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In reply to the discussion: CIA director withheld information about JFK assassination [View all]YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)22. Re: this conspiracy theory...
In reflecting back on this long and discursive account, it strikes me that a great deal of what passes for secret government in Talbots imagination would probably be described by a judicious national security historian as the day-to-day practice of the politics of espionage by an aggressive, but deeply flawed, master of the game.
Talbots reconstruction of the plot engineered by Dulles to assassinate JFK contains so many key and bit players, and is so packed with qualifications concerning their actions, whereabouts, and intentions, that its close to impossible to keep ones bearings. Tantalizing coincidences, clues, and statements from investigators and participants accumulate, casting doubt on the lone gunman theory accepted by the Warren Commission, but no truly credible alternative explanation seems to emerge.
In the end, and with all due respect for Talbots dogged detective work, the case he makes for Dulless masterminding the assassination strikes me as far-fetched and highly speculative. Even if one grants the existence of a Dulles-led, malign, and anti-democratic network of deep power conspiratorsa tall order in and of itselfits hard to see why they would see the need to liquidate Kennedy. Contrary to Talbots claims, JFKs policies, foreign or domestic, simply did not pose a dire threat to deep power interests. As Columbia historian Alan Brinkley points out, the consensus among historians today is that JFKs differences with the hardliners were mostly tactical not strategic.
Finally, from a practical standpoint, is it at all plausible that John McCone, the Kennedy-appointed CIA director at the time of the assassination, stood by passively as the retired Dulles waltzed back into CIA headquarters two years after having been fired to spearhead the greatest conspiracy in U.S. history? And if Dulles was behind it all, one wonders why Robert Kennedy pleaded with President Johnson to ask the gentleman spy to serve on the commission to investigate the murder of his beloved brother. Was Bobby in on it, too?
Talbots reconstruction of the plot engineered by Dulles to assassinate JFK contains so many key and bit players, and is so packed with qualifications concerning their actions, whereabouts, and intentions, that its close to impossible to keep ones bearings. Tantalizing coincidences, clues, and statements from investigators and participants accumulate, casting doubt on the lone gunman theory accepted by the Warren Commission, but no truly credible alternative explanation seems to emerge.
In the end, and with all due respect for Talbots dogged detective work, the case he makes for Dulless masterminding the assassination strikes me as far-fetched and highly speculative. Even if one grants the existence of a Dulles-led, malign, and anti-democratic network of deep power conspiratorsa tall order in and of itselfits hard to see why they would see the need to liquidate Kennedy. Contrary to Talbots claims, JFKs policies, foreign or domestic, simply did not pose a dire threat to deep power interests. As Columbia historian Alan Brinkley points out, the consensus among historians today is that JFKs differences with the hardliners were mostly tactical not strategic.
Finally, from a practical standpoint, is it at all plausible that John McCone, the Kennedy-appointed CIA director at the time of the assassination, stood by passively as the retired Dulles waltzed back into CIA headquarters two years after having been fired to spearhead the greatest conspiracy in U.S. history? And if Dulles was behind it all, one wonders why Robert Kennedy pleaded with President Johnson to ask the gentleman spy to serve on the commission to investigate the murder of his beloved brother. Was Bobby in on it, too?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/13/did-allen-dulles-order-the-hit-on-jfk.html
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Remarkable, considering how Corporate McPravda has only played the lone nut tune since Nov. 22, 1963
Octafish
Oct 2015
#5
No. Neither were the CIA-Mafia assassination contracts on Castro and Cuban leadership.
Octafish
Oct 2015
#6
The CIA Admitted To Lying About JFK’s Assassination, But No One Really Noticed
Octafish
Nov 2015
#87
I found John Davis' "Mafia Kingfisher: Carlos Marcello and the and the Assassination of John F. ...
Eleanors38
Oct 2015
#58
THAT is the crux of the dilemma: Secret Government does not trump the Constitution.
Octafish
Oct 2015
#35
Consistent with Talbot’s claims JFK’s policies did pose a dire threat to “deep power” interests
MinM
Oct 2015
#33
K&R! Thanks for the thread, octafish! Also, thanks for your tireless dedication to exposing the
Ghost in the Machine
Oct 2015
#23
Dulles knew Bay of Pigs Operation was COMPROMISED, yet gave it his blessing...
Octafish
Oct 2015
#62
(U) DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy - David Robarge
Octafish
Oct 2015
#46
''...the JFK case is being solved, thanks largely to the brute force of the power of the Internet.''
Octafish
Oct 2015
#55
DCI Dulles and JCS chair Lemnitzer counseled JFK launch all-out attack on USSR in 1961.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#84