Is it news or propaganda? How can you tell?
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Full Video of "JFK and the Unspeakable" panel discussion with Jim Douglass, Oliver Stone and Lisa Pease, moderated by Robert Ellsberg
Here is the entire talk, filmed at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, California, on November 8, 2010, 50 years to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected President.
I have to say, each and every one of these men was just as nice and genuine and brilliant offstage as they were onstage. It was such a treat to share the stage with them for this event! YouTube limits uploads to 15 minutes, hence the five parts, below.
I've talked about this many times before, and will talk about it many times again. But this article should be required reading for anyone interested in how our news is shaped. And I'm sure the CIA isn't the only group with its hooks in the media.
Please read, if you haven't already, Carl Bernstein's landmark piece, "The CIA and the Media," originally published in Rolling Stone in 1977. The New York Times did a follow up piece later that same year talking extensively about the one outlet Bernstein doesn't go after, his home journal of the Washington Post.
And please read this memo from then CIA Director Robert Gates (now Secretary of Defense), written fourteen years after Bernstein's breakthrough piece, which contains the following text about the CIA's Public Affairs Office (PAO):
A. MEDIA
1) Current Program:
a) PAO now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.This has helped us turn some "intelligence failure" stories into "intelligence success" stories, and it has contributed to the accuracy of countless others. In many instances, we have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests or jeopardized sources and methods.
b) PAO spokespersons build and maintain these professional relationships with reporters by responding to daily inquiries from them over the telephone (3369 in 1991), by providing unclassified background briefings to them at Headquarters (174 in 1991), and by arranging for them to interview the DCI, DDCI and other senior Agency officials (164 in 1991).
c. PAO responds to numerous requests from authors, researchers, filmmakers, and others seeking information, guidance, or cooperation from the Agency in their endeavours. Some responses can be handled in a one-shot telephone call. Others, such as Life Magazine's proposed photo essay, BBC's six-part series, Ron Kessler's requests for information for his Agency book, and the need for an Agency focal point in the Rochester Institute of Technology controversy drew heavily on PAO resources.
d. PAO has also reviewed some film scripts about the Agency, documentary and fictional, at the request of filmmakers seeking guidance on accuracy and authenticity. In a few instances, we facilitated the filming of a few scenes on Agency premises. Responding positively to these requests in a limited way has provided PAO with the opportunity to help others depict the Agency and its activities accurately and without negative distortions. Except for responding to such requests, we do not seek to play a role in filmmaking ventures about the Agency which come to our attention. For example, although we knew that Oliver Stone's movie on JFK was in the works for some time, we did not contact him to volunteer an Agency viewpoint.
Here's a picture of the document for the above text, for the doubting Thomases among us.
It should be obvious to anyone who reads and digests the above that if print media was important, and TV, that control of major blogs on the Internet would be the next step in their strategy for total media dominance.
I've written at length about the CIA and the Media in the book The Assassinations. I refer you there for the details I don't have time to repeat here. If you are serious about learning Real History, you have to learn about the control of the media. You can't stop yourself from being propagandized if you have no awareness that it's happening.
It's also a bit scary that Obama is leaving in charge of the Defense Department the man who had no qualms bending the media to the will of the CIA. In this same document, the CIA references the 'briefing' (I read that as propagandizing) of new Congressional members.
I recommend reading the whole document - as it mentions the priority the CIA gives to its contacts in Academia and the business world as well as the media.
Re Sarah Palin, the Washington Post, conspiracy theories, and bold letter writing
I recevied this by email and wanted to share it with you:
September 8, 2008
Letters to The Editor The Kennebec Journal Augusta, ME 04330 Fax: 623-2220
On September 4 and 5, the Kennebec Journal fed its readers rambling, groveling front page “news stories” and distracting op-ed opinions about our all-smiles newest candidate for vice president of the United States. But the KJ failed to tell us about the Wildlife Defense Fund’s (WDF) charge that Palin supports the massacre through pursuit by marksmen in low-flying airplanes of wolves struggling to escape through deep Alaska snow. When the exhausted animals collapse, they are shot to death from an airplane. WDF says, “In 2007, Palin proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf’s fore leg as proof of the kill, (and) earlier this year she introduced legislation to expand the (bounty) program. On March 27, 2008, a coalition of the WDF, the Alaska Wolf Alliance, and the Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club requested a temporary stay to stop the bounty. Three days later a Superior Court judge issued the stay; the Alaska Department of Fish and Game failed to offer the bounty; and the State Senate failed to pass Palin’s bill.”
Hoping to shift readers’ attention away from Palin’s treatment of wildlife, the KJ produced two top-of-the-page opinion pieces featuring Palin’s hunting prowess at bringing down her own moose and caribou. Hunting is not an everyday hot button issue in Maine, but animal cruelty is! Maine readers may not be fooled by the KJ’s devious tactic designed to promote Palin’s image as a macho woman hunter -- rather than to examine her as the alleged macho promotress of the cruel Alaska massacre of innocent wild animals.
Copies to: Public-spirited citizens
Julian C. Holmes
Holmes has been told in no uncertain terms that this paper will never print any of his letters, and that he should simply stop writing their journal. But if you think letters like this desperately need to be heard, consider contacting The Kennebec Journal via the address or fax number above.
Julian is a prolific letter writer. I first read one of his pieces years ago, when Garby Leon forwarded it to me. In it, Holmes decried the Washington Post for deriding conspiracy theories, when so much of our recent history has been writ by conspiracies.
I promptly posted a link to it from my Real History Archives site, but the original link broke. Here is that letter, in full. All emphasis within is mine.
April 25, 1992 Richard Harwood, Ombudsman The Washington Post 1150 15th Street NW Washington, DC 20071 Dear Mr. Harwood,
Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government "conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various other political and social sports events, editors and reporters scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government stability -- the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!
It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".
Recall how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.
Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring the Anderson column before printing it (*2).
But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S. arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets (*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of conspiracy and by publishing false information about the drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from Rangel (*5).
Sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government complicity in the drug trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug conspiracy evaporating, the ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and retained Hosenball to exorcise from our minds a newly emerging threat to domestic tranquility, the "October Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But close on the heels of Hosenball and the Post came Barbara Honegger and then Gary Sick who authored independently, two years apart, books with the same title, "October Surprise" (*8). Honegger was a member of the Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in 1980. Gary Sick, professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University, was on the staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick published their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages until after the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was to quash the possibility of a pre-election release(an October surprise). which would have bolstered the reelection prospects for President Carter.
Others published details of this alleged Reagan-Bush conspiracy. In October 1988, Playboy Magazine ran an expose "An Election Held Hostage"; FRONTLINE did another in April 1991 (*9). In June, 1991 a conference of distinguished journalists, joined by 8 of the former hostages, challenged the Congress to "make a full, impartial investigation" of the election/hostage allegations. The Post reported the statement of the hostages, but not a word of the conference itself which was held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium (*10). On February 5, 1992 a gun-shy, uninspired House of Representatives begrudgingly authorized an "October Surprise" investigation by a task force of 13 congressmen headed by Lee Hamilton (D-IN). who had chaired the House of Representatives Iran-Contra Committee. Hamilton has named as chief team counsel Larry Barcella, a lawyer who represented BCCI when the Bank was indicted in 1988 (*11).
Like the Washington Post, Hamilton had not shown interest in pursuing the U.S. arms-for-drugs operation (*12). He had accepted Oliver North's lies,and as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee he derailed House Resolution 485 which had asked President Reagan to answer questions about Contra support activities of government officials and others (*13). After CIA operative John Hull (from Hamilton's home state). was charged in Costa Rica with "international drug trafficking and hostile acts against the nation's security", Hamilton and 18 fellow members of Congress tried to intimidate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez into handling Hull's case "in a manner that will not complicate U.S.-Costa Rican relations" (*14). The Post did not report the Hamilton letter or the Costa Rican response that declared Hull's case to be "in as good hands as our 100 year old uninterrupted democracy can provide to all citizens" (*15).
Though the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy theories, it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves government or corporate conspiracies:
In its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery, surveillance, false arrests, and violence to illegally harass U.S.citizens in the 60's (*16).
The CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying crops, brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and conspiring with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other leaders" (*17).
"Standard Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of Germany. ...By its cartel agreements with Standard Oil, the United States was effectively prevented from developing or producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin (*18).
U.S. Government agencies knowingly withheld information about dosages of radiation "almost certain to produce thyroid abnormalities or cancer" that contaminated people residing near the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford, Washington (*19).
Various branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in getting around to cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear weapons sites (*20). State and local governments back the nuclear industry's secret public relations strategy (*21).
"The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some twenty comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused the public and Congress by repeated claims that we are winning the war against cancer. In fact, the cancer establishment has continually minimized the evidence for increasing cancer rates which it has largely attributed to smoking and dietary fat, while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and the workplace." (*22).
The Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq "is yet another example of the President's people conspiring to keep both Congress and the American people in the dark" (*23).
If you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of doing business in this country.
Take the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf War by the Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).
Or the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend $100 million in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated history of Columbus in America (*25). along the lines of the Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the two worlds", (*26). rather than examining more realistic aspects of the Spanish invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death" (*27).
Or circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from the INSLAW company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer software which "now point to a widespread conspiracy implicating lesser Government officials in the theft of INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson (*28).
Or Watergate.
Or the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" (*29), where the White House knew of the criminal activities at "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" (BCCI) (*30), where U.S. intelligence agencies did their secret banking (*31), and where bribery of prominent American public officials "was a way of doing business" (*32).
Or the 1949 conviction of "GM [General Motors], Standard Oil of California, Firestone, and E. Roy Fitzgerald, among others, for criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with gas- and diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to transportation companies throughout the country" [in, among others, the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles] (*33).
Or the collusion in 1973 between Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT). and the U.S. Department of Transportation to overlook safety defects in the 1.2 million Corvair automobiles manufactured by General Motors in the early 60's (*34).
Or the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive, and which ignored repeated warnings of the Shield's hazards and which "stonewalled, deceived, covered up, and covered up the coverups...[thus inflicting] on women a worldwide epidemic of pelvic infections." (*35).
Or that cooperation between McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company and the FAA resulted in failure to enforce regulations regarding the unsafe DC-10 cargo door which failed in flight killing all 364 passengers on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 on March 3, 1974 (*36).
