Free Sirhan.
With the recent passing of
Paul Schrade who, as one of the shooting victims in the pantry, had standing to
appear and testify at the hearing, Sirhan’s defense team is a man down. I’m
hoping you can step up and help out.
If you’ve read my book, you know that Sirhan is truly
innocent. But even if you haven’t, Sirhan is old, nonviolent, has been a model
prisoner, has a place to return to – his childhood home, where his brother
still lives. He should be treated like any other prisoner and not made to bear “cruel
and unusual punishment” because people believe (inaccurately) that he killed
someone famous and beloved. Justice requires that we defend everyone’s
rights – not just the rights of the people we love the most.
We can’t argue for Sirhan’s innocence in a parole hearing.
Parole hearings are not about the evidence, so please don’t waste any writing
time discussing the conspiracy. Parole hearings have one simple question to
answer: is the person fit to be released back into society?
Let’s go over the facts of Sirhan’s case:
· Sirhan is 78. The vast majority of crimes are committed
by much younger people.
· He has no history of prior or subsequent crimes.
· He has been a model prisoner.
· He has attended classes in anything that could help
him lead a better life outside prison, from anger management to classes on alcoholism.
· He was already paroled by the Board, but the
Governor exercised his veto power over his own board to insist Sirhan be kept
in prison – a power available to only two governors in the US (and a power
that should be available to no governors anywhere).
· There aren’t enough jails to house all the
violent, mentally ill and drug-addicted prisoners we already have. Why should a
quiet old man who bothers no one take up space when it is needed for someone
truly violent?
· Taxpayers foot the bill to house people who
should be paroled. It’s cheaper to all of us if Sirhan is paroled. His brother
has enough for them both. They own their house outright. And his brother is nearly blind and really needs Sirhan's assistance now.
· The neighbors of the Sirhan family have said
they are fine with him coming home.
· Two of the Kennedy children – one who has
actually looked into the case and one who hasn’t, but understood RFK’s strong
faith in the power of redemption – have asked for his release.
· The rest of Kennedy’s children remain
traumatized by their father’s loss and can’t see past their own grief to do
what’s right. That, btw, is why statues of Justice, worldwide, are blindfolded.
Justice cannot favor one family’s grief over another’s.
· The Governor’s veto is being challenged in
court.
· The parole board got it right the last time, and
they should get it right again and never bow to pressure from a Governor, a
family member or anyone else who doesn’t have the law and justice for all at
the forefront of their intentions.
Please don’t just copy and paste, and you don’t have to
address all these points. Pick the ones that resonate with you and speak from
your heart.
If you want to submit your letters by email, send to: State of California, Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation
via BPH.CorrespondenceUnit@cdcr.ca.gov
And cc Angela Berry, Sirhan's parole attorney, at angela@guardingyourrights.com If you want to use "snail mail," send your letters to: State of California, Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Board of Parole Hearings
P.O. Box 4036
Sacramento, CA 95812-4036
Please send a
copy to:
Angela Berry
75-5660 Kopiko Street, Suite C-7, #399
Kailua-Kona, HI 96740
Thank you very much for caring about someone you don’t know.
By doing so, you make the world a better place for everyone.
FB and Twitter Censorship are driving me back here
I haven't been posting here because I enjoy the immediacy of Twitter and FB for an instant response. But with the growing and completely irrational censorship I'm seeing on Twitter and Facebook of late, this may be my last option. If the powers that be had their way, I'd be silenced on all platforms forever. Power relies on lies to survive. And I'm a truth warrior, shattering the mirrors they are using to try to keep us down. They want us to feel helpless. I refuse.
Free speech was hard won with the blood of thousands. But some today are so wimpy they'd give it up without any fight whatsoever.
Look. I've been against violence all my life. My way is not the way of war. I believe information can change reasonable people's minds for the better. So I write. I speak. I tweet. I post. Free speech is like a muscle. Use it or lose it. Join me. Call out the fascism, the racism, the labelism wherever and whenever you see it. Donald Trump has to go. And as terrible as Joe Biden is - a Republican in the wrong party - he will bring in a team far better than the one Trump has, people who believe in science and have experience.
I wonder if God gave us Covid to slow us down and rethink our ways. He's not going to destroy us. We're doing that all by ourselves. Of course, another thought is that Covid-19 is a population control weapon that was probably accidentally released, or perhaps "accidentally on purpose." #SorryNotSorry, someone is saying. For decades - since the 1970s, environmentalists have warned that we're straining the Earth's ability to support us. Climate change is raising the temperature. Within a few decades, it will be too hot to grow food. So somewhere, in the dark corners of major governments and think tanks, people whisper about population control. Dan Brown even based on a novel on that. In his novel, a mad scientist unleashes a pathogen on the world that randomly sterilizes people in an effort to contain population growth. Surely someone in the real world has thought hey, if we could kill people randomly with a virus, we could stop overpopulation quickly, and everyone will just think it was a pandemic. And maybe it is just a pandemic. They've happened before, and they will happen again. In the end, it doesn't matter who started it or why. What matters is how we deal with it, how we get past it, if we get past it. Because until all the deniers start wearing masks, this is going to be with us for a long time. The number of people who will be homeless will be incredible, unprecedented. Now, more than ever, if you have more than enough, share it with the many who have less than enough. We need a revolution of compassion first, and information second. Because America as it is currently constituted is not going to survive, period. Civil War, economic colonization, all our evils coming back to haunt us. All the things we've done to other countries will be done to the US, because that's how karma works. And yet, I have hope. Because the only way out is through. And on the other side, I see signs of light and love and a closer, more connected nation that starts to value facts above all else. If we can just survive long enough to get there. "Fermi's paradox," the nuclear physicists quandry as to why we don't see more intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, might be explained simply through propaganda. The more the people are deceived, the less able they are to focus on getting off their own planet, an essential task that will become a necessity in the next 40 years. And forty years is generous. Some climate scientists give us less than 10 years. We could well have to live underground in the coming decades, as the surface will be too harsh for human life, thanks to our arrogance, our lack of science, even in this day of big data. Some people alive in the present era still think the world is flat, or expanding, or a number of other things easily disproved with, well, science. Now, I revere science. But scientists, not so much. Don't get me started on the Nobel winner and CIA liar Luis Alvarez, who concocted a way to show a "jet effect" by shooting taped melons to simulate JFK's head moving backward after being shot from behind. (But any soldier or big game hunter will tell you a head moves away from the bullet, not toward it, in real life.) Scientists can and do lie.
And that's why we're going to be in this mess for a long time. Scientists will tell us, for big bucks, that they have found a vaccine that works. And the dutiful will sign up to get vaccinated. And maybe by some miracle one of the many tried will work. But since we've never even been able to cure the common cold, I have my doubts. We live in interesting times. The lessons we learn or refuse here will determine our course as individuals, as countries, as a planet. Someone once said "History is a race between education and disaster." Right now, it's a dead heat.
