For those interested in history (prologue to the future, don't ya know), Part 1 examines the U2 affair in 1960: was it a highly inconvenient accident, or the first coup of the military-industrial complex?
"Our overseas bases now cost us over $100 billion yearly. Since the DOD sops up over half of the disposable resources of the government, Obama must get control of it. His task will be difficult because the DOD and what President Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex" have cleverly portioned out the work and procurement on the program to virtually every congressional district. Congress will opt for the program even if it bankrupts America."
— William Polk
“They’ve got us hostage, man! The irony is that we have established a reverse economic Darwinism, where we ensure the survival of the fattest, not the fittest, the biggest, not the best.”
— James Brock
“Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well? Because that was the plan, as devised by [Paulson], a former CEO of Goldman Sachs.”
— Robert Scheer
“He had a $700 million conflict of interest and everything that he did while he was Treasury Secretary, every single thing that he did, has one explanation – what’s good for Hank Paulson?”
— Rep. Alan Grayson
"That's how audacious these assholes are. At least with other banks, you could say that they were just dumb — they believed what they were selling, and it blew them up. Goldman knew what it was doing."
— anonymous hedgefund manager
"Only buy used, only use cash or bank debit cards, or only buy from local merchants. They can only steal from us if we enable them."
— Cindy Sheehan
"You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
— Andrew Jackson
"The ignorance in America is overwhelming... The concentration of power in America is frightening."
— Otto von Habsburg
"Three out of four of the big health care firms lobbying on Capitol Hill have former members of Congress or government staff members on the payroll - more than 350 of them - and they're all fighting hard to prevent a public option, at a rate in excess of $1.4 million a day.
That's how it works. And it works that way because we let it. The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change - nothing - until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM's are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they've placed on government - the one that reads, 'For Sale.' "
--Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
"The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from 'influences' of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise."
— Pope Benedict in recent encyclical
"Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of 'free markets', everything-- science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds-- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production."
— Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist
"I was expecting a thank you, all I got back in return was a hostile response. Some of the Madoff investors said I was behaving unprofessionally and was bad-mouthing a competitor. Oh, they were nasty. Nasty! They said the publications were jealous of Bernie. They were being anti-Semitic. People called me an anti-Semite. I'm not only a Jew, I live in Israel."
— Laura Goldman, who tried to warn Palm Beach Country Club investors about Madoff
"Secrecy protects the American people from grisly facts at variance with their self-image."
— journalist Taylor Branch
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
— Albert Einstein
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How Hemp was outlawed
http://www.zianet.com/postpubco/ththemp.htm
Before 1931, Harry Anslinger was Assistant Commissioner for Prohibition. He represented a large group of law-enforcement personnel facing lack of work after the Repeal. In 1931, he was appointed by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon to Direct the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He also happened to be married to one of Mellon’s close relatives. Mellon also had another significant position -- he owned the Mellon Bank, one of the nation’s largest, with significant interest in the fortunes of DuPont, which held patents for cheap wood pulp-acid paper, and on the manufacture of artificial textile fibers from petroleum. Both paper and textile markets were controlled by products derived from Hemp...also known of course as marijuana.
Through the 1930’s, the force leading the fight to get marijuana controlled by the Bureau of Narcotics was the "yellow journalism" of the Hearst papers. When in 1937, Anslinger led the crusade against pot before Congress, his testimony was almost entirely made up of Hearst news releases which he read aloud in the emotionally-charged style typical of the exaggerated or contrived "news" of yellow journalism. He declared marijuana was the most powerful violence-inducing substance known to mankind, and implied its use (and not desire for social justice) was responsible for the well-known violent tendencies of the Negro and Latin, among whom it was widely consumed. The culmination of the attack was the film "Reefer Madness", which time and experience have revealed to be ludicrous. On the basis of that mentality, however, marijuana was outlawed. DuPont, Mellon, and Hearst in a single move wiped out HEMP, their major competitor in the paper, textiles, and paint industries.
