The Kennedys?

[ipollux]

I'm interested in getting everyone's opinion on JFK, Bobby and the rest of the family. By opinions, I mean of them as politicans and their governing. Ever since interviewing RFK Jr. a few years ago, I've been doing extensive research on the family.

[RedDawn]

Real shitballs, both of them.

JFK put 5000 troops in Vietnam.
JFK appointed a bunch of pro-segregation federal judges.
JFK repeatedly refused to give federal protection to civil rights workers. Everything you saw in Mississippi Burning was preventable.

RFK authorized wiretapping of MLK.
RFK decided to have the Freedom Riders arrested instead of simply protecting them from white mobs.
RFK merely postured on Vietnam, he never had any intention on a full withdrawal.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinn17explo.html
http://socialistworker.org/2008/06/06/bobby-kennedy-myth

[OI OI OI]

I don't know much about them because I don't give a rats ass about American presidents.
I think though JFK was the one who invaded Cuba no?

[Lost In Translation]

JFK was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too vague on his platform when running for president. It amazed me that he actually did get elected. He was also really slow on putting his plans to action. To the majority of Americans (non-left Americans, that is), he's a hero because in their point of view, he made Khrushchev look like a douchebag in the Cuban Missile Crisis

[oujiQualm]

The most attacked president by BOTH "liberal" and Conservative journalists. That ought to tell you something.

Chomsky is wrong on JFK. Tremendous amount of disinformation. It has almost become the unwritten rule of the "left" in US: Wanna publish your other stuff? Publish Langeley lies about Kennedy! Does this mean that he was some sort of Revolutionary. Course not. The Chomsky-Cockburn line has always been to paint disagreement as naive liberals. Not true. Reading history can also cause people to chafe at the Chomsky yoke. This is coming from a former Chomsky Mainliner.

Check out these words of JFK on the book Seven Days in May. They were uttered after the Bay of Pigs but before the Cuban Missile Crisis:

.... JFK said he would read the book. Hed did so that night. The next day
Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of thier seeing such a
coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis:

'It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would
have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President,
and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain unseasiness. Maybe
the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be
written of as the ususal military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then
if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be,
'Is he too young and inexperienced?' The military would almost feel that
it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of
the nation, an only God knows just what segment of democracy they
would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment'

Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs
it could happen.' Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning,
he concluded the an old Navy phrase, "But it won't happen on my watch."

On another occasion Kennedy said of the novel's plot about a few military
commanders taking over the country, 'I know a couple who might wish
they could.' The statement is cited by biographer Theodore Sorenson
as a joke. However, John Kennedy used humor in pointe ways, and
Sorenson's preceding sentence is not a joke: "Communications between
Chiefs of Staff and their Commander in Chif remained unsatisfactory for
a large part of his term."

Director John Frankenheimer was encouraged by President Kennedy to
film Seven Days In May 'as a warning to the republic.' Frankenheimer
said, 'The Pentagon didn't want it done. Kennedy said that when we
wanted to shoot at the Chite House he would conveniently go to
Hyannis Port that weekend. (JFK and the Unspeakable, pp12,13)

Now cut to Douglass overview of the Bay of pigs:

Four decades after the Bay of Pigs, we have learned that the CIA
scenario to trap Kennedy was more concrete than Dulles admitted
in his handwritten notes. A conference on the Bay of Pigs was held
in Cuba March 23-25, 2001, which included 'ex-CIA operatives, retired
military commanders, scholars, and journalists.' News analyst Daniel
Schorr reported on National Public Radio that 'from the many hours of
talk and heaps of decassified secret documents' he had gained one
new perception on the Bay of Pigs:

'It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, director Allen Dulles and
deputy Richard Bissell, had their own plan of how to bring the United
States into the conflict. It appears that they never really expected an
uprising agaist Castro when the liberators landed as described in their
memos to the White House. What they did expect was that the invaders
would establish and secure a beachhead, announce the creation of a
counterrevolutionary governemnt and appeal for aid from the United
States and the Organization of American States. The assumption was
that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American
involvement, would be forced by pubic opinion to come to the aid of the
returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in
to expand the beachhead.

' In effect, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation
that collapsed when the invasion collapsed' (JFK and the Unspeakable:
Why He Died and Why It Matters, p. 14-15)

Remember this the next time you read in the Corporate Media that the CIA is merely the tool of the president. It was not the last covert action the CIA
would take without presidential authorization. After reading Douglass' book one wonders if it even made the final dozen.
_________________

[oujiQualm]

I don't know much about them because I don't give a rats ass about American presidents.
I think though JFK was the one who invaded Cuba no?

---------
No he would be the one who PREVENTED the invasion of Cuba twice and then some, holding out against virtually all of the CIA the JCS and much of the US media.

[Trystan]

I know little about them either. But I do know that JFK was not openly pro-civil-rights. He was too interested in self-presevation, I guess. Did JFK not allow concentration camps be set up in South Vietnam btw? I rememberreading that in one of Chomsky's books, I think.

[Labor Shall Rule]

The Kennedy family descended from a lineage of New England rum smuggling and mob ties - John had Giancana (the Chicago mob boss) set up a three-some for him while he was in Cuba!

They are imperialist pigs, racists, and general bourgeois dirt-bags.

[trivas7]

JFK was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too vague on his platform when running for president. It amazed me that he actually did get elected.
Sounds like Obama, no?

[ChristianV777]

Obama reminds me a lot of Kennedy actually.

Kennedy tried to straddle a fence and please as many people as possible. He wanted to please the anti-Communists by being tough on Cuba, but he wanted to show that he was a "compassionate Liberal" so he didn't follow the war-hawk's line on invading Cuba.
He was also the one who got America into Vietnam in the first place.

I don't see how it really matters about whether the CIA is a government operation or working outside the government. The point for the Left is the system. The CIA is certainly working towards the same interests as the Capitalists and Imperialists, regardless.
It's mostly nationalist Libertarians who love to rave about the evils of the CIA taking over the U.S. govt., because see, the United States used to be the best country in the world and was pure as glass until evil enemies like the CIA or Israel or minorities got power and took America down a different path. It's a narrow reading of history, and it buys the nationalist mythology of American "exceptionalism".
Yes, the glorious history of America, like genocide against Native Americans, Imperial expansionism, or slavery!
The CIA is part of the system, regardless. It's not as if the United States govt. really want to help the proletariat of the world, if only the CIA wasn't so "evil". We don't want to abolish just the CIA, we want to abolish the whole Capitalist system and the nation-State.

[oujiQualm]

The Kennedy family descended from a lineage of New England rum smuggling and mob ties - John had Giancana (the Chicago mob boss) set up a three-some for him while he was in Cuba!

They are imperialist pigs, racists, and general bourgeois dirt-bags.

--------
Gee this person seems informed on the topic!

[oujiQualm]

I know little about them either. But I do know that JFK was not openly pro-civil-rights. He was too interested in self-presevation, I guess. Did JFK not allow concentration camps be set up in South Vietnam btw? I rememberreading that in one of Chomsky's books, I think.

-----------
Reading CHomsky on the Kennedy's is virtually the same as reading from the CIA playbook.

Did Chomsky increase the number of advisers in Vietnam?

Yes.

What Chomsky fails to metion is that he also had just avoided and fought against a united JCS who wanted to invade Laos already in 1961. Then the JCS wanted to invade Vietnam in 1962. Kennedy again talked them out of it. So what we have is avoiding two invasions and then -- yes raising the number of advisers in 1963, but then also making clear plans for a reduction of adivisors and the eventual leaving of Vietnam after the election of 1964. You can say Oliver Sone all you want to but every major historian of the topic since 1993 agrees Kennedy was going to get out.

Its so funny how much Chomsky resembles hisbeloved New York Times on anything Kennedy.

The point is not to idealize Kennedy.Certainly on civil rights he did what about any other northern democrat would have done given the fact that there was still a Solid South in the democratic party.

But Chomsky and Cockburn and the allowed to publish by foundation left have done so much to distort our view of Kennedy by only publishing the negative aspects. If you are mature and serious about history, you cannot allow your own personal differences with an individual to distort what happened.

It is incredible how much Chomsky and COckburn and the Mc Pacifica "leftists' bash Kennedy. This is NOT the view of all historians on the left. This is the view of those allowed on the radio and in magazines.

See for example what Marcus Raskin-- a former Kennedy AId who went on to found IPS says about the new book JFK and The Unspeakable. See also what Daniel Ellsberg says about that book.

Right now some naive liberals actually think that Obama is going to change things. Why? In my view, a lot of this is rooted in disinformation about the US between 1960 and 1963. There WAS a division within the bourgeoisie, and it was important.

When he accept the liberal and conservative disinformation about this period we are allowing them to cover up the permanence of military and industrial bureacracy, that Kennedy began to increasingly disagree with after the Bay of Pigs. This belief in turn maintains a belief in the current fake political system, by covering up the extent to which rich corporations call the shots no matter what the individual president may want.

[Lost In Translation]

Sounds like Obama, no?
Now that you mention it, yeah, i guess so.

[BIG BROTHER]

JFK was a fucken imperialist bastard, he's in part responsable for the bay of the pigs attack on cuba, and also isolated cuba from the rest of latin america.

[ipollux]

After Obama's speech in Germany today, he seems even more like JFK than ever. I think that's how Obama is positioning himself, though.

[BIG BROTHER]

After Obama's speech in Germany today, he seems even more like JFK than ever. I think that's how Obama is positioning himself, though.

yea, you're right they both got a similar style when it comes to politics and speeches. Do you guys think obama might get shot too?

[ipollux]

yea, you're right they both got a similar style when it comes to politics and speeches. Do you guys think obama might get shot too?

There's a good chance, but not because of his politics, but because of the extreme racism that still exists in the U.S., especially in the south.

[Lost In Translation]

After Obama's speech in Germany today, he seems even more like JFK than ever. I think that's how Obama is positioning himself, though.
As my history professor said, "When I hear Obama speak, it is like hearing Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK speak at the same time. Both, coincidentally, got shot."

[ChristianV777]

When I hear Obama start to question Capitalism and the system that creates Imperialism and racism, rather than his Liberal assessment that "a once great nation has been led into a grave mistake by miscalculations in judgment" or his "personal responsibility" trip addressing racism is when I might start to compare him to someone like Martin Luther King Jr.

[oujiQualm]

Christian wrote:
"I don't see how it really matters about whether the CIA is a government operation or working outside the government. The point for the Left is the system. The CIA is certainly working towards the same interests as the Capitalists and Imperialists, regardless."
------------

I disagree. I think it does matter in terms of people learning about how the government and political power really work.

"See heres an elected leader who thought he COULD change things in a manner that powerful imperialist interests did not approve of.... and look what happened to him!" One does not have to overlook JFKs many anti-communist actions and statements to know this is true. One does have to read more than the quick and curiously ubiquitous Kennedy bashing of the the US controlled left-- yes controlled in the sense of publication and airwave access, more on this if you would like to discuss it-- to learn about the OTHER 53% OF the kennedys that has been off limits.

Its epistomological. Wanna read about a massacre in Indoesia-- Chomsky is good at that-- though he wont tell you that JFK was going to visit Sukarno ins 1963 ins spite of the fact that the CIA had been targeting Sukarno since 1958. That might make it seem like it actually mattered that JFK was killed and replaced by LBJ who approved the CIA coup and genocide.

Whats far more dangerous to the elite is if LOTS of people question the fundemental fictions about how our gov works eg three branches checks and balances and our 18th centruy political vocabulary, that is the ONLY ONE WE ALL HAVE IN COMMON WITH WHICH TO COMMUNICATE AS A BODY POLITIC. Mess with that myth and people could construct their own model of power, and not just the people who can afford to be history majors and speak middle class!

So Chomsky, go on about Indonesia. That will never threaten power! Just keep on repeating the mantra Conspiracy Theory whenever anyone wants to talk about US history between 1960-63!!