The Washington Post tells the truth about the RFK asssassination
Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes
On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60
prominent American citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the
investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Signers of the joint
statement include Isaac Newton Farris Jr., nephew of Reverend King and past
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Reverend James M.
Lawson Jr., a close collaborator of Reverend King; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, children of the late senator.
Other signatories include G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of
the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that
President Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert
McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who
tried to save President Kennedy’s life and saw clear evidence he had been
struck by bullets from the front and the rear; Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers
whistleblower who served as a national security advisor to the Kennedy White
House; Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton
University and a leading global authority on human rights; Hollywood artists
Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Oliver Stone; political satirist
Mort Sahl; and musician David Crosby.
The declaration is also signed by numerous historians,
journalists, lawyers and other experts on the four major assassinations.
The joint statement calls for Congress to establish firm oversight
on the release of all government documents related to the Kennedy presidency
and assassination, as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. This
public transparency law has been routinely defied by the CIA and other federal
agencies. The Trump White House has allowed the CIA to continue its defiance of
the law, even though the JFK Records Act called for the full release of
relevant documents in 2017.
The group statement also calls for a public inquest into “the four
major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact
on the course of American history.” This tribunal -- which would hear testimony
from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists,
historians and family members of the victims -- would be modeled on the Truth
and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid.
This American Truth and Reconciliation process is intended to encourage
Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four
organized acts of political violence.
Signers of the joint statement, who call themselves the Truth and
Reconciliation Committee, are also seeking to reopen the Robert F. Kennedy
assassination case, stating that Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction was based on “a
mockery of a trial.” The forensic evidence alone, observes the statement,
demonstrates that Sirhan did not fire the fatal shot that killed Senator
Kennedy -- a conclusion reached by, among others, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los
Angeles County Coroner who performed the official autopsy on RFK.
The joint statement -- which was co-written by Adam Walinsky, a
speechwriter and top aide of Senator Kennedy -- declares that these “four major
political murders traumatized American life in the
1960s and cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John
F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each
in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward
disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division
toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a
savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of
these assassinations still haunt our nation.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee views its joint statement
as the opening of a long campaign aimed at shining a light on dark national
secrets. As the public transparency campaign proceeds, citizens across the
country will be encouraged to add their names to the petition. The national
effort seeks to confront the forces behind America’s democratic decline, a
reign of secretive power that long precedes the recent rise of
authoritarianism. “The organized killing of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK was a
mortal attack on our democracy,” said historian James Douglass, author of JFK
and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. “We've been walking in
the valley of the dead ever since. Our campaign is all about recovering
the truth embodied in the movement they led. Yes, the transforming,
reconciling power of truth will indeed set us free."
***
The Truth and Reconciliation
Committee’s Calls for Action:
1.
We call upon Congress to establish
continuing oversight on the release of government documents related to the
presidency and assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to ensure public
transparency as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. The House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should hold hearings on the Trump
administration's failure to enforce the JFK Records Act.
2.
We call for a major public inquest on
the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous
impact on the course of American history: the murders of John F. Kennedy,
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. This public tribunal,
shining a light on this dark chapter of our history, will be modeled on the
Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa. The inquest --
which will hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative
journalists, historians and family members of the victims -- is intended to
show the need for Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations
into all four assassinations.
3.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we call
for a full investigation of Reverend King’s assassination. The conviction of
James Earl Ray for the crime has steadily lost credibility over the years, with
a 1999 civil trial brought by Reverend King’s family placing blame on
government agencies and organized crime elements. Following the verdict,
Coretta Scott King, the slain leader’s widow, stated: “There is abundant
evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.”
The jury in the Memphis trial determined that various federal, state and local
agencies “were deeply involved in the assassination … Mr. Ray was set up to
take the blame.” Reverend King’s assassination was the culmination of years of
mounting surveillance and harassment directed at the human rights leader by J.
Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other agencies.
4.
We call for a full investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy
assassination case, the prosecution of which was a mockery of a trial that has
been demolished by numerous eyewitnesses, investigators and experts --
including former Los Angeles County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed
the official autopsy on Senator Kennedy. The forensic evidence alone
establishes that the shots fired by Sirhan Sirhan from in front of Senator
Kennedy did not kill him; the fatal shot that struck RFK in the head was fired
at point–blank range from the rear. Consequently, the case should be reopened
for a new comprehensive investigation while there are still living witnesses --
as there are in all four assassination cases.
***
A Joint Statement on the Kennedy, King and Malcolm X Assassinations and Ongoing Cover-ups:
As the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979, President John F. Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy.
- In the four decades since this Congressional finding, a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus using, among others, figures in the criminal underworld to help carry out the crime and cover-up.
- This stunning conclusion was also reached by the president’s own brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who himself was assassinated in 1968 while running for president -- after telling close aides that he intended to reopen the investigation into his brother’s murder if he won the election.
- President Kennedy’s administration was badly fractured over his efforts to end the Cold War, including his back-channel peace feelers to the Soviet Union and Cuba and his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election.
- President Kennedy has long been portrayed as a Cold War hawk, but this grossly inaccurate view has been strongly challenged over the years by revisionist historians and researchers, who have demonstrated that Kennedy was frequently at odds with his own generals and espionage officials. This revisionist interpretation of the Kennedy presidency is now widely embraced, even by mainstream Kennedy biographers.
- The official investigation into the JFK assassination immediately fell under the control of U.S. security agencies, ensuring a cover-up. The Warren Commission was dominated by former CIA director Allen Dulles and other officials with strong ties to the CIA and FBI.
- The corporate media, with its own myriad connections to the national security establishment, aided the cover-up with its rush to embrace the Warren Report and to scorn any journalists or researchers who raised questions about the official story.
- Despite the massive cover-up of the JFK assassination, polls have consistently shown that a majority of the American people believes Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy -- leading to the deep erosion of confidence in the U.S. government and media.
- The CIA continues to obstruct evidence about the JFK assassination, routinely blocking legitimate Freedom of Information requests and defying the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992, preventing the release of thousands of government documents as required by the law.
- The JFK assassination was just one of four major political murders that traumatized American life in the 1960s and have cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.
Dr. Gary Aguilar
Daniel Alcorn
Russ Baker
Alec Baldwin
G. Robert Blakey
Denise Faura Bohdan
Abraham Bolden
Rex Bradford
Douglas Caddy
Rodnell Collins
Debra Conway
David Crosby
Edward Curtin
Dr. Donald T. Curtis
Alan Dale
James DiEugenio
James Douglass
Laurie Dusek
Daniel Ellsberg
Karl Evanzz
Richard Falk
Isaac Newton Farris Jr.
Marie Fonzi
Libby Handros
Dan Hardway
Jacob Hornberger
Douglas Horne
Gayle Nix Jackson
Stephen Jaffe
James Jenkins
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bill Kelly
Andrew Kreig
John Kirby
Rev. James M. Lawson Jr.
