clear any public speeches with the White House. Kennedy did not want officers thinking they could speak or act however they wished.
CONTINUED..
http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/
Bamford is great, a sage. The more we learn, the easier it isto see JFK was facing a "Seven Days in May" situation from Day One. Nixon the warmonger vp would've fitright in.
Douglass was like beingwith Buddha...
...truly profound, humbling experience. I asked what we could do? Mr. Douglass said, keep spreading the word. It's making a difference.
He spoke of President Kennedy in the Oval Office. A rainy day, JFK was looking out the window. He and his science advisor had been talking about fallout from the nuke tests. JFK asked if the rain contained radioctivity and learned it did.
President Kennedy worked to get a nuclear atmospheric test ban treaty worked out with the Soviets and through Congress in record time by enlisting the cooperation of all the various factions interested in peace - from the Quakers to moms of young kds to readers of The Saturday Evening Post.
Interestingly, the PBS profile on JFK, "The American Experience," included the fact Edward Teller virulently opposed the nuclear test ban and JFK didn't care. Teller got all he wanted under Teagan, plus more with his Start Wars scheme.
Here you go, courtesy of Conspiracy Debunker John McAdams' website:
Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of TreasonSome DUers don't believe there's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or even a Bush Family Evil Empire.
Hey, I'm a Democrat and respect other's opinions and views.
But I do believe in the VRWC and BFEE, perhaps more accurately termed the Bush Transnational Criminal Enterprise. Here's why:
Bush Crime Line
• Vietnam
• Bay of Pigs
• Chile
• Watergate
• October Surprise
• El Salvador
• Reagan Survives Hinckley and Bush
• NAZI Ethnics for Reagan-Bush
• Voodoo Economics
• INSLAW/Promis
• Haiti
• Iraq-gate / Banca Nazionale del Lavoro arms to Saddam
• BCCI International Money Laundering for Terrorists & Intelligence Community arming Dr AQ Khan
• Savings & Loan scandal in general and Silverado in particular
• Iran-contra Guns/Drugs/Martial Law
• Gulf War I Glaspie Gives Go-Ahead
• Selection 2000 Shreds US Constitution
• Tax Cuts for UltraRich
• Criminal Justice Department
• Suicidal Environmental Policy
• ENRON Energy Policy
• 9-11 Criminal Negligence, at best; Treason, most likely
• Illegal Iraq Invasion
• Paperless Selection 2004
It’s interesting in reviewing the above list, just how much ultra-right, conservative Republican leadership has really been. More than a listing of criminality, the list demonstrates there have been many treasonous activites against “We the People” through “business opportunities” in the finance, energy, and defense industries.
There is one FAMILY name that runs through all the history, the four decades since the JFK administration. Since the very hour of President Kennedy’s death, and through the list of sinister events and unrelenting criminality noted above — a record of infamy stretching back 41 years today — appears the name George Herbert Walker Bush, a tradition continued by his son, George Walker Bush, beard of the BFEE.
DUers: Add, Discuss, Rip -- Whatever. I'd love to learn what y'all think, have to say and believe.
SOURCE http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/DU_Bush.htm
Original post on DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315
PS: Note Prof. McAdams even took the time to download and host the image. That's real class, DU.
PPS: I've written about all those "Conspiracy Theories" on DU and posted links showing where I got my information. Please show where I'm wrong. I've never failed to apologize and correct a mistake.
So the new smear is I'm in it for the money?
That's disinformation or misinformation, depending on your rationale. No problem. CIA printed up instructions for their assets in the American news media (illegal at the time, but since made A-OK when "everything changed" after 9-11):
CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.
CIA Instructions to Media Assets
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with (?)and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. (Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.)
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
SOURCE: http://www.boston.com/community/forums/news/national/general/cia-instructions-to-media-assets-doc-1035-960/80/6210620
From 2003, first OP on DU I could find on it: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x765619
So rather than an open investigation, where the facts can be examined in public, the instructions call for an attack on the messenger. Could it be that the CIA has something to hide?
First: CIA agents monitored Oswald in the weeks before the assassination.
Second: Top CIA officials knew Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City before the assassination.
Third: Former CIA director, fired by JFK, Allen Dulles kept this information from the Warren Commission.
These are the FACTS most Americans SHOULD know, but they don't. Because the government and its toadies in the press say, "Case closed. Move on. Nothing to see here."
Sorry, zappaman. I've heard that story for 50 years and seen the nation nearly ruined by wars for profit. That un-democratic authoritarian garbage doesn't cut it for me.
There were cover stories on top of cover stories.
Victor Marchetti reported CIA director Richard Helms was very concerned about word leaking out that CIA agent E Howard Hunt was in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.Lone Nut did it.
Mafia Did it.
Anti Castro Cubans did it.
Rich Oil Men did it.
Rogue CIA agents did it.
Not us, but another CIA did it.
Move on.
Right.
Lone Nut did it.
The Big Con at Dealey Plaza
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