Why did the Warren Commission lie?

[Matilda]

This is what has puzzled me since it was released, and people with
more knowledge than I were able to pick holes in its findings. I
believe there was a conspiracy, and the Commission's findings fly
in the face of much of the evidence presented to them. There's
no doubt that they suppressed some evidence, later brought to light
through FOI requests, and they simply glossed over other facts.
What particularly bothers me is why did they do this? The murder
of the President demands justice - even for those who had no love
for him or his policies, the concept of simply removing by whatever
means a President you happen to disagree with sets a very bad
precedent. So why the blatant cover-up?

I can only think of two reasons, but other people may have a
different take on it. It could be that some members of the
Commission had some connection to those involved, because all these
people had connections who had connections because of their high
positions, and they wished to divert attention away from the truth.

Or, as I think is more likely, they realised that there was indeed
a conspiracy, and that those who carried out the assassination had
the power to subvert, whether by threats, blakmail or bribery, at
least some member of the Secret Service, the Dallas Police Force,
the FBI, the CIA, and by extension, the Armed Services, Judiciary,
the Senate & Congress and the White House itself. The member of
the Warren Commission would have known that an investigation
was going to lead nowhere, except probably to more deaths if anyone
got close to the truth. But they could hardly report to the
American people that the assassination was the result of a
conspiracy by persons unknown, but we're not going to take it any
further because it's too dangerous. So the best thing would be to
find that it was one lone crackpot supermarksman who just got lucky
on the day. Safer for everyone.

Remember the Cigarette Smoking Man and his cabal in the X-Files? I
don't think that picture is too far from the truth at all. I think
there are people who have far more power than the President or any
other leader anywhere. When you reflect that the wealth of the
biggest corporations is far greater than that of almost any single
country in the world, how much power does that give to the leaders
of those corporations? I have no idea who might have pulled the
strings in 1963, but I think there are people and groups out there
with that kind of power, and it's very scary.

For me there is no question that the Warren Commission Report has
tried to bury the truth - the real question is why?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Simple.

Things are not as they appear. Elected officials are limited in their power by monied interests.

[joeybee12]

2. Go to Salon--long article about it--author says Johnson ordered the

Commission to get it over with quickly and bury stuff because of the Catro/Russia connection--that being exposed could have caused nuclear war. Makes me think those rogue elements in the CIA were hoping for this.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. Exactly.

[Booberdawg]

11. How long ago was this article in Salon?

I have an online subscription with Salon and did a search but getting too many hits to find what article you are referring to. If you could narrow it down a bit that would help.

[jeter]

3. What did they "lie" about?

These consipracy threads are getting a little boring.

[pipster]

5. hear hear!!

and on and it goes......surely a better question should be:

Why are so many people prepared to believe the most idiotic conspiracy theories?

[Terwilliger]

7. when a popular leader is taken out

and there are so many questions surrounding the incident, it's almost impossible to address them all

[mbali]

9. And why they dismiss anything and everything

that tends to prove that Oswald acted alone, regardless how reliable, yet are willing to accept any claim made by any Tom, Dick or Harry as irrefutable fact if it in any way supports a claim of conspiracy.

[Octafish]

15. You don't like the JFK assassination threads, skip them!

Same goes for "conspiracy theories" involving RFK and MLK. These three men were the leading lights of American Liberalism of the past 40 years.

Who in that time has emerged to take their place? Jimmy Carter? Bill Clinton? Howard Dean? Don't make me laugh.

[SheilaT]

6. As Jeter and Pipster said,

you need to look at your assumption about lying. Or better yet, ask yourself, if the Warren Commission was deliberately lying, why has no one on the commission ever, in all these years, come forward to say, "We were wrong, you (pick your conspiracy theory) were right."

Maybe because they weren't wrong.

[joeybee12]

10. Yeah, someone on the comission is going to come out and say that

People in authority believe us little people shouldn't know the truth. To the day they die they'll believe they told the truth.

And why is it so hard to believe it wasn't Oswald? Hell, the history of man is the history of powerful interests assainating others and covering it up.

It'll all come out fter we're loing gone, and then people will say then, as people like you apparently are saying now, "Oh, but that was a different time. It couldn't happen now."

Man is NOT evolving.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

38. Actually, quite a few Commissioners had doubts about the...

...conclusions of the Warren Commission and did attempt to speak out.

Hale Boggs, one of the WC's Commissioners, started making commentsthat the Warren Commission had come to the wrong conclusions. Soon after that, the small plane in which he was a passenger went down over Alaska and was never recovered. There is some controversy over the plane crash and the subsequent search and rescue attempt:

Hale Boggs
<http://www.check-six.com/lib/Famous_Missing/Boggs.htm>

"The Washington-based newspaper, Roll Call, which reports on Capitol Hill, found information through the Freedom of Information Act that two FBI telexes had come in from the FBI office in Los Angeles, indicating that someone had contacted the FBI and that they had knowledge of the whereabouts of the plane and that two people were still living at the site and they gave the coordinates.
This was followed up by another telex two days later in which the FBI said that they had verified the authenticity of the source and established their credibility. The source was working in surveillance technologies for an undisclosed firm and they had located the plane.