Or the now-banned, cancer-producing pregnancy drug Diethylstilbestrol (DES). that was sold by manufacturers who ignored tests which showed DES to be carcinogenic; and who acted "in concert with each other in the testing and marketing of DES for miscarriage purposes" (*37).
Or the conspiracies among bankers and speculators, with the cooperation of a corrupted Congress, to relieve depositors of their savings. This "arrogant disregard from the White House, Congress and corporate world for the interests and rights of the American people" will cost U.S. tapayers many hundreds of billions of dollars (*38).
Or the Westinghouse, Allis Chalmers,Federal Pacific, and General Electric executives who met surreptitiously in hotel rooms to fix prices and eliminate competition on heavy industrial equipment (*39).
Or the convictions of Industrial Biotest Laboratories (IBT). officers for fabricating safety tests on prescription drugs (*40).
Or the conspiracy by the asbestos industry to suppress knowledge of medical problems relating to asbestos (*41).
Or the 1928 Achnacarry Agreement through which oil companies "agreed not to engage in any effective price competition" (*42).
Or the conspiracy among U.S. Government agencies and the Congress to cover up the nature of our decades-old war against the people of Nicaragua -- a covert war that continues in 1992 with the U.S. Government applying pressure for the Nicaraguan police to reorganize into a more repressive force (*43).
Or the conspiracy by the CIA and the U.S. Government to interfere in the Chilean election process with military aid, covert actions, and an economic boycott which culminated in the overthrow of the legitimately elected government and the assassination of President Salvador Allende in 1973 (*44).
Or the conspiracy among U.S. officials including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby to finance terrorism in Angola for the purpose of disrupting Angola's plans for peaceful elections in October 1975, and to lie about these actions to the Congress and the news media (*45). And CIA Director George Bush's subsequent cover up of this U.S.-sponsored terrorism (*46).
Or President George Bush's consorting with the Pentagon to invade Panama in 1989 and thereby violate the Constitution of the United States, the U.N. Charter, the O.A.S. Charter, and the Panama Canal Treaties (*47).
Or the "gross antitrust violations" (*48) and the conspiracy of American oil companies and the British and U.S. governments to strangle Iran economically after Iran nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. And the subsequent overthrow by the CIA in 1953 of Iranian Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (*49).
Or the CIA-planned assassination of Congo head-of-state Patrice Lumumba (*50).
Or the deliberate and wilful efforts of President George Bush, Senator Robert Dole, Senator George Mitchell, various U.S. Government agencies, and members of both Houses of the Congress to buy the 1990 Nicaraguan national elections for the presidential candidate supported by President Bush (*51).
Or the collective approval by 64 U.S. Senators of Robert Gates to head the CIA, in the face of "unmistakable evidence that Gates lied about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal" (*52).
Or "How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism" (*53).
Or how the Reagan Administration connived with the Vatican to ban the use of USAID funds by any country "for the promotion of birth control or abortion" (*54).
Or "the way the Vatican and Washington colluded to achieve common purpose in Central America" (*55).
Or the collaboration of Guatemalan strong-man and mass murderer Hector Gramajo with the U.S. Army to design "programs to build civilian-military cooperation" at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia; five of the nine soldiers accused in the 1989 Jesuit massacre in El Salvador are graduates of SOA which trains Latin/American military personnel (*56).
Or the conspiracy of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant administration to harass and cause bodily harm to whistleblower Linda Porter who uncovered dangerous working conditions at the facility (*57).
Or the conspiracy of President Richard Nxion and the Government of South Vietnam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the 1968 U.S. presidential election (*58).
Or the pandemic coverups of police violence (*59).
Or the always safe-to-cite worldwide communist conspiracy (*60).
Or maybe the socially responsible, secret consortium to publish The Satanic Verses in paperback (*61).
Conspiracies are obviously a way to get things done, and the Washington Post offers little comment unless conspiracy theorizing threatens to expose a really important conspiracy that, let's say, benefits big business or big government.
Such a conspiracy would be like our benevolent CIA's 1953 overthrow of the Iranian government to help out U.S. oil companies; or like our illegal war against Panama to tighten U.S. control over Panama and the Canal; or like monopoly control of broadcasting that facilitates corporate censorship on issues of public importance (*62). When the camouflage of such conspiracies is stripped away, public confidence in the conspiring officials can erode -- depending on how seriously the citizenry perceives the conspiracy to have violated the public trust. Erosion of public trust in the status quo is what the Post seems to see as a real threat to its corporate security.
Currently, the Post has mounted vituperative, frenzied attacks on Oliver Stone's movie "JFK", which reexamines the U.S. Government's official (Warren Commission. finding that a single gunman, acting alone, killed President John F. Kennedy. The movie also is the story of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of Clay Shaw, the only person ever tried in connection with the assassination. And the movie proposes that the Kennedy assassination was the work of conspirators whose interests would not be served by a president who, had he lived, might have disengaged us from our war against Vietnam.
The Post ridicules a reexamination of the Kennedy assassination along lines suggested by "JFK". Senior Post journalists like Charles Krauthammer, Ken Ringle, George Will, Phil McCombs, and Michael Isikoff, have been called up to man the bulwarks against public sentiment which has never supported the government's non-conspiratorial assassination thesis. In spite of the facts that the Senate Intelligence Committee of 1975 and 1976 found that "both the FBI and CIA had repeatedly lied to the Warren Commission" (*63) and that the 1979 Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that President Kennedy was probably killed "as a result of a conspiracy" (*64), a truly astounding number of Post stories have been used as vehicles to discredit "JFK" as just another conspiracy (*65).
Some of the more vicious attacks on the movie are by editor Stephen Rosenfeld, and journalists Richard Cohen, George Will, and George Lardner Jr (*66). They ridicule the idea that Kennedy could have had second thoughts about escalating the Vietnam War and declaim that there is no historical justification for this idea. Seasoned journalist Peter Dale Scott, former Pentagon/CIA liaison chief L. Fletcher Prouty, and investigators David Scheim and John Newman have each authored defense of the "JFK" thesis that Kennedy was not enthusiastic about staying in Vietnam (*67). But the Post team just continues ranting against the possibility of a high-level assassination conspiracy while offering little justification for its arguments.
An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered it (*71).
Two weeks after his first "JFK" article, Lardner blustered his way through a justification for his unauthorized possession of the early draft ofthe movie (*72). He also defended his reference to Pershing Gervais by lashing out at Garrison as a writer "of gothic fiction".
When the movie was released in December, Lardner "reviewed" it (*73). He again ridiculed the film's thesis that following the Kennedy assassination, President Johnson reversed Kennedy's plans to de-escalate the Vietnam War. Lardner cited a memorandum issued by Johnson four days after Kennedy died. Lardner says this memorandum was written before the assassination, and that it "was a continuation of Kennedy's policy". In fact, the memorandum was drafted the day before the assassination by McGeorge Bundy (Kennedy's Assistant for National Security Affairs) Kennedy was in Texas, and may never have seen it. Following the assassination, it was rewritten; and the final version provided for escalating the war against Vietnam (*74) -- facts that Lardner avoided. [Lardner has yet to explain his last conversation with key assassination witness David Ferrie, who begged for protection. Ferrie died shortly before, during, or shortly after Lardner's visit. The coronor's examination of the body made him think Ferrie had to have been dead already when Lardner left him, but Lardner insisted that Ferrie was alive when he left.]
The Post's crusade against exposing conspiracies is blatantly dishonest: The Warren Commission inquiry into the Kennedy Assassination was for the most part conducted in secret. This fact is buried in the Post (*75). Nor do current readers of this newspaper find meaningful discussion of the Warren Commission's secret doubts about both the FBI and the CIA (*76). Or of a dispatch from CIA headquarters instructing co-conspirators at field stations to counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization" and to "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors "and to "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ...The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..." (*77).
In 1979, Washington journalist Deborah Davis published Katharine The Great, the story of Post publisher Katharine Graham and her newspaper's close ties with Washington's powerful elite, a number of whom were with the CIA.
Particularly irksome to Post editor Benjamin Bradlee was a Davis claim that Bradlee had "produced CIA material" (*78). Understandably sensitive about this kind of publicity, Bradlee told Davis' publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich ,"Miss Davis is lying ...I never produced CIA material ...what I can do is to brand Miss Davis as a fool and to put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't give a shit for the truth". The Post bullied HBJ into recalling the book; HBJ shredded 20,000 copies; Davis sued HBJ for breach of contract and damage to reputation; HBJ settled out of court; and Davis published her book elsewhere with an appendix that demonstrated Bradlee to have been deeply involved with producing cold-war/CIA propaganda (*79). Bradlee still says the allegations about his association with people in the CIA are false, but he has apparently taken no action to contest the xetensive documentation presented by Deborah Davis in the second and third editions of her book (*80).
And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.
Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice:the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictmen twas announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).
Of the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to consider Philip Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement from his wife Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post. In a lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs. Graham said: "A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent terrorists from using the media as a platform fortheir views. ... The point is that we generally know when we are being manipulated, and we've learned better how and where to draw the line, though the decisions are often difficult" (*85).
Today, the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified that our elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as conspirators behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the assassination of President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in that, like most of us and like most institutions, the Post runs its business as a conspiracy of like-minded entrepreneurs -- a conspiracy "to act or work together toward the same result or goal" (*86). But where the Post really parts company from just plain people is when it pretends that conspiracies associated with big business or government are "coincidence". Post reporter Lardner vents the frustration inherent in having to maintain this dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver Stone and suggests that Stone may actually believe that the Post's opposition to Stone's movie is a "conspiracy". Lardner assures us that Stone's complaints are "groundless and paranoid and smack of McCarthyism" (*87).
So how does the Post justify devoting so much energy to ridiculing those who investigate conspiracies?
The Post has answers: people revert to conspiracy theories because they need something "neat and tidy" (*88) that "plugs a gap no other generally accepted theory fills', (*89. and "coincidence ...is always the safest and most likely explanation for any conjunction of curious circumstances ..." (*90).
And what does this response mean? It means that "coincidence theory" is what the Post espouses when it would prefer not to admit to a conspiracy. In other words, some things just "happen". And, besides, conspiracy to do certain things would be a crime; "coincidence" is a safer bet.
Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, who, it is rumored, serves as Executive Director of the Benevolent Protective Order of Coincidence Theorists, (*91) recently issued a warning about presidential candidates "who have begun to mutter about a press conspiracy". Ordinarily, Harwood would simply dismiss these charges as "symptoms of the media paranoia that quadrennially engulfs members of the American political class" (*92). But a fatal mistake was made by the mutterers; they used the "C" word against the PRESS! And Harwood exploded his off-the-cuff comment into an entire column -- ending it with:"We are the new journalists, immersed too long, perhaps, in the cleansing waters of political conformity. But conspirators we ain't".
Distinguished investigative journalist Morton Mintz, a 29-year veteran of the Washington Post, now chairs the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In the December issue of The Progressive, Mintz wrote "A Reporter Looks Back in Anger -- Why the Media Cover Up Corporate Crime". Therein he discussed the difficulties in convincing editors to accept important news stories. He illustrated the article with his own experiences at the Post, where he says he was known as "the biggest pain in the ass in the office" (*93).
Would Harwood argue that grief endured by journalists at the hands of editors is a matter of random coincidence?
And that such policy as Mintz described is made independently by editors without influence from fellow editors or from management? Would Harwood have us believe that at the countless office "meetings" in which news people are ever in attendance, there is no discussion of which stories will run and which ones will find inadequate space? That there is no advanced planning for stories or that there are no cooperative efforts among the staff? Or that in the face of our news-media "grayout" of presidential candidate Larry Agran, (*94) a Post journalist would be free to give news space to candidate Agran equal to that the Post lavishes on candidate Clinton? Let's face it: these possibilities are about as likely as Barbara Bush entertaining guests at a soup kitchen.
Would Harwood have us believe that media critic and former Post Ombudsman Ben Bagdikian is telling less than the truth in his account of wire-service control over news: "The largely anonymous men who control the syndicate and wire service copy desks and the central wire photo machines determine at a single decision what millions will see and hear. ...there seems to be little doubt that these gatekeepers preside over an operation in which an appalling amount of press agentry sneaks in the back door of American journalism and marches untouched out the front door as 'news'" (*95).
When he sat on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge Clarence Thomas violated U.S. law when he failed to remove himself from a case in which he then proceeded to reverse a $10 million judgment against the Ralston Purina Company (*96). Ralston Purina, the animal feed empire, is the family fortune of Thomas' mentor, Senator John Danforth. The Post limited its coverage of the Thomas malfeasance to 56 words buried in the middle of a 1200-word article (*97). Would Harwood have us believe that the almost complete blackout on this matter by the major news media and the U.S. Senate was a matter of coincidence? Could a Post reporter have written a story about Ralston Purina if she had wanted to? Can a brick swim?
Or take the fine report produced last September by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. Titled All the Vice President's Men, it documents "How the Quayle Council on Competitiveness Secretly Undermines Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs". Three months later, Post journalists David Broder and Bob Woodward published "The President's Understudy", a seven-part series on Vice President Quayle. Although this series does address Quayle's role with the Competitiveness Council, its handling of the Council's disastrous impact on America is inadequate. It is 40,000 words of mostly aimless chatter about Quayle memorabilia: youth, family, college record, Christianity, political aspirations, intellectual aspirations, wealthy friends, government associates, golf, travels, wife Marilyn, and net worth -- revealing little about Quayle's abilities, his understanding of society's problems, or his thoughts about justice and freedom, and never mentioning the comprehensive Nader study of Quayle's record in the Bush Administration (*98).
Now, did Broder or did Woodward forget about the Nader study? Or did both of them forget? Or did one, or the other, or both decide not to mention it? Did these two celebrated, seasoned Post reporters ever discuss together their jointly authored stories? Did they decide to publish such a barren set of articles because it would enhance their reputations? How did management feel about the use of precious news space for such frivolity? Is it possible that so many pages were dedicated to this twaddle without people "acting or working together toward the same result or goal"? (*99) Do crocodiles fly?
On March 20, front-page headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post read respectively:
TSONGAS DROPPED OUT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLEARING CLINTON'S PATH
TSONGAS ABANDONS CAMPAIGN LEAVING CLINTON CLEAR PATH TOWARD SHOWDOWN WITH BUSH
TSONGAS CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON
TSONGAS EXIT CLEARS WAY FOR CLINTON
This display of editorial independence should at least raise questions of whether the news media collective mindset is really different from that of any other cartel -- like oil, diamond, energy, (*100) or manufacturing cartels, a cartel being "a combination of independent commercial enterprises designed to limit competition" (*101).
The Washington Post editorial page carries the heading:
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Is it? Of course not. There probably is no such thing. Does the Post "conspire" to keep its staff and its newspaper from wandering too far from the safety of mediocrity? The Post would respond that the question is absurd. In that I am not privy to the Post's telephone conversations, I can only speculate on how closely the media elite must monitor the staff. But we all know how few micro-seconds it takes a new reporter to learn what subjects are taboo and what are "safe", and that experienced reporters don't have to ask.
What is more important, however, than speculating about how the Post communicates within its own corporate structure and with other members of the cartel, is to document and publicize what the Post does in public, namely, how it shapes and censors the news.
Sincerely, Julian C. Holmes
Copies to: Public-spirited citizens, both inside and outside the news media, And - maybe a few others.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes to Letter of April 25, 1992: 1. Mark Hosenball, "The Ultimate Conspiracy", Washington Post, September 11, 1988, p.C1
2a. Julian Holmes, Letter to Washington Post Ombudsman Richard Harwood, June 4,1991. Notes that the Post censored, from the Anderson/Van Atta column, references to the Christic Institute and to Robert Gates.
2b. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Iran-Contra Figure Dodges Extradition", Washington Merry-Go-Round, United Feature Syndicate, May 26, 1991. This is the column submitted to the Post (see note 2a)..
2c. Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "The Man Washington Doesn't Want to Extradite", Washington Post, May 26, 1991. The column (see note 2b). as it appeared in the Post (see note 2a)..
3a. Case No. 86-1146-CIV-KING, Amended Complaint for RICO Conspiracy, etc., United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey v. John Hull et al., October 3, 1986.
3b. Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein, "Reports: Contras Send Drugs to U.S.", Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 16, 1986.
3c. Neal Matthews, "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (based on interviews with Robert Plumlee, contra resupply pilot)., San Diego Reader, April 5, 1990.
4. Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
5a. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, University ofCalifornia Press, 1991, p.179-181.
5b. David S. Hilzenrath, "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling", Washington Post, July 22, 1987, p.A07.
5c. Partial correction to the Washington Post of July 22, Washington Post, July 24,1987, p.A3.
5d. The Washington Post declined to publish SubCommittee Chairman Rangel's Letter- to-the-Editor of July 22, 1987. It was printed in the Congressional Record on August 6, 1987, p.E3296-7.
6a. Michael Kranish, "Kerry Says US Turned Blind Eye to Contra-Drug Trail", Boston Globe, April 10, 1988.
6b. Mary McGrory, "The Contra-Drug Stink", Washington Post, April 10, 1988, p.B1. 6c. Robert Parry with Rod Nordland, "Guns for Drugs? Senate Probers Trace an Old Contra Connection to George Bush's Office", Newsweek, May 23, 1988, p.22.
6d. Dennis Bernstein, "Iran-Contra -- The Coverup Continues", The Progressive, November 1988, p.24.
6e. "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", A Report Prepared by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1988.
7a. Mark Hosenball, "If It's October ... Then It's Time for an Iranian Conspiracy Theory", Washington Post, October 9, 1988, p.D1.
7b. Mark Hosenball, "October Surprise! Redux! The Latest Version of the 1980 'Hostage- Deal' Story Is Still Full of Holes", Washington Post, April 21, 1991,p.B2.
8a. Barbara Honegger, October Surprise, New York: Tudor, 1989.
8b. Gary Sick, October Surprise, New York: Times Books, Random House, 1991.
9a. Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage", Playboy, October 1988, p.73.
9b. Robert Parry and Robert Ross, "The Election Held Hostage", FRONTLINE, WGBH-TV,April 16, 1991.
10a. Reuter, "Ex-Hostages Seek Probe By Congress", Washington Post, June 14,1991,p.A4.
10b. "An Election Held Hostage?", Conference, Dirksen Senate Office Building Auditorium, Washington DC, June 13, 1991; Sponsored by The Fund For New Priorities in America, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, 10016.
11a. David Brown and Guy Gugliotta, "House Approves Inquiry Into 'OctoberSurprise'", Washington Post, February 6, 1992, p.A11.
11b. Jack Colhoun, "Lawmakers Lose Nerve on October Surprise", The Guardian, December 11, 1991, p.7.
11c. Jack Colhoun, "October Surprise Probe Taps BCCI Lawyer", The Guardian, February 26, 1992, p.3.
12. See note 5a, p.180-1.
13a. See note 4, p.229, 240-1.
13b. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Senate Report No. 100-216, House Report No. 100-433, November 1987, p.139-141.
14a. Letter to His Excellency Oscar Arias Sanchez, President of the Republic of Costa Rica; from Members of the U.S. Congress David Dreier, Lee Hamilton, Dave McCurdy, Dan Burton, Mary Rose Oakar, Jim Bunning, Frank McCloskey, Cass Ballenger, Peter Kostmayer, Jim Bates, Douglas Bosco, James Inhofe, Thomas Foglietta, Rod Chandler, Ike Skelton, Howard Wolpe, Gary Ackerman, Robert Lagomarsino, and Bob McEwen; January 26, 1989.
14b. Peter Brennan, "Costa Rica Considers Seeking Contra Backer in U.S. -- Indiana Native Wanted on Murder Charge in 1984 Bomb Attack in Nicaragua", WashingtonPost, February 1, 1990.
15. Press Release from the Costa Rican Embassy, Washington DC, On the Case of the Imprisonment of Costa Rican Citizen John Hull", February 6, 1989.
16. Brian Glick, War at Home, Boston: South End Press, 1989.
17. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard-- The U.S. Role in the New World Order, Boston: South End Press, 1991, p.121.
18. Hearings Before the Committee on Patents, United States Senate, 77th Cong., 2nd Session (1942)., part I, as cited in Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben, New York: The Free Press, Macmillan, 1978, p.93.
19. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Study of A-Plant Neighbors' Health Urged", Washington Post, July 13, 1990, p.A6.
