Kennedys and King Test host626

Category: General

Reviews of books treating the assassinations of 1960s, their historical and political context and aftermath, and the investigations conducted.

  • Dr. Michael Marcades, with Norma J. Kirkpatrick, Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals

    Dr. Michael Marcades, with Norma J. Kirkpatrick, Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals

    Melba Christina Youngblood was born in Texas in 1923.  Her only son, Michael Marcades, has now written a book about his mother, who was posthumously made famous by film director Oliver Stone in his 1991 film JFK.  If one recalls, that film opens with Dwight Eisenhower making his epochal Farewell Address warning of the rise of the Military Industrial Complex. The film proper then opens with a long credit sequence. Near the end of the credits, the film crosscuts between Kennedy arriving in Dallas and a woman being thrown out of a car on a lonely highway.  We then see her in a hospital.  She seems hysterical with fear warning that the men who threw her out of the car are going to kill Kennedy in Dallas.  The doctor mumbles that she seems high as a kite on something, therefore implying that her warning will be ignored. Which it was—until after the assassination. 

    The woman was named Rose Cherami in Stone’s film.  This was accurate since this is the final alias that she used in her life.  And that was the name through which New Orleans DA Jim Garrison discovered her. Her Cassandra-like warning had been ignored by the Dallas Police, even though they were fully aware of it.  It had then laid dormant for the FBI and the Warren Commission. In the seventies, it had been pursued by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In fact, one of their most famous reports, written by researcher Patricia Orr, incorporated some of Garrison’s information with some new work that committee had done.  In the annotated screen play of JFK entitled The Book of the Film, it was revealed that the script relied on Orr’s report for their information.

    It was not until the Assassination Records Review Board declassified the HSCA files that we finally got many of the records that the committee used in order to compose that report.  In a handy appendix to Rose Cherami: Gathering Fallen Petals, the authors supply several of these helpful documents.  But the book goes much further than that.  Because Marcades was so interested in finding out more about a mother he barely knew, but had read about in several sources, he decided to spend many years doing research in order to write the first full scale biography of Melba Youngblood, who only lived to be a bit over forty years old. 

    For a multiplicity of reasons, this was not an easy task.  First, from a forensic viewpoint, many of the important personages had passed from this world. Also, as this reviewer has mentioned previously, many of the files of the late Jim Garrison have been lost, stolen or incinerated.  Third, since Youngblood led such an offbeat, itinerant, peripatetic life, there was not a lot of paper data or tangible leads to follow.  But Marcades stuck it out. And with the help of two others, including journalist Norma Kirkpatrick, he has put it together in book form.

    Melba Youngblood grew up on a farm in a small town called Fairfield in east Texas.  Her father was named Tom Youngblood; her mother was Minnie Bell Stroud. She was the eldest of three sisters, the other two being named Mozelle and Grace. Melba’s nickname growing up was Crit.  The father was a stern disciplinarian and the girls were expected to do farm chores in addition to attending school and going to church on Sunday.

    From the rather young age of fourteen, Crit was unsatisfied with the simple, dirt farming rural life. At that time, she actually ran away after hitching a ride with the milkman.  Her parents managed to find her in a nearby small town.  The street waif had been taken in by a kindly old couple.

    A couple of years later, the family moved to Aldine, which was near Houston.  There, Tom managed a tenant farm for the owner.  They lived in a home that was much larger and modern. The father worked a second job on construction.  But even with the improved circumstances, Melba was unsatisfied. She ran away for the second time at age 16.  This time, she ended up in Houston.  She found work as a waitress at first.  But it is at this point that she fell into a life of hard partying in both Houston and Galveston.  And with the wrong people.

    She met a man named Al who gave her a job in his restaurant.  It was in this time period, 1941-42, that she fell into a serious heroin habit.   But, even worse, she met a bartender named Johnny who now began to hire her to do illegal errands for him.  This included delivering drugs, liquor and cigarettes to soldiers on military bases.  Sick of this kind of life, she decided to split by stealing his car. She did not think he would call the police because of his illicit black market dealing.  But he did.  And what made it all the worse was that she did not contact her parents to help her once she got apprehended.

    She was extradited to Shreveport, Louisiana since that is where Johnny actually lived.  Since she had no independent legal counsel, she did not know how to deal with the court. For example, she could have made a deal with the prosecutor for immunity and a pardon by turning state’s witness against Johnny.  She did not.  And she did not contact her parents until after she was incarcerated. Since she was in northern Louisiana, she was sent to infamous Angola.  There, because she was shapely and attractive she found out about being on the “cordiality detail”.   This meant going up to the big house on the hill and attending parties with guests of the state.  She was released after two years in 1944.

    Once she was out, she visited her parents.  She got a job as a switchboard operator, and was married for the first time.  She stayed clean and led a normal life for two years.  But she left her husband and went, first to Dallas, and then to New Orleans.  She became a stripper at a club called the Blue Angel.  It was here where she met a man named Edward Joseph Marcades.  Eddie ended up being her second husband and the father of Michael, who was born in 1953. But again, this marriage did not last very long.  Melba left her husband and took Michael to New Orleans.  After not hearing from her for awhile, her parents went looking for her.  She was living in such dilapidated standards that they decided to take Michael home with them.  A point that his mother did not strongly dispute.

    It was around this time, the late fifties, that Melba began to work as a stripper for Jack Ruby at a place called the Pink Door.  As Vincent Bugliosi states in his book Reclaiming History, there is no official record of Ruby ever owning a club by this name. He ignores the possibility that Ruby could either have been a silent partner, or owned a minority share of it. Bugliosi also does not inform his readers of Ruby’s activities at this same time, the late fifties. Maybe it’s because they provide a reason for a disguised ownership.  And they also match the kinds of things that Melba Christine was described as doing in this phase of her life. Ruby’s activities include the smuggling of narcotics across state lines, a call girl ring, and the transfer of pornographic films.  Ruby was very serious about this and he did research on how it could be done. He went into business with a man named Jim Breen. In fact, some of the call girls actually talked to the FBI to inform them of this activity.  (See Warren Commission exhibits 1761-62 in Volume 23)  Ruby’s activities in this regard later evolved to include gun running.  There are several FBI reports from different witnesses—for example, Blaney Mack Johnson and Ed Browder—that describe this in Volume 26 of the Commission exhibits.  (See especially exhibits 3055-3066) These exhibits also include reports of businesses—hotels and bars—that Ruby had an interest in but for which there is no record of him formally owning, at least not in the Warren Commission volumes.

    It was around this time period—late fifties, early sixties—that Melba Christine began to use the alias of Rose Cherami.  And it was under this name, and as part of drug, guns and prostitution runs from Dallas to Miami that Cherami became involved in the incident that Stone depicted in his film, that Orr wrote a report on, and that numerous writers—including this reviewer—have exhaustively described.  I won’t detail the incident at any length, since most readers are already familiar with it.  I will just summarize it.  At a sleazy bar called the Silver Slipper Lounge, Cherami’s two Latin cohorts began a vociferous argument with her.  She was thrown out by the bartender, Mac Manual, and began hitchhiking on route 190.  She was hit by a car and the driver transported her to a hospital.  On two occasions, with two different witnesses, she said the two men with her had talked about killing Kennedy.  Both of these declarations occurred prior to November 22nd. But no one took it seriously; they chalked it up to the ravings of a junkie in need of a fix.  After the assassination, it was a different story.  Louisiana State Trooper Francis Fruge, who had accompanied her to a state hospital, got permission from his superiors to turn her over to the Dallas Police.  But the police did not want to hear from her.  The doctor who talked to her in the hospital, while on a hunting trip revealed to a friend what she said.  And it was through this friend that Jim Garrison found out about her case.  But by then she had passed away.

    The authors are firmly in the camp that Cherami was murdered.  They believe that she was shot on one of these drug runs in 1965.  That the killer then ran her over to try and disguise her death as a matter of hit and run.  That the man who eventually found her body on the road, Jerry Don Moore, did not actually strike her.  (The investigating police officer did not think he did either.) Further, they show that there was apparently something wrong with the hospital report on her death, i.e., the report says she was DOA, yet this is provably false.  She was worked on in the ER room and then transferred to a private room and survived for about eight hours in critical condition.

    Michael Marcades put together the book by interviewing several surviving family members.  He also found a grocery bag full of letters that Rose wrote. And he has also read much of the source material on her case, though I was surprised he did not include Todd Elliot’s prior brief book on the subject, A Rose by Many other Names (actually a  pamphlet). Elliot discovered two other witnesses who heard his mother mention the Kennedy assassination prior to it happening.  This was at Moosa Hospital in Eunice prior to Fruge arriving.  But Elliot’s work was not anywhere near a full-scale biography as this book is.

    I would be remiss if I did not make a formal criticism of the book, as I did with Fernando Faura’s volume, The Polka Dot File.  Marcades and Kirkpatrick decided to use a lot of reconstructed dialogue in the scenes they drew.  Some of this is acceptable since they probably got it from family members who interacted with Rose.  But some of it is hard to fathom since it’s done without any surviving witnesses, at least that I know of.  Also, sometimes this extends into a stream of consciousness, where we actually read the thoughts of a character.  If I had been editing the book I would have advised the authors to be less liberal with this aspect of narrative license.

    The photos in the volume are extraordinary.  Almost all of them have never been seen before.  And the document annex, mostly made up from the ARRB declassification process is valuable.  Michael Marcades wanted to find his mother, whom he had met only three times before she died.  The last meeting was at a picnic at a lake. It was a time-consuming and courageous undertaking.  I should also add the word honesty to that voyage.  For he gives us a picture of this unfortunate woman warts and all.

  • Mark Lane, Part II: Citizen Lane

    Mark Lane, Part II: Citizen Lane

    When Mark Lane’s autobiography was published in 2012, I was working on my rewrite of Destiny Betrayed.  Right after that, I started in on Reclaiming Parkland. I tried to get someone else to review Citizen Lane, but there were no takers.  In retrospect, I am sorry that I could not get anyone interested. And I also understand why no one in the MSM reviewed the book.  It is, in quite simple terms, both a marvelous read and an inspiring story.

    Too often in the JFK field, we focus solely on the work of the author or essayist on the assassination itself.  In my view, this is mistaken.  It’s important to me to know who an author is outside of the field.  To give one example, Robert Tanenbaum—who wrote the thinly disguised roman a clef about the HSCA, Corruption of Blood—was a graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law. He then became a prosecutor under the legendary New York DA Frank Hogan.  He rose to become head of the homicide division. Tanenbaum never lost a felony case in his nearly decade long career in that office. Therefore, he cannot be dismissed as a tin foil capped conspiracy theorist.  The late Philip Melanson rose to become the head of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.  He then built an RFK archives at his university, the best such repository on the east coast.  He wrote 12 non-fiction books, including an excellent one on the Secret Service.

    In my elegy for the recently deceased Mark Lane, I alluded to some of the things he had accomplished outside the Kennedy assassination field: his work for the alleged killer of Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray; his book on the fey, chaotic Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968; and his prime role in freeing an innocent man from death row, James Richardson.  Little did I know how much I was still leaving out. I, and many others, clearly shortchanged the career of a truly remarkable attorney. 

    I have belatedly read Lane’s autobiography, Citizen Lane.  Let me say two things at the outset.  Everyone should read this book.  It is the testament of a man who dedicated his legal career to a lifelong crusade for the causes he believed in.  And, as we will see, Lane did this almost right at the beginning of his career. It is clear that no obituary of Lane came close to doing him justice, because there seemed to be a unified MSM  boycott about this book.  Without reading it, no one can come close to fairly summarizing his career. 

    Lane was born in New York in 1927, two years before the stock market crash.  His father was a CPA, and his mother was a secretary to a theatrical producer.  All three of their children went to college and graduated, which is quite an achievement for that time period.  Lane’s older brother became a high school mathematics teacher and a leader of the teachers union in New York. His younger sister became a history professor who eventually took over the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Virginia. She built it from virtually nothing to the point where it had fifty majors, and the areas of concentration were expanded.  (See here https://news.virginia.edu/content/ann-j-lane-first-director-women-s-studies-uva-has-died)

    After serving in the army in Europe during World War II, Mark Lane returned home and decided to become an attorney.  He attended Brooklyn School of Law. It was founded in 1901, and is highly rated today by the National Law Journal.  That particular publication rates law schools by return on investment.  That is: how many of the graduates sign on with the top law firms in the United States.  According to that rubric, Lane’s alma mater is in the top 15% of law academies.  But Lane did not intend on cashing in on his law degree. 

    Lane decided that what he wanted to do was to offer legal services to those who did not have access to them but, in fact, really needed them.  So he began as a member of the leftist National Lawyers Guild, and working in an office with the later congressional representative Bella Abzug.  Lane started out as little more than a researcher and court stand-in for his boss when he was behind schedule.  But one day he happened to walk by a court in session while the great Carol Weiss King, founder of the National Lawyers Guild, was defending a client.  Lane heard her say, “Just who does this government think it is that it can violate the law with impunity, that it can traduce the rights of ordinary people, that it can tell us that the law doesn’t count because these are extraordinary times? ” (p. 27) 

    From that propitious moment on Lane decided he was not going to be a gopher for anyone anymore.

    II

    He now set up an office on the second level of an apartment building in Spanish Harlem. Because few other attorneys were there, people began to come to him with their most dire needs.  Prior to Lane’s arrival, when there was a gang shooting, the young Latin accused of the crime almost automatically was executed or got life imprisonment.  With Lane there this all changed, even in instances when the victim was white and the assailant was Puerto Rican.  Lane was one of the first to assail what was called the Special Jury System.  (pgs. 43-44)  In New York, under these circumstances, the jury master could choose a jury, instead of having one picked at random.  Therefore, the accused was not judged by a jury of his peers. Later, Lane was instrumental in getting this system abolished.

    Once he developed a higher profile, Lane would set up legal clinics for the public in high school auditoriums. One of his specialties was advising local renters on how to set up tenant councils and, if necessary, conduct rent strikes. (p. 48) He even arranged to have a legal clinic at the offices of the local Hispanic newspaper. With their help, Lane helped save the concept of rent control in New York City. (p. 49)

    Lane was also an active member of the National Lawyers Guild. Like many young lawyers in the late forties and fifties, Lane thought the ABA did not take a strong enough stand against Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee or the demagogue Joe McCarthy.  He volunteered to organize a benefit show for the Guild.  When the main targeted performer refused to sign on, Lane went to the blacklisted folk singer Pete Seeger.  Seeger invited the jazz artist Sonny Terry.  Lane also invited female folk singer Martha Schlamme.  Every ticket was sold, with scores of people paying for standing room only. Lane went on to do two more of these shows for Seeger.  They went over so well that the young attorney briefly thought of becoming a musical impresario. (p. 36)  But, lucky for us, he did not. Lane married the talented and attractive Schlamme, who unfortunately, died of a stroke in 1985.

    By this time, the mid fifties, Lane had been in practice for just six years.  But yet, his reputation as a champion of lost causes was so prevalent that a young man named Graciliano Acevedo walked into his office one day. He was an escapee from a young adult prison.  Except it was not called a prison.  It was called Wassaic State School for Mental Defectives. Acevedo began to recite a virtual horror story to the young lawyer.  He told him that Wassaic was not really a school.  It was a prison camouflaged as a school.  Acevedo had been committed there without access to an attorney and not given a hearing or a trial.  He did not want to return. He said there was no real schooling going on there, and that the guards were incompetent and sadistic and would beat up some of the prisoners.  In fact, one guard actually killed an 18-year-old prisoner. (p. 58)

    Lane took Acevedo to a psychiatrist.  When his IQ was tested it turned out to be 115.  So much for him being a mental defective. Lane decided he was not going to turn him over.  He now enlisted two local reporters to his side: Fern Marja and Peter Khiss.  Marja ran a three-day series on the abuses of this “school,” which culminated with an editorial plea for it to be cleaned up.  Which it was.  There was no more solitary confinement, books were now made available, academic tests were now given in Spanish, guards were fired (some were prosecuted), and hundreds of the inmates were released.

    It is hard to believe, but at this time, Lane was just 28 years old.

    III

    Lane was interested in improving the community he worked in, as were some other talented people.  So, through his defense of a parishioner, he met with the famous reverend, Eugene St. Clair Callender.  After getting the young man off, he and Callender decided to work on creating a drug treatment center at the Mid-Harlem  Community Parish. (p. 79)  Once the two men got the center up and running, they passed its management on to one of the former patients. That center ended up treating 25,000 patients.  After a meeting with baseball star Jackie Robinson, a company he was affiliated with agreed to hire some of the rehabilitated drug addicts.  To culminate their success story, Lane and Callender invited a young rising star of the civil rights movement to come north and speak in Harlem. Martin Luther King spoke in front of the Hotel Theresa in 1957.  Lane supplied the power for the sound system through a nearby nightclub run by boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson. (pgs. 86-87)

    From social problems, Lane now turned toward the political field. The young attorney did not think the Democratic Party of New York was representing Spanish Harlem anywhere near as well as it should.  So Lane decided to organize his own version of the party.  He got the backing of Eleanor Roosevelt in this effort. At the beginning, he said that if he won his race for the state legislature, he would only serve one term.  He then wanted to pass the seat on to a local Hispanic.  With the help of his sister, brother and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Lane campaign registered over four thousand new voters. At the same time he was running for office, he was managing the local campaign of Senator John Kennedy for president.

    On Election Day, his backers patrolled the ballot boxes to make sure no one from outside the district tried to vote.  Lane won and celebrations broke out. As promised, after he served one term, he passed the seat on to a local Latino community organizer he knew.

    At around this time, the early sixties, the struggle for civil rights was heating up to a fever pitch. The election of John Kennedy and the appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General, inspired long delayed public demonstrations to attain equality for black Americans.  Callender decided to join in one of these actions, the Freedom Riders movement, by sending Lane and local black activist/lawyer Percy Sutton south to join in them. (p. 138)

    In Jackson, Mississippi, before they could even participate in the protest, both  men were arrested for sitting next to each other at an airport terminal. The charge was disorderly conduct. They were convicted without trial and sentenced to four months in prison.  They were released on bail and promptly interviewed by the New York Times and New York Post. (p. 144)  After the bad publicity, the two men returned south to stand trial. Wisely, the prosecutor moved for a directed verdict of not guilty.

    IV

    We now come to a part of Citizen Lane that most of our readership will be partly familiar with.  That is, Lane’s writing of his famous National Guardian essay proclaiming doubt about the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of President Kennedy.  What inspired Lane to write his essay were the pronouncements of Dallas DA Henry Wade after Oswald had been killed.  This was suspicious in itself, since Jack Ruby killed Oswald live on national TV in the basement of City Hall. In spite of that, perhaps because of it, Wade held a press conference and stated that, even though he was dead, and would not have an attorney, or a trial, Oswald was still guilty. (p. 150)  Lane studied the charges levied by Wade. He now decided to respond to the DA’s bill of indictment.  Although he offered his work to several outlets e.g. The Nation, Look, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, none of them would publish it.  Finally, James Aronson of the left leaning National Guardian called. He had heard of the essay through the publishing grapevine.  Lane told him he could have it for now, but not to publish it yet.  In the meantime, he went to Jimmy Weschler of the New York Post.  The Post had helped him with the Wassaic scandal, and covered his political campaign fairly.  Weschler turned it down. After final approval for Aronson, it became a mini-sensation.  Aronson had to publish several reprints.  Weschler never spoke to Lane again.  (p. 152)

    This essay was not just hugely popular in America, it also began to circulate through Europe and even Japan. Therefore, with the money Aronson made through the $100 dollar sale of the rights from Lane, he arranged a speaking tour abroad for the author.  With Lane’s dissident profile rising, the head of the ABA and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wanted him disciplined because of his defense of Oswald.  (p. 155)  But Marguerite Oswald had read Lane’s work and wanted him to defend her deceased son, which Lane agreed to do.  But the Warren Commission would not tolerate anything like that, by Lane or anyone else.  In fact, following through on Powell’s suggestion, Commission Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin filed a complaint with the New York City bar.  Lane had to get an attorney to represent him and the complaint was dismissed.  (p. 157)

    Even though Rankin would not tolerate a formal defense of Oswald before the Warren Commission, Lane now established his Citizens Commission of Inquiry (CCI) to informally investigate the Kennedy case through a wide network of volunteers.  Through his lecture tours he raised enough  money to fly to Dallas and talk to witnesses. He also rented a theater in New York and began to appear on college campuses.  When he was invited to travel to Europe, the American embassies abroad tracked his appearances and tried to talk his backers out of their sponsorships.  At one appearance in Vienna, they planted a translator who deliberately misspoke what he was saying.  When the crowd started objecting, an American living there took over the duties. (p. 159)

    When Lane returned to the States, he tried to get a book published based upon the Warren Report and the accompanying 26 volumes of evidence.  But the FBI visited some of the prospective publishers and talked them out of working with Lane.  They also visited local talk radio hosts and tried to discourage them from having him on the air.  The Bureau then tapped the phones of the CCI so they would know when and where Lane would be traveling in order to investigate the case.  He was also placed on the “lookout list” so that when he arrived back from a foreign speaking tour, the FBI would know he had returned.

    Because he was working for nothing but expenses, and he had neglected his private law practice for the Kennedy case, Lane was extremely low on funds at this time.  Finally, a British publishing house, the Bodley Head, decided to publish his manuscript called Rush to Judgment. A man named Ben Sonnenberg went to the company and volunteered his services to edit the book. When Lane saw his suggestions, he thought they were weird.  It later turned out that Sonnenberg was a CIA agent who was relaying information to the Agency about what was in the book.  (p. 165)

    The book did well in England and the Bodley Head began to look for an American publisher.  They contacted Arthur Cohen of Holt, Rinehart and Winston.  Cohen was very interested but, probably through Sonnenberg, the CIA found out how explosive the book was. Although it did not implicate them, they tried to talk Cohen out of publishing the book anyway.  Cohen told them if they did not leave him alone, he would double the advertising budget.  (p. 165)  Norman Mailer did a good review of the book in the New York Herald Tribune and the volume became a smashing best seller in America.

    Lane began to tour the country from coast to coast as the book caught on like wildfire.  In St. Louis, he got a phone caller on a talk show who said he wanted to talk to him offline.  He then told him that he needed to talk to him out of the studio.  So he directed him to a phone booth nearby.  When Lane got there, he now instructed him to go to another phone booth a few miles away.  Lane, who had received numerous death threats before was now getting worried.  But it turned out that the caller was alerting him to an assassination attempt on his life.  He told Lane that this would take place in Chicago, outside of a hotel room he would be staying in and he actually gave him the room number he would be at.  He then added that there would be a studio across the street.  Lane would cross the street to get there at a precise time, and then there would be an attempt to run him over with a truck.  (p. 169)  Lane asked him how he knew all of these details.  The man said that he had been hired to drive the truck, but he refused to kill an American on American soil.  He then added that he would now send a taxi to pick Lane up and return him to his hotel, which he knew the name of.  When Lane got to Chicago, all the details the assassin told him were accurate.  So he changed his room number, and then arrived at the interview via a circuitous route.

    {aridoc engine=”iframe” width=”560″ height=”315″}https://www.youtube.com/embed/3XoAg-FeU9I?rel=0&showinfo=0{/aridoc} 
    Mark Lane appears on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. Although many people had been
    skeptical of the Warren Report’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in
    the assassination of President Kennedy, Lane’s book Rush to Judgment was the first to
    lay out the argument seriously. He defends himself ably in this spirited exchange.

    After Rush to Judgment became a national bestseller, documentary film director Emile De Antonio got in contact with him to a do a film based upon the book.  So the two traveled to Dallas to interview some witnesses.  One of them, Sam Holland, told them that he had been alerted in advance about them coming.  And he had also been told by the police not to talk to them. Further, he had been threatened with the loss of his job if he did so. When Lane asked him if those were the circumstances, then why he was talking to him, Holland replied with words that have become hallowed in the annals of JFK assassination literature:  “When the time comes that an American sees his president being killed and he can’t tell the truth about it, that’s the time to give the country back to the Indians—if they’ll take it.”  As Lane reports, Holland had tears in his eyes as he said this.

    I should add one more detail about their work on this film, one that does not come from this book, but from Lane’s 1968 volume A Citizen’s Dissent. While at work on the film, the two struck a deal with CBS to look at their outtakes from their 1964 two-hour special on the Warren Report.  The first night they watched five hours of film.  They understood it would eventually run to 70 hours—for a two-hour documentary?  Lane and De Antonio found something shocking that first night.  CBS was, as Lane put it, filming from a script.  If any witness diverted from that scenario, the interviewer yelled cut. The witness was then instructed with new information so as to alter their answer for the camera.  The witness then gave the revised answer. Only the rehearsed parts were shown to the public.  Needless to say, after their first night, CBS called the librarian and said the agreement they had was null and void.  (Mark Lane, A Citizen’s Dissent, pgs. 75-79)

    V

    While on a speaking tour in northern California in 1968, Lane picked up a magazine and read the story of James Joseph Richardson.  Richardson was a resident of  Arcadia, Florida, who was charged with killing his seven children with poison.  (Citizen Lane, p. 187)  Lane happened to have another speaking engagement upcoming in Florida. While there, he found that Richardson had been convicted.  Lane got in contact with Richardson’s attorney and then with Richardson.  After this he and three of his friends and working associates—Carolyn Mugar, Steve Jaffe and Dick Gregory—conducted an eight-month investigation, after which he published a book about the case called, appropriately, Arcadia.  This managed to attract some attention to the case and place some pressure on local officials. 

    The book strongly suggested that Richardson had been framed and that the local police chief and the DA had cooperated in manufacturing evidence. This turned out to be the case.  Lane got TV host David Frost interested in the case and he did a jailhouse interview with Richardson.  Dick Gregory got a story in Newsweek.  Lane called a press conference on the steps of the state capital after he had acquired a copy of the master case file.  These documents proved the accusations he had made in his book.  The governor now ordered a special hearing into the case and the new facts were now entered into the record.  Janet Reno had been assigned the case as a special prosecutor.  Lane was allowed to make his case to vacate the previous judgment.  Reno made a short presentation which, in essence, agreed with all the facts Lane had presented.  She also agreed the verdict should be vacated.  The judge agreed also and Richardson was set free. (pgs. 206-07)  Lane later called the day Richardson was freed after 21 years of incarceration the greatest day of his professional life.

    Mark Lane (left) with Jane Fonda

    It would seem almost destined that an attorney like Lane would get involved with the long and arduous attempt to end the Vietnam War.  Lane did. With actress Jane Fonda and actor Donald Sutherland, he helped arrange the famous Winter Soldier Investigation.  This was a three-day conference in Detroit in 1971. It was designed to publicize the atrocities and crimes that the Pentagon had committed in its futile attempt to defeat the Viet Cong and the regular army of North Vietnam.  A documentary film was made of the event and the transcript was entered into the Congressional Record by Sen. Mark Hatfield. 

    Both President Richard Nixon and his assistant Charles Colson despised the conference, as did the Pentagon and the FBI. They therefore began counter measures to neutralize its impact. Lane wrote a book about the subject called Conversations with Americans. Consulting with the Pentagon, New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan wrote an article saying that since some of Lane’s interviewees were not listed in Pentagon records, then the persons must be ersatz.  When Lane tried to call Sheehan and enlighten him on this issue, Sheehan never returned his calls.  Lane understood that some of the soldiers would not want their actual names entered into the book for fear of retaliation.  Therefore, he had entered the real information about the subjects on a chart and given this information to a former lawyer for the Justice Department.  (See pages 219-221) Sheehan apparently never wanted this information.  And neither does former professor John McAdams because he still runs a link to Sheehan’s false article to discredit Lane. 

    Neil Sheehan was a former acolyte of Col. John Paul Vann. Vann had been part of the American advisory group that President Kennedy had sent to Vietnam to assist the ARVN. Vann became convinced the war could not be won unless direct American intervention was applied.  In this, he was in agreement with New York Times reporter in Vietnam, David Halberstam.  Kennedy disliked them both since he had no intention of inserting American combat troops in Indochina.  Somehow, 42 years after the fall of Saigon, McAdams still does not understand what made it such a disaster. It was partly because of writers like Sheehan and military men like Vann.