Some of the other interesting points surrounding the disappearance include: The fact that Boggs was taken to the airport for the first leg of the trip by a young democrat named Bill Clinton who later, as President, appointed Congressman Boggs' wife Lindy to the position of US Ambassador to the Vatican after she served eighteen years in the Congress after her husband's disappearance. Boggs had also served on the Warren Commission and had been suggesting that perhaps there was something more there that needed to be investigated.

Side Note: Cokie Roberts, the nationally known television journalist, is Hale Boggs' daughter."

=================================================

And finally, a third Commissioner, Richard Russell of Georgia had strong reservations.

RUSSELL DISAGREED WITH JFK DEATH REPORT
<http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/jfk_9russell.html>

"...The transcript of a Jan. 27, 1964 secret session of the Warren Commission, declassified and published in 1974, is typical. It shows Russell asking questions and making comments indicating that he was highly displeased with the quality of both the FBI's investigation and the information being fed the Commission by the FBI and CIA.

To prevent any embarrassment to President Johnson, the loyal Russell signed the Warren Report without publicly disagreeing with anything in it. But two years later the senator could restrain himself no longer. He publicly announced his 'lingering dissatisfaction' with parts of the Report. In an interview published in The Atlanta Constitution on Nov. 20, 1966, Russell explicitly stated he could not agree that Oswald acted alone. He could accept the conclusion that Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK, but he could not rule out the possibility that Oswald was part of a conspiracy.

In the interview Russell also disagreed with the Report's single bullet theory--the theory that one of the bullets fired from behind the presidential limousine struck JFK in the back, exited the front of his neck, and then struck Texas Gov. John Connally. The Warren Commission embraced the theory in its Report to try to explain why films of the assassination appeared to show JFK and Connally both reacting to wounds in less than the amount of time it takes to fire two shots from the rifle supposedly used by Oswald. Without the theory the Commission would have been forced to acknowledge the existence of multiple gunmen.

On Jan. 19, 1970, less than a year before his death, Russell again proclaimed his doubts about the Warren Report, this time in a television interview. Although professing to have not 'the slightest doubt' that Oswald fired the fatal shots, Russell went beyond his 1966 remarks and stated flatly that he 'never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy without at least some encouragement from others." Russell added: 'I think someone else worked with him.'

==============================================

Additionally, another Commission member, Gerald Ford, shortly after becoming President, pardoned Richard Nixon (see below for the proclamation). While President, and under rising pressure to discuss Watergate, Nixon asked one of his aides, Bob Haldeman, to speak with Richard Helms of the CIA about calling off their Watergate investigation because it could 'blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing'. After all, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Bernard Barker were still on the CIA payroll at the time of the Watergate break-ins. Haldeman believed that the quote was code for the JFK assassination. Nixon had been in Dallas prior to the arrival of JFK's motorcade and flew out of town at 12:30pm on November 22, 1963. Also present in Dallas that day were J. Edgar Hoover, Poppy Bush, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, and others.

President Gerald R. Ford's Remarks on Signing a Proclamation Granting Pardon to Richard Nixon
<http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/740060.htm>

"'Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.'"

It was believed by pardoning Nixon, Ford had prevented the possibility of questions being raised that would have eventually led to the JFK assassination. Ford was also closely allied with J. Edgar Hoover and was known to be the FBI's eyes and ears on the Commission.

Ford also was present with Earl Warren during a visit with Jack Ruby in the Dallas jail. Ruby begged to be taken out of town where he would tell them what he knew. They refused the request and Ruby later died of cancer in jail.

===========================================

More questions contained in the following link:


Warren Commission Errors by Martin Shackelford (9-22-99)
<http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/report35.html>

Excerpts (scroll down):

"Sen. Richard Russell, Warren Commission member:
"They have tried the case and reached a verdict on every count."
(January 27, 1964 Warren Commission Executive Session)
"So much possible evidence was beyond our reach."
(September 29, 1964, Atlanta Constitution, upon the Report's release)
"We have not been told the truth about Oswald."
(Letter to critic Harold Weisberg)

Hale Boggs, Warren Commission member, on the Single Bullet Theory:
"I had strong doubts about it."
(quoted by Edward Jay Epstein, "Inquest," the first study with access to
Warren Commission members and staff)

John J. McCloy, Warren Commission member:
"It was important to show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy."
(quoted by Epstein, "Inquest")

Sen. John Sherman Cooper, Warren Commission member:
"We had to lift the cloud of doubts that had been cast over American institutions."
(quoted by Epstein, "Inquest")

Allen Dulles, Warren Commission member, fired by JFK as CIA Director:
"But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...The public will read very little."
(September 6, 1964, Warren Commission internal memo)

J. Lee Rankin, Warren Commission chief counsel:
"We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission...and it is very damaging to the agencies that are involved in it, and it must be wiped out insofar it is possible to do so by this Commission."
(January 27, 1964, Warren Commission Executive Session)

[hippiechick]

8. Because a grieving country in a state of anarchy is a messy thing

They had to find an answer, and fast, so as not to destroy the country.

