The Origins of John F. Kennedy’s Struggle against the CIA

[Time for change]

A couple months ago I wrote a DU post titled “The GAME”, which I began by noting the many unmentionable things in U.S. politics, and I concluded that the purpose of the censoring of so many important issues is the creation of an alternate reality among a critical mass of the American people. The belief in that alternate reality is necessary in order to convince the American people to continue to play the GAME that has been laid out for them by the GAME’s masters. For the actual reality of the GAME’s methods and purposes, I believe, is so terrible that if people consciously recognized it they would refuse to play, and the GAME would have to be radically altered or come to an end – peaceful or otherwise. The ultimate purpose of the GAME’s masters is to arrange the world to their advantage or according to the way that they believe things should be. In pursuit of their goals we have wars, overthrow of sovereign governments, and obscene wealth accumulation into the hands of the GAME’s masters and prime players.

Another way of saying this is that there is a group of people that some of us sometimes refer to as “The powers that be”, who exert a lot more control over our country, our planet, and our lives than we imagine is possible in a so-called democracy. The comedian Bill Hicks once memorably captured the thrust of that idea:

It's just a handful of people that run everything…No matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'

Some excellent books that touch on the subject include: “The Shock Doctrine – the Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, by Naomi Klein; “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries out of Trillions” and “The Secret History of the American Empire”, by John Perkins; “The Bush Agenda – Invading the World, One Economy at a Time”, by Antonia Juhasz; “Moyers on Democracy”, by Bill Moyers; “Blowback”, “The Sorrows of Empire”, and “Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Republic”, by Chalmers Johnson; and, “Who Will Tell the People – The Betrayal of American Democracy”, by William Greider. President Eisenhower’s farewell address, warning us about the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), is also relevant.

Also highly relevant to this discussion is a book that I read many years ago, by two former CIA agents, who required a prolonged legal battle with the CIA in order to get their book published. I don’t recall the name of the book, the authors, or many of the details. The main point that stuck with me was the authors’ claim that the CIA had developed such autonomy that U.S. presidents could not control what it does. Since then, I’ve often wondered how that could be. It is related to the issue of the relationship of our Presidents and other elected officials to the GAME. I’ve often thought about this with regard to our new President. How much of his tilt to the right on some issues is forced by the powers that be? How much of his agenda is his own? What exactly is he up against?


An early remark about JFK’s potential struggle against shadowy powers

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who was avidly against nuclear proliferation. On that score he was disappointed in the early Kennedy presidency. He wrote in a 1962 letter to a friend:

I have little confidence in Kennedy, I think he cannot fully measure up to the magnitude of his task… What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don’t have: depth, humanity and a certain self forgetfulness and compassion… a deeper kind of dedication…

Maybe Kennedy will break through into that someday by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination.

The origin of JFK’s struggle against the CIA

When Kennedy came to the presidency in January 1961 he inherited a CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba by about 1,500 Cuban exile troops, who were then being trained by the CIA. The plan, as it was related to Kennedy by CIA Director Allen Dulles, was that the landing of the Cuban troops in Cuba would inspire a nation-wide uprising against Fidel Castro, which would quickly overthrow him. The landing of the Cuban troops was to be preceded by bombing of the Cuban Air Force on the ground by a Cuban Expeditionary Force.

Kennedy was never enthusiastic about the plan, but he approved it anyhow, while making clear that under no circumstances would he introduce U.S. troops or air support, even if the refusal to do so meant the defeat of the Cuban exile troops.

The invasion at the Bay of Pigs
The invasion began at dawn on April 15th, 1961, with air strikes by the Cuban Expeditionary Force, which were followed on April 17th by the landing of the Cuban exile troops at the Bay of Pigs. But there was no Cuban uprising, as the CIA had promised Kennedy. The Cuban exile troops were soon surrounded by Castro’s troops, they surrendered on April 19th, and 114 men were lost and more than a thousand were taken prisoner.

Prior to the surrender, Kennedy’s military advisors put tremendous pressure on him to intervene militarily. From Thomas Reeves’ book, “A Question of Character – A Life of John F. Kennedy”:

As the situation at the Bay of Pigs grew worse, pressure mounted on the president to come to the rescue. Members of the exile government were furious with… the administration for refusing to use its full military might… American military men on the scene and in Washington were enraged over the orders prohibiting them from saving the lives of brave men on the beaches…

But Kennedy held firm. He had good reason to fear that further escalation at that point could lead to a nuclear exchange with the USSR. And that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.

What we now know about the CIA’s motives
At the time, it was believed that the CIA officials who drew JFK into the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs were merely incompetent. But it later turned out otherwise. James W. Douglass, in his book, “JFK and the Unspeakable – Why he Died and Why it Matters”, explains what we now know about this episode:

At his death Allen Dulles left the unpublished drafts of an article that scholar Lucien S. Vandenbroucke has titled “The Confessions of Allen Dulles”… In these handwritten notes, Dulles explained how CIA advisers who knew better drew John Kennedy into a plan whose requisites for success contradicted the president’s own rules for engagement that precluded any combat action by U.S. military forces… They discreetly kept silent in the belief, Dulles wrote, that “the realities of the situation” would force the president to carry through to the end they wished… “We felt that when the chips were down – when the crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”…The assumption was that President Kennedy… would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.

Kennedy’s reaction to the CIA betrayal
Douglass describes Kennedy’s reaction to the whole affair:

President Kennedy… said to one of the highest officials of his administration that he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”. Presidential advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said the president told him… “It’s a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business – that is, that we will have to deal with CIA… no one has dealt with CIA” …

And deal with them he did. He asked the three principal planners of the operation – Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Directors Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell – to resign. And he cut the CIA budget in 1962 and 1963.


JFK’s turn towards peace

Kennedy started off his political career and his Presidency somewhat to the right on questions of U.S. militarism, compared to where he eventually ended up. He escalated our involvement in Vietnam (which he inherited from Eisenhower), and he began his presidency by agreeing to the invasion of Cuba (which he also inherited from Eisenhower).

But he exhibited an extraordinary ability to learn from his mistakes. Rejecting the advice of his predecessor and his military advisors, instead of violently intervening in Laos to overthrow the Communists, he began working out a diplomatic solution in 1961, which ended in the signing of a 1962 agreement that set up a coalition government in Laos. In his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he repeatedly resisted advice from his military advisors to escalate the crisis by invading Cuba.

He then began diplomatic attempts to end the Cold War. A few months before he was assassinated, he gave a radical speech on behalf of peace that probably seemed terribly threatening to the Military Industrial Complex. Here are some excerpts:

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament -- and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude -- as individuals and as a Nation -- for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every… thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward -- by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed -- that we are gripped by forces we cannot control…

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace -- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned…

Six weeks later, Kennedy announced to the American people the first nuclear test ban treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. He then undertook secret negotiations with Fidel Castro in an attempt to come to an accommodation with him. And, he began talking with his close associates about pulling out of Vietnam.

