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  • Ron Paul Says the CIA Killed President Kennedy

    Namely that the CIA assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963. If the reader recalls, Paul had Oliver Stone on his own show a few years back after they both appeared at a JFK seminar in Virginia. Here is the transcript as posted by K. K. Lane at the Education Forum.

    Ron Paul: But I do believe there has been a coup, and it’s been taken over, and if I can, I want to just put the date in my mind. Anybody could probably pick any date in the last hundred years. But I’ve picked November 22 1963.

    Interviewer: What happened on that day?

    Ron Paul: That was the day Kennedy was murdered by our government….by the CIA.

    And at the time I was in… a matter of fact…Kennedy was killed in Dallas but he landed at Kelly Air Force Base and I was a flight surgeon there the day before, and I was aware of this trip. So this was a big thing.

    Those early years which we talked about a lot—especially the first year or two: “Oh, Oswald did it. Oswald did it.” And then, you know the person they thought about most is…uh…Allen Dulles as being the instigator of all this. And he, guess what, LBJ met him immediately: “We have to investigate this.” The president has been assassinated. What, what is…they never used the word coup…so he’s been assassinated. So guess who he puts…there were 7 on the commission, and you know, Dulles was put on the commission to investigate it. So, but he was gonna make sure they told the truth. But that was a big day in history in my mind.

  • RFK Jr. Announces 2024 Bid For White House

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  • Don McGovern Examines the Phony Stories about the Mob, the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe

  • The Kennedy Withdrawal, by Marc Selverstone

    The Kennedy Withdrawal, by Marc Selverstone

    Marc Selverstone begins his book The Kennedy Withdrawal with a curious, self-serving statement. He says that Kennedy’s withdrawal plan has not previously been treated in an extensively scholarly way. Is the author saying that somehow the works of John Newman, James Galbraith, David Kaiser, Jim Douglass, Gordon Goldstein, Howard Jones and James Blight do not matter? Its clear from his references that he has read virtually all of these works. But he barely refers, for example, to John Newman.

    In 1992, the combination of John’s book, plus Oliver Stone’s film JFK—which utilized his data—had a powerful public impact, since much new information was conveyed to the audience. It eventually caused the formation of the Assassination Record Review Board which, among 60,000 documents, declassified hundreds of pages on Vietnam. John’s work, and those newly declassified pages, showed how, with very few exceptions, the prior work in this field had relied on false premises and ongoing empty cliches. Many of them owing to none other than Lyndon Johnson. This might be the reason Selverstone wants to ignore John.

    II

    The first thing that one notices about this book is that there is little background to the years under question: 1961-64. That is, there is not much detailed information about how America got caught in such a predicament in Indochina. And further, what Kennedy’s views on colonial matters were, as opposed to his predecessors: President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon and the Dulles brothers, i.e. John Foster at State, and Allen at CIA. Not only is this dealt with rather briefly, the small portion offered is delivered in a sweeping, synoptic manner. But, even worse, Selverstone distorts the little he does offer.

    For example, he tries to imply that somehow, Kennedy never considered a neutralist solution in Vietnam. (p. 18) Not only did Kennedy consider it, he even tried for one. But he was betrayed on this by Averill Harriman. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 119) In his comments on the general subject of neutralism, Selverstone uses Robert Rakove’s Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World. But he uses it in an argument to turn Kennedy into a Cold Warrior. (Selverstone, p. 18)

    Yet, the whole point of Rakove’s book is to demonstrate how JFK did battle with the Dulles brothers and Eisenhower in the fifties. And to show how, once in the White House, his policies broke with the Cold War ethos they had created. Rakove illustrates this in places like the Middle East and Africa. In fact, Kennedy was clear about this in conversations with Harris Wofford prior to the 1960 primary season. He said, “The key thing for the country is a new foreign policy that will break out of the confines of the Cold War.” He then continued by saying, if LBJ or Stu Symington won the 1960 nomination, “we might as well elect Dulles or Acheson, it would be the same cold war foreign policy all over again.” (Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, pp 36-37)

    But that is not all Selverstone is up to. He is determined to portray Kennedy as not just a Cold Warrior, but something like a conservative Democrat. So he says that Kennedy had a halting pursuit of civil rights as president. (p. 52) Again, this is simply wrong. As I have proven, Kennedy did more for civil rights in 3 years than Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower did in three decades. That is simply a fact. (Click here) Yet, this is how comprehensive the author is in his attempt to caricature JFK.