We are told over and over that the CIA and the intel agencies are controlled by the President even though there is massive historical evidence to the contrary, or at least showing that the President is severely constrained by the
permanent military intelleigence bureacracy.

So cut to Obama. Notive how many people maintain the ridiculous idea that Obamb is going to change things? Why is it that they can have such literal ideas about the presidency and checks and balances etc?

I would suggest that its because the best AND POTENTIALLY MOST ACCESSIBLE (and potentially of popular interest) examples to the contrary have been censored, lied about etc.

Writers like Chomsky and Cockburn divorce the assassination from its historical context which was a time of ossification after massive and very very rapid change. The Cold War had frozen the possibility of a Democratic socialism Western euro style order emerging in the US. DId that mean that the oil and defense economy that we have today was inevitable?? I would aregue BOTH YES AND NO!

The years 1960-63 is precisely the crucible in which this question would be answered: and it is this wider historical context which Chomsky and Cockburn seek to obfuscate with their insane name calling, which reminds me very much of the history of CIA support for the non-communist left during the Cold war as a way of dividing the left.

Here is this. It is about a Great Book called They Will Be Done: its about Nelson Rockefeller oil and genocide in Latin America. The authors are no liberals, but they get the Kennedys, and above all understand that to conflate our current well-earned cynicism about today's liberals with the period around the Kennedys is the main tool that the CIA uses to prevent a common and socially mediated history of how we came to where we are in the world today.
------
This book is so eclectic that nothing is "representative." That said, I found its description of the Rockfeller Commission of 1975, to be provoctive and perhaps usefull in placing it in historical context of prior and later developments in the CIA's negotiation of the 1970's (1970's negotiation of the CIA?)

The authors put the commission in terms of a post-Watergate control mechanism for information about past CIA abuses. They see Watergate as a reprisal by the CIA against Nixon after Nixon threatened to use old CIA stories as blackmail with the goal of getting Helms to cooperate in the Watergate Coverup.

(I wonder to what extent the Hunt forgeries of documents blaming Kennedy for the Diem killings were central to this.Even Bland Ghost Writer, Stanley Kutler acknowleges " on June 19 Colson urged that Howard Hunt's White House safe be confiscated....Later that afternoon Dean and his Associate Counsel,
Fred Fielding, sifted the contents of Hunt's safe, finding evidence of more"dirty tricks," including an attempt to fabricate a direct link between President
Kennedy and the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem" (The Wars of Watergate, p. 216). Writer J. Anthony Lukas, offers much more on the
attmepts to link Kennedy to Diem:

Two days later, at a meeting with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell, the President discussed a political strategy which
would keep the origins of the Vietnam War "front and center so that the Democrats would "squable about it." They agreed
that the "Diem incident" ws the "best ground" for attack because it involved both Averill Harrima-- a Muskie supporter--
and Ted Kennedy. Nixon suggested that several Republican senators might pick up his accusation of September 16th and
' demand that Conein be released from the silence" required by the CIA regulations. "Let the CIA take a whipping on this,
Nixon said, demanding that the agency deliver its "entire Diem file" immediately. (Nightmare, p.91)


Lucas claims that the initial purpose of this creative autopsy of the Diem murder was to hurt the campaign of Ted Kennedy, especailly among
Catholics, by claiming to prove that JFK had ordered the killing of a fellow Catholic. But in the above quote its as if he is trying to kill at least one other
bird with a wider shotgun approach. But what of his comment on letting the CIA 'take a whipping'? Does it suggest that Nixon himself thought that the
Conein and Kennedy were on the same page about Diem, when they really were not? With this wide angle blast, was Nixon threatening to raise questions that might have shown that the CIA was following its own agenda with the Diem Killing? And was Nixon aware that this would happen?

Lucas also offers an interesting quote from Hunt that makes it seem like Hunts forged JFK-Diem documents originated at the suggestion of the White House
(Colson) and not the CIA:

After about a week, Colson asked him, "What kind of material have you dug up in the files that would indicate Kennedy
complicity in Diem's death?" Hunt said that nombody who read the cables would have any doubt about it, but no single
cable would establish it. 'you'd have to take a sequence of there of four cables, be aware of their context, and speculate
on what was contained in the cables missing from the sequence. According to Hunt, Colson asked, 'Do you think you
could improve on them?' Hunt said he would need technical assistance, particularly in finding the original typwriters
on which the cables had been typed. "Well, we won't be able to give you any technical help," Hunt recalls Colson saying.
This is too hot. See what you can do on your own" (Nightmare, p. 91)


All of this makes me wonder if the Diem killing and its very contested narration was not very high up the list of reasons that the CIA felt they had to get
to take serious steps in getting rid of Nixon.)

Note these paragraphs leading up to the creation of the Rockefeller Commission:

In Hersh's New Year's Eve story, " the Bay of Pigs thing" resurfaced with potentially astounding implications: "The Times reported
Sunday that the new domestic unit was formed in 1964 but Mr. Hunt realled that it was assmebled shortly after the failure of the Bay
of Pigs operaion in 1961. Many Agency men connected with that failure were shunted into the new domestic unit' Hunt placed the date
of its founding in 1962, before, not after the Kennedy assassinaiton, and noted that Helms was strenuously opposed to its establishment.
Who, then, ran this secret operation of Bay of Pigs veterans? (Morales with his AMOT connections he had developed prior to the invasion,
who he then siphoned of to Fort Bennning, separate from the other group of returning BOP veterans?????) According to once source at the
DIA, such opperations fell within the domain of the Clandestine Services chif of the Western Hemishphere Division: Nelson Rockefeller's
old friend from CIAA days in the Brazilian Amazon, Colonel J.C. King.

Four days later, after an even more sensitve oral briefing by Colby in the White House, President Ford announced that he was appointing Nelson
Rockefeller to head an eight-member "blue-ribbon commission (including Nelson's old friend and coinvestor in Belgian Congo properties,
C. Doulas Dillon) to probe the CIA's illegal operations n the United States. (Thy Will Be Done, p. 735)

J.C. King. After reading this book, which is chock-full of ties between King and Neslon Rockefeller, I am wondering if I, for one, may have underestimated
his involvement in the original multi-faceted assassination plan, the one that would have culminated in a US invasion of Cuba. Recall that he was very
involved in the development of the original BOP invasion plan, and undoubtedly knew of the points in the 1959 and 1960 Castro assassination points that
would could have either directly or indirectly implicated Nixon and old FBI contacts from WWII days when the FBI was stronger in Latin America. King is also described as one of the strongest detractors from Kennedy's Alliance For Progress.

It is also worth noting that King began his career in Latin America while working for Johsnon and Johnson, the US drug company who dug a lot of the
Amazonian ingredients. Later, with Rockefeller money he created a front for MK-ULTRA research called the (Amazon Natural Drug Company). He was heavily involved in the Brazil coup of 1964, the one that Rockefeller's man on the WC found considerably more interesting than attending meetings with
Earl-- because of Rockefeller mining investments, among many many others in Brazil.


(Nelson Rockefeller) recommended keeping secret what ins some cases even Colby though unnecessary.(Recall Colby's
by [assisted?] canoe in 1996 N.H.) But Neson had personal,not just official, reasons for secrecy. As Eisenhiower's under
secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and then as his special assistant on Cold War strategy
and psychological warfare, Nelson knew about many of the CIA's covert actions, including the mind-control experiments
(which were funded partyly through the HEW) and assassination plots. Indeed, as chairman of the National Security Council's
Special Group, he was briefed on ALL covert operations and would have had to approve someo of the most questionable ones,
including coups and assassinations abroad and continuting mind-control experiments at home.

President Ford was particulary interested in having Nelson "look into this assassination business" Nelson understood the
implications immediately. He already knew about the attempts on Castro's life and the theory that such attempts had
backfired on Kennedy in Dallas "This was another way of chopping my head off and getting me out there where I was the one
who was putting the finger on the Kennedy's, see, as chairman of the committee. Also getting me into an impossible hope
because I happened to know this thing had been investigated a good many times there was a lot of very interesting leads.

With a lot of intersting leads why was it so impossible? By "chopping my head off" was Nelson here implying that his own investigation was limited
becasuse it could lead to Nelson Rockefeller and his close associate J.C. King? This "chopping my head" head off seems to be open to a number of
different interpretations.

Faced with Nesons's threat to resign, Ford dropped his insistence on a written report on this specific subject. But the investigation would
go forward.Neson began assembling the case for a Castro-Kennedy Assassination link. 'We got this information and we put it together
and it was hot' (This piecing together sounds similar to the alledged Hunt-Colson plan of four years before. Nixon had previously thought
of emphasizing Kennedy-Castro assassination alledged ties, before setteling on JFK-Diem instead N.H.) ...... Unable to find any evidence
that proved the Kennedys had ordered the CIA to try to kill Castro, Nelson gave up the investigation. Avoiding having to report "got
the President off the hook, got me off the hook, got it right where it belonged: in the Congress.

Despite Neson's claim that he was sticking ot the commission's original madate to invstigate only the CIA's domestic activities,
some activities that bore on oprations overseas were addressed in Nelson's report, but in a highly contained and selective manner.

The CIA's illegal cooperation with the NSA in monitoring phone conversations by narcottigs traffickers between Latin America and the
US in 1973 was considered a worthy target for criticism; the CIA's ties to American cocaine traffickers operationg between the United
States and Columbia were not.

The CIA's support for the activiteis of the Cabinet Committee on narcotics Control, including invstigations abroad, was reported; the
involvement of the CIA's Air America in the transport of the very Southeast Asian heroin that the committee was so concerned about
(and ultimately reported the futility of trying to stop) was not.

Nixon's abuse of the CIA on such matters as access to files and equipment, Watergate, and requisitioning more than $33,000 from
the CIA to pay for White House responses to mail on the Cambodia invasion was fair game; The CIA's conspiring with mobsters and
Cuban exiles in the US to assassinate the Cuban head of state was not. Newither was the CIA's abuse of the names of President
Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy after the missile crisis to continue these assassination attempts illegally and without
authorization.

While taking a properly critical tone and makig some sound structural and procedural recommendations to correct the most glaring
errors of process and of the government's line of authority, Neson, in most cases, projected confidence in the Agency's claim that
the abuses had been stopped and reforms had already been enacted, including a prohibition against the assassination of foreign
leaders. He did not mention the CIA's unauthorized storage of curare, cobra venom, shellfish poison, and other toxins and biological
weapons, in direct wiolation of President Nixon's executive order of February 1970 to destroy the stockpiles. Among the scientists
collaborating with the CIA in the illegal storage of these biological weapons were four scientists at Rockefeller University (p.736-737,
They Will Be Done)

The authors present the Rockefeller Commission as an CIA controlled revelation of some of their secrets, that was made necessary by its
conflict with Nixon over Watergate, and at the same time a sign of the CIA's triumph over another president who thought he could control it.

[ChristianV777]

"One does have to read more than the quick and curiously ubiquitous Kennedy bashing of the the US controlled left-- yes controlled in the sense of publication and airwave access, more on this if you would like to discuss it-- to learn about the OTHER 53% OF the kennedys that has been off limits."

What? Are you arguing there's been a great conspiracy to cover up the truth about that "great man" John F. Kennedy?
Are you saying he had no idea about what was going on in Iraq, or that he totally opposed it? With his other actions....Bay of Pigs, getting involved in Vietnam; whether you think he was a "really nice guy" for not starting all-out wars, the facts remain that he did support these actions.
There are many books, including one by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that I read, written about Kennedy that are not from the Left perspective in any way. Schlesinger couldn't get enough of kissing Kennedy's butt. If you want to get a positive perspective of Kennedy, there's no shortage of books at your local bookstore. The Liberals treat the man like a god. I don't particularly put a lot of trust in someone like Schlesinger's objectivity though.