Four months after his peace speech, Kennedy was assassinated.


The power of the Pentagon

The CIA and the U.S. military are strongly connected. They have similar goals, and U.S. foreign policy decisions often come down to a question of which one – the CIA or U.S. military or some combination of the two – is the preferred way of accomplishing a given goal.

An excellent source of information on the history of the Pentagon is James Carroll’s “House of War – The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power”. The main theme of Carroll’s book is that the Pentagon has become a tremendously powerful entity unto itself, beyond the control of anyone, even American presidents. In the last pages of his book, Carroll says:

The Pentagon defines America’s reach across the world, and for countless millions that reach is choking… The Pentagon is now the dead center of an open-ended martial enterprise that no longer pretends to be defense. The world itself must be reshaped… The Pentagon has, more than ever, become a place to fear.

Even after reading Carroll’s excellent “National Book Award” winning book,
the scope of power at issue is so vast that I can barely comprehend it. So many more questions are raised than answered. Why can’t a U.S. president exert control over the U.S. military, all of whose employees report directly or indirectly to him? What forces are at work that would put the military of a democracy beyond the control of that democracy’s elected representatives?

One thing is for certain, however. A U.S. president can go against the advice of those who try to rush him into war (though perhaps not without serious consequences). JFK proved that time and time again. One of the most striking examples of this was “Operation Northwoods”, a plan by JFK’s Joint Chiefs of Staff for a false flag operation that would draw the United States into a war against Cuba. James Bamford describes it in “Body of Secrets – Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency”:

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.

The idea was shot down. Kennedy told Lemnitzer that “there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.”


Some additional observations

In my article on “The GAME” I described three U.S. presidents since World War I who in my opinion, at least to some major extent, decided not to play the GAME – FDR, Jimmy Carter, and JFK.

FDR survived a coup against him in 1933. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was destroyed by the Iran hostage crisis, for which there is much evidence that his successors (which included a former CIA Director) arranged to prolong. And JFK… Well, official U.S. history has it that he was cut down by a lone gunman – before ‘the powers that be’ had an opportunity to take action against him for his repeated challenges to the Military Industrial Complex.

And Allen Dulles? A prospective biographer quoted him as saying shortly before his death, “That little Kennedy… he thought he was a god”. James Douglass describes how Dulles returned to prominence after JFK’s death:

Foreign observers, many more familiar than Americans with Dulles’s history in assassination plots and the overthrow of governments, wondered at the former CIA director’s possible involvement in the murder of the man who had fired him and then tried to rein in the CIA. However, far from being considered a suspect, one week after the assassination Dulles was appointed by the new president Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. Wow!

As always the problem is, what do we do? :shrug:

[Time for change]

76. Spread the truth

A major problem with our country is that too many Americans are woefully ignorant of the forces that determine events in their world. That is partly the fault of our corporate news media, which seeks to keep them misinformed, but is also our own faults too.

The thing is that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them. We have the truth on our side, and we also have the numbers. I think that the Internet is serving a purpose of helping to keep Americans much more informed than we used to be. Maybe that will create a positive feedback loop that will accelerate our knowledge accumulation.

Anyhow, I believe that the key is an informed public. They could not get away with this kind of stuff if we were informed enough. That's what our Founding Fathers believed too, which is why they put so many safeguards into our Constitution with the purpose of ensuring our right to keep ourselves informed.

In saying that, I certainly don't claim to have a full grasp on the truth, with regard to a multitude of issues, including the issues discussed in this post. But I do believe that I have my eyes open, and I have a strong desire to learn more of the truth.

[Lint Head]

2. I wonder if Obama was given the talk in the smoke filled room by

the industrialists and shown the angle of the JFK assassination no one else has seen.



:dem:

[rucognizant]

26. I'm quite sure...................

Nancy Pelosi was taken into the smoke filled room! Poor soul, she has had so much criticism and disaproval heaped on her...when U I truly think her hands have been tied!
That said...I believe my family has been pitted against these "powers that be" for several centuries, beginning with the Huguenots, ( French Protestants) forced to flee France. Intellectuals of Integrity, they contributed to society through cultural improvements rather than amassing wealth. One of the major hospitals in NY ( can never remember which one) the quarentine center at ELlis Island, Columbia U, Bard College, Hyde Park the herb garden, ( the house is gone, replaced by the Vanderbilt mansion, Trinity Chirch at ground zero, ( some of them repose in the graveyard there). One Dr. Bard saved G Washington's life from cutaneous anthrax during his 2nd term. ( He had studied medicine in Edinborough Scotland, where there are sheep and naturally occuring anthrax. His area of expertise was herbs, frined of the herbalist John Bartram, whose medicinal hwerb garden stillexhisits at 22nd & Chestnut Sts. in Phila. across the street from the elementary scholl my childeren attended. One of my daughters classmate's Father, Vincent Salandria, did HIS OWN independent study, not believing in the Warren COmmission's results!
My cousin's husband became a Deacon at CHrist's church in Phila. not knowing at the time that one of our ancestors had been married to two of the Rectors there and her sisiter married the architect who designed the church!
There is a geneology book passed down through the family, which I read, just when I was questioning WHY my integrity /moral ethical code, was preventing me from economic gain through this past 30 years of the rapid ascendancy of the greedy and powerful.
Long story short, genetic memory, and dna tuerning in my bones have made me a passionate activist to what is happening to this country, so many of them contributed so much to build!
Thank you for this story.

[antimatter98]

28. Based on how Obama's acting, I'm sure he was told, and was threatened in a mafia kind of way. n/t

[yurbud]

43. 9/11 & anthrax attacks were update of that grassy knoll photo

Things happened that should have been impossible, and then explanations were given to the public that shouldn't have been believed but were.

While I don't think they had to force Bush's hand, I could see the same thing happening to an unwilling president to turn the public against him until he got back on the corporate plantation or got a lead headache from the modern equivalent of E. Howard Hunt.

[No.23]

3. JFK and Executive Order 1110

In your research, ever find anything interesting re. JFK's Executive Order 11110, which was signed on June 43, 1963. a few months before he was assassinated?

Executive Order 1110 returned the power to issue currency to the U.S. Government, without going through the Federal Reserve. The Treasury was given the power to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury. This effectively made the Federal Reserve significantly less powerful.

A few months later, Kennedy was assassinated. Five months later, the issuance of silver certificates was terminated.

Ever find anything interesting re. this final chapter of Kennedy's?

[Time for change]

24. I didn't know anything about that

It seems that JFK was a royal pain in the ass to the powers that be in a lot of different ways.

