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In reply to the discussion: Jill Abramson: CONDI RICE Personally Asked Me to KILL CIA STORIES [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)53. JFK assassination: CIA and New York Times are still lying to us
Fifty years later, a complicit media still covers up for the security state. We need to reclaim our history
DAVID TALBOT
Salon.com, Nov. 6, 2013
Well never know, well never know, well never know. Thats the mocking-bird media refrain this season as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Americas greatest mystery the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson hijacked a large chunk of her papers Sunday Book Review to ponder the Kennedy mystery. And after deliberating for page after page on the subject, she could only conclude that there was some kind of void at the center of the Kennedy story. Adam Gopnik was even more vaporous in the Nov. 4 issue of the New Yorker, turning the JFK milestone into an occasion for a windy cogitation on regicide as cultural phenomenon. Of course, constantly proclaiming well never know has become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the American press. It lets the watchdogs off the hook, and excuses their unforgivable failure to actually, you know, investigate the epic crime. When it comes to this deeply troubling American trauma, the highly refined writers of the New Yorker and the elite press would rather muse about the meta-issues than get at the meat.
All this artful dodging about the murder of President Kennedy began, of course, nearly 50 years ago with the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon panel that was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson not to get at the truth, but to lay the dust (in the words of one commissioner) on all the disturbing rumors that were swirling around the bloody events in Dallas. Two new books take us inside the Warren Commission sausage factory, and show in often shocking detail how the august panel got it so terribly wrong. Soon after the Warren Report was released in September 1964, polls began showing that the American people rejected its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of the president and nearly a half century later, the report remains a notorious symbol of official coverup. (This does not prevent Abramson from blithely declaring that the historical consensus seems to have settled on the lone gunman theory there is no such consensus, only a deeply fractious ongoing debate.)
SNIP...
A Cruel and Shocking Act by former New York Times investigative reporter Philip Shenon has been soaking up most of the media spotlight in recent days. The book proclaims itself to be a secret history of the Kennedy assassination. Based largely on interviews with Warren Commission staff lawyers, the book reveals how the investigation was immediately taken over by the very government agencies the CIA, FBI and Secret Service that had the most to hide when it came to the assassination. The other new book, History Will Prove Us Right, was written by Howard Willens, a Warren Commission lawyer who refused to speak with Shenon. As suggested by the title which is taken from a defiant statement by the commission chairman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren Willens book is a stubborn defense of the report that he helped produce. But ironically, after grinding ones way through Willens serviceably written but highly revealing story, a reader can only come to the same conclusion that Shenons sexier expose demands namely, that the Warren Report was the result of massive political cunning and investigative fraud.
Both books contain juicy and informative details that shed new light on the JFK investigation. (Shenons book also contains a few breathlessly advertised scoops that turn out to be rehashed stories or false leads.) But the two books also suffer from a strange cognitive dissonance. After elaborating on the many ways that the Warren Commissions work was sabotaged by President Johnson, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (who immediately took charge of the investigation), former CIA director Allen Dulles (who conveniently got himself appointed to the commission), Treasury chief C. Douglas Dillon (who oversaw the Secret Service) and other Washington power players, the books seem to arrive at the same baffling conclusion as the deeply compromised Warren Report i.e., that Oswald did it.
When it comes to the million-dollar question, Shenon is much more equivocal than Willens. He seems to think that Oswald might have had accomplices but Oswald nonetheless remains at the center of Shenons story, rather than the intelligence officials, for instance, whom Sen. Richard Schweiker once remarked had their fingerprints all over the young alleged assassin. In following the conspiracy trail, Shenon quickly takes a wrong turn down the Castro-as-mastermind path. Perhaps because as a writer he found this story of deep espionage more intriguing than the Warren Commissions twisted bureaucratic tale, the author lights off for Mexico City, where Oswald apparently visited (or was impersonated visiting) the Soviet and Cuban embassies in the days before Dallas. Shenon has Oswald dallying with a sexy clerk in the Cuban embassy, and perhaps getting entangled in a sinister Fidelista plot against JFK.
CONTINUED...
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/the_jfk_assassination_we_still_dont_know_what_happened/
I heard Mr. Talbot speak at the Duquesne Conference. He names Allen Dulles "the Chairman of the Board" behind the assassination plot.
DAVID TALBOT
Salon.com, Nov. 6, 2013
Well never know, well never know, well never know. Thats the mocking-bird media refrain this season as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Americas greatest mystery the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson hijacked a large chunk of her papers Sunday Book Review to ponder the Kennedy mystery. And after deliberating for page after page on the subject, she could only conclude that there was some kind of void at the center of the Kennedy story. Adam Gopnik was even more vaporous in the Nov. 4 issue of the New Yorker, turning the JFK milestone into an occasion for a windy cogitation on regicide as cultural phenomenon. Of course, constantly proclaiming well never know has become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the American press. It lets the watchdogs off the hook, and excuses their unforgivable failure to actually, you know, investigate the epic crime. When it comes to this deeply troubling American trauma, the highly refined writers of the New Yorker and the elite press would rather muse about the meta-issues than get at the meat.