I also think you misunderstand Chomsky. He argues that certain governments might be better for certain nations than other governments, but that there's an Imperial objective with all United States' governments.

I also think you're misjudging the American people. I think a great many people in America, a growing number, realize exactly that the President is, overall, a bit of a puppet.
Even George W. Bush, who has been working to turn the presidency into a monarchy, most people I talk to think he's "an idiot being controlled from behind the scenes". Not Left-Wingers, random people.
There are serious problems with the American governmental system that most people don't realize. They think things were originally perfect, but that somehow, working outside the Constitution, certain people have gained unlawful power. They don't realize that the Constitution and the American governmental system, itself, was flawed to begin with.
But, let's not start playing "great men" theories. The President's come from the ruling class in America. They have a certain class interest.

So, are you arguing that, rather than changing the whole system, we should just fight to eliminate things like the CIA, so that Presidents like Obama can change things? You believe that Obama really is a voice for change, rather than someone who is being bought and paid for by Wall Street and corporate interests?
So, America should try to be more like Britain or more like France, rather than addressing systemic issues?
Are we just waiting to get the "right great man" into office, who can rule us justly and fairly?

[oujiQualm]

"
What? Are you arguing there's been a great conspiracy to cover up the truth about that "great man" John F. Kennedy?"

No. Interesting that you should need to put words in my mouth,prefering to leap to an easy pre-fab dichotomy vs strucutural change scntick rather than read what I had to say. This is standard practice among foundation funded leftists Chomsky and Cockburn, who immediately seek to portray all who disagree with them as stary eyed liberal former cabinet members.

WHAT AM I ACTUALLY SAYING ABOUT JFK?

1) Chomsky and Cockburn are essentially CORRECT in arguing that JFK got to power as a Cold Warrior, with some signs of change-- for example in the context of 1960 he met with MLK and NIxon refused to. You can be as cynical as you want, until you study the context of that action in 1960 with the Dems still controlling the Solid SOuth.

2.) Even before becomming president, Kennedy did show some NOT RADICAL BUT STILL SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT POSITIONS REGUARDING ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLES IN AFRICA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA AS COMPARED WITH OTHERS IN SENATE AND ELITE US OPINION.

3) KENNEDY DISAGREED STRONGLY OVER LAOS AND PREVENTED A US LAND WAR THERE IN 1961 OVER VERY STRONG OPPOSITION FORM THE JCS AND CIA AND MUCH OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA, MOST SIGNIFICANTLY LUCES'S TIME-LIFE.

4) KENNEDY BEGAN TO HAVE A NUMBER OF VERY SERIOUS DIFFERENCES WITH THE CIA OVER AUTONOMY FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF HIS ADMINISRATION WHICH BECAME OVERT AND DANGEROUS DURING THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION-- WHICH WAS PLANNED BEFORE HE CAME INTO OFFICE.

5) KENNEDY IT IS TRUE-- WAS VERY STRONGLY ANTI-CASTRO AND WAS SEEKING CASTROS REMOVAL FROM POWER IN THE BEGINNING OF HIS TERM. CAN YOU THINK OF ANYONE WHO COULD HAVE BEEN ELECTED PRESIDENT AT THAT TIME AND WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN? (keep in mind here Monroe doc, history of US fo.po. etc.)

6) KENEDY WAS GOING TO PULL OUT OF VIETNAM. THIS IS NO LONGER EVEN DEBATEABLE SAVE AMONG NEWSWEEK, THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NOAM CHOMSKY!

7) KENNEDY MANAGED TO STAVE OFF A FULL US GROUND WAR IN VIETNAM IN 1961-62. YES THIS INVOLVED SOME SERIOUS COMPROMISES, BUT WE ONLY HEAR ABOUT THE COMPROMISES FROM GURU CHOMSKY AND NOT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.

8) JFK BEGAN VERY SERIOUS AND CONCRETE MOVES TOWARDS DETANTE WITH THE USSR IN 1963, AS IS MOST PROFOUNDLY EVIDENT IN HIS JUNE 10TH 1963 SPEECH AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WHICH IS NEVER MENTIONED BY CHOMSKY AND HIS FELLOW KENNEDY BASHERS AT HIS BELOVED NYT.

9) KENNEDY RESISTED THE MOST INTENSE PRESSURE IMMAGINABLE -- FROM THE PERMANENT MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE BUROCRACY THAT HAD BEGAN TO OSSIFY AND BECOME THE REAL INSTRUMENT OF POWER IN THE US AFTER ITS BIRTH ONLY 13 YEARS BEFORE-- DURING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. THERE WAS OVERWHELMING AND VIRUTALLY UNANIMOUS PRESSURE FROM CIA AND JCS TO CARRY OUT AN INVASION THAT WOULD HAVE HAD AN EXTREMELLY HIGH PROBABILITY OF TRIGGERING WORLD WAR III.

10) KENNEDY HAD SHOWN THAT HE WAS NOT AFFRAID TO CHALLENGE US CORPORATE ELITES BY GOING DIRECTLY TO THE AIRWAVES AND CRITICIZING CORPORATE GREED IN A WAY THAT I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND A SIMILAR EXAMPLE SINCE. I AM HERE REFERING TO THE STEEL CRISIS OF 1962.

11) KENNEDY WAS THE ONLY PRESIDENT SINCE WORLD WAR TWO THAT HAS EVER REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE A RIGHT WING COUP D'ETAT IN LATIN AMERICA. UNPRECEDENTED. WAS HE CHE? NO, BUT TO ROCKEFELLER AND WALL STREET HE WAS A VERY VERY REAL AND SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE IN COMPARISON TO THE CORPORATE MAINSTEAM ON LATIN AMERICAN AND ALSO IN COMPARISION WITH
PREVIOUS US FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD THE REGION.

12) KENNEDY WAS ALLY OF SUKARNO IN INDONESIA EVEN AT A TIME WHEN THE CIA WAS HAD ALREADY BEGUN ITS SUBVERSION OF THAT COUNTRY WHICH CULMINATED IN THE GENOCIDE OF 1965 UNDER PRESIDENT JOHNSON. KENNEDY WAS ACTUALLY PLANNING A STATE VISIT TO SUKARNO IN 1963-- GURU CHOMSKY SOMEHOW MANAGES TO FORET THIS AS HE DOES RFK S COMMENTS -- VIRUTALLY ALONE AMONG ALL US POLS--DURING THAT GENOCIDE.

13) KENNEDY TOOK ACTIVE STEPS TO SUPPORT THE POPULARLY ELECTED PRESDENT OF BRAZIL GOULART IN 1963. EVEN AS HE DID THIS THE CIA WAS COORDINATING THE COUP THAT WOUL HAPPEN SHORTLY AFTER HIS DEATH.

THESE ARE JUST SOME OF THE UTTERLY DEBATEABLE POINTS I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE ABOUT JFK-- AND I HOPE WE CAN INDEED NOW MOVE ONTO AN INFORMED AND RESEARCHED DEBATE OVER EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE POINTS!

NOW WHATS UP WITH THE CAPS?????????????

I have decided to capitalize the above points because I have noticed a pattern among the left when it comes to discussing the place of 196-63 within the overall context of the cold war.

Nearly every single time they go into their "lets bash the naive liberal" gear. And that, in my opinion is just what it is a gear, carved in the mind by the publishable left such as Chomsky and Cockburn.

The point here is that it is not the job of the historian to read history on the basis of whether they like or dislike a politician.?

What would 18th Brumaire by Karl Marx have sounded like if that were the case?

In no way do I think that Kennedy was some kind of a radical leftist. In no way do I think that he was against capitalism. I read. For a long time I believed Chomsky. Then I read a lot more about the Cold War. A LOT more. Does this make me special? No just old, and having the advantages of more time to read.

There are lots of left historians who do not see JFK and in the sickeningly one sided way the Guru Chomsky and Cockburn present.

THAT IS THE REAL REASON I AM WRITING ON THIS THREAD-- to make it clear to younger readers that things opinion on JFK is not so clear cut as we would think in todays heavily controlled media environment. In my next post I will name authors who create very convincing arguments that Chomskys view is vastly oversimplified to put it very mildly.

I also want to address the 9 assumptions that were attributed to me by the previous poster. THere were a lot so I will start with the one about only naive liberals hisotrians believing that Kennedy was not just another Cold Warrior (if I am mistating this, please let me know, I do not want to establish straw dogs as Chomsky does!)

I would argue quite strongly that just the opposite is the case.

Liberal historians have been the most ferocious Kennedy bashers for at lest twenty years now! What liberal historians are you thinking of? I am thinking of Dallek, Hersh,
Tim Weiner (author of the Horrid piece of CIA propaganda Legacy of Ashes) Max Hollland and many others.

In fact there seems only one thing that these liberal historians, the NYT and Noam Chomsky can agree on-- JFK!

Now why does it matter? Why is this period of history worth our study, given so much that is worthy of reading about. Im getting to that.

[Comrade B]

The better of the left of the USA. I think that the CIA operates pretty much independently and is much more responsible for the invasion of Cuba than JFK. I do not stand completely by them, nor do I try to say they did not hurt the communists at all, but I will say that they are not near as evil as many of us seem to think. To liberals of the United States, the Kennedys represent a large part of their voice. I do not attack JFK in front of my non-radical friends and family out of respect.

[oujiQualm]

In the excellent new book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, the author James W. Douglass points out something quite interesting about the 11-2-63 Chicaogo attmept to assassinate JFK. The attempt involved the very same CIA connected Chicago cop that would later be the leader in the Chicago Police murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton in 1969. I strongly recommend Douglass' book. It is not so much about the details of the assassintation as about the structural reasons for it --contradictions in the US domestic economy and a division over Cold War policy.

--------

Just received my copy of JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass.

It does seem to have quite a bit more on the Chicago plot than most other books.

Thomas Arthur valle was quickly identified from intelligence sources as an ex-Marine who was a "disaffiliated member of the John
Birch Society,"....Vallee was also descirbed as a loner, a paranoind schizophrenic, and a gun collector. He fit perfectly the 'lone nut'
profile that would late be used fo characterize ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.


Only after two secret service agents surveilling Vallee found an M1 rifle, a carbine rifle, and twenty-five hundred rounds of ammunition, were
Chicago police officers Daniel Groth and Peter Schurla assigned the task of surveilling Vallee on Novermber 2nd. Interestingly, Douglass notes that
both of these officers were destined for

prominanat roles in police intelligence activites. In 1975, when a reporter tried unsuccessfully to interview Peter Schurla
about Vallee's arrest,
Schurla was a high-level intelligence official at Chicago police headquarters. His companion, Daniel Groth's career on intellignec had by then
become more public and more notorious tha Schurla's

At 4:30 A.M. on december 4, 1969, six years after the arrest of Thomas Arthur Vallee, Sergeant Daniel Groth commanded the police team that broke
into the the Chicago aprtment of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The heavily armed officers shot both men to death. ...Groth
(later) acknowledged under oath that his team of officers had carried out the assault of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark at the specific request of the
FBI (JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 203-204)

Douglass goes on to note, however that Northeastern Illinois Prof. dan Stern researched Daniel groths background and found that Groth had taken
several "training leaves" from the Chicago Police department to go to Washington D.C. where Groth' underwent speacialized counterintelligence
training under the auspices of both the FBI and the CIA.

The Chicago Police Department and the Los Angeles Police department seem to have had the closest ties with the CIA. They were pioneer members of the Law Enforcemnt Intelligence Union, a CIA -police liason program that was seen as a rival to similar and older liason-programs that the FBI had
established with most other police departments. The LEIU was formed in 1956. This, of course, does not preclude other CIA-Police programs, but Los Angeles and Chicago seem to stand out as the oldest and largest.