It really makes me wonder how much each of his successors has thought about this and how it has influenced their policies.

[Blackhatjack]

4. As this OP points out ... INFORMATION is the most effective weapon against oppression...

Stalin understood that people were both useful and dangerous because of one thing, what they knew and how they might use that knowledge. Stalin engaged in regular purges of top officials to eliminate those who 'knew' and to scare into submission any underlings from sharing with others 'anything they might know.'

And of course, the practical result was that the people were controlled by the information they were 'given' by the government, and the by the lack of 'outside information' that might challenge the official information given by the government.

Once information from the outside world began to filter inside the USSR, it was only a matter of time before the people became impossible to control.

In the US there is no way to control all of the information that might be communicated by government officials to those outside of government, but there are the twin antidotes ... disinformation and discrediting of the sources.

As pointed out 'there are lies, damned lies and official lies....', and it all depends on the agenda of the organization with power to classify them before we know which are which.

[omega minimo]

12. "... disinformation and discrediting of the sources...."

and discombobulating of the public ......

[Time for change]

53. I'm not sure if or where I pointed that out, but I certainly agree with you

Information is the starting point for any effort to take control of our country. If most people in our country knew what was going on, the GAME would not be able to continue for very long.

[rtassi]

73. I've never been able to figure out..

why the idea of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy scares the living shit out of people, many of whom weren't even on the planet when it happened ... who then seem eager and willing to accept and then defend propaganda less challenging to human intellect! Certainly by now, even the most recent and perhaps lesser informed observer, would have to conclude that some structure of power seen or unseen, keeps Presidents from thoughtfully serving the desires of those who seek peace. I thank you for your post ... as always excellent!
rt

[bertman]

5. Thanks for another powerful history lesson, Time for change. Recommend.

[Time for change]

72. Thank you bertman

[deaniac21]

6. Slow down on the lsd.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

8. Your dazzling rebuttal is melting.

[omega minimo]

11. if you listen to Dark Side of the Moon while reading that reply.........

it's still lame.

[catnhatnh]

13. Your comment is not merely stupid and demeaning...

but also contains not a single countering fact...in short-worthless.

[deaniac21]

64. Sure stired you guys up though. What does that say about you?

:hi:

[Octafish]

89. And ''stir(r)ed up'' is all you added to the conversation.

Why is that?

In fact, you never add to the discussion -- on this or any other thread, deaniac21.

[deaniac21]

108. It's all good for me.

[Aethertek]

96. LSD?

Maybe you should try some, might expand your perceptions.
What next? Gonna run around with your eyes closed swinging Occam's razor while shouting nananana?

[A-Schwarzenegger]

7. And the brother of fired CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell was none other than ...

Earl Cabell, Mayor of Dallas at the time of JFK's murder.

[omega minimo]

10. Hey, Cabell's a common enough name............!!!1111

:eyes:




:hi:

[defendandprotect]

9. Re intelligence budgets . . . evidently they've hidden $ for them in school budgets. . etc.!!!

And he cut the CIA budget in 1962 and 1963.


Therefore, times when we have absolutely no idea how much money we're really

giving to any government program.

What you don't know about, you can't possibly control.

[Octafish]

14. Wall Street, the Warren Commission and the Reich

You nailed the central question of our times, my honorable Friend. Our nation has suffered at the hands of traitors for too long.

In addition to Dulles, we must remember another of the Warren Commission members who was a big time player in the service of the Establishment on Wall Street, John J. McCloy. The fellah also was the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany after WW II. In that role, McCloy forgave some of the biggest NAZI war criminals, allowing them to escape justice at Nuremberg and Moscow. Instead, these mass murderers made their way on the Vatican-CIA ratlines to the United States and other Western nations. Ostensibly, they were here to help fight the Commies. In reality, they served the military industrial complex and its masters.

Thank you for another must-read, kick and bookmark article, Time for change. Our readings and our takes on history are very, very similar. For a million other reasons, though, it really is an honor to know you.

[defendandprotect]

18. McCloy was at least an adviser to Truman . . . and some say encouraged dropping of Atomic

Bombs on Japan --

McCloy has quite a negative history --- !!!



Candidate JFK, in Maine 1960 . .

I must say that if I am elected President of the United States, I am not going to attempt only to select men for positions of high leadership who happen to have the word democrat after their name.

When Franklin Roosevelt became President in 1932 he selected three Republicans to be members of his first Cabinet. When President Truman was the President, he selected men like John McCloy, Robert Lovett. He continued men like James Forrestal. He brought John Foster Dulles into the State Department to negotiate the Japanese Treaty. He secured for the great positions of responsibility the best men and women he could get.

This is what we are going to do in the future.

Not entirely such a good idea!

[JDPriestly]

85. Unfortunately, Obama is falling into the same trap.

It is the dream of uniting the country. That is, in fact, I kind of dream of ultimate power. As seductive as it is, that dream is unrealistic and dangerous. Strength comes from allowing disagreement, from allowing differing opinions to be voiced.

[MicaelS]

34. James Jesus Angleton

Angleton was the top counter-intelligence czar of the CIA during his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Angleton

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

http://www.enter.net/~torve/trogholm/secret/rightroots/dulles.html

Ties into Prescott Bush and his crimes, too.

[leveymg]

56. J.J.A. and his father, Hugh, were part of the Dulles-Bush crew.

The senior Angleton owned the National Cash Register (NCR) franchize in Italy between the wars. He had an insider's relationship with Il Duce. His son edited the only openly fascist literary publication as an underclassman at Yale.

During the US occupation, the two of them pretty much ran the country and worked closely with Dulles, Frank Wisner and Dick Helms in Operation Paperclip, the ratlines, and the reconstruction of Gen. Gehlen's Org.

Yes, James Jesus certainly knew a thing or two about the American intelligence officer circle around Dulles' who became the "ex-Nazis" best friends. The same ones in OSS/CID/ONI who also took a 75 percent cut of all the gold and treasure the Nazis had looted in Europe since 1933. These guys had all the money in the world to play with - they really didn't need Congressional appropriations for many years.

[peace frog]

60. 'Angleton assumed that he would see

all his old companions again "in hell".'

Cold comfort for those who don't believe in heaven and hell. You didn't suffer enough in your lifetime, James Jesus, you treasonous murderer.

[leveymg]

69. Allow me to qualify what I said immediately above. JJA was a severe critic of Bush as CIA Director

and President. The reason had to do with the change in intelligence sourcing that went on under Bush's leadership.

When I say that Angleton was part of Bush's crew, I was referring to Prescott Bush, who was part of the Brown Bros Harriman global banking empire who, along with the Dulles Bros at Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, worked closely with the Germans between the wars. After 1945, Prescott was a real force within the GOP faction of the intelligence community, and served as a problem shooter for Eisenhower, much as John J. McCloy did for FDR and Truman.