    But that is not all Lane did to try and stop the war.  He also read up on the laws concerning conscientious objectors and provided counseling to scores of young men who wanted to use that aspect of the law to either avoid service or leave the service.  (p. 236)  In addition to that, because Lane had achieved a high profile on the war, one day a Vietnamese pilot training in Texas got in contact with him.  He said he did not want to be part of these Vietnamese Air Force missions, since most of them targeted civilians. So he asked Lane if he could be granted political asylum in America so as not to go back and do bombing runs.  Lane did some work on the issue.  He told him that he did not think he would be successful petitioning for asylum in America, but he thought he could do so in Canada.  Therefore, along with his lifelong friend Carolyn Mugar, the two set up a kind of underground railroad into Canada. Carolyn would stop her station wagon before the border checkpoint. Lane and the man he calls Tran (along with two other trainees) jumped out of the car and circled around into a snowy, thin forest.  After Carolyn passed the border, she then drove along a narrow road to pick up the pair on the Canadian side. Because of its success, Lane duplicated this along with Mugar several times.  He later talked to a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman who said that they were on to what he was doing. but they actually were in agreement with him.  (p. 283)

    VI

    One of the most gripping chapters in the book is Lane’s description of his participation in the defense of Russell Means and Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement (AIM) during the siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.  AIM had organized an effort to impeach tribal president Richard Wilson who they felt was a totally corrupt pawn who was actually abusing the tribe. The area was cordoned off with FBI agents and US Marshals. During the siege, several people were shot and at least one disappeared.  After the siege was lifted, Banks and Means went on trial for conspiracy and assault.  They were defended respectively by Lane and William Kunstler.

    The trial began in January of 1974.  Lane motioned for a change of venue to St. Paul, Minnesota, which the court granted.  It became very obvious early on that the FBI had illegally wiretapped the phone at the reservation and that they had suborned perjury from their star witness. (p. 267)  Although one of the jurors became ill before a final verdict was voted on, the judge accepted an acquittal to one charge and threw out the other because of prosecutorial misconduct. That ruling was accepted on appeal.

    Most of us know about Lane’s participation in the Martin Luther King case.  He and Dick Gregory wrote a good book about the murder of King.  It was originally titled Code Name Zorro and then reissued as Murder In Memphis.  In this volume, Lane only discusses his work with Grace Stephens.  Stephens was at Bessie’s Boarding House with her common law husband, Charlie Stephens, when King was shot.  She saw a man run out of the communal bathroom.  Yet, she would not say it was James Earl Ray, the accused assassin, even though she was sober and got a good look at him.  Charlie was stone drunk at the time and was not a witness to the man running out. He did not even have his glasses on. (p. 290) But since he would say it was Ray, he was used as a witness to extradite the alleged assassin from England.

    When Lane started investigating the case, he asked around for Grace.  No one knew where she was or why she was never called as a witness.  Finally, Lane got some information that she was squirreled away in a sanitarium.  He went there and looked for her. When he found her, he sat down next to her, took out a tape recorder, and asked her about the man she saw.  She said she did get a good look at him.  And when she was shown pictures of Ray, it was not him.  Lane left the place and then played the tape on local Memphis radio.  He then got a hearing called in order to free Grace Stephens. (p. 294)

    In the fall of 1978, Lane was asked by his friend Donald Freed to go to Jonestown in Guyana.  James Jones wanted Freed to lecture there on the King case.  Freed figured that since Lane knew much more about it than he did, he would let him do the talking.  Lane was well received and he was invited back in November.  Before he left, he got a call from a congressional lawyer in Washington. He inquired about how many news media would be there, and if the congressional delegations of Leo Ryan and Ed Derwinski would be small. He was assured that there would be no media and that just one assistant would accompany both congressmen. (p. 305)  He had inquired about this because he felt that if everything was kept small scale, he could serve as a mediator if Jones got too paranoid about being investigated.  Lane was either misinformed or he was lied to on both points.

    Jones did feel threatened by the rather large delegation and Lane could not control things.  After watching and intervening in a murder attempt on congressman Ryan, Lane advised the representative from northern California  to leave the scene. Jones had seen Ryan bloodied and the newsmen were trying to take photos. (p. 310)  Lane convinced Ryan to go. He told him he would interview the people his constituents were inquiring about.

    After Ryan left for the airport—where he and others would be killed on the tarmac—Lane and the People’s Temple lawyer Charles Garry were placed in a cell.  Lane talked to one of his guards and convinced him that he would be the perfect author to tell the truth about the colony. Miraculously, the two lawyers made it through the jungle to Port Kaituma where they were rescued by the military.  They then sought refuge in the American Embassy.  Lane concludes this chapter by agreeing with most authors:  Jonestown was not a mass suicide.  It was at least partly a mass murder.  (Please read Jim Hougan’s three-part series on Jones to gain some understanding of what really happened at Jonestown http://jimhougan.com/JimJones.html)

    As shown in the video clip above, many people know that Mark Lane opposed William F. Buckley on his show Firing Line about the JFK case.  What very few people knew, including me, was that Lane also opposed him in court on four counts of defamation.  Buckley had sued Willis Carto for libel because he had called him a neo-fascist and a racist.  Carto’s first lawyer took a powder on him and so he turned to Lane in desperation: Buckley was requesting $16 million dollars in damages.  Even though the judge was clearly biased towards Buckley, Lane did very well.  He simply used words that Buckley had written in his own magazine, National Review  to show that Buckley had clearly sided with the forces of segregation in the south way past the time when King and Rosa Parks began their campaign to integrate the area.  He also showed that Buckley encouraged the prosecution of African American congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and that he was also in favor of the poll tax.  The $16 million was reduced to $1,001.00.  (pgs. 321-28)

    It is also instructive to compare the work Lane did in life with what the counsels of the Warren commission did. Did David Belin ever take on a case of abusive landlords? Did Wesley Liebeler ever hold free legal clinics on how to organize rent strikes? Not to my knowledge.

    Two other things I did not know about Lane that are in this book.   He successfully argued a case before the Supreme Court against Jack Anderson.  This again involved a libel case in which Anderson had libeled Carto.  The district judge had thrown the case out.  Lane argued it should be reinstated.  He won the case and Carto settled for a withdrawal of the charges and a token payment to a charitable cause.  (p. 336) 

    Second, Lane had a radio show. He made an appearance on a radio program in New Jersey in 2004 to talk about the JFK case.  He did so well that he was invited back.  He was then offered a job five days a week, which he declined. But he agreed to do the show once  a week with a co–host.   The show was called Lane’s Law and I really wish I had known about it since it sounds very funny. Lane had a great time making fun of pompous fools like Sen. Bill Frist. (p. 346)

    When Lane’s sister Anne became ill and had to resign her Department Chair at Virginia, Lane moved to Charlottesville to be close to her. She later recovered and moved to New York to attend her children and grandchildren.  Mark decided to stay in Virginia.  Coincidentally, all three siblings passed away in a period of four years, from 2012-16.

    Unlike what Bob Katz once wrote about him, Mark Lane was not an ambulance chaser.  In each high profile case he entered, he was requested to do so: from the JFK case to the Buckley case, and all of them in between, including Wounded Knee and the King case. It is also instructive to compare the work Lane did in life with what the counsels of the Warren commission did.  Did David Belin ever take on a case of abusive landlords?  Did Wesley Liebeler ever hold free legal clinics on how to organize rent strikes?  Not to my knowledge.

    Mark Lane was such an effective defense lawyer he could have made millions a la Dick DeGuerin defending the likes of Robert Durst.  Instead, he decided to be an attorney for the wretched and the damned.  A counsel for the downtrodden and the lost. But they happened to be, like Wounded Knee and the JFK case, just causes.  And Lane acquitted himself well, considering the forces arrayed against him.  I know of very few lawyers who could have written a book like this one.  Lane’s life stands out as a man who did what he could to correct the evil and injustice in the world around him, with no target being too small or too large in that regard. This book stands out like a beacon in the night. It shows both what a citizen should be, and what an attorney can be. Buy it today.

  • Clint Hill, with Lisa McCubbin, Five Presidents

    Clint Hill, with Lisa McCubbin, Five Presidents

    Oh, what I hath wrought to the world. As readers of my critical review of Lisa McCubbin’s first of four “co-authored” books The Kennedy Detail well know [1], I am thoroughly convinced that it was my 22-page letter to Clint Hill in 2005 that awoke a sleeping giant. Hill, then 73 and with zero want or desire to write a book (a sort of badge of honor that he carried for decades), was angered by my letter, a “cliff notes” version of the basics from my then self- published first book critical of the JFK-era Secret Service entitled Survivor’s Guilt.[2]It is important to emphasize the fact that Hill had an unlisted address and phone number at the time; it was only through the good fortune of an unsolicited bit of help via a colleague of Hill’s, former agent Lynn Meredith, that I was able to obtain this then highly-sought bit of information. As I discovered during my June 2005 conversation with Gerald Blaine, Clint shared the contents of my private letter to his fellow former agent, a man who, I soon found out, was his best friend for many years and who was, by any measurable standard, an obscure agent of the Secret Service who was on the Texas trip (but not in Dallas), having served a meager five years with the agency.

    Perhaps you can figure out where this is headed to.

    As fate would have it, it was during this same summer of 2005 that two things happened: Gerald Blaine began writing his book[3] and Clint Hill, writer of the Foreword to the book (and participant in the book tour and numerous television programs), destroyed his personal notes he had in his possession for decades.[4] It was also during this very same time that Lisa McCubbin, an obscure former television reporter who lived in Qatar in the Middle East for six years as a freelance journalist[5], began helping Blaine with the writing of his book. McCubbin was born after the assassination and was friends with the Blaine family; in fact, she had dated Blaine’s son.[6] In an unexpected turn of events, McCubbin (born in 1964) would start a romantic relationship with Hill (born in 1932), although Hill is still married. [7] This partnership, professional and otherwise, would reap many benefits: The Kennedy Detail in 2010 and the accompanying Emmy-nominated Discovery documentary of the same name[8], Mrs. Kennedy and Me in 2012[9]; Five Days In November in 2013[10]; and, now, Five Presidents in 2016, all of which would go on to become New York Times best-sellers, having the distinct advantage of being published by the biggest publishing house in the world, Simon and Schuster, who can guarantee instant articles on Yahoo, People magazine exposes, and coverage on Fox, CNN, and NBC. McCubbin even brags on her website that “she is widely respected within the U.S. Secret Service for her responsible and accurate writing about this highly secretive agency.”

    And, yet, as I have written at length about in both my book Survivor’s Guilt, my forthcoming book The Not So Secret Service, and in several CTKA reviews (not to mention countless blogs and posts online), her work cannot be trusted with anything controversial. Sure, you can take it to the bank when she writes about harmless historical items such as Hill’s many interactions with Jackie Kennedy and other Redbook/Reader’s Digest type moments, but her work should be viewed with a jaundiced eye when the Kennedy assassination is mentioned.

    Hill, Blaine and McCubbin are much aware of my work; no delusions of grandeur here. Apart from my aforementioned 22-page letter that opened Pandora’s box, Hill and Blaine have discussed my work on C-SPAN with CEO Brian Lamb (in Hill’s case, twice);[11] Blaine sarcastically names me as a Secret Service “expert” on pages 359-360 of his book (and quite a few other pages are a direct response to my work); I am credited at the end of a 2013 television program in which Hill briefly addresses my “allegations” (McCubbin also participated as well)[12]; Blaine had his attorney send me a threatening letter[13]; McCubbin, who contacted me about my blog, gave my first book a one star on “Good Reads” and has even admitted on C-SPAN of finding information that contradicted Blaine (almost certainly my work)[14]; Blaine added my book as an item “to read” on “Good Reads”; Blaine and Hill friend (and former agent) Chuck Zboril, much aware of my blog, gave my first book a one-star review on Amazon; former agent Ron Pontius mentions one of my articles without naming me on the television documentary; and I have been treated to petty harassment by several other personal friends of Blaine, both at home and at my former place of employment.

    With all of this in proper focus, it is time to examine the latest offering from the Hill/McCubbin partnership, Five Presidents.

    Clint Hill with Jackie Kennedy

    While serving five different presidents is somewhat noteworthy, Hill is hardly the first or only one to have served five or more presidents or to have written books about their service. SAIC Edmund Starling (author of the 1946 book Starling of the White House), SAIC/ Assistant Director Rufus Youngblood (author of the 1973 book Twenty Years in the Secret Service: My Life With Five Presidents), Chief/Director (and former SAIC) James Rowley, SAIC Gerald Behn, ASAIC Floyd Boring (who contributed to David McCullough’s 1993 book Truman and the 2005 Stephen Hunter book American Gunfight), ASAIC Roy Kellerman, Art Godfrey, Chuck Zboril (misspelled “Zobril” on page 451), Winston Lawson, Emory Roberts, Vince Mroz, Howard Anderson, Morgan Gies, SAIC of PRS Bob Bouck, John Campion, Ron Pontius, Stu Stout, Hill’s brother-in-law David Grant, Director Stu Knight, and others served five or more presidents (the number is quite large if one were to include agents from field offices and/or on temporary assignments, as it was not unusual for an agent from the FDR-Ike era to serve for many years on the White House detail, later known as the Presidential Protective Division, or in the Washington field office, among many other field offices around the country and, indeed, the world. The number is even larger if one was also to include those agents who also protected former presidents or vice presidents who later became president such as Truman, Nixon, LBJ, Ford, and Bush 41).

    Part 1 of the book, encompassing the first seven chapters, details Hill’s time protecting President Eisenhower. After learning that Hill served in Army Counter Intelligence from 1954-1956 (pages 8-10), serving duty at Fort Holabird (where Richard Case Nagell and fellow agent Win Lawson also served), Hill makes a troubling error, claiming that James Rowley was the Special Agent in Charge of the White House detail since the FDR days (page 14) when, in actual fact, he became SAIC on 5/3/46 during the Truman era, replacing George Drescher.[15] In yet another contradiction to the writing of Gerald Blaine and Lisa McCubbin found on page 398 of The Kennedy Detail, wherein they state that Ike usually rode in a closed car, there are seven photos of Eisenhower in a motorcade and every photo depicts him in an open vehicle. This is in addition to various times in the actual text where Hill mentions Ike riding in an open car (this reviewer has found dozens and dozens more photos online of President Eisenhower in an open-topped vehicle. In fact, one is hard pressed to find any photos of Ike in a closed car).

    In the coup de grace, Hill (and, presumably, McCubbin) writes on page 44, not realizing the stark contradiction, “[the canvas roof] really bothered Ike, who liked seeing the crowds, but more important, wanted them to have the opportunity to see him…President Eisenhower preferred to use the car as an open convertible whenever possible so he could stand up and be even more visible to people viewing the motorcade.”

    On pages 40 and 46, in particular, the heavy use of well-armed military guards on Ike’s foreign trips paints a picture in sharp contrast to Dallas circa 11/22/63. On page 48, there is a minor contradiction: Hill states that Ike’s eleven-nation tour was his first time out of the United States, yet, on page 24, he writes of an earlier one-day trip to Canada with Ike.

    On pages 53-55, Hill describes working with Harvey Henderson, a controversial and racist agent from Mississippi who harassed fellow agent Abraham Bolden to no end.[16] While Hill describes Henderson as “a good ol’ Southern boy,” he was more forthcoming to author Maurice Butler: “Now there were certain individuals in the service, I won’t deny that, who were very, very bigoted. Most of them came from Mississippi or Alabama or somewhere in the South. Sometimes we had problems with them. They didn’t want to work with a black agent.”[17] Fellow agent Walt Coughlin told me, “Harvey Henderson he [Bolden] is probably rite (sic) about.”[18] Yet The Kennedy Detail’s Gerald Blaine, in typical fashion, wrote this reviewer on 6/12/05: “I don’t remember anybody on the detail that was racist. Merit was perceived by a person’s actions, their demeanor, reliability, dependability and professional credibility – not race! Harvey was not even on the shift that Bolden was during his thirty day stay. Even though Harvey Henderson was from Mississippi, I never heard of him discriminating nor demeaning anyone because of race.” Can the reader see why I have major problems with history as seen through the Blaine and McCubbin prism? There’s a real tendency to whitewash and omit crucial information. They know better…and they know I know better, but they are hoping you do not, if that makes any sense. But I digress a tad.

    Also on page 55, Hill notes that local police helped secure buildings and routes of travel, as well as checking out the local medical facilities (which he further notes on page 81). Yet, again, when President Kennedy goes to Dallas, officially speaking, no buildings were secured, the motorcade route was woefully short staffed, and they allegedly did not know that Parkland Hospital was the closest hospital in case of emergency.

    Overall, I would assess Part 1 of the book-the Ike era- as a fairly decent perspective of an agent’s time protecting the former World War II hero. Although glimpses of Eisenhower come through, I was left more with Hill’s outlook on trying to do his job than any deep analysis of Ike.

    Part 2 covers the Kennedy era and encompasses chapters 8-19 and much of it will be familiar to anyone who has read the three previous Lisa McCubbin co-authored books; lots of repetition here. That said, there are some items of interest. On page 112, it is noted that the 27-mile motorcade route in Caracas, Venezuela was massively guarded by the host country’s heavily-armed military, involving more than 30,000 soldiers and 5,000 police officers. The bubbletop was used, despite the nice weather, and agents rode on the rear of the limousine.[19]

    On page 133, while discussing President Kennedy’s European tour (in an obvious allusion to the upcoming Dallas trip several months later), Hill writes: “There was no way to check every building or every rooftop,” yet that is precisely what they were able to do on past trips, at least those involving multi-story buildings.[20] Chapters 16 and 17 (pages 141-160) cover the Texas trip and the assassination. On page 142 McCubbin, as she did with Blaine in The Kennedy Detail and in the prior two books with Hill, mentions once again the alleged “order” from President Kennedy, via Floyd Boring, to not have the agents on the back of the car. I have written at length on this specific topic, as I am extremely skeptical of the veracity and timing of this situation.[21] My first reaction when reading this section was “McCubbin HAD to put that one in there again.” On page 152, not realizing the huge contradiction, Hill/ McCubbin write: “I knew the president didn’t want us on the back of the car, but I had a job to do.” Hill jumped off and on the back of the limousine four different times on Main Street. So much for the president’s “order.” No other agent attempted to get on the back of the car.

    Hill deals with the infamous drinking incident at Kirkwood’s the night before JFK’s death in a very dismissive fashion on page 147. Hill was one of nine agents who drank the early morning of the assassination. Hill was also one of the four agents who drank alcohol who would go on to work the follow-up car in Dallas (the others were Paul Landis, Jack Ready and Glen Bennett).

    On pages 153-154, Hill writes of the shooting sequence and, as he has done in the past (echoing the same thoughts as Dave Powers and Governor Connally on the matter), Hill states that all three shots made their mark and there was no missed shot: the first shot hit JFK, the second hit Connally, and the third was the fatal head shot. Again, he does not realize the grave contradiction to official history. In this regard, he once again repeats what he has written (and said) many times before: JFK had “a gaping hole in the back of his skull” (page 155).

    Once again, as was noted in their prior works (and as I was the first to note in my own work): ”Normally [SAIC Gerald] Behn would be on the [Texas] trip, but as fate would have it, he had decided to take a few days off-his first vacation in years…” (page 156). “As fate would have it.” huh?

    On page 178, Hill states his disagreement with the “magic bullet theory,” stating that Governor Connally and his wife Nellie agreed with him. Hill cannot seem to understand you cannot have your cake and eat it, too: either there was a “magic bullet” or there were two assassins. Still, it is nice to have him on the record about this vital issue. And he seems unaware that as authors like Joe McBride have shown, Connally actually disagreed with the entire thesis of the Warren Report. (McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 418)

    Overall, I would assess Part 2 of the book-the Kennedy years- as largely repetitive from his and McCubbin’s past books, which all seem to tout the same recurring agenda in two parts: his adamant stand that there was only one assassin (despite his contradictory views as expressed by his statements about the wounds and the shooting sequence), and that the agents did the best they could, despite their feelings of failure (and making sure to put that false blame-the-victim nugget in there again for good measure). That said, there were some new tidbits of information about prior trips and, to be fair, the Kennedys shine through in a positive way in this section.

    Part 3, the LBJ section, encompasses chapters 20-29 and is arguably the best part of the book- Hill really captures Johnson and the so-called “Johnson treatment” quite well. Even before the formal Johnson section of the book begins, the JFK section ends with Hill’s auspicious first greeting to LBJ in October 1964 when the President visited Jackie Kennedy in New York. Hill extended his hand to Johnson and said “Hello, Mr. President, I am Agent Clint Hill.” LBJ simply ignored him, reached into his back pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. Hill said the experience, witnessed by the agents of the White House detail who were guarding LBJ, was “humiliating.”

    Another minor error occurs on page 227 when Hill states that the Kennedys visited Mexico in 1961-it was actually 1962, as is correctly noted on page 114.

    Hill succeeds the best here when he vividly describes Johnson’s interactions with himself and others, as well as the impromptu nature of the brusque Texan. Like the travels of Ike and JFK, the many travels, domestic and foreign, of Johnson are duly noted and Hill (and McCubbin) do an admirable job describing the interaction the president had with the hosts and with the spectators, as well as with the agents themselves. When the McCubbin “team” (either with Blaine or Hill) aren’t treading into controversial waters, they actually succeed with some well-written stories and presidential anecdotes. Perhaps this is why I liked Mrs. Kennedy and Me the most- other than a couple pages, it was harmless fun about the elegant First Lady and a touch of Camelot, albeit a tad maudlin and trite in places. In this regard, I believe Five Presidents is a very close second to that work, with Five Days In November being disposable and forgettable and The Kennedy Detail as the worst by a country mile for its deceit and deception. In fact, one could argue that Five Presidents, despite the Kennedy-era repetition and one page (page 142, to be exact) of controversy, is the best of the lot, but I digress.

    What I think makes the LBJ section such a winner is not just that it is the longest section of the book, but that the “safe” button was switched to off and Hill is telling the true stories with the bark off, so to speak. It is actually a shame, for history’s sake, that an agenda pervaded two of the three earlier books (and a very small part of the other two, this one included) because, again, when McCubbin and Hill just tell the tales, I find myself begrudgingly admiring the vivid pictures of the presidents they draw. In hindsight, perhaps it was Blaine as the true culprit in all of this and Hill merely thought it was good to have in-house symmetry when a touch of the blame-the-victim (JFK) mantra was repeated in his books–less readers would be left to wonder why he appeared to disagree with his adamant colleague. Paradoxically, when it comes to Ike, Hill is diametrically opposed to Blaine (the above-mentioned open car versus Blaine’s claim of an Eisenhower preference for a closed car).

    Funny enough, there is also fodder for the LBJ-did-it crowd on page 235: Hill, describing Johnson’s 1966 trip to Australia, wrote that the president “crouched down in the backseat…it was the only time I ever saw a president duck down in the rear seat of a car to avoid being seen.” Roger Stone and Phil Nelson, take note.

    On pages 236-237, Hill describes the Melbourne, Australia trip, wherein angry Vietnam War protestors threw balloons filled with paint at the presidential limousine and, by extension, several of the agents surrounding the car. Hill again makes a minor error, stating that agents Rufus Youngblood and Lem Johns rode on the rear of the car when, in actual fact, it was Youngblood and Jerry Kivett, as several clear films and photos of the motorcade incident demonstrate, although Johns was indeed there and was also splattered with paint, albeit in his position walking by the automobile.

    The travels and tribulations for LBJ continue through 1967 and 1968, as Hill does a good job of documenting the activities of President Johnson in relation to the monumental events of this two-year period. In particular, the assassinations of MLK (pages 278-286) and RFK (287-295), as well as the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention (pages 303-306), are remarkably described in the context of Hill’s and LBJ’s reaction to them. Interestingly, although Hill’s brother-in-law, fellow agent David Grant, is mentioned on one page (page 303), once again, as he did in his previous two books, Hill does not mention their family connection (although Blaine did so in The Kennedy Detail and in a conversation with myself in 2005, although nothing was mentioned when Grant and Hill appeared, separately, on the television documentary of the same name). As I describe in my forthcoming book The Not So Secret Service, I believe there was bad blood between the two near the end of Grant’s life, having something to do with his writing partner, among other things (Grant passed away 12/28/2013). Hill’s wife Gwen is mentioned in his obituary but Clint is not. As mentioned above, Hill is still legally married to Gwen[22]).

    Part 4 covers Hill’s involvement in the protection of Presidents Nixon and Ford and encompasses chapters 30-38. Although quite interesting in its own right. Hill was off the front lines of presidential protection and relegated to, first, the SAIC of the vice president’s detail for Spiro Agnew and, shortly thereafter, to Secret Service headquarters. He was first Deputy Assistant Director of Protective Forces, then later Assistant Director of the Presidential Protective Division (PPD). So the intimacy and interaction with both President Nixon and Ford pales in comparison to the prior three presidents, especially LBJ. That said, it is what it is; Hill was where he was in those moments in history. Still, there are several items of special interest. On page 367, after describing how fellow agent (since the Kennedy days) Hamilton Brown was angered by President Nixon’s disregard for security protocol by visiting anti-war demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial on 5/9/70, Hill writes: “all of us were disgusted with the attitude of the president for placing himself in such a vulnerable position.” [23]

    On page 376, Hill reveals that he was “one of very few people who knew about the [Nixon] taping system, and, as with all types of similar privileged information, it was kept very private, limited to people on a need-to-know basis.” After learning on page 381 that then-Secretary of the Treasury John Connally was instrumental in promoting Hill to his highest position in the Secret Service (the aforementioned Assistant Director of PPD), Hill describes the inner turmoil he felt in having to witness multiple viewings of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination during Secret Service training classes.

    On pages 388-391, Hill totally whitewashes the Bob Newbrand-as-informant matter. Agent Newbrand was used as a plant by Nixon and his henchmen to try to obtain information of a derogatory nature against Ted Kennedy.[24] Interestingly, Hill was in contact with Alexander Butterfield and James McCord (and agent Al Wong), principal people in the Watergate mess.

    While the dismissal of agents Bob Taylor, the SAIC of PPD, and his assistant, Bill Duncan, by the Nixon/ Haldeman gang is relatively old news for those like myself who study these things (page 403), Hill adds that agent Art Godfrey was also a victim of the purge. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that Godfrey, whom I spoke to and corresponded with, was removed by Nixon’s hand (Director Rowley retired in October 1973). While Deputy Directors Rufus Youngblood and Lem Johns were ousted by the Haldeman gang a few years earlier. In fact, Godfrey was a favorite of Nixon, belonged to the February Group (die-hard Nixon loyalists), watched the Grand Prix with Nixon after the president’s fall from grace, and was even asked by Nixon’s best friend Bebe Rebozo to work for him.[25] Further, it is a matter of record that Godfrey retired in 1974, a year after this all took place, as ASAIC of PPD, not from some field office.[26] Godfrey served on PPD protecting Presidents Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ and Nixon. Needless to say, I am skeptical of Hill’s assertion. Perhaps Hill is simply mistaken.

    Chapters 37, 38 and the Epilogue contains some fascinating personal details of Hill’s final days as an agent and the troubled aftermath, as Hill has had trouble coping with his failure on 11/22/63. He goes into detail about his appearance on 60 Minutes in November 1975 (which aired the next month). Hill states that Mike Wallace’s interview was the first time, other than his Warren Commission testimony, that he had ever spoken to anyone about the assassination (pages 429 and 430). This is wrong; Hill was interviewed by William Manchester for his massive best-seller The Death of a President (on 11/18/64 and 5/20/65, to be exact). Manchester also talked to The Kennedy Detail’s Gerald Blaine, Gerald Behn, Bill Greer, Roy Kellerman, Lem Johns, and a host of other agents. However, to be fair to Hill, Blaine also denies ever talking to any author (including Manchester) before he wrote his book. [27] In addition, Hill also spoke about the assassination for 60 Minutes once again (November 1993), The History Channel’s The Secret Service (1995; also a home video), The Discovery Channel’s Inside the Secret Service (1995; also a home video), and National Geographic’s Inside The U.S. Secret Service (2004; also a DVD still available).

    On the second to last page, Hill/McCubbin write: “As with our previous two books [28], our overriding concern was to present a factual account to preserve history, while also abiding by the Secret Service pledge to be worthy of trust and confidence.” I would say it is the latter part of that statement that has guided McCubbin, Hill and Blaine through all four books. Sometimes to extremes – don’t embarrass the agency (what J. Edgar Hoover would call “the bureau”) and protect reputations as they would protectees.

    Nevertheless, with all the aforementioned points and previous disclaimers in mind, Five Presidents must be considered a worthy addition to anyone’s library. The first was the worst…they saved the best for last.