Until then, about 80% of all paper, canvas, rope, and paint depended on hemp, which is still unexcelled for those purposes. (The Declaration of Independence, written on hemp linen, is in excellent condition; the anti-hemp laws, written on wood pulp-acid paper, are decaying on the shelves.) Hearst’s cheap newspapers were made possible by DuPont’s acid-rain-producing paper process. DuPont’s petroleum-based fibers and oils enabled them to take over the entire market which had been dominated by hemp. Mellon’s bank, and Anslinger’s tax-funded agency became more wealthy and powerful.
As for the "violence" on which Congress’ action was predicated: when in 1944, the New York City "LaGuardia Marijuana Report" refuted marijuana’s causing violence at all, Anslinger changed his tune. Before Congress in 1948, he said he no longer felt marijuana caused violence -- in fact, quite the opposite. Marijuana was even more dangerous than previously suspected because it caused users to become peaceful. Its growing abuse was a deliberate plot by the communists to weaken the resolve of American youth to fight for their country, turning them all into pacifists. The Committee didn't want to be brought before some other Committee for being soft on commies, so they voted to keep the law on the books.
More hemp for long-lasting paper can be grown on land in a given time than wood pulp trees. Hemp seed is excellent livestock feed. Hempseed oil is excellent paint base. Hemp is persecuted to raise the value of certain stocks and natural resource holdings. Let us end the persecution of Hemp; end dependence on petroleum for inferior non-biodegradable textiles; end the destruction of American forest for inferior acid-pulp newspaper. Re-legalize Hemp!
James Nathan Post
http://ohiorepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/state-sovereignty-resolutions.html
Legislators in at least nine States have had it with Federal meddling! They have therefore introduced resolutions asserting the sovereignty of their States in the current session, which began last month. Those States are Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, and Georgia. Twelve additional States reportedly are considering the introduction of such resolutions: Colorado, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Nevada, Maine, and Illinois (!).
These States are claiming their rights under the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers to the States or to the people, that are not specifically delegated to the Federal Government under Article I, Sections 8-10 of the Constitution.
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Mississippi Passes Legislation Protecting Gun Owners During Martial Law
Infowars
February 11, 2009
http://www.infowars.com/internment-camps-readied-for-mass-illegal-alien-influx/
Mississippi lawmakers have passed a bill to protect the state’s residents during martial law. On the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi website, Phil Bryant announces the passage of SB 2036. The legislation “restricts the power of a peace officer to confiscate firearms and ammunitions in an emergency or during a time of martial law,” according to the website...
Mississippi passes the law reaffirming the Second Amendment at approximately the same time a number of states are introducing and passing resolutions and bills declaring sovereignty from the federal government and buttressing the Tenth Amendment...
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States Push to Take Back National Guard
Wednesday 11 February 2009
http://www.truthout.org/021109J
The president can call up the states's Guard units in a time of war. But when the mandate for war becomes obsolete, say members of the Bring the Guard Home: It's the Law (BTGH) campaign, sending those troops overseas is illegal. BTGH members and their allies are now sponsoring a chain of bills and resolutions in states across the country, demanding an investigation into the legality of deploying the Guard to Iraq, and a refusal to comply with any illegal federal orders...
"We believe that it would be a good thing for a court to be asked the question of whether a state Guard can be brought into federal service to fight in an overseas war - other than in an emergency - that does not have a proper Congressional authorization," Fisher said...
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Beijing Skyscraper Fire: The Silence Is Deafening
Debunkers' only response is to claim that no comparison to WTC 7 can be made, yet they feverishly compared completely dissimilar bridge collapses to twin towers in 2007
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2009/021209_beijing_silence.htm
Three days after a towering inferno engulfed a 500 foot skyscraper in Beijing, debunkers have failed to come up with any answers as to why the building remained standing in comparison with WTC 7, which suffered a uniform 7 second implosion as a result of limited fires spread across just 8 floors on 9/11...
[HF notes: I am currently dealing with a number of dullards on CounterKnowledge, and they attempted the exact same comparison! Here is the link proffered - “Oakland freeway fire/collapse” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tjs5ILNkJc&feature=related - priceless!]