20. Tom Horton, "A Cost Higher Than the Peace Dividend -- Price Tag Mounts to Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Sites", Baltimore Sun, February 23, 1992, p.1K.
21. "The Nuclear Industry's Secret PR Strategy", EXTRA!, March 1992, p.15.
22a. Samuel S. Epstein, MD et al, Losing the War Against Cancer: Need for PublicPolicy Reform", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.E947-9.
22b. Samuel S. Epstein, "The Cancer Establishment", Washington Post, March 10, 1992.
23a. Hon. Henry B. Gonzalez, "Efforts to Thwart Investigation of the BNL Scandal", Congressional Record, March 30, 1992, p.H2005-2014.
23b. Hon. David E. Skaggs (CO)., White House Spin Control on Pre-War Iraq Policy", Congressional Record, April 2, 1992, p.H2285.
23c. Nicholas Rostow, Special Assistant to the President and Legal Adviser, Memorandum to Jeanne S. Archibald et al, "Meeting on congressional requests for information and documents", April 8, 1991; Congressional Record, April 2, 1992,p.H2285.
24a. Michio Kaku, "Operation Desert Lie: Pentagon Confesses", The
Guardian, March11, 1992, p.4.
24b. J. Max Robins, "NBC's Unaired Iraq Tapes Not a Black and White Case", Variety Magazine, March 4, 1991, p.25.
25. Emory R. Searcy Jr., Clergy and Laity Concerned, Spring 1991 Letter to"Friends", p.1.
26. Jean Dimeo, "Selling Hispanics on Columbus -- Luis Vasquez-Ajmac Is Hired to Promote Smithsonian Project", Washington Post, November 18, 1991, p.Bus.8.
27. Hans Koning, "Teach the Truth About Columbus", Washington Post, September 3,1991, p.A19.
28a. James Kilpatrick, "Software-Piracy Case Emitting Big Stench", St. Louis Post/Dispatch, March 18, 1991, p.3B. Elliot L. Richardson, "A High-Tech Watergate", New York Times, October 21,1991.
29. "BCCI -- NBC Sunday Today", February 23, 1992, p.12; transcript prepared by Burrelle's Information Services. The quote is from New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau who is running his own independent investigation of BCCI.
30. Norman Bailey, former Reagan White House intelligence analyst; from an interview with Mark Rosenthal of NBC News. See note 29, p.5.
31. Jack Colhoun, "BCCI Skeletons Haunting Bush's Closet", The Guardian, September 18, 1991, p.9.
32. Robert Morgenthau. See note 29, p.10.
33. Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime and Violence, San Francisco: Sierra ClubBooks, 1989 paperback edition, p.227.
34. See note 33, p.136-7.
35. Morton Mintz, At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield, NewYork: Pantheon, 1985. As cited in Mokhiber, see note 33, p.157.
36. See note 33, p.164-171.
37. See note 33, p.172-180.
38. Michael Waldman, Who Robbed America?, New York: Random House, 1990. The quote is from Ralph Nader's Introduction, p.iii.
44. William Blum, The CIA -- A Forgotten History, London: Zed Books Ltd., 1986,p.232-243.
45a. John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, New York: Norton, 1978.
45b. See note 44, p.284-291.
46. See note 17, p.18.
47a. Letter to President George Bush from The Ad Hoc Committee for Panama (James Abourezk et al)., January 10, 1990; published in The Nation, February 5, 1990, p.163.
47b. Philip E. Wheaton, Panama, Trenton NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992, p.145-7.
48a. Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, Power, Inc., New York: Bantam Books, 1977,p.521.
48b. "The International Oil Cartel", Federal Trade Commission, December 2, 1949. Cited in 48a, p.521.
49a. See note 44, p.67-76.
49b. See note 48a, p.530-1.
50. Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits, New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983,p.60.
51. HR-3385, "An Act to Provide Assistance for Free and Fair Elections in Nicaragua". Passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 4, 1989 by avote of 263 to 136, and the Senate on October 17 by a vote of 64 to 35.
52. Jack Colhoun, "Gates Oozing Trail of Lies, Gets Top CIA Post", The Guardian,November 20, 1991, p.6.
53. Carl Bernstein, Time, February 24, 1992, Cover Story p.28-35.
54. "The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control", Time, February 24, 1992, p.35.
55. "Time's Missing Link: Poland to Latin America", National Catholic Reporter,February 28, 1992, p.24.
56a. Jim Lynn, "School of Americas Commander Hopes to Expand Mission", Benning Patriot, February 21, 1992, p.12.
56b. Vicky Imerman, "U.S. Army School of the Americas Plans Expansion", News Release from S.O.A. Watch, P.O. Bo 3330, Columbus, Georgia 31903.
57. 60 MINUTES, CBS, March 8, 1992.
58. Jack Colhoun, "Tricky Dick's Quick Election Fix", The Guardian, January 29,1992, p.18.
59a. Sean P. Murphy, "Several Probes May Have Ignored Evidence Against Police", Boston Globe, July 28, 1991, p.1.
59b. Christopher B. Daly, "Pattern of Police Abuses Reported in Boston Case", Washington Post, July 12, 1991, p.A3.
59c. Associated Press, "Dayton Police Probing Erasure of Arrest Video", WashingtonPost, May 26, 1991, p.A20.
59d. Gabriel Escobar, "Deaf Man's Death In Police Scuffle Called Homicide", Washington Post, May 18, 1991, p.B1.
59e. Jay Mathews, "L.A. Police Laughed at Beating", Washington Post, March 19, 1991, p.A1.
59f. David Maraniss, "One Cop's View of Police Violence", Washington Post, April 12,1991, p.A1.
59g. From News Services, "Police Abuse Detailed", Washington Post, February 8, 1992,p.A8.
60. Michael Dobbs, "Panhandling the Kremlin: How Gus Hall Got Millions", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.A1.
61. David Streitfeld, "Secret Consortium To Publish Rushdie In Paperback", Washington Post, March 14, 1992, p.D1.
62a. See notes 48 and 49.
62b. See note 47b, p.63-76.
62c. "Fairness In Broadcasting Act of 1987", U.S. Senate Bill S742.
62d. "Now Let That 'Fairness' Bill Die", Editorial, Washington Post,
June 24, 1987. The Post opposed the Fairness in Broadcasting Act.
63. David E. Scheim, Contract on America -- The Mafia Murder of President John F.Kennedy, New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988, p.viii.
64. See note 63, p.28.
65a. Chuck Conconi, "Out and About", Washington Post, February 26, 1991, p.B3.
65b. George Lardner Jr., "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland", Washington Post, May19, 1991, p.D1.
65c. George Lardner, "...Or Just a Sloppy Mess", Washington Post, June 2, 1991,p.D3.
65d. Charles Krauthammer, "A Rash of Conspiracy Theories -- When Do We Dig Up BillCasey?", Washington Post, July 5, 1991, p.A19.
65e. Eric Brace, "Personalities", Washington Post, October 31, 1991, p.C3.
65f. Associated Press, "'JFK' Director Condemned -- Warren Commission Attorney Calls Stone Film 'A Big Lie'", Washington Post, December 16, 1991, p.D14.
65g. Gerald R. Ford and David W. Belin, "Kennedy Assassination: How About the Truth?", Washington Post, December 17, 1991, p.A21.
65h. Rita Kemply, "'JFK': History Through A Prism", Washington Post, December 20,1991, p.D1.
65i. George Lardner Jr., "The Way it Wasn't -- In 'JFK', Stone Assassinates the Truth", Washington Post, December 20, 1991, p.D2.
65j. Desson Howe, "Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?", Washington Post, December 20,1991, p.55.
65k. Phil McCombs, "Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire -- In Defending His 'JFK' Conspiracy Film, the Director Reveals His Rage and Reasoning", Washington Post, December 21, 1991, p.F1.
65l. George F. Will, "'JFK': Paranoid History", Washington Post, December 26, 1991,p.A23.
65m. "On Screen", 'JFK' movie review, Washington Post, Weekend, December 27, 1991.
65n. Stephen S. Rosenfeld, "Shadow Play", Washington Post, December 27, 1991, p.A21.
65o. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "The Paranoid Style", Washington Post, December 29,1991, p.C7.
65p. Michael Isikoff, "H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! -- Why Did Oliver Stone Omit (Or Suppress!). the Role of Johnny Carson?", Washington Post, December 29, 1991,p.C2.
65q. Robert O'Harrow Jr., "Conspiracy Theory Wins Converts -- Moviegoers Say 'JFK' Nourishes Doubts That Oswald Acted Alone", Washington Post, January 2, 1992, p.B1.
65r. Michael R. Beschloss, "Assassination and Obsession", Washington Post, January 5, 1992, p.C1.
65s. Charles Krauthammer, "'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless", Washington Post, January 10,1992, p.A19.
65t. Art Buchwald, "Bugged: The Flu Conspiracy", Washington Post, January 14, 1992,p.E1.
65u. Ken Ringle, "The Fallacy of Conspiracy Theories -- Good on Film, But the Motivation Is All Wrong", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.G1.
65v. Charles Paul Freund, "If History Is a Lie -- America's Resort to Conspiracy Thinking", Washington Post, January 19, 1992, p.C1.
65w. Richard Cohen, "Oliver's Twist", Washington Post Magazine, January 19, 1992, p.5.
65. Michael Isikoff, "Seeking JFK's Missing Brain", Washington Post, January 21,1992, p.A17.
65y. Don Oldenburg, "The Plots Thicken -- Conspiracy Theorists Are Everywhere", Washington Post, January 28, 1992, p.E5.
65z. Joel Achenbach, "JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Facts", Washington Post, February 28, 1992, p.C5.
65A. List of books on the best-seller list: On the Trail of the Assassins is characterized as "conspiracy plot theories", Washington Post, March 8, 1992,Bookworld, p.12
66. See notes 65n, 65w, 65l, 65b, 65c, and 65i.
67a. Peter Dale Scott, "Vietnamization and the Drama of the Pentagon Papers". Published in The Senator Gravel Edition of The Pentagon Papers, Volume V,p.211-247.
67b. Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy -- The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War, Indianapolis/New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, p. 215-224.
67c. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, Copyright 1973. New printing, Costa Mesa CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1990, p.402-416.
67d. See note 63, p.58, 183, 187, 194, 273-4.
67e. John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam, New York: Warner Books, 1992.
67f. Peter Dale Scott, Letter to the Editor, The Nation, March 9, 1992, p.290.