    Footnotes:

    [1] review of The Kennedy Detail

    [2] review of Survivor’s Guilt

    [3] review of The Kennedy Detail

    [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gRhG3ya7JE

    [5] http://lisamccubbin.com/

    [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpY8zI_wwA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmCEx-f0dfI

    [7] http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/why-i-blame-myself-for-jfks-death-248893.html

    [8] “Slick propaganda” and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALbLw4U7U0

    [9] review of Mrs. Kennedy and Me

    [10] A mostly repetitive photo book that appears to have been a cash grab for the 50th anniversary. Since this book is basically a shortened version of Mrs. Kennedy and Me with glossy photos, I chose not to formally review it.

    [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbD1shPmla8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bqE0rPJyGI

    [12] JFK: The Final Hours 2013, National Geographic (also a DVD); see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNXJKs9xAMI

    [13] review of The Kennedy Detail

    [14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgB2mnmiU-s

    [15] George Drescher oral history, Herbert Hoover Library.

    [16] Survivor’s Guilt (2013), pages 174-175, 403, 407-408.

    [17] Out From The Shadow: The Story of Charles L Gittens Who Broke The Color Barrier In The United States Secret Service by Maurice Butler, KY: Xlibris, 2012, pp. 125-126.

    [18] Survivor’s Guilt (2013), page 408.

    [19] See photo in Survivor’s Guilt.

    [20] See Survivor’s Guilt and my forthcoming book The Not So Secret Service.

    [21] See my CTKA reviews of The Kennedy Detail, the accompanying documentary, and Mrs. Kennedy and Me, as well as my own book Survivor’s Guilt (especially chapter 1) and my upcoming book The Not So Secret Service.

    [22] http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?pid=168833469

    [23] See my book Survivor’s Guilt, especially chapters 1 and 10.

    [24] See my forthcoming book The Not So Secret Service.

    [25] The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (2000) by Anthony Summers, pages 247 and 262.

    [26] Survivor’s Guilt, chapter 13.

    [27] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxZVgPIt05o and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23K1J_cMt2c

    [28] By definition and book order release, this statement omits The Kennedy Detail.

  • Greg Parker, The Korean War Intelligence “Failure”

    Greg Parker, The Korean War Intelligence “Failure”

    Introduction to the “Korean War” section of
    Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War, Vol. One

    The Korean War. The “forgotten” war. If war is ugly, this was Quasimodo without the redemptive heart.

    The “conflict,” as it is sometimes euphemistically called, likely helped test and refine germ warfare, and may have been started just for that purpose. It provided the raison d’etre for expanded programs and funding in the search for radiological weapons and enhanced interrogation and “mind control” techniques. Further, it provided the impetus for more research and development within the field of military hardware and munitions, and kept the money rolling in for military contractors.

    It should also be regarded as the starting point to our understanding of the Oswald “legend.” This legend began to be built when Oswald became a teenager and took to skipping school in New York City.

    The Chinese had developed a profile for potential defectors from the West and used this profile to target individual POWs for recruitment.

    The indicators being looked for were soldiers who had unstable childhoods, were raised in female dominated house-holds, had high IQs but low prospects, or had physical differences, an aversion to authority, a thirst for knowledge, or had been involved in activity that may result in some type of State sanction.

    By the time Oswald left for the USSR, he not only had the profile in New York court and school records, but also in his military records. And as if that wasn’t enough, he wore it ostentatiously. For our purposes however, we are not just looking at the Korean War from the micro as one mirror into Oswald (which it is) – we are also looking at the macro – how the war was used as a testing ground for biological warfare; how it was used to justify all manner of covert activity and experimentation, how it ramped up the profits of the war industry, saw the emergence of the US as Sheriff on the world stage and paved the way for the emergence of the Neoconservative movement.

    Without the Korean War, Oswald would have remained obscure, Kennedy may have lived to see a second term and the march toward Fascism would not be quite so bold.

    The Korean War Intelligence “Failure”

    The undeclared war began on June 25, 1950 when the North Korean Army crossed the 38th Parallel that divided the Soviet backed north from the US backed south.

    The official story has barely wavered. The aggressors were the North Koreans and the CIA had failed to foresee imminent danger. This obstinately obtuse view is encompassed best in a story broadcast by National Public Radio (NPR) to mark the 60th anniversary of the conflict. In fact, it takes a leaf out of the Warren Commission’s ode to vitiation (officially known as The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy) by citing the very CIA documents to support its case that could and should have been used to destroy it.

    One clear example of this come from a CIA memo dated January 13, 1950 which states inter alia:

    Troop build-up. The continuing southward movement of the expanding Korean People’s Army toward the thirty-eighth parallel probably constitutes a defensive measure to offset the growing strength of the offensively minded South Korean Army. The influx of Chinese Communist trained troops… [is] further bolstered by the assignment of tanks and heavy field guns … [yet] despite [these increases] in North Korean military strength, the possibility of an invasion of South Korea is unlikely unless the North Korean forces can develop a clear cut superiority over the increasingly efficient South Korean Army.

    The CIA is then excused for this (supposed) completely dumbfounding and appallingly bad misreading of both North Korean intent and South Korean military superiority because it was “just three years old and lacked resources.” This excuse completely ignores the fact that the CIA had been granted greater autonomy (and probably resources) after its “failure” in Bogota. It also ignores the fact that despite being a mere three years old, the CIA was heavy with former OSS and SIS agents with many years of experience in the field. The fact is, there was no misreading. This was an accurate assessment.

    Not all scholars have held with the official line. According to Oliver Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, the South Korean government provoked the north into a counter-attack in order to draw in the US and thus ensure the survival of the unpopular regime. Lee further pointed out there were no credible witnesses to North Koreans being the aggressors because, conveniently, UN observers had left the thirty-eighth parallel two days before the outbreak, and all but one of the five hundred US advisors had gone to Seoul for the weekend!

    Professor Lee listed the following circumstantial evidence in support of his thesis:

    1. Syngman Rhee’s government in Seoul was extremely unpopular and insecure, able to rule only by imposing upon South Korea “a cloud of terror that is probably unparalleled in the world,” according to a New York Times reporter on March 6, 1950. Despite the terror, Rhee’s party was dealt a disastrous defeat in the parliamentary election held four weeks before the war broke out. Rhee thus had a plausible motivation to start the war so as to create a totally new ball game.

    2. Rhee had several times announced his ambition to “regain” North Korea, boasting in January 1950, for example, that “in the new year we shall strive as one man to regain the lost territory.”

    3. Rhee received encouragement from certain US high officials, such as John Foster Dulles, who said in Seoul six days before the war broke out, “You are not alone. You will never be alone so long as you continue to play worthily your part in the great design of human freedom.”

    4. There had been a long pattern of South Korean incursion into North Korea. The official US Army history of the American Military Advisory Group in Korea, referring to the more than 400 engagements that had taken place along the 38th parallel in the second half of 1949, reports that “some of the bloodiest engagements were caused by South Korean units securing and preparing defensive positions that were either astride or north of the 38th parallel. This provoked violent actions by North Korean forces.”

    5. South Korean troops were reported by the Seoul government as having captured Haeju, one mile north of the parallel, on June 26. While we can accept this as an acknowledgement of their troop incursion into the north of the 38th parallel, such acceptance does not require us to believe their report as to the timing. They may well have made the capture one day earlier, touching off the counterattack.

    6. The two captured North Korean documents which allegedly prove that the North had started the war exist only in English, supposedly translated from the Korean original. Ostensibly titled “Reconnaissance Order No. 1” and “Operation Order No. 1,” the originals were never made public, nor have they subsequently ever been found.

    7. Rhee made a self-incriminating statement when he said to US News & World Report in August 1954, “We started this fight in the first place in the hope that the Communists would be destroyed.” Although the context of this statement was not explicitly military, certain American leaders knew enough about Rhee to understand what he meant, and indeed to be worried about his possible provocation of yet another Korean War.

    Meanwhile the Pentagon budget, which had not exceeded $60 billion between the years of 1947 and 1950, needed a crisis to get Congress to dig deeper into the treasury coffers. Undersecretary of State, Dean Acheson, who was among the first to nominate North Korea as the aggressors, put it succinctly when he said “Korea saved us.” The “us” cited by Acheson clearly didn’t include John or Joan Q. Citizen.

    After 1952, the Pentagon budget would never drop below $143 billion.

    The Korean “Conflict” was, in reality, a limited war that spun nearly unlimited gold for the War Machine, shifted goal posts at the UN and saw the US emerge as the world’s sheriff.

    It would also be the catalyst for Lee Harvey Oswald’s eventual involvement in covert interplay between the two Superpowers.

    Peace Talks and the Geneva Convention Failures

    Talk of a peace settlement began in July, 1951 and took two long years to reach an agreement – one sticking point being the disposition of what was nothing other than a tract of wasteland. For that, more casualties accrued than in the previous two years combined.

    Though a lack of trust and good faith no doubt, also played a major role in dragging the war out , the other major sticking point was an issue that was far more complex on political, moral, legal and propagandistic grounds. Some prisoners on both sides simply did not want to be repatriated. At the end of hostilities the problem was that Article 118 of the Geneva Convention did not allow a choice. Repatriation had been a thorny issue from the beginning with sick and wounded prisoners – who were covered by Articles 109 through 115 of the Convention – eligible to be treated in a neutral country or returned to their country of origin.

    Legitimately owning the “moral high ground” was a dystopian nightmare to the architects of this war. Owning it by means of psychological warfare was another matter entirely. There was, admittedly, not much new within that situation. What was new was one of the psy-op ploys used: accusations of brainwashing from the Americans against accusations of using germ-warfare from the opposite camp. Propaganda is best defined as ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause. There is still debate as to whether either of these allegations had any basis in fact.

    Operation Little Switch

    The death of Stalin on March 5, 1953, seems to have been the catalyst for a change in policy by the North Koreans and China . On March 28, the respective Communist leaders not only agreed to an exchange of sick and wounded prisoners; but suggested that such an exchange may provide a platform for a resolution of all POW and cease-fire issues.

    Operation Little Switch took place between April 20 and May 3. It was not until May 25 that the residual disagreements were resolved through the creation of a UN sponsored Neutral Nations Repatriations Commission (NNRC). The Commission would be tasked with maintaining responsibility for non-repatriates over 60 days. The fate of those men would be determined during the course of the next few months by means of peer pressure or via a political conference that was allowed for under Agenda Item 4 of the July 27 Armistice Agreement.

    During Operation Little Switch, the Communists released 471 South Koreans, 149 Americans, 32 Britons, 15 Turks, 6 Colombians, 5 Australians, 2 Canadians, and one prisoner each from The Philippines, South Africa, Greece and The Netherlands. On the other side, the United Nations Command (UNC) returned 5,194 North Koreans. 1,030 Chinese, and 446 civilians. These were the men most in need of medical treatment. The figures corresponded to about a fifth of the total prisoners held by either side. Although accusations arose that the Communists only released those who were most likely to provide a positive portrayal of their captors, those released later in Operation Big Switch were certainly in overall better physical condition.

    Operation Big Switch

    Operation Big Switch was the operation which would see the remaining POWs sent home (save those who had not accepted repatriation). It began at 8:56 on the cool, dull morning of August 5, 1953 when Russian built trucks rattled and clunked to a halt in front of the triple arched gates at Panmunjom. The trucks were ferrying the first batch of UN POWs to leave the peninsula since Little Switch.

    It took until September 6 for the operation to be completed.

    The final disposition of this second group was that the North Koreans and Chinese handed over 12,773 to the UNC and another 359 to Indian Custodial Forces. Of the latter, 9 were returned to the UNC, 347 were returned to the Communists, 1 escaped and 2 were shipped to the NNRC based in India.

    The UNC meanwhile returned 75,773 POWs to the Communists and 22,604 to the Indian Custodial Forces. Of the latter, 629 were returned to the Communists, 21,820 were returned to the UNC, 13 escaped (or were otherwise missing), 38 died while in Indian custody, 18 remained in Indian custody and 86 were shipped off the NNRC .

    The unofficial war was now unofficially over. New CIA Director Allen Dulles called the armistice “one of the greatest psychological victories so far achieved by the free world against Communism.”

    Germ(ane) Warfare

    Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army – officially titled the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army – was based in Harbin. Harbin was a city in what is now Northeast China, but was at that time the Japanese puppet state popularly known as Manchuria.

    The history of Unit 731 actually traces back to the poor performance of the medical system during the 1894 war with China. To remedy that, army doctors were shuttled off to Europe for intense training.

    By the commencement of the Russo-Japanese War, military medicine in Japan had reached a new pinnacle in performance, especially in dealing with the types of disease outbreaks common in war-time. Having reached that benchmark, Japan turned its thoughts to weaponizing chemicals and biological materials. This program, headed by bacteriologist and physician Shiro Ishii, accelerated after Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933 while deep in dispute over its invasion of Manchuria. The invasion had been predicated on a false flag operation, and marked the beginning of the end for the toothless League.

    By the time of World War II, the unit was well versed in the art of black medical experimentation. The unit’s activities included infecting men, women and children with various diseases and then performing vivisections upon them; performing amputations on live victims to study the effects of blood loss; and removing parts of organs such as brain, liver and lungs from other living subjects.

    Japan’s entry into the war opened up opportunities for Unit 731 to exploit even more diverse groups while offering unbridled rein to the sickening imagination of Ishii and his team. Such were the atrocities and tortures that thousands of victims no doubt welcomed death when it was finally granted.

    Among the many selected to take part in this perverse lottery were 1500 American, British and Australian POWs who were shipped to Manchuria and infected with everything from bubonic plague to typhoid. In one 5 day period alone, 186 deaths occurred. The nature of the deaths however, was suppressed by the Allies.

    The main aim of the exercise was to ascertain which strains of which diseases were the most virulent for use in war.

    In August, 1945, the staff of Unit 731 fled Manchuria to escape the invading Russian Army. The Japanese homeland however provided only a temporary haven, with formal surrender a looming and forlorn certainty. The surrender finally arrived on September 2nd.

    The International Military Tribunal for the Far East held its war trials in Tokyo, commencing April 29, 1946. High on the agenda was the prosecution of Ishhi and others responsible for the atrocities of Unit 731, but the Tribunal was blindsided by General McArthur and his Chief of Intelligence, Charles Willoughby. McArthur and Willoughby’s idea of interrogating Ishhi involved convivial dinner parties at the home of the germ warfare specialist. As soon as it became apparent that Ishii would not be prosecuted (due in no small measure to the withholding of evidence gathered by MacArthur’s men), MacArthur conspired to have him and others granted blanket immunity in return for their full cooperation. The boys from Fort Detrick Biological Warfare Laboratories quickly moved in. It was by now 1948 and the US was not only desperate to have the data for itself, it was equally desperate to keep it out of other hands; allies and new Cold War enemies alike.

    The Tribunal was not the end of court action. The Soviet Union commenced War Crimes Trials in 1949, and the trials must have given MacArthur and Willoughby ulcers when a court sitting in Siberia took testimony to the effect that Unit 731 had tried out lethal germs against American POWs. The POW experimentation had been undertaken “to ascertain the degree of vulnerability of the American army to different combat infections.” In any event, MacArthur wasted no time in issuing a denial, letting the press know that “there are no known cases in which Japanese used American prisoners in germ warfare experiments.” It was a lie of significant proportions, but one that was necessary in MacArthur’s eyes given the deal that had been struck with Ishhi, and the need to conceal anything that could lead to uncomfortable questions being asked.

    The Japanese germ warfare materials collected by Unit 731 now complimented what Fort Detrick had produced.

    The US was about to become akin to an urban teenage street gang (straight out of a Hollywood short, circa 1950) with a newly acquired baseball bat and glove. Someone just needed to find a rival gang and get the game started.

    Six months later, the Korean War began.

    In the meantime, the US press was doing what it does best; preparing the citizenry to accept what was coming. This work started just prior to the Tokyo War Crime Trials.

    March 12, 1949. UP reports Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal as stating that the US “leads the world in germ warfare research;” that germ weapons are “definitely not the fantastic killers they have been labelled,” but could be “a cheap and most important means of warfare.” Major General Alden H Wyatt, head of the Army Chemical Corp reiterates that “potentially” the spreading of disease germs “is a most important means of warfare.” It is stressed that the US program is aimed “primarily” at defense and that the US is quite prepared to strike back with biological weapons if other nations should attack with them.

    May 27, 1949. UP reports an assertion by the former chief of the air-borne infection project at the US biological warfare headquarters at Camp Detrick, Dr. Theordor Rosebery. Dr. Rosebery states that the practicality of germ warfare cannot be proven unless it is used in war. He also warns that “defense against BW (biological weapons) as a whole is pitiably weak, so weak that none of us, civilian or military, can find much comfort in its prospect.”

    July 21, 1949. AP reports that the army has asked Congress for an extra 3.3 million to improve both the “defensive and offensive aspects of war with biological weapons.”

    September 10, 1949. AP reports Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Brock Chisolm as declaring that biological weapons would make “large armies, navies and air forces” obsolete along with the atomic bomb. Dr. Chisolm also claims that scientists have found “one substance so deadly that seven ounces, properly distributed, could kill the people of the world within six hours.” He does not name the substance.

    June 25, 1950. The undeclared war in Korea begins.

    July 26, 1950. UP reports that “defensive measures against germ warfare are being drawn up.” The scientist being quoted is familiar with the program and adds “that they include no new rays or other ‘magic’ means of coping with germs. Instead, the measures would consist of “training health officers in known medical and public health practices – but on an emergency basis.”

    November 3, 1950. AP reports that the armed forces are looking ahead to wars fought with radiological poison weapons, germ warfare, guided missiles and special devices to make maps of enemy terrain under cover of night or clouds.

    December 28, 1950. UP reports that the Federal Government is urging “civil defense workersto prepare for nerve gas and germ warfare attacks upon American Cities.” The story adds that a manual issued by the Health Resources division states that automatic detection devices are essential for adequate protection” but ominously concludes such devices are not available at a price which would make their purchase and use for civil defense practical.”

    There is a clear design in these stories. It goes like this: the US has the most advanced germ warfare program in the world. It wants to use this program in a defensive manner only, but is carefully leaving the door ajar for a first strike option. We also learn that the program needs to be evaluated under combat conditions. Next, we are treated to the prospect that the US will probably soon suffer a germ warfare attack – followed by the awful truth that civil defense is inadequately trained and equipped to cope with such an attack if it ever occurs. Once these seeds have been planted, the reader is left to conclude for themselves that a pre-emptive strike is the only viable option.

    But first things first. A limited land war was needed to test Fort Detrick’s arsenal.

    Allegations from the Communists that the UNC was using biological weapons against North Korea began in March 1951 and grew into a crescendo of specific charges by February the following year. The charges indicated that US forces had been “systematically scattering large quantities of bacteria-carrying insects by aircraft in order to disseminate infectious diseases over our front line positions and rear. Bacteriological tests show that these insects scattered by the aggressors on the positions of our troops and in our rear are infected with plague, cholera and the germs of other infectious diseases.”

    In response, General Ridgway stood before Congress and emphatically denied the allegations. Elsewhere, the counterclaim was being made that North Korea and China were engaging in propaganda, and that they could even be using the accusations as an excuse to launch their own bioweapons offensive.

    The Red Cross offered to investigate, if both sides agreed.

    Both sides duly agreed.

    The Red Cross put together a Blue Ribbon Panel.

    The Red Cross Blue Ribbon Panel duly found no substance to the allegations.

    The Reds duly accused the Red Cross of having a pro-West bias.

    And so it goes.

    The specific allegations expanded into claims of attacks on animals and crops, and by September, the Reds had commissioned their own investigation through the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) – a body organized by participants at the Nuremburg Trials. The IADL was later accused of being a Communist Front.

    The IADL issued two reports during March and April, 1952. Both reports read like indictments, with the second report concluding, “We consider that the facts reported above constitute an act of aggression committed by the United States, an act of genocide, and a particularly odious crime against humanity. It indeed hangs over the whole world as an extremely grave menace, the limits and consequences of which cannot be foreseen.”

    If the Red Cross had a pro-West bias, the bias charge could equally be levelled against the IADL – not to mention all other organizations that had been commissioned by either side. It was a courtroom drama on a grand scale replete with dueling experts.

    Time thankfully has the grace to allow some detachment – enough to permit a determination based on good faith rather than partisanship, and any conclusion about these events must now take into account the very strong circumstantial case against the US. The case includes the planning of covert actions for conducting biological warfare. It includes the actual production of disease-laden insects, and the subsequent discovery of such insects in the war zone. It includes the preparation of disease-laden feathers and the discovery of such feathers around exploded bombs in the war zone. It also includes the manufacture of specific weapons and delivery systems and the discovery of same in the war zone. Finally, it includes America’s secreting away of Japan’s biological warfare secrets.

    The discovery of all this physical evidence underlines the means. The motive, as already explored, can be found in the alleged need for the US to test such weapons in combat conditions. The opportunity came via the manufacturing of a pretext for war and the railroading of the United Nations.

    The Great Un(brain)washed

    On December 26, 1948, Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary was arrested and charged with treason and conspiracy. The specifics included theft of the Crown Jewels, and plotting the eradication of Communism through aiding America to start World War III. The payoff for the Cardinal would be political power in his homeland should America prevail.

    A few days prior to being arrested, the Cardinal wrote a very prescient letter to his Bishops advising that if he should resign or confess, and even if his signature was appended to any such declarations, they should know that it was the result of “human frailty” and he declared it “null and void in advance.”

    A few days after the arrest, but still weeks out from the trial and acting on instructions, one of his clergy issued a document stating that the Cardinal feared that the Communists would use the drug Actedron on him. Actedron, the document claimed, had been used in previous trials to break morale and extract bogus confessions.

    The release of this document caused a world-wide furore.

    The broth was starting to bubble.

    Actedron is an amphetamine and used historically as an appetite suppressant. More recently, it has been prescribed to sufferers of ADHD.

    The Security Research Section of the CIA was internally admitting that though they saw the drug as having some potential in interrogations, the drug alone could not produce the results being credited to it in relation to what would later become known later as “mind control.”

    News of US pilots confessing to dropping deadly germs behind enemy lines broke in early May, 1952 when it was reported that 1st Lt. Kenneth L. Enoch and 1st Lt. John Quinn had made certain admissions which had been taped and broadcast over Radio Peiping (the previous name for Beijing). Among the details supplied by Enoch, whose B-26 had been shot down on January 13, was that the undetonated bombs he had dropped would be called “duds.” His confession is now kept in the grandiloquently titled “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum” in Pyongyang.

    That story was followed by one which told of five British businessmen who had been to a trade conference in Moscow before moving on to Peiping to discuss trade expansion with China. The five reported that they had been played the taped confessions of four American POWs and believed that the confessions warranted being taken seriously.

    The immediate response to the charges was typified by Dean Acheson who dismissed the confessions as having been “dictated by Red propagandists,” without stating outright that they were fake.

    Experience tells us that cover stories come in phases as need may, from time to time, dictate. That was phase one. Phase two was claiming that collaborators had been brainwashed. Phase three was blaming the upbringing and lack of discipline of the soldiers and also in not having any unified and ingrained American doctrine on liberty to help withstand Communist indoctrination.

    The term “brainwashing” was coined in September 1950 by Edward Hunter, a CIA operative with non-official cover as a journalist. Hunter used the term to describe how China was forcing its citizens into joining the Communist Party, and claimed that the use of drugs and hypnotism were paramount to success.

    This was a distortion of the historical truth , but with Cardinal Mindszenty’s confessions still fresh in the public mind, alongside the claimed use of drugs, it stuck, as it was no doubt meant to.

    The POW Homecoming

    Each returned prisoner was interviewed during the course of the trip home about their symptoms and experiences. Chief among the POW’s symptoms were a lack of spontaneity, flat affect, apathy, retardation and depression. Incongruously, many also exhibited signs of tenseness, restlessness and suspicion of their surroundings.

    Other systems in combination could have been associated with chronic physical and mental disease, or vitamin deficiency.

    Once on home soil they became subjected to several studies (including at least one lasting a number of years). Some of the studies were aimed ostensibly at searching for answers as to what exactly happened in Korea and the short and long term effects thereof. Others were aimed at profiling those who collaborated as a means of having the ability to weed out potential turncoats at the time of enlistment, and putting in place such public policies that might produce a better, more resilient fighting force. Public reaction meanwhile, was being manipulated in whatever direction the winds (along with sundry windbags) were blowing. History is not driven by individuals acting alone, or by conspiracy or coincidence, but a combination of those as end products (or sometimes mere by-products) of philosophies, agendas, policies and contingencies which colloquially and collectively, these may all come under the heading of “mind-sets,” The repatriated prisoners were thus put through three phases of thematic nuance as various philosophies, agendas, policies and contingencies were deployed in the fight for control over the POW “reality.” First came the “atrocities” theme, following by the “brainwashing” theme, and ending at the more tenaciously entrenched theme of blaming the victims for lacking discipline, moral compasses and patriotism.

    Each theme was responded to as if true.

    The fear that these men had been victims of atrocities led to hero homecomings. The fear of brainwashing led to trainees at Stead AFB, Nevada being forced to spend hours in a dark hole up to their shoulders in water, fed only raw spaghetti and uncooked spinach, given electric shocks and being verbally abused – all to make them capable of withstanding such treatment, if captured. The Navy conducted similar training at Camp Mackall in North Carolina. Additionally, it offered up excuses to expand “mind control” programs at home (yes indeed, there was purportedly a “mind control” gap). Finally, the fear that American men were soft led to the Military Code of Conduct which had to be signed by all personnel. Various other programs involving forms of indoctrination in “Americanism” also soon appeared.

    In short, symptoms which should have been associated with chronic physical and mental illness and vitamin deficiencies, were instead being attributed to brainwashing or moral decay (if not complete moral turpitude) on the home-front.

    Militant Liberty & the Code of Conduct

    To those who blamed the POW situation on the “softness” of American soldiers, the response was to seek a strengthening through a deeper understanding of American values. Militant Liberty was the 1954 brainchild of John C Broger, President of the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) and consultant to the Joint Subsidiary Activities Division in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What the proposal boiled down to was the use of Chinese indoctrination methods through rigid programs of re-education and proselytization. The whole shebang was being sponsored by Abraham Vereide and his secretive organization known as “The Fellowship.”

    The program imploded barely a year into its mission amid criticism that it breached the line between military and civilian life through politicization of the troops. Despite this, it did manage to insinuate itself into Hollywood scripts for movies like John Ford’s Wings of Eagles starring the All-American epitome of Rugged Individualism, John Wayne, and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments which according to author Professor Alan Nadel, attempted to equate “God’s perspective with American global interests.” In short, it was produced with the aim of gaining acceptance for the doctrine of Manifest Destiny through the use of cinema magic and psychology. Put another way, it was yet more of what author Jeff Sharlet termed Vereide’s “bastardized Calvinism” at work.

    Nor did it hurt Broger’s career . In 1956 he was made Deputy Director of the Directorate for Armed Forces Information and Education within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) before taking over as Director and holding that position until 1984.

    Broger’s stint as the Pentagon communications Czar was not without controversy. In 1977, Jack Anderson reported that Broger had once used his position to arrange a two-day seminar in “Christian Counseling,” had military techs record the entire event, then packaged the tapes and sold them commercially through the National Association of Evangelicals at $34.95 a set. Meanwhile, internal complaints of mismanagement, malfeasance, corruption and conflicts of interest abounded until finally, the Defense Department’s general counsel and Air Force Special Investigators were called in. Their findings were forwarded to the Justice Department which found no evidence of criminal culpability. According to Anderson however, the reason no evidence was found was that the most damaging facts were omitted from the submitted report. This document should be tagged “Exhibit A” and presented to anyone holding to the fantasy that official reports are sacrosanct.

    Anderson also gave some insights into Broger’s background and mindset. His world was black and white – populated only by “good guys” and “bad guys.” The “good guys” were “conservatives, anti-Communists and Christian fundamentalists who believe in the God-given American right to make a buck.” The “bad guys” were, unsurprisingly, “liberals, hippies and Communists.” Anderson also described Broger’s old broadcasts with the FEBC as “right-wing anti-Communist propaganda to alien lands in the guise of Evangelical Christianity.”

    Meanwhile, as the debate over Militant Liberty was being waged, the Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War was tasked with drafting a code which would outline US POW obligations while augmenting the Geneva Convention on their treatment. It also investigated the extent of treasonable conduct which had occurred and found that it had been exaggerated. This should have negated the need for such a code, but the POW “scandal” was going to be spun into programs addressing the nation’s ideological needs, come hell or high water.