Jim Lesar
Edwin Lopez
David Mantik
Dr. Robert N. McClelland
Mark Crispin Miller
Jefferson Morley
John Newman
Len Osanic
Lisa Pease
William F. Pepper
Jerry Policoff
Rob Reiner
Abby Rockefeller
Dick Russell
Mort Sahl
Vincent Salandria
Martin Sheen
Lawrence P. Schnapf
E. Martin Schotz
Paul Schrade
Peter Dale Scott
John Simkin
Bill Simpich
Oliver Stone
Dan Storper
David Talbot
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Adam Walinsky
Benjamin Wecht
Dr. Cyril H. Wecht
Betty Windsor
Biographies:
Gary L. Aguilar, MD, is a private practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California-San Francisco, and the vice chief of staff at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. One of the few physicians outside the federal government who has ever been allowed to review President Kennedy's still-restricted autopsy photographs and X-rays, Aguilar has delivered lectures on JFK's autopsy evidence before numerous medical and legal conferences. With coauthor Cyril Wecht, MD, JD, Aguilar has published articles on the Kennedy case in journals such as The American Scholar and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and has contributed chapters to several anthologies exploring the JFK assassination. Dr. Aguilar’s writings on various aspects of the Kennedy case are available online, most notably a multipart essay that examines the five investigations of Kennedy's medical and autopsy evidence that have been conducted by the U.S. government.
Daniel Alcorn was a law partner of the late Bud Fensterwald, co-founder of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). He has served on the AARC board since 1992, and was a founding director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) on behalf of AARC, and served on COPA's board until the end of the Assassination Records Review Board process in 1998. Alcorn has represented requesters in precedent-setting Freedom of Information Act cases in the trial and appellate courts in Washington, D.C., including cases related to the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, allegations of misconduct in the FBI crime laboratory, death squad activity in Central America, intelligence abuses, and PTSD, among other issues.
Russ Baker is the founder, editor-in-chief and CEO of WhoWhatWhy, a nonprofit news organization devoted to covering stories and angles ignored by the media. WhoWhatWhy has a special team poring over thousands of declassified JFK records. Baker is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.
Alec Baldwin has appeared in numerous productions onstage, in films and on television. He has received a Tony nomination (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1992), an Oscar nomination (The Cooler, 2004) and has won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards as Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his role on NBC-TV's 30 Rock. His films include The Hunt for Red October, Glengarry Glen Ross, Malice, Blue Jasmine, and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. He has authored three books: A Promise to Ourselves; his memoir, Nevertheless; and You Can’t Spell America Without Me, with Kurt Andersen. He serves on numerous boards related to the arts, the environment and progressive politics.
G. Robert Blakey is retired as the William J. & Dorothy K. O'Neill Professor of Law (now emeritus) at the Notre Dame Law School, where he taught criminal law, the law of terrorism, and jurisprudence. He also was a professor of law and the director of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime, where he taught criminal law in the law school. Blakey also served as a special attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the United States Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1979, he was the chief counsel and staff director, United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Denise Faura Bohdan is a lawyer, film producer and the daughter of Fernando Faura, author of The Polka Dot File on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing: The Paris Peace Talks Connection, chronicling the search for an alleged conspirator in the assassination of RFK. Faura’s investigation in 1968 is regarded by most researchers as one of the most important, linking Sirhan Sirhan to co-conspirators. Ms. Bohdan is producing a film on his investigation to shine more light on the assassination and conspiracy. Her previous film work focuses on human rights abuses, freedom of speech and pursuit of justice.
Abraham Bolden was the first African-American assigned to the White House Secret Service Detail, at President Kennedy's personal request. When he later tried to testify to the Warren Commission about rampant misconduct in the Secret Service, he was punished for his courage by a trumped-up bribery charge that resulted in his imprisonment for over three years. He is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Echo From Dealey Plaza.
Rex Bradford pioneered the digital dissemination of declassified JFK assassination documents, over 1.5 million pages of which are available at www.maryferrell.org. He is president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
Douglas Caddy is a Houston-based attorney and the author of six books, most recently his memoir Being There: Eyewitness To History. In 1959, he published an article in the National Review that began a long friendship with founding publisher William F. Buckley as they worked together to help found what’s now known as the modern conservative movement. In 1960, Caddy was elected as the founding national director of Young Americans For Freedom. His conservative activism made him an early campaigner for 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Caddy then worked in Washington, DC, as an attorney involved in many high-profile cases. In one, he became the original defense attorney for the Watergate burglars. His legal work has included cutting-edge research and whistle-blowing on the JFK assassination, Koreagate, CIA influences and other justice-related issues.
Rodnell Collins, Malcolm X’s first cousin, is the founder of the Malcolm X, Ella L. Little Collins Family Foundation and curator of the childhood home that he and Malcolm shared in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Now a national historic landmark, Collins is working on turning it into a museum. Collins’s memoir, Seventh Child, tells Malcolm’s story from a family member’s point of view. Most recently Collins participated in the 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous Oxford Union debate, “The Night Malcolm Spoke Out.”
Debra Conway is the president of JFK Lancer Productions and Publications, a historical research company specializing in the administration and assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
David Crosby is a musician and songwriter. He has been speaking out about the JFK assassination since the 1960s, including onstage with the Byrds at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
Edward Curtin is a sociologist who teaches at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is a widely published essayist who has written extensively about the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Donald T. Curtis is a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon who participated in the resuscitation attempt of President Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.
Alan Dale is executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center. He is the host of JFKConversations.com.
James DiEugenio is the author of The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, and editor of Kennedysandking.com.
James Douglass is the author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.
Laurie Dusek has served as legal counsel to Sirhan Sirhan in a pro bono capacity for the last 11 years.
Daniel Ellsberg was a national security consultant to the Kennedy White House. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers. A senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, he is the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner and a memoir, Secrets, which became the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. He is also a key figure in Steven Spielberg's film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post.
Karl Evanzz is the author of six books, including two highly acclaimed studies of the Nation of Islam: The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (1992) and The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (1999). A literary and film consultant, Evanzz worked on Malcolm X: Make It Plain (Blackside Productions, 1994) and Ali (2001), starring Will Smith. Evanzz worked at the Washington Post for 32 years in its news department before retiring in 2008.
Richard Falk is professor of international law, emeritus, at Princeton University and author of Power Shift: On the New Global Order (2016).
Isaac Newton Farris Jr. is the nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He has served as the president and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and in 2011 was elected president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization founded by Dr. King. Farris currently serves as senior fellow of the King Center where he not only continues to write, research and lecture on the life, philosophy, and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., but also on how Kingian nonviolence should guide American society as we confront the social, religious, economic and war issues of America and of the world today.
Marie Fonzi is the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, a top investigator on both the Senate and House Committees that probed the death of President Kennedy in the 1970s. Marie wrote the preface and afterword of the 2016 paperback edition of The Last Investigation, Fonzi's inside story of this fateful Congressional drama.
