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In reply to the discussion: CIA director withheld information about JFK assassination [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)73. Seymour Hersh got taken in by someone foisting disinformation.
The Posthumous Assassination of JFK Part II
Sy Hersh and the Monroe/JFK Papers:
The History of a Thirty-Year Hoax
By James DiEugenio
On September 25, 1997, ABC used its news magazine program 20/20 to take an unusual journalistic step. In the first segment of the program, Peter Jennings took pains to discredit documents that had been about to be used by its own contracted reporter for an upcoming show scheduled for broadcast. The contracted reporter was Seymour Hersh. The documents purported to show a secret deal involving Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, and President John F. Kennedy. They were to be the cornerstone of Hershs upcoming Little, Brown book, The Dark Side of Camelot. In fact, published reports indicate that it was these documents that caused the publisher to increase Hershs advance and provoke three networks to compete for a television special to hype the book. It is not surprising to any informed observer that the documents imploded. What is a bit surprising is that Hersh and ABC could have been so naive for so long. And it is ironic that ABC should use 20/20 to expose a phenomenon that it itself fueled twelve years ago.
What happened on September 25th was the most tangible manifestation of three distinct yet overlapping journalistic threads that have been furrowing into our culture since the Church Committee disbanded in 1976. Hershs book would have been the apotheosis of all three threads converged into one book. In the strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually begin after Frank Churchs investigation ended. But it was at that point that what had been a right-wing, eccentric, easily dismissed undercurrent, picked up a second windso much so that today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is accepted by a large amount of people. And, most surprisingly, some of its purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research community.
The three threads are these: 1) That the Kennedys ordered Castros assassination, despite the verdict of the Church Committee on the CIAs assassination plots. As I noted last issue, the committee report could find no evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots on Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. 2) That the Kennedys were really bad boys, in some ways as bad as Chicago mobsters or the gentleman killers of the CIA. Although neither JFK nor RFK was lionized by the main centers of the media while they were alive, because of their early murders, many books and articles were written afterward that presented them in a sympathetic light, usually as liberal icons. This was tolerated by the media establishment as sentimental sop until the revelations of both Watergate and the Church Committee. This good guy image then needed to be altered since both those crises seemed to reveal that the Kennedys were actually different than what came before them (Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers) and what came after (Nixon). Thus began a series of anti-Kennedy biographies. 3) That Marilyn Monroes death was somehow ordained by her involvement with the Kennedy bad boys. Again, this was at first a rather peculiar cottage industry. But around the time of Watergate and the Church Committee it was given a lift, and going back to a 1964 paradigm, it combined elements of the first two movements into a Gothic (some would say grotesque) right-wing propaganda tract which is both humorous and depressing in its slanderous implications, and almost frightening in its political and cultural overtones. Egged on by advocates of Judith Exner (e.g. Liz Smith and Tony Summers), this political and cultural time bomb landed in Sy Hershs and ABCs lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode, pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of all three industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame (and shame) to be shared. And not just in 1997.
As we saw in Part One of this article, as the Church Committee was preparing to make its report, the Exner and then Mary Meyer stories made headlines in the Washington Post. These elementsintrigue from the CIA assassination plots, plus the sex angles, combined with the previous hazing of Richard Nixon over Watergatespawned a wave of new anti-Kennedy expose biographies. Anti-Kennedy tracts were not new. But these new works differed from the earlier ones in that they owed their genesis and their styles to the events of the mid-seventies that had brought major parts of the establishment (specifically, the CIA and the GOP) so much grief. In fact we will deal with some of the earlier ones later. For now, let us examine this new pedigree and show how it fits into the movement outlined above.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ctka.net/pr1197-jfk.html
PS: Thank you for the heads-up on the stage play, Gloria! If I can take in one show this holiday break, it will "Marliee and Baby Lamb: The Assassination of an American Goddess." If I can, I'd love to see it in Las Cruces.
Sy Hersh and the Monroe/JFK Papers:
The History of a Thirty-Year Hoax
By James DiEugenio
On September 25, 1997, ABC used its news magazine program 20/20 to take an unusual journalistic step. In the first segment of the program, Peter Jennings took pains to discredit documents that had been about to be used by its own contracted reporter for an upcoming show scheduled for broadcast. The contracted reporter was Seymour Hersh. The documents purported to show a secret deal involving Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, and President John F. Kennedy. They were to be the cornerstone of Hershs upcoming Little, Brown book, The Dark Side of Camelot. In fact, published reports indicate that it was these documents that caused the publisher to increase Hershs advance and provoke three networks to compete for a television special to hype the book. It is not surprising to any informed observer that the documents imploded. What is a bit surprising is that Hersh and ABC could have been so naive for so long. And it is ironic that ABC should use 20/20 to expose a phenomenon that it itself fueled twelve years ago.
What happened on September 25th was the most tangible manifestation of three distinct yet overlapping journalistic threads that have been furrowing into our culture since the Church Committee disbanded in 1976. Hershs book would have been the apotheosis of all three threads converged into one book. In the strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually begin after Frank Churchs investigation ended. But it was at that point that what had been a right-wing, eccentric, easily dismissed undercurrent, picked up a second windso much so that today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is accepted by a large amount of people. And, most surprisingly, some of its purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research community.
The three threads are these: 1) That the Kennedys ordered Castros assassination, despite the verdict of the Church Committee on the CIAs assassination plots. As I noted last issue, the committee report could find no evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots on Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. 2) That the Kennedys were really bad boys, in some ways as bad as Chicago mobsters or the gentleman killers of the CIA. Although neither JFK nor RFK was lionized by the main centers of the media while they were alive, because of their early murders, many books and articles were written afterward that presented them in a sympathetic light, usually as liberal icons. This was tolerated by the media establishment as sentimental sop until the revelations of both Watergate and the Church Committee. This good guy image then needed to be altered since both those crises seemed to reveal that the Kennedys were actually different than what came before them (Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers) and what came after (Nixon). Thus began a series of anti-Kennedy biographies. 3) That Marilyn Monroes death was somehow ordained by her involvement with the Kennedy bad boys. Again, this was at first a rather peculiar cottage industry. But around the time of Watergate and the Church Committee it was given a lift, and going back to a 1964 paradigm, it combined elements of the first two movements into a Gothic (some would say grotesque) right-wing propaganda tract which is both humorous and depressing in its slanderous implications, and almost frightening in its political and cultural overtones. Egged on by advocates of Judith Exner (e.g. Liz Smith and Tony Summers), this political and cultural time bomb landed in Sy Hershs and ABCs lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode, pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of all three industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame (and shame) to be shared. And not just in 1997.
As we saw in Part One of this article, as the Church Committee was preparing to make its report, the Exner and then Mary Meyer stories made headlines in the Washington Post. These elementsintrigue from the CIA assassination plots, plus the sex angles, combined with the previous hazing of Richard Nixon over Watergatespawned a wave of new anti-Kennedy expose biographies. Anti-Kennedy tracts were not new. But these new works differed from the earlier ones in that they owed their genesis and their styles to the events of the mid-seventies that had brought major parts of the establishment (specifically, the CIA and the GOP) so much grief. In fact we will deal with some of the earlier ones later. For now, let us examine this new pedigree and show how it fits into the movement outlined above.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ctka.net/pr1197-jfk.html
PS: Thank you for the heads-up on the stage play, Gloria! If I can take in one show this holiday break, it will "Marliee and Baby Lamb: The Assassination of an American Goddess." If I can, I'd love to see it in Las Cruces.
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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