    The Code was signed into law through Executive Order 10631 on August 17, 1955. Evangelicals determined to refashion the American gestalt by promotion of a civil-military-religious Menage a trois were definitely on a roll.

    One of those most responsible for bringing in the code was Dr. Winfred Overholser. Overholser had testified at the inquiry on behalf of Colonel Frank Schwable, another POW who had confessed to the use of biological weapons. The doctor recommended to the inquiry that the military do more to “condition our people to resist communist brainwashing.”

    After facing possible execution for cowardice, Schwable was instead awarded the Legion of Merit and given a desk job at the Pentagon.

    Dr. Overholser will re-enter our narrative soon.

    Fred Korth & the Korean War

    Korth was brought to Washington in March 1951 by Secretary of the Army, Frank Pace. The two were old acquaintances, having served together in Air Transport Command during WWII. Pace offered, and Korth accepted, the position of Deputy Counsel for the Army. This did not last long. In yet another response to the Korean POW situation, the position of Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) had been created, and on Pace’s recommendation, Korth was appointed by Truman in May, 1952.

    The following year, with a newly inaugurated Republican president, Pace and Korth were back doing business in the Lone Star State. Pace had been appointed CEO at General Dynamics Corp and Korth returned to law, while also taking the role of vice president of Continental National Bank in Fort Worth. It is important to note however, that his services were retained as a consultant by the new Secretary of the Army, and this consultancy continued up until 1960.

    NOTES

    1. The Korean War, June 1950 – July 1953 Introductory Overview, Naval History & Heritage @ history.navy.mil

    2. CIA Files Show US Blindsided By Korean War, by Tom Gjelten, NPR broadcast transcript

    3. South Korea Likely Provoked War with North by Oliver Lee, Star-Bulletin, June 24, 1994

    4. Ibid

    5. US Military Spending In The Cold War Era: Opportunity Costs, Foreign Crises, and Domestic Constraints, by Robert Higgs, Professor of Political Economy, Lafayette College

    6. CenturyChina.com, Korean War FAQ

    7. “Long Delay on Peace: Korea talks ‘might take four weeks,’” AAP report, The Courier-Mail, July 10, 1951, p4 “The United States has not ruled out the possibility that the talks may fail altogether. In the meantime United Nations’ forces will continue to press their field operations against the enemy. There is much uneasiness that should the talks fail, the Communists would have brought time to mount a smashing counter-offensive.”

    8. ABC-CLIO History and Headlines: The Korean War 60th Anniversary: Remembering a “Forgotten” Conflict – Operations Big Switch/ Little Switch by Clayton D. Laurie

    9. Ibid

    10. Time Magazine, August 17, 1953 article, “Korea: Big Switch”

    11. A Substitute for Victory: Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) by Rosemary Foot, p191

    12. Military Medicine: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century, by Jack E McCallum, p337

    13. The Pariah Files: 25 Dark Secrets You’re Not Supposed to Know by Philip Rife, p 134

    14. The Scramble for Asia: US Military Power in the Aftermath of the Pacific War, by Marc Gallicchio, p 157

    15. Russians Press Germ War Trial, UP wire story, Dec 27, 1949

    16. Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology and History, Volume 1, edited by Eric A. Croddy, James J. Wirtz , p 175

    17. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, by Stephen Lyon Endicott and Edward Lagerman, p195

    18. “The Adelaide Advertiser,” Catholic Church News, p9, February 12, 1949 and derived from the breaking article in The Tablet published on January 1.

    19. “China Reds Broadcast Germ Warfare ‘Confessions,’” UP report appearing in the Oxnard Press-Courier, May 5, 1952, p1

    20. Acheson Attacks Red Germ Warfare Charge, AP report appearing in The News & Courier, May 8, 1952, p1

    21. AP Report, Claims Airmen were Tortured to “Confess,” Oct 23, 1952. The story claims information was gathered in Indo-China, Hong Kong, India and elsewhere that the airmen had been “brainwashed” in the same way as Mindszenty and others using a combination of prolonged questioning, sleep deprivation, threats to friends and relatives, drugs and perhaps hypnosis.

    22. When the Army Debunks the Army: a legend of the Korean War by William Peters (Encounter Magazine, July 1960)

    23. AP Report, “Yanks Brainwashed in Survival Training,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, p55, September 8, 1955

    24. Military Medicine, vol. 167, November, 2002, Psychiatry in the Korean War, p902

    25. The Family: Power, Politics and Fundamentalism’s Shadow Elite, by Jeff Sharlett, pp201-202

    26. The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network, edited by Helen Laville, Hugh Wilford,

    27. The Nevada Daily Mail, “Communication Czar Uses Pentagon Post,” by Jack Anderson with Joe Spear, p18, Jan 12, 1977

    28. International Society for Military Ethics article, University of Notre Dame. Article, “Evangelicals in the Military and the Code of Conduct,” by Lori L. Bogle

    29. The Pentagon’s Battle for the American Mind: The Early Cold War, by Lori L. Bogle, p131.

    30. American Torture: from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, by Michael Otterman, p35

    31. Act of Retribution: The Military-Industrial-Intelligence Establishment and the Conspiracy to Assassinate President John F Kennedy, by J. P. Phillips, p343

    32. Texas Bar Journal, 1962, vol. 25, p201

    33. Current Biography Yearbook, 1963, by Charles Moritz, p244

  • Patrick Nolan, CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys

    The assassination of John F. Kennedy is probably one of the most written about events in 20th century American history. So given that this year marked the 50th anniversary of that tragic day, it was perhaps inevitable that we would see a deluge of books on the subject. There are some good new ones, like Jim DiEugenio’s Reclaiming Parkland, and some worthy reissues such as Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation and Harold Weisberg’s Whitewash. But, as many feared would be the case, these volumes appear to be outnumbered by books that add little or nothing to our understanding and, by and large, are being published simply to capitalize on the hoped-for resurgence of interest that such anniversaries typically bring. Dale Myers seems particularly interested in squeezing as many more pennies as possible out of the anniversary, reissuing his Tippit book, With Malice, at a whopping $65 dollars a pop – $75 if you want the honour of his Emmy award-winning autograph.

    With a personal JFK assassination library of around 100 books, I long ago stopped buying every new one to hit the shelves. Instead I save my time, money and shelf space for those books that look as if they might actually offer some genuinely new information or insight. Consequently, when I first saw CIA Rogues advertised on Amazon, I added it to the mental list of books I wouldn’t be purchasing. After all, the conclusion that rogue elements of the CIA had conspired to kill the Kennedy brothers is hardly a new one. The late, great Jim Garrison had first publicly suggested that JFK was murdered by “men who were once connected with the Central Intelligence Agency” in his NBC address on June 15, 1967. And he predicted soon after that JFK’s brother would be a victim of the same sinister forces who killed the president. Since then, a good number of writers have followed in Garrison’s footsteps and reached the same conclusion. So I expected to learn very little from CIA Rogues. However, I did note that the foreword was provided by renowned forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, so I checked out author Patrick Nolan’s web page. There I found the claim that CIA Rogues “is based on interviews and/or correspondence with world-renowned forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee, and other notables including Kennedy aide Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., former FBI agent William W. Turner, Sirhan attorney Larry Teeter, RFK assassination expert Judge Robert J. Joling, and University of Massachusetts Professor Philip H. Melanson, among others.” Well, I think most would be impressed by that list. So I ordered the book.

    As it turned out, I should have trusted my initial instincts. CIA Rogues is not in any real sense based on “interviews and/or correspondence” with those named above; it is based on their published books. Checking his source notes, I came across only two references to original interviews conducted by Nolan. Almost all of his remaining 1,654 citations are to secondary sources. Talk about misleading! I had expected his treatment of the forensics would be based on new work by Dr. Lee but was disappointed to discover that it is largely derived from Josiah Thompson’s book, rather old Six Seconds In Dallas. Not that there is anything wrong with Six Seconds, but it was published in 1967 and even Thompson himself has since abandoned one of the primary tenets of its reconstruction of the assassination. So I believe it’s fair to say that there is little if anything new in CIA Rogues and, therefore, I see little point in offering a lengthy summation or critique of most of its content here. What does need addressing is Nolan’s central thesis, which is that both Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald were victims of the CIA’s MKULTRA project.

    For those who don’t know, MKULTRA began in 1953 at the suggestion of Richard Helms as a project aimed at finding ways to control human behaviour. Under the direction of Helms and Technical Services Division Chief, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the Agency experimented with everything from sensory deprivation and electroshock therapy to LSD and hypnosis. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of MKULTRA is that many of these experiments were conducted without the knowledge or consent of the test subjects. As Nolan writes, the CIA chose “prisoners, foreigners, prostitutes, mental patients, and drug addicts…because, due to their social and economic circumstances, they typically would have little recourse if they discovered the true nature of their predicament.” (p. 19) Much documentation was lost in 1973 when Helms ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA files – approximately 20,000 records survived because they had been stored in the wrong building – so a full understanding of the scope of MKULTRA is probably not possible. However, it is widely believed that one goal of the program was the creation of a “Manchurian Candidate”. That is, a “hypno-programmed” assassin. One surviving CIA document from 1954 does mention finding ways to get a subject “to perform an act, involuntarily, of attempted assassination against a prominent [redacted] politician or if necessary, against an American official.” (Lisa Pease, The Assassinations, p. 533)

    When he was interviewed by author Dick Russell, Gottlieb denied that creating brainwashed or hypnotized assassins had been an aim of MKULTRA and suggested that such a thing wasn’t actually possible (On The Trail of the JFK Assassins, p. 242). But there’s every reason to believe it is. In 2011, British mentalist/hypnotist Derren Brown produced a series of TV shows called The Experiments, the first of which was titled The Assassin. In it, Brown took a volunteer through a series of hypnosis sessions which the volunteer believed were intended to make him a superior marksman. In reality, Brown was programming him to commit an assassination against his will of which he would have no memory. The show culminated with the unwitting gunman firing blanks at British comedian and TV personality, Stephen Fry, in front of a packed and unsuspecting auditorium. After watching The Assassin, the viewer is compelled to conclude that a mind-controlled assassin is a shockingly real possibility.

    It has long been believed that Sirhan’s behaviour before, during, and after the shooting of Robert Kennedy is highly suggestive of hypno-programming. Witnesses recalled that during the assassination Sirhan looked detached and tranquil. One of those who helped wrestle him to the ground, George Plimpton, said that Sirhan’s eyes appeared “enormously peaceful.” (Nolan, p. 253) Others reported a “sickly” smile on his face. (Pease, p. 579) More importantly, to this day, Sirhan claims and indeed appears to have no memory of shooting his pistol at senator Kennedy, or even of being in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. Even under hypnosis, Sirhan has been unable to recall the assassination. When Sirhan’s defense team hired psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Diamond to put him under, he discovered signs that Sirhan had been hypnotized numerous times before. As Nolan writes, Diamond “was also struck by how reliably Sirhan would perform in a waking state what had been suggested to him under hypnosis, without recalling having been told to perform and without recalling having been hypnotized.” (Nolan, p. 269) After Sirhan was convicted and sent to San Quentin Prison, the chief psychologist there, Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas, undertook to discover whether or not Sirhan’s amnesia was real. He ended up convinced that Sirhan had no memory of the assassination and that he was “prepared by someone. He was hypnotized by someone.” (p. 274) So it’s fair to say that there are good reasons for believing that Sirhan was indeed hypno-programmed.

    However, because Nolan wants to put MKULTRA at the centre of both assassinations, he wants to postulate that Lee Harvey Oswald was also a “hypno-programmed patsy”. Unfortunately for him, there is simply no credible evidence to support this belief and, try as he might, Nolan is unable to cobble together a convincing case. He writes of Oswald’s alleged “mood swings and irritability” which he says are “symptoms of hypno-programming”. (p. 92) He sources these “mood swings” to page 269 of Sylvia Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, in which she includes a story of Oswald complaining about overcooked eggs at the Dobbs House Restaurant. This is hardly convincing stuff. Of course, there are allegations that Oswald beat his wife, Marina, but many of these were made by Marina herself after she was put under intense pressure to tell the authorities what they wanted to hear. As Nolan himself notes, in her earlier interviews, Marina described Lee as “a good family man” (p. 110). It wasn’t until after she was threatened with deportation that the Russian-born widow’s stories began to evolve. So these are open to question. And how would this prove Nolan’s thesis anyway?

    Further “symptoms” of Oswald’s supposed programming according to Nolan are “his rapid speech while lecturing as if by rote, and automatic writing”. (p. 110) In support of the first “symptom” he cites “a three-hour lecture on American policies regarding Cuba” that he says Oswald gave at a dinner party with “Dallas’s White Russian community.” (pgs. 110-111) When we check his source, Edward Epstein’s Legend, we discover that he is referring to an alleged three-hour “conversation” that Oswald had with Volkmar Schmidt and that there is no mention of “rapid speech”. (Epstein, p. 204) In support of the second, Nolan apparently has in mind the letters that Lee wrote home shortly after his arrival in Russia, and his so-called “Historic Diary”. Nolan writes that one of these letters contains an “uncharacteristically violent passage” in which Oswald said he was prepared to “kill any American who put on a uniform in defense of the American Government”. (p. 101) As Nolan himself admits, Oswald no doubt understood his letters were being intercepted by Russian authorities and was writing them in an attempt to prove his loyalty and gain a resident permit. And yet he somehow concludes that Oswald “no doubt had no knowledge of writing them.” (p. 102) Confused? Me too. I simply cannot follow his logic. With regard to the diary, Nolan basically repeats what others have been saying for years which is that it is full of inaccuracies and appears to have been written in one or two sittings. It hardly needs pointing out that all this proves is that the “Historic Diary” is not an authentic, contemporaneous account. In no way does that suggest “automatic writing”. Sadly, this is pretty much the extent of what Nolan could come up with as far as finding signs of hypno-programming in Oswald goes.

    In the case of Sirhan, it’s possible to identify the individual most likely responsible for hypnotizing him; CIA asset, and renowned hypnotist Dr. William J. Bryan. In fact, Dr. Bryan who, in his own words, was “chief of all medical survival training for the United States Air Force, which meant the brainwashing section”, apparently himself boasted to two Beverly Hills call girls that he had hypnotized Sirhan. (William Turner & Jonn Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, p. 225-228) For the role of Oswald’s hypno-programmer, Nolan offers us David Ferrie whom he claims “is known to have been a master hypnotist”. (p. 126) Now admittedly Ferrie was a strange guy who apparently dabbled in all sorts of odd areas, and I have read unconfirmed reports that he was interested in hypnosis. But I have never seen him referred to as a “master hypnotist” before. In any case, even if one accepts the notion that Ferrie practiced hypnosis on Oswald (which I don’t), this still leaves a big hole in Nolan’s theory since he has Oswald being programmed nearly four years before he moved back to New Orleans and began playing intelligence fun and games with Ferrie. Just who was supposedly hypno-programming Oswald before his fake defection, Nolan doesn’t say.

    In support of his Ferrie contention, Nolan brings up the mysterious trip Oswald made to Clinton, Louisiana but, crucially, he leaves out the visits he made to the neighbouring village of Jackson. To Nolan, Oswald’s standing in line for hours to register to vote in rural Louisiana is best explained as a test of the “MKULTRA conditioning process”. (p. 126) But the fact is that by leaving out Oswald’s appearance in Jackson, Nolan has stripped the Clinton incident of its context. Before he turned up to register in Clinton, Oswald had stopped to get a haircut in the Jackson barbershop of Ed McGehee. There he asked about job opportunities in Jackson and was told about the East Louisiana State Hospital, which was a mental institution. McGeehe suggested Oswald talk to State Representative, Reeves Morgan, who he was sure would help him get a job. When Oswald dropped in on Morgan, Morgan suggested it would help if he registered to vote. So, the next day Oswald, in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw, was in Clinton attempting to register. Once he reached the front of the line, Oswald was informed that it wasn’t necessary to register in order to get a job at the hospital so off he went back to Jackson where he apparently filled out an application. (for more details see the second edition of Jim DiEugenio’s Destiny Betrayed, pgs. 88-93). It seems fairly clear that the purpose of the Clinton trip was to help get Oswald a job at the State Hospital, and had nothing to do with Ferrie testing his control over Oswald. What purpose would be served in securing Oswald such employment remains a matter of debate and speculation.

    While we’re on the subject, I cannot let Nolan’s treatment of the Clinton/Jackson incident pass without noting one other serious misconception. He writes that “Ferrie drove” Oswald in a black Cadillac that day, and that the other passenger “is believed to have been Guy Banister, based on witness descriptions, although some researchers have said the third member on the excursion was Clay Shaw”, which, Nolan says, “is unlikely”. (p. 125) This is a serious misrepresentation of the facts. Firstly, according to witnesses, Ferrie was the second passenger and not the driver. Secondly, it is not just “some researchers” who have claimed the driver was Shaw. It was Clinton witnesses John Manchester, Henry Palmer, Corrie Collins, and William Dunn. And,what’s more, they positively identified Shaw in court. There is little real doubt that Shaw accompanied Oswald to Clinton, however unlikely Nolan finds that fact. And there is also little doubt that Guy Banister was nowhere around. Because, as he told both Jim Garrison’s office and the HSCA, eyewitness Henry Palmer knew Banister from before 1963 and he was sure Banister was not in the car. (DiEugenio, p. 93)

    Returning to Nolan’s MKULTRA theory, hopefully the reader can see that there is really no credible reason to believe that Oswald was a victim of this program. But Nolan seems so enamoured with the notion of hypno-programming in the JFK case that at one point he goes completely off the deep end. This occurs when he’s discussing the Warren Commission’s star witness to the Tippit slaying, Helen Markham. Now, most serious researchers agree that Markham was somewhat eccentric and that much of her obviously coerced testimony is not to be taken at face value. And most researchers are happy to leave it there. But not Nolan. Nolan decides that Markham was “connected to Jack Ruby” because she worked at the Eatwell Restaurant where Ruby was known to eat. (Nolan, p. 161) A more tenuous connection is hard to imagine. But worse than that, Nolan decides that because she was “hysterical” when she was taken to Dallas police headquarters, and because her testimony was “odd”, Markham “may well have been conditioned or hypno-programmed”! (p. 156) This is ridiculous, nonsensical and, ultimately, fodder for the Warren Commission apologists. Making unsupported and frankly wacky claims of this nature tarnishes the author’s credibility and makes it all too easy for lone nutters to dismiss his work entirely – and that of conspiracy writers in general. And to be clear, this is far from being the only unsupported or blatantly incorrect claim in his book. For example, Nolan writes that a “201 file is a CIA personnel term that applies to individuals who are either CIA or have a contract with the Agency.” (p. 98) Wrong. A 201 file is opened on anyone in whom the CIA takes an interest. Nolan also writes that David Ferrie was found dead “shortly before he was to appear at Garrison’s JFK assassination conspiracy trial.” (p. 94) Again, this is wrong. Ferrie died almost two years before the trial began without ever being arrested, let alone charged. And finally, Nolan boldly proclaims that “Ferrie’s name was listed in Ruby’s address book.” (Ibid) It wasn’t.

    I could point out more errors and problems in CIA Rogues but there’s no need. As I wrote above, there is really nothing new in the book and its central thesis is simply not supported by the evidence. That CIA rogues were a part of the plot to kill Kennedy has been written before and in a far more persuasive manner than Nolan manages. As much as I was hoping it would be otherwise, I simply cannot recommend this book.

  • Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory In America

    Lance deHaven-Smith is a university professor who is a rather rare bird: he actually studies and writes about political conspiracies in America. In 2005 the Florida State instructor wrote a book called The Battle for Florida. This is one of the best volumes about the stealing of the 2000 election.

    Like many of us, deHaven-Smith was shocked that there was no criminal inquiry into this naked power play by the Bush family and their accessory Katherine Harris. Neither the Justice Department nor the MSM ever launched serious investigations into whether or not there was any kind of planned and concerted effort to preempt the democratic process by depriving people of their civil rights. We know today what the price was in not exercising any kind of due diligence. For the presidency of George W. Bush was one of the worst in history. Beginning with a healthy surplus in the treasury, it almost immediately evaporated that with more of the discredited “trickle down” economics, which really should be called trickle up. It then orchestrated a completely manufactured war which needlessly killed thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. It culminated with a double economic crash in the real estate market and the stock market, the combination of which provoked the most devastating financial debacle since 1929. America has still not recovered from those three events. Which all began with a stolen election. Perhaps nothing illustrates to better effect the price of living in a country where high crimes and misdemeanors have become almost SOP since 1963. And perhaps nothing illustrates more dramatically just what the price of that accommodation has become for the general populace.

    Perhaps as a result of that experience, the professor has followed up The Battle for Florida with a book that casts a much wider net. Conspiracy Theory in America is actually two books. It is first, an historical and sociological review of the attitudes toward the idea of the crime of conspiracy in America. In the last third or so, the author begins to concentrate on different conspiracies and to classify them into a chart he has devised. That part of the book is less satisfactory than the first. But let us deal with the historical aspect first.

    As the author notes, the term “conspiracy theory” did not really figure into the American lexicon until 1964. In that year, the New York Times wrote five stories in which the phrase appeared prominently. This was the beginning of a megatrend of sociological significance. For today, the Grey Lady does about 140 stories per year which feature that term. If one googles the phrase, one will get an astronomical number of hits, three times as many as for similar terms like “abuse of power” or “war crime.” (deHaven-Smith, pgs. 3-4). Today, noted authors use the term so indiscriminately, e.g. Vincent Bugliosi, that it has lost any real meaning. And in many ways it has simply become a cheap rhetorical slam. A way to marginalize and isolate arguments which the MSM does not want to consider. (p. 11) The use of the term as a pejorative leaves the clear connotation that people who argue in this manner really do not have any reasonable evidence to present, they only have suspicions. Which is far from the case of course. In fact, in many instances, e.g. the major assassinations of the sixties, it is actually the other way around: it’s the official story which has no credibility or strong evidence to support it. But there is little doubt that the MSM and its allies have done a good job in depriving the term of any rational meaning. In fact, the repeated use of the word “conspiracy theory” in its neutered form today, implies that the official story is credible. When in fact, as Jim Garrison said way back then, the idea that all three killings in Dallas on that unforgettable weekend were coincidental is highly improbable. Therefore the author introduces the term he would like to substitute for it, SCAD, or State Crime against Democracy (p. 12). One of the things this would do is to eliminate the tendency to view these crimes in isolation to each other. Which the author thinks is a mistake. An example he uses is the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Another example he proffers is the assassination of JFK and RFK. deHaven-Smith writes that in the real world of criminal detectives, this isolationist view is not the norm. Detectives try and link crimes by methods of operation. And there does seem to be some similar traits in these two examples. (Although this may begin the author’s tendency for a large grouping together of literally dozens of crimes which tends to mar the book at the end.)

    Another point the author makes is that the MSM does allow for certain conspiracies e.g. Watergate, Iran/Contra. But in both cases it states that those crimes were uncovered and prosecuted. But the author points out, these crimes were discovered by accident. In the first instance, it was because a guard at the Watergate Hotel noticed a strip of tape dangling from a door, one that he had already removed. Therefore, he understood a breaking and entering was in process and called the police. In the second instance, it was because a young Sandinista militia member shot down an American supply helicopter over Nicaragua. This constituted a violation of the Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited the United States from doing such a thing. But the crimes of the Plumbers Unit under the Nixon White House had been going on for months previously. As had the resupply of the Nicaraguan Contras. The author could also have added here: were the prosecutions of these crimes full and adequate? As we know, President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon; and later writers, like Jim Hougan, have stated that the CIA had a much larger role in the affair, a role which was largely ignored. In the second instance, the drug-running aspect of that criminal episode was also largely ignored or denied at the time. But there is no doubt today that it did exist. And as Ford pardoned Nixon, George H. W. Bush pardoned several people in the Iran/Contra scandal. Perhaps so the ultimate trail would not lead to him? In that sense, the so-called investigations of these historical episodes were not really satisfactory. In fact, some would say they deliberately avoided what should have been the ultimate result. And as such, they allowed certain people involved in the crime s to escape, not just inquiry, but also visibility.

    But, as deHaven-Smith notes, such a state of affaris was not always the case. Which is why the reader should note that jump in the use of the term in 1964. For if one takes the historical view, the concept of conspiracy, especially political conspiracies, has been around since the advent of the republic. As the author notes, the Founding Fathers were quite cognizant of the idea of political conspiracies. They actually wrote about guarding against “Conspiracies against the people’s liberties” by “perfidious public offiicials” and to “tyrannical designs” by “oppressive factions”. Back then, “factions” referred to power groups within society who had individual interests which were not always congruent with the public interest. (p. 59) And it was understood that these factions could and would use illicit means to achieve their ends, like bribery of public officials. Which, of course, constitutes conspiracy. Which may be a small scale plot. But deHaven-Smith quickly mentions a large scale one. This was the incredibly complex machination that Aaron Burr was going to employ to create an independent nation in the American southwest. Even though Thomas Jefferson and Burr were once friends and political allies, Jefferson urged that Burr be prosecuted on these charges. Burr was acquitted because he had not actually committed an overt act in order to aid a declared enemy of the union. (p. 64) In other words, it did not get out of the planning stages. But he did plan on it.

    From here, the author notes other historical, and popular precedents of famous personages decrying the use of conspiracy to further illicit ends. For example in 1824, Andrew Jackson accused Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams of plotting “a corrupt bargain” to deprive him of the presidency that year. Whereby, Adams became president and Clay was then appointed by him as Secretary of State. Congressman Abraham Lincoln proposed the famous “spot resolution”. This was designed to have President Polk show exactly where American blood was spilled by Mexicans on American soil. That resolution was designed to show that Polk had plotted with the army to deliberately provoke a war with Mexico in order to expand American territory into the southwest. Does this make Jackson and Lincoln “conspiracy theorists” who should not have been president?

    The author then shifts the focus to Nuremburg. At the trials of the captured Nazis from the Third Reich, the beginning of the indictment accused the defendants of using false-flag terrorism, faked invasions and other camouflaged techniques to convert the German populace into a police state. (p. 71) This was necessary since the Nazis were never able to gain a majority in the German parliament by legitimate voting means. As deHaven-Smith notes, this is a key point to underline. Because it is important to understand that after the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had a vibrant, politically diverse liberal democracy called the Weimer Republic. It was torn asunder step by step due to terrorist tactics and political assassinations plotted by the military e.g. that of the great Rosa Luxemburg. By 1930, the republic had been destabilized to the point that the Nazis were now in striking distance of taking over the country.

    The author points out that criminal conspiracies have also occurred in the financial sector due to the fact of lack of oversight. And also due to political corruption. A good example of the latter is the all too often overlooked Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980’s. Another example would be the looting of Enron, and Enron’s conspiracy to first, deregulate the California power grid, and then create phony “crises” and “outages” in the state in order to artificially raise rates and fleece the consumer.(See the fine film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.) A third example would be the conscious drive to deregulate Wall Street in the nineties, by eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act. And then to create the concept of the “derivative” and to be sure that this brand new invention could not be regulated. That goal was achieved largely through the aid of former Senator Phil Gramm.

    In other words, the idea of conspiracy has been inbred into American society since the beginning. And people like Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln accused others of resorting to it for political ends. People like Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling used it to loot the California economy. Which helped bring the state a man named Arnold Schwarzenegger. To say that these did not exist, or the were not complex and large conspiracies is simply to be in a state of denial. The author then asks, well, how and why do people like Michael Schermer do the denying? What prompted him and others like him?

    The book outlines three main causes which turned the domestic debate around on this issue. The first was the rise of political philosophers Karl Popper and Leo Strauss in academia. The second was the (infamous) 1964 essay by historian Richard Hofstadter “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” The third was the equally infamous 1967 CIA Memorandum entitled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.”

    The author lays in the background to the rise of Popper and Strauss very nicely by outlining the work of historian Charles Beard. Beard, along with Frederick Jackson Turner, was perhaps the most influential historian of the first half of the 20th Century. He made his reputation with his groundbreaking book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. That volume argued that the Constitutional Convention was actually a power struggle between the upper economic classes, the mercantile class and land owning farmers. But he then went on to argue that the 14th amendment was also passed with the help of economic interests in order to make corporations the equivalent of people under the law. (http://www.celdf.org/article.php?id=407) Finally, toward the end of his life. Beard – who bitterly opposed American entry into World War II – argued that President Roosevelt had engaged in subterfuge by letting Pearl Harbor occur. (See, Beard’s President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War.)