All this artful dodging about the murder of President Kennedy began, of course, nearly 50 years ago with the Warren Commission, the blue-ribbon panel that was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson not to get at the truth, but to lay the dust (in the words of one commissioner) on all the disturbing rumors that were swirling around the bloody events in Dallas. Two new books take us inside the Warren Commission sausage factory, and show in often shocking detail how the august panel got it so terribly wrong. Soon after the Warren Report was released in September 1964, polls began showing that the American people rejected its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of the president and nearly a half century later, the report remains a notorious symbol of official coverup. (This does not prevent Abramson from blithely declaring that the historical consensus seems to have settled on the lone gunman theory there is no such consensus, only a deeply fractious ongoing debate.)
SNIP...
A Cruel and Shocking Act by former New York Times investigative reporter Philip Shenon has been soaking up most of the media spotlight in recent days. The book proclaims itself to be a secret history of the Kennedy assassination. Based largely on interviews with Warren Commission staff lawyers, the book reveals how the investigation was immediately taken over by the very government agencies the CIA, FBI and Secret Service that had the most to hide when it came to the assassination. The other new book, History Will Prove Us Right, was written by Howard Willens, a Warren Commission lawyer who refused to speak with Shenon. As suggested by the title which is taken from a defiant statement by the commission chairman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren Willens book is a stubborn defense of the report that he helped produce. But ironically, after grinding ones way through Willens serviceably written but highly revealing story, a reader can only come to the same conclusion that Shenons sexier expose demands namely, that the Warren Report was the result of massive political cunning and investigative fraud.
Both books contain juicy and informative details that shed new light on the JFK investigation. (Shenons book also contains a few breathlessly advertised scoops that turn out to be rehashed stories or false leads.) But the two books also suffer from a strange cognitive dissonance. After elaborating on the many ways that the Warren Commissions work was sabotaged by President Johnson, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (who immediately took charge of the investigation), former CIA director Allen Dulles (who conveniently got himself appointed to the commission), Treasury chief C. Douglas Dillon (who oversaw the Secret Service) and other Washington power players, the books seem to arrive at the same baffling conclusion as the deeply compromised Warren Report i.e., that Oswald did it.
When it comes to the million-dollar question, Shenon is much more equivocal than Willens. He seems to think that Oswald might have had accomplices but Oswald nonetheless remains at the center of Shenons story, rather than the intelligence officials, for instance, whom Sen. Richard Schweiker once remarked had their fingerprints all over the young alleged assassin. In following the conspiracy trail, Shenon quickly takes a wrong turn down the Castro-as-mastermind path. Perhaps because as a writer he found this story of deep espionage more intriguing than the Warren Commissions twisted bureaucratic tale, the author lights off for Mexico City, where Oswald apparently visited (or was impersonated visiting) the Soviet and Cuban embassies in the days before Dallas. Shenon has Oswald dallying with a sexy clerk in the Cuban embassy, and perhaps getting entangled in a sinister Fidelista plot against JFK.
CONTINUED...
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/the_jfk_assassination_we_still_dont_know_what_happened/
I heard Mr. Talbot speak at the Duquesne Conference. He names Allen Dulles "the Chairman of the Board" behind the assassination plot.
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CIA remains under control of BushInc. No president can crack the inner power circle
blm
Oct 2014
#10
Just stop it. Stop giving a free pass to the Presidents that should know better.
MontyPow
Oct 2014
#54
Glad you asked. Unless you've got Top Secret clearance and a numbered Swiss bank account...
Octafish
Oct 2014
#57
Me, yes, even if much of the Secret Government is beyond apparent control of the president.
Octafish
Oct 2014
#61
I read your post. I concluded that with such powers there is no point in voting.
MontyPow
Oct 2014
#67
The Intercept :James Risen’s new book on war-on-terror abuses comes out tomorrow
Ichingcarpenter
Oct 2014
#7
And, to this very fucking day, anyone who disagrees with the Official Government Handout about
djean111
Oct 2014
#16
Careful, there - I don't think being a Progressive is desired in the New Democratic Party any more.
djean111
Oct 2014
#32
Or at least marginalize them but keep them around for voting purposes. < They may have screwed
jtuck004
Oct 2014
#87
oh the white privilege of complaining after the fact...shouldn't this meeting have been part of the
Supersedeas
Oct 2014
#24
Now you know why I was shocked to hear that the White House had a direct link to
Baitball Blogger
Oct 2014
#25
So why would she capitulate? Either her patriotism got the best of her or she felt threatened.
rhett o rick
Oct 2014
#34
And now Kindasleazy is picking football teams to play for national championship.
liberal N proud
Oct 2014
#51
Kick for an extraordinary thread! Bookmarked for all the excellent information here.
scarletwoman
Oct 2014
#71
lol - if Risen had published an expose of our current administration's fuckups, you can just
whereisjustice
Oct 2014
#72
Translation: I regret that I was and am a tool. As the Church Lady might say,
KingCharlemagne
Oct 2014
#86