Earl Warren was no fan of Kennedy's ...
and is it coincidental that Gerald Ford, the hapless Senator from Michigan, was appointed as Nixon's Veep only to turn around and pardon him after he resigned ?

Think Circle Jerk & maintaining the power structure.

Like the man said: Follow the money.

:hippie:

[Booberdawg]

12. I've always felt the Warren Commission Report was a whitewash

too.

[GAspnes]

13. just got this from a friend who's *deeply* interested

Did you watch the 7 hour documentation of The Men who Killed Kennedy over
the weekend, followed by 1 hour on Robert Kennedy.  (I've got all 8 hrs on
tape if you're interested - the last 4 I hadn't seen before - with Hoover
and Johnson implicated in the first by multiple witnesses & evidence, plus
new evidence that Oswald was undercover and trying to prevent the
assassination).  Johnson, had motivation to go along (he didnt dream it up,
but they needed him to go along), his choices were to let Robert throw him
in jail (he was close due to his Texas money-laundering-partners on trial),
or go along and become President, and from there, end any serious
investigation.
RE Roberts assassination:  Sirhan Sirhan was clearly 5-10 feet in front of
Robert in all the pictures, they are facing each other, Sirhan's gun is
completely horizontal - yet all 3 bullets that hit Robert came in the back
of his head, at an 80 degree upward angle, and there were 2 more bullet
holes found than there were bullets in Sirhan's gun...  Police marked &
photographed all the bulled holes, then someone ordered the doors and door
frames with bullet holes removed and burned.  Police also confiscated and
destroyed movies and over 2,000 pictures relating to the assassination.
 They lost several law suits over stolen cameras, film, etc and paid out a
lot of money.  Plus a guard who was in position to fire the shots (had arm
behind Kennedy) was on record as hating the Kennedy's, and is on record
telling 4 different lies about owning the same gun that Sirhan used.
Within minutes of the shooting, a witness told police she saw and heard 2
people leave saying "We did it, we just shot him".  She asked them who they
meant, and was told "Kennedy, we just shot Kennedy", then ran off.  She
told a cop who put out an all points bullitin with their description, but
it was immediately cancelled by a superior who said "we dont want to make a
conspiracy out of this" - this within minutes of the killing, they didnt
even know Sirhan's name (he had no ID on him), or if he had help, lookouts,
etc.  Yet someone killed the APB to look for accompliances.
I believe Robert was killed because he: 1) stated he would get us out of
Vietnam (which is a major factor in why John was killed - soft on
communisum at a time when the government was consumed with anti-commie
zealots) and because he said he would re-open the investigation into who
killed his brother - that left Johns assassins no choice but to kill Robert
too.

It's enough to raise questions in my mind, and I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist.

[Terwilliger]

18. That's just the way it is

if you're skeptical and can see as plain as anyone else that there are nagging questions of familiarity and coinidence, you're OBVIOUSLY a tin-foil hatter!

[Samantha]

22. I totally agree with you about Robert Kennedy

I am no conspiracy theorist either, but I started walking through this again recently after reading Blood, Money & Power (How LBJ Killed JFK). It's written by Barr McClellan, who served as a personal attorney to Johnson.

I decided Robert Kennedy probably figured LBJ had a hand in his brother's violent death but could not get on top of the investigation because Johnson had all the power. Robert figured and rightly so the only way HE could get on top of the investigation was to bump Johnson right out of the Oval Office. Too many people would be taken down by this -- the same people who had engineered the death of Kennedy, as well as many others over the years. Some of these people were wealthy oil men out of Texas; other were military suppliers. They probably had Robert Kennedy eliminated in the same manner as they did Jack because they couldn't run the risk of his winning the Presidency and having their crimes exposed. I think it was a continuing effort by the same players to cover their crimes.

I also would not be surprised to learn that the FBI had something to do with the assassination of Martin Luther King. I think Hoover (remember he attended the party in Texas the night before the assassination) hated Martin Luther King and somehow through his perverted thought process convinced himself King was associated with Communism. Well, Hoover probably didn't truly think this but he could have used it as a rationale to others to justify planning King's assassination. I also think through the revelation of the "Zorro" project, Martin Luther King had it within his means to broadcast to the people the illegalities of the abuse of power exercised by the FBI and I believe he would not have hesitated to use that information to the detriment of Hoover had Hoover carried through with implied threats of revealing nationally King's philandering. This is all just supposition and is not based on facts or links -- I want to make that clear.

[MisterP]

27. remember that Johnson despised RFK, so that would

hamper RFK's pushes for investigation; a personal matter. I for one don't think Johnson was in on the assassination, but investigating JFK's death likely pushed RFK to depose LBJ in '68.

[Matilda]

26. I saw a lot of that program, but not all of it.

Johnson was in a hurry to get the Commission Report out quickly,
but that was most likely because he didn't want his Presidency
to be always in the shadow of Kennedy's. I don't really subscribe
to the Johnson theory.