    As most people who study histiography know, after Beard’s death in 1948, the influence of Strauss, Popper, and especially Hofstadter, did much to deflate his reputation. Popper and Strauss, although different in their approaches, both advocated the limiting of liberal tendencies. Because both men believed that liberalism contained an inherent strain towards nihilism because of its extreme form of moral relativism. There was a nihilism of two types. One which tended towards the totalitarian rule of Nazism and Marxism; and one which was more gentle, which featured a permissiveness which bordered on hedonism which would sap the energy of society. (p. 79) Under the considerable influence of these two men, plus Hofstadter, academic studies of government now became more quantitative and behavioral in their approach. Beard’s work, which was much more pragmatic and value oriented, fell into eclipse. Under deHaven-Smith’s intellectual analysis, he maps out how Popper’s teachings led to neoliberalism and those of Strauss led to neoconservatism. It should be added here that in his brilliant film, The Power of Nightmares, director Adam Curtis came to the same conclusion: namely that the work of Strauss, and its critique of liberal permissiveness, helped turn people like Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz against the “permissive society” of Kennedy and Johnson. And helped convince them that to revitalize national unity, one had to have an international enemy. This was first the Soviet Union, and then the threat of Moslem terror. The author adds that Popper was probably the first person to use the term “conspiracy theory’ as a pejorative. This was in his two volume work The Open Society and its Enemies. And Strauss wrote about, the “noble lies” which must be maintained in order to preserve society. (p. 100) There is little doubt that these two men had an impact in academia; and an even larger impact outside it.

    Beard thought differently. To him, the survival of democracy relied upon what he called “critical historiography”. And this was necessary in order to show that democracy was not being subverted behind the scenes.

    What then follows is a long and detailed analysis of the 1967 CIA dispatch which went out to all CIA stations and encouraged them to contact friendly assets in the media. The goal was to employ propaganda techniques to discredit critics of the Warren Commission. The author also shows how the concept of “blowback” worked in this situation. One of the assets contacted was a man named John P. Roche. Roche was an academic who worked under Kennedy and Johnson. Roche wrote a letter to the London Times. The letter was clearly influenced by the CIA dispatch. As the author writes, “Roche implied that the mind-set of conspiracy theorists is a dangerous mix of mental problems, superstition and extremism.” (p. 128) Time magazine then wrote an article based on this letter. (p. 121) Therefore, two MSM bastions were now using the CIA dispatch to attack the Commission critics – without revealing that they were using the CIA script in doing so. But there is no doubt that this theme then spread to another MSM bastion, The New York Times. As is shown in this book, “conspiracy theorist” now was used, not just to avoid any serious discussion about problems in the evidence; it also acquired the stigma Roche had attached to it, e. g. paranoid, radical, crackpot, were all words the Times now attached to that rubric. (p. 130) The author concludes Chapter 4 of the book by saying that “the conspiracy theory label has become a powerful smear that preempts public discourse, reinforces rather than resolves disagreements, and undermines popular vigilance against abuses of power.” And as Popper and Strauss theorized, this is all done in the name of reason, civility, and preserving democracy. When in fact, one can cogently argue, the opposite is actually being achieved.

    So far, deHaven-Smith has written some interesting material about the historical aspect of how conspiracy facts and thinking have been dealt with in American culture. But where the book gets into trouble is when the author tries to present his own rubric about how the public should deal with these types of crimes. He calls it State Crime Against Democracy, or SCAD. I’ve long felt that we needed a set of models or paradigms for “conspiracy theory” to assist us with our inquiries. Hopefully such models would address a variety of suspected conspiracies. After all we do have documented instances not only of conspiracies to commit illegal acts but also conspiracies to obfuscate or cover up embarrassing or damaging information. I recall being much impressed with Peter Dale Scott’s effort to isolate and define elements of “deep politics” as they might associate themselves with any conspiracy involving attempts to influence government and public policy – in other words conspiracy beyond the routine day to day networking and conniving that we see in both politics and business, especially corporate business and even more especially corporate business as it relates to obtaining contracts for government projects and services.

    But one thing that is missing here is that the author should have covered all the bases by differentiating types and characterizing a full range of conspiracies, giving due consideration to the well-established practice of CYA – “cover the Agency”, “cover the Bureau” or the ever popular and endemic “cover your ass”. After all, CYA by itself is endemic to the human condition but often presents us conspiracy research types with the challenge of separating conspiracies of commission with conspiracies of omission. In the culminating discussion of the book and in the tables that end it, this issue is not really discerned or dealt with. Neither is the related issue of media complicity in order to further the cover-up.

    Early in the introduction, deHaven-Smith captured my sympathies by espousing the legitimacy of conspiracy investigation and coming down hard on the position taken by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule in their highly negative law journal article on conspiracy theories in general. One can only wonder if those two considered that their proposals to influence popular conspiracy theories through options such as public information campaigns, censorship and fines for internet service providers hosting conspiracy web sites actually fueled the very phenomena they were writing about – suspicion of omniscient government conspiracy against the public. After all, Sustein had himself been appointed to head the Obama Administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Sort of reminds me of the title of a country song – “What was I thinking?” Didn’t Sustein and Vermeule ever consider the alternatives of “fact checking” or hear about Snopes – did they feel they had to jump directly to suppression of inquiry? Smith gives the pair his full attention and gained my moral support with his remarks.

    The introduction kept my attention and raised my interest as the author moved on to present his concept of SCAD / State Crime against Democracy, a construct referring to “an attack from within on a political system’s organizing principals”. He positions SCAD as a “high crime”, committed against the people’s liberties and in the category of treason. Continuing in that vein he also differentiates it from political crimes such as Watergate or Iran-Contra and gives the alternative definition of SCAD as “state criminality” and “elite crime.” At that point I began to wonder if SCAD was really all that different from Peter Dale Scott’s “deep politics” which might also produce what could be called elitist or at least “establishment” conspiracies. But I found no reference to either Scott or his extensive writing on the subject in this book.

    And at that point in the introduction I have to admit to doing a bit of a double take as deHaven-Smith introduces the contention that America’s entire cultural attitude toward conspiracy has not just evolved from the general attitude of skepticism expressed by the countries’ founding fathers but that the reversal in attitude has been intentionally and carefully managed, “planned and orchestrated by the government itself” beginning shortly after the Second World War. He continues that theme by noting that he has found commonalities in multiple contemporary SCAD’s related to “targets, timing, tactics and policy consequences” and that the patterns associated with the SCAD’s suggest that they originate with “military and military-industrial interests which have the intent of fomenting social panic, encouraging militarism and wars.”

    At this point it began to dawn on me that this book was not going to be exactly what I had anticipated. That the author was setting himself a high bar, writing not only about the study of conspiracy and the cultural milieu for conspiracy theory in America but offering his own perceptions of the evolution of a large scale, ongoing elitist conspiracy not only to undermine the perception of conspiracies, but to conduct a series of ongoing and associated State Crimes Against Democracy. What I thought was going to be a book focused on the theory of conspiracy and the academic and media bashing of conspiracy proponents in modern day America now was evolving into a full-fledged conspiracy book in and of itself: an American version of Jonathan Vankin’s books on the subject.

    The book most definitely does have its academic side, indeed the author begins with a chapter titled “The American Tradition of Conspiracy Belief”, which I found to be a very interesting historical study. He continues that contextual development with a chapter on “Conspiracy Denial in the Social Studies”, examining the evolution of historical perceptions of the nature and presence of conspiracy in governmental and political affairs, very interesting to me as a history buff. This kind of intellectual history on Strauss and Popper is exactly the sort of material I would have anticipated from the title, and I found it quite educational. In concluding those chapters he does maintain the elite conspiracy theme of the book by introducing the “possibility” that American militarists have been organizing and maintaining a series of SCAD’s which could involve “political assassination, false flag terrorism, election theft, military provocation and contrived economic crisis”.

    Continuing the dual concept of a “conspiracy theory conspiracy” and the existence of a series of State Crimes against Democracy, the next chapter explores the manner in which such an ongoing SCAD conspiracy could indeed protect itself with an associated effort to essentially gut the basic American skepticism and critical facility, a conspiracy to neutralize conspiracy theory. In addressing that idea, the author goes into considerable detail on the CIA’s effort to neutralize critics of the Warren Commission and to undermine any popular emergence of a public concept of conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy. This is an area familiar to many students of the JFK crime, however the book’s overview is well structured and will probably be a surprise to many readers. One issue with this chapter is that it also evolves into a limited case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination and along with the authors’ other discussion of the Kennedy assassination has to be relatively superficial due to space limitations. It also introduces some points which are perhaps not the strongest that could be made in regard to a conspiracy of commission in that crime.

    At that point the book moves into Chapter 5, some 130 pages into the core of the 202 page book. It is there that deHaven-Smith fully introduces the construct of the conceptualization (both his words, not mine) which he designates as State Crimes against Democracy. His initial presentation of the concept is academic, some of which I personally found interesting and some of which I’m not sure I followed. As an example he seems to find it very important that the aerial images of the buildings during the 9/11 attack were not publically aired for over eight years, citing an article on that in the New York Times. However he notes that while the authors of the article clearly believe that to be quite significant they themselves make no effort to present what that might explain about the attack on the World Trade Center, and deHaven Smith himself notes that the article simply “flirts with dark suspicions.” In the chapter, examples of suspected SCAD’s are addressed, ranging from tainted elections to political assassinations and both policy consequences and possible Modus Operandi of SCAD’s, including “Linguistic Thought Control” are discussed.

    Perhaps most importantly the SCAD chapter goes much further than simply examining the possibility of SCAD and potential indicators or “finger prints” of such conspiracies; it associates multiple events, characterizes categories and projects trends. Based on that analysis, the author concludes by painting a picture of an organized and ongoing series of elite/militarist organized SCAD’s being conducted against the American public. To emphasize his position, he specifically discusses trends in regard to mass deception regarding defense related information and assassinations, before and following the Second World War. While much of this dialog will seem familiar to conspiracy oriented readers, it is presented with an aura of scientific support and it certainly seems that the author is going beyond simple hypothesis and theory to advocating a conclusion that there has been an elite conspiracy involved in both commission and obfuscation of “high crimes” against the American public.

    Now in the interest of transparency, most people who know my work and my opinions are very much aware that I have a problem with grand conspiracies which contain extended linkages, maintained over decades. Those who share that view may be less enthusiastic about this book, those who follow grand conspiracy lines of thought will find it extremely interesting and reinforcing. But there is one issue that I would be remiss in not noting. It appears to me that a great deal of the authors’ analysis is based on his categorization and trending of the events that he classifies as SCAD’s; those are illustrated in tables 5.1 and 5.2 in the book. I love tables, they can be really fulfilling after you spend years of digging and research and I believe they are often excellent tools at disclosing patterns. But being a conspiracy researcher and skeptic myself, my first inclination is to want to paw through the data in the tables – but then I also love end notes, what can I say.

    Table 5.1 is a chart of the modus operandi of U.S. SCADs and suspected SCADs – so naturally I want to see a list of what those are and how the author integrates them by category. With kudos to deHaven-Smith, Table 5.1 is broken down at the end of the book, with the title “Crimes against American democracy committed or allegedly committee by elements of the U.S. government”. The table includes events beginning in 1798 and extending to 2004 and I assume it to be the source material for the overall analysis and trending of SCAD’s discussed in what seems to be the key chapter of the book, Chapter 5. Table 5.1 discusses perpetrator motives, policy implications, identifies the suspected or confirmed perpetrator and then gives remarks on “degree of confirmation of government role” for each suspected SCAD. It also gives a confidence ranking for each – low, medium, and high. I did not find any specific set of criteria for making such rankings; however each incident is referenced to the source book and author from which it was taken.

    The problem here is that none of the listed SCAD’s is really analyzed in extended detail in the book and some of them are described as circumstantial even in the table. Several are listed as low in confirmation and some as medium. Of some 27 subjectively ranked, only 14 are listed as of a high confidence level. Included among the high rankings are the Sedition Act of 1798, the Lincoln assassination, the election of 1876, the McCarthy anti-Communist campaign, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Ellsburg burglary, October Surprise, Watergate, Iran-Contra (which I thought had been designated a political conspiracy not a SCAD in the Introduction?), the 2000 Presidential election, the post 9/11 Anthrax attacks, Iraq-Gate, the False Terror Alerts of 2004 and the 2004 election.

    The issue then is that the tables and trend analysis, as well as the overall theme of an ongoing elitist conspiracy against democracy and the American public seems to rest to a great extent on the data and evaluations of the incidents selected as SCAD examples. Certainly the reader will make their own call on the author’s premise and conclusions but in doing so it would be well advised to spend time considering the data sets which are used to support them. In sum, deHaven-Smith should have written either a shorter, or a much larger book.

    (with James DiEugenio)

  • Clint Hill, Mrs. Kennedy and Me

    Clint Hill, Mrs. Kennedy and Me

    MRS. KENNEDY & ME: A Very Good Book with a Few pages of Trouble

    I. Introduction: Bad precedent

    I so wanted to dislike this book. As the leading civilian literary expert on the Secret Service, I had previously—-and rightfully—lambasted Lisa McCubbin’s prior effort entitled The Kennedy Detail for its rewriting of history, blaming JFK for his own death and putting words in the late president’s mouth that he never once uttered, as verified by the prior accounts of numerous top agents and White House aides, many of whom WERE there in Dallas (unlike former agent Gerald Blaine). As previously stated, it was my 22-page letter to former agent Clint Hill that angered him and his best friend to whom I had also spoken to, the aforementioned Blaine, that directly led to the writing of The Kennedy Detail and, by extension, the need to write a follow-up tome, Mrs. Kennedy & Me (whenever a book is even a mild best-seller, which their first effort was, it is almost a guarantee that, if there is any gas left in the tank, so to speak, a further literary work will be forthcoming). In fact, both agents Blaine and Hill debated the merits of my research on television and, if that weren’t enough, I was mentioned on pages 359-360 of The Kennedy Detail (without naming me, of course). One could argue several other pages refer to my work, directly or indirectly, but I digress from the matter at hand.

    II. My initial review: honesty prevails

    Simply put, Mrs. Kennedy & Me is excellent: a literary home run, second only to another brand new work, the outstanding 2012 book Within Arm’s Length by former agent Dan Emmett, as attaining the mantle of being the best book on the Secret Service by a former agent ever to date (1865-2012 and counting). I have to say in all honesty: Mr. Hill and Ms. McCubbin have a lot to be proud of in this book. it is consistently everything The Kennedy Detail is not: truthful, honest, no axe to grind, not dry or boring, well written, and coming from the perspective of a brave and dedicated public servant who WAS truly there. (To be fair, even The Kennedy Detail,and certainly the documentary it was based on, had its moments, although my judgment is rightfully clouded by what I and others feel are the purposeful untruths and propaganda contained throughout, as well as the exasperating third-person narrative interwoven throughout the book, making it hard to pin down exactly WHO was responsible for specific passages. President Kennedy did NOT order the agents off his limousine in Tampa, in Dallas, or anywhere else, for that matter- SAIC Behn, ASAIC Boring, ATSAIC Godfrey, many of their colleagues, and several prominent White House aides said so).

    Do I still have misgivings about some of the agents on the Kennedy detail? Sure; that will never change. Am I also an ardent admirer of the Secret Service? You bet: the agency has a whole lot to be proud of. Clint Hill at least TRIED to do something that fateful day in Dallas and carried much guilt and depression over the sad events of that time and place. That is a whole lot more than several of his colleagues can lay claim to.

    That aside, Mrs. Kennedy & Me is highly recommended to everyone for its honesty and rich body of true, first-hand accounts of guarding First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Too bad this book wasn’t even longer and The Kennedy Detail did not exist, but one cannot ask for everything.

    III. On second thought

    The assassination-related part of this book aside, I obviously quite liked this book- there are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. However, upon reflection, there are several items in the assassination-related section (and elsewhere) that should be duly noted. (Indeed, I later added a disclaimer to my online review noting this dissent). On pages 55-56, Hill talks about the benefits of Jackie Kennedy keeping a low profile during her trip to New York as beneficial to security: “The fewer people who know your intended destination or route, the better. A police escort would have just drawn attention to us, so we kept the motorcade to as few vehicles as possible.” Indeed, on yet another trip to New York in early 1963, this one involving both Jackie and JFK, Hill records Jackie as stating: “We want to keep it private…No police escorts, no motorcades, no official functions. We just want to enjoy the city like we used to.” However, this very same situation for President Kennedy in New York, the very same city, in mid-November 1963 was viewed not as a virtue but as a detriment to his safety and welfare by several writers after his assassination.[1] Today, these kinds of trips are known by the Secret Service as “OTR”s, or “off the records”, and they are quite effective, now as then, in their element of surprise from potential assassins. Indeed, Hill writes: “It was a real challenge for the Secret Service agents to keep these presidential movements private yet still maintain an adequate amount of protection, without police escorts or blocking the streets, but we managed.” That was their job and they did it well…until November 22, 1963.

    In addition, this book vividly demonstrates that Jackie DID indeed travel with JFK on many trips other than the fateful Texas venture in November 1963: New York, Florida, Boston, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Germany, etc.

    Page 136 has an item of much interest to those contrasting the measures used in Dallas: “The lead vehicle in the motorcade was a press truck—an open flatbed truck with rails around the outside—filled with about a dozen photographers. This was typical when you expected large crowds along a motorcade route for a president, but I’d never seen it, prior to this trip [Pakistan], for a first lady (Hill’s emphasis).” Dallas Morning News reporter Tom Dillard testified to the Warren Commission:

    “We lost our position at the airport. I understood we were to have been quite a bit closer. We were assigned as the prime photographic car which, as you probably know, normally a truck precedes the President on these things [motorcades] and certain representatives of the photographic press ride with the truck. In this case, as you know, we didn’t have any and this car that I was in was to take photographs which was of spot-news nature.”[2] (Emphasis added)

    On page 202, there is a photo of the agents surrounding the presidential limousine at the Orange Bowl in Miami in December 1962: agents Gerald Blaine (of Kennedy Detail infamy), Ken Giannoules, Clint Hill, Paul Landis, Frank Yeager (uncredited), Ron Pontius (uncredited), and Bob Lilley (also uncredited). Hill writes: “I and the other agents jogged alongside the car, constantly scanning the crowd for any sign of disturbance or disruption, as we headed toward the waiting helicopter outside the arena.” On page 212, Hill says: “There would always be at least five or six Secret Service agents around the president, and trailing close behind the president’s limousine was the not so unobtrusive follow-up car.”

    IV. Déjà vu All Over Again

    Still, all things considered, pretty smooth sailing so far- a good book about Jackie Kennedy and Clint Hill; great human interest anecdotes and dialogue. However, the party ends briefly on pages 270-271, wherein Hill does his best Gerald Blaine “imitation” and seeks to rewrite a little history to suit his own ends. Hill states that it was November 20, 1963, when he saw ASAIC Floyd Boring (the planner of the Texas trip[3]) and, conveniently[4], fellow ASAIC Roy Kellerman (the agent nominally in charge of the Dallas trip) by the Secret Service office in the White House, as he correctly notes that SAIC Gerald Behn was on vacation at the time. It was here that Boring—with Kellerman strangely silent by his side—conveyed to Hill that JFK allegedly ordered the agents off the limousine in Tampa on 11/18/63, something this author is adamant, based on years of research and interviews with Boring, Behn, and many of their colleagues, never happened.

    When asked if Hill was aware of what allegedly went down in Tampa, Hill states: “I didn’t recall anything out of the ordinary [on the radio].” Hill, “quoting” Boring (who passed away 2/1/08), writes: “(as Boring) We had a long motorcade in Tampa, and it was decided that we should keep two guys on the back of the car for the entire route—just for added precaution.” Hill further writes (as himself): “I nodded. That wasn’t all that unusual.” Then, in a little jumbled thought/ sentence, Hill (once again as Boring), adds: “So, we had Chuck Zboril and Don Lawton on the back of the car the ENTIRE way,” Floyd said. “But PARTWAY through the motorcade, in an area where the crowds had thinned, the president requested we remove the agents from the back of the car (emphasis added).” On page 271, Hill writes: “Really? I asked. I had NEVER heard the president ever question procedural recommendations by his Secret Service detail (emphasis added).”

    Hill writes: “What was the reason?” Writing “as” Floyd Boring again (with, again, a strangely silent Roy Kellerman, assuming he was really there and this really took place as written): “He said now that we’re heading into the campaign, he doesn’t want it to look like we’re crowding him. And the word is [FROM WHOM?], from now on, you don’t get on the back of the car unless the situation absolutely warrants it.” “Okay,” I said. “Understood.” Nothing is in writing, Kellerman is silent, Behn is on vacation, and we are to just take Hill at his word that this 2012 reconstruction is the gospel.

    Congressman Sam Gibbons, who actually rode a mere foot away in the car with JFK, wrote to me in a letter dated 1/15/04: ““I rode with Kennedy every time he rode. I heard no such order. As I remember it the agents rode on the rear bumper all the way. Kennedy was very happy during his visit to Tampa. Sam Gibbons.” Also, photographer Tony Zappone, then a 16-year-old witness to the motorcade in Tampa (one of whose photos for this motorcade was ironically used in The Kennedy Detail!), told me that the agents were “definitely on the back of the car for most of the day until they started back for MacDill AFB at the end of the day.” (Emphasis added) Win Lawson wrote to this reviewer on 1/12/04, before this book was even a thought, and said: “I do not know of any standing orders for the agents to stay off the back of the car. After all, foot holds and handholds were built into that particular vehicle… it never came to my attention as such.” (emphasis added). FLOYD BORING himself told me “[JFK] was a very easy-going guy … he didn’t interfere with our actions at all.” In a later interview, Boring expounded further: “Well that’s not true. That’s not true. He was a very nice man; he never interfered with us at all.” If that weren’t enough, Boring also wrote the author: “He [JFK] was very cooperative with the Secret Service.”

    As for ASAIC Floyd Boring, this reviewer has no doubt that Boring DID INDEED CONVEY the fraudulent notion that JFK had asked that the agents remove themselves from the limo between 11/18-11/19/63, but that the former agent was telling the TRUTH of the matter when he spoke to me years later. You see, Clint Hill wrote in his report:

    I … never personally was requested by President John F. Kennedy not to ride on the rear of the Presidential automobile. I did receive information passed verbally from the administrative offices of the White House Detail of the Secret Service to Agents assigned to that Detail that President Kennedy had made such requests. I do not know from whom I received this information … No written instructions regarding this were ever distributed … [I] received this information after the President’s return to Washington, D.C. This would have been between November 19, 1963 and November 21, 1963 [note the time frame!]. I do not know specifically who advised me of this request by the President. (emphasis added)

    Mr. Hill’s undated report was presumably written in April 1964, as the other four reports submitted to the Warren Commission were written at that time.[5] Why Mr. Hill could not “remember” the specific name of the agent who gave him JFK’s alleged desires is very troubling. He revealed it on March 9, 1964, presumably before his report was written, in his (obviously pre-rehearsed) testimony under oath to the future Senator Arlen Specter, then a lawyer with the Warren Commission[6]:

    Specter: Did you have any other occasion en route from Love Field to downtown Dallas to leave the follow-up car and mount that portion of the President’s car [rear portion of limousine]?

    Hill: I did the same thing approximately four times.

    Specter: What are the standard regulations and practices, if any, governing such an action on your part?

    Hill: It is left to the agent’s discretion more or less to move to that particular position when he feels that there is a danger to the President: to place himself as close to the President or the First Lady as my case was, as possible, which I did.

    Specter: Are those practices specified in any written documents of the Secret Service?

    Hill: No, they are not.

    Specter: Now, had there been any instruction or comment about your performance of that type of a duty with respect to anything President Kennedy himself had said in the period immediately preceding the trip to Texas?

    Hill: Yes, sir; there was. The preceding Monday, the President was on a trip to Tampa, Florida, and he requested that the agents not ride on either of those two steps.

    Specter: And to whom did the President make that request?

    Hill: Assistant Special Agent in Charge Boring.

    Specter: Was Assistant Special Agent in Charge Boring the individual in charge of that trip to Florida?

    Hill: He was riding in the Presidential automobile on that trip in Florida, and I presume that he was. I was not along.

    Specter: Well, on that occasion would he have been in a position comparable to that occupied by Special Agent Kellerman on this trip to Texas?

    Hill: Yes sir; the same position.

    Specter: And Special Agent Boring informed you of that instruction by President Kennedy?

    Hill: Yes sir, he did.

    Specter: Did he make it a point to inform other special agents of that same instruction?

    Hill: I believe that he did, sir.

    Specter: And, as a result of what President Kennedy said to him, did he instruct you to observe that Presidential admonition?

    Hill: Yes, sir.

    Specter: How, if at all, did that instruction of President Kennedy affect your action and—your action in safeguarding him on this trip to Dallas?

    Hill: We did not ride on the rear portions of the automobile. I did on those four occasions because the motorcycles had to drop back and there was no protection on the left-hand side of the car. (Emphasis added throughout)

    However, keeping in mind what Boring told this reviewer, the ARRB’s Doug Horne—by request of this author—interviewed Mr. Boring regarding this matter on 9/18/96. Horne wrote: “Mr. Boring was asked to read pages 136–137 of Clint Hill’s Warren Commission testimony, in which Clint Hill recounted that Floyd Boring had told him just days prior to the assassination that during the President’s Tampa trip on Monday, November 18, 1963, JFK had requested that agents not ride on the rear steps of the limousine, and that Boring had also so informed other agents of the White House detail, and that as a result, agents in Dallas (except Clint Hill, on brief occasions) did not ride on the rear steps of the limousine. Mr. Boring affirmed that he did make these statements to Clint Hill, but stated that he was not relaying a policy change, but rather simply telling an anecdote about the President’s kindness and consideration in Tampa in not wanting agents to have to ride on the rear of the Lincoln limousine when it was not necessary to do so because of a lack of crowds along the street.” (emphasis added)

     

    Hill on limo
    SS Agent Clint Hill rides on the rear of the Presidential
    		limousine during the Dallas motorcade, 11/22/1963.

     

    This reviewer finds this admission startling, especially because the one agent who decided to ride on the rear of the limousine in Dallas anyway—and on at least four different occasions—was none other than Clint Hill himself.

    Returning to Hill’s book, Hill writes on pages 276-277: “What was most useful, from the Secret Service standpoint, were the special handles on the trunk and the steps on the rear bumper area where two additional agents could ride, and have immediate access to the occupants, should the need arise.” Then, in an awkward sentence, Hill continues: “But, as I’d been told the day before, the president did not want us there, on the back of the car.” Lisa McCubbin was also the co-author of Gerald Blaine’s The Kennedy Detail : boy, does this stuff sound familiar—the mantra of JFK-is-to-blame.

    V. Other items of interest

    After noting that President Kennedy trusted Kellerman “completely” (page 274) and wrongly noting that the SS-100-X was in service since March 1961 (page 276; it was actually in service since June 1961, 3 months later), Hill totally gleans over the infamous drinking incident of 11/21-11/22/63 involving NINE agents of the Secret Service, including Clint Hill himself, Paul Landis, Glen Bennett, and Jack Ready! Interestingly, they were all from Shift Leader Emory Roberts’ particular shift. Significantly, none of the agents from the V.P. LBJ detail were involved in the drinking incident.[7]

    Regarding the issue of the bubbletop, although Hill states (on page 284) that agent Lawson conveyed to Sam Kinney, the driver of the follow-up car, that the bubbletop was to be removed in Dallas, Sam told this reviewer on 10/19/92 and, again, on 3/4/94 and 4/15/94: “It was my fault the top was off [the limousine in Dallas]—I am the sole responsibility of that.”[8] In addition, Kinney’s oft-ignored report dated November 30, 1963 confirms this fact[9], as does the former agent’s recently-released February 26, 1978 HSCA interview:

    “… SA Kinney indicated that he felt that his was the responsibility for making the final decision about whether to use the bubble-top.”[10]

    Hill, in his zeal to show how “normal” it was for JFK not to use the bubbletop, makes an error, as well as many omissions- he writes:

    “It was the same whether he was in Berlin, Dublin [wrong-JFK used the top on part of this trip, in bad AND good weather!], Honolulu, Tampa, San Antonio, or San Jose, Costa Rica.”