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Bailout Plan by Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno Show
Welfare for the rich will cost $7000 per citizen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXznKV7rw7k
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Poll: Most want inquiry into anti-terror tactics
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-11-investigation-poll_N.htm
WASHINGTON — Even as Americans struggle with two wars and an economy in tatters, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds majorities in favor of investigating some of the thorniest unfinished business from the Bush administration: Whether its tactics in the "war on terror" broke the law.
Close to two-thirds of those surveyed said there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants. Almost four in 10 favor criminal investigations and about a quarter want investigations without criminal charges. One-third said they want nothing to be done....
The Republican viewpoint was summed up recently by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "If every administration started to re-examine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it," he said. "This is not Latin America."
It's a matter of LAW, you doofus! And Latin America is a model we should emulate — they've been prosecuting their patriot criminals from the Dirty Wars 30 years ago.
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AP Impact: Pentagon ups public relations spending
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/05/ap-impact-pentagon-ups-public-relations-spending/
An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That's almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.
This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.
Not to mention: the Pentagon maintains about 275 golf courses on bases around the world, and there are more personnel in military bands than in the State Dept.
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Military Aid to Israel violates Symington Amendment
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=14229
The 1976 Symington Amendment prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards. Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). If U.S. presidents complied with the Symington Amendment, they would not deliver yearly aid packages to Israel totaling billions of dollars. Presidents make-believe that Israeli nuclear weapons don't exist so Congress can legally continue shoveling the lion's share of the U.S. foreign aid budget to Israel. But this thin pretense is now over. Since Carter's revelation, press outlets such as Reuters chat openly about how Israel's nukes mean that it does not qualify for U.S. aid.
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Have you seen 60 Minutes' Is Peace Out of Reach segment from last Sunday? If you haven't, please take a moment to view it by clicking here. This piece marks the first time that a mainstream U.S. media outlet has dared to accurately portray what Israeli occupation and settlement mean for Palestinians living in the West Bank and to explain to the American public why this system is apartheid.
After viewing the clip, please take a moment to thank CBS for airing this bold and insightful look at how settlements and occupation are preventing real peace in Palestine/Israel. Click here or call 212-975-2006 to send a message to 60 Minutes' management commending them for telling the truth about life in theWest Bank.
Get Involved in the Media Conversation
As you know, this kind of honest reporting is all too rare in mainstream U.S. media, but you can help influence coverage of this issue. After thanking CBS for their quality journalism, click here to use our newmedia action tools to write a letter to the editor or an op-ed, or to meet with editorial boards and other media management. These media action tools can help you correct inaccurate and biased reporting in your local media.
We've been calling the situation in Israel/Palestine apartheid for years and we're glad that this language is finally breaking into the mainstream. You can learn more about why we say apartheid is happening in Israel/Palestine by reading about our anti-apartheid framework here.
Hunt, JFK and Obama
by Travis Kelly
On the 45th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, we stand much closer to a final truth in the case, thanks to E. Howard Hunt’s posthumous confession this year (published in the March edition of Rolling Stone*, with videos released in October), corroborating what many researchers have long concluded. Finally, the self-deluding “someone would have talked by now” mantra sung for five decades with stubborn rectitude by the MSM — which has never lifted a pebble in this case — should have ended. Hunt has been a prime suspect in the assassination for 30 years, and his guilt had already been established in the landmark 1985 Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby trial. Haven’t heard of it? Nor the Hunt confession? If a tree falls in the forest, and the MSM doesn’t hear it... there’s no sound and little fury.
The confession should have been adequate occasion for an honest journalism to at least examine the evidence (abundantly researched by 2008) for Hunt’s involvement; or if that’s too distant now, for some of our university historians, most of whom still swear allegiance to this most moribund of myths with the fealty of Catholic priests for the Holy Trinity. Curiously, several of the last bastions of the dying faith can be found in left-of-center venues: an editor at Salon rejects this proposed article, uttering obeisance to the Lone Nut dogma; at Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn still fervently clutches his ragged bible from the Warren Commission; Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com grudgingly refers to the “still-lingering mystery” on occasion; Noam Chomsky will have none of it (he’s above this riff-raff, too). I won’t mention the whole chorus of hacks in our major dailies and channels — one can only adopt Mencken's detached amusement and laugh bitterly. He wasn’t only speaking of American rubes as “the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages” — a majority of our journalists and historians are at the center of the herd.