Libby Handros is an award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker. Since beginning her career on the PBS team that produced Inside Story, the first regularly scheduled examination of the American press ever to appear on television, she has gone on to develop and produce over one hundred hours of prime-time programming on a wide array of subjects. Along with director John Kirby, Handros produced the critically acclaimed documentary feature The American Ruling Class and Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle, among other films. Currently she is Kirby’s producing partner on Four Died Trying, a multi-part series on the political murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which changed the course of history.
Dan Hardway, a graduate of Cornell Law School, has practiced law for the past 37 years. His firm, based in Cowen, West Virginia, focuses on representing nonprofit organizations, especially Christian churches and ministries, and Freedom of Information Act litigants. From 1977 to 1978, Hardway worked as a researcher for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and assisted Ed Lopez in writing the section of the committee report titled, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, a libertarian nonprofit educational foundation, and the author of The Kennedy Autopsy.
Douglas Horne served for three years on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), from 1995-1998. He was hired by the ARRB as a senior analyst on the Military Records Team, and was later promoted to the position of chief analyst for Military Records; while on the ARRB staff, Mr. Horne ensured the release of historical records on Cuba and Vietnam policy; played a key role in the sworn depositions of ten JFK autopsy witnesses; and became the primary ARRB point-of-contact for all matters related to the Zapruder film. He is the author of the five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009), and the e-book JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated (2014).
Gayle Nix Jackson is the granddaughter of Orville Nix, the man who took the film of the JFK assassination opposite from Abraham Zapruder. Following three decades of research on the background of the government's loss of this film, she has written two books, Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film and Pieces of the Puzzle: An Anthology.
Stephen Jaffe was an investigator and photo-analyst for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison 1967-68, testified before the Rockefeller Commission, was an associate producer/technical advisor for the film Executive Action, associate producer/technical adviser for documentaries The Garrison Tapes and the sequel by filmmaker John Barbour, and is the producer of the new documentary, A Rush to Judgment: Conspiracy in America, with Mark Lane. Jaffe was an investigator for the Lane Law Firm for the past 50 years and has written numerous articles on the assassination of President Kennedy.
James Jenkins was a medical corpsman assigned to work with pathologists on the autopsy of President Kennedy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He reports his eyewitness account in his book At the Cold Shoulder of History, co-written with William Matson Law.
William Klaber was the producer of The RFK Tapes, a 1993 public radio documentary on the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy. In 1997 he co-authored, with Philip Melanson, the book Shadow Play, which examined the evidence of police misconduct in the RFK murder investigation, evidence found in the LAPD’s own files that was finally made public in 1988.
Bill Kelly is a co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archives and the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He was the recipient of the 2013 Mary Ferrell Award for his work on the Air Force One radio transmission tapes. He is currently the coordinator of the research committee for Citizens Against Political Assassinations. His blog is http://JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the author of American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family.
John Kirby made his directorial debut with the Tribeca Festival-award-winning film The American Ruling Class, made for the BBC and the Sundance Channel. He is currently directing and editing Four Died Trying, a multi-part documentary series on the extraordinary lives and calamitous deaths of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
Andrew Kreig is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit executive, attorney, author and commentator who edits the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project, which examines the performance of legal institutions. Its work includes publication of a multi-part “Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination” that highlights the topic’s leading books, films, archives, events and news developments.
The Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. was a long-time collaborator with Martin Luther King Jr. and, after the Reverend King, the major teacher in the non-violent struggles for desegregation and justice. Rep. John Lewis called him “the architect of the non-violent movement.”
Jim Lesar is president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to disclose information on political assassinations to the public. During the past 49 years Lesar has litigated more than 200 Freedom of Information Act cases, resulting in the release of several hundred thousand pages of documents prior to the enactment of the JFK Records Act. He then testified before several House and Senate committees in favor of greatly expanded release of withheld government records pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy. After the passage of the JFK Act, Lesar testified several times before the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) regarding the definition and scope of the term “JFK-assassinated-related” records. In 2006, in a suit in which he represented journalist and author Jefferson Morley, he won a significant precedent that subjected the CIA’s ultra-secret operational files to judicial review. This ultimately resulted in the disclosure of significant operational records, and in the process the CIA admitted under oath that it had hired a case officer linked to Lee Harvey Oswald’s pre-assassination activities to undermine the investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Edwin Lopez is an attorney practicing in New York. He has served as the general counsel at the Rochester City School District and is currently on the faculty of the Yang Tan Employment and Disability Institute at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell University. In 1977 and 1978 he was a researcher for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where he was involved, among other areas, in the research and investigation of anti-Castro Cuban groups, their possible involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, possible Cuban government complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in Mexico City and the performance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in monitoring and reporting those activities. With the assistance of other staff members, he wrote the HSCA’s “Lopez Report.”
David Mantik holds an MD from the University of Michigan and a PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin. He is former faculty member in the physics department at the University of Michigan and in the radiation oncology department at Loma Linda University. He is the author of JFK's Head Wounds (an e-book).
Dr. Robert N. McClelland is professor emeritus in the Department of Surgery at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, an adjunct professor of law at Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, and a member of the attending staff at Zale Lipshy University Hospital. Previously, he served for 30 years as the UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Alvin W. Baldwin Chair in Surgery, where he had first come to work as an instructor in surgery in 1962. Two years prior to that, Dr. McClelland had begun his career on the senior attending staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where his duties would include the attempt to save the life of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. While working on the mortally wounded JFK, Dr. McClelland saw clear evidence that the president had been struck by bullets from the front and rear, indicating more than one shooter was involved. The gruesome injury to the back of JFK’s head was caused by a bullet exiting the skull rather than entering it, McClelland determined, suggesting it was fired from the front of the presidential limousine, instead of from the rear, where Lee Harvey Oswald was allegedly shooting from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.
Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, and author of several books, including Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. As editor of Discovering America, a book series published by the University of Texas Press, he commissioned Lance DeHaven-Smith to write Conspiracy Theory in America, and his Forbidden Bookshelf series, published by Open Road Media, has revived dozens of essential books long out of print, and many of them killed at birth, including works by I.F. Stone, Peter Dale Scott, Christopher Simpson, Ralph McGehee and Gerald Colby.
Jefferson Morley is the founder of The Deep State, a news blog that illuminates the influence of secret intelligence agencies. He worked for 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He is the author of Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton and of Our Man in Mexico, a biography of the CIA’s Mexico City station chief Winston Scott.
Major John M. Newman, U.S. Army (retired), is adjunct professor of political science at James Madison University. He is the author of JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA and the multi-part series The Assassination of President Kennedy: Volume I, Where Angels Tread Lightly; Volume II, Countdown to Darkness, and Volume III, Into the Storm.
Len Osanic is host of Black Op Radio and producer of The Collected Works of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.
Lisa Pease is the author of A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Based on more than two decades of investigative research, Pease’s recently published book has already been hailed as “the magnum opus of RFK assassination research” by acclaimed Kennedy biographer James Douglass.