One has to wonder if Groth and Schurla knew about Vallee before they were tipped off by the Secret Service. It might sound like too little compartmentalization if they did, but given their earlier involvement with the CIA, and Schurla's later involvement in polical murder, it
seems at least a possiblility.

More info on Thomas Vallee Note the similarities to Lee Harvey Oswald.

*Thomas Arthur Vallee was wounded in the Korean War. An FBI teletype
on Vallee the week after Kennedy's Assassination stated that the ex-
Marine had a prior history of mental commitment, "allegedly has a metal
plate in his scalp," and "recieved complete disability from the V. A"
(footnote 165 chapter 6)
* a few days after being discharged from the Marines, Vallee suffered
a second head injury, this one follwed by a "complete rehabilitation
program, learning all over again how to walk, talk and hold a knife
and fork (note 167)
* Soon after he returned home his father died of a heart attack. An
Uncle accused Thomas of killing his father, driving him to death by
his errant behavior. His sister said Vellee felt deeply guilty about his
father's death. "After the accident," she said, "my brother was never
the same again".
* Vallee told invesitgative reported Edwin Black that he had been
assigned by the Marines to a U-2 base in Japan, Camp Otsu.(note
172)" Vallee thereby came under the control of the CIA, which
commanded the U-2 just as Oswald would come under the CIA's
control as a radar operator at another CIA U-2 base, in Japan.
* Like Oswald Vallee was involved with a camp being used as a
training ground by the CIA for Cuban exiles in a plan to assassinate
Fidel Castro.
* Vallee's close CIA connections, like Oswald's help to explain how
he too, came to be employed at a site over a presidential parade
route.

"In August 1963 as Oswald was preparing to move from New Orleans back
to Dallas, Vallee moved from New York City back to Chicago (note 175
Chapter 6) Just as Oswald got a job in a warehouse right over Kennedy'
future motercade route in Dallas, so, too did Vallee get a job in a
warehouse right over Kennedy's motorcade route in Chicago. Like
Oswald in Dallas (before his summer in New Orleans), Vallee found
employment as a printer. He was hired by IPP Litho-Plate, located at
625 West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago."

The author, James W. Douglass, describes the view from the roof of
625 West Jackson:

"From its roof I could look down and over to where JFK's presidential
limousine had been scheduled to make a slow turn up from the
Northwest Expressway (today ironically the Kennedy Expressway)
exit ramp onto West Jackson on November 2, 1963. It was analogous
to the slow curve the limousine woul make in Dallas in front of the
Texas School Book Depository three weeks later. In the Chicago
motorcade, after proceeding one more block, President Kennedy woul
have passed by Vallee's workplace, just as he would in fact pass by
Oswald's workplace in Dallas three weeks later

Vallee's location at IPP Litho-Plate actually gave him a nearer, clearer
view ofthe November 2 Chicago motorcade than Oswald's so-
called "sniper's nest" did onf the November 22nd Dallas Motercade"
(JFK and the Unspeakable:Why He Died and Why It Matters, p. 206)

[oujiQualm]

Both castro and his intelligence director who was responsible for infiltrating the relationship between the Oswald and the CIA agree with your assessment of the CIA being much more behind the Bay of Pigs than Kennedy.

Knee jerk Kennedybashers might want to check out the book on The Kennedy asssassination written by the former head of Cuban Intelligence.

JFK: The Cuba Files by Fabian Escalante. In it they will not recognize the JFK of Guru Chomsky.

[oujiQualm]

Many at times wonder about the degrees of government influence on the so called free press. But it is difficult to know when the topic is always switching. hard to analyze the epistomology of a flickering screen! In my opinion that is why it is so important that the miasma of "conspircacy theory" be draped over the major political assassinations of the 1960s. Look at these for any legnth of time, and credibilities begin to crumble.

It is noteworthy that this PBS documentary, which will be rebroadcast on Monday night, poses as a feftitsh view. It is made by Robert Stone who claims to be a progressive. This is in keeping whith much of the CIAs disinformation which is specifically targeted at the left, and tries to portray JFK as Just Another Cold Warrior. There is certainly no shortage of JFk qutoes to support that view, as there is no way he or anyone else would have become president in 1961 wouthout saying them. However much--very very much-- is left out as we now know. In fact the entire other side of the story is censored.

It is a bad time to be defending the lone nutism in the case of JFK assassination and indeed for RFK and MLK as well

Tons of new documents are STILL being released under the Congrssionally mandated ARRB proceedure that was legislated in 1993.

Major books by David Kaiser(Harvard University Press, 2008, and former Washington Post Editor Jefferson Morley (University of Kansas Press, 2008) have added to the steady drum- roll of lone-nut bunker busters of the last five years.(The best of all of these books IMO is JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It matters. THis book has receieved rave reviews from the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, Marcus Raskin, former assistant to JFK Chief of Staff, McGeorge Bundy, Phillip Glass' Piano teacher, and also founder of Institute For Policy Studies in Washington and Markus Raskin of Princeton University. I guess these are all glazed over flying saucer nuts in the eyes of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting????

There is only one solution to prevent the lesson of the JFK assassination form leeching out to ITS BROADER RELEVENCE FOR TODAYS WORLD: IF A PRESIDENT TRIES TO IMPEDE THE PERMANENT MILITARY AND INTELLIVENCE BUREACRACIES, HE WILL BE MADE IRRELEVANT IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

This solution, is to air extremely one sided TV shows that are meant to convince people who have never read even one book about the assassination. This view is given access coast to coast to millions, while the other side of the story, will be not be mediated into the discussion.

Of course the best way of doing this is pretend to give both sides of the story. The horrible Oswalds Ghost does this by using some old pro-conspiracy writers, who published in the 1970s and have now basically changed their minds. Virtually none of the new documents released since 1993 that overwhelmingly suggest a conspiracy are even alluded to.

NOW PLEASE LOOK AT THESE JOURNALIST THAT PBS USES IN MAKING THEIR PRO GOVERNMENT CASE. YOU MAY AS WELL KNOW THEM, BECAUSE YOU ARE PAYING THEIER SALARIES AS THEY ARE CIA ASSETS.

Priscilla Johnson was one of two American reporters who interviewed LHO after he "defected" to the Soviet Union in 1959.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjohnsonPR.htm
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8045

Hugh Ayensworth is a Journalist with extensive ties to the intelligence community, who has been a key player in the defending lone nutism that prevents us from seeing the structural limits on presidential power.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKayneswo
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12117

I am not asking you to believe me or the thread desciption from Spartacus or its affiliated Education Forum. Scroll down my friend, as John McCain told me last night in a sensitive moment. Look at the EXCERPTS FROM MANY DIFFERENT PUBLICATIONS ON Priscilla Johnson and Hugh Aynesworth. Then click to the discussion on these threads at Eduction Forum. Then research some more on your own.
_________________
Operation Mockingbird Spartacus:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm
Operation Mockingbird Education Forum
http://educatio

[oujiQualm]

This book is one of the most important books published in 40 years. For all those who have been dutifully trained to think that the Left has nothing important to learn about the Kennedy Assassination and more importantly the history of the Kennedy Presidency I heartily recommend it, if you have an open mind and are not just trying to be in with the in crowd of leftists.:) There is good reason Kennedy has been bashed on the Fake Left more even than on the right.

And that reason is not that Kennedy was loved by the right;)
-----

I cannot BELIEVE WHAT IS IN HERE!!!!!!!!!!!! POWERFUL IS NOT QUITE THE WORD. CORE IS.

The Great NONO in the debate over the power of the presdecies is Does the President REALLY controll the permanent Intelligence andmilitary bureacracies. Even great writers like Chalmers Johnson are permitted to say what they do on condition that they toe the mantra-line: the prez is in control of these agencies amen.

Well read THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK ON AMERICAN POLITICS IN FORTY YEARS.

Russ Bakers Family of Secrets.

This is not just one more book on the Bush Dynasty. No Mantra here!

The Woodwards That Be are going to attack this like Dresden's Twin, but this guy's credentials have the ability to protect him from Major League Insult. MUST. A necessary rescrambling of the last fifty years of US history. Seatbelts necessary no children under 5 feet six inches.

[benhur]

This book is one of the most important books published in 40 years. For all those who have been dutifully trained to think that the Left has nothing important to learn about the Kennedy Assassination and more importantly the history of the Kennedy Presidency I heartily recommend it, if you have an open mind and are not just trying to be in with the in crowd of leftists.:) There is good reason Kennedy has been bashed on the Fake Left more even than on the right.

And that reason is not that Kennedy was loved by the right;)
-----

I cannot BELIEVE WHAT IS IN HERE!!!!!!!!!!!! POWERFUL IS NOT QUITE THE WORD. CORE IS.



Can you give a gist? Why do you feel it's that significant?

[The Deepest Red]

As a general rule agents of the bourgeoisie, such as politicians, are considered to be the enemies of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world and so therefore the enemies of communists as well. There was nothing special about the Kennedys. They were reactionaries who once presided over the largest and most grotesque empire the world has ever seen. In fact I would argue that popular figures like the Kennedys and Obama are worse than the bare-faced reactionaries as they present a further obstacle with the façade of 'capitalism with a human(e) face'.

[oujiQualm]

Deepest so as not waste bandwidth pls see my post 22 on this thread. I will respond more in a day or two when I have a second.

Ben likewise I need to respond much more specifically to your question although it is much more difficlult than most summaries of books, so elcectic is this one! In the meantime here is this Please forgive its prechewed nature I have a three month old who is trying to create false consciousness!

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1421

[Guerrilla22]

The Kennedys are the US equivalent of European blue bloods. they are about as bourgeois as one can be and are the apitomy of white privellege. What exactly have they done aside from making the gossip columns on a regular basis?

[ZeroNowhere]

Did Chomsky increase the number of advisers in Vietnam?

Yes.
Wait, what?

[oujiQualm]

Here by the way is an articl written abou two years ago by the author. I am posting it because it is UNUSUALLY DIFFICULT TO describe what is so unique about this book.

I think it is the degree to which it is so incredbily detailed and researched to the nth degree that it overcomes the belabored dichotomy between "Conspiracy Theory" and structural analysis-- ie how the intel eencies are connected to banks and oil related companies etc. The media likes to leave these connections vague. This book gets so specific that it is impossible to get anyone who has read it as "CT" Thats why the strategy is clearly to get nobody to read it.
--

http://www.realnews.org/index.php-op...Itemid=217.htm

[oujiQualm]

No Chomsky did not, although those boys at MIT sure knew their way around Langely. More than ANY other University including Harvard.

Kennedy did increase the number of advisors, as Chomsky and COckburn love to point out MAKING DAMN SURE NOT TO GO INTO MUCH DETAIL. They use this to hang the escalator tag on JFK.

Just the opposite was the case.

KENNEDY WAS GOING TO END US MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM.

Don't worry I know how many times this has been called Conspiracy Theory by Chomsky Cockburn and their erstwhile enemies (see encounter magazine) at NYT and Newsweek.

Just one problem. ALL of the histories that have examoined this question since it first flared up dramatically around the time of the JFK movie in 1992 ALL OF THEM including University of Alabam prof Howard Jones in his Oxford University Published work Death of A Generation-- have concluded that JFK was going to get out of Vietnam.

Jones even states in his intro that his intention in writing the book was to debunk what he inititally took for a WACKY C.T. A funny thing happened on the way to publication.

He looked at the evidence.

JFK DID in fact increase the mnumber of advisors in V. But it was only after HE JUST BARELY AVOIDED A LAND WAR IN LAOS over the unified objection of the CIA and Joint Chiefs-- NOTE THAT A LAND WAR NOT JUST ADVISORS-- and also as temp. compromise to avert a full land war in Vietnam already by 1963.

The probllem with so much of Fake-Left Kennedy Bashing is that they take out the PERMANTEN INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES that were on JFK to Fully escalate.

How ironic that those who talk of the JFK assassination are routinely dismissed by theallowed to be published US left as WORSHIPPERS OF THE GREAT MAN OF HISTORY THEORY.