Among my favorite of the herd’s Pavlovian triggered (by the mere utterance “conspiracy”) grunts and calls:
“We couldn’t face the truth then — now we’ll never know.”
“Occam’s Razor unerringly dictates that Lee Harvey Oswald did it solo.”
“Someone would have talked by now.”
Which brings us to an examination of the evidence for the talking Hunt and his named co-conspirators’ guilt...
But first: why should we care now, about an event half a decade ago, with the nation reeling from a tsunami of crises demanding our urgent attention? Aside from the cliched admonitions (”Know the past is prologue, and it will set you free.”), there is the new man whom we’ve elected to solve these crises, and there is more than a superficial resemblance in the global adulation greeting Obama’s and JFK’s elections: Obama faces conditions very much like those confronting the man elected in 1960 — entering office in a recession, with an agenda to curb the speculative excesses of Wall Street, and managing an imperialist War Party determined to intervene wherever corporate interests are challenged, whatever the ideology — communist, social democratic, Islamic or merely nationalist.
Rendered by the nuance-free binary thought endemic to American thought, JFK was either a Cold War hawk, or the seminal peacenik of the ‘60s. Actually, his Irish Catholic ancestry determined his general anti-imperialism: he opposed both Soviet domination and Western neo-colonialism, favoring national economic development and political reform as the surest bulwark against communist importunity, inciting a furious WASP nest of old-boy bankers and militarists — the British-inflected Eastern establishment, headquartered in the Council on Foreign Relations (and its London parent, the Royal Institute of International Affairs), determined to carry on the global Anglo empire via the “shock doctrine” of USAF carpetbombing and World Bank/IMF carpetbagging. Domestically, he enraged Wall Street with investment tax policies encouraging domestic productive investment, curtailing off-shore tax shelters and punishing speculation. This was a double blow to the “economic royalists” epitomized by Allen Dulles, chief of the CIA, aka the “private army of the Fortune 500.” (for the best account of this conflict, see Donald Gibson’s Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency).
That reactionary aristocracy has come a long way since, over the minor speed bump of Carter and the hiccup of Clinton, culminating in the totally unbridled “feed-the-good-ole-boys” regime of George Bush, and the crippling overextension on both the domestic and foreign fronts that Obama inherits. Will he muster the resolve to reign in the insatiable predators in Halliburton/Blackwater and the financial cannibals on Wall Street? More costly surges and bailouts, or the genuine reforms demanded by the public that elected him? Like JFK, Obama cannot be totally deaf to his own ancestry — surely there is an anti-imperialist animus in his bones. But like JFK, he is surrounded by a ruthless plutocracy capable of extinguishing pluralistic progress at home as effectively as it has done around the third world for half a century.
If Obama continues to staff up with more hawks (Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Zbigniew Brzezenski, Hillary Clinton, Gates), yet struggles to fulfill his principle mandate, to end the fraudulent War on Terror, he may be heading for his own Bay of Pigs — the proximate cause of JFK’s demise. Will he eventually confront the War Party as JFK did, or will the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (Eisenhower’s unedited term, reflecting the density of defense industry stocks in Capitol HIll portfolios, the Democrats leading), enriched and entrenched ever deeper after a decade of fructifying privatization, cross the Rubicon again and commit another Roman coup? And most importantly: could our bewigged Lords get away with it again? Given our punditocracy’s steadfast evasion and denial about JFK’s takedown over five decades, the praetorian guard must feel confident that it could contain and reverse any excess populism by the Afro-American president.
Ultimately, Mencken’s sardonic chuckle rings hollow: the defenders of the faith choose to let the insidious precedent stand as a beacon for the future — that the ultimate sanction against an American president is not impeachment by a congressional majority, but homicide by a powerful minority of war hawks. So, yes, I accuse all of them, the whole pusillanimous pack of pravda chihuahuas, of a criminal dereliction of conscience and duty. For half a century, they have persisted as accomplices after the fact, in the most grievous of crimes against the polity.