    Selverstone mentions, like others, that in 1961 Kennedy would break certain aspects of the 1954 Geneva Accords. (p. 48) I have always thought this to be patent nonsense. Those peace accords were shattered in 1956 when Eisenhower refused to conduct the national elections which were to unify Vietnam, after a division that was only temporary. But also, neither side was to form any foreign military alliances. Not only did Eisenhower and Foster Dulles do that, they placed in power a whole new government through Colonel Edward Lansdale. It was through Lansdale that South Vietnam had Ngo Dinh Diem installed as fiat leader. Further, in late 1955, France let America set up a Military Assistance Advisory Group in Saigon, superseding and dispelling their own. That cinched a new military alliance. For this, and other reasons—like Hanoi’s infiltrations into the south—the Accords were a dead letter as far back as 1955. Selverstone is using transparent camouflage.

    For example, he writes that Kennedy set up a task force for Vietnam. He leaves out the fact that that this was part of Kennedy’s wholesale revision of Eisenhower’s approach. JFK also did this for other trouble spots like Congo and Laos. (Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 38) It was done so he would not be imprisoned by prior Eisenhower and Dulles policies— to halt the bureaucratic momentum Ike had set in motion. Laos is a good example of this. The day before Kennedy was inaugurated, Eisenhower told him that Laos was the key to all Southeast Asia. If Laos fell, America would have to write off the entire area. (Newman, JFK and Vietnam, 2017 edition, p.9)

    With respect to Laos it took about five months to bring the government around to JFK’s views. (Kaiser, p. 39). This included Paul Nitze, Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow. They agreed with Eisenhower, who favored intervention. As did the Pentagon who wanted to mass 60,000 men, use air power, and, atomic weapons in case China intervened. As David Kaiser wrote, the joint chiefs had “thoroughly absorbed the Eisenhower-Dulles doctrine of treating nuclear weapons as conventional weapons.” (Kaiser, p. 43) Kennedy disarmed the hawks by estimates of how many men the Chinese and Hanoi could get into Laos for a war. He also talked in private with Ambassador Winthrop Brown and steered him to a neutralist approach. (Kaiser, pp. 40-41) As Kennedy told Arthur Schlesinger, referring to the Joint Chiefs on the Bay of Pigs and Laos: “If it weren’t for Cuba, I might have taken this advice seriously.” (Mike Swanson, Why the Vietnam War? p. 284)

    To most prior writers on the subject, Kennedy’s handling of Laos is an important precedent.

    III

    If Kennedy was a prototypical Cold Warrior on Southeast Asia, why was he promoting the book and film The Ugly American from 1958 through 1962? That book was one of the most trenchant, bitterest indictments of American Indochina foreign policy in all literature. It essentially says that if all America had to offer in the Third World was anti-communism, then she might as well close shop and go home. Kennedy bought a copy for all 100 senators and helped purchase a full page ad for the book in The New York Times. He then helped get the film made in Thailand. (See, the film JFK : Destiny Betrayed or click here) The imaginary country the action takes place in, Sarkhan, is meant to symbolize Vietnam.

    Continuing in this vein, Selverstone also wants to display the image of JFK abiding by the Domino Theory. (See p. 148). Even if he has to use the unmitigated hawk Walt Rostow to do so. (p.230) Again, Selverstone is not telling the whole story. In 1961, Kennedy told journalist and family friend Arthur Krock that he had serious doubts about the Domino Theory, and did not think the USA should get into a land war in Asia. (Swanson, p. 335)

    McGeorge Bundy also commented on this whole “falling dominoes” concept, which allegedly would have trapped Kennedy in Saigon. Bundy once said that, although Kennedy was not prepared to be an anti-domino theorist, “he certainly was not in the sort of straightforward way, ‘you lost this and all is gone’ kind of fellow….” (Goldstein, p. 230). Bundy then said something very important about Vietnam: “He was deeply aware of the fact that this place was in fact ‘X’ thousand miles away in terms both of American interest and American politics.” (ibid)