Just the opposite is the case. Nothing shows more clearly the triumph of permanent instituions over the will of nominally elected bourgeois "leaders" than the CIA murder of JFK. Thanks to so many who misperceive the unique politics of the US btw 1960-63 this lesson will remain unlearned by too many.

[oujiQualm]

The Kennedys are the US equivalent of European blue bloods. they are about as bourgeois as one can be and are the apitomy of white privellege. What exactly have they done aside from making the gossip columns on a regular basis?

----

Well lets start with standing up to unified JFC CIA pressure for a land invasion and or air strike leading to a later invasion of Cuba. We now know that Fidel not honly had mediaum rangke nukes but tactical nukes that almost certainly would have been used at invading US ships.

Ummm that would very likely have lead to WWIII. Now for our next course please see post 22 so as not to waste bandwidth.

Bourgeiois as one can be? Perhaps, but they were definitely not in with Rockefeller's aristoctracy!

[PRC-UTE]

Wait, what?

:lol: Chomsky that blood thirsty imperialist!

[Guerrilla22]

KENNEDY WAS GOING TO END US MILITARY INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM.

Purely speculation. This is a popular sentiment amongst liberal admirers of the JFK in recent books to try to help polish up his legacy.


Well lets start with standing up to unified JFC CIA pressure for a land invasion and or air strike leading to a later invasion of Cuba. We now know that Fidel not honly had mediaum rangke nukes but tactical nukes that almost certainly would have been used at invading US ships.

Yeah, he didn't resist calls for a full scale invasion out of principle, he did so out of pragmatism. The situation was really JFK's own doing, his administration was resposible for placing crippling economic sanctions on Cuba in an attempt to squeeze the new government, which led Cuba to seek an alliance with the Soviet Union.

[oujiQualm]

No its not purely speculation. It has been soundly proven with an unbelievable amount of evidence. Sorry that I cannot print seven books totalling five thousnd pages here for you here. You might want to try reading.

I could say "purely specution" about almost anything written.

The economic sanctions were inituated by the Eisenhower admin. You don't seem very well read on this topic. So was ALL of the planning for the Bay of Pigs, including the lies that Kennedy was told.

Now, did Kennedy continue the sanctions. Absolutely. The argument IS NOT THAT JFK WAS NOT A BOURGEOIS POL. THE ARGUMENT IS NOT THAT JFK WAS CHE WITH ASPIRING FACIAL HAIR. There is no President in 1961-63 who could have removed the sanctions and remained prez. Is this an excuse for Kennedy. NO by all means go ahead and hold it against him.

In looking at the nominal leader of the US -- the president-- we would not expect there to be THAT MANY major differences between his views and the ruling class. The difference with 60-63 is that FOR THE FIRST TIME IN US HISTORY IT BECAME OBVIOUS TO THE PRESIDENT EARLY (NOT LATE LIKE IKE) IN HIS TENURE , THAT HE WAS NOT REALLY IN CONTROL-- BAY OF PIGS.

This was then followed by the Missile Crisis in which JFK saw a permanent military and intel bureacracy actively working against his nominal command. This was repeated in Laos, Vietnam, and in negotiations with the USSR. That is why 1960-63 is more unique than today when both parties are absolutely the same,with the dems just using different good cop words.

In 1961 the CIA was thirteen years old with a new step-parent. I have seeen worse metaphors than this to describe the relationship between JFK and the Agency that he vowed to scatter to the wind just before his brains were.



The job of the historian is not to hero worship, and forget about gradations of difference. TRUE, OFTEN THESE GRADATIONS CAN BE SUPERFICIAL cover-ops.

But not always. There can be meaningful divisions within the bourgoiesie, and it is my contention that there were btw 1960-63--OR That kennedy perceived that there were, did not realize how unified the bourgoisie really was in spite of superficial differences (e.g. Rockefeller's growing ties with Southern oil military and banking interests-- See the INCREDIBLE BOOK THEY WILL BE DONE BY COLBY AND DENNETT) .

------

From a Review of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

JFK admittedly ran for president as a cold warrior. Most people know that. What they don’t know about JFK is how shaken he was by the whole Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had narrowly averted war with the Soviet Union and the Pentagon was not happy about that fact. Kennedy understood afterwards that the CIA-Pentagon-MIC plan was global domination and it would likely lead to a nuclear war. Kennedy had experienced enough death (his own family history) and war (his participation in WW II) and wanted to find another way.

Early in the story Douglass points out that, “What Eisenhower in the final hours of his presidency revealed as the greatest threat to our democracy Kennedy in the midst of his presidency chose to resist. The military-industrial complex was totally dependent on a ‘Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.”

Following the Cuban missile crisis JFK set out to do three things. First he began negotiations with the Soviet Union on a nuclear test ban treaty. Douglass reports that “The Joint Chiefs and CIA were adamantly opposed to Kennedy’s turn toward peace.”

Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev (who carried on a secret pen pall relationship for some time) eventually signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They wanted to go much farther but there was a push back. The August 5, 1963, U.S. News & World Report carried a major article headlined, “Is the U.S. Giving up in the Arms Race?” The article cited “many authorities in the military establishment, who are now silenced,” as thinking that the Kennedy administration’s “new strategy adds up to a type of intentional and one-sided disarmament.”

At the time JFK confided “One of the ironic things about this entire situation is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I’ve got similar problems.”

Testifying against the test ban treaty US Navy Admiral Lewis Strauss said, “I am not sure that the reduction of tensions is necessarily a good thing.”

Another of JFK’s sins was to begin to open up back-door communications with Fidel Castro in Cuba. By doing this JFK wanted to reduce the chance of another severe miscalculation like that which happened during the missile crisis. After JFK’s death, Lyndon Johnson put on permanent hold any dialogue between the White House and Cuba. No president since has dared to restart serious talks with Cuba.

Kennedy’s third mistake, as seen by the MIC, was Vietnam. JFK was tortured by the early deaths of American GI’s in Vietnam. He began looking for a way out. On October 11, 1963 he signed his presidential order for an initial withdrawal of 1,000 US troops from Vietnam by the end of the year, anticipating a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 1965.

Douglass eloquently says about those troubled times, “What is unrecognized about JFK’s presidency, which then makes his assassination a false mystery, is that he was locked in a struggle with his national security state. That state had higher values than obedience to the orders of a president who wanted peace. The defeat of Communism was number one.”

Today one could substitute the word terrorism for communism and the story would remain much the same.

JFK’s Congo policy was also being subverted by the CIA, which had been arming the Congo’s secessionist regime in Katanga in order to promote Belgian mining interests.

The US coup d’etat was about corporate control. A shadow government was taking over. As evidence to that fact Douglass unearthed the words of Washington Daily News reporter Richard Starnes alarming article on the CIA’s “unrestrained thirst for power” in Vietnam. Starnes had cited a “very high American official” in Saigon who “likened the CIA’s growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.”

Douglass reports, “The consequence in the early 1960’s, when Kennedy became president, was that the CIA had placed a secret team of its own employees through the entire US government. It was accountable to no one except the CIA.”
_________________

[Dóchas]

i heard somewhere that the only reason JFK was put in the white house because the mafia or someother gang was behind him the background kinda pulling strings for him im not sure if this was true but if it is its a pretty bad example to set and entire nation

[duffers]

The JFK cult personality is well and alive. oujiQualm, might you be in the wrong place?

[oujiQualm]

Ok so he called me guilty of cult of personalityism.

I have posted twice already on this thread, how the death of JFK shows precisely the opposite of this bourgois attitude toward history. But I guess SOME prefer to engage in adolescent namecalling than historical discussion.

FOR THE FIFTH TIME TO STUDY THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION AND THE HISTORY OF THE US BTW 1960-63 DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU DEFEND EVERYTHIG OR EVEN MOST ABOUT JFK . THERE IS A HELL OF A LOT OF BABY BEING THRWN OUT WITH BATHWATER By fake-left disinformation (Sy Hersh et al) on Kennedy.

Who does that serve?

Please debate me on one or more of the many points I made in post 22. Or HAVE YOU READ ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THE TOPIC??????? The topic not being just the assassination but far more importantly the US and the Cold War btw. 1960-63.

[oujiQualm]

Why do so many ideots still vote for the Democrats after eight years of them saying ABSOLUTELY NOTHING while the least popular prez in history got away with everthing?

I think part of the reason is that the very lessons that offer THE WIDEST ACCESS RAMPS to understanding how power really works are immediately shut off by people often posing as LEFTER THAN THOU shut off study of key events at key turning points that could perhaps offer vast numbers a way of understanding structural aspects of power.

Just so people who come up with their supperficial Chomskyite Kennedy bashing while actually having done almost no reading on the topic of their own.

The number one MYTH of US politics is that the President is in control of most foreign policy and that he actuall has the freedom to overrule the permanent military and intelligence buraucracy. This is prominant among many left-gatekeepers but THERE ARE PLENTY ON THE LEFT WHO DISAGREE AND BELIEVE THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION WAS A KEY TURNING POINT IN TERMS OF BOTH DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY.

Namecallers who have read nothing are only doing the elite a favor. I am not saying this is their intention, only that they need to read more . I say this as someone who used to believe the superficial crap that chomsky and z lets be hairycultural leftists and allienate the entire working class magazine are paid to pump out.. Tired of it.

Disagree with my views of JFK. Great love to disscuss, just tired of the superficial namecalling.

Left gatekeeping is real See the History of Encounter Magazine.the CIAs fake left mag during the Cold War.

[oujiQualm]

These are excerpts from Fabian Escalente's writings about Cuban Intelligence and the Kennedy Asassination. Escalente was the head of Cuban intelligence at the time of the assassination.
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(3) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

He (Felipe Vidal Santiago) was arrested in March of 1964 when he tried to ram his boat in Cuba with three others to perform acts of sabotage. There he had many conversations with us. He just told us this of his own accord. We didn't ask questions. Our interest really were in the plan of sabotage. Sabotage when and where. We wanted to know what was behind the sabotage and then he started to talk about his subject. So then, that's why a decision was made to take down everything he said. And that's why we have tapes. He talked about things not associated with the sabotage. There were too many people, we didn't have the resources or tapes to take it. It was in his first declaration, it was political information. He came to us for the first time to talk to us about September of 1962, opening a communication with Cuba. And that was very important to tape all of his conversations about Cuba.

He was informing the groups of exiles in the United States about Kennedy administrations attempts to have dialog with Cuba. While interrogating Santiago in Cuba, we came up with some more interesting information. He was arrested in 1964, March. A few months after the assassination. He explained that he had a relationship with a CIA official, who was military intelligence - William Bishop. He says that in November of 1963, William Bishop invited him to a meeting in Dallas. It was a meeting with a few wealthy people in Dallas talking about financing an anti-Castro.

The first few days of November, 1963. He says that William Bishop picked him up in his car in Miami and they drove to Dallas. They were there for about four days. This would had to have happened the weekend before the assassination, according to what he says. They stayed in a second class hotel. They stayed in a second class hotel. Bishop left several times to have interviews. But this guy did not know who he was talking to. After approximately four days, they returned to Miami. After the assassination, they were in Tallahassee, when he went to visit a new house for a new car. He passed information.