Principally, I believe that although Oswald was involved, he didn't
act alone; Nellie Connally says JFK was hit twice, and Gov. Connally
once, and there was no magic bullet. I believe her, she was right
there. Everything else hinges around whether people accept that
there was more than one gunman or not. I don't really want to argue
about whether there was a conspiracy, because that's dealt with on
other threads. I'm more interested in thoughts of others who
believe there was a whitewash, and the reasons why. Because if it
was designed to put the matter to rest, it certainly failed - here
we are, forty years later, none the wiser, but with a clear majority
of people all over the world believing that the Warren Commission
was a sham. If the main idea was simply to get it out of the way
fast, they were way too clumsy - too many loose ends, too many
things that don't quite add up. Or were they really afraid that
there was something going on that they simply couldn't, or wouldn't
deal with. And did that conspiracy later claim Bobby as well?
After all, he was in a prime position to dig for evidence - was he
doing just that, and getting too close? Because I don't believe
Sirhan Sirhan acted alone either - I've read the books and articles,
and seen the photos of too many bullet holes in that room. Of
course lone nutters kill people all the time, but in these two cases
there appears to be too many other fingers on the trigger, and I'd
like to know why the Warren Commission didn't want us to know what
really happened.

[RainDog]

29. For the same reason

that Reagan nor Bush Sr weren't brought up on impeachment charges for Iran-Contra, possibly?

Both were certainly involved in activities which were ten times more serious than a prez lying under oath about a blow job...but of course, they're Repukes, so of course, the law doesn't apply to them because they have enough big money to buy them out of responsibility to the Constitution..hey, sort of like now, in fact...

The Iran-Contra scheme was unconstitutional because it was done in secret, outside of the oversight of Congress. This is what also made it illegal.

Read Lost History, by Robert Parry of The Consortium (online) for a good overview. Spider's Web also documents Bush Sr.'s illegal activities in arming both Saddam and Iran at the same time, again, in extra-Constitutional activities which make him (still...I assume... is there a statute of limitations on treason?) guilty of subverting offices of the U.S. govt.

In both cases, the House did not bring articles of impeachment forward. In the case of Reagan, the conventional wisdom (or the conventional explanation) was that the country had been so torn by Watergate that our legislators didn't want to put the country through another such moment.

(didn't stop them on the petty blow job perjury trap, but the repukes wanted their revenge for Nixon and a way to be able to have a dem who had gone through the same thing. I've always thought it was "interesting" that Monica was living at the Watergate...shades of history...)

also, Reagan was supposedly such a popular president...no doubt helped by the fact that his administration immediately started a propaganda campaign called "project truth" -- a label as Orwellian as the "patriot act" since its sole purpose was to spread disinformation and discredit journalists who reported on the Reagan administration's illegal activities and their involvement in genocide in Central America...but I digress..

[BigBigBear]

14. My theory is this:

I don't think they KNEW who did it. They had a dead suspect; a plausibly if imperfectly set up patsy who'd never go to trial, and Johnson wanted the whole thing done and wrapped up, since suspicions would certianly revolve around him until the final word was out.

I suspect as well that the belief of the Warren Commissioners was that, if this were a Intel-assisted hit (and it would have to have been), it would be extremely difficult and dangerous to completely expose publicly.

They had no reason to look further than Oswald, and a client (Johnson) who wanted the report written quickly.

[Samantha]

16. Well, try this on for size

I think the Big Oil and military industrialists whose interests out of Texas Johnson represented are the same interests which Bush* represents. These hard-core right-wing conservative interests have always viewed the presidents of these United States as their servants at will. They are in power because these interests allow them to be, in effect put them there with their money. It's an investment these interests are willing to make because it is returned a thousand fold.

It's no secret that many of these Big Oil people hated Kennedy. He was going to reduce the oil depletion allowance. Kennedy thought it was far too generous and any reduction he made would cost Big Oil a lot of money. Further, he had signed the papers to withdraw the troops from Vietnam. That would cost Brown & Root a lot of money. Three days after Kennedy's death, Johnson signed a government contract (awarded to Brown & Root) which deeply enriched the Texas subsidary. The Big Oil people no longer had to worry about losing money; the military suppliers were back in business. People said Johnson was the strongest lobbyist in Washington each had.

Brown & Root is a subsidiary of Halliburton. Think about the complaints you have heard about the no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton for the Iraqi war. Think about the charges many have made that the Iraqi war is all about oil. Now compare the Then with the Now. Vietnam. Iraq. Big Oil. Military contracts. Johnson -- out of Texas. Bush* -- out of Texas. Many of the monied Southern Democrats from that timeframe defected from this party following the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 Johnson passed out of appeasement to Bobby Kennedy in memory of Jack. These defectors, racist in nature, joined the Republican party. Johnson -- stole the election of 1948 to save his political future. Bush -- stole the election of 2000 to save his political future.

Why did the Warren Commission fail to admit it had made a mistake. The Warren Commission was covering for the same interests that ran the government then that is running our government now. There was no mistake. It was simply a "correction" in course to them.