Dr. William F. Pepper is an American lawyer, English barrister and best-selling author. His legal career has included representation of governments and heads of state, and teaching human rights law at Oxford University. A political activist, Pepper was a 1960s friend and supporter of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The King family asked his help to address their doubts about the guilt of accused assassin James Earl Ray. Pepper’s investigation concluded that Ray was a patsy. Representing both the imprisoned Ray before his 1998 death and the King family pro bono, Pepper then won a Memphis civil jury verdict in 1999 for the family concluding the murder was a conspiracy. Pepper authored three books on the evidence, most recently The Plot to Kill King (2016). In 2007, Pepper began representing pro bono Robert F. Kennedy’s accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan based on similar evidence that Sirhan did not fire any of the shots that struck RFK. Along with other RFK friends, Pepper has advocated for Sirhan to be released on parole and/or granted a first-ever hearing to examine the relevant scientific evidence.
Jerry Policoff has been a JFK assassination researcher since 1966, specializing in the role of the media. Widely published in magazines and book anthologies, Policoff covered the House Select Committee on Assassinations for New Times magazine, breaking many exclusives. He is the former executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center.
Rob Reiner is an actor and director best known for his role in the iconic TV show All in the Family and for his films A Few Good Men, When Harry Met Sally, and This Is Spinal Tap. His 2017 political thriller Shock and Awe was the first Hollywood movie to examine the tragic run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reiner is now developing a docudrama TV series on the Kennedy assassinations.
Abby Rockefeller has participated in the sponsoring and organizing of several conferences concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Dick Russell is the author of three books on the assassination of President Kennedy: The Man Who Knew Too Much; On the Trail of the JFK Assassins; and They Killed Our President!, with Jesse Ventura.
Mort Sahl is an entertainer and political satirist. He helped write speeches for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and later worked closely with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to solve the Kennedy assassination, even though doing so severely damaged his career.
Vincent J. Salandria is a Philadelphia attorney who began studying the Kennedy assassination on November 23, 1963. One of the original critics of the lone assassin concept, he is the author of False Mystery, an anthology of his essays incriminating the national security state for the murder of JFK.
Martin Sheen is an actor and activist.
Lawrence P. Schnapf is the principal attorney of Schnapf LLC and an adjunct professor at the New York Law School. He serves on the board of Citizens Against Political Assassinations.
E. Martin Schotz is the author of History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial and the Murder of President Kennedy.
Paul Schrade is a former United Auto Workers official who knew both of the Kennedy brothers and worked in their campaigns. He was wounded in the hail of gunfire that mortally wounded Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Schrade, who has spent decades researching the RFK assassination, believes that Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the shots that struck Kennedy and is working for his release from prison.
Peter Dale Scott is a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Deep Politics and the Death of JFK; Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics; The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War; The American Deep State; and Poetry and Terror.
John Simkin established the Spartacus Educational website in 1999, an important section of which was devoted to the Kennedy assassination. He is the author of the e-book Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia.
Bill Simpich, a civil rights attorney, is on the board of the Mary Ferrell Foundation. He is the author of the e-book State Secret.
Oliver Stone is an Academy Award–winning director and screenwriter best known for his movies Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK. His 1991 feature JFK provoked a nationwide uproar about the Kennedy assassination that led to Congressional passage of the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act and the release of thousands of important previously withheld government documents.
Dan Storper is the founder and CEO of the world music company Putumayo. He is writing a book about the political struggles of the 1960s.
David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. He is the founder and original editor-in-chief of Salon and a former senior editor of Mother Jones magazine.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the eldest of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy’s children. She is the former lieutenant governor of Maryland. She has taught foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland and is currently a research professor at Georgetown University, where she founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives.
Adam Walinsky served in the United States Department of Justice in 1963-64. He joined Robert Kennedy’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 1964, and then served as counsel and speechwriter for the senator through the presidential campaign of 1968. He was one of the coordinators of the Vietnam Moratorium of 1969-70, and was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of New York in 1970. He practiced law in New York City until 1994, serving as chairman of the New York State Investigations Commission in 1979-81. Walinsky created and led the Police Corps, a federal program that offered scholarships to college students who agreed in return to train intensively for six months, and then serve four years in a state or local police force. Police Corps programs were created in 30 states, and although funding ended in 2004, many of its graduates are still serving in law enforcement and other civic endeavors across the country. From 2008 to 2012, he led a complete retraining of the Police Department in Baltimore, Maryland. He served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
Benjamin Wecht is the administrator of Duquesne University's Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law, managing an internationally acclaimed center for professional and general education that presents public seminars on the assassination of President Kennedy and other urgent topics. He also serves as managing member of the Forensic Sciences and Law Education Group, a business dedicated to disseminating educational video products and online resources relating to topics at the interface of forensic investigation and historical inquiry.
Dr. Cyril H. Wecht is past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American College of Legal Medicine. He is a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University. Dr. Wecht served as a consultant or expert witness on several major JFK inquests, including New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Betty Windsor was a close friend of Dallas Times-Herald journalist Jim Koethe, who was murdered in his home in 1964 while working to solve the JFK case. Since the reporter’s murder, she has worked to solve both the Koethe case and the JFK case. Many researchers consider her the most important source on the events in Dallas during that era.
Please share this information with everyone you know. This is the first time in history members of the families of the four major leaders assassinated in the 1960s have come together saying these cases all need to be reinvestigated. This is historic and important. There will be ways you can contribute. Watch this page for information in the coming days and weeks. This is the start of a long campaign, not a one-time message. We're all very serious about this. #TogetherWeCanDoAnything #FreeSirhan #FreeOurHistory!!!
Preview of the cover of my new book, A Lie Too Big to Fail!
As many of you know, I've been researching the assassinations of the 1960s for more than 25 years now. I've had a particular interest in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I started and stopped this book a couple of times over the last ten years, but got really serious about writing it over the last three and a half. Here is a preview of the cover. Jim DiEugenio was kind enough to write a wonderful introduction as well.
I can't wait to talk about what's in the book. But I'm sitting on mega secrets for now. Can't wait to knock your socks off though! The book will be out in September and should show up in Amazon.com and other outlets in April.
HSCA investigator Dan Hardway discusses imminent release of JFK assassination files
Dan Hardway read many of the documents that are about to be released during his role as an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s. As such, he can tell us a great deal more than the average person about what this release may prove. Here is his "for release" comment on these, "rush job - proofed only once".
- - -
WHAT WERE THEY
HIDING AND WHAT SHOULD WE LOOK FOR?
By Dan L. Hardway ©
October 26, 2017
As we
go into the hysteria of a massive JFK document dump, there is one remarkably
surviving document that has already been released that we should keep in mind –
especially when reading news coverage of the documents scheduled for release
today.
On April
1, 1967, the Head of the Covert Action Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) sent a dispatch to many of the CIA stations and bases around the world. [i] That the document survived may be remarkable
as it is clearly marked as “Destroy when no longer needed.” Or, then again, maybe it is not remarkable
that it has not been destroyed because the government and intelligence
community’s efforts to silence those who question the official story about John
Kennedy’s murder has never succeeded and, hence, the dispatch remains needful
from their viewpoint.