After WWII, JJ Angelton had a real change of heart about the Jews (perhaps, to some degree about fascism, as well). For several decades thereafter, Angelton had the Israel account at CIA as well as being in charge of CI, and Mossad provided a lot of very valuable and accurate intelligence about many countries, including the Soviet Union.

Bush's major change was to take Arab money and intelligence input after Congress cut off funding for covert operations in exchange for allowing the Saudis to develop their own nuclear program (in Pakistan along with the AQ Khan spin-off), global paramilitary force (which morphed into al-Qaeda), and independent global economic and political intelligence capability (which came to control many U.S.-based cmpanies, including Citi Group, along with certain DoD/NSA/CIA contractors). Angleton, quite correctly, found much of this privitization and tilt toward the Arabs to be self-serving, unwise, and contrary to the US national interest. Trento's books reflect that. I agree with that assessment about Bush and the Saudis. See: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280

During Bush Junior's era we've seen a coalescence of the worst elements within US, Israeli and Saudi intelligence. The result was the Iraq WMD deception, the Plame outing, and the destruction of CIA Counter-Proliferation Division, along with a generalized wrecking of American interests around the world. See,

OUTING THE CIA (leveymg Thread - Part 2) - Democratic UndergroundOuting CIA CPD (Brewster-Jennings was a front) had the effect of doing away with competing ... 1. Initial submission of leveymg's Part 2 of Outing CIA ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=358x4659 - 80k - Cached - Similar pages -

OUTING THE CIA (leveymg Thread - Part 1)... to "out" a CIA deception campaign that the CPD was running through the A.Q. Khan ..... leveymg's Part 1 of OUTING THE CIA. Submitted by rosesaylavee. ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x4645 - 50k - Cached - Similar pages -
More

[swilton]

79. You mention Sullivan & Cromwell

It is interesting that that is the law firm where our friend the President of Georgia, Saakashvili, worked while he was in the USIt has been alleged that Saakashvili is a CIA stooge - ergo why did he attack the Russians in South Ossetia, etc. so that they would retalliate, etc.] It is also the lawfirm of the former Secretary of States George Schultz. :hide:

[Time for change]

80. Thank you Octafish -- I'm not that familiar with McCloy

Another interesting member of the Warren Commission was Arlen Specter. He was one of the lawyer/interrogators. He was interviewing a physician witness who treated JFK at the hospital and testified that the throat wound entered the throat from the front. Specter kept trying to get hime to change his mind, and he wouldn't. So specter came up with this:

Permit me to add some facts which I shall ask you to assume as being true for the purposes of having you express an opinion. First of all, assume that the President was struck… from the rear at a downward angle… then exiting precisely at the point where you observed the puncture wound to exist. Now based on those facts was the appearance of the wound in your opinion consistent with being an exit wound?

And the doctor, who had consistently maintained that the wound was an entrance wound, answered, “With those facts … this would be … I believe … an exit wound.”

That's from "Best Evidence", by David Lifton, which centered mostly on the medical evidence.

[Octafish]

90. The guy was a prince...

...in the worst sense of the word. McCloy rubbed shoulders with people responsible for the deaths of millions and the looting of Europe. He'd fit right in with the scum running the show today.

The traitors of Dallas might have sold their plot to their co-conspirators as the removal of a president who'd gone "rogue." By the time they got to his level, the tool Specter may have believed that he was serving the national security interests of the United States.



At the time, LBJ had told Justice Warren the nation needed him to lead the investigation in order to allay any fear in the public mind that the Soviets were behind the assassination. Johnson was being fed informaton from the CIA's Mexico City station that Oswald had made contact with the principles of the KGB assassination squad. So, to avert nuclear war, they came up with the cover-up and the requisite magic bullet. Of course, it turns out later that connection to the KGB had been staged by someone impersonating Oswald.

PS: You've advanced historiography, Time for change. Thank you!

[RufusTFirefly]

15. Another wonderful post, Tfc!

I'm so glad that JFK and the Unspeakable-- Why he Died and Why it Matters plays such an important role in your cogent analysis this time. That is an extremely important book.

[Time for change]

94. Thank you Rufus -- I'm just getting into it, but it does seem like one of the most interesting books

I've read in quite a while. I can't remember -- did you recommend it to me?

[RufusTFirefly]

101. I may have. I know I've mentioned it in your threads before.

BTW, I usually read several books at once so I'm still just about 2/3 of the way through Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War, which I know you suggested. Excellent recommendation.

I read American Dreamer quite a few years ago and was glad to get a chance to read another book about Wallace, a prescient, much maligned, and much misunderstood man.

[Time for change]

103. Yeah, that book's a keeper -- It really explained a lot about the Cold War mentality too

I have the same habit as you -- reading several books at a time. I've it for probably about 20 years now. It's hard to explain why -- except that some books are somewhat difficult to get through, even though they're important, so reading several books at a time helps to breat things up and make it easier.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

106. Mr 'pede and I

were talking last night about 'children in the White House' and I mentioned that Mrs Kennedy had lost her baby in August 63 and he (Mr 'Pede) had no memory of that. Well, Mr 'pede did have his own 4 month old daughter to deal with at the time.
So I directed him to my copy of JFK and the Unspeakable on the night stand ...

[defendandprotect]

16. Compared to Dulles and his CIA, Kennedy was a "god." ---

Supposedly Dulles fed his "Paperclip" Nazis into the CIA . . . using them to found it.

Also into the FBI. And that was over 50 years ago, without the American public and

I presume much of Congress having an idea of what was truly going on.


Nixon worked on "Operation 40" -- later known as Bay of Pigs -- while Ike was in the

hospital recovering from a heart attack. Oliver Stone also seemed to suggest in his

published script for either the "Nixon" movie or the "JFK" movie that Nixon played some

role in arranging the Gulf of Tonkin "incident."


Operation Northwoods is scarey. So is Nixon's Huston Plan and there isn't too much

difference between them!

IMO, it's really, again, corporate power that we are fighting here.

Taxpayer money that translates into power for corporations making weapons ---

and ever more frighteningly, privatization of the military.

45,000 private corporations in Iraq!!!

[arcadian]

17. Cultural Cold War

CIA was funding artists and writers who were "left" but perceived to be "not socialists" with their front company called The Congress for Cultural Freedom. Jackson Pollock, Irving Kristol, Encounters Magazine, and the Boston Symphony to name a few. Read the book.

They have had their hand in everything and nearly everything you see in this country today is the result of perception management by Madison Ave and the CIA.

[seemslikeadream]

46. perception management

[Time for change]

105. Thank you for the reference

I haven't heard that one before -- or not much, anyhow.

So, what did they hope to accomplish with this, and how successful were they?