Sometimes while we here at DU worry on threads will our votes be counted I wonder if this coterie of people laugh at us. I am not belittling the importance of voting or the right we have to have that vote counted; I am simply stating that since I was a child many adults who did not vote gave as the reason, "why bother, it's all fixed." In those days as a young idealist I thought they were simply cynical, lazy people. Living through the history of these last few decades, I think now they were simply right.

Think about it again. Texan named Johnson. Stolen election. Big Oil. Brown & Root. Vietnam war. Texans get richer. He served their interests well. Texan named Bush*. Stolen election. Big Oil. Halliburton. Iraqi war. Texas get richer. He serves their interests well. What's the difference between the Then and Now?

[RainDog]

17. NEW information re: JFK assassination from 4-21-01

This article is one to read. I also have the Salon link, which I'll post, and a link to a recent Frontline which also talks about Blakey, the man considered an extremely reputable source who believes that Oswald's shots actually killed Kennedy; however, based upon this new info in the link below, he now states that he cannot say that rogue elements of the CIA may have been involved, as well a the ultra-rght DRE (anti-Castro "mafia").


http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2001-04-12/feature.html/1/index.html

Originally published by Miami New Times Apr 12, 2001
©2003 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

Revelation 19.63
For nearly four decades the CIA has kept secret the identity of a Miami agent who may have known too much too early about Lee Harvey Oswald
BY JEFFERSON MORLEY

...For 38 years one of the most powerful of those leaders has guarded a secret about the events leading up to Kennedy's violent death, a secret potentially damaging to the exile cause as well as to the agency itself. The man is Richard Helms, former director of the CIA. Now retired and living in the swank Foxhall section of Washington, D.C., the 89-year-old Helms declined interview requests for this story, the basic facts of which have emerged from recently declassified JFK files.

Through four intensive investigations of the Kennedy assassination, Helms withheld information about a loyal CIA officer in Miami -- a dapper, multilingual lawyer and father of three -- who guided and monitored the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (the Revolutionary Student Directorate, or DRE). His name was George Joannides, and his charges in the DRE were among the most notoriously outspoken and militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the early Sixties. For several weeks in the summer of 1963, those same exiles tailed, came to blows with, and harassed Lee Harvey Oswald, who just a few months later changed the course of U.S. history.

Helms never told the Warren Commission -- the presidential panel set up after Kennedy's death to investigate the assassination -- about his officer's relationship with the exile group. He never disclosed that the CIA was funding the DRE when it had contact with Oswald, who was agitating on Castro's behalf in New Orleans in August 1963. A skillful bureaucrat, Helms withheld files on Oswald's pro-Castro activities from an in-house investigation of the accused assassin (and when the veteran officer in charge of that probe protested, Helms relieved him of his duties).

Helms stonewalled again in 1978, when Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations to re-examine Kennedy's murder. Once more the CIA kept every detail of Joannides's mission in Miami under wraps. Worse still, in veiled contempt of that inquiry, the CIA assigned to Joannides himself the job of deflecting sensitive inquiries from the committee's investigators.

[arewethereyet]

19. America would get upset if they knew it was a coup de tait

so they make up a big old jumbled mess and hope for the best.

[RainDog]

25. fwiw: coup d'etat

Literally-

coup (cut) de =d' (of) etat (state)

getting the chance to use my little bit of French I still remember...

[arewethereyet]

28. I stand edified thanks !

n/t

[RainDog]

32. de rien

:*

or

:9

(french kisses???)

LOL

[Octafish]

20. IMO: The Warren Commission lied to prevent Civil War.

LBJ had a hard time convincing Chief Justice Warren to lead the panel. LBJ said it was a matter of paramount national importance, as the people needed to be assured there was no sign of a coming Soviet nuclear attack or World War. Hence the Lone Nut conclusion was hatched.

Strange, though. So much of the case against Oswald also builds a case against the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, Secret Service, Anti-Castro Cubans, and Big Oil. Most of all, the evidence shows elements within the government used Oswald as a patsy to build a case FOR WAR with the Soviets.

Ever hear of Operation NORTHWOODS? It's what the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended JFK do to start another invasion of Cuba, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In NORTHWOODS, the idea was US airliners, perhaps one filled with college students, would be hijacked and crashed. The hijacking would be blamed on Castro. I kid you not.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html

Kennedy nixed the NORTHWOOD plans. That didn't stop the JCS and their secret partners and bosses. These traitors decided to use Kennedy like they did Oswald. If all that became public, it's Civil War 2, at least, World War III in the form of hydrogen bombs, at worst.