(4) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

Eladio Del Valle worked for two police services - military intelligence and the traditional police. He was in charge of narcotics. He was also a legislature in the government - a representative. He was from a little town from the south of Havana. He was a captain in the merchant marines. In 1958 he was doing business dealings with Santos Trafficante in a little coastal town south of Havana. There he brought in contraband whose destination was Santos Trafficante. When the revolution triumphed, he went to Miami. Eladio Del Valle went to Miami. He settled in Miami, we don't know the address and he allied himself with Rolando Masferrer and other Batista supporters and they formed an organization called the Anti Communist Cuban Liberation Movement. From that moment on, Eladio was involved in many project against Cuba. But as I told you yesterday, we managed to penetrate this organization. And we came to know of a lot of projects, efforts, for an invasion of Cuba in secret. In order to provide arms to internal rebel groups, they needed David Ferrie as the pilot on these flights. In 1962 Eladio Del Valle tried to infiltrate Cuba with a commando group of 22 men but their boat had an English key - a little island. In the middle of 1962. Of course, we knew this. I tell you about this, because one of our agents who was one of the people helping to bring this group to Cuba, was a man of very little education. They talked English on many occasions on this little island with Eladio Del Valle told this person, on many occasions, that Kennedy must be killed to solve the Cuban problem. After that we had another piece of information on Eladio Del Valle. This was offered to us by Tony Cuesta. He told us that Eladio Del Valle was one of the people involved in the assassination plot against Kennedy. As you know, he was taken prisoner and he was very thankful to be taken back - he was blind.

He asked that this information not be public. I am only saying it here, because he is already dead. It is finished. We didn't have any other kind of information to give. There are some things you must respect. He gave us this information and in 1978 we didn't know if it was true or not. In 1978, we were not aware of the participation of Eladio Del Valle. We didn't know who he was. Remember that I explained to you yesterday that when the Select Committee when they came to Havana - they didn't give us any specific information. They just came to question us. We didn't know the relationships.



(5) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

He was called Carlos Tepedino. His code name was AM/WIN. He was a good friend of Cubela in 1956. At the same time he was good friends with Santos Trafficante. And after 1960, he played an important role in the recruitment of Cubela by the CIA. He met with Cubela in Italy in 1960, June or July, and in February of 1961 he participated in the recruitment of Cubela in 1961 in Mexico along with a CIA agent. This is a description of this CIA agent. Very interesting. In taking into consideration Cubela's description about the CIA official/agent who had met in Mexico. The Inspector General's report in 1967 and according to this report the fact that the official had met with Cubela in Havana when he was assigned and a similar contact was planned that could never have taken place, it is probably the identity of this official could be David Phillips. The description of this character: he was a tall man, approximately 40 years old, thin, with a receding hairline, shadows under his eyes, good manners, well dressed, sociable, and speaks fluent Spanish. That's enough. We are not sure if it is Phillips but it is a very similar description.



(6) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

Following the Bay of Pigs developed a hostile attitude in the exile community. They were convinced that Kennedy was responsible for the failure of the Bay of Pigs and that he was even a communist. In the middle of 1963 they had infiltrated a special group within the CIA. And one day an official of the CIA came to the safe house, a Cuban house. Around that time Kennedy had made a public statement. Officials were bothered by this. It was said, "the Cubans must eliminate the pinko in the White House." That's the type of info I have.



(7) Fabian Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62 (1995)

One of Howard Hunt's first jobs when he arrived in Miami was to find an efficient assistant. His mission was to convince "prominent" Cubans there to form a front to back-up the operational plans of the CIA in the months ahead. He selected Bernard Baker, the CIA agent who, months earlier, had helped Manuel Artime flee from Cuba. He also talked with Batista supporters, organized into the Anticommunist Crusade. They were a powerful force that could not be ignored. Besides, Colonel King had instructed Hunt to give preferential attention to this group, which was favorably disposed to the United States, and with whom they could do business once their cause triumphed.

Hunt had risen as far as he could in the CIA and knew that he would never be made division chief; therefore this mission suited him perfectly. He would do his job for the Agency while preparing himself for the new life he envisioned as a businessman after the fall of "the Castro regime."

Meanwhile, other plans were underway in Langley. Tracy Barnes and Frank Bender knew that Batista and his supporters had lost all prestige in Cuba and Latin America in general. The Agency was also looking for its own candidates. Two men were particularly favored because they represented two different generations of Cuban politicians: one was Tony Varona, and the other Manuel Artime Buesa. Another important candidate was the deserter Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz.

Personal interests interfered with the work of the CIA operatives. Finally a deal was struck: the political front would be represented by all of the tendencies in exile, including the Batista supporters. Howard Hunt heaved a sigh of relief; however, he still continued to question the decision by Barnes and Bender not to give that group the preferential treatment that Colonel King, the division chief, had ordered.



(8) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

On September 8, there was a reception at the embassy in Havana. Daniel Harker, an American journalist interviewed Fidel. It was not a formal interview, just some questions as he arrived to the reception. He asked several questions. One was related to the CIA attempts to assassinate him. Fidel said something such as, "The American leaders should be careful. This is something the government could control." Or this type of - somebody organized it to happen. Political assassination, this could become anything, however Daniel Harker didn't say that in his report. Daniel Harker in his report suggested that Fidel Castro was making a threat against Kennedy. And that is very interesting. That news was published in New Orleans precisely during the days when all of us are trying to travel to Cuba. These acts can not be isolated, in all this that started at the end of April 1963. In April 1963 the Cuban Revolutionary Council, that was an organization that was CIA in the back of, accuses Kennedy of abandoning the Cuban cause... Orlando Bosch prints a pamphlet that was called the "Cuban Tragedy" that accused Kennedy of being a traitor to the Cuban cause. This was sent to the White House in May. Immediately after, Oswald brought activism in New Orleans. Here Oswald's history starts. And it's going to have it's high point when he is arrested by police in a public discussion with some Cuban exiles. Afterwards this makes the discussion of Daniel Harker with Castro very famous.



(9) Anthony Summers and Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

Anthony Summers: There is quite a lot of work being done in the last year or two that whatever the Kennedy administration was doing in conversations through Attwood and Colonel Lechuga, at the same time Robert Kennedy - and presumably the President too - was personally behind a major effort that envisioned the overthrow of Castro in the fall of 1963. Which would involve an internal coup with the death of Castro. After that, massive American backing for which Kennedy's perceived as being (Cuban) democrats as opposed to being right-wing extremists.

I asked Dean Rusk about this, shortly before his death a year or so before. And he told me, yes he learned about the plans for such a coup. They were indeed backed by JFK and understood by his brother and were in charge of it. That he learned of this in 1964 during meetings of the National Security Council. And what can one make of this? One is talking about not a double track, but a double cross? If the Kennedy's were talking peace on the one hand and a full 1963 coup on the other? He said, yes but they did this all the time. And he found that not surprising. He said the Kennedy's work that way. And he said rather cynically, do governments everywhere. In your research in Cuba, have Mr. Escalante and Lechuga gotten a similar picture of double-track, double-cross?

Fabian Escalante: Look, I'm going to answer very briefly. In 1963 McGeorge Bundy designed this new approach towards Cuba. It involved a double track or multiple track. This appeared in documents in the Church Committee. One of the tracks was to strengthen the blockade against Cuba, political pressure, the isolation of Cuba from the continent and also from Western Europe. To destroy through sabotage and external operations all the energy and industrial infrastructure in the country. In 1963 there were two major plans of sabotage proved against Cuba. Two paths, with one objective. To force Cuba to sit down at the negotiating table, but under very disadvantaged circumstances. That's why we never really heard what the possible American agenda would be. We never heard anything... That's why the Cuban government took its time to deeply study the proposal put forth by Attwood.

What could they possible been trying to do by trying to start a dialogue. So they took their time. Here's what happened according to our judgement. The hawks never supported, they didn't understand this strategy, didn't agree. Anything that didn't agree with a new invasion of Cuba, they didn't agree with. We think the hawks felt themselves betrayed. According to our judgement there were two strategies to be followed by the US: (1) from the administration; (2) and one from the CIA, the Cuban exiles, and the Mafia - and even they had their own independent objectives. Around that on the part of this latter group, there developed this need to assassinate Kennedy. It seemed to them that Kennedy was not in agreement to the new invasion. That's our hypothesis.

Anthony Summers: Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. The information that's been coming out, new scholarship that Robert Kennedy personally in those weeks heading up to November 22, in the weeks leading up, was behind a detailed plan for the killing, overthrow of Castro, the killing of Raul, key leaders of the revolution. To be followed by massive American support for take over in Cuba by the so-called Cuban democrats. This was a real plan in the works. This is different from, maybe connected with but very specific and different from conversation.



(10) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

In the late 1980's we came into contact with an informant who had known Phillips and who had contact with Phillips in 1958-59. This person told us about three Cubans who had had contact with Phillips at this time. (Juan) Manuel Salvat, Isidro Borja and Antonio Veciana... That is something our agent informed us of. We did a spoken picture of this Harold Benson as we do always. But we didn't know really know who he was. In 1972, this CIA official had an interview with our agent. Our agent at that time had a different case official. But this man came as a.... as a leader, as a boss or something. Had an interview with our agent. This interview was... took place in Mexico they were just having a few drinks. In between, Kennedy's name came into the conversation they were talking about... into the conversation, not Kennedy came to, into... So when the subject comes up this character explains to our agent that after Kennedy's death, he visited his grave and peed on it and said he (JFK) was a communist and such and such. We still didn't know who Harold Benson was but when Claudia Furiati did her research, among the people we interviewed was this agent. We showed him a group of photographs. Plus we already knew about David Phillips. I'm speaking of 1992 and 1993. And the photograph that we showed him was a photograph of David Phillips. And so he pointed out as Harold Benson.



(11) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

Morales, we knew him in 1960. He was another from the United States Embassy in Havana and he was linked to another official, an American official from the embassy Robert Van Horn. He was a major in a conspiracy with Rolando Masferrer and a North American citizen Geraldine Chapman. This was a plot to kill Fidel Castro to promote an armed uprising. This plot started in 1959 and our agent, which is already dead was a man that had lived many years in New Orleans and then lived in Miami in 1959, and he was named Luis Tacornal. And also there was another agent that was his partner in New Orleans and had always things to do with the case.

The plot had as a main operative to kill Fidel Castro in Ramiro Valdez house at that time he was the head of the security service. In February 1960 there was an official from the (CIA) headquarters called Luis C. Herber to supervise the operation. Of course we made this operation fail. We have penetration of all the organizations and in November all the people in the plot were arrested except for the diplomatic, of course. And this was published in the Cuban press. They were on trial in it.

There is another moment when we knew about David Morales. In 1973 we arrested one of the CIA agents that used to be a member of the Batista police he was recruited in 1958. He was called Francisco Munoz Olivette and he told us about the official that was in charge but of course he had a different name... We didn't know who he was. However, he was sure that it was someone who had worked in the embassy. So we showed him the photographs of the people working in the embassy... and he identified David Morales as Moralma. He told us in those days, I mean, I mean Francisco Munoz Olivette, but in several moments Morales or Moralma had told him about a plot against Fidel Castro's life that he had headed in 1959. And that this plot was going on, to be carried out in the headquarters of the military air force. We never knew who this person was. But after having so much information in our hands we think that this could be Frank Sturgis because Frank Sturgis was in a plot with Fidel in the Air Force with Jerry Hemming and with Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz and the last information on Morales. We have it from Cubela. Cubela told us when he was arrested that he had interviews with at least three CIA officials from Latin origin. In different moments we didn't know who they were but in 1978 in Havana there was a youth festival and there was an activity that had to do with an explanation to the youth about the CIA activities against Cuba. Cubela agreed on going to this meeting to explain which were his activities with the CIA in those days. It was published by the Grama magazine newspaper several histories about CIA activities, one of them was this one about Francisco Munoz, where David Morales photograph was shown.






The JFK Assassination Debates



Breach of Trust





(12) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

They were going to demand that somebody would be a part of that new government to be established in Cuba and who would be better than Manolo Ray, who used to be a minister in that government. Manolo Ray, that was a person that didn't have good relations with the CIA. He was a social democrat. And it turns out to be that Silvia Odio belongs to the same group. So I could think that Oswald's presence, and Emilio Cordo might have some link to some involvement of JURE? as Castro agents... who is a Castro agent that later would kill Kennedy. So I think all these episodes have to be seen related one to another. For instance, I think the same way you... some of you do that Oswald was taken to a trap from the very beginning. But he was penetrating a Castro group that wanted to kill Kennedy. But I don't think that Veciana had anything to do with it. I think that people that had to do with that, are people in the DRE, but here I am just... using some technical... because when you are going to carry out an operation as complex as this one, you cannot put all your money in one single horse. You have to use different ways in order not to have any mistakes. And obviously, the DRE was in the whole plot against Cuba.



