PBS/American Experience TONIGHT "Oswald's Ghost" --JFK

[Gloria]

assassination.
"examines how 'six seconds in Dallas' changed America and fed a myriad of conspiracy theories. The documentary features cogent insights from Norman Mailer."
(That's Comcast's blurb)

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

1. I almost didn't watch it because I've seen and read so much

about that awful day.

It's excellent !

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

2. ii've never seen that footage of dan rather

giving a bullshit description of the shooting.

[kayob1]

3. Thanks for posting!

[Bozita]

4. Riveting. Flat-out riveting.

Still have the Lane and Epstein books.

[Gloria]

5. Tom Hayden, commenting on how the 3 assassinations affected the

emergence of a progressive majority......boy, is that hitting home tonight, re: the corporate media locking out Edwards....it's like another assassination....and a similar thing with Dean. It's so chilling....

[LiberalHeart]

8. I sat there having the same reaction.

[SeattleGirl]

11. I had the same reaction to that part.

Very chilling.

[SeattleGirl]

6. Thanks for the heads-up!

Comes on here in an hour.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

7. Dammit! I didn't see this post until 10:08

Oh, well. Thanks!

[Gloria]

9. In the end, the program and Mailer says that Oswald did kill JFK...Mailer

is open to accepting that there may even have been conspiracies in the works....but comes back to being convinced that Oswald had the motive and chance to do it. The woman who worked for JFK when he was in Congress and then became a reporter had been interviewing Oswald prior to the assassination for a book...and concluded that he had done some hard things on his own--being a Marine, getting out on a hardship claim, getting the Russians to accept him, then leaving Russia with a wife--so that anyone who thinks he couldn't have planned and done it alone would be wrong.....

[Beausoleil]

18. She did not say how he was able to come back to the US

after defecting to the USSR. We're supposed to assume he did it all by himself, without any help.

While Oswald was capable of acting on his own in some respects, it is not proven that he acted alone at all. In those days, one just didn't stroll back into the US after defecting to the USSR.

I only saw the last half of the show, but I didn't hear any mention of Oswald's FBI contacts.

Mailer has constructed a mythical narrative of Oswald's life, making assumption after assumption, leading him to conclude that Oswald did it by himself because he wanted to be a world-changing personality. (WTF?)

Anyone who looks at Oswald's activities, his contacts (documented), the fact the he was being sheep-dipped (Mexico City photo), may reasonably conclude that he was not acting alone and was obviously in someone's radar before the assassination.

[kskiska]

10. The Bugliosi book covers EVERYTHING.

Mailer's book was excellent, too - "Oswald's Tale." He did extensive research, including Oswald's time in the Soviet Union.

[avaistheone1]

13. The Bugliosi book was bogus.

There was no serious research or scholarship in that book. I prefer Peter Dale Scott's work. Scott is a scholar who is considered an expert and who has been studying, and writing about the assassination for 40+ years.

[Bolo Boffin]

15. "No serious research or scholarship in that book"???????

1632 pages begs to differ.

[JackRiddler]

12. Missed the last 20-30 mins but...

- Takes the old dodgy cultural-interest approach, avoids too direct a look at what happened. That way it can jump from topic to topic without needing to solve anything.

- No mention of Oswald as tech at U2 station, or the fact that he did not just move but *defected* to the Soviet Union, and yet was able to return to the U.S. without delay when he flew back, which practically seals the case that he was in the employ of the U.S. government.

- No mention that Clay Shaw was in fact a CIA agent - by Richard Helms's admission.

- Cherry-picked effort to make Garrison look like a fool (and he did provide ammo, certainly).

- Throw in all scenarios (Castro and Mafia and whatnot) and pretend they're all equally likely or unlikely - as usual, obfuscating that the only two credible possibilities from the git-go are lone gunman or coup d'etat (since anything less would not have the government participating in the cover-up).

- Ruby saying on audio tape that it was practically by accident that he was present at the police station is played for us. Okay. But why don't we also get the press conference where Ruby completely contradicts that and says he killed Oswald on behalf of very powerful people whom he refuses to name?!

- No mention of House assassination hearings and the finding that there were at least four shots, though maybe that came up later.

- Why no list of these men on the Warren Commission? How Hale Boggs rejected the findings? How about how Dulles was fired by Kennedy?! Etc.

- Now why is Jackie chasing fragments of the skull that came out the back?

Etc. etc.

[AntiFascist]

14. This is the best article I've seen on who was responsible...

by former UPI bureau chief Don Fulsom:

http://www.crimemagazine.com/03/richardnixon,1014.htm

The two investigators flatly asserted that the president of the Mob-dominated Teamsters union, Jimmy Hoffa — along with Mob bosses Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana — planned and carried out the president's slaying. They said both Oswald and Ruby were Mafia-connected, and that Ruby silenced Oswald on orders from the Mob. In a recent book, former Mafia consigliere Bill Bonanno — the son of legendary New York godfather Joe Bonanno — also maintains that Hoffa, Marcello, Trafficante, and Giancana were involved in the JFK assassination.

...

CIA agent E. Howard Hunt — Richard Nixon's top confederate in past and future undercover operations — may also have been in Dallas the day President Kennedy was killed. During a 1985 trial in Miami, CIA operative Morita Lorenz testified that, on Nov. 21, at a Dallas motel, she saw Hunt pay money to another agency operative — Hunt pal and future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis. She maintained that, shortly after Hunt left, Jack Ruby showed up. Lorenz returned to her home in Miami that same night, but said Sturgis later told her what she had missed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963: "We killed the president that day."