[RainDog]

21. Here's the Salon link...from this weekend

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/22/conspiracy/print.html

The man who solved the Kennedy assassination
It wasn't Earl Warren -- or Oliver Stone. His name is G. Robert Blakey.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot



Nov. 22, 2003  |  After a week of media overkill triggered by the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the American public is left as bewildered as ever by the "crime of the 20th century." ABC News took the part of the establishment media this time (a role played on past JFK anniversaries by CBS and the New York Times), reassuring us in a two-hour Thursday special report hosted by Peter Jennings that the Warren Commission got it right in 1964: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, case closed. ( Yet) As even its most resolute defenders -- such as Gerald Posner, author of the 1993 bestseller "Case Closed" -- concede, the distinguished panel headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren was denied key pieces of the puzzle by the FBI and the CIA. And the most important pieces of information related to the CIA/Mafia plot against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the illegal FBI surveillance of Mafia leaders, which revealed a widespread and murderous hostility toward President Kennedy and his crime-busting brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

The Warren panel did have a neon-bright sign pointing to the Mafia right before its eyes -- Jack Ruby, the Mob-connected nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on national television -- but the commission inexplicably decided not to pursue this angle. Commission investigators credulously accepted the word of a Chicago hood named Lenny Patrick that Ruby had no underworld ties, when in fact it was Patrick himself who had run Ruby out of town for stepping on his gambling turf.

Bobby Kennedy was not so credulous. Kennedy, who according to his biographer Evan Thomas "regarded the Warren Commission as a public relations exercise to reassure the public," immediately turned his suspicions on the Mafia, CIA, and anti-Castro Cubans after his brother's murder. He would accept the solemn word of fellow Irish Catholic John McCone, the CIA director, that the agency had nothing to do with the crime. But he would go to his grave in 1968 suspecting that JFK was the victim of a plot, and his thoughts lingered darkly on the lords of the underworld. In the years after JFK's assassination, as Bobby was elected to the Senate from New York in 1964 and then ran for president in 1968, he would launch more than one of his old Mafia-hunting Justice Department associates on a search for the truth, including Walter Sheridan and Ed Guthman, and even his press secretary Frank Mankiewicz.

( )...as attorney general, Bobby Kennedy waged a merciless war against these very same underworld kingpins. While FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had long insisted there was no such thing as the Mafia, Kennedy knew better, and he took the number of organized crime convictions from a mere 35 in 1960 to 288 in 1963, a figure that doubled within a year as a result of the momentum built up in the last months of the Kennedy reign. Bobby created a "Get Hoffa" unit in the Justice Department to hound the Teamster leader, who had turned the union's pension fund into a piggy bank for the Mob. He even unceremoniously deported the powerful godfather of Louisiana, Carlos Marcello, who had cops, FBI agents and politicians in his pocket.

Bobby Kennedy never got into a position to reopen the file on his brother's assassination -- as he told a crowd of California college students he would in 1968 if elected president. But one of the young federal prosecutors who had worked for him at the Justice Department -- inspired by the battle cry in Shakespeare's "Henry the Fifth," they and Bobby referred to themselves as "we band of brothers" -- would. In 1977, G. Robert Blakey, who had worked on Bobby's "Get Hoffa" team, was named chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the only government panel besides the Warren Commission to investigate JFK's murder. Blakey, an organized crime expert who wrote the 1970 RICO act, would go into the two-year, $6 million probe believing the committee would reach the same conclusions as the Warren Commission. He would emerge as the Warren Report's most authoritative critic and a firm believer that Kennedy had died as the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by Marcello and his Mafia ally, Santo Trafficante, the Florida godfather who had been driven out of the lucrative Havana casino business by Castro and who had been recruited in the CIA plot to kill the Cuban leader.

...much more...watch the ad and read the article at Salon...

[Booberdawg]

34. I saw that one

But it didn't mention anything about Johnson ordering the commission to get it over with quickly because of the Castro/Russia - mentioned in post #2

[RainDog]

37. Booberdawg- I don't know about post #2.

also, I don't claim to know the answers to the questions about the Kennedy assassination. What I do know is that those who have followed the case for years still have unanswered questions.

I'm simply amazed, though, that people in this day and age think that nothing underhanded and/or deadly goes on in politics anymore, nor has it since the time of Lucretia Borgia, apparently.

Kennedy himself may very well have been involved in underhanded sorts of power plays in Chicago and in his dealings with the mafia.

I don't think he was a saint, either.

unfortunately, there are too many examples of deadly force to achieve the ends of power across history. I don't think America is immune to those sorts of moments.

[Matilda]

35. Great link -- thanks. It makes a lot of sense.

Much more sense than the Warren Commission!

[RainDog]

36. The link in post #17 is really important in relation

to all the comments in Salon and from the Frontline program (which you can watch online).

[Matilda]

39. I've bookmarked that one too.

Haven't had time to read all the way through yet as I'm at work,
but I've heard of Helms from another website. Thanks.

[RainDog]

23. Kennedy planned to withdraw from Vietnam

...not directly related to the header question, but perhaps related to events back then, who knows..


http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html
 
Exit Strategy

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

James K. Galbraith

8 Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam?

It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous way.

And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States faces another indefinite military commitment that might have been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of our own history in the eye.