(13) Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992)

The most intriguing news to come out of the Nassau conference, however, was Escalante's revelation about what another leader of the Alpha 66 group allegedly told him. As we have seen, Nagell would never reveal the true identities of "Angel" and "Leopoldo" - the two Cuban exiles who he said had deceived Oswald into believing they were Castro operatives. Instead, on several occasions when I prodded him, Nagell had cleverly steered the conversation toward a man named Tony Cuesta - indicating that this individual possessed the knowledge that he himself chose not to express. Cuesta, as noted earlier, had been taken prisoner in Cuba during a raid in 1966.

"Cuesta was blinded (in an explosion) and spent most of his time in the hospital," Escalante recalled. In 1978, he was among a group of imprisoned exiles released through an initiative of the Carter Administration. "A few days before he was to leave," according to Escalante, "I had several conversations with Cuesta. He volunteered, 'I want to tell you something very important, but I do not want this made public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous.' I think this was a little bit of thanks on his part for the medical care he received."

Escalante said he was only revealing Cuesta's story because the man had died in Miami in 1994. In a declaration he is said to have written for the Cubans, Cuesta named two other exiles as having been involved in plotting the Kennedy assassination. Their names were Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia.



(13) Jean-Guy Allard, Who had the means and motives to kill Kennedy in 1963? (22nd May, 2005)

“Who in 1963 had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means and who had the motives to kill the U.S. president?”, asks General Fabian Escalante in an exclusive interview in his Havana office. And he gives the answer: "CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly anti-Kennedy. And among them were Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Antonio Veciana and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia."

“Who were the ones who had the training to murder Kennedy? The ones who had all of the capabilities to carry it out? Who were the expert marksmen?" continues Escalante, pointing out that the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles has to be seen within the historical context of what he calls "the machinery of the Cuban American mafia."

And in the heart of that machinery is Operation 40, created by the CIA on the eve of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence, author of The Plot (Ocean Press), about the assassination of the U.S. leader.

"The first news that we have of Operation 40 is a statement made by a mercenary of the Bay of Pigs who was the chief of military intelligence of the invading brigade and whose name was Jose Raul de Varona Gonzalez," says Escalante.

"In his statement this man said the following: in the month of March, 1961, around the seventh, Mr. Vicente Leon arrived at the base in Guatemala at the head of some 53 men saying that he had been sent by the office of Mr. Joaquin Sanjenis, Chief of Civilian Intelligence, with a mission he said was called Operation 40. It was a special group that didn't have anything to do with the brigade and which would go in the rearguard occupying towns and cities. His prime mission was to take over the files of intelligence agencies, public buildings, banks, industries, and capture the heads and leaders in all of the cities and interrogate them. Interrogate them in his own way”.

The individuals who comprised Operation 40 had been selected by Sangenis in Miami and taken to a nearby farm "where they took some courses and were subjected to a lie detector."

Joaquin Sangenis was Chief of Police in the time of President Carlos Prio, recalls Escalante. "I don't know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but he was very close to Carlos Prio. And in 1973 he dies under very strange circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise -- without any prior illness and without any homicidal act -- that Sangenis, who wasn't that old in '73, had died unexpectedly. There was no wake. He was buried in a hurry."

Operation 40 had "in the year '61, 86 employees, of which 37 had been trained as case officers...while in Cuba we probably didn't have one single case officer trained. I didn't finish the course until July of '61 and I was in the first training group."

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA organizes a Domestic Affairs Division. "For the first time, the CIA is going to work inside of the U.S. because until that moment, it wasn't doing it. It was prohibited.

"And at the head of this division they put Tracy Barnes, who was chief of the CIA operations group which operated against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, and he brought to the same group of officers David Atlee Phillips, David Sanchez Morales and Howard Hunt, and two or three other Americans who just as surely worked on the Guatemala project."

The first CIA project against the Cuban revolution wasn't a landing and assault brigade, remarks the general. "The first CIA project was to create a civil war inside of Cuba. They were thinking of creating political leaders overseas, organizing a series of military cadres overseas who are the ones who will infiltrate Cuba and who will place themselves at the head of this civil war they are planning to carry out. And furthermore parallel to that, to make an intelligence network. All of this falls apart almost as soon as it is born.

"In October 1960, they realize that this project has failed, and that is when Brigade 2506 is formed, when due to the uprising of a group of patriotic military officers in Puerto Barrios in Guatemala and, this was in November, they send the Cuban mercenaries in Brigade 2506 to put down this operation."

Escalante remembers that in 1959 a "very strong" CIA center existed in Cuba with several case officers based in Havana. Among them two very important figures: David Sanchez Morales, registered as a diplomat with the U.S. embassy, and David Atlee Phillips who was doing business in Cuba since 1957.

"Phillips had a press agency, David Phillips Associates, which had offices on Humbolt St., behind the Rampa theater. We had information from a person who was his personal secretary at the time and he was using the Berlitz Academy, where he would meet with people he wanted to recruit. The Berlitz Academy was not his business, but he had recruited its director and that's why he was using it to train his agents.

"And at that time he recruits Antonio Veciana, Juan Manuel Salvat, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Isidro Borjas, a person of Mexican origin, to carry out the internal counterrevolution."

Phillips will train illegal cadres while Morales, on his part, directs a group of North Americans who are infiltrated in the Rebel Army: Frank Sturgis, Gerry Hemming, William Morgan.

"When the revolution triumphs these people are officers in the Rebel Army, many of them in the air force because the chief there is Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, who was the first chief of the rebel air force and who later leaves the country when an assassination attempt against Fidel fails. He will also direct Howard Hunt, who is visiting Cuba in '59 and '60 and who will write a far-fetched chronicle about Havana which is a series of lies. Hunt is a professional liar.

"There was information that at the end of '58, when CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick came to tell Batista to leave power, he has an interview with a group of figures. And since this Phillips was passing himself off as a respectable North American businessman, Kirkpatrick has an interview with him. And Phillips explains to him that the situation is very difficult."

In this context, now in the middle of '58, the CIA plans an assassination attempt on Fidel with a North American citizen, Alan Robert Nye, and ex-marine recruited in Fort Lauderdale by agents of the FBI and by the Cuban military intelligence service.

"He was received here in Havana, they put him up at the Comodoro hotel, fortunately they paid his bill and that was how he was later discovered. They sent him to a zone near Bayamo where Fidel was, in a zone called Santa Rita and he was arrested there by the Rebel Army. He had instructions to introduce himself to Fidel as a sympathizer of the Cuban cause and to assassinate him at the first opportunity," recalls Escalante.

The man is arrested on December 12, 1958, by rebel forces and remains in custody until the beginning of 1959. "An officer of the Rebel Army is in charge of the investigation. Knight says that he was lodged at the Comodoro hotel and it turns out that the ones who had paid this gentleman's expenses were none other than Col. Orlando Piedra, the chief of the investigation bureau of the police, and Col. Tabernilla II, the son of the head of the army."

"These are the principal artists," says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence. "David Phillips; David Morales; Howard Hunt; a figure who disappeared later and who was head of the CIA until diplomatic relations were broken, James Noel; and several more who were working actively."

When the Domestic Affairs Division is created, the large CIA operations base in Miami was subordinate to the central division of the CIA; "that is to say that the JM/WAVE station, which had 400 officers plus 4,000 Cuban agents, was directed by the main center in Langley.

"Whom are they going to use? Operation 40. That is to say all of the specialists who are already trained, have gone through the school, have already participated in operations against Cuba...I refer to the group of Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Antonio Veciana, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Felipe Rivero, who recently died, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Gaspar "Gasparito" Jimenez Escobedo, Juan Manuel Salvat, Nazario Sargent, Carlos Bringuier, Antonio Cuesta, Eladio del Valle, Herminio Diaz, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Rafael "Chichi" Quintero, Jose Basulto, Paulino Sierra, Bernard Baker, who was a Cuban with a North American name -- he was a guard at the U.S. embassy -- and Eugenio Martinez, alias 'Musculito.'

"And there was the team that brought together all of the North Americans: David Morales; David Phillips; Howard Hunt; Willian Harvey; Frank Sturgis; Gerry Hemming; John Rosselli, who was second head of the Chicago mafia and at that time in '62; Porter Goss, the current head of the CIA, who is in the JM/WAVE as a subordinate of Phillips and Morales."

"Operation 40 is the grandmother and great-grandmother of all of the operations that are formed later," continues Escalante.

"The Domestic Affairs Division will have its missions...You have to remember the scandal of the Pentagon papers; a long time later, the Watergate scandal...which are the things that were found out. These people were the plumbers of the division, the men that carried it out."

In 1966 and '67, Felix Rodriguez is in charge of the task force the CIA sends to Bolivia against Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. "He used several names. He is there and he ends up participating directly in the murder of Che. Also there, in another position, is Antonio Veciana. He is there as a bank consultant in La Paz but he runs the center which is coordinating intelligence gathering in the rear guard, working with the Bolivian intelligence services.

"This is very interesting because we are then going to see this whole group in the second large operation they organize, which is advising the secret police of Latin America. We are going to see Felix Rodriguez in 1980 in Argentina, we are going to see Posada in Venezuela..."

Luis Posada Carriles next appears in Venezuela.

"Posada says he arrived in Caracas in 1969, which is not true, he arrived in '67. What is happening is that he is a CIA advisor and it doesn't suit him in his book to talk about that; he says he was recruited in Miami by a chief of DIGEPOL. He's a tremendous storyteller. In reality, Posada is already there in '67 helping DIGEPOL as a CIA advisor.

"After that we are going to see Orlando Bosch's group: Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Dionisio Suarez in Chile after '73. We are going to find 'Mono' Morales Navarrete in Venezuela and Felipe Rivero in Chile...That is to say that this group is going to be spread out in Latin America with actions everywhere."

All of them have devoted themselves, besides the subversive activities, "to drug smuggling, which began when they were training for the Bay of Pigs," says the general.

"The planes came from Miami to Guatemala loaded with weapons, ammunition, personnel, and they returned...even with blood plasma. They were even smuggling blood plasma which Manuel Artime commercialized with the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Drugs started to be included, cocaine."

Phillips was head of Operation 40 from 1960 to 1973..."It is assumed that in '73 Operation 40 was 'discontinued,' as the North Americans say, but that is absolutely not true.

"You have to remember that in '73, the Watergate scandal broke out. Who were the ones who broke into the offices of the Democratic Party? This same group. We are talking about Bernard Baker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, Ferry Hemming, and we learned this from the documents from the Church Commission.

"And after he got out of prison, Eugenio Martinez came to Cuba. Martinez, alias 'Musculito,' was penalized for the Watergate scandal and is in prison for a time. And after he gets out of prison - it's the Carter period, the period of dialogue, in '78, there is a different international climate - Eugenio Martinez asks for a contract and one fine day he appears on a boat here... and of course he didn't make any big statements, he didn't say much that we didn't know but he talked about those things, about this Operation 40 group, about what they had done at the Democratic Party headquarters..."

And who are directing the operation against Allende, asks Escalante. "In the first and second part, David Phillips, first as chief of the operations group, and afterwards he moved up to Western Hemisphere division chief of the CIA until 1975. He participates in that and participates in the formation of Operation Condor, which was formed in 1974 when the first meeting of intelligence chiefs of the Southern Cone is held in Santiago, Chile." The veterans of Operation 40 will also participate in Operation Hoja de Parra, which Argentinian intelligence organizes to spy on political emigres throughout Latin America.