THE “WHOLE BAY OF PIGS THING”
According to one of his chief lieutenants, H.R. Haldeman (in The Ends of Power), Nixon was using “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” as a euphemism for the JFK assassination in this segment from the Watergate tapes:
...this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things. You open a scab, there's a hell of a lot of things...This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky...Just say...very bad to have this fellow Hunt, ah, he knows too damned much, if he was involved...If it gets out that this is all involved, the Cuba thing, it would be a fiasco. It would make the CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's going to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing which we think would be very unfortunate-both for the CIA and the country...
Hunt was blackmailing Nixon for hush money at the time, as he along with Frank Sturgis and a few Cuban operatives were taking the fall for the Watergate burglary.
In another of those inexhaustible satori revelations that populate this greatest of all murder mysteries: Nixon was in Dallas on Nov. 22 (he couldn’t recall exactly at first). And so was E. Howard Hunt, if we are to credit the verdict of a Miami jury in 1985 in which Hunt lost a libel appeal against the allegation that top CIA brass had discussed “a limited hangout” with Hunt as the fall guy during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation, which was burrowing dangerously close to the truth. Ex-CIA agent Victor Marchetti (The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence) authored the article in the Liberty Lobby’s publication, The Spotlight, referring to a memo between DCI Richard Helms and counterintelligence chief James Angleton, stating: “Someday we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963.” Curiously, it was Angleton himself who supplied the memo to both Marchetti’s source, New Jersey reporter James Trento, and to HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi.
Hunt won the first trial, but faced the seminal JFK conspiracy researcher and attorney for the deceased assassin, Mark Lane (Rush to Judgment, 1966), in the second — and lost. Among other damages, Hunt claimed that the Dallas allegation had alienated the affections of his three children, who came to him demanding to know if it was true — had he been in Dallas on Nov. 22? On the witness stand, Hunt was crucified by Lane with the glaring contradiction of this claim against his stated alibi: that he had been in Washington with his now deceased wife and three children (two of them teenagers) on Nov. 22... yet they all seemed to have forgotten this small detail on a day for which everyone else alive at the time enjoys near perfect recall. None of them were called to testify in Hunt’s defense.
The forewoman of the jury, Leslie Armstrong, stated to the local media afterwards: “(Lane) wanted us to say our own government had killed our president. We listened to the evidence very carefully. We discussed it. We concluded that the CIA killed President Kennedy; and I call upon the United States government to do something about that." That de facto verdict, and news of the trial itself, never escaped the enduring MSM quarantine on the case. But Hunt knew that it was the final judgment against his legacy, and it is against this backstory that we must judge his final confession to his eldest son, St. John Hunt, who has since publicly recalled that his father was not in Washington on that day, but had left town for “a business trip” to Dallas that week.
Hunt names this chain of the command in the assassination: LBJ, and CIA agents Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey and David Morales, with his own role limited to that of “benchwarmer” — probably a coy admission that he didn’t actually pull a trigger or spot a sniper that day... a “limited hangout” to the one child he was still close to, but who knew too much to swallow the “plausible denial” canards offered to the public.
Circumstantial evidence that he was on the team in some capacity, along with his longtime CIA partner David Atlee Phillips, Chief of Station in Mexico City, co-conspirator in the Iranian and Guatemalan coups, and fellow planner of the Bay of Pigs fiasco (all under the aegis of Nixon), includes:
• In 1963, Hunt was deputy chief of the CIA's newly created DOD, Domestic Operations Division (whose very title seems to violate the CIA's charter against domestic ops), and Chief of Covert Operations. He had set up the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a far-right anti-Castro Cuban group, in New Orleans. Witnesses have placed Hunt visiting its headquarters — the same 544 Camp Street address where “pro-Castro” defector Lee Harvey Oswald operated under the tutelage of anti-Castro ex-FBI agent Guy Bannister.
• In September '63, Hunt moved to Mexico City as temporary CIA Chief of Station — presumably the permanent Chief there, David Atlee Phillips, had gone elsewhere while Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in town on his trail-laying mission to the Cuban and Soviet embassies, all observed 24/7 by CIA surveillance. (Hunt’s biographer, Tad Szulc, is the source, although Hunt later denied this temporary duty under oath to the Rockefeller Commission. But in a deposition for the Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby trial, Phillips cagily admitted that he had seen Hunt in Mexico City sometime between Sept. '61 and March '65.