68a. See note 65b.
68b. Oliver Stone, "The Post, George Lardner, and My Version of the JFK Assassination", Washington Post, June 2, 1991, p.D3.
69. See note 65b.
70. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of The Assassins, New York: Warner Books, 1988, 315/318.
71. Associated Press, "Garrison, 2 Others, Found Not Guilty Of Bribery Charge", Washington Post, September 28, 1973, p.A3.
72. See note 65c.
73. See note 65i.
74. See note 67e, p.438-450.
75. John G. Leyden, "Historians, Buffs, and Crackpots", Washington Post, Bookworld, January 26, 1992, p.8.
76a. Tad Szulc, "New Doubts, Fears in JFK Assassination Probe", Washington Star,September 19, 1975, p.A1.
76b. Tad Szulc, "Warren Commission's Self-Doubts Grew Day by Day -- 'This Bullet Business Leaves Me Confused'", Washington Star, September
20, 1975, p.A1.
76c. Tad Szulc, "Urgent and Secret Meeting of the Warren Commission -- Dulles Proposed that the Minutes be Destroyed", Washington Star, September 21, 1975,p.A1.
77. "Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report", New York Times, December 26, 1977, p.A37.
78. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979,p.141-2.
79a. Eve Pell, "Private Censorship -- Killing 'Katharine The Great'", The Nation, November 12, 1983.
79b. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, Bethesda MD: National Press, 1987. Davis says, "...corporate documents that became available during my subsequent lawsuit against him [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich chairman, William Jovanovich] showed that 20,000 copies [of Katharine the Great] had been "processed and converted into waste paper"".
79c. Daniel Brandt, "All the Publisher's Men -- A Suppressed Book About Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham Is On Sale Again" National Reporter, Fall 1987, p.60.
79d. Deborah Davis, Katharine The Great, New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991. "...publishers who don't give a shit", p.iv-v; bullying HBJ into recalling the book, p.iv-vi; lawsuit and settlement, p..
80. Benjamin C. Bradlee, Letter to Deborah Davis, April 1, 1987. See note 79d, p.304.
81. See note 79d, p.119-132.
82. Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media -- How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up", Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977, p.63.
83a. Daniel Brandt, Letter to Richard L. Harwood of The Washington Post, September 15, 1988. The letter asks for the Post's rationale for its policy of protecting government covert actions, and whether this policy is still in effect.
83b. Daniel Brandt, "Little Magazines May Come and Go", The National Reporter, Fall 1988, p.4. Notes the Post's protection of the identity of CIA agent Joseph F.Fernandez. Brandt says, "America needs to confront its own recent history as well as protect the interests of its citizens, and both can be accomplished by outlawing peacetime covert activity. This would contribute more to thesecurity of Americans than all the counterterrorist proposals and elite strike forces that ever found their way onto Pentagon wish-lists."
83c. Richard L. Harwood, Letter to Daniel Brandt, September 28, 1988. Harwood's two- sentence letter reads, "We have a long-standing policy of not naming covert agents of the C.I.A., except in unusual circumstances. We applied that policy to Fernandez."
84. See note 79d, p.131.
85. Katharine Graham, "Safeguarding Our Freedoms As We Cover Terrorist Acts", Washington Post, April 20, 1986, p.C1.
86. "conspire", ß4ßRandom House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition Unabridged, 1987.
87. Howard Kurtz, "Media Notes", Washington Post, June 18, 1991, p.D1.
88. See note 65y.
89. See note 65n.
90. See note 65d.
91. William Casey, Private Communications with JCH, March 1992.
Richard Harwood, "What Conspiracy?", Washington Post, March 1, 1992, p.C6.
93. p. 29-32.
94a. Washington Post Electronic Data Base, Dialog Information Services Inc., April 25, 1992. In 1991 and 1992, the name Bill Clinton appeared in 878 Washington Post stories, columns, letters, or editorials; "Jerry" Brown in 485, Pat Buchanan in 303, and Larry Agran in 28. In those 28, Agran's name appeared 76 times, Clinton's 151, and Brown 105. In only 1 of those 28 did Agran's name appear in a headline.
94b. Colman McCarthy, "What's 'Minor' About This Candidate?", Washington Post, February 1, 1992. Washington Post columnist McCarthy tells how television and party officials have kept presidential candidate Larry Agran out of sight. The Post's own daily news-blackout of Agran is not discussed.
94c. Scot Lehigh, "Larry Agran: 'Winner' in Debate With Little Chance For the Big Prize", Boston Globe, February 25, 1992.
94d. Joshua Meyrowitz, "The Press Rejects a Candidate", Columbia Journalism Review,March/April, 1992.
95. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy And Other Crimes By The Press, NewYork: Harper and Row, 1972, p.36-7.
96a. 28 USC Section 455. "Any justice, judge, or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." [emphasis added]
96b. Alpo Petfoods, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co., 913 F2d 958 (CA DC 1990)..
96c. Monroe Freedman, "Thomas' Ethics and the Court -- Nominee 'Unfit to Sit' For Failing to Recuse In Ralston Purina Case", Legal Times, August 26, 1991.
96d. Paul D. Wilcher, "Opposition to the Confirmation of Judge Clarence Thomas to become a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds of his JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT", Letter to U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, October 15, 1991.
97. Al Kamen and Michael Isikoff, "'A Distressing Turn', Activists
Decry What Process Has Become", Washington Post, October 12, 1991, p.A1.
98. January 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 1992, p.A1 each day.
99. See note 86.
100. Thomas W. Lippman, "Energy Lobby Fights Unseen 'Killers'", Washington Post,April 1, 1992, p.A21. This article explains that "representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the coal, oil, natural gas, offshore drilling and nuclear power industries, whose interests often conflict, pledged to work together to oppose amendments limiting offshore oil drilling, nuclear power and carbon dioxide emissions soon to be offered by key House members".
101. "cartel", Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977.
One of the happiest people on New Year's Eve, 2007, had to be Sara Jane Moore, released from jail many years after being put there for shooting at President Ford in the 1970s (just seventeen days after Manson devotee Squeaky Fromme attempted the same feat).
I've wanted to write about Moore for some time. Besides being an FBI informant and a go-between for the Symbionese Liberation Army and William Hearst, after his daughter was kidnapped, she had also been arrested -- and let go -- for carrying a concealed weapon the day before she shot Ford, even though the weapon was part of a deal she had done with ATF and SFPD escort.
I've never put the time aside to pull the data I have together. I'll see what I can do in the next week or two. It's a twisty, convoluted tale, but a very interesting one. I copied a few pages from a hearing held in the Senate on the matter from 1975.
In the meanwhile, this is an interesting piece, comparing the media's coverage of the Bhutto assassination (shouting, "conspiracy") to their coverage of the Kennedy assassination (shouting, "no conspiracy").
I wish all readers of Real History the courage and sanity to prevail in these twisted times. I hope the new year brings a healthy dose of both to any who would be our leaders in the next few years.
Happy New Year. It's hard to say that, knowing how many are suffering at my country's hands. It's really hard to be happy about anything whenever I think of Afghanistan and Iraq, and even Iran, whose fundamentalism is a direct outgrowth of our having overthrown their very democratic leadership in the 50s.
I'm sorry, world. I'm personally sorry for all my country has done. I know a lot of us feel the same way. Please don't hate us all.
Disinformation season is officially open on the JFK and RFK assassinations
As I predicted, the disinformation campaign about the RFK assassination is kicking into high gear. How did I know this would happen? Because the 40th anniversary of the case is right around the corner. June 5 of this year marks the 39th anniversary. The same thing is happening in the JFK case, as next year will mark the 45th anniversary of that tragic event as well. In other words, the disinformation needs to be put in place THIS year so that specials can repeat and amplify it NEXT year. That's how it works. But of course, you already understand that. That's why you read this blog.
I believe the CIA was the primary force behind the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. I believe they killed Bobby for two reasons: 1) he was even more progressive and peacemongering than his brother by that time, and 2) Bobby was quietly pursuing the trail of his brother's killers (and he too strongly suspected the CIA's hand. More on that in a later post.)
As I demonstrated a few days ago, the CIA sent an operational memorandum to its vast media network (called the "Mighty Wurlitzer" because it could be played so dominantly when needed) and gave them talking points on the JFK assassination. If you haven't seen this particular 'playbook' memo before, it's worth a careful read. There were others. This was not the sole document of its kind. Because we've never had a high level investigation of the Robert Kennedy case, we don't know if similar memos were sent by the CIA regarding his particular case.
I also noted, in that same post, how common it has been for CIA assets in the media to take up the cause of the lone assassination. As I wrote:
you can scratch the background of nearly every writer on this case who has claimed there was no conspiracy, and find a CIA link in their past or present. James Phelan, a respected Saturday Evening Post reporter who attacked Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw in the only trial ever brought on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, turned out to be not only an FBI informant, but a close friend of the CIA’s point man on the anti-Castro plots. Hugh Aynesworth, responsible for nearly all the original Dallas coverage of the event, who later repeated his coverage for Newsweek, had applied to work for the CIA the month before the assassination. Reporter Hal Hendrix, called “the Spook” because of his intelligence agency connections, was the one who supplied Seth Kantor with background info on Oswald in record time right after the assassination. Hendrix was a close friend of David Atlee Phillips, the CIA man most often fingered as a conspirator due to the extensive documentary record, and the man whom all the Castro did it” stories that surfaced originally can be traced to.
Gerald Posner? He came to fame by writing a book that excused the CIA for its failure to find Mengele. He also wrote a fictional book which featured a Cold War CIA hero pitted against a newfangled government bureaucracy. Max Holland? He got his start at the Voice of America, long acknowledged as a propaganda outlet for the CIA abroad. And when “liberal” Holland couldn’t get his regular employer, The Nation, to run one of his lone-nut screeds, whom did he turn to? Why, the CIA, of course, which was more than happy to publish his work in their in-house publication “Studies in Intelligence.”
So along comes Mel Ayton. He appears to be cut from the prototypical mode of the people mentioned above. He's pompous, self-righteous, and wrong. He hasn't done his homework, or if he has, he's lying about what he found. He blames the victims. The people in the pantry were too traumatized by what they saw to report on it correctly, he asserts. It's a shop-worn tactic, which begs the question: whom or what does Mel Ayton really serve?