[Norrin Radd]

19. kr

[rhett o rick]

20. R & K. Who are the Game Masters? I believe that something very close to what you describe

is happening. That's why Obama hasn't gotten rid of Geitner and has allowed billions to be given, no strings attached, to who-knows-who. But it would be hard to hide the Masters i think. These people have too big of egos.

[Jackpine Radical]

88. It's really not that hard for them to hide. As for their egos,

they don't even recognize the likes of us as human. Just as we wouldn't think of trying to impress field mice, they have no concern about what we might think, except insofar it is useful to them to keep us blindered and deceived so we will continue to do their bidding. They hide behind their walls and in their penthouses, in their French villas and in their castles, absorbed in themselves and in each other, neither knowing nor caring anything at all about our lives, our trials, our tribulations. Dubya had to maintain a facade of "regular guy" during his presidency, but he let the mask slip in one famous moment, when a young woman berated him about the war. "Who cares what you think?" he retorted. That is the message of the super-rich to all of us: Who cares what you think?

[rhett o rick]

112. I agree with what you said, but there must be some competition for the top dog spot. nm

[norepubsin08]

21. Interesting!

[Overseas]

22. K&R for this and your other wonderful articles !! //nt, xxoo

[burning rain]

23. Very interesting.

k & r

[Demeter]

25. Real American History Is a Tragic Tale

To go from such heroic, uplifting beginnings as this nation did in the 1700's to the crass, vile conclusion that will befall in the 2000's--it will make a great opera, some day.

Rather like Sondheim's "Into the Woods" which looked into the not-so-happily-ever-after of fairy tales.

[antimatter98]

27. Agreed. America is a very dirty country. n/t

[leveymg]

29. KNR - One small thing, though, JFK wasn't what they expected. His father, Joe, was a 5th Columnist,

every bit as reactionary and pro-German as the Brothers Dulles, in fact a founding member of the same treasonous cabal that organized a fascist coup against FDR in '34. This was the same group of German-connected plotters that the Dulles Bros., Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker headed up. These were the Wall Street investment bankers, European industrialists and Mob money wiseguys who had financed the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. Old Joe was part of it. After the war, they got their revenge, a purge of the Democratic and British Labour Party under the guise of anti-Communism.

Both candidates in the 1960 election were "made men". Nixon was the Dulles-Bush protege and JFK the creature of the competing Irish-Italian-Jewish mob. Both groups were tied in with the Military Industrial Complex and the CIA. Everyone expected that, no matter which candidate won, the gambling houses of Havana would be returned to their "rightful owners", Meyer Lansky and his Chicago-Vegas mob partners. Everyone was shocked and flabberghasted that Kennedy called off the airstrikes, and that hostile takeover failed. What we now know is that JFK was conducting backchannels diplomacy with Krushchev, and had learned that the Soviets had a 31,000 man combat brigade on the island armed with tactical nuclear weapons with orders to use them in the event of a full-scale U.S. invasion.

For that, and the fact that the Kennedy brothers turned on their father's organized crime partners, was a death sentence for both. You should add Ronald Kessler's "Sins of the Father" to your reading list. It will give you the background and context to see that this didn't start with the Bay of Pigs, that just sealed their fate.

[Jackpine Radical]

37. I have always argued exactly this point.

Old Hitler-loving Bootleg Joe was an insider, and he had a leash on Jack. Until his stroke. Then Jack got off the leash, and it became necessary to fix the problem.

[leveymg]

38. Wall Street and the Mafia have been partners for a long-time, but we just couldn't admit it publicly

without risk of being branded a "commie pinko scum".

America is finally waking up to the obvious. The country's banking and political systems have been run by robber barons in expensive clothes. It's been that way for generations.

[Jackpine Radical]

39. Wall Street, the Mafia, and the CIA.

Lots of people keep moving back & forth between the Street and the Company.

[leveymg]

48. THAT is an interesting group to study re: economic destabilization/coup d'etat

Carter got destabilized using the same methods as Allende's Chile by the same group. Read Joe Trento's excellent books about Bush, Shackley, Rodriguez, Ed Wilson, el al. for many specifics not elsewhere described. Corn's Blonde Ghost is also an excellent resource. Also, my History of Dirty-Tricks for an historical review going back to the origins of the modern intelligence service and their role in international financial markets going back to the 19th Century and before: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0612/S00194.htm

Never forgive the G.H.W. Bush bastards for all that - knocked over two of the oldest elected Democracies in the world, three, if you include Australia, four counting the British Labour Government in the early 1970s.

Didn't care about the harm done to ordinary Americans and Chileans in the process. Sold themselves and their own country out to petrodollars. Murdered and tortured thousands.

Treason and Mass Murder - Mass Murder and Treason. Ultimately, they did it to increase their own power and wealth - it wasn't even about the Cold War. It was their war against America and the rest of the world.

The CIA is necessary and essential to the national security. I can only trust it's in far, far better hands today.

[Jackpine Radical]

54. Well, I followed your links and

fell down another goddam rabbit hole. Falling down rabbit holes is not exactly a new experience for me, but the wonder of what I find in each successive rabbit hole is new.

Are you by any chance thinking of pulling this stuff together into a book?

[leveymg]

58. Yes. But, I've been working on other peoples books and blogging. Hard to find time.

Can you suggest a publisher?

[Jackpine Radical]

62. I would seriously consider self-publishing with something like this.

The major thing that a publisher contributes is in marketing. However, these days if you want to put the time into it, you can do OK on your own working Amazon & advertising in the right places. Self-promote a little on DU, Kos, & similar sites. Get yourself into the Midwest Review of Books (they will review self-published things), etc.

Have a look at Aaron Shepard's book Aiming at Amazon for starters.
http://www.amazon.com/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-Amazon-com/dp/093849743X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237911410&sr=8-1

Or look for publishers who want your type of topic. Th following ones suggested themselves in a brief search:

William Morrow (published a Jim Marrs book)
The Disinformation Company http://www.cbsd.com/pubdetail.aspx?id=295
(I know nothing about them except that they also published a Jim Marrs book)
Trine Day (They published a book on the Bilderburgers

I would look these and others up in the current Writers Market.

[leveymg]

65. Thanks for the encouragement and info

It's really just a matter of storing up enough nuts so I can take a few months off and do nothing else but research, write, and edit one topic.

Hard to find enough accorns, these days. Know where any of those are buried?

[Jackpine Radical]

84. Acorns are getting harder to find everywhere.

Squirrels of the world, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your nuts.

[sce56]

113. Well here are a few more tidbits on the crime

How many shots were fired that day?
Three according to the Warren Report! But there is evidence of more than three.



There are two or three, one that impacted the windshield and the mirror or one hit the mirror and one hit windshield plus the one that hit the frame above the windshield.