The
dispatch lays out a plan for defending the lone nut theory first advanced as
the major theme of the government cover-up of the assassination
investigation. The dispatch labels
people who question the lone nut theory as “conspiracy theorists”. It plainly states the purpose of the dispatch
“is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the
conspiracy theorists…. Our play 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.” It goes on to suggest that critics be
countered by advancing arguments such as they have produced no new evidence,
that they overvalue some evidence while ignoring other evidence, that large
scale conspiracies are “impossible to conceal in the United States,” that Oswald would not have been any “sensible
person’s choice for a co-conspirator”, and by pointing out the comprehensive
work of the Warren Commission which was composed of men “chosen for their
integrity, experience, and prominence.”
Many of
the claims in the dispatch are ludicrous in hindsight, but are still parroted
by main stream media sources. We’ve seen
them trotted out by lone nut theory defenders every time there has been a major
breakthrough in the assassination investigation. As I’ll discuss below, we are already seeing
some of these “plays” (as the dispatch calls them) already before the JFK
document release and I suspect we’ll see a lot more of them in the coming days.
Let’s start by looking at the possible validity of the plays.
At this
point in time, fifty-four years after the assassination and fifty-three years
after the publication of the Warren Report, there are researchers, analysts,
historians, attorneys and many others who have been researching this case for
most of that time. Many of them do not
advance “theories” about what happened, but rather try to find and analyze the
facts that have been hidden for so long and ask questions about what they
mean. They certainly are not wedded to
theories that were adopted before the evidence was in. And let’s think about that for a moment. The cover-up of the assassination began on
Air Force One as it flew back to D.C. from Dallas. The seeds are there in the released
transcripts of Lyndon Johnson’s telephone calls. If the standard is waiting to see all the
evidence, then the Warren Commission is totally discredited as it has now been
shown beyond any reasonable argument or doubt that not only did they not have
all the evidence in before issuing their report, the very investigating
agencies upon whom they relied actively conspire to keep evidence from them –
just as they have, and still do, actively conspired to keep the evidence from
the American people. Lone nut theorists
appear to be the ones wedded to the theory adopted before the evidence is in
and doing all they can to spin the evidence as it comes out to try to shore up
support for their theories.
To try
to argue that the Warren Commission members, its supporters since, and those
covering up the evidence and resisting release of documentation, were not
politically or financially interested in the cover-up should be accepted as
facially absurd at this point. Indeed,
even in 1967, the CIA dispatch openly admits to such interest, pointing out
that opinion polls showing that more than half of the public was questioning
the Warren Commission’s lone nut theory reflects a “trend of opinion [that] is
a matter of concern to the U.S. Government, including our organization.” Questioning the rectitude and wisdom of the
members of the Warren Commission would “tend to cast doubt on the whole
leadership of American society.” An
“increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person
who might be said to have benefited” [ii]
could implicate him. Such concerns
“affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of
the American government.” [iii]
The Chief of Covert Action then
acknowledges the Agency’s own interest: “Our organization itself is directly
involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation.” Indeed, they also covered-up information, as
they have now admitted. [iv] The Agency’s concern, one that continues to
this day, is plainly stated: the conspiracy theories expose them to “suspicion
on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald
worked for us.” The CIA’s main personal,
if you will, stake in covering up and countering criticism has always been to
deflect any possible focus on their relationship to the purported lone-nut
assassin.
Hasty
and inaccurate in their research? How
many documents are about to be released that have never been seen? And who is it that is sure of their
theory? What can we say now about
critics who for over fifty years have called for the release of all the
information so that the American people can see and judge for themselves?
Arguing
that there is no new evidence is like standing in front of a camel and
insisting it is a horse. New evidence
has dribbled out now over the decades, in small manageable doses that can be
dismissed as disconnected by the lone-nut theorists. And the blatant hubris of the argument is
astounding. These are people who can
suppress the evidence and taunt you because you don’t have it! It’s like prosecuting attorneys in criminal
cases who refuse to reveal exculpatory evidence while simultaneously shifting
the burden of proof to the accused. And
as for the weighing all the evidence argument, how do you expect that to go if
you control the evidence and only let the evidence out that supports your
theory? Convenient. And if someone else does come up with a fact
that contradicts your lone-nut theory, you can always deny it even though you
know your suppressed evidence supports it.
No wonder there has been such resistance by the Agency to full disclosure.
Conspiracy
theories can’t be hidden in America?
Really? That’s why J. Edgar
Hoover was able to do all that he did to undermine American civil liberties for
fifty years without exposure that wouldn’t have even come then had not there
been a break-in at a small FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania. [v] MKULTRA wasn’t as successful. It was only covered up for 25 years or so, as
was the CIA programs to save and use ex-Nazi scientists and intelligence
officers after the Second World War. Actually,
all that needs to be said in rebuttal is that for 50 years the CIA and our
government vehemently denied that there was a conspiracy to keep information
from the Warren Commission. It is a
prime tenet and support of the lone-nut theorists. In spite of the denials, finally, three years
ago, the Agency in their internal secret magazine, in an article written by
their official historian, admitted there was such a conspiracy, although they
called it benign [vi]. We’ll return to this in a bit.
Next,
we have a point I will concede: Oswald as a co-conspirator. I agree, he’s hardly one that a rational
person might choose. But, is he one a
rational person might choose as a patsy?
-- an entirely different question.
Remember, that being a patsy was Oswald’s claim in one of the few brief
encounters he had with the press. That
claim would have been, presumably, a major theme developed by competent defense
lawyers had he lived long enough to be tried.
But the lone-nut theorists dismiss that possibility out of hand. Nothing to see here, folks, just move
on. There was no investigation of this
in the hasty Warren Commission investigation that led to the establishment of
the lone-nut theory.
As far
as the Warren Commission membership goes, I will concede their then-prominence,
but I have to wonder, in light of the evidence that has come in since, about
their integrity and experience as support for the integrity of their work. Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA fired by
President Kennedy. His collusion with
the CIA in the pendency of the Warren Commission is shown in documents that
have been released in the last few years.
He passed out a book to Commission members at their first meeting taking
the position that American assassins are always lone-nuts. Earl Warren was coerced into serving against
his will by Lyndon Johnson and the supposed threat of nuclear war. Gerald Ford was in J. Edgar Hoover’s
pocket. John J. McCloy was steeped in
the intelligence community and was almost single handedly responsible for the
end of prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the early release of those who had
already been convicted when he became the High Commissioner for post-war
Germany. Richard Russell, Jr., and Hale
Boggs both privately rejected the Warren Commission’s lone nut theory, as did
Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and many, many
others. But the conspiracy of silence
took years to break, and when broken, the revelations came out piecemeal and
were dismissed at the time as insignificant, old news – just conspiracy
theorists.