Over at the (misnamed) History News Network, Ayton takes up the case of "the girl in the polka dot dress," the most intriguing unsolved mystery of the case. I have a very large file of witness statements of people who saw a girl in a white dress with dark polka dots (black or dark purple/navy by the vast majority of accounts) who was seen by a few witnesses with Sirhan literally just before he started shooting. They were talking, and she was almost holding him. Then she released him, and Sirhan stepped forward and starting shooting...something. I believe he was firing blanks, but that's a topic for another day.
So who was this mystery girl? Oh my, I've accumulated a lot of new information on her since I first wrote about her. But I'm saving that for the moment. Here's what I have written in the past, which I present her to show you how much Ayton did not tell you in his own piece:
One of the most intriguing figures in this case has been "The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress" who was seen with Sirhan immediately prior to the shooting, and who was subsequently witnessed running from the scene crying "We shot him! We shot him!" The LAPD tried to shut down this story by getting the two most public witnesses to retract their stories. But there were so many credible sightings of this girl that the police were forced to take a different tack. They identified first one, then a second woman as "the" girl, despite the fact that neither bore much of a resemblance to the girl described. Meanwhile, languishing unnoticed in the LAPD’s own files is the name of a far more likely candidate, someone who leads to a host of suspicious characters.
Over a dozen witnesses gave similar descriptions of a girl in a polka-dot dress who for varying reasons drew their attention. The two most famous of these were Vincent DiPierro, a waiter at the Ambassador Hotel, and Sandy Serrano, a Kennedy volunteer. DiPierro first noticed Sirhan in the pantry because of the woman he saw "following" him. The LAPD interviewed him the morning of the shooting (Kennedy was shot at 12:15 A.M. the morning of June 5th). During one interview, DiPierro gave the following information about the girl:
A (DiPierro): The only reason that he [Sirhan] was noticeable was because there was this good-looking girl in the crowd there.
Q: All right, was the girl with him?
A: It looked as though, yes.
Q: What makes you say that?
A: Well, she was following him.
Q: Where did she follow him from?
A: From--she was standing behind the tray stand because she was up next to him on--behind, and she was holding on to the other end of the tray table and she--like--—it looked as if she was almost holding him.
DiPierro reported that he saw Sirhan turn to her and say something, to which she didn’t reply, but smiled. He said Sirhan had a sickly smile, and said "When she first entered, she looked as though she was sick also." He described her as Caucasian and as about 20 or 21 years old, definitely no older than 24. She was "very shapely" and was wearing a "white dress with—it looked like either black or dark violet polka dots on it and kind of a [bib-like] collar." He said her hair color was "Brown. I would say brunette," "puffed up a little" and that it came to just above her shoulders. DiPierro told the FBI that she had a peculiar-looking nose.
That same morning, Sandy Serrano had described to the LAPD a "girl in a white dress, a Caucasian, dark brown hair, about five-six, medium height...Black polka dots on the dress" in the company of a man she later recognized as Sirhan and another man in a gold sweater. She had seen this trio walk up the back stairs to the Ambassador earlier in the night. Sometime later, the girl and the guy in the gold sweater came running down the back stairs. Serrano recalled to the LAPD this encounter:
She practically stepped on me, and she said "We’ve shot him. We’ve shot him." Then I said, "Who did you shoot?" And she said, "We shot Senator Kennedy."
She described the girl’s attitude in this manner:
"We finally did it," like "Good going."
Serrano thought the girl was between the ages of 23 and 27, with her hair not quite coming to her shoulders, done in a "bouffant" style, wearing a polka dot dress with a bib collar and ? length sleeves. She also recalled that the girl had a "funny" nose.
Ultimately, the LAPD pressured Serrano and DiPierro into backing down on these stories, getting each to admit they had first heard of the girl from the other, an impossibility the LAPD hoped would go unnoticed. Across page after page of witness testimony cover sheets Pena scrawled "Polka Dot Story Serrano Phoney", "Girl in Kitchen I.D. Settled", "Wit[ness] can offer nothing of further value" or "No further Int[erview]." But the interviews behind these sheets tell a different and compelling story.
Dr. Marcus McBroom was in the pantry behind Elizabeth Evans, one of the shooting victims. He exited the kitchen through the double doors at the West end and noticed a brunette woman aged 20-26, medium build, "wearing a white dress with silver dollar size polka dots, either black or dark blue in color." The report of his LAPD interview records what drew McBroom’s attention to the girl:
This young lady showed no signs of shock or disbelief in comparison to other persons in the room and she seemed intent only on one thing—to get out of the ballroom.
George Green was also in the pantry during the shooting, and reported seeing a girl in a polka dot dress (early 20s, blond hair) and a young, thin, taller male with dark hair. He saw this couple earlier in the night and after the shooting. Afterwards, Green stated, "They seemed to be the only ones who were trying to get out of the kitchen...Everyone else was trying to get in."37
Ronald Johnson Panda told the LAPD that a good-looking girl, about 5’6", in a polka dot dress ran by him in the Embassy room immediately after the shooting yelling "They shot him." He had seen her earlier that night carrying some drinks.
Eve Hansen had talked to a girl in a "white dress with black or navy blue polka dots approximately the size of a quarter" who had dark brown hair that hung just above the shoulders, who had a "turned-up nose." The girl gave Hansen money for a drink and Hansen ordered the drink. When she brought it back to her, the girl made a toast "To our next President" and shortly thereafter left the bar.
Earnest Ruiz reported something he thought was odd to the police. He had watched a man and a girl in a polka dot dress run out of the hotel, but said the man later came back as Sirhan was being removed and was the first to yell, "Let’s kill the bastard."
Darnell Johnson, another pantry witness, told the police the following:
While I was waiting [for Kennedy], I saw four guys and a girl about halfway between Kennedy and where I was standing. The girl had a white dress with black polka dots. During the time that a lady yelled, "Oh, my God," they walked out. All except the one...this is the guy they grabbed [Sirhan]. The others that walked out seemed unconcerned at the events which were taking place.
Johnson also told the police that he had received threatening phone calls and that his car brakes had been tampered with, causing a near-accident.
Roy Mills also observed a group of five people, one of which was female, standing outside the Embassy Room as Kennedy was speaking. He claimed that Sirhan was one of the four males in the group, remembering him distinctly for his baggy pants. He thought one of the other men was a hotel employee. He couldn’t remember anything about the girl except that she was wearing a press pass. Curiously, Conrad Seim—who, like Serrano, DiPierro and Hanson, had noticed the girl’s "funny nose"—reported being asked by a girl in a white dress with black or navy polka dots for his press pass. He refused her request, but she came back about 15 minutes later. "She was very persistent," he told the police. He thought the girl’s nose might have been broken at one time, and described her as Caucasian but with an olive complexion.
Bill White saw a female Latin and two male Latins near the door of the embassy room. Their dress looked out of place. He also noticed a busboy wearing a white button-down jacket in the Anchor Desk area sweeping up cigarette butts where there were no butts to be swept up. He wasn’t sure this was really a busboy.
Earnest Vallero was a job dispatcher for the Southern California Waiters Alliance. He reported that a man resembling Sirhan appeared at the union office two or three weeks prior to the assassination and requested placement as a waiter at the Ambassador Hotel. Vallero said the man got upset when he was refused, and flashed an Israeli passport.
A Hungarian refugee "with absolutely no credentials at all"38 named Gabor Kadar had been turned away from the Embassy Room during the night, but found a waiter’s uniform, and donned it. Kadar later involved himself directly in the struggle to wrest the gun from Sirhan.
Booker Griffin, another pantry witness who had reported seeing a woman in a polka dot dress,39 asked Richard Aubry, a friend of his who was also in the pantry during the shooting, "Did they get the other two guys?"40
At about 9pm the night of the 4th, Irene Gizzi noticed a group of three people who "just didn’t seem to be dressed properly for the occasion." Her LAPD interview report summarizes the events as follows:
[Gizzi] saw a group of people talking who did not seem to fit with the exuberant crowd. Observed the female to be wearing a white dress with black polka dots; approximately the girl was standing with a male, possible Latin, dark sun bleached hair gold colored shirt, and possible light colored pants, possibly jeans. Possibly with suspect [Sirhan] as a third party...."
A friend of Gizzi’s who was also present, Katherine Keir, gave a very similar description of this group, describing a male in a "gold colored sport shirt" and blue jeans, another man of medium build with a T-shirt and jeans, both with dark brown hair, and a girl in a black and white polka dot dress. Keir was standing at a stairway when the polka dot dress girl ran down yelling, "We shot Kennedy." The police were able to persuade Keir to consider that she had heard the girl say instead, "Someone shot Kennedy."
Jeanette Prudhomme also saw two men, one of which looked like Sirhan and the other of which was wearing a gold shirt, in the company of a woman who appeared to be 28-30, with brown, shoulder length hair, wearing a white dress with black polka dots.
A couple of people even recalled seeing this girl on the CBS broadcast. A Mr. Plumley, first name unrecorded, claimed he had seen a polka dot dress girl in the CBS broadcast the night of June 4th. Duncan Grant, a Canadian citizen, wrote the LAPD when he heard they were canceling their search for the polka dot dress girl, stating that he had seen her on the CBS broadcast. He wrote:
"We could hear two shots fired and then another burst of shots. At this moment someone shouted that the Senator had been shot. There was more confusion and at this moment a young lady burst in on the picture and she shouted We have shot Kennedy then shouted again We have shot Senator Kennedy. She was what I would call half-running and she crossed right in front of the camera from left to right and disappeared from view."
Sirhan himself remembered talking to a girl shortly before he blacked out that night. According to Kaiser, one of Sirhan’s last memories is of giving coffee to a girl of "Armenian" or "Spanish" descent in the pantry:
"This girl kept talking about coffee. She wanted cream. Spanish, Mexican, dark-skinned. When people talked about the girl in the polka-dot dress," he figured, "maybe they were thinking of the girl I was having coffee with."41
Sirhan had been at the Ambassador the Sunday before election night. A girl matching the description of the polka dot dress girl was also seen there Sunday. Karen Ross described her to the LAPD as having a nose that had been "maybe fixed", a white dress with black polka dots, ? length sleeves, dark blond hair worn in a "puff" and with a round face. Sirhan and a girl were also recorded as behaving suspiciously at a previous Robert Kennedy appearance in Pomona on May 20th.