    In short: Was Vietnam an inherent part of America’s national security? Kennedy famously asked General Lyman Lemnitzer in November of 1961, words to the effect: If we did not go into Cuba, which is so close, why should we go into Vietnam, which is so far away? Lemnitzer replied, that the Joint Chiefs still felt we should go into Cuba. (Newman, pp. 139-40). This crystalizes Kennedy’s dispute with the vast majority of his advisors. And it shows that Selverstone’s attempts at diminishing that dispute and foreshortening Kennedy’s attempts to break out of the Cold War paradigm are persiflage. As we shall see, those two traits did not apply to Lyndon Johnson.

    The November 1961 epochal debates over combat troops and what we should do in Vietnam is given rather short shrift by Selverstone. More importantly, the mission given to John Kenneth Galbraith right after is also discounted. (Selverstone, pp. 43-45) To me, those two events, plus the November 27th meeting of Kennedy with his advisors, are crucial to understanding what happened in 1963 and how JFK’s policies were reversed by LBJ.

    The November meetings are key since they show Kennedy disarming the hawks just as he did with Laos—by asking a series of probing questions. (Howard Jones, Death of a Generation, p. 126) Upon General Maxwell Taylor’s return from Saigon, Kennedy was shocked by his combat troops request. Because he had advised Taylor in advance not to do so. He was so taken aback “that he recalled copies of the final report.” Kennedy also planted stories in the press that Taylor had not really recommended combat troops. (Newman, pp. 137-38).

    IV

    One reason Kennedy was adamantly opposed was the simple reason that he had been in Vietnam during the imperial war in the early fifties and saw what had happened to France. Therefore, to Kennedy, the war was Saigon’s to win or lose. If it became a “white man’s war” America would be defeated, just as the French had been. (Jones, pp. 125-26). Selverstone leaves out that part of Kennedy’s quote and he (shockingly) writes that, whether Kennedy was going to make a 300,000 man combat troop deployment is unclear. (Selverstone, p. 42) As many have written—including Newman, Jones, Goldstein and James Galbraith—such a thing is pretty much unimaginable. Because the line Kennedy drew on the “no combat troops” issue in 1961 was indelible. In fact, U. Alexis Johnson, Dean Rusk’s Deputy, said for the record that “the line has clearly been drawn in Vietnam.” (Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith, p. 371)

    As per John Kenneth Galbraith’s journey to Saigon, Selverstone has this happening almost out of nowhere: somehow Galbraith decided to take a sight-seeing tour of Saigon on his way back to India. (p. 45) The record shows that Galbraith had been in Washington during a part of these November debates. He had stolen a copy of the Taylor/Rostow report off of Walt Rostow’s desk. He took it back to his hotel room and was horrified. (Parker, pp. 367-68) Kennedy asked him to write a memo to counter it, and JFK used some of these points in his warding off the hawks. On the day Galbraith was going to leave Washington, Kennedy gave his instructions to the Ambassador for India: he was to visit Saigon as quickly as possible and report back to him personally and to no one else. He wanted Galbraith’s advice as to what should be done next. (Parker, p. 372)

    The third critical point, the November 27, 1961 meeting, is not even noted by Selverstone. Yet this event is of maximum importance. This White House meeting was attended by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and Max Taylor among others. Although he called the meeting, Kennedy was the last to arrive. After making a bit of small talk, the president forcefully unloaded on the reason for the meeting. He was clearly frustrated by how hard he had to fight to get NSAM 111 approved, which denied combat troops but raised aid and advisors to Saigon. Kennedy said as clearly as possible, “When policy is decided on, people on the spot must support it or get out.” He demanded whole hearted support for his decisions. He then asked: Who was going to implement his Vietnam policy. McNamara said he would. (Newman, p. 145-46)