And,
speaking of that title, “conspiracy theorist”, is designed to be
pejorative. If you can stick it to
someone, then you don’t have to listen to what they say. Even if they are reporting new evidence,
they’re just wacky conspiracy theorists.
Just like those nuts who for years said J. Edgar Hoover was running a
program to subvert dissidents illegally, or that the CIA was illegally
surveilling U.S. citizens, or that the CIA had covered up information to keep
it from other government entities that were investigating the Kennedy murder,
right? Even if the person only reported
facts and asked questions, they were (and are) labelled a “conspiracy theorist”
solely for the purpose of undermining their credibility and lessening any
impact they might have on public opinion.
And when it comes to light that the answer to the question they raised,
“is it possible there was a conspiracy?’ is, “Not only is it possible, there
was indeed a conspiracy,” then even a blind bird occasionally finds a
worm. And the cover-up artists say this
without shame even though they have known about the conspiracy from the
get-go. The next stage is to come up
with a new spin such as, the cover-up was “benign”, or shifting suspicion where
they want it to go. What, exactly, was
covered up in other words.
As noted by Lance deHaven-Smith, a
professor at Florida State University, the CIA in 1967 began a campaign to
“popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make a conspiracy belief a target
of ridicule and hostility.” He notes
that the campaign, “must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most
successful propaganda initiatives in all time.” [vii] He summarizes why the label has been used as
a sword by those who resist the truth: “[T]he conspiracy-theory label, as it is
applied in public discourse, does not disparage conspiratorial thinking or
analysis in general, even though this is what the term suggests. Rather the broad- brush ‘conspiracy theory’ disparages inquiry and questioning that challenge
official accounts of troubling
political events in which public officials themselves may have had a hand. A conspiracy theory directs suspicion at
officials who benefit from political crimes and tragedies. The
theories are considered dangerous not because they are obviously false, but
because, viewed objectively and without deference to U.S. political officials
and institutions, they are often quite plausible.” [viii]
So, the first thing to remember
going into the next few days is to stop when you see the label and ask, “Why is
the writer of this story disparaging this idea?
Who is he trying to deflect suspicion from? Why is he trying to direct my suspicion
elsewhere? Can I reject the label and recover an objective view what this
labeled individual has to say?” Then do
your best to find out what the idea being attacked really is rather than just
rejecting it out of hand because of the labelling. Remember, the term “conspiracy theory” gained
prominence as a result of a CIA led propaganda initiative specifically
addressed at protecting their own interests.
We see a blatant example of this
dismissive labelling in CNN’s coverage of the upcoming document release. Jeremy Diamond writes, “A decision to
withhold even a sliver of the documents could give conspiracy theorists more
fodder to propel their claims.” [ix] So, what you are supposed to take away is
that if anyone raises any questions about documents being withheld after the
release date, they have to be a “conspiracy theorist” who isn’t worthy of your
time or attention. Consider, what is
there to hide at this point? If
something is not released, why is it illegitimate to ask why, especially in
view of our government’s relationship with the truth, or lack thereof, over the
past six decades? What purpose is served
by Mr. Diamond’s advance labelling?
The appeal to authority is also
used in battling “conspiracy theories.”
It is seen in the CIA dispatch’s appeal to the apparent authority of the
Warren Commission created by the then-reputations of its members and the
superficially extensive investigation.
This technique appears again in Mr. Diamond’s article: “Historians who
have closely studied the Kennedy assassination have said they do not expect the
documents to … contradict the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely
responsible for killing Kennedy.” [x] Really, what historians? Why are none named. Why does he not give any consideration to
people such as Dr. David R. Wrone, an emeritus professor of history at the
University of Wisconsin, and Dr. John Newman, an adjunct professor of history
at James Madison University, whose lifetime study of the subject has led them
to the conclusion that Oswald could not have been solely responsible? [xi] I haven’t spoken to them but I would venture
to guess that neither Dr. Wrone nor Dr. Newman expect the documents to support
Mr. Diamond’s lone-nut theory.
Then we have Phil Shenon’s return
to the fray in The Guardian this morning. [xii]
Even in the title of his article, “Files will shed light on a JFK shooting
conspiracy – but not the one you think”, Mr. Shenon starts to try to divert
attention in the direction he wants it to go.
He states plainly what he doesn’t want you to consider: first, a second
assassin in Dealey Plaza even though his assertion that “most credible” evidence
supports the lone-nut theory is patently not true. [xiii] Second, about a mafia plot to kill Oswald he
asks “What half-way competent Mob boss would choose a delusional blabbermouth
like Ruby…?” echoing the CIA dispatch’s question about what rational person
would ever choose Oswald as a co-conspirator?
Again, as with the CIA’s question, Shenon’s borrowed technique avoids
the important questions and shuts off the possibility of objective
investigation and consideration of other alternatives. It’s a form of straw-man argument, but more
slanderous and pernicious – you must be crazy if you don’t accept what I
say. For example, what about the
possibility that Ruby was called on as an emergency stop gap measure only after
an initial plan to dispose of the patsy failed?
I’m not saying that is what happened, but I am asking why it should be
crazy, then or now, to consider the possibility and investigate it? Third, “a
sprawling coup d’état involving everyone from President Johnson” on down the
chain of command. I, too, find that less
credible than most. But, then again, we
have to consider that the evidence is now pretty much indisputable that
President Johnson led the cover-up conspiracy and that his leadership and the
conspiracy to cover-up anything that didn’t support the loan nut theory began
immediately after the assassination. I
have to ask, “Doesn’t that raise questions in your mind that merit
investigation and, if possible, answers?”
Why should we accept Mr. Shenon’s belittling dismissal of any questioning
or review to see what’s actually in the evidence before we dismiss it?
So, having told you what not to
look for because even raising the questions can undermine proper deference to
U.S. officials and institutions, he gives us the concession that we are now
believed. The CIA has admitted they
participated in a benign cover-up of information during the Warren Commission
investigation. [xiv] Mr. Shenon acknowledges that the evidence is
indisputable that both the CIA and the FBI had, at least, had Oswald under
“aggressive surveillance in the months before the assassination.” [xv] Mr. Shenon then advances the spin that the
CIA and FBI embarrassment over not taking action to better protect the
president in Dallas in light of what they knew is the reason for the benign
cover-up: “ [I]mmediately after the assassination, panicked officials at
both the CIA and FBI tried, desperately, to cover up evidence of the extent of
their knowledge of Oswald, fearing their bungling of the intelligence about
JFK’s assassin might be exposed – and that they would be blamed for the
president’s murder.” Yes sir, that
certainly explains why the cover-up began immediately on Air Force One on the
way back to D.C. on November 22, 1963.
As ridiculous as that idea is, it’s even more ridiculous to think that
this embarrassment of two agencies would lead the whole government – from the
president on down -- not just to cover up then, but to continue the cover-up
and resist disclosure for more than fifty years of most of the documentary
evidence, not to mention the massive destruction of evidence that has taken
place. When an offered concession is as
implausible as this, what is the questions that the concede is trying to avoid
being asked? Could there have been other
motivations for such a cover-up?