One man may have spent the last day of Kennedy’s life with this girl. While his tale is extraordinary, it is eerily credible for the nuances and details which matched other evidence of which he could not possibly have been aware. Kaiser and Houghton referred to this man by the pseudonym of "Robert Duane." His real name is John Henry Fahey.42
June 4th with the Mystery Girl
At 9:15 A.M. on June 4th, Fahey entered the back of the Ambassador Hotel. He had planned to meet another salesman there 45 minutes earlier, but had left late and been held up in traffic. On his way up the back stairs, he noticed two men he thought looked Spanish. When they spoke, however, he realized it wasn’t Spanish because he knew Spanish. He presumed they were kitchen workers.
While in the lobby area, he spotted a pretty girl and made a flirtatious comment to her. She asked him where the Post Office was, and he couldn’t help her, and she left. About ten minutes later, she returned. He invited her to join him for breakfast in the coffee shop at the hotel. She spoke "very good English" but also had a "slight accent" that he couldn’t place. He asked her where she was from. She said she had only been there three days, and that she was from Virginia. Fahey had a relative in Virginia, and asked her if she knew Richmond, whereupon the girl said she really had come from New York, and before that a middle-eastern country ("Iran" or "Iraq", Fahey thought). She mentioned specifically Beirut. (Fahey had to ask his interviewer if there was a place named "Beirut".) She also mentioned "Akaba". When he asked her name, she gave him one, and soon another, and another. He didn’t know what her real name was. She, meanwhile, pumped him for as much information as she could get, asking his name, his occupation, and his business at the hotel. When he asked her about her own business, she said "I don’t want to get you involved...I don’t know if I can trust you to tell you the whole thing."
She told him that they were being watched, and indicated a man near the door of the coffee shop. Fahey saw a man he thought might be Spanish or Greek, resembling one of the men he had seen on the back stairs when entering the hotel. He thought the man resembled Sirhan, except that this man was taller and had sideburns. When later shown pictures of Sirhan’s family, Fahey said the man was not one of the Sirhan brothers.
The girl wanted Fahey to help her get a passport. Fahey said he had no idea how to do that, at which point she explained to him that you just find a deceased person, use their Social Security Number and write to the place where he was born to get a passport. He said she seemed shaken, and very nervous, with clammy hands, and that she seemed to be genuinely in some sort of trouble.
He described her as "Caucasian" but with an "Arab complexion, very light." He called her hair "dirty-blond" and guessed her age might be 27-28. He said her clothes, shoes and purse were all tan. In addition, he felt the purse and stockings looked foreign. He also said "Her nose was of—on the hooked fashion where you can realize that she was from the Arabic world." Asked if the nose was what one might call prominent, Fahey answered affirmatively.
Fahey had business calls to make in Oxnard, and invited the girl to come along for the ride with him, since she seemed so troubled. When they got up to leave, she wanted to pay the bill, and opened a purse where he saw a fistful of money in her wallet—"big stuff—50 dollar bills—hundred dollar bills."
They drove up the coastal route through Malibu. Two different tails followed them for part of the way. At one point, Fahey was so nervous he pulled off the road, thinking the tail would leave him. As he started to get out of the car, he noticed the girl eyeing his keys, and thinking she might run off with his car, decided not to get out after all. During the ride, she said the people tailing them were "out to get Mr. Kennedy tonight at the winning reception." He thought they should call the police to get rid of the tail but she insisted they should not call the police, and asked to be taken back to Los Angeles. In the end, although they drove to Oxnard, Fahey opted out of his sales calls and returned with the girl to the Ambassador Hotel. After driving and eating meals, they returned at around 7pm, where he dropped her off. She wanted him to come into the hotel with her. When he refused, she got angry.
Fahey might not have thought of this incident again had it not been for the assassination and the story of the strange woman who ran out into the dark afterwards. A frightened Fahey called the FBI and told them he thought he might have spent the day with that woman. After talking to the FBI, Fahey read a story by journalist Fernando Faura in the Valley Times about the polka dot girl. He called Faura and told him he might know something about the girl. Faura was hot on the trail of the mystery girl, and took Fahey’s detailed description of the girl to a police artist. Fahey tweaked the image with the artist until he saw a match.
Faura then showed the drawing to Vincent DiPierro. "That’s her," DiPierro responded. "She’s the girl in the polka-dot dress. The girl’s face is a little fuller than this sketch has it, but this is the girl."43 Faura then brought in Chris Gugas, a top Los Angeles polygraph operator, who put Fahey and his story through a lie detector. Faura told Fahey he passed the test "like a champion."44
Jordan Bonfante, the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of Life magazine, was interested in publishing Faura’s account. Hank Hernandez of SUS, however, was busy trying to crack Fahey under his own polygraph test. Under pressure from Hernandez, Fahey told an untruth, saying it was Faura who had persuaded him to connect the girl he was with to the polka dot girl. But Fahey had made the connection to the FBI long before he ever spoke with Faura. But this lie was pronounced "true" by Hank Hernandez, proving again that a polygraph’s value depends a great deal upon the integrity of the operator. Sgt. Phil Alexander tried to persuade Bonfante that Fahey was not credible, and that Life shouldn’t run the story on the girl. Kaiser amusingly recounts this incident:
"I don’t think you’ve really proved that [Fahey] was mistaken," said Bonfante. He was right. It was practically impossible to do so. But if the police didn’t do so, the implications were that there was a girl who knew something about the Kennedy assassination and that the police couldn’t find her. That was a black eye for the department.
To Bonfante, this sounded too much like Catch 22 to be true. He decided to discover how important this was to the LAPD and let Alexander talk. Six hours later, Alexander was still talking, and had not yet managed to persuaded Bonfante there was no "girl in the polka dot dress."45
[Note: to see the footnotes that correspond to the numbers in the text, refer to the original article here.]
(By the way, several commentators on this case, even Bill Turner, have dismissed Fahey as unreliable. But I have information on Fahey they did not that explains the seeming inconsistencies and adds important new information which I will reveal at another time.)
If you compare Ayton's account to the above, you are in a better position to make up your own mind about the truth. I'm not in the least afraid to stand the accounts side by side because most people are very skilled at recognizing the truth when it's put up beside a lie. I am equally certain he dares not link to my evidence because he knows this to be true as well.
As I said - I wrote the section above years ago, and have almost doubled my knowledge relating to the girl in the polka dot dress. The new evidence continues to be entirely consistent on the major points (e.g., she was wearing a white dress with dark polka dots. Who cares if the dots were described as the size of a dime or a quarter? That kind of inconsistency is meaningless as people are not good judges of size, whereas they tend to be good judges of overall color. And again, the nuances of hair color do not matter -- I've been called a "dark blonde" and a "brunette" all my life. Is that an inconsistency? No. People just call the same hair color by different names. Hair color is more subject to interpretation than stark colors like white or black.)
As for Valerie Schulte, ah, so much more later. Even the police knew she wasn't the girl. If Mel Ayton read more he'd know exactly what I'm talking about. (Whether he'd be honest about that of course remains to be seen. But at this point I think it's a safe bet he has no idea what I am referring to here. But he will. In time.)
Ayton needs to go look at the record and stop his ridiculous theorizing. When the witnesses are that consistent, it's only appropriate to assume they were right, not wrong, and to deal with the consequences of that.
By the way. A while back, I wrote about Shane O'Sullivan's work positing the presence of three CIA agents at the Ambassador hotel the night Kennedy was shot. I expressed extreme skepticism right away, and according to recent research conducted by David Talbot and Jeff Morley, it appears I was right. Talbot put some of that in his book "Brothers", about which I will have more to say later; I also understand Morley is seeking an outlet for recounting his part of that investigation as well.
Yes. Disinformation season is open. Mud is being mixed into the water to make the truth that much harder to find. It will take strong, educated, and courageous minds to resist the propaganda intensive and to stand up for what we know to be true. As most people learned in high school, the desire to be popular often outweighs the desire to be truthful. But the only path worth traveling, on all kinds of material and spiritual levels, is the one that comes from choosing the latter over the former.
I was incensed enough with a horrible attack on the research community that I sat down and fired this off to the editors of The Atlantic, a print magazine. I hope if you read the article and find yourself similarly incensed that you'll drop them a note as well. Here is what I sent off, with minor punctuation and formatting changes:
-----------------------------
Dear Editors:
Thomas Mallon’s recent article on the JFK assassination found its way to me accompanied by a subscription offer. Why did I not subscribe? Because you let a disinformationist pose as a book reviewer in your pages.
Not that I should be surprised. There's a precedent for this. At the New York Times, for years, whenever a new book on the JFK assassination came out, the review was often farmed out to Priscilla Johnson McMillan, herself the author of an anti-conspiracy book. Of course, we know now what the public was not told then: by her own admission, Priscilla Johnson McMillan was a "witting" asset of the CIA who, according to her superior, Donald Jameson, could “be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want." (Source - CIA contact report signed by Jameson dated 11 December 1962.)
I say this to put Mallon's comments on the case and those who continue to research this case in context. Mallon is flat out wrong on several points. So why is he allowed to publish? Does no one fact check things any more? Or does he, like Priscilla, have special access because he is a favorite of the agency that still controls the media’s reporting on this topic, the CIA?
Let’s look at some specific examples of Mallon’s dishonesty or bias, whichever you wish to call it. Mallon calls Ruth Paine "virtuous Quaker woman who became, quite innocently, enmeshed in the assassination." He does not mention that during the Iran Contra war, her Quaker activities in Nicaragua got her shunned from her group because the peace activists believed her to be a CIA spy, documenting their every move. He does not mention that she had a big "x" in her calendar the day Oswald ostensibly bought the rifle (which provably, by the documentary record, Oswald didn't buy) and that even the Warren Commission expressed disbelief at her explanation that that X, the only X in her whole calendar, marked the start of one particular menstrual cycle. He does not mention that Ruth Paine's own daughter has suspicions about her mother's involvement in the JFK case, and that this caused a falling out between them. But then, if Mallon were a CIA apologist in the media, this would be expected.
Mallon also inaccurately states that the Kennedys believed in the Warren Report. As David Talbot's new book "Brothers" makes abundantly clear, Robert Kennedy’s first-day suspicion that the CIA was involved in his brother’s death continued until his own death. He had planned to reopen the investigation into his brother’s assassination and had been conducting his own very serious investigation. (The CIA, for their part, considered spying on Robert Kennedy equally important to spying on the Soviet Union, according to CIA documents revealed by the New York Times).