    Why is this so important? And why is it inexplicable that Selverstone left it out? Because, in April, Galbraith would be in Washington again. And what Selverstone does with this trip is once more, just strange. He seems to want to make Galbraith the MC running the whole agenda. But the record does not support that. Galbraith had written another report in early April arguing against any further involvement with the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. He even warned of the possibility of an escalation to a Korean War conflagration. (Letter to Kennedy of April 4, 1962). Kennedy was very taken by this communication. And he read it to diplomat Averill Harriman and NSC assistant Mike Forrestal. Galbraith was then directed by Kennedy to talk to McNamara about the memo. (Newman, p. 235) According to Galbraith McNamara got the message. (James Blight, Virtual JFK, p. 129; Pentagon Papers, Vol. 2, pp 669-671)

    So in a very real way, after the November 27th meeting, Kennedy directed Galbraith to his man on Vietnam policy, McNamara, and this begat the origins of the withdrawal program. This is double sourced through McNamara’s deputy Roswell Gilpatric, who said the withdrawal “was part of a plan the president asked him [McNamara] to develop to unwind this whole thing.” He also added, that Kennedy:

    …made it clear to McNamara and me that he wanted to not only hold the level of US military presence in Vietnam down, but he wanted to reverse the flow and that’s when this question of bringing back some of the US military personnel came up. But it was in keeping with his general reluctance to see us sucked in militarily to Southeast Asia. (Jones, pp. 381-82)

    The reason I think that Selverstone does this curtailing is because he wants to suggest that somehow the withdrawal plan was really McNamara’s doing. (See p. 71 for an example)

    But not only does the above record not indicate this, but to buy into it one has to explain how McNamara, on his own, did a 180 degree pirouette on the issue. During the November debates, he advised Kennedy to commit six combat divisions to Indochina. (Goldstein, p. 60) I have shown above how McNamara’s reversal was caused by JFK. The last certifying event is when McNamara attended the Sec/Def meeting of 5/8/62. He told Commanding General Harkins, along with General Lyman Lemnitzer, to stay after. Reciting Kennedy, McNamara said Vietnam was not America’s war. The American function was to help train the ARVN, the army of South Vietnam. He then asked Harkins when the ARVN could take over completely. After the shock wore off, the Defense Secretary said he wanted plans for how the American military structure was going to be dismantled. (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 120)

    It is clear how this May 1962 order came about; and it was not McNamara’s doing.

    V

    Before getting to Selverstone’s off the wall denouement, let me point out four other absurdities.

    At times, the author actually tries to suggest that, somehow, the withdrawal was done to curry favor with the media. (p. 122, p. 135) I had to go back to Daniel Hallin’s book, The Uncensored War to look this one up. Hallin’s fine study concluded that up until the Tet offensive, the media embraced the war and had no strong objections to escalation. (Hallin, p. 174) The best example of this was what they did to Governor George Romney of Michigan. When Romney went against that grain on Vietnam in 1967, suggesting America should not be there, he was literally destroyed as a viable presidential candidate for 1968. In fact, as he often does, Selverstone later admits that the press supported a firm commitment to remain in Vietnam. So the author contradicts his thesis.(p. 149)

    But JFK understood this. This is why he tried to keep his decision to begin the withdrawal low key. So low key that some historians had a problem locating it for decades on end. There was no political upside in withdrawal at that time. Kennedy was doing it since he felt it was the right thing to do. Newman notes in his book that it was Kennedy’s enemies—the military in Saigon— who actually publicized his decision and forced him to formulate it into NSAM 263. (Newman, p. 435)

    Selverstone also tries to repeat a Chomskyite strophe which I thought was long ago obsolete. That somehow Kennedy’s withdrawal plan was based on the course of the war. (p. 128) Way back in 1997, the release of hundreds of pages of documents more or less put an end to that maneuver. (See Probe Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 19-21) As I wrote back then, after reading these documents, everyone in the loop seemed aware that Kennedy would begin his pullout in December of 1963 and end it at the end of 1965. Even General Earle Wheeler observed that any proposal for overt action invited a negative presidential decision. And the specific transition plans are laid out in black and white.