Then they appear in Operation Calypso, part of the Nicaraguan contras: "That is to say, when the Argentinian army sends Col. Osvaldo Rivero, first to Miami and then to Honduras, with a group of Argentinian specialists, they fail and the Cubans from Operation 40 have to come; Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada who in '85 replace the Argentinians and transfer the general headquarters from Tegucigalpa to San Salvador. And the El Aguacate air base which belonged to the Hondurans stops being the main base of air supplies..."

All of the operations carried out, after a certain time, by members of Operation 40 are operations called "autonomous" where the CIA officer who directs the terrorist group -- we're talking about terrorist "action" groups, as they call them -- discusses the objectives of that group, approves it, facilitates all necessary resources "and afterwards reads about the results in the newspaper."

About the Kennedy case, Escalante recalls how Cuban intelligence services would receive in the '60s much information from North Americans, from Cubans outside of the country and from Central Americans, about subversive activities.

"By correspondence... Letters would arrive that many times, of course, they would come without a return address or with a fake address. And we started to have information from these figures through this means.

"There is a source who participates in a meeting in Miami in the year '63 in a CIA safe house and who, from what I remember, was related to Veciana, very close to Veciana. This source identifies Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz and, I believe, the Novo Sampol brothers...and that same source later recognizes Lee Harvey Oswald as one of the participants.

"The last time we heard about this source was in the '70s when he refers to a meeting with Antonio Veciana and Phillips in Puerto Rico," says Escalante.

"I'm convinced that they wanted to kill Kennedy in different places. Probably that Dallas had better conditions. But I'm under the impression from some very fragmented information I had access to one time, that they wanted to assassinate him in Miami. And I can't exclude, without confirming it, because this information is very relative, that these people had been gathered there for that reason...

"There is another source, who is Maria Lorentz, who relates something similar to this, that is to say that she was in a meeting in Miami, that she saw these people, that she went with them to Dallas, around November 20."

Escalante underlines how a Cuban, Manuel "Manolito" Rodriguez Orcarberro, arrives in Dallas two months before the Kennedy assassination "and he leaves afterwards at full speed."

There he opens an office of Alpha 66, where Oswald will enter at one time, according to the testimony of the assistant police chief of Dallas.

"This Cuban sought asylum in 1960 in the Brazilian embassy together with two known CIA agents. Who were they? Ricardo 'El Mono' Morales Navarrete and Isidro Borgas, a figure of Mexican origin who looks a lot like one of the figures who is with Oswald handing out proclamations supposedly in favor of Cuba in New Orleans - all of that which was a show put on where Carlos Bringuier goes to challenge them, a fight erupts, and the police arrest all of them..."

And who is the boss of Rodriguez and of Alpha 66? "Antonio Veciana, from Operation 40. That same Veciana whose testimony would lead Gaeton Fonzi to interview Luis Posada in Caracas when he was in prison, due to the similarity between the plan he prepared to assassinate Fidel in Chile and the Kennedy assassination."

Even more: the name that one of the "cameramen" used in Chile is Ramon Medina "which is a pseudonym Posada later used in Ilopango."

There are several sources who place Luis Posada Carriles in Dallas on November 20, 1963, says Escalante.

The ex-chief of Cuban security points to a recent investigation by the Dutchman Wim Dankbaar: "There are elements which even say that Posada was one of the shooters, which cannot be ruled out because Posada is an expert marksman.

"Posada who is an expert marksman who graduated from a North American military school. Posada who afterwards becomes, together with Orlando Bosch and all of that gang, one of the leaders of the terrorist groups. Within the mechanism of Operation 40. Posada who since then has always been protected by U.S. authorities, protected by the Cuban American National Foundation, protected by Jorge Mas Canosa."

The assassination of Kennedy could not have been an improvised action in any manner, says Escalante. "If they detoured Kennedy from the avenue where he was traveling to drive around a park, it wasn't for any other reason than to slow down the car to be able to fire at him. Because this famous detour to Dealey Plaza makes no sense. Evidently this makes the vehicle travel at 20 kilometers per hour. And there the fatal shots are fired, from behind and from ahead.

"It had to be a complex operation in which a large group of people participated, because if they shot at him from three shooters' nests which had to have an element of communication as well, to have the means to get out of that place and afterwards to get out of Dallas. We are talking about between 10 and 15 people in the least of cases."

Returning to the subject of the explosion of the Cuban airplane in 1976, Escalante underlines that, in the weeks preceding the attack, Orlando Bosch is in the Dominican Republic, goes to Nicaragua, and then to Caracas with a fake Dominican passport.

"Allegedly invited by Orlando Garcia who if he wasn't head of DISIP at that time was chief of personal security for Carlos Andres Perez. This at the same time that Mono Morales Navarrete had become head of division 54 of DISIP.

"Navarrete arrived when Posada left DISIP, in '74, to organize that front of the Industrial and Commercial Investigations Office. A CIA front which was probably connected with Operation Condor...Why does Posada go over to DISIP? Why does he have disagreements? If he is operations chief of DISIP, he has contact with the U.S. embassy, he's supported by the CIA. Why is he tired of torturing, which is what he did there at DISIP?"

According to reports from the time, at the office of Posada's detectives agency in Caracas they also found plans for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, which occured in Washington on September 21, barely two weeks prior. "Bosch had coordinated the operation in Santiago where he met with General Manuel Contreras, head of DINA." (Chilean secret police)

"In '74, Bosch had already gone to Chile with Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Jose Dionisio Suarez to offer himself to Contreras and Pinochet as hit men for Condor... The same Bosch who in 1976 returns to the Dominican Republic, then goes to Nicaragua, meets with the Somoza dictatorship, and then to Venezuela for this operation...Bosch arrives in Venezuela in September and the blowing up of the Cubana airplane was on October 6.

"Where do instructions come from? Where is the plan drawn up? It is drawn up in Caracas. Who are in Caracas? Bosch, Posada and Morales Navarrete. Those are the three figures who are there. This is perfectly documented. As if that weren't enough, Morales Navarrete is an FBI informant, they passed him the bill themselves in '82 for that reason. The FBI was aware of everything they were doing. Probably the CIA gave them the objectives with that cover of autonomous operations. Who was head of the CIA in '76? George Bush Sr. And so...as clear as day! Was Posada still with the CIA?

"In a declassified document from July 1976, the CIA says it broke off with Posada because it had suspicions that he was involved in drug smuggling. That's what it says, that's what it says... when David Phillips gave Veciana a quarter million dollars so he could go to prison for 18 months for a drug trafficking charge," answers the general.

[duffers]

But the defence of a bourgeois politician, and one as bloody handed as JFK is completely folly to my, and other's beliefs. Much like slave owners, there's no such thing as a good ruler.

As interesting as it is, who gives a toss who shot him? What actual importance does it hold to socialists?

[oujiQualm]

What difference does it make?

It makes an incredible difference which is why there has been so much mistification and disinformation aimed at the left around the assassination.

THere is NO BETTER EXAMPLE OF THE FAILURE OF AN ELECTED BOURGIOIS POLITICIAN FAILING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE BECAUSE OF THE PERMANENT INSTITUIONAL NATURE OF POWE THAN THE JFK ASSASSINATION.

Yet bovine leftists commited to sounding lefter than though are not at all concerned with challenging bourgeois narratives of history at the very crucial interscitons that are potentially the most educational.

Though they know nothing of the period they continue to mough the mantras of Conspiracy theory fed to them and then they act surprised when people still vote in the fake elections.

[Robespierre2.0]

Thank your for your posts, ouijiQalm. Unlike everyone else who's posted here, I actually read everything you wrote, and think this split in the Amerikan bourgeois was indeed, as you said, an example of how the capitalist institution is far more powerful than a single politician.

The rest of you are all douchebags. This guy came here and typed up multiple pages of information based on his own research, and yet you guys don't even take the time to read it, and dismissively assume he's a JFK apologist.

[benhur]

Thank your for your posts, ouijiQalm. Unlike everyone else who's posted here, I actually read everything you wrote, and think this split in the Amerikan bourgeois was indeed, as you said, an example of how the capitalist institution is far more powerful than a single politician.

The rest of you are all douchebags. This guy came here and typed up multiple pages of information based on his own research, and yet you guys don't even take the time to read it, and dismissively assume he's a JFK apologist.

Agreed. Ouiji Qalm is doing a very good job, whereas others are simply being mean and rude. Bad behavior, comrades!

[benhur]

The more I understand Kennedy, the more I realize he was a man of integrity. I don't know why many leftists bash him, when there are others like Nixon, Reagan, who were far more dangerous and ruthless. Kennedy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's how it seems. He just doesn't strike me as an imperialist.

[Kassad]

The more I understand Kennedy, the more I realize he was a man of integrity. I don't know why many leftists bash him, when there are others like Nixon, Reagan, who were far more dangerous and ruthless. Kennedy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's how it seems. He just doesn't strike me as an imperialist.

What about Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs? You consider those necessary? I mean, if you're going to infer that Kennedy wasn't advocating colonialism after such events, then I don't know what to tell you. Kennedy was a bourgeoisie politician, just like all the others. Anyone getting elected to the presidency in the United States has succumbed to the corporate agenda, without fail.

[Cumannach]

When it comes Kennedy, some comrade say things like this;

The President is in reality the servant of the Bourgeoisie, not the people. He takes his orders from them. Usually he is one of them.

The people believe that the President is the true representative of the people. When he makes decisions and pursues policies, he does so only with the aim of serving the people, they think.

So along he goes and makes some of his decisions and pursues some policies. Then he gets his brains blown out.

What are the people to think? Well exactly what they're told, it was a random shooting by a lunatic.

What do our comrades think? It was the best way for the Bourgeoisie to remove a man, who, in his stupidity and naivety, wasn't doing his job properly, without exposing the real nature of the state and who it serves.

No, scratch that we'll also believe what we're told. !

Marxism is the conspiracy theory par excellence, and it happens to be true.

[Magdalen]

JFK was as much of a reactionary and an imperialist as any other US President. His father was a notorious bootlegger and friend of organised crime, not to mention an anti-communist and anti-semite, who met with Hitler on several occasions and openly supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In his days as a Senator, JFK voted in favour of Joseph McCarthy's most rabid anti-communist legislation. Bobby Kennedy was a member of Senator McCarthy's staff. After JFK was narrowly elected to office, he immediately approved the invasion of Cuba at Playa Girón which had been planned under the Eisenhower regime. After the US suffered a crushing defeat, JFK imposed the illegal US blockade against Cuba which lasts to this day, and alongside his father's friends in the Mafia, planned the assassination of Fidel Castro. JFK also payed lipservice to the Civil Rights movement while authorising FBI spying operations against Martin Luther King. It has been claimed by some that JFK would not have become involved in the Vietnam, yet it was JFK who deployed the first 15,000 US troops. He believed that a US victory in Vietnam was essential to restore the its 'crediblity', which had taken a battering in Cuba.

It's very clear that, in spite of his rhetoric, JFK was a friend and defender of capitalism and imperialism, and an enemy of the working class. If his life had not been ended by an assassin's bullet, he would have undoubtedly carried out the policies implemented by his successors.

[Cumannach]

I'm no Kennedy lover, he was a filthy capitalist, but I thought it was a matter of historical fact that he was a barrier to increasing the deployment of US forces in Vietnam and even had plans to withdraw the American Military presence that was already there. Also, to believe that Kennedy had total, or even very significant control over Hoover's FBI is quite an assumption. As I read it he didn't authorise the Bay of Pigs and was at loggerheads with the CIA. For example, he replaced it's venerable director after the fiasco. Anyway, you could on about the details forever, but just because someone says that Kennedy may not have been reactionary and imperialist enough for the american bourgeoisie, doesn't mean they're saying he wasn't a reactionary imperialist.