I’m particularly incensed that the Atlantic would stoop to allowing Mallon to smear a lot of really smart, good people who have spent years doing what the government failed to do: seriously investigate the Kennedy assassination on the basis of hard, documented evidence. Bugliosi has it right on that point, at least. The most serious researchers are indeed some of the most patriotic people I’ve ever met. When asked are if they are “real scholars, professors, [and] historians,” instead of giving the correct answer of yes, The Atlantic allows Mallon to make this completely untrue and ridiculously propagandistic smear:
I think it’s a truly dark, morbid fascination to them. Hmm. How inflammatory do I want to be here? On some level—subconscious in some, conscious in others—they find the assassination thrilling. And their preoccupation with it is, I would say, unhealthy. There are a few supposedly respectable academics who have gone way out there in conspiracy theory, but I would say that most of them are kind of gumshoes, amateurs, and people who probably were impacted by the assassination. Their emotions were impacted by it in what was originally a genuine way, but somehow the tissue around that impact has become infected, and it’s become something that they don’t want to let go of. The thing that they would hate most is for anything that they would have to regard as definitive proof to come along. I think we do have definitive proof that Oswald killed Kennedy, but if definitive proof of their own theories came along somehow, I think they’d be terribly bereft. They’d have to forfeit. They’d have a terrible, massive depression—and would go on to something else.
Let’s see. Here are a group of people who have seriously researched this case:
- Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy, Jr., before their untimely deaths. - Professors: John Newman (formerly an intelligence analyst), Phil Melanson, Gerald McKnight, David Wrone, and many others. - MDs, JDs and PhDs: Cyril Wecht, Peter Dale Scott, Gary Aguilar, Michael Parenti, Mark Lane, Dawn Meredith, and many others. - Journalists: David Talbot (founder and editor in chief of Salon.com); Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post, Anthony Summers (formerly with the BBC), Josiah Thompson (formerly with LIFE), Fred Cook (formerly with The Nation), and many others.
The reason we believe there was a conspiracy is simply because we’ve read the evidence. The evidence is so clear in this regard that only the terms ignoramus or liar apply to those who claim otherwise. One only needs to realize that the back wound did not penetrate all the way through Kennedy’s body to realize how big the lies surrounding this case have become. Hitler was right on that point. It’s easier to believe a big lie than a small one, because who among us is so bold as to make up such egregious lies?
If the back wound did not go through, no “single bullet theory” is possible, and therefore, there had to be a conspiracy, because a non-penetrating back wound would have required four shots, and the Zapruder film shows there was only time to get off three shots from a single location in the time permitted.
There was no exit wound until it became politically necessary to come up with one to validate a lone shooter scenario. And because there was no exit wound, the doctors spent a good amount of time looking for the bullet that had to be lodged in his wound. Here’s a sampling of statements from Kennedy’s doctors and other medical professionals at Parkland and Bethesda to make this point very clear:
[QUOTING from Warren Commission, HSCA and ARRB documents]
“According to BOSWELL, HUMES probed the neck wound with his little finger (indicating a point on the little finger which did not go past the first knuckle, less than one inch). He said HUMES also probed it with a metal probe. He said no one gave orders that they not probe that wound.”
From Boyers’ signed affidavit:
“Another wound was located near the right shoulder blade, more specifically just under the scapula and next to it. ... During the autopsy many X-rays and photographs were taken. The pathologists kept searching for the missile which entered the right shoulder, but could not locate it. ... I recall during the autopsy there was much use of metal probes trying to locate the passage of the bullet from the right shoulder entrance. I donot [sic] believe the actual passage was proven to have exited, at the site of the tracheotomy, i.e., by probing - due probably to deflection by bone structure. This was the reason for the whole body x-rays [sic] - in trying to ascertain if the missile was still present in the body.”
From Boyers’ handwritten notes:
“Many X-rays were taken trying to locate the bullet which entered the president's [sic] right shoulder area.”
Mr. Jenkins said he believes Dr. Humes attempted to probe the back wound. He said he didn't believe the doctor found the probe "...penetrated into the chest." Mr. Jenkins said he believed the organs had already been taken out. He said the body was "...repeatedly X-rayed because they felt there should be a bullet or something there." “Mr. Jenkins recalls Humes trying to probe the wound with his finger which enabled him to reach the end of the wound.”
Jenkins recalls Humes discussing with someone the problem of finding the bullet. He said this discussion amounted to a "disturbance." Jenkins had the impression that everything "...seemed like it was predesignated...seemed they had an answer and wanted to prove it."
Jenkins said the back wound was "...very shallow...it didn't enter the peritoneal (chest) cavity."
Kellerman recalls Dr. Finck probing the wound about 4 - 5 inches as he was trying to "...get the probe to come out..." Kellerman said the doctors didn't probe the wound with his finger first, saying it was "not that big."
Lipsey says that he recalls the doctors discussing the third bullet which he believes entered low in the neck and was deflected down into the chest cavity. [This matches the account reported in the New York Times that first day.]
Lipsey said that the doctors were using the angle from the extrance [sic] in the rear of the head to the throat to look for the other bullet that entered high in the back. He said that both entrances looked the same. Lipsey mentioned that the doctors spent more time looking for the bullet that entered high in the back than anything else. He recalls that he said that the bullet could have gone anywhere. The doctors were also frimly [sic] convinced that this bullet did not exit in the front of the neck. Lipsey said the doctors followed the path of the bullet for a short distance until they lost the track at which point they removed the organs in an attempt to locate it.
[END QUOTES]
One of the FBI agents present at the autopsy even speculated about the use of ice bullets because that would explain both the non-penetrating wound and the lack of a bullet.
I could go on and on. I’ve read this stuff. Clearly, the editors at The Atlantic haven’t. But that’s no excuse for allowing Mallon to so misrepresent not just the evidence, but the people who feel strongly that by allowing the lies about Kennedy’s death to go unchallenged, tragedies like the Iraq war -- a war built on official lies -- became possible. We pursue the truth because we think the truth matters. If the truth really will set us free, it follows that lies keep us imprisoned in a false history, from which no useful lessons can be determined.
My own introduction to the case started when I found a set of Warren Commission hearings (a 26-volume set) at a local library. I pulled off a volume at random and started reading. It was a passage where Arlen Specter was questioning Dr. Perry about Kennedy’s wound in the front of his neck. It was so obvious that Specter was not trying to elicit information, but to lead the witness to the desired answer, that I literally shuddered. It was so obvious. That was the first time I realized how utterly the media had failed us in this country. Anyone who seriously looks and is honest can find evidence of conspiracy rather quickly. Pinpointing the blame is a far more difficult exercise, but it doesn’t take anything near rocket science to prove conspiracy.
So I have to ask again. Does Mallon have friends at the CIA? Has he worked for them? Because you can scratch the background of nearly every writer on this case who has claimed there was no conspiracy, and find a CIA link in their past or present. James Phelan, a respected Saturday Evening Post reporter who attacked Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw in the only trial ever brought on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, turned out to be not only an FBI informant, but a close friend of the CIA’s point man on the anti-Castro plots. Hugh Aynesworth, responsible for nearly all the original Dallas coverage of the event, who later repeated his coverage for Newsweek, had applied to work for the CIA the month before the assassination. Reporter Hal Hendrix, called “the Spook” because of his intelligence agency connections, was the one who supplied Seth Kantor with background info on Oswald in record time right after the assassination. Hendrix was a close friend of David Atlee Phillips, the CIA man most often fingered as a conspirator due to the extensive documentary record, and the man whom all the Castro did it” stories that surfaced originally can be traced to.
Gerald Posner? He came to fame by writing a book that excused the CIA for its failure to find Mengele. He also wrote a fictional book which featured a Cold War CIA hero pitted against a newfangled government bureaucracy. Max Holland? He got his start at the Voice of America, long acknowledged as a propaganda outlet for the CIA abroad. And when “liberal” Holland couldn’t get his regular employer, The Nation, to run one of his lone-nut screeds, whom did he turn to? Why, the CIA, of course, which was more than happy to publish his work in their in-house publication “Studies in Intelligence.”
Consider for just a moment. Why is it that everywhere you look in the media, the voices telling us that Oswald was a lone assassin (and therefore, the CIA didn’t do it) all seem to have ties to the CIA?
This was brought home yet again at a conference in DC a couple of years ago. One man got up to attempt to prove that famous “dictabelt” tape, recorded by a policeman whose microphone was stuck on, did not in fact capture shots in Dealey plaza. (Because if it did, it captured four shots, and hence, at least two shooters.) At the end of his presentation, I challenged his presentation, because he relied on science provided by a Nobel prize-winning scientist who also drew a paycheck from the CIA. The man then said sure, his source was CIA, but so what? “I am too,” he said. In other words, yet again, the people most actively pushing a lone nut scenario were directly connected to the CIA.
If The Atlantic wants to show journalistic credibility and independence, they need to publish a companion piece by David Talbot, Jefferson Morley, or someone equally suited to the task. Mallon’s work was outrageously biased and patently dishonest by omission. The truth should be allowed at least equal space in your pages as well. But I’m not holding my breath. I know that journalistic integrity belongs to an era that died sometime before the start of the Cold War. I fear I will never again see its like in any major publication in my lifetime.
I’ll leave you with these excerpts from a CIA memo that instructed its media assets how to discuss the CIA assassination. Perhaps some of you have seen it before?
This document caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977. Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED", this document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was over investigations into the Kennedy assassination. Emphasis has been added to facilitate scanning.
This is CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. [Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.]
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
What’s sad is that, even when the CIA admits publicly (they never denied this was their document when it first surfaced) that they’ve used book reviews to attempt to shape the debate in their favor, editors at a place like The Atlantic Monthly can still be played for suckers.
Disappointedly,
Lisa Pease 15+ year researcher on the Kennedy Assassination Contributing author and co-editor of the book “The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X” (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003) Featured authority on the Discovery Channel show “Conspiracy Files” in the “CIA Mind Control” segment. A patriotic American and a normal human being who does not have any “morbid fascination” with this case, does not find the thought of assassination “thrilling” in any regard, and has a solid reputation for honesty in this field.
Bcc’d to about a hundred serious researchers in this case, none of whom find this case morbidly thrilling either.