Add to that the one that hit the curb and wounded James Teague



James T. Tague was agitated that he was caught in a traffic jam on Commerce Street in downtown Dallas, Texas at 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963. Little did he realize that as he stepped out of his car to see what was going on, he was stepping into the most notorius moment in US history. Immediately, he had a direct view of the oncoming motorcade for the President of the United States. Just then, rifle shots tore into President Kennedy and Governor Connally, then into a curb in front of Tague, exploding debris into his face.

When it became known late in the investigation that there was a missed shot, the Warren Commission was forced to adopt the "single bullet theory," that one shot hit both men.
With the help of all the agencies including the Secret Service






“During the last stages of this autopsy Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole, which was below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column.”

(That happens to be five and a half inches below the neck line, not the location the Warren Report indicated)

“This opening was probed by Dr Humes with a finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entered at this point and entered in a downward position of 55 to 60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a SHORT distance, in as much that the end of the opening could be felt with a finger. In as much that no complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area, and likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other area of the body, as determined by total-body X-rays and inspection revealing that there was no point of exit. The individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explaining why they could not find no bullets.”

[Fire1]

93. and even worse with Robert.

[Jackpine Radical]

95. Indeed.

Important to remember that Bobby started out as a McCarthyite.

(Aw, jeez, here comes the lynch mob.)

:hide:

[Jackpine Radical]

30. Were you perhaps thinking of Philip Agee?:

"Also highly relevant to this discussion is a book that I read many years ago, by two former CIA agents, who required a prolonged legal battle with the CIA in order to get their book published. I don’t recall the name of the book, the authors, or many of the details."

Agee wrote "Inside the Company" among other books, and was the guy Bush I blamed for the killing of the CIA station chief in Greece, iirc.

As always, a thought-provoking read here. Thanks.

And while I'm on the topic of old books on the Empire, did you ever read Krikpatrick Sale's Power Shift? It's the book in which he lays out his notion of a power conflict between the old Eastern money (Rockefellers, Cabots, Astors, etc.) and the upstarts of the south & southwest. He saw Kennedy as a tool of the old guard, LBJ & Nixon as expressions of the new money. "Cowboys versus Yankees."

[arendt]

36. "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" by...

Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks. Published in 1974. Still on my bookshelf.

This book started me off down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. It was published with the blank spots where the CIA had censored them (I hate the word "redacted".)

arendt

[leveymg]

47. Sale's "Cowboys vs Yankees" frame is still valid, IMHO

Only, it also seems to have devolved into an internal Spy vs Spy with the Bush-Saudi-Mossad dirty tricks and destabilization faction on one side, and the more "liberal" CIA professionals/JCS Staff cadre on the other.

Speaking of Greece, there's an excellent, comprehensive rundown on Operation Gladio at Wiki. Worthwhile read, if you haven't seen it.

[Jackpine Radical]

51. Thanks for the Wiki tip.

And your "update" on the Sale thesis was most interesting. I think you're maybe right; it makes a strange sort of intuitive sense, anyway. Cheney is a classic "cowboy" type.

[Time for change]

61. That very possibly could be

It was so long ago, that I would have to see the book in order to know for sure. It was full of censored portions that were blacked out, to indicate the parts where the CIA had won in court their efforts to block large portions of what was written.

I have not read "Power Shift" or "Cowboys vs. Yankees". I take it that you consider them well worth reading?

[Jackpine Radical]

63. No, I think Arendt was right (above).

You probably read the Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks book. That was the one with the censored blanks. Agee's was a different book.

Kirkpatrick Sale wrote Power Shift, which put forth his theory of competing power blocs, whom he dubbed Cowboys and Yankees, and described as struggling for dominance in the 70's. You can usually find used copies on Amazon. It's a paperback. References to it seem to have virtually disappeared from online within the past few years, as if someone were sweeping. I was very interested in what leveymg had to say about it somewhere on this thread.

[Time for change]

86. Yes, that's right, it was Marchetti's book, I'm pretty sure.

[RufusTFirefly]

67. Nixon a victim of the "Cowboys vs. Yankees" conflict?

I wasn't aware of Kirkpatrick Sale's paradigm, but it might underlie Russ Baker's suggestion (in Family of Secrets) that Nixon grew tired of being beholden to Eastern money and was set up by the CIA when he tried to push back.

[dflprincess]

68. I'm only about 100 pages into "Family of Secrets"

it's slow going as I have to stop every few pages to add more tinfoil to my hat. Everyone should read this book - maybe it will stop the next Bush from rising to power.

[liam_laddie]

82. Agreed!

Into that book about 50 pp as well as 1/3 the way through "JFK & the Unspeakable." My brain is swimming upstream against a swift current...
Many thanks to TfC for bringing this up front!

[Jackpine Radical]

83. I thnk Sale imagined Nixon to be a Cowboy,

one of those who were opposed to Eastern money from the beginning. As to the rest of it, I'd have to dig up my copy of Sale. I bought it again for reference, but haven't reread it since the 70's.

[The Wizard]

31. The Dulles and Rostow brothers

played an integral role in our Vietnam policy that led to our greatest foreign policy disaster until Bush invaded and occupied Iraq.
The Military Industrial Complex and its bastard step child war have been a drain on the treasury and mental well being of the United States.
For most of our lives our country has been in a profit motivated war with a handful of criminals and profiteers gaining large sums of money on the blood, sweat and tears of the vast majority.
With their control of the media, the war profiteers have convinced the people that if you are not in favor of war you are not patriotic or an enemy of the state.
What happens when the masses of zombies realize they've been played for suckers by the rich and powerful?
John Kerry asked, "How can you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?" ...
The problem is that these wars of choice weren't mistakes, but deliberate crimes designed to separate tax payers from their resources and soldiers from their lives, limbs and sanity.

[Old Michigander]

32. Johnson's Involvement

Do you ever wonder why it is taking Robert Caro so long to publish his 4th and final volume in his Lyndon Johnson biography series?

[Time for change]

35. Absolutely

I read two of his first three books in the Johnson series (2 and 3), and they were a couple of the best books I've ever read. I have long felt that if and when he ever comes out with the last one, it will provide the final proof that we've all been waiting for. But then, why would they ever let him finish it? God knows what he's been through. Perhaps he didn't know anything about the JFK assassination until he got to a certain point in his Johnson biographical research.

[yurbud]

49. there was a great HBO bio movie on Johnson that implied he made a deal with the devil

he gave them Vietnam in exchange for the Great Society.

But he miscalculated and paid far more political capital than he gained.