[Matilda]

40. It seems certain that at the very least

he had no plans to increase the number of advisers, nor to send
combat troops. When he travelled to then Indo-China when the
nationalists were fighting the French, he wrote a report saying
that the French would never be able to win. That must have been
very much in his mind, believing that the U.S. was in a lose-lose
situation, but also aware that to simply pull out wouldn't go
down very well with the electorate, nor with the arms manufacturers
or the Pentagon. I can believe that these vested interests
wouldn't have been sorry to see him go if they believed that he'd
withdraw from Vietnam, even if they knew the alternative would be
a long war they could only lose. As long as they would win
financially. The Haliburtons have always been with us.

[RainDog]

24. recognized assassination expert revises his views, based upon new info

this is an excellent interview with Blakey. Perhaps THE recognized expert on the assassination has altered his original conclusions based upon information which has been revealed since 1993, and again in 2001. If this man is willing to reconsider this issue, why anyone else thinks the issue has been settled and all questions resolved might ask themselves how much more they know that this man doesn't.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/interviews/blakey.html


Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey is a recognized expert on organized crime and an authority on the JFK assassination. He is the author of the 1981 book, The Plot To Kill the President, and in the late 1960s he campaigned for and helped write much of the anti-racketeering legislation that would usher in the demise of the Mafia. As chief counsel to the 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations, Blakey led the investigation into President Kennedy's assassination, reexamining the evidence with a new forensics panel. The committee found that there was a "probable conspiracy,"suggesting that parts of the Mafia and/or certain anti-Castro Cuban groups "may have been involved."

In his interview with FRONTLINE, Blakey calls the prosecution case against Lee Harvey Oswald "open and shut." While he does not see Oswald as a Soviet, CIA or FBI recruit, he is careful to point out many of the unanswered questions regarding Oswald's mysterious associations and possible ties to the mob. This interview was conducted in 1993 in conjunction with Frontline's first broadcast of "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" For this 2003 publication of the interview, Mr. Blakey has added a notation to those questions touching on the CIA, and refers the reader to a long addendum at the end of this interview that reflects his opinion on the CIA in light of current revelations.
2003 Addendum: I now no longer feel comfortable with the conclusions I expressed here in 1993. I set out below the reasons for this judgment.


Did the CIA and FBI give you access to the necessary files?

CIA clearly did lie about the case. For example, Helms lied about the case. The CIA appear to have been not cooperative, to have put out false photographs of Oswald, to have claimed they had no photographs of Oswald, there were many cases where they seem to have tried to cover their tracks,. How do you know that you found the underlying cause of this? You have to draw a distinction between the FBI and the Agency in the 1960s--and the substantial lack of candor between them and the Warren Commission--and the subsequent behavior of the agencies as they dealt with the congressional committee .

Those who had a stake in what happened in 1963 and 1964 were no longer in control of the Agency. The people in the FBI and the CIA that we dealt with in my judgment were genuinely interested in the truth coming out. What was the FBI's posture in 1963 and 1964? It was anything but cooperation and, frankly, certainly there were lies by omission. When it came time to analyze the candor that the Agency had with us, and the FBI had with us, it's my judgment that it was difficult. Teeth had to be pulled, but in the end we had unlimited access.

History seemingly writes with a crooked line. The best evidence of the non-involvement of our own intelligence services comes not from our investigations but the KGB investigations.

2003 Addendum: I now no longer feel comfortable with the conclusions I expressed here in 1993 in reference to the Central Intelligence Agency. I set out below the reasons for this judgment.

[Matilda]

42. It's an excellent interview. I wasn't aware of Blakey before.

I find it disturbing that organisations such as the CIA and the FBI
are always prepared to work against the people to protect the state.
Disturbing, but not surprising - it's the same everywhere. It
seems sometimes that no crime is too great in order to make sure
that the wheels of government continue to move smoothly. They
would definitely lie, prevaricate, and manufacture evidence to suit
the needs of government. The members of the Warren Commission, by
virtue of the positions they held, would have been well aware of
how things work, so the question is did they really know all along
that there was a conspiracy and did they try not to find out too
much? Or did they begin to suspect as they went along, and panic?
Because one thing that stands out is how clumsy the cover-up really
was, with so many loose ends. Perhaps they really thought, like
Allan Dulles, that no-one would read the report - did they really
have that much contempt for the public?

[Matilda]

44. Raindog, thanks for your great links.

I've never believed that Oswald was the main assassin, because of
the reports that he was a pretty lousy marksman, although I think
he was involved somehow, and used by the plotters. But I have to
defer to Blakey, whose knowledge is so profound, and whose theories
make a lot of sense - especially the reason for the fourth shot.
I'd never thought of that before - but of course, they'd need to
get rid of Oswald really fast. I've always figured that either
the police knew in advance, or were tipped off about where to catch
Oswald - his arrest was just too damn quick if they were really
starting from scratch.

I've also believed for a long time that J Edgar Hoover was in it up
to his ears, although in all reports he's only ever mentioned on
the periphery, but it was funny how the FBI never did the job
properly under his watch, at least as far as the two Kennedys and
Martin Luther King were concerned. Funny how all these assassins
slipped through the FBI nets when it came to targeting anyone who
got up Hoover's nose.

[burr]

30. hmm, let's take a broader look...