• Where might Phillips have been vacationing while Hunt took over his duties in the Mexican capital? It appears he was in Dallas sometime earlier in the month, meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald before his departure south. This was the bombshell revelation given to HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi by Antonio Veciana, head of the most radical anti-Castro militia, Alpha 66. Veciana only identified his CIA controller as "Maurice Bishop" — an alias now definitively known to have been used by Phillips — but he never specifically linked the two, or spoke of them ever again subsequent to his near assassination in Miami’s Little Havana after the confession.
• Kerry Thornley, an ex-Marine stationed with Oswald in Japan who also lived in New Orleans for two priors prior to the hit, had conversations with two mysterious middle-aged men there named "Gary Kirstein" and "Slim Brooks," among them the subject of how one might assassinate President Kennedy. Thornley’s post-Marine path eerily paralleled Oswald’s — he believes he may have been groomed as a backup patsy. Jim Garrison questioned him in his 1967 investigation. Thornley has stated "Kirstein" was actually E. Howard Hunt.
• In 1975, Texas JFK researcher Penn Jones, Jr. receives a photocopy of a handwritten letter mailed from Mexico City, the original dated 11-08-63:
Dear Mr. Hunt,
I would like information concerning my position. I am only asking for information. I am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else.
Thank you, Lee Harvey Oswald
Three handwriting experts testified it was Oswald's writing, although the HSCA came to no definite conclusion.
• In the Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby trial, CIA contract agent and former Castro lover Marita Lorenz testified that she had met with Hunt in Dallas on Nov. 21, '63, along with fellow Watergate conspirator Frank Sturgis and anti-Castro Cuban exiles who had driven from Miami (she also gave this testimony to the HSCA, which again came to no definite conclusion about her veracity). She identified Hunt as the paymaster of the operation.
• Hunt’s final identified conspirator was an anonymous “French gunman” on the grassy knoll. This would almost certainly be Jean Souetre, a French OAS right-wing terrorist suspected in assassination attempts against DeGaulle (for sacrificing Algeria). Souetre was arrested by the FBI in Dallas that day, and promptly deported, apparently without interrogation (another “coincidence” to bedevil the WC apologists). A French investigator has reported that Hunt met with Souetre in Paris in May ‘63.
• In a 2004 Havana conference between American assassination researchers and retired Cuban intelligence officers, former chief Fabian Escalante testified: “By mid-1963, we had infiltrated a special group of exiles working with the CIA. A CIA official came to a safe-house in Miami and said to a group of Cuban exiles, `You must eliminate Kennedy.’” The Cubans identified this CIA officer as “Maurice Bishop,” with corroborating evidence that his true name was David Atlee Phillips.
A SINGULAR CAULDRON OF PARANOIA AND HATRED
The “whole Bay of Pigs thing” resulted in a cauldron of delirium and fanaticism after the Cuban missile crisis — long after his Watergate convictions, Hunt believed that the missiles were still hidden in Cuba, and that Castro’s survival ranked as the greatest tragedy in American history. In the Pentagon, bizarre plots were hatched: submarines firing special high-altitude fireworks to simulate the Second Coming, abetted by agents spreading the panic, and the good Catholics would rise up and overthrow their heathen leader in time for salvation. Even more Machiavellian were the Operation Northwoods schemes, including false-flag terrorist acts against American planes and citizens to spark the next invasion. Meanwhile, a certain faction of CIA officers, eager and desperate to rehabilitate themselves after the massive bungling of the Bay of Pigs, were hatching a plot of their own with the return of an asset freshly repatriated from the U.S.S.R — Lee Harvey Oswald (for the most thorough examination of Oswald as CIA asset, see history professor Philip Melanson’s Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence).