[RufusTFirefly]

102. I had the same thought!

"The Wink"

[barbtries]

33. there's a lot to ponder there

not all of it new...i am touched by Kennedy's words. thank you for promoting my growth and education with your posts. what's to be done? sometimes it seems hopeless as if it is written in stone that the bad guys will win. i believe in the ability of this planet to support all of the life upon it without war or famine, but i am so powerless. just gotta keep on keeping on.

will obama join the three you mention? and if he does, will he survive his first term as president? i hope so. i have children, and grandchildren, who will eventually have children. these people will not have been born for the purpose of having their hapless bodies thrown at stupid fucking wars for those in charge of the GAME.

[Time for change]

92. Each one of us is powerless by ourselves

But together, with each of us doing what we can, we can make a difference. At least, that's the way I look at it to avoid feeling powerless.

And it's not written stone that the bad guys will win. They have some serious disadvantages, which often prove to be their undoing. First, we outnumber them. And second, we have the truth on our side. That need us. They can't make it on their own. They have to get our cooperation. Hence, the GAME. Little by little, the GAME is being shown for what it is. When enough people come to see it for what it is, it will dissolve.

[glitch]

40. Terrific thread. K & R nt

[MinM]

41. "I was not privy to who struck John." James Jesus Angleton (CIA); 1976

"The world will never know the true facts.." Jack Ruby;1963

"Yes, there will come a time, but it might not be in your life time. I am not referring to anything especially, but there may be some things that would involve national security." Chief Justice Earl Warren; February 5, 1964

"There were many rooms in the mansion. I was not privy to who struck John." James Jesus Angleton(CIA);1976

http://www.ctka.net/pr700-ang.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x236308#236532

[leveymg]

52. Joe Trento was a J.J. Angleton confidant.

You should read his recent books. They're informed by many, many hours of conversation Trento had with the enigmatic former Chief of Counter-Intelligence for the CIA and his some-time co-author, the late Col. William R. Corson, who was a DIA/JCS special operations officer and expert on political warfare. Angleton had his own axes to grind, certainly, but he had a unique perspective on modern history and the role of assassinations and political deception operations in shaping the world.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MrMickeysMom]

44. In before the move to ...

(God, I hope not)...

Thanks for such a good post! K&R, and more at-

http://www.blackopradio.com/

[Initech]

45. Imagine what our country would be like had JFK been allowed to complete his agenda.

[Time for change]

111. I believe it would have been far better

[nichomachus]

50. Bay of Pigs trivia

The Bay of Pigs operations was codenamed "Operation Zapata" -- which curiously was the same name as George HW Bush's oil company at the time. The ships used were named "The Houston" -- which was where George HW Bush lived a the time -- and "The Barbara" -- who was sharing George HW Bush's bed at the time.

George HW Bush was also BFFs with Allen Dulles and was furious at JFK for firing him.

George Bush was in Dallas on the day of JFK's assassination, but made a quick trip to Tyler TX, where he made a phone call to the FBI, telling them that some local GOP volunteer had been threatening JFK. That turned out not to be true, but put GHWB on the official record as not being in Dallas.

Coincidence theorists -- start your engines.

[MinM]

57. Allen W. Dulles speech Harvard Dec. 1963

http://www.blackopradio.com/black252b.ram

A couple notes of interest:

1) Allen Dulles alludes to how useful a propaganda tool the 'mass media' is.
2) At the 25 minute mark -- Dulles laments Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories -- while conceding mistakes were made.
3) Finally, Allen Dulles conveniently uses this occasion, less than a month after the JFK Assassination, to continue scapegoating Kennedy for the failure of The Bay of Pigs.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/75
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/186

[sce56]

109. Behind every Bush there is a terrorist

[benld74]

55. So Mulder WAS right, The Truth is Out There- AND Nicholson is right We Can't Handle the Truth!

[balantz]

59. Here is a link to excerpts from another JFK assassination book you may find interesting.

Final Judgment
The missing link in the JFK assassination conspiracy
by Michael Collins Piper

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Assassinations_page/Final_Judgment.html

[Name removed]

66. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bos1]

70. JFK researcher Peter Dale Scott called it "deep politics", how we all forget what we know due to

the constant reinforcement of what is mentionable in daily discourse (including, but not only in, the media).

[peacetalksforall]

71. Early 1960's - Early 2000's. The President is told that the people of Cuba will

rise up and support a regime change. Forty years later - the people of the U.S. are told by the President that the people of Iraq will rise up and support a regime change.

Kennedy - the CIA told him. George, Don, Dick all said it - who told them? The powers that be. The powers that are over all branches of our government for the purpose of their power over the world - earth resources, people resources, population control, resources control. They think they know what is best ... for them. We are nothing but to be used or killed.

[JMDEM]

74. Interesting -- the post has not been condemned to the dungeon yet

And it has been only attacked by 2 or 3 of the many seemingly professional conspiracy squashers that seem to live in this forum.

I guess the key to prevent dungeonification and swarms of killer bee-like attacks is intelligence. This post is very intelligent and presents the facts well.

Humans instinctively know the truth, and want peace. This is why JFK became so popular in only 3 years, and why most people would acknowledge that we haven't had a decent president since.

[Time for change]

87. I tried to be careful, because I really didn't want to be sent to the dungeon

In particular, I tried to keep my claims to a minimum. I didn't actually make the claim that JFK was killed by a conspiracy, though I have made that claim in several other OPs (most which weren't sent to the dungeon).

I believe Carter was decent.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=816499

The jury's still out on Obama, but he certainly has disappointed me in a number of respects.

PS: The mods seem to be doing a vigilant job of deleting disruptive posts from this thread -- though I haven't seen any of them before they were deleted.

[caseymoz]

75. It has occured to me that the problem with a secret organization that brings down governments . . .

and who's activities are utterly secret is that a president might lose control of them. Which, BTW, is the main reason to open it up and air it out.

Which makes me cringe when I here conservatives say that Bill Clinton caused 9/11 by underfunding the CIA for years.

[Gman]

77. K&R Excellent work

[Name removed]

78. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JDPriestly]

81. And now we have Kissinger

[Divine Discontent]

98. HA! so true... so sad. eom

[Fire1]

91. People have had this in the back of their minds for decades

but have been silenced for fear of being labeled.

[pacalo]

97. Thank you so much for the work you put into this interesting post.

[Waiting For Everyman]

99. And the CIA budget isn't even revealed to Congress.

That says it all. And there are lots of "little CIAs" within the government. The silliest thing of all is that they even compete with each other.

Black Ops broke off the chain in the early 1980s, and it is fully assimilated and covertly interwoven now within the privatized business world. (Especially heavily around D.C.) Nobody knows who/where it is, or ever will again.

It's kind of like if computers became self-directed, and started acting on their own against us. That's what Black Ops did. Now, even its creators couldn't find it, because it went "self-directed" and independent of them, and spawned on its own since the '80s.