    What Hill omits are the many times JFK used a PARTIAL top (just the front and back with the middle open) OR the FULL top (New York Spring 1963, several motorcades in D.C., Venezuela, and many other trips). [11]

    On page 286, Hill states that Bill Greer, the driver of JFK’s car, was “a Catholic”, yet his own son Richard told me on two occasions that his father was a Methodist. (When asked, “What did your father think of JFK?”, Richard did not respond the first time. When this author asked him a second time, Greer responded: “Well, we’re Methodists … and JFK was Catholic.”)![12] In addition, Hill states that Greer “spoke with a bit of a brogue”, something not in evidence on his lengthy 1970 interview available on my You Tube Channel.[13]

    VI. VERY interesting

    On page 287, Hill describes the makeup of the follow-up car and writes: “Glen Bennett from the Protective Research Section, handling intelligence (emphasis added).” Oh, really? Thanks for the confirmation, Clint. Officially-speaking, he was NOT acting as an active PRS agent that day…well, at least according to your own colleagues who spoke to me.[14] For his part, former WHD agent J. Walter Coughlin, who assisted fellow agent Dennis R. Halterman on the advance for the San Antonio part of the Texas trip (November 21, 1963), wrote the author: “I can only add the following—I was not in Dallas so my knowledge is hearsay from good friends who were there.” Glen Bennett was on all these trips [second New York, Florida, and Texas] not as a member of PRS but as a temporary shift agent in that so many of us (shift agents) were out on advance. “This I do know to be a fact and read nothing more into it.”

    Furthermore, the author must have touched a nerve in Coughlin. Winston Lawson wrote the author:

    “I understand from my friend Walt Coughlin that you wondered why Glen Bennett from PRS was on the trip [note: the author did not tell Coughlin, who lives in Texas, about the author’s contact with Lawson, who lives in Virginia, regarding this or any other question]. Nothing sinister about it and had nothing to do with threats or intelligence. There were so many trips, MD and FL, just prior to TX and so many stops in TX that the small WH Detail was decimated supplying advance people. A number of temporarily assigned agents were on all 3 shifts in TX … I believe Walt had been on an advance before he went to his stop in TX.”

    Clearly, we have a conflict: the written record, my research, and Clint Hill’s account versus Walt Coughlin’s and Win Lawson’s statements to myself.

    Was PRS Agent Glen Bennett monitoring mortal threats to JFK’s life, made in the month of November, and was this covered up afterwards? Is this the reason for the conflicting accounts—and the timing—of Bennett’s participation in the second New York trip, the Florida trip, and the Texas trip?

    Did Bennett ride in the follow-up car and participate on these trips for this purpose? I strongly believe this to be the case. Thanks again, Clint, for the confirmation.

    VII. And another thing (or two)

    On pages 288-289, Hill mentions that JFK looked back at him on two different occasions during the fateful Dallas motorcade–when Hill briefly rode on the rear of the car on Main St, as depicted in the photo on page 289– yet did not say anything. JFK not saying anything speaks volumes, in and of itself. Mainly, that he did not care, one way or the other, if the agents were there doing their duty or not. But what is most troubling is the fact that no films or photos this author has ever seen reveal JFK allegedly turning to look at Hill in the first place! Hmmm…

    Just to reiterate the point of SAIC Behn’s absence from the Texas trip and its importance further, Hill writes (on page 297): “Jerry Behn…was with the president all the time, just like I was with Mrs. Kennedy. They had a great relationship. The president loved him, trusted him…Jerry decided to take a week off…His first annual leave in three years.” Kind of convenient.

    VIII. Another mantra: the back of the head

    On pages 290, 291, 305, and 306, Clint Hill states firmly, as he has many times in the past[15], that the BACK of JFK’s head was gone, thus indicating that President Kennedy was shot from the front, as entrance wounds leave small holes, while exit wounds leave large holes. Page 290: “…blood, brain matter, and bone fragments exploded from the back of the president’s head. The president’s blood, parts of his skull, bits of his brain were splattered all over me—on my face, my clothes, in my hair.” Page 291: “His eyes were fixed, and I could see inside the back of his head. I could see inside the back of the president’s head.” Page 305: (at the autopsy) “the wound in the upper-right rear of the head.” Page 306: “It looked like somebody had flipped open the back of his head, stuck in an ice-cream scoop and removed a portion of the brain…”

    IX. In the final analysis

    Unlike The Kennedy Detail, Clint Hill has written (again, with Lisa McCubbin) a fine book. That said, it is best to take some of his pre-assassination “reenactments” of statements made by others (“faction”?) with a huge grain of salt, while also noting—with interest—those assassination and post-assassination revelations and statements that do ring true and are of interest to all.

    POST SCRIPT

    It was recently announced that the first book Clint Hill was involved with, Lisa McCubbin’s and Gerald Blaine’s The Kennedy Detail, will be made into a movie, set for release in 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination.[16] The movie should be about Abe Bolden.  That is a great story and a truthful one. That said, Mark Lane’s movie, that will include former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden, is set to be released soon.[17] That should even out the playing field a little more. Lane’s movie with Bolden will hopefully fill in the blanks left by the Secret Service destruction of records.

    According to Ch. 8 of the ARRB’s Final Report (1998):

    Congress passed the JFK Act of 1992. One month later, the Secret Service began its compliance efforts. However, in January 1995, the Secret Service destroyed presidential protection survey reports for some of President Kennedy’s trips in the fall of 1963. The Review Board learned of the destruction approximately one week after the Secret Service destroyed them, when the Board was drafting its request for additional information. The Board believed that the Secret Service files on the President’s travel in the weeks preceding his murder would be relevant.

    As the ARRB’s Doug Horne wrote in a memo dated April 16, 1996: “The ‘final decision’ to approve the Texas trip made ‘late Tuesday night’ indicates that decision came on September 24, 1963 … the Secret Service Protective Survey Reports … which were destroyed in 1995 commence with trip files starting on this same date: September 24, 1963.”

    In addition, the ARRB’s Joan Zimmerman noted in a May 1, 1997 Memorandum To File:

    “Thus far, the US Secret Service collection is in 6 gray archive boxes for documents, 7 large, flat gray boxes with newspapers and clippings, and 1 small box with a tape cassette … In Box 5 there are three folders marked “trip file”. All are empty.” The chairman of the ARRB, Judge Jack Tunheim, stated: “The Secret Service destroyed records after we were on the job and working. They claimed it was a mistake that it was just by the normal progression of records destruction.”[18]

    More important are the Florida/Chicago Secret Service Advance reports that the Secret Service intentionally destroyed after being asked for them by the ARRB, and that, according to The Kennedy Detail, Gerald Blaine has copies of and preserved.[19] The largest number of known destroyed JFK documents for the U.S. Secret Service was implemented by James Mastrovito, publicly recorded in the ARRB Collection, Joan Zimmerman Correspondence File, Created 04/01/97 CALL REPORT/PUBLIC. USSS Records.

    Mastrovito destroyed a vial containing a portion of JFK’s brain, along with 5 or 6 file cabinets of material, according to the two page document.[20]

    JAMES MASTROVITO WENT ON TO A CAREER IN THE CIA AND HE WAS A FORMER MEMBER OF JFK’S WHITE HOUSE DETAIL![21] (emphasis added)

    NOTES

    [2] 6 H 163. As the author presented at the COPA ’96 and JFK Lancer ’97 conferences, the press photographers frequently rode in a flatbed truck in front of the motorcade pro-cession [films courtesy JFK Library; see also John F. Kennedy: A Life in Pictures, pp. 178–180, 183, 231]. Photographer Tony Zappone confirmed to the author on December 18, 2003 that a flatbed truck was used for the photographers in Tampa, Florida, on November 18, 1963.

    [3] See my review of “The Kennedy Detail”

    [4] Ibid; Kellerman was conveniently absent from Blaine’s alleged 11/25/63 meeting

    [6] 2 H 136-137

    [9] 18 H 730

    [10] RIF#180–10078–10493

    [11] See the images on my blog and on my You Tube channel videos. See also http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n1/v4n1chapter03.pdf

    [15] Hill’s November 30, 1963 report: 18 H 740–5. WC testimony: 2 H 141, 143 (See also the 2004 National Geographic documentary, Inside the U.S. Secret Service). See also “The Kennedy Detail”, pages 216-217, 266+ media appearances

    [18] CBS News, December 13, 1999.

    [19] E-mail from researcher Bill Kelly 4/18/12

  • Dean T. Hartwell, Dead Men Talking: Consequences of Government Lies

    How did it happen? How did this country get into the sorry state it is? America today is a place where presidential elections are stolen in broad daylight – and the Supreme Court then sanctions the thievery. Where a debacle like 9/11 takes place, and yet not a single person gets fired. A country where an administration can launch a phony war with Iraq – needlessly losing thousands of young men and women and countless billions in dollars – yet the Speaker of the House says that giant fraud was not grounds for impeachment. A country in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average has increased over 1,000% since 1972 – yet both the middle class and working class are worse off now than they were then. A country where a con artist like Bernie Madoff could actually rise to be president of NASDAQ. A nation whose politicians allow casino-like gouging on Wall Street, and then when the bubble bursts, the tax-payers bail out the looters to the tune of a trillion dollars. And they have to, because if they don’t their IRA’s, pensions, and annuities could disappear. It’s a country where the moderate Republican Party of Eisenhower became the extremism of Gingrich and DeLay. The US is a place where a right-wing foreign billionaire like Rupert Murdoch can convince a large part of the public that somehow his interests coincide with theirs. It’s a nation whose populace is so cowed and misinformed that they could consider a shallow frat boy like George Bush Jr. for president – not once, but twice. And then, when he cheats his way into office both times, the MSM actually tries to cover up for him. After all, the only price paid was the financial bankruptcy of the USA. A country, which, as conservative banker Charles Morris has written, is “hopelessly in hock to some of the world’s most unsavory regimes.” And part of that transfer of wealth was made possible by companies like the Carlyle Group, led by former “representatives of the people” like George Bush Sr., James Baker, and John Major.

    In other words, the USA today is a second-rate nation which veers violently from national scandal to senseless war back to national scandal. And the purveyors of neither the wars nor the scandals are ever actually called to account for their sins. Consequently, the cycle continues downward. With no real light at the end of the tunnel. When you can pull off a crime like what just happened on Wall Street, and make average Americans foot the bill – well, that should tell you what the USA has become: a giant ATM machine for the wealthy. Except in the end, you find out they had access to your account. And the politicians in Washington don’t really give a damn.

    How did things go so awry? To the point where, to use some appropriate hyperbole, America reminds some of the last scene of fire and smoke in Nathanael West‘s memorable apocalyptic novel The Day of the Locust. Many people are aware of the condition of course. Which is why alternative forms of media have arisen. Because, to put it mildly, the MSM has not done a very good job keeping the wolf from the door. In fact, many citizens think they helped the animal up their sidewalk.

    For me, alternative media has not been up to the task, at least not yet. As I have noted on this site, the likes of blogs like Firedoglake and Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo have been rather disappointing. For me, before a nation can deal with its present, it has to be able to face its past. Its real past. In other words, the public has to be made to understand the depth and breadth of the historical crimes in order to explain how, for instance, an administration can simultaneously fire eight US attorneys and lie about it before Congress. And the following Democratic administration chooses not to try any of the perjurers or the perpetrators. This is pretty much saying that the law is what the occupiers of the Department of Justice say it is. And in the case of Don Siegelman, Cyril Wecht, and others, new Attorney General Eric Holder replies, “Well, too bad, but I guess it was.”

    For those of us who recall a better America, this will not do. Therefore we have tried to give history back to the people in an honest and investigative way. We did it when Lisa Pease and myself published Probe bi-monthly. We tried to do it in our book, The Assassinations. And John Kelin and I do it here on this site, e.g., Roger Feinman’s fine essay on Sonia Sotomayor.

    Dean T. Hartwell has now made his contribution.

    His short book, Dead Men Talking, is subtitled Consequences of Government Lies. It is a concise attempt at what some people call revisionist history. Except that it stretches across the decades from 1963 to 2001, nearly forty years. The Assassinations, was also an attempt at revisionist history. But it only covered five years: 1963-68. It took in the murders of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert Kennedy. We did that because we thought that by centering on those four people, we could concentrate on both one time period, and also one method of covert operation: the assassination of political leaders by gunfire. Then, in the Afterword of that book, I tried to isolate these events by saying they constituted a landmark in American history. Hartwell decided to take two of these assassinations – the Kennedys – and combine them with the attacks on the USA of September 11, 2001.

    Hartwell begins the book by countering the mocking tone that the MSM uses to discount the idea of “conspiracy theories.” One method he uses is rather simple: If the official story is harder to swallow than an alternative theory, then the public has every right to question the official story. Especially when it makes no sense anyway. The idea that a mediocre – or worse – rifleman like Lee Harvey Oswald could actually better the performance of almost every marksman who ever tried to duplicate his alleged feat is hard to swallow. And when you add in the fact that the Warren Commission could never duplicate the condition of the magic bullet, i.e., CE 399, in any of their tests – and actually tried to cover that fact up – well that gives us reason to wonder. He also mentions the recurrent use of a patsy, or what he terms a scapegoat. The labeling of Oswald as an anti-social Marxist helped to compensate and distract from the weakness of the evidentiary case against him. The author also notes that the official investigations often fail to properly address relevant and controversial facts that are necessary to uphold their stories. In the JFK case for instance, an example would be the location of Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting.

    Hartwell also mentions other precedents for government officials lying to the public about acts of state. Two being the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and the 18 1/2-minute gap in the famous Nixon-Haldeman tape three days after the Watergate break-in.

    I am not going to analyze in any depth his discussion of what happened on September 11, 2001. I have read only two books on that subject, plus a few essays on the web. If you can believe it, I have never even read anything by David Ray Griffin. And Griffin is the 9/11 equivalent of Mark Lane. Hartwell lists some of the most common anomalies that the critics of the official story have enumerated: the ignored warnings both domestically and from abroad; the failure of any interceptor jets to get close to either Washington or New York; the acrobatic tight turn taken by Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon: the confluence of war games that morning which tended to confuse radars; the incredibly fast collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by any planes. (I must note in this regard, when Tucker Carlson had scientist Stephen Jones on his show, he showed this collapse. But he edited out the complete fall. All you saw was the beginning of the collapse, and the actual bouncing of the rubble.)

    I cannot make any real judgment about Hartwell’ s work on this case since, as I said, I am in no way an authority on it. And I don’ t feel ashamed in admitting that. One can only thoroughly investigate so many of these scandals. And I feel I have done that with the JFK, MLK, and RFK cases. But it seems to me that Hartwell has hit the highlights and used the work of some of the credible critics e.g. Griffin, Mike Ruppert, Michel Chossudovsky.

    Let me add one last thing about this case. I managed to watch some of the live hearings of the 9/11 Commission. It convinced me that the days of so-called Blue Ribbon Commissions should be officially ended. This was especially obvious during the questioning of Condoleezza Rice, which I thought was actually kind of embarrassing. I later learned that the Executive Director of the Commission, Philip Zelikow, had 1.) Worked on the transition team of George Bush Jr., 2.) Been appointed to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and 3.) Co-written a book with Rice. In fact, after the attacks, Rice had him rewrite the initial report on what the American response should be to the new threat of terrorism. In light of all this, even Warren Commission sycophant Max Holland – who knows Zelikow personally – has declared that Zelikow should not have been the director of that Commission.

    II

    In his discussion of the assassination of President Kennedy, Hartwell first lists the main official findings about three shots and three shells. He then brings in the common questions about this. Namely that some people heard more than four shots, and that the presence of the shells do not prove they were fired that day. He then begins to critique the work of Gerald Posner and his accent on the presumed psychology of Lee Harvey Oswald. Hartwell notes that Posner’ s intent is somehow to denote a motive. He adds that this is “misplaced since motive makes no difference in a criminal conviction.” (p. 73)

    He then shifts the focus and adds that what occurred both directly before and after is quite important. (p. 74) In other words, where was Oswald at the time of the shooting? Hartwell, relying somewhat on the work of noted critic Howard Roffman argues that he probably was not on the sixth floor. He then goes after the Commission’ s star witness in this regard, Howard Brennan. (p. 76) For instance, Brennan once said that he actually saw the fatal shot hit JFK, and that he also saw the assassin stay at the window for three or more seconds after the fatal shot hit. (ibid) Both are dubious since they seem mutually exclusive.

    Hartwell then goes into Oswald’ s alleged movements after the shooting, concentrating on the testimony of policeman Marrion Baker. This is the motorcycle officer who stopped his vehicle and then climbed the stairs in the Texas School Book Depository. He allegedly encountered Oswald at the second floor lunchroom. Hartwell questions the efficacy of the timing of the reconstructions. (p. 77) Hartwell then uses the testimony of Dr. Robert Hunt before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. After studying the photos of the boxes in the so-called sniper’ s nest, he concluded that someone had moved the boxes about two minutes after the shooting. As Hartwell writes, that person could not have been Oswald. (p. 79)

    From here, Hartwell briefly discusses the provenance of the alleged rifle that was supposedly ordered by Oswald. He acutely states that no one at the post office recalled handing the rather large and bulky package to Oswald. (p. 80) And he also notes the problem of the post office box being signed for in Oswald’ s name only. Yet the rifle was ordered in the name of A. Hidell. If Oswald picked up the rifle, he would have had to show that he actually was the bearer of both identities. An event which probably would have gone up to the supervisor and which surely would have been remembered.

    Hartwell then goes on to the highly controversial palm print evidence. He notes that the palm print was taken off a part of he rifle that was only exposed when the rifle was taken apart. Which, as Ian Griggs has shown, was very hard to do. He also asks why did the Dallas Police not match this alleged palm print off the rifle to Oswald’ s on the 22nd. Especially since Oswald had given the police such a print that day. (p. 81) He also asks a pertinent question first posed by the illustrious Sylvia Meagher. How did the FBI later match the palm print taken from the rifle to a palm print taken from a card? Wouldn’ t the first be curved? (p. 82) I should add here, Hartwell mentions in passing the Barr McClellan/Walt Brown story about the matching of a previously unidentified print from the sixth floor to the late Mac Wallace. (p. 85) This was featured during the (quite disappointing) 40th anniversary installment of Nigel Turner’ s The Men Who Killed Kennedy. Since I have taken a lot of time criticizing Reclaiming History, I should note here that Vincent Bugliosi does a creditable job on this issue. He called McClellan’ s fingerprint expert Nathan Darby and told him there was a problem in his forensic methodology. The unidentified print from the sixth floor was a palm print. Yet, the prints Darby had from Wallace were his 1951 fingerprints. He asked Darby if he had developed some new technology to compare the two. Darby pleaded blind innocence. He said he was only given two fingerprints, one from a card and one a latent. He said, “I wasn’ t given any palm print. They were both fingerprints. Of course, you can’ t compare a palm print with a fingerprint.” (Bugliosi, p. 923) Let me add this about the matter: from the moment I first saw him, I never liked Barr McClellan. He was too glib, too fast-talking, too confident and oh so convenient. He arrived out of the woodwork to attract and confuse the masses on the fortieth anniversary.

    Hartwell goes on to raise some familiar questions about the murder of Officer Tippit, also – according to the Warren Commission – allegedly killed by Oswald. He recites the argument about the time factor working against Oswald. He was last seen by his landlady standing outside his rooming house at 1:04. Yet the most credible time placements of the Tippit murder are at around 1:09 or 1:10. The Warren Commission’ s “probative” witness, Helen Markham, said the shooting happened at 1:06, a fact that Commission supporters, like Dale Myers, manage to discount when they defend her. (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 254) Witness T . F. Bowley looked at his watch when he saw Tippit’ s dead body on the street. It said 1:10. (Ibid) The late Larry Harris, a foremost expert on this case, told me that he thought the time of the murder was 1:09. This all makes it hard to believe Oswald could have been involved since the necessary distance traversed by him was about 9/10 of a mile. (Hartwell, pgs. 90-91) He would have had to be running or jogging the whole way. Which no one saw him do. (Meagher, p. 255) The author then goes into the confusing mélange of the ballistics evidence in the case. The bullets could not be matched to the gun, and the cartridges do not match the bullets: the shells were 2 Westerns and 2 Remingtons, while the bullets were 3 Westerns and 1 Remington. And he thankfully brings up the matter of the Oswald wallet found at the scene. (p. 92) Which creates an insurmountable problem for the Commission stalwarts. Because a.) Oswald would have never done this if he was the actual killer, and b.) The official story has Oswald’ s wallet being discovered on the way to the station – while he left another wallet on the dresser at the Paines that morning. Which equals Oswald as the Man with Three Wallets. (See Reclaiming Parkland, First edition, pp. 101-105). This is powerful evidence that Oswald was not at the scene and was framed.

    Using this as a cue, Hartwell then takes up an alternative view of the crime. He mentions the famous testimony of the witnesses who saw a man who resembled Oswald running down an embankment outside the Texas School Book Depository a few minutes after the murder. People like Roger Craig, Helen Forrest, Marvin Robinson, and Richard Carr all said essentially the same thing on this point. (p. 99) This Oswald double could have then been used in the Tippit murder, and then been the man who was seen early, at 1:00, by attendant Butch Burroughs at the Texas Theater. He was then escorted out of the back of the theater and was seen by witness Bernard Haire. (pgs 100-101)

    Hartwell ends this discussion by asking some sensible questions about the Commission’ s story. First, if Oswald was an ideologically motivated killer, why didn’ t he admit it like other assassins e.g. Booth, James Guiteau, and Leon Czolgosz. (p. 101) If he meant to disguise his act why did he have the rifle and handgun shipped to a post office box with his name on it? When he could have purchased the rifle over the counter with cash, no questions asked. If he was planning on killing Kennedy, why is there no credible evidence of him target practicing in advance? How could he have been so sure that no one in the building would see him unwrap the weapon and assemble it? If he had planned the assassination, why didn’ t he wear gloves? Why did he first drive in the taxi past his rooming house, and then rush inside it and leave so quickly? If he really shot both Kennedy and Tippit, why did he then not try and leave Dallas via bus? (pgs 103-104)

    Hartwell concludes that the failure of the Commission to adequately address any of these important issues shows that their purpose was not to solve the crimes but to disseminate a cover story to be in turn picked up by the major media and force fed to the public. (p. 105) He also notes, as Deputy Consul for the House Select Committee on Assassinations Bob Tanenbaum did: the amount of evidence slanting used by the Commission was enormous. In other words, the Commission never selected evidence favorable to Oswald. If the case were as easy as the Commission states, this practice would not have been necessary. (p. 114)

    III

    The final case discussed by Hartwell is the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy in June of 1968. The author begins by outlining what most citizens consider the open and shut case against the convicted gunman Sirhan B. Sirhan: He was standing in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel with a gun amid 73 witnesses. Kennedy was struck down and later died. He then tells us Sirhan was convicted at trial after his lawyers stipulated to the evidence the prosecution presented against him. Hartwell notes this was done to aid in their plea of diminished capacity, which would have been difficult if they outlined a conspiracy. Sirhan was then sentenced to death but had his sentence altered to life in prison by decree of the Supreme Courts of both the United States and California.

    The author begins to chip away at the prosecution’ s case using the autopsy of Dr. Thomas Noguchi. Hartwell shows how the findings of Noguchi contrast significantly with what the best and closest eyewitnesses said happened. The four shots into RFK (one actually went through the top of his jacket) all came from behind and at very close range. Yet no witness said that Sirhan ever got behind Kennedy or that close to him. (p. 119) He also uses the quite credible testimony of hotel maitre d’ Karl Uecker who said he grabbed Sirhan’ s gun hand after the second shot. Therefore how could Sirhan have delivered the others with any degree of accuracy? (ibid)

    Hartwell outlines the pros and cons of the case against security guard Thane Eugene Cesar as the actual assassin. (p. 122) And he later adds that the Los Angeles police treated him way too gently. He then goes to the testimony of Sandra Serrano and Lt. Paul Sharaga. (pgs. 123-124) These two witnesses begin to outline the role of the two accomplices who probably entered the Ambassador that night with Sirhan. And they also begin to outline the role of the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress. This is the woman seen with Sirhan prior to he shooting and who is part of his last memory before the shooting. A memory of drinking coffee with her and then following her out of the room and into the pantry. Properly, Hartwell then sketches the ordeal Serrano was put through at the hands of Lt. Hank Hernandez to make her withdraw her testimony. Lawyer Hartwell notes, this kind of brutal treatment is usually reserved for suspects, not witnesses. He also adds, that sometimes witnesses do misrepresent. But there is usually a discernible motive. There is none with Serrano. (p. 126)

    Hartwell then describes how there were too many bullet holes in the pantry than were possibly emitted by Sirhan’ s eight shot revolver. (p. 128) He even quotes infamous LAPD criminalist DeWayne Wolfer on this point: “It’ s unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling.” (p. 128) He adds that it turned out the LAPD could never clearly link any of the bullets in RFK to Sirhan’ s weapon.

    The author then analyzes four points offered up by critics of the LAPD: 1.) There were more than eight bullets fired, 2.) There was another gunman besides Sirhan 3.) There was a non-shooting accomplice 4.) Sirhan was hypnoprogrammed to do what he did. (p. 130) After giving the pluses and minuses of these issues he decides that the official theory does not hold up, and neither do the arguments of its supporters like Dan Moldea. (pgs 130-140) Finally, he uses the now famous Stanislaw Pruszynksi tape, recorded the night of the murder, as tested by audio technician Phil Van Praag. This tape is powerful evidence for there being too many shots fired that night and for them being too close together. (Click here for more on this.)

    Hartwell produced this book on his own. There are the spelling mistakes, typos and spacing errors to prove it. And as I wrote in part 6 of my review of Reclaiming History, the issues involving the testimony of Wesley Frazier and Marrion Baker in the JFK case are even worse than what he deduces. But these things are easily forgiven since this is not a corporate effort, but a citizen’ s book. A citizen who is greatly bothered by what has happened to his nation. How voting, as proven by Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, cannot be relied upon anymore. (p. 151) How trying to get elected officials to do something about serious government crimes does not work, since there is no upside in it for them. (p. 152) How the rather attractive alternative of moving elsewhere means leaving these troubling issues in America behind. And, as everyone knows, the MSM is no help. He proposes taking advantage of the new media to spread the word to others and the rest of the world. (ibid) It won’ t be easy, but it is necessary. If not we will maintain the system that allows these crimes and they will continue to pollute the body politic. Which, as we see now, is harmful to us all. The evidence for that, as I noted at the start, is all around us.

    When I finished the Afterword to The Assassinations I wrote that, as in Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, after the murder of RFK, those who believed in him and his cause felt like the stone was at the bottom of the hill. And they were alone. Today, we are not. History has caught up with some of the public. They don’ t like what America has become either. In that regard, we need more people like Dean Hartwell. Because if The Assassinations was a pebble thrown into the polluted stream, this book provides another stepping-stone beyond it. And hopefully, one day, a man the stature of Carroll Quigley will arrive to trace the decline from November 1963, to March of 2003, filing out the entire canvas with color and perspective. In order to make the public face the fact that, yes the forces that killed the vibrant progressive energy of the sixties won, but what did they bring us? The answer is: Less than zero. Or as James Joyce once wrote for his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.” Few who were alive in 1963 would argue the fact that the country we live in today does not resemble what we had then. Hartwell’ s effort is that of a true patriot offering an attempt to bridge that gap and explain how it all happened. For the benefit of us all.

  • Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell, American Conspiracies: A Textbook for Alternative History

    Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell, American Conspiracies: A Textbook for Alternative History

    Jesse Ventura in Dealey Plaza
    (CTKA File Photo)

    In my recent review of Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch, I spent a lot of time explaining why the organization of the book destroyed its credibility. The topics it covered were dictated by media coverage rather than a serious study of history. Coming on its heels, just a month later, American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell, rushes right into the breach. Talk about good timing.

    The first three sentences of American Conspiracies set the tone of what will be good in this book that was not good in Aaronovitch: “First of all, let’s talk about what you won’t find in this book. It’s not about how extraterrestrials are abducting human beings, or the Apollo moon landing being a colossal hoax perpetrated by NASA, or that Barack Obama somehow is not a natural-born American citizen. I leave these speculations to others, not that I take them seriously.”

    And on that note we’re off.

    ORGANIZATION

    So how are Ventura and Russell going to explain conspiracies to us? They take 14 separate topics, in order: the Lincoln assassination; the attempt to overthrow FDR; the JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK assassinations; the Watergate scandal (however, not the Woodward version but the Jim Hougan version); Jonestown; the October surprise; the CIA drug connection; the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004; 9/11; Wall Street; and the “secret plans” to end American democracy. As I noted in my Aaronovitch review, these are much closer to the topics that make sense for a political researcher to investigate – note the absence of reference to Princess Diana.