    As James Galbraith and Howard Jones wrote, Kennedy’s withdrawal was unconditional and did not rely on victory. (Boston Review, “Exit Strategy” September 1, 2003) Newman made this issue deader than a doornail when he listened to McNamara’s debrief from the Pentagon. McNamara said that once the training period was over, he and Kennedy had decided the effort was complete. They could not fight the war for Saigon. They were leaving. (Vietnam: The Early Decisions, edited by Lloyd C Gardner and Ted GIttinger, pp. 166-67)

    Third, Selverstone has no mention of the circumstances of the writing of the Taylor/McNamara Report of October 1963. Once the plans for turning the war over to Saigon were handed in, Kennedy sent those two men to Saigon in order to pen a report that would certify his decision to begin his withdrawal. Realizing what Taylor had done back in 1961, he was taking no chances. It was written before the party departed. (Jones, p. 370) But still, on the return, people like William Sullivan forced the removal of the section on withdrawal. Selverstone has Taylor putting it back in. (p. 167) Newman writes that Kennedy called Taylor and McNamara into his office. When they emerged, McNamara had the section put back in the report. (Newman, p. 411) As the reader can see, as with the origins of the withdrawal plan, Selverstone is trying to keep Kennedy’s hands off its result.

    The book moves toward the famous last words of Kennedy to Mike Forrestal before JFK went to Dallas. Forrestal said in 1971 that before the president departed Washington he told him that there would be a review of Indochina policy when he got back, Selverstone writes that, since in an earlier interview Forrestal did not mention that, then somehow Forrestal was embellishing. Since Forrestal had long passed, that is easy to say. He then writes that this typifies the ‘expansion of claims about Kennedy’s intentions” at a time when they seemed most laudable and prophetic. Meaning, by 1971, the war was a mess.

    When I read that, I realized that this was what the book was really about. But, like any zealot, Selverstone is not aware that he has set himself up to have the plank sawed off beneath him. Because, as Peter Scott has noted, way back in 1967 Charles Bartlett and Edward Weintal wrote a book called Facing the Brink. It has a chapter dealing with the transition between Kennedy and Johnson on Vietnam. They confirmed what Forrestal said: That shortly before he was assassinated, JFK had ordered a complete review of American policy in Southeast Asia. (p. 71). That book was released in 1967, so it was likely being written in 1965-66. Which was before the war had gone south, before the media had altered course, and while Johnson was still rallying public opinion to save South Vietnam. Therefore, far from indicating any “expansion” of Kennedy’s intentions, what Selverstone has shown is his insistence on ignoring what the president was actually doing.

    That insistence extends much further than Forrestal. In my review of Newman’s 2017 revision of JFK and Vietnam, I listed 19 people who Kennedy had revealed his intent to withdraw from Vietnam. This included senators, generals, ambassadors and journalists. Were all these people being deceitful? Or was Kennedy a pathological liar? If you do not deal with this evidence in any real way, then you can simply—and, as we have seen, wrongly—chalk it up as an “expansion of claims about Kennedy’s intentions”.

    VI

    The subtitle of Selverstone’s book is “Camelot and the Commitment to Vietnam”. The reader might ask himself, is not the full title somewhat of an oxymoron? The McNamara/Taylor report states three times that the American forces would be out by 1965. But agreeing with Howard Jones, Selverstone states that it allowed for a small amount of advisors to be left for further training. In either case, it would have been 1,500 at the most.

    So here is my question: If that would have been the case—and Johnson had not first stopped and then reversed Kennedy’s policies—what would have happened? I can tell you what would have happened. The same thing that occurred in 1975, when Hanoi overran South Vietnam in two months. In 1965, Hanoi had a total armed force, including reservists, of about 750,000 men. (Some estimates go beyond that into seven figures.) That does not include about 80,000 Viet Cong in the south. That army was being supplied with munitions by both the USSR and China. The idea that a thousand or so American advisors, plus the ARVN, was going to stop that force from taking Saigon is so ridiculous that it almost seems satirical. To use another example, Hanoi’s Easter Offensive of 1972 would have succeeded except for extreme American bombing, some of it laser guided, by the Air Force and off of aircraft carriers of the Seventh Fleet. Hanoi had defeated France, but been robbed by the cancellation of the Geneva Accords. They understood that to unify their country they would need a military victory over Saigon and that is what they were prepared to do. And eventually did do. For Selverstone to compare this situation to Afghanistan is ridiculous.

    As we all know, instead of America being out by the end