You have Richard Russell, LBJ's political teacher and Senate ally. He was also chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, you know...the one that approves every penny of our taxdollars for all military spending including publically known projects, revealed with time-failed projects, as well as unknown and nonexistant projects.

And then why even have an airtight case, when the accused murderer is dead? No trial, no need for details.

Why worry about X-rays showing the wildly scattered remains of shattered bullet both in Connelly and Kennedy, when they already have the single bullet in near-perfect condition?

Why actively collect any tangible evidence, when clearly evidence isn't needed to disprove wild theories?

Why appoint a commission with only political allies of Johnson and J.E. Hoover, while not allowing the Attorney General to participate in investigating a top murder case which is fundamentally related to national security issues?

[NNadir]

31. Because the 82,785,321 people who conspired to murder Kennedy

threatened to kill them.

[RainDog]

33. why don't you bother to read reasoned and informed articles?

...but why, when you are obviously better informed than THE man who is considered to be THE authority on this investigation.

funny, but that man has reconsidered his positions, first in light of the accoustic report from the House investigation, and beyond, to new revelations that a CIA agent which Blakey relied on as a source of information should, in Blakey's words, HAVE BEEN ON THE STAND TESTIFYING, rather than serving as an advisor?

btw, the church finally admitted that Galileo was right and that the earth is not the center of the universe...after 700 years.

...not that they had any vested interest in denying Galileo's unsettling discovery.

[grasswire]

41. I believe....

....it's probably SOP in an event of great national emergency to immediately name a likely perp, simply to calm the people if nothing else. Otherwise, the fear is contagious and rumor and speculation drive it like a forest fire.

Look how long it took to name the perp in the Oklahoma City bombing. And Osama bin Laden.

But (as Fletcher Prouty wrote) Oswald was named in the Far Eastern press as the assassin even before Kennedy was killed (time zone difference).

[Matilda]

43. They got onto Oswald really quickly - too quickly perhaps.

You might be tempted to think they already knew who to look for.

You know there always has to be a scapegoat, but putting out such an
ill-considered report, with all its obvious distortions of fact,
surely can only make the situation worse - people are going to
wonder what the hell is really going on here, that we're not being
told the truth.

[Pinko Commie]

45. There are a lot of reasons...

the WC may have lied. Many of which are presented in this thread.

But assuming that Earl Warren (CJ of one of the most progressive courts of the 20th century) was a basically good man who would not have perpetrated such a lie, I think he was worried about where it would lead.

If the assassination was a conspiracy which lead to the Soviets, the American public would have demanded WWIII. I think Warren and others were deathly afraid of this. Even Johnson's stated reason for convening the WC was to allay any fears the public may have about a conspiracy, not to find the truth.

Let's face it: any commission founded with that purpose was never likely to get to the truth.

[William Seger]

46. "Lied"? Maybe, maybe not, but...

After some heated exchanges here, it's no secret that I'm about 99.9% convinced that Oswald killed Kennedy with a shot from the TSBD, and I'm maybe 98% convinced that there was not a second shooter (and if there was, there's zero evidence that he hit anything). But on the issue of whether or not the WC dug up "the whole truth and nothing but the truth", I don't believe that they really even attempted to do that.

In particular, I think Warren was smart enough to understand that letting the FBI and the CIA investigate themselves would never lead to anything incriminating about them. However, I do believe that Warren rationalized that to himself because he personally did not believe that either the FBI or CIA was involved in any conspiracy to kill JFK.

But he didn't want the investigation to dig up any miscellaneous dirt about the government, either. As we know now from other sources, there certainly was a lot of dirt to dig in both the FBI and the CIA back then, and we probably don't know the half of it, but I think Warren personally believed that not digging into the "whole truth" was really the best thing for the country.

My impression of the "cold war mentality" that existed then in the government was that it was directly derived from the WWII mentality that preceded it -- the (correct) belief that the world is a dangerous place, with the (troubling) belief that when it comes to protecting the country, the end justifies the means, and the (truly disturbing) belief that our security ultimately depends on secrecy.

The real problem was, and still is, that secrecy leaves far too much room for abuse of government power, with no accountability. We need to find ways to protect the country (effectively -- not the Bush* bullshit type of protection), while maintaining high ethical standards and full accountability. I think that should be the role of the Senate, and it could be that way, if they'd really step up to the plate.

[Matilda]

47. I think they lied, in that they presented a conclusion that was

demonstrably false. Had they left the question open, that couldn't
have been construed as a lie, but they deliberately tried to lead
people down the wrong path. It makes some sense that there was an
urgency to calm people's fears, but it doesn't seem to have occurred
to Commissioners that the people would prefer the truth to a lie so
poorly constructed that it was impossible to believe. And I'm still
not sure how much they really knew, or guessed, about who was behind
the assassination. While I could accept the possibility of a lone
nutter who got a lucky break on the day, I can't accept this one.
What happened afterwards was too pat - the quick arrest and the
too-convenient shooting of Oswald, case closed. I still can't help
wondering - were any of the Commissioners protecting or scared of
the people behind it all?