I am glad you asked. Remember, in the 1967 dispatch the CIA
acknowledged their basis of concern and, I believe, their motivation for
participating in, if not leading, the cover-up of information for all these
years. Not just hiding information from
the Warren Commission, but continuing to hide it and resist its disclosure even
up to the present. They acknowledged that
the main CIA concern was that conspiracy theories might link them to the use of
Oswald in intelligence operations. This
concern is still found in David Robarge’s article admitting CIA’s, or at least,
Director McCone’s, participation in a conspiracy to hid information from the
Warren Commission. The article talks
about the anti-Castro plots and the Nosenko information that was not shared
with the Commission. [xvi] This was used as an opportunity by Mr. Shenon
to revive the kinda-like-maybe Castro did it theory, a theory was first raised
on November 23 rd in a Cuban exile publication sponsored and paid for
by CIA . [xvii]
But you have to read Mr. Robarge’s
article carefully. It is always wise to
carefully parse CIA pronouncements to see what they are actually saying. Mr. Robarge never specifically states that
the CIA was mainly concerned in suppressing Kennedy murder information in
preventing information about their attempts to murder Castro getting out. Here’s what he actually says about the
motivation for the cover-up: “Moreover, the DCI shared the [Johnson] administration’s
interest in avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially
implicate CIA in conspiracy theories, and possibly lead to calls for a tough US
response against the perpetrators of the assassination. If the commission did not know to ask about
covert operations against Cuba, he was not going to give them any suggestions
where to look.” [xviii]
Taken in toto, the statement would draw you to infer that the Castro
assassination plots were what was being covered up. But if that is the case, why has the
resistance to disclosure remained so fierce even after those plots were
disclosed in 1975? And earlier in the
article, Robarge clearly states that electronic intercepts had, within a few
days, convinced the administration and the Agency that neither the USSR nor
Cuba had any complicity in the assassination. [xix] So who might the “perpetrators” be against
whom “calls for a tough US response“ might be made if they already knew that
neither Soviet Russia nor Cuba were complicit?
Notice the specific structure of Mr. Robarge’s statement: “avoiding
disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially
implicate CIA in conspiracy theories.” I submit to you that this is the same
motivation that existed in 1967 as stated by the CIA Chief of Covert Action in
the April 1 dispatch: “Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on
our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked
for us.” [xx]
The CIA has told us what they were
trying to hide. They have been trying to
hide information that could implicate them as an organization participating in
a conspiracy based on the fact that Oswald was not only under aggressive
surveillance, but was also being utilized in some capacity by them in active
intelligence operations shortly before the assassination. Those operations were directed at Cuba. The ones they didn’t want to be asked about,
as Mr. Robarge states, were “covert operations against Cuba,” not covert Castro
assassination plans. Please note in his
article that Robarge is careful to specify the Castro assassination plots when
he is talking about them. He is equally
careful here to not reference them but, rather, more general “covert operations
against Cuba.” We should be looking for
information on Oswald’s involvement in those operations in this document
release. They’ve told us where to look. [xxi]
[i] Dispatch, Countering Criticism of the Warren
Report, from Chief of CA Staff to Chiefs of Certain Stations and Bases, April
1, 1967, RIF 104-10009-10022.
[ii]
Que bono? Certainly not just Johnson,
but the basic investigative question never seems to have even been raised, let
alone considered, by the Warren Commission or the intelligence community in
1963-1964.
[iii]
“L’Etat, c’est moi.” The Agency’s concern was well-founded. The JFK murder cover-up was the beginning of
the unravelling of government credibility in the United States and led directly
to the growth of the secrecy culture that subsequently allowed the Vietnam war,
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraqi WMD’s, etc., etc., etc.
[iv] David
Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,”
Studies in Intelligence, (Vol. 57, No. 3, 09/2013), Approved for Release and
declassified, 09/29/2014, available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF.
[v]
See, e.g., Betty Medsger, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s
Secret FBI, Knopf 2014.
[vi]
One CIA officer is also on record calling Operation Phoenix in Vietnam that
tortured and killed myriads of Vietnamese civilians “benign”.
[vii]
Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, University of Texas Press
2013, at p. 25.
[viii]
Id., at 41. Emphasis added.
[xi] See, e.g.,
David R. Wrone, Two Assassinations: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, Lincoln
Fellowship of Wisconsin, Meeting
(37th: 1980 : Madison), Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana
(Library of Congress); http://aarclibrary.org/board-of-directors/ ; John Newman, Oswald and the CIA:
The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government
and the Alleged Killer of JFK, Skyhouse 2008; John Newman, JFK and Vietnam:
Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power, 2nd Ed., CreateSpace
Independent Publishing 2016;
John Newman, Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy
Volume II, CreateSpace Independent Publishing 2017.
[xiii]
Most ear and eye witnesses on record from Dealey Plaza put a second shooter on
the grassy knoll. Any fair analysis of
the Zapruder film supports a finding of a shot from the front. The acoustics work of the HSCA showing a
shooter on the knoll is also still supported by the best scientific evidence in
spite of vigorous attempts to discredit it.
[xiv]
Technically, the Robarge article, see note iv above, did not concede CIA
participation so much as to blame the JFK appointed Director of Central
Intelligence, John McCone, of participating in a benign cover-up. See, Dan Hardway, A Cruel and Shocking
Misinterpretation, 2015, available at http://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/;
Dan Hardway, Thank You, Phil Shenon, 2015, available at
http://aarclibrary.org/thank-you-phil-shenon/
[xv] A
more objective and careful review of CIA documentation shows that there is even
more documentary evidence that the CIA was using Oswald as a witting or
unwitting asset in at least one intelligence operation. See, e.g., John
Newman, Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship
Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK, Skyhouse 2008; John
Newman, Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy Volume II,
CreateSpace Independent Publishing 2017; JFKFacts, Exclusive: JFK investigator
on how CIA stonewalled Congress, http://jfkfacts.org/hardway-declaration-cia-stonewalled-jfk-investigation/; Declaration of Dan L. Hardway, Morley v. CIA, CA #
03-02545-RJL, D.C.D.C. 11 May 2016, Docket No. 156.
[xvi] Robarge
above at n. 4.
[xvii]
See, Phil Shenon, Phil Shenon, “Yes, the CIA Director was Part of the JFK
Assassination Cover-Up,” Politico, 10/06/2015, available at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197;
Dan Hardway, Thank You, Phil Shenon, 2015, available at http://aarclibrary.org/thank-you-phil-shenon/
[xviii] Robarge, above, n. 4, at p. 9.
[xix] The
National Security Agency has never released such intercepts.
[xx] Dispatch, above at n. 1.
[xxi]
This article is going out quickly and will be reviewed and supplemented in the
future. One supplement will address the
modus operandi of CIA cover-up and obstruction of investigations. Another will
deal with what we know before the present document release about possible
covert operations against Cuba that may have involved Oswald.
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