By mid 1963, eight assassination attempts against Castro had failed. One of Hunt’s accused con-conspirators, William Harvey, directed them in alliance with Santos Trafficante and Johnny Roselli — mobsters who wanted their casinos back — through his ZR/RIFLE program. (Oswald was also well-known to the Mob: his uncle, Dutch Murret, was a numbers man for Carlos Marcello in New Orleans). Then the feverish Cubans and their CIA handlers learned of the ultimate betrayal: JFK’s secret back-channel detente talks with Castro and Khruschev. The missile crisis had sobered this Cold Warrior, but not the cadre of fanatics in the south, who did not have to deal with Khruschev’s threat to retaliate against another Cuban invasion by engulfing West Berlin.
David Morales, the last named in Hunt’s hierarchy, is the man most likely to have plotted the tactical hit, as he had personally assassinated a number of Communists and leftists in South America, and orchestrated the Bay of Pigs invasion. A Native-American from Arizona, he was known as “El Indio,” a courageous front-line agent and heavy drinker whose expressed hatred of JFK even exceeded Hunt’s — 114 of the men he personally recruited had been sacrificed on those beaches, and it was all JFK’s fault for failing to send in American jets. Actually, there was air support: a “contra” air force of ancient B-26 bombers flying from Nicaragua with no insignia, but the CIA tacticians (perhaps Morales?) had forgotten to calculate the time-zone difference. They arrived an hour late. With little genuine experience in military operations, the CIA had also miscalculated the tides, forcing the whole marine brigade to wade in at low tide against murderous shore fire.
Former anti-Castro CIA contract agent Gerry Patrick Hemming, has suggested to me that some operations, including the Bay of Pigs, were designed to fail — and that thought certainly occurred to JFK, just as a similar suspicion about the summit-sabotaging U2 affair had prompted Eisenhower to deliver his odd Military-Industrial Complex speech. JFK did threaten to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces.” And the CIA, or at least it’s compartment directed by Phillips, vowed to “force JFK’s hand” in the fight not to abandon Cuba.
But the CIA was not alone in facing extinction: both LBJ and Hoover were facing political mortality if JFK had lived — LBJ embroiled in the Bobby Baker scandal, with the headline in the Dallas Morning News on Nov. 22 reading “Nixon Predicts JFK May Drop Johnson.” Hoover faced mandatory retirement in a second Kennedy term, and there was no chance of a reprieve, as they despised each other. These were the two most powerful men in Washington in real terms, and their hatred of the president burned almost as hotly as David Morales’. It was not only the survival of the nation against Castro’s influence (the example of his health care system as dangerous as his nukes), but the conspirators’ personal survival as well that brought it to the tipping point. The actual operation, no more radical and violent than the Northwoods false-flag plans that JFK had scotched, may have originated with Phillips, Hunt, their Cuban pit bulls and Mob asssets, but LBJ and Hoover almost certainly got wind of it and tacitly approved it at the least. Hoover had an inside source — none other than LHO himself (Texas attorney general Waggoner Carr identified Oswald as an FBI informant to the Warren Commission, throwing that august body into a panicked en camera session.) Both LHO’s and Jack Ruby’s curious pasts were airbrushed out of existence in the WC’s final report.
November 22 solved all these problems efficiently: Castro had obviously Svengalied Oswald in the assassination of a president, who could no longer impede this final casus belli for Cuba Libre. This was the line being disseminated by Phillips’ and Morales’ propaganda assets in Miami, even before the police in Dallas knew anything but Oswald’s name. Grilled about these connections by HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi, Phillips nearly came unglued — he had 3 cigarettes going at once, according to Fonzi (basically, they had their man on the run, but how the HSCA was sabotaged in a beltway coup is recounted in Fonzi’s book, The Last Investigation). Fabian Escalante sums it up: “We believe Kennedy became an obstacle to US military aggression against Cuba. There were two objectives to the plot — to kill Kennedy and to blame Cuba for the crime.”
Two other points of evidence corroborate Hunt about LBJ’s involvement:
• On the night before the asssassination, LBJ attended a gathering in Dallas millionaire Clint Murchison’s home, according to the video testimony of his long-time mistress Madeleine Brown before her death. Also there: Nixon and Hoover (she didn’t mention Clyde Tolson, or what striking ensembles they might have worn to this gala). When LBJ emerged from the private power confab, he told her: “After tomorrow, those SOBs will never embarrass me again. That’s a promise.”