    Each chapter begins with a little box explaining what the situation is, what the official word on it is, and Ventura’s take on the subject, and ends with a short paragraph on what he feels should be done about it. These add to the textbook feel of the work – the only thing missing are discussion questions. And, by and large, the book does a good job of synthesizing the main idea of each topic with solid information. One assumes that a great deal of the research came from Russell, and he gets this across well while keeping Ventura’s distinctive voice throughout.

    As noted, they begin with the Lincoln assassination, which is an acknowledged conspiracy, though seldom written about by political researchers. Their version is an interesting one, based largely on Blood on the Moon by Edward Steers, Jr., but leaves out some of the little details, such as the fact that Mary Todd Lincoln suspected Secretary of War Andrew Stanton’s involvement in the plot to her dying day. (The background for this is quite interesting but left to the reader to investigate. Stanton and Lincoln had prior very public disagreements, and Stanton, after Lincoln’s murder, had screamed at Mrs. Lincoln and ordered her removed from his sight because she was so upset.) Additionally, while there are conspiracists who assert that Jefferson Davis was involved or even the progenitor of the Lincoln assassination, it is not often noted that Davis had been the target of a Union assassination attempt just weeks before. (See James Hall’s article, “The Dahlgren Papers: A Yankee Plot to Kill President Davis,” Civil War History Illustrated No. 30 Nov. 1983). On the other hand, this is perhaps too academic a complaint. There is a real benefit to beginning the book with an established conspiracy to appeal to the general reader, and it might bog things down to get into too much detail too fast. In that mindset, it makes sense to take a more conservative approach.

    This is also true for the chapters on the various assassinations. In general, they rely on the best works (for example, Pepper and Melanson on MLK, Turner & Christian and O’Sullivan – the book, not the documentary – on RFK, and heavily on John Armstrong, Douglass, DiEugenio and Pease, and Russell himself on JFK) in each area. And in each case the chapters serve as solid introductions for their subjects. While some material should perhaps have been left behind (Barsten’s MK-ULTRA thesis in the MLK assassination is a little too out there to be explained in a few paragraphs, although the authors do a creditable job), the material is generally well-handled.

    With respect to new material, there is some new research in the book, mostly concerning Mike Connell and election fraud. Connell was an IT person who worked for Karl Rove. Not only had Connell built websites for George W. and Jeb Bush, but also for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, famous for their poisonous and baseless attacks on John Kerry’s military record. (p. 137) Connell knew the dirty details behind both election-fixing and emails that would implicate Rove and Bush in multiple criminal dealings. In December 2008, three months after a subpoena was issued to Connell to testify about these matters, he died in a plane crash. (p. 140) Others have promoted this story – Mark Crispin Miller talked about it on television and raised the possibility of foul play – but Russell and Ventura did some legwork on this case and the conclusions are in book.

    BACKGROUND

    The best parts of American Conspiracies tend to rely on Ventura’s own background in politics and as a SEAL team member to enhance his credibility in drawing conclusions. This is especially true in the chapter on the CIA drug conspiracy, which draws together a lot of good information and makes some intelligent inferences about it. For example, he discusses the fact that in pure economic terms, drugs make more profit for the U.S. then they do for the countries actually growing and exporting them:

    But even though 90 percent of the world’s heroin is originating in Afghanistan, their share of the proceeds in dollar terms is only 10 percent of that. It’s estimated that more than 80 percent of the profits actually get reaped in the countries where the heroin is consumed, like the U.S. According to the U.N., ‘money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis.’ (p. 122)

    A simple but cogent observation. The book further illustrates:

    “Not including real estate transfers, there’s an estimated inflow of $250 billion a year coming into the country’s banks – which I suppose is welcomed by some as offsetting our $300 billion trade deficit.” (114) The authors also go into a timely history of the Mexican drug cartels and their relationship to the U.S. In 1947, when the CIA was created, the DFS was also created – the Mexican version of the CIA. Since that time, drug traffickers have been protected by the United States. This was clearly described by the late Gary Webb in his seminal book Dark Alliance, but also in several others. One example raised by the book involves the traffickers who murdered DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who were protected by their U.S. connections. (p. 124)

    As with all the chapters, there are certain omissions – to leave out Alfred McCoy from a bibliography in writing about drugs and covert operations is inexplicable.

    DISAGREEMENTS

    I have certain quibbles with the book – the information on the 9/11 attacks is a real mixed bag, including some things that I find to be disinformation. But 9/11 is always a contentious issue and Ventura and Russell do focus on several good points, including the all-important Norman Mineta testimony. However, Ventura talks about the Pentagon missile theories and actually urges people to see Loose Change. Like his television program on 9/11, he also relies heavily on the testimony of Willie Rodriguez, who has been a questionable figure in the movement. On the other hand, he does invoke the lack of military and FAA response, and unlike most critics does so having actually been in the military and seen traffic controllers at work. (p. 143) He also talks about a 2003 memo in which the idea to paint a U2 surveillance plane in U.N. colors to fly over Iraq is floated. If Saddam fired upon it, this could be played up as an attack on a U.N. plane and made the instigator of a war. As Ventura notes, this has certain echoes of the Operation Northwoods documents floated during the Kennedy presidency and turned down by JFK. (p. 185) He also notes, quite rightly, that 10 months prior to 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld had approved major “changes to the Army’s [Continuity of Government] plan.” He correctly identifies this as a “shadow government.” (p. 191) In the bibliography of the 9/11 chapter, one finds only Peter Dale Scott’s excellent book, The Road to 9/11, and the work of David Ray Griffin, which explains much of what is good and bad in his analysis.

    This does point out what is a flaw in the book and in Ventura himself: which is a certain excess of credulity at times. As anyone who has tried to navigate the minefield of political research in general, and 9/11 in particular, one encounters all sorts of bizarre claims and “witnesses” who may be telling no truth, some truth, or the whole truth at various times. It is a weakness of the book that, in having to jump quickly into a topic and then leave it behind for something else, the information tends to be muddled together, good, bad, and questionable, with a certain lack of prioritization. The bibliography shares this trait as well. In his chapter on the Jonestown case, the best work has actually been done in two articles, one by John Judge and the other by Jim Hougan. Hougan is greatly relied upon both in this chapter and the Watergate chapter, and one can find both authors’ work in the endnotes. However, there are only two books listed on Jonesstown, and one is John Marks’ The Search for a Manchurian Candidate, a fine work but with a limited connection to Jonestown.

    Having said all this, one can always find things to argue with in textbooks, and this one remains terrific as an introductory volume. For the dedicated researcher, there are tidbits of new material here and there, but the primary purpose of this book is to serve the uninitiated, and on that score Ventura and Russell park it. The book is readable, fast-paced, and short: well-tailored to today’s public. The hope is, of course, that some of those who read this book will move on to deeper and more complex books, but even if they don’t, American Conspiracies serves them well.

  • Russ Baker, Family of Secrets

    This book has a rather deceptive title. In two ways.

    First, although it says it will be about the Bush family, strictly speaking, it really is not. There are only a few pages about Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush, the man who really started off the whole regime. But further, there is next to nothing on important figures in George’s brood like Neil, Marvin, and especially, Jeb Bush. Which means that the book really examines the careers of two men only: George Bush Sr. and Jr.

    But it’s even more constricted than that. From a careful reading of the volume, the book spends over 40% of its text on just three events in the lives of those two men. In order they are: Senior’s alleged involvement in the JFK case and Watergate; and Junior’s much debated service in the Texas Air National Guard. That’s it. Check for yourself. Think for a moment of all the rather dark and deadly things those two men have been involved with. Its hard to believe that Baker makes short work of the following: the Iran/Contra affair, the elimination of the Sandinistas through lethal means, the October Surprise, Gulf War I, Oliver North’s drug running, the election heists of 2000 and 2004, the incredible intelligence failure that resulted in 9-11, the phony pretenses for Gulf War II, and the 2007 collapse of the American economy. That list is, of course, selective and reductive. But Baker gives all of these matters the once over. In fact, some are not dealt with at all. It is an odd choice.

    Baker would probably say that there have been reams written about the above topics. Which is true. Yet, there are two salient points to be made in that regard. First, one can always do more digging into matters like the above. For the simple reason that they are very large and complex subjects that have yet to be exhausted. One great comparison is what Jim Hougan did with Watergate. By the time he issued Secret Agenda in 1984, there had been scores of books written on the matter. Yet his book made you reconsider the whole affair from Step 1. Secondly, the Bush family role in the above events I listed is certain. It is not a matter of manufacture, conjecture or speculation. As we shall see, that is not the case with two of the three areas that Baker has chosen to concentrate his book on.

    I

    Let us start with what I perceive to be the strength of the book. This would be the discussion of George Bush Jr. and his rather weird and spotty service in the Texas Air National Guard. Baker had written about this subject previously and at length in publications like The Nation. So this is clearly something he had followed through time as the issue gradually mushroomed in importance. The climax of its public debate was the veritable explosion that erupted at CBS in 2004-05. As Baker describes it, Dan Rather and others were dragged over the coals when they used some questionable copied documents to explain the gaps in President Bush’s service in the Guard.

    The problem all began in 1968, after Bush Jr. graduated from Yale. Once out of college, George would lose his student deferment and almost certainly be eligible for a tour in Vietnam. The problem was this: although the Bush clan supported the war in public for political fodder, they secretly understood it was a terrible mistake that was not worth fighting in, much less dying over. So they had to finesse George W. Bush dodging his impending service in Indochina. The clan decided on an exit ticket: W. would join the National Guard.

    Specifically, George would join the 147th Fighter Wing of the Texas Air National Guard. The trouble was that, understandably, many young men in Texas wanted to join this group at the time. It was nicknamed the “Champagne Unit” because many of the offspring of wealth and power joined up to dodge combat in Vietnam (p. 139) In fact, special positions were created to accommodate the many demands for entry. (ibid)

    The Bush story has been that George talked to unit commander Lt. Col. Walter Staudt and Staudt told him positions were open. (p. 138) In reality, strings were pulled by state Speaker of the House, Ben Barnes, to get Bush Jr. into the unit. (p. 139) But, once in, W. got even more special treatment. Usually, to be commissioned a second lieutenant, one has to either attend officer training school, pull 18 prior months of service, or have 2 years of ROTC. Bush did none of these, but he still got the commission. (p. 140) Secondly, the unit paid to train Bush to be a pilot from square A. Which was another exception to procedure. The unit usually either borrowed trained pilots from the Air Force or further trained those who had had some experience. Bush had none. (p. 139)

    And then there were the strange interludes, let us call them vacations. After George Jr. took six weeks of basic training in San Antonio, he got a two-month leave to work on Ed Gurney’s Senate campaign in Florida. (p. 140) Gurney’s campaign was being run by a friend of Bush Sr. named Jimmy Allison. It was after this episode that Bush Jr. took his first training lessons, on both a Cessna and a simulator, in Valdosta, Georgia. That took about a year. (p. 141) He then returned to the Houston area and Ellington Field for the “more daunting task of learning to fly a real fighter jet.” (ibid)

    In the summer of 1970, having completed his jet pilot training, his full-time obligation now transformed to a part-time status, usually referred to as a “weekend warrior”. But after this, in early 1972, something began to go wrong with Bush’s flying career. For some reason that has never been fully explained, he was taken out of the cockpit and placed in a two-pilot training plane. (p. 148) From which he had already graduated. Sort of like going back to trainer wheels after one has learned to ride a bicycle. On these regressive two-seater flights, his friend Jim Bath sometimes accompanied him. It didn’t seem to work. Because back in the F-102, he needed three passes before he made a landing. In fact, he had become such a liability in the air that, according to the author, the last documented record of him flying alone is April 16, 1972. (ibid) He then left both the unit and the state. The problem is he had not fulfilled his time obligation yet. This now begins the second stage of murkiness to the Bush National Guard saga: in addition to not flying again, did he or did he not fulfill the rest of his service obligation?

    The latter question is partly covered up by another political campaign. George Jr. said he now was going to work on another Allison managed enterprise. This one was the senate run of Red Blount in Alabama. So George Jr. requested a transfer to the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance unit in Montgomery at Dannelly Field. The question then became: Did Bush Jr. then fulfill his service at Dannelly? Well, the former base commander said the following: “I’m dead certain he didn’t show up.” (p. 150) And in fact, as Baker writes, “no credible records or eyewitnesses ever emerged to back” his claim of fulfilling his weekend service requirement in Alabama. (ibid) In fact, former members of the Dannelly unit ran ads offering monetary rewards in a Guard periodical to anyone who had any evidence that George Jr., had fulfilled his service. No one replied to the ads. (ibid) But Baker did find a number of witnesses who testified to Bush being a rather boisterous drunk during the Blount campaign, and two who said he combined his alcohol intake with illicit drugs. (p. 151)

    And this angle perhaps links to why George had to get out of flying, and also the 147th. According to a witness who talked to Jerry Killian, Bush’s wing commander, Bush was getting the jitters about flying. Killian said he “was having trouble landing, and that possibly there was a drinking problem involved.” (ibid)

    After Blount’s loss in November of 1972, George Jr. packed his bags and returned to Texas. But he did not return to Ellington as he was supposed to do so. He first went to Washington DC and then to Florida for the holidays. He then returned to Dannelly in Alabama for a routine x-ray, except, oddly, it was done by a dentist. (p. 153) He also called a former female Blount worker and invited her to dinner. Over dinner, he told her he was there for guard training. As Baker notes, this sure sounds like George Jr. was laying in a future CYA trail to disguise the facts that a.) he had not served in Alabama and b.) he was not returning to Ellington.

    Junior now went back to Texas to try to allegedly fulfill his service requirement. Except his superiors did not want him back. (p. 154) In fact, there is no record of him serving back at Ellington after Alabama. Further, no paperwork for alternative service in Alabama was ever sent to Ellington. (p. 156) As Baker logically deduces, “Just about all the evidence suggests that George W. Bush went AWOL from National Guard duty in May 1972 and never returned, thus skipping out on two years of a six-year military obligation.” (ibid) Clearly, someone was pulling strings for Bush Jr. As Texas reporter Jim Moore wrote, if Guardsmen missed drills or were late they were hunted down and arrested. If they missed a second exercise you could be made eligible for the draft. (p. 157) Who was doing the pulling for W.? Well, at around this time, George Bush Sr. was becoming head of the Republican National Committee.

    From the beginning of Junior’s political career his handlers knew this National Guard episode was going to be a problem. When Moore first questioned W. about it during a debate for the Texas governorship in 1994, he was later accosted by campaign advisers Karen Hughes and Karl Rove. (pgs. 407-08) They wanted to make it clear that these questions were somehow out of bounds. But as Bush’s career advanced along to the point that he was now considering running for president, the issue would not go away. And it appears that when the presidency got on their radar screens, the Bush team fiddled with the files.

    According to Guard manager Bill Burkett, this began in 1997. After a call from a Bush staffer, he saw some Guardsman in a room with Bush’s file. It was being pilfered. One of the documents discarded was a ‘counseling statement’. This explained why George was being grounded and the changes in assignment, slot, and his wages. (p. 411) Burkett first made these claims at that time. He then wrote letters to state legislators. He then phoned Bush adviser Dan Bartlett. (ibid) Burkett was then sent to Panama in 1998. He got sick on his way back and had problems getting his medical benefits. People who tried to help him in the Guard were fired.

    As Baker summarizes it, whatever one thinks of Burkett, there are documents missing from Bush’s Guard file that should be there. For instance, on how Texas handled his transfer to Alabama, and also a panel report that should have been written up after Bush stopped flying. (p. 412) Further, “microfilm containing military pay records for hundreds of Guardsmen, including Bush, was irreversibly damaged”. (ibid) This also occurred in 1997, the year when Burkett’s reported pilfering incident allegedly happened.

    What is so utterly fascinating about this whole sorry tale is that no MSM source did any real reporting on it until late May of 2000. This was when W. had more or less vanquished the GOP field and was closing in on the presidential nomination. Only then did reporter Walter Robinson of the Boston Globe break a story , which included interviews with Bush’s former commanders who did not recall seeing him in Alabama or Texas in 1972 or ’73. (ibid)

    Mickey Herskowitz made this saga even more interesting. Herskowitz was a longtime Texas sportswriter who also co-wrote several biographies of celebrities e.g. John Connally and Mickey Mantle. The writer knew George Bush Sr. and he suggested that he co-write a book with his son in time for the 2000 presidential campaign. Karl Rove OK’d the project and W. said he would do it if he didn’t have to work too hard. He also wanted to know how much money was in it. (p. 420) But W. also worried if there was enough material there for a book since he thought he had not really accomplished all that much. Therefore he felt it might be a good idea to focus on his policy objectives. When Herksowitz asked what those would be, W. replied, “Ask Karl.” (ibid)

    The pair had about twenty meetings about the book. Herskowitz said that although Bush was reserved about his National Guard service, he did say some interesting things. The writer asked him what he did about his obligation once he went to Alabama and served on the Blount campaign. Bush replied, “Nothing. I was excused.” (p. 420) This may or may not be true. But it contradicted the cover story that was already out there, and also later cover stories to come. Bush also told the author that he never flew a plane again after he left the Texas Guard in 1972, either military or civilian.

    There was one other tantalizing thing that W. told Herskowitz. He said that his father “had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and he wasted it … If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed…” (p. 423)

    This is a very important statement of course. For the attacks of 9-11 gave W. the opportunity to invade Iraq. And to complete the job that he thought his father had not. Even if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11! That is how predisposed W. was on this issue before the 2000 campaign even began. And the fact that he had dodged his military service in Vietnam, and then gone AWOL in the Air National Guard personally made it easy for him to commit tens of thousands of young men to an awful war, since he had never come close to fighting in one. Therefore, with the terrible war in Iraq as a backdrop, Bush Jr. and his Guard service should have loomed large in the debate over sending young men into a questionable war. That the national media never pursued this angle with any relish or consistency tells us all we need to know about the state of the MSM at that time. Especially since W. was now sending National Guard troops to serve in Iraq. (p. 440)

    In 2004, right before the re-election campaign, things did heat up. Burkett appeared on Hardball and made his accusation about seeing Bush aides clean up the Guard records. This story had some bounce, as it later appeared on the CBS News and in the New York Times. (p. 447) Then two things happened to suck any helium left out of the balloon.

    First John Kerry, and his campaign manager Bob Shrum, made one of the biggest miscalculations in the history of presidential races. Rather than attacking the first four years of W.’s presidency, they decided to center Kerry’s nominating convention, and a large part of his early campaign, on his service in Vietnam. Baker properly scores them for this. It was a misguided strategy, especially in light of the fact that there was so much in the Bush presidency to go after. But we all know what made it worse. Karl Rove created the whole phony Swift Boat Veterans for Truth mirage. And, unchallenged at first by the Kerry campaign and the press, this Rove manufacture was allowed to disseminate through rightwing outlets like Fox News.

    The second event that helped bury the issue was the Dan Rather-Mary Mapes-CBS News bloodbath. Most of us know this story by now. Burkett got hold of some documents about George’s service in the Texas Guard. One seemed to depict a transfer from Killian due to George’s inability to meet standard on his pilot training, and his failure to get a physical. (p. 456) This, and 3-4 other documents whetted Mapes’, Rather’s 60 Minutes producer, appetite. She wanted to use the documents for a 60 Minutes segment on the issue.

    There were two problems with this. First, Burkett got them from a source who did not want his name divulged. In fact, this mysterious source did not even turn them over to Burkett. A go-between named ‘Lucy Ramirez’ did so. Consequently, the provenance of the documents was under a cloud. Second, the documents themselves were copies. Further, Mapes had Burkett fax them to CBS in New York. (p. 457) This resulted in further distortion of the lettering on the papers.

    Everyone knows what happened next. Via what appeared to be some GOP operatives who just happened to view the show, the Bush allies on the Internet began to question whether the documents were real or fakes. This created a tempest in the midst of an election campaign i.e. the whole phony issue of whether or not the “liberal media” was out to get a sitting GOP president. CBS management did a bad job in meeting this challenge. They eventually gave in and authorized an “independent panel”. Which, of course, was not really independent. Their job was to essentially get rid of or demote everyone involved with the program. How bad was this panel? They never even investigated or ruled on whether the documents were actually genuine.

    If Bush Jr. had planned it all in advance, it could not have turned out better for him. Through the Swift Boat mirage, his military service backfired on Kerry. And because of the Web attack, Bill Burkett, and the whole Texas Guard issue was taken out like a machete had cut it away.

    Beyond any doubt, this is the high point of the book. Baker combines some original reporting with work by people like Moore and Mapes to put together a good, juicy, and factually solid summary of this whole sorry episode. What it all says about W., and even worse, the national media, seems to me to be of the utmost importance and interest. The former abdicated his responsibility to the Guard. And the latter abdicated its responsibility to the public.

    II

    If the rest of Family of Secrets was as sound as this section, the book would have been a good and valuable effort. In my view, such is not the case. In fact, it’s not even close. And the bad part is that the rest of the book really means upwards of 90% of it. Baker’s reporting on Bush Sr. does not reveal anywhere near the amount of factual data, reliable testimony, logical inference, and investigative reporting that he does on the Texas Guard story. And since, as I note above, these other areas take up much more space than this first story, the overall effort suffers mightily for that.

    A clear objective of the book is to counter and modify the work of Joseph McBride for the Nation. In two essays done in 1988, McBride unearthed documents and interviews that indicated that Bush Sr. was involved in providing cover for Cuban exiles for the CIA. McBride did not go any further than what the documents indicated. He came to the conclusion that Bush’s actual CIA status-whether he was an agent or asset– could not be really evaluated. But it looked like he was a businessman used as an asset. One of the main objectives of Baker’s book is to somehow show that Bush Sr. was much more than just a CIA asset at the time of the Bay of Pigs. In fact, Baker tries to insinuate that Bush Sr. was a CIA officer from the fifties onward. In fact, his chapter on Bush Sr. becoming CIA chief in the mid-seventies makes this objective clear. It is entitled “In From the Cold”.

    Generally speaking the argument is made through three steps: 1.) Bush’s alleged service as an agent in the fifties 2.) His alleged role in the JFK case, and 3.) His alleged role in the Watergate effort to bring down President Nixon.

    I cannot do any better than Seamus Coogan did in his brief discussion of the import of the 1988 McBride articles. (Click here to view his essay.) The relatively brief McBride articles are also reprinted on pages 371-78 of Mark Lane’s book Plausible Denial. McBride does not pass judgment on what Bush actually was up to in the Agency. But he did interview a trusted source who said Bush had probably helped with the Bay of Pigs. Which would make sense. For as Seamus noted, Bush’s oil company operated off of Cay Sal island, about 40 miles off the coast of Cuba.

    Now, inexplicably, Baker writes that the McBride articles elicited a collective yawn from the media at the time of publication. (p. 11) Not really so. As McBride notes in his second piece, his story “received wide coverage in the media.” The Bush team’s initial denials, and the CIA’s break with tradition to issue a formal reply were extraordinary. It was made worse when, in a dumb stroke, the Agency tried to say the document actually referred to a different George Bush. McBride tracked down this second George Bush, who did work for the CIA at the time. From the interview, it is very hard to believe the memo from J. Edgar Hoover, warning of a possible exile attempt to attack Cuba in the wake of JFK’s death, referred to him. (Lane, pgs. 376-78) All this mucking about created a buzz in the press. Especially considering the fact that, back then, there was no Internet to speak of at all. But I think Baker wants to characterize it as much less than it was in order to somehow portray himself as a pioneer in uncovering the long ignored clandestine career of Bush Sr. In other words, McBride’s work was the tip of the iceberg and it greatly understated who Bush Sr. was and what his ties to the Agency really were. It took Baker to reveal it. Let us evaluate his case for the long withheld clandestine career of George Bush Sr.

    He begins his excavation on page 12. He says that researcher Jerry Shinley has found a document that places Bush’s service with the CIA back into the early fifties. The problem is that the phrasing in this document is quite ambiguous. It says that through a Mr. Gale Allen the CIA had learned in 1975 that Bush had knowledge of a terminated project dealing with proprietary commercial projects in Europe. Bush learned of them through CIA officer Tom Devine. Now, the fact that Devine told his sometime oil business partner about a since deceased CIA project does not mean that Bush Sr. was in the CIA. In the memorandum’s terms, at least as Baker presents it, the wording suggests what I just wrote: Bush had acquired the knowledge through Devine. Another problem is that Bush’s commercial projects were not in Europe, but in America and the Caribbean. So I got the feeling that, unlike with the Air Guard story, the author was stretching his data thin.

    That impression was strengthened when I discovered that, Baker was relying largely on one source for the rest of his information about Bush and the CIA prior to the Bay of Pigs. That source was the same one that John Hankey used in an online discussion with me, namely Joseph Trento’s 2005 book entitled Prelude to Terror. Let me explain why this creates a problem.

    Trento is a longtime writer on intelligence matters. In fact, he figures importantly in Lane’s Plausible Denial. But it’s the way he figures in that book that should have given Baker and Hankey pause. Trento is not an intelligence writer in the way that say Jim Hougan is. Hougan is a digger, a man who does not accept the world of intelligence by its surface measures or by what its maestros tell him. And it’s that skepticism that makes him a trusted and valuable source.

    Trento is not a digger. And he trusts what most of his sources tell him. To the point that sometimes he just writes their declarations out in sentence form. A good example of this would be his previous 2001 book, The Secret History of the CIA. Which, to put it mildly, did not live up to its title. Since two of Trento’s most trusted sources were CIA operators like James Angleton and Robert Crowley, the book has a definite spin to it. For example, in spite of much contrary evidence, it says that it was not Henry Cabot Lodge who spawned the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, but President Kennedy. (Trento, p. 252) Trento, listening unswervingly to Angleton, characterizes Lee and Marina Oswald as Russian agents, and the Kennedy assassination as a KGB plot. (pgs. 258ff) Trento mentions the fact that George DeMohrenschildt said he had been told by the CIA to contact Oswald. But Trento, quoting Angleton writes, “Angleton, however, maintained that DeMohrenschildt worked for the KGB and that he was the Oswalds’ control officer.” (ibid, p. 258) He also adds that DeMohrenschildt took his own life in 1983, when in fact he died mysteriously in 1977. (ibid) Angleton tells Trento that Oswald’s cavorting around with Cubans in New Orleans was a KGB charade to blame the assassination on Cuba and not Russia. (ibid, p. 260)

    I could go on and on in this vein but let me just add this: Trento tells us that another of his sources, William R. Corson, was dispatched to Dallas by President Johnson to begin his own investigation of the case. (Trento, p. 267) And that Corson ended up working for the Warren Commission. Corson told Trento that Cuban DGI agents convinced Jack Ruby to kill Oswald. (ibid) Need I say that this last is right out of a Gus Russo disinformation script. And for the same reason. Just as Russo is ‘oh so trusting’ of his CIA sources, so is Trento.

    But what makes this last bit even more interesting is that of his three major sources, Corson is probably the most trustworthy. Corson was a military intelligence officer who served in Vietnam and wrote a highly critical book on US involvement in that struggle. But part of the problem is that Corson died in 2000. The two Trento books under discussion were both published afterwards. So whatever corrective influence Corson could have had on these last two books was probably weakened.

    In spite of all the compromising elements I have listed, its from Trento’s Prelude to Terror that Baker gets the large part of the rest of his information about George Bush and his previously secret ties to the CIA. In light of all I have outlined above, here is a question that Baker should have asked himself: “If this information about George Bush is true and viable, then why didn’t Trento use it in his previous book? After all, it was titled The Secret History of the CIA. Wouldn’t George Bush be part of that?”

    What makes this even worse is that in the area of Prelude to Terror where the early CIA employment of Bush is discussed, virtually every endnote is to an interview with a CIA officer. (See Prelude to Terror, pgs. 362-64) In other words, it’s all anecdotal. But furthering my original point, these interviews were almost all done many years ago. So why didn’t Trento use them in the previous book? It doesn’t help matters that almost all these interview subjects are now dead, so they can’t be cross-checked. Why should they be? Consider this: “It was in the late 1950’s that the covert operations culture called upon George H. W. Bush’s talents. Bush was at first a tiny part of Operation Mongoose, the CIA’s code name for their anti-Castro operations.” (ibid, p. 16) Baker didn’t seem to notice that the CIA could not have first called on Bush in the late 50’s to be part of Mongoose because Mongoose did not begin until 1962.