In addition to its own unknown budget from the government, it also has most of the funds in the black market at its disposal. That also has a lot to do with screwing up our banks - just the sheer volume of off-the-books cash that has been laundered through them.

[Waiting For Everyman]

100. A scholarly book on the phoney origins of the Cold War is "The Wise Men"

by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas.

[stranger81]

104. Thomas Merton, incidentally, suffered a suspicious & untimely demise himself

when he died in Bangkok in 1968 from allegedly accidental electrocution.

As Merton's biographer John Howard Griffin described it, when Merton arrived in Bangkok, "he gave his talk on the morning of the 10th, the anniversary of his entry into the monastery. And he was very tired, the heat was oppressive and he hadn’t had a nap the day before so since he was going to have to answer the questions in the evening, he went to his cabin and took a shower and he was never a very practical man about things, he put on a pair of either shorts or short pyjamas, and barefoot and still damp, walked across the terrazzo floor and they had these very tall fans, and he reached for the fan to turn it on to the palette where he was going to take his nap on the floor. It was DC current and it went into him and he was staying in a cabin with three other people, but it wasn’t until about an hour later that they went, and the door was locked from the inside, it was a double kind of door, and there was a little curtain in the upper part and they saw him lying on the floor on his back with this big fan crosswise across his body. The blades had stopped rotating but the current was still alive and it was still burning. He was very deeply burnt, in that angle across the body."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s322192.htm

[bottomtheweaver]

116. Whoa.

Thanks for that.

[santamargarita]

107. Well written and well cited!

Thanks for another great post.

[sce56]

110. Here is a hard to find video set from The History Channel. IBTL or IBTMTTD

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C780026FDB5FA168

The Men Who Killed Kennedy - The Final Chapter

This series of 15 nine-minute segments make up the complete final three episodes of The History Channel's long-running documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which began in 1988. This last installment of the series was televised during the third week of November, 2003; the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Within a few days, the History Channel's parent company, Arts and Entertainment (A&E) was adjured by attorneys for family and former associates of ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson, to never again air these episodes (#9-"The Guilty Men" in particular) nor offer them for retail distribution. THC backed off; therefore, the three episodes were quickly buried, never to be shown again. This Final Chapter includes episode 7-"The Smoking Gun", episode 8-"The Love Affair" and episode 9-"The Guilty Men". They are all complete and full of shocking, interesting interviews with believable witnesses. The first 6 episodes are still available to purchase through the History Channel website. Fact or Fiction? Watch the whole series and judge for yourself.

These are available in their best quality on BitTorrent a P2P network. www.bittorrent.com Torrent - btjunkie
Nov 13, 2008 ... BitTorrent Anonymously - Encrypted protection of your identity (IP), ... CENSORED EPISODES <7 - 9>/The Men Who Killed Kennedy - <7 of 9> ...]


Very interesting stuff there like the finger print from TSBD Sixth floor that matched a Johnson crony! And the Ferry Oswald search for Cancer agents that were immediate and quick killing, Ruby died of a fast acting cancer! David Ferry also died of cancer!

[Hippo_Tron]

114. All of which proves absolutely nothing

So JFK didn't do exactly what the CIA and the military wanted in certain instances. So did most Cold-War era Presidents at some point or another. The Dulles Brothers wanted Eisenhower to back Chiang Kai-Shek in an invasion of mainland China during the Quemoy crisis in '54. Ike did exactly what Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He managed the conflict in a manner that made him appear tough on Communism but in reality was designed to make sure not to drag the United States into an extremely costly war over something relatively insignificant.

Truman also stood up to the military and fired MacArthur for insubordination when he wanted to break the ceasefire and escalate the Korean War in '51.

Yet neither of those guys were assassinated.

[bottomtheweaver]

115. bwahaha.

Truman signed the freaking thing into existence. He also dropped two atom bombs on heavily populated civilian populations to please the MIC. What next, Ronnie really WAS our greatest president?

[Hippo_Tron]

117. Didn't say that they were wonderful presidents

But showing instances of where JFK opposed the CIA and the military doesn't even come close to proving that JFK was some kind of radical anti-establishment figure or furthermore than the CIA and the military had him assassinated.

Carter, as the OP mentioned, also opposed the CIA and the military several times. Even if Reagan's people engineered the Iran Hostage crisis (something that is completely unproven) it by no means guaranteed their victory. Reagan's attacks on Carter with regard to the hostage situation were very well exploited by the Carter campaign to make Reagan look like a crazy warmonger. With the economy what it was, Regan should have been way ahead in the polls. But Carter's campaign was very effectively able to scare enough people away from Reagan than the polls were tied until the debate which took place a week before the election. Carter blew the debate and allowed Reagan to ease peoples' fears about him being a warmonger.

If the CIA was really in the business of assassinating anti-establishment presidents they would've killed Carter too instead of half-assing the job by meddling in politics. The fact is that while JFK and Carter were to the left of Truman/Eisenhower/Nixon/Regan, that really isn't hard. Those guys were about as right wing as they come on foreign policy. They backed every single dictator so long as it would prevent the spread of communism. The only thing JFK and Carter did differently was that they were more selective about what dictators they were willing to back and the extent they were willing to use covert operations. But they still gave the CIA and the military industrial complex plenty of work to justify their continued existence.

[bottomtheweaver]

118. Do you find that in a textbook published in Texas?

Don't be ridiculous. If Carter had bucked them directly they would have nailed him too. He didn't. Neither did Nixon, but he ended a profitable war, so they took him out of office less sadistically. Stop watching those idiot PBS specials.

[Hippo_Tron]

119. ROFL, Nixon was an enemy of the CIA/military industrial complex?

I think I'll take advice about textbooks from somebody who has actually read one.

[bottomtheweaver]

120. It doesn't take much.

Put the brakes on the money train and it's over no matter who you are. Why do you imagine we're still bombing Afghanistan for example?

[Time for change]

122. You're right -- None of this proves how JFK was assassinated or who assassinated him

There are several books on that subject, none of which I discuss in this post. Here is something that I wrote on that subject a few years ago:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5449636

However, I would say that, for those who find the evidence for U.S. government complicity in the JFK assassination convincing, the issues discussed in this OP provide a more than plausible reason. It's true that other presidents did not do everything that our military asked of them. That's not the point. It's a matter of degree. I would say that JFK went much further than any of the others in standing up to the military and CIA. And he was in the process of trying to withdraw from Vietnam and end the Cold War.

[loudsue]

121. What will it take for this system to be replaced with one that is sane?

A revolution? Or just quantum leaps in people's consciousness?

[Time for change]

123. Great question

The answer is obviously very complex, and beyond my capability to answer. But I would say that the first and most important step is an informed citizenry. I think that from that, the rest will follow.

I think that the fight over net neutrality is going to be one of the most important fights we will ever face.