...

The records also reveal that FBI agents suspected the Nixon White House of soliciting $1 million from the Teamsters to pay hush money to the Watergate burglars. In fact, in early 1973 — when the Watergate cover-up was coming apart at the seams — aide John Dean told the president that $1 million might be needed to keep the burglary team silent. Nixon responded, "We could get that … you could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash, I know where it could be gotten." When Dean observed that money laundering "is the type of thing Mafia people can do," Nixon calmly answered: "Maybe it takes a gang to do that."

...

Documents that came to light in 2007 show that, shortly after the president's murder, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy's right-hand man Walter Sheridan – dispatched by RFK on a secret investigative mission to Dallas – quickly reported back that Jimmy Hoffa associate Allen Dorfman had paid off Jack Ruby in Chicago. A witness to that payoff – reportedly of $7,000 in 100 dollar bills stuffed into a manila envelope – says it occurred on the weekend of Oct. 27th 1963.

It barely touches on possibly the true purpose of the Watergate breakin: to remove incriminating evidence from the Democratic Offices of Hunt and Sturgis being arrested in Dealey Plaza.

[JackRiddler]

16. Hunt's confession public before this film was released - how inconvenient

I don't know whether the full details of this scenario fit, but last year we learned that before his death E. Howard Hunt provided an organizational chart of the hit - albeit claiming he refused the offer to participate himself.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x461116#462107

But remember: too many people would have known, where are the whistleblowers, etc. etc.

[JackRiddler]

17. Now HERE is the 2007 documentary PBS should air

Evidence of Revision (1 of 5) : The Assassinations of Kennedy and Oswald

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=666048701355447870

The first three minutes cover with humor what the ponderous "Oswald's Ghost" only thinks it's saying.

It's a series of scenes without comment, strung together brilliantly.

[Beausoleil]

19. "too many people would have known, where are the whistleblowers"

Connected Mafia types have been keeping their mouths shut for decades, they're pretty good at it, especially when nobody is asking questions.

[JackRiddler]

21. The point being, when the whistleblowers appear...

they are dismissed out of hand. Or ignored. Or shot, like that epidemic of suicides during the House assassination hearings. Then, decades later, some newbie reporter cuts his teeth by "starting at zero," repeating the no-whistleblower canard, and studiously avoiding memory, study or investigation.

[Beausoleil]

22. Exactly. Both Roselli and Giancana were murdered

without talking, before either could testify before the HSCA. No talk of suicide, just run-of-the-mill Mafia executions.

George DeMohrenschild was also murdered at his home the day before he was to testify. Suicided, of course.

There are many more.

[AntiFascist]

25. Another notable deathbed confession....

was Gerald Ford himself, to his biographer -- but the Republican types always seem to want to shift more of the blame to LBJ. How does one explain all the former mafia/CIA whistleblowers:

Giancana, Files, Holt, Plumlee, Granata ... why did so many go missing or were murdered: Giancana, Hoffa, Roselli, Nicoletti, West. James Sibert testified that JFK's medical evidence had been tampered with. David Mantik reported seeing two sets of medical records, the first showing how JFK was shot from two directions, and later how it was tampered with. Lt.Colonel (ret.) Daniel Marvin reports evidence that William Pitzer may have been killed because he had seen the JFK medical records. FBI agent killed: Michael Wacks, Richard Stilling vouches for his integrity and wants JFK's case reopened.

How many whistleblowers do you need?

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/cast.htm

[Clinton Crusader]

20. A good book is 'Best Evidence'

Good Lord, I must have read it 15 times by now, I've even discussed it many times with the author. I find the theories and conclusions fascinating. Yeah, I know, there's a million theories involved with this, you could go on for hours, maybe days. In my younger days I was a rabid researcher, even sponsored a conference in DC, ran a newsletter. Now I'm a semi retired researcher, prefer to read and researcher from my home.

Theoretically, you can make almost any scenario fit. A lot of people had a reason or a motive to want JFK dead; many had something to gain from it. I never believed Oswald acted 100% alone. There is no way he could fire all those shots from that rifle at a moving target from that distance. Just the shot that hit James Tague's cheek proves that. Why didn't he shoot JFK when he was coming straight at him before the turn onto Elm Street? He had a clear shot right at him, right in the head? Why wait till the car turns and is constantly moving away from him? Makes no sense! He's using a WWII piece of crap rifle, the Mannlicher Carcano, why not just shoot him as he's coming right at you; his head growing larger in that scope all the time. But no, he waits till the car turns, and is now getting smaller all the time. Why?

And in 1963, no one, NO ONE, denounces their US citizenship, goes to the USSR, then strolls back in without being debriefed. NO ONE.

JFK is in a triangular killing zone, no escape, especially with the car going so slow, and with car braking (witnesses (plural)) report car brake lights coming on repeatedly, he's a sitting duck, no escape. and like another poster said, why is Jackie climbing on the trunk retrieving parts of the BACK of his head if he's shot from behind?

Oh it's too early in the morning for this.

[tuckessee]

24. Especially when that defector is an ex-Marine with U2 associations.

Oswald was clearly part of the false defector or some similar program.

[tuckessee]

23. Just read "Farewell to Justice" by Joan Mellen.

It's about the Garrison investigation & I recommend it to anyone who is a student of the JFK hit.