    Finally, let me add one last word about why the use of this book seems suspect to me. The general message of Trento’s tome is that the use of private intelligence networks, set up by people like Ted Shackley, has led to our present problems in places like Afghanistan. (ibid, pgs. 316-17). The book blames some of this on George Bush Sr. because of his well-known ties to the Saudi Arabian monarchy. It is also highly critical of this network’s Saudi ties to Pakistan and the death of President Zia. In fact, it blames the Saudis inability to keep control of Pakistan’s atomic weapons quest as the reason why the quest became Islamicized, that is, anti-Israel in intent. Who is a major source for Trento’s view of Bush and the Saudis in all this: Angleton’s scribe Edward Epstein. (See p. 324) I should note that one of Angleton’s later responsibilities in the CIA was supervising the Israeli desk and interfacing with Mossad.

    Baker writes not a word of caution, qualification, or warning about any of the above. That’s how much he wants to make Bush Sr. a longtime CIA operator. And the drive does not stop there. Not by any means.

    III

    As most commentators on the life of George Bush Sr. acknowledge, by the early sixties, he was trying to transition out of his previous petroleum business life style. He wanted to get into national politics-a goal at which he later succeeded in a big way. So in 1963 he was living in Houston and became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. As such he was supporting Barry Goldwater for president. He also decided to run for the senate against liberal Democratic incumbent Ralph Yarborough. An important point to enumerate here, as Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin do in George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, is this: Bush was in on the beginning of the revival of the GOP in the south. And, unlike Dwight Eisenhower’s GOP version, it was a particularly virulent strain of the GOP. One that would eventually and naturally evolve into the Newt Gingrich slash and burn version, whose intent would be to essentially raze the New Deal.

    According to Tarpley, Bush had run hard for the county office in 1962, with his wife in tow. They went from meeting to meeting telling listeners that there had to be a viable two party system in Texas. It was from this county position that Bush decided to scaffold his run against Yarborough. He announced his candidacy on September 10, 1963. He would have to win a primary first before he took on the populist Yarborough.

    Just about all the above is missing from Baker’s treatment of Bush’s first senatorial run. To Baker, all this rather interesting drama takes a back seat to what he perceives as the real and hidden importance in that run: George Bush’s role as a covert CIA operative in the killing of John F. Kennedy. In fact, Baker devotes more pages to this subject than any other. (About 90 of them.) He begins his Chapter 4 on a rather unusual note, one that will establish his creeping solipsistic view. He actually implies that Bush became chair of the Harris country party not for the above stated political ends. Oh no. He did it so he could travel all over Texas. Why? Because “Bush’s political work, like his oil work, may have been a cover for intelligence activities.” (Baker, p. 49 By the way, the supposition about his oil work being a cover is largely from Trento.)

    A few pages later, on page 52, Baker introduces what will clearly be the main entrée for his theory of Bush the covert operator in the Kennedy hit. This is the Parrott memorandum. It is to Baker what the above-mentioned Hoover memorandum about Cuban exiles was to John Hankey in his film JFK 2. That is, Baker is going to drag every single piece of nuanced meaning he possibly can out of it. If the Parrott memo were a cow, Baker would have worked every last drop of not just milk–but blood, water, and tissue from it. To the point that someone would have had to kill the cow to put it out of its misery.

    To provide the background: on 11/22/63, George H. W. Bush called the FBI. He said that he had heard in recent weeks that a member of the Young Republicans named James Parrott had been talking about killing Kennedy when he arrived in Houston. The FBI characterized Parrot as rightwing, a quasi-Birchite, a student at University of Houston, and active in politics in the area. Further, that a check of Secret Service indices revealed that they had a report that Parrott had threatened to kill Kennedy in 1961. The FBI interviewed Parrott’s mother and then Parrott himself. They found out that Parrott had been discharged from the Air Force for mental reasons in 1959. Parrott said that he had been in the company of another Republican activist at the time of the shootings. Bush at first denied making the call, and then he said he did not recall making it. (See Tarpley, Chapter 8b.)

    In light of the above basic facts, let us watch what Baker does with this. First of all, if you were a covert CIA operator in on the Kennedy plot, would you announce in advance that you would be in Dallas to give a speech on the evening of 11/21? Further, would you put that announcement in the newspapers? Well, that is what Bush did in the Dallas Morning News on 11/20.

    At the actual time of the assassination, Bush was in Tyler, Texas. The author says he made the FBI call about Parrott to establish an alibi. This makes no sense. Why? Because Bush already had an alibi. As Kitty Kelley established, the vice-president of the Kiwanis Club-a man named Aubrey Irby-was with Bush at the time of Kennedy’s murder. Along with about a hundred other people. For Bush was about to give a luncheon speech at the Blackstone Hotel. He had just started when Irby told him what had happened. Bush called off the speech. (Baker, p. 54) Question for the author: With about 101 witnesses, why would you need a phone call to establish your alibi?

    The author then writes that Bush told the FBI he would be in Dallas later on the 22nd, and that he would be staying at the Sheraton that night. Baker finds it suspicious that he did not stay the night as he said he was going to. Or as Baker writes in his full Inspector Javert-or John Hankey-mode: “Why state that he expected to spend the night at the Dallas Sheraton if he was not planning to stay?” (p. 59) Well Russ, maybe he was planning to. But because he later realized that Dallas would not be a real good place to campaign in that night, he changed his mind. I mean don’t you think the populace was mentally preoccupied?

    What Baker does with the figure of Parrott is just as odd. As Tarpley wrote, the man had been discharged from the Air Force for psychiatric reasons. He was from the rabid right in Texas, which is pretty rabid. And the Secret Service had a source that said he had made a threat against Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. Baker soft pedals all this to the max. He tries to make Parrott into a sweet misunderstood lad who Bush somehow magically picked out to provide him an alibi he didn’t need. I could find no mention in Baker of the previous Secret Service file threat by Parrott which Tarpley mentions. And because that is not here, an important part of the story get jumbled.

    In Bush’s report to the Bureau, he mentioned a man named Keary Reynolds as someone who may have told him about Parrott. From Parrott and his mother, Baker says that Reynolds actually came to Parrott’s house to ask him to paint some signs for the GOP campaign. So this now becomes Reynolds giving Parrott an alibi. (Which, like Bush, he did not need. Because, as I wrote above, he had been with another Republican activist.)

    Baker then interviews Reynolds. Reynolds does not recall making the paint job offer or visiting the Parrot house. (pgs. 61-63) He says he vaguely recalled the name because a young man had come around HQ previously and someone told him that he had threatened JFK. He also recalled escorting Parrott to the Secret Service office on 11/22 because of that. So what Reynolds does is back up the Secret Service having a threat file on Parrott. He also seems to back up Bush hearing about this reactionary around HQ. Finally, he seems to undermine the whole “visit to Parrott’s house to offer a job” thesis. Reynolds says he was never at the Parrott home. Parrott and his mom may have fibbed about that to conceal the fact that the Secret Service called him in that day because of his past history. And also perhaps because of the Bush phone call.

    But Baker is still not done. Barbara Bush is apparently part of the plot, or at least the cover up. Barbara Bush wrote a note about her activities on 11/22/63. Addressed just generally to members of her family, it talks about her being at a beauty parlor when she heard the news on the radio of Kennedy being shot. (Baker, pgs. 53-54) Again, Baker gives the letter the Javert-Hankey going over. First, he asks where was George? Russ, Kitty Kelley already established where George was. Did you expect him to be at the hairdresser’s with his wife during a primary campaign? Back then, guys used combs and Brylcreem. Baker then asks why the letter had not surfaced earlier. Maybe because this was Barbara’s first book of personal memoirs? As far as I can see, that was the case. Barbara Bush did write one book previously called Millie’s Book, but that was really a children’s book about the White House, wryly written from the point of view of her dog. Baker/Hankey then asks for the original, which he says he cannot get since Bush and his wife would not talk to him for the book. I wonder why.

    What I think Baker is getting at-and he’s always getting at something or other– is this: Somehow Barbara faked this letter years later to establish another alibi. But again, for who? Her husband already had one. (I really hope Baker does not mean for herself.) Further, back in 1994 when her book was published, who harbored any suspicions about Bush Sr. and the JFK case? Hankey and Baker were years off.

    The rest of this overlong JFK section is, for me, even worse than the above. It basically amounts to what I scored Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann for in their two bad books: guilt by name association. A friend of the Bushes was letting them use their plane during the campaign. I think Baker means us to believe that this was not a friendly gesture between friends: Mr. Zeppa was really an accessory to the plot as he squired Bush around. Don’t ask me how or why. Jack Crichton was a pal of Bush’s in the Texas GOP. But Crichton, in turn, was a friend of Deputy Police Chief Lumpkin who was driving the pilot car in Kennedy’s motorcade. What that means is never made clear. But Baker also brings up the fact that Crichton provided a translator for Marina Oswald who wrongly worded her Russian phrases. What Baker leaves out is that Marina had a few translators, and they were all questionable.

    In spite of the speciousness of the above, Baker caps it off with Jack Ruby’s famous speech in an empty courtroom about people in “very high positions” putting him in the place he was in after his conviction for murder. (p. 118) I actually think Baker wants to imply that Ruby was referring to Bush.

    If he was doing that, all I can say is, Baker has as much unearned chutzpah as John Hankey. And in regards to the JFK case, he also has about as much balance and judgment as his soul brother does. Let us note just how misguided the guy is. For the sake of argument, let us grant him one of his premises in regards to the Parrott episode: That it was a charade meant to divert attention. (And with all I pointed out above, that is a very generous grant of credit.) Here’s my question: What would be the point of a diversion if both Bush and Parrott had credible alibis? Which they did. This is what the author says: “Poppy Bush was willing to divert the investigative resources of the FBI on one of the busiest days in its history.” (p. 65) When I read that I had a Hankeyian moment: I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Can Mr. Investigative Journalist Russ Baker really be this ignorant about the FBI and the Kennedy murder? As Tony Summers discovered long ago, J. Edgar Hoover was “working” on the Kennedy case from the racetrack the next day. (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 315) As everyone except perhaps Baker knows, Hoover had closed the case against Oswald within about 2-4 hours. (Vanity Fair, 12/94, p. 90) He did so for many reasons, including the strong possibility that Oswald was an FBI informant. So the fix was in almost immediately. And it never let up. The idea that somehow Hoover was actually going to investigate 1.) Who Oswald really was, and 2.) What the true circumstances of the murder were is a preposterous tenet. But that is somehow what Baker is proposing: the Parrott episode somehow upset Hoover’s apple cart.

    Concerning J. Edgar Hoover and the JFK case, Baker is only slightly less silly than John Hankey.

    IV

    As was established in The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, from their days in the oil business in Texas, Bush Sr. knew George “the Baron” DeMohrenschildt. This was probably because the Baron partnered an oil investment firm with Eddie Hooker. (Baker, p. 75) Hooker had been Bush’s roommate at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. (ibid, p. 72) And they had stayed friends through the years.

    After giving a brief but serviceable overview of the Baron and his brother Dimitri, plus the development of the White Russian community in Dallas, the author begins to describe why the Baron was in Haiti at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. According to Baker, it was only the Baron’s distance from Dallas at the time of the murder that allowed his actions to escape the purview of the Warren Commission. (p. 113) Again, this shows how shallow Baker is on his view of the Kennedy case. Can he really be serious? Who the heck did not escape the purview of the Warren Commission? You can make a pretty good list of all those they had myopia about. In addition to DeMohrenschildt, there was Ruth and Michael Paine, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, Kerry Thornley, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Sylvia Duran, and even Sylvia Odio (who the Commission never took seriously). And that’s just those dealing with Oswald’s direct associations. The Commission was a set-up from the start. And it was meant to be so. Whether DeMohrenschildt was in Haiti or not.

    He then compounds the above with this thundering truism: “The bottom line is that the Warren Commission did not assign a seasoned criminal investigator to figure out DeMohrenshildt’s relationship with Oswald and his larger circle of connections.” (p. 127) Oh really Russ? Maybe Baker doesn’t know that the Commission had no private ‘seasoned criminal investigators’ on their staff. They relied on the FBI, CIA and Secret Service. Who, as most informed observers realize, were covering things up. Baker didn’t know this? Maybe that’s why they publish him in the New York Times.

    The author found out the real reason that DeMohrenschildt was able to escape scrutiny. It wasn’t actually because of the above. It was the blinding obfuscation of the sisal plant. Hold on a moment. Let me explain this Bakeresque idiom. See, once DeMohrenschildt handed off Oswald to the Paines, he left Texas for Haiti. Before departing he and his partner had a couple of meetings with government agents i.e. the CIA and Army intelligence. He and his business partner Clemard Charles were then paid almost $300,000 by the Haitian government for geologic testing and a prospective sisal plantation. There has always been a question about whether or not this money was really a disguised reward for his mission with Oswald.

    As far as I can see, Baker ignores the money angle. He then says that the sisal proposal was a cover to disguise what DeMohrenschildt was really doing. (pgs. 104-105) I am assuming Baker means what he already did with Oswald. But here’s my question: Who was the sisal motif supposed to fool? Critics of the Commission have always been suspicious of the Baron and his Haiti payoff. The money may have been for his Oswald duties, or it may have been for a role in a later coup against the Duvaliers in Haiti. Which attempt did take place, and Charles was jailed for his perceived role in it. But the point is, what did Baker think was going to be discussed and put on paper before the two left? Did he really think the CIA or Army intelligence was going to write that the Baron was now coming off his clandestine assignment with the future patsy in the upcoming JFK murder? Or that the interviewers were going to outline the upcoming overthrow attempt? These kinds of thing do not get written about in memoranda.

    About 140 pages later, the DeMohrenschildt story gets picked up again. This time it’s in the midst of the hurricane created by the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, and the formation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations to reopen the JFK case. In September of 1976, the Baron wrote a short letter to the new CIA Director, George Bush. (p. 268) In it the Baron described the painful situation he now found himself in: he said his phone was bugged, he was being followed, and the FBI would not help him. He thanked his old acquaintance and asked him if he could do something to help.

    If anything, the Baron was underestimating his drastic situation. He did not describe two other elements. First, the psychological treatments he was getting, actually electroshock. This may have been from the loss of his daughter three years hence; or, as Jim Marrs has written, a mysterious doctor may have inflicted it on him. (Baker, p. 271) Secondly, the weird figure of Willem Oltmans was pursuing him, trying to get him to “confess” to his role in the Kennedy murder.

    Oltmans was a Dutch journalist who knew DeMohrenschildt from a few years back– 1968 to be exact. (HSCA testimony of Oltmans, p. 10) Just precisely what he was up to, or why he pursued George insistently over the years, these have never really been explained. But its interesting that after George suddenly died on 3/29/77-allegedly a suicide-Oltmans began to spread the news that the Baron had confessed to him before he supposedly took his life. It was a bizarre plot that involved Russian KGB agents with Texas oilmen. But, according to Oltmans, the Baron himself was also involved and Oswald had acted on his instructions in this plot. (ibid, p. 28). Oltmans began his campaign to tell the world of this right after his former friend died. He testified before the HSCA in closed session on April 1, 1977. When one reads this deposition you will note that the longer Oltmans talks, the less Deputy Counsel Bob Tanenbaum believes him.

    At around this time, reporter Jerry Policoff of New Times met with Oltmans in New York. Policoff had secured notes DeMohrenschildt had made while working on a manuscript left with his lawyer. The notes expressed his considerable fear of Oltmans and the reason he had fled from him in Amsterdam. He felt the journalist was trying to drug him in order to get him to say things he did not want to say. He also thought Oltmans was bisexual and was making a homosexual pass at him. Oltmans had heard that Jerry had secured the notes and got in touch with him to meet. Oltmans reacted to the notes by saying they were forgeries. Policoff said he was confident they were genuine. Oltmans then made some thinly disguised threats on his health. Policoff left. Oltmans’ behavior left Policoff with the strong suspicion he was some kind of intelligence asset. (Communication with Policoff, 6/24/10)

    Yet Oltmans was only one side of a pincers movement. Once George ran away from Amsterdam to escape him, Edward Epstein awaited him in the USA. And he promised the Baron thousands of dollars to just sit and talk with him about Oswald. In fact, Epstein was the last person to see him before DeMohrenschildt died. On the morning of his death, he had been subpoenaed by the HSCA. Epstein wanted to talk to George since he had been working on a biography of Oswald for Reader’s Digest. Epstein’s unofficial adviser was James Angleton. The book that derived from this effort, Legend, insinuates that the Baron was a KGB control agent for Oswald. The reader should note here the rough parallel with what Oltmans eventually was selling.

    Bush made two replies to the 9/76 missive by the Baron. One was to his staff, which had forwarded the letter to him. These are rough bullet notes saying the following: that he did know DeMohrenschildt, that the Baron got involved with dealings in Haiti, that his name was prominent in the Oswald affair, that the Baron knew Oswald prior to the JFK murder, at one time DeMohrenschildt had money, Bush had not heard from him in years, and he was not sure what his role was in the JFK matter. (p. 267)

    On the whole this is accurate. But Baker takes issue with the last two points. Concerning the first, he says that Bush was in contact with the oil geologist in 1971, and that DeMohrenschildt had written Bush a note when he became GOP County Chair in 1973. Bush may or may not have gotten that note. If he did not, he had not heard from him in about six years. Concerning the last, if Bush was not in on the JFK plot, then in 1976, that was a quite defensible stance.

    Bush wrote the Baron a brief letter back saying he sympathized with his situation. But although there was media attention to his case, he could not find any official interest right then. He then said he wished he could do more, and then signed off. Considering the fact that Epstein and Oltmans were likely working off the books for Angleton, his observation about “official interest” was probably correct. Thus ended the Bush/Baron relationship. Almost like he knows he has very little here, Baker tags on some meandering scuttlebutt about a man named Jim Savage who delivered the Baron’s car to him in Palm Beach on his return from Amsterdam. Its another of his Scrabble type name association games: Kerr-McGee, the FBI, Sun Oil, even the Pew family. (pgs. 275-277)

    The above two sections are pretty much the sum total of Baker’s work on Bush Sr. and the JFK murder. If anyone can find anything of significance here, something that somehow changes how we look at the case, please let me know. In all honesty, I can’t.

    V

    As threadbare as Baker’s work is on the JFK case, his two chapters on Bush Sr. and Watergate are probably worse (pgs. 175-252). In fact, having read much on the contemporary political scandals that have rocked the American scene, I would rank Baker’s work on Watergate with some of the most pretentiously empty political reporting I can recall. It’s so bad that it made me think he had a desperate rationale behind it all. (Which I will discuss later.)

    Baker begins his section on Watergate with a discussion of a scandal that is not even normally associated with Watergate. In fact, it may not even be a scandal. In early 1970, Richard Nixon authorized H. R. Haldeman to funnel funds from White House contributors to some 1970 congressional campaigns. The idea was to reward Nixon loyalists with campaign cash and ignore those who were not perceived as such.

    There are two important things to remember about the so-called Townhouse Operation. First, the machinations behind it occurred before any of the planning of the crimes associated with Watergate began. This would be the missions done by the infamous Plumbers units who did burglaries and surveillance operations. The planning of Townhouse predates the summer 1970 hiring of Howard Hunt by Charles Colson by about six months. (Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, pgs. 32-33) Hunt did not start recruiting members of his Plumbers Unit until April of 1971. (Hougan, p. 29) Their first operations did not formulate until two months later with the NY Times exposure of the secret Pentagon Papers. (ibid) It was then that things like the burglary of Dan Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and the forgery of documents linking President Kennedy with the death of Ngo Dinh Diem began. (ibid, p. 33) In fact, in the rather lengthy three articles of impeachment against Nixon prepared by the House of Representatives, you will not find any specific mention of the Townhouse Operation. (Click here)

    Further, none of the money funneled into Townhouse was used to finance the Plumbers illegal capers. Third, in a technical sense, it is hard to argue that Townhouse was illegal. For the simple reason that laws regulating campaign funds, and their eventual usage, were not enacted until after the Watergate scandal. In other words, although it was a ‘slush fund’, it was not a violation of law. For these reasons I was curious as to why the author began with Townhouse, an event which you seldom see even mentioned in chronicles of Watergate-either conventional or revisionist.

    And make no mistake, Baker has drunk deep the revisionist history of Watergate. So in an effort to set up a Nixon vs. CIA backdrop, he mentions Nixon’s desire to attain secret CIA files that Richard Helms was reluctant to turn over. (p. 181) He says that Nixon wanted CIA files on the days near the end of the Kennedy administration. Hmm, maybe dealing with the Kennedy assassination? Problem: the paragraph where he mentions this is not footnoted. But the next paragraph is. In that paragraph Baker has John Ehrlichman telling Bob Haldeman that the CIA is holding something back and the way they are acting, it must be dynamite. The problem with this quote is that when I looked it up in the source Baker named, The Haldeman Diaries, I couldn’t find it where he said it was. I then searched that book for all references to CIA Director Richard Helms, who Baker said Nixon demanded the documents from. Still no luck.

    Now, most informed observers know that there are two sources for this ‘secret file” tale. Haldeman wrote about a meeting with Richard Helms in which he was instructed by Nixon to mention the whole “Bay of Pigs thing”. Helms came unglued when he did. So Haldeman came to believe that the phrase was a code term for the JFK murder. (See pgs. 38-39, of Haldeman’s The Ends of Power. But oddly, in those pages, Haldeman writes that although he actually wanted to do a private inquiry into the JFK case, Nixon turned it down.)

    Another source for this is Ehrlichman’s roman a clef novel, The Company. In that work, Ehrlichman is referring specifically to the secret Bay of Pigs Inspector General report. But what Baker writes here is simply confusing. He refers to “[relevant files] … regarding the turbulent and little-understood days leading up to the end of the Kennedy administration”. These secret CIA documents do not exist anywhere that I know of in file form. So what Baker is referring to, and why he uses it, are things never really made clear. And the author reveals his own confusion when he later contradicts himself by saying the files Nixon was seeking were about the Bay of Pigs. Which, of course, was at the beginning of the Kennedy presidency. (Baker, p. 200)

    The reader should note: with Townhouse, which is not really part of Watergate, and these nebulous “secret CIA files”, Baker is off to a rather unpromising start. He never recovers.

    As I said, Baker has read much of the Watergate revisionist library. He will now cherry pick from it in a way worthy of the likes of Lamar Waldron in order to fulfill his own agenda. Incredibly, the author writes the following: “My independent research takes … the facts in a completely new direction. It leads to an even more disturbing conclusion as to what was really going on, and why.” (Baker, p. 204) As we will see, Baker did next to no new research on Watergate. And his new direction is a fabricated one that I can guarantee no one will follow in the future since it is based upon quicksand.

    It was under Nixon that George Bush actually became a player on the national stage. In fact, one can argue that it was Nixon who salvaged Bush’s political career. Bush had tried to break into that national theater in two runs for the senate from Texas. He first lost to Ralph Yarborough and then to Lloyd Bentsen. Afterwards, Nixon gave Bush a job first as United Nations Ambassador and then as chair of the Republican National Committee. Nixon made it clear that although he perceived Bush to be part of the Eastern Establishment-of which he was not-he liked and trusted him. And no serious commentator whether of a conventional or a revisionist stripe-e.g. Stanley Kutler or Jim Hougan-has ever proffered that George Bush had anything to do with what happened to Nixon during Watergate. Like most Republicans, he supported him through the crisis as long as he could. His advice basically consisted of advising Nixon to tell his whole part of the story as truthfully as possible. One can read any number of Watergate books and this is what will come through.

    Baker can’t settle for that. Why? Because if Watergate was a CIA operation, it doesn’t fit his agenda of defining George Bush as this super duper Agency Black Operator from way before the Bay of Pigs. So as with the Kennedy assassination, he has to create a function for him in this labyrinthine plot. At first he dredges up Townhouse. And at first he does not tell the reader that Bush himself was a prime recipient of those funds-that is how much Nixon liked him. He then links this at the end with a call Bush made as RNC chair to Lowell Weicker. (p. 233) Weicker was a Republican member of the Senate Watergate Committee, which investigated those crimes in televised hearings. Bush, now chair of the RNC, asks Weicker if he should destroy the Townhouse records. Baker, in super conspiratorial high gear, casts this as being a ploy to get Weicker mad, knowing that Weicker was also a recipient of some of the funds, though in a much smaller way.

    To me this is ridiculous. First, Weicker needed no egging on to be outraged against the crimes of Watergate. From the beginning of his career, which goes back further than Baker outlines, Weicker has always been 1.) An independent minded politician who defies easy categorization, and 2.) Against corruption in government. For a Republican, he is so independent minded that Ted Kennedy actually presented him with a Profiles in Courage award. The idea that a character like him needed egging on, or else his actions would have been different , is completely unjustified in light of his record. Both before Watergate and after.

    Second, far from Baker’s spin, the purpose of the call seems to be for Bush to keep himself out of Townhouse, since he was the largest beneficiary of the funding. This may be why Baker soft-pedals this fact until near the end of the discussion. In fact, in his discussion of this phone call, he never reveals that Bush ranked first in Townhouse funding. (pgs. 232-33)

    To me, this angle yields about zero. But Baker has a fallback.

    As I said, the author has drunk deep in the literature of Watergate revisionism. So he is familiar with the books, Secret Agenda and Silent Coup. But you will see very little of the revolutionary discoveries about the Watergate break-in from the former in this book. This is at first seemingly odd. Why? Because it was those actions that 1.) Made the scandal front-page news 2.) Sprung a trap on Nixon which he did not at first understand and from which he could not escape 3.) Is the clearest indication that the break-in was deliberately sabotaged by CIA operatives masquerading as Nixon campaign workers.

    The above is undeniably true. But the problem for a guy with an agenda the size of Baker’s is this: there is no evidence that Bush had anything of any substance to do with any of it, in any aspect.

    So what does the ever-inventive author do? He goes over to the inferior revisionist book on the subject, Silent Coup. He borrows their aggrandizement of the role of John Dean in the scandal. Why? Please sit down before I write this. Its because in March of 1973, in a phone call with Nixon, Bush-at the urging of others– suggested sending Dean to testify before the Watergate Committee. (p. 213) That’s about it.

    The reader should understand something: in March of 1973 Nixon was being attacked in the media because of his stonewalling of the Watergate Committee. (Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate, p. 268) In fact, he was being specifically pilloried over this issue that Bush is talking to him about. That is, his invoking blanket executive privilege over public testimony by members of his staff. Nixon even said that the doctrine of executive privilege was not subject to question by the other branches of government. (ibid) What made it worse was that Dean was supposed to be writing a report on Watergate for the White House at the time. So he should have been an important witness. (ibid) Further, because Dean had cooperated with acting Director of the FBI Patrick Gray on Watergate, the threat was that if Dean did not testify, Gray would not be approved. (ibid, p. 269) So this made the issue Bush was addressing important booth in Congress and in the media. How bad did it get? It got so heated that three conservative GOP senators, Jim Buckley, John Tower, and Norris Cotton all implored the president to get Dean before congress. (ibid, p. 270) Weicker even wanted Haldeman to testify at this rather earl date. (ibid)

    So Bush was doing what several other Republican leaders were. By not informing you of that, by not specifically mentioning the circumstances and acts of many others, Baker tries to make what Bush did into some covert conspiratorial act. Which it is not. And that’s bad journalism. In fact, this whole section on Watergate is really a confession of bankruptcy on Baker’s part. Failing to find anything to implicate Bush in either the conventional or revisionist versions of Watergate, he concocted something that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. And then, after he produces nothing, he has the Hankeyan chutzpah to state that Bush was actually behind it all. (p. 232) Which is nothing but pretentious and bombastic balderdash.

    I almost don’t want to go on. But I should mention that what Baker does with the JFK and Watergate episodes is symptomatic of the rest of the book. He wants to somehow implicate the Bushes in crimes for which there is next to no evidence, while not reporting on the ones for which there is plenty of evidence. Therefore, somehow the Bushes are also involved in BCCI, the stealing of the Marcos Gold, and even the Phoenix Program. And there is about as much evidence in those instances as what Baker produces in the JFK and Watergate cases. My question then is: Why stop there? Why not involve them in the King and RFK cases Russ? (I hope I didn’t give him any ideas.)

    The overall poor quality of this book worries me. We are at a crossroads in America between the fall of the Old Media and the rise of the New. (See here for a view of that.) We know what we got from the Old Media, which is still hanging on. But if the New Media means a choice between the likes of The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast on the one hand, and the unfounded conspiracy mongering of the likes of Alex Jones and Family of Secrets on the other, then are we really any better off than we were before?

    I’m not sure.