• The fingerprint of LBJ’s longtime enforcer, Mac Wallace (convicted of one murder of an early LBJ enemy, and suspected in another) has been identified on one of the boxes from the TSBD sniper’s nest — one that had eluded all identification until certified fingerprint expert Nathan Darby compared it to Wallace’s prints in 1998 and came up with a legally viable 12-point match (it’s been disputed by the ever reliable Warren Commission acolytes).
That leaves the last named conspirator, the most dubious on Hunt’s list: Cord Meyer. In the now vast literature on the assassination, Meyer has never been suspected, and there is not a shred of evidence to connect him with the other players named by Hunt, or their motivations. Meyer was one of the more liberal leaning officers of the CIA — he had been investigated by the McCarthy witch hunters for his association with several leftist “subversive” groups. Adding a potboiler element to his confession (as in his many novels), Hunt alleges that Meyer was furious over JFK’s affair with his former wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was murdered in a park in 1964 (the M.O. had all the markings of a professional hit). The affair did not begin until 1961, three years after their divorce. In 2001, writer C. David Heymann visited Meyer in a nursing home and asked him of his suspicions about Mary’s unsolved murder. “The same sons of bitches that killed Kennedy,” he hissed. It’s highly doubtful that he was referring to himself.
In the final analysis, Hunt’s history as a masterful propagandist, criminal and forger of evidence to accuse another innocent man of assassination (JFK for the Vietnamese president Diem, using fabricated cables), must be taken into account. It is probable that Hunt was adulterating the hard truth in his final days — as much of it as he dared tell the one son who still loved him. Substitute Hunt himself for Meyer in the hierarchy — a far more likely candidate and no “benchwarmer” in the Cuban/CIA “hate-Kennedy” mobs — and we have a more credible cabal.
LBJ, Nixon, Hoover and Hunt, all convened in Dallas on Nov. 21-22 — no adult should believe the coincidental innocence of that gathering, any more than the innocence of Jack Ruby prowling the DPD basement.
And no adult should doubt that it could easily happen again. The first victims of the War Party are always the peacemakers. Obama will walk point on that dangerous route, and only a mature, undeluded and discerning public at his back will see him through.
It’s far past time that the nation’s intellectual class muster the courage of its counterparts in Argentina, Chile, Russia and Germany, and deliver a candid historical judgment on these conspirators: 45 years later, Castro’s regime is still in power. Florida has never flown the red flag. Vietnam — which JFK refused to escalate beyond the Green Beret advisors** — fell and the predicted dominos didn’t, after the unnecessary sacrifice of 56,000 men. The men who perpetrated this atrocity, and all the iniquity spawned by it, should be identified and condemned utterly.
* Also alone among American journals, in the 1970s Rolling Stone published Carl Bernstein's exposé about the CIA penetration and co-optation of the media — Operation Mockingbird. It's agents of influence, and many sympathetic fellow travelers in the press, have effectively promoted the notion of "conspiracy" as fevered delusion, and actively disparaged researchers and authors investigating the assassinations of the '60s.
** A mother lode of tendentious obfuscation and revisionism on this point. For the definitive account, see ex-Army intelligence officer John Newman’s excellent book-length doctoral thesis, JFK and Vietnam, and the most highly regarded recent book about both the JFK presidency and the assassination: JFK, the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.
In response to the Russian actions in Georgia, President Chimpy actually promised "humanitarian aide" delivered by the U.S. military, before Defense Secretary Gates -- a sane man -- nixed any such actions. Then Dubya mustered the shameless audacity to say this:
"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st Century. Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation."
In this editorial, "Will American insouciance destroy the world?", Paul Craig Roberts cites Pravda's response (below), and concludes that the neoCONs are leading the world toward nuclear war:
The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
A population that tolerates the insane Bush Regime and its criminal neocon operatives has no claims to life on earth.
Pravda's response to Bush's statement:
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq.
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone.
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties?
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?
Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives?
Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion?
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is “magnificent foreign intelligence” such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being “driven around the country in vehicles”? Suppose Russia declares for instance that “Saakashvili stiffed the world” and it is “time for regime change”?
Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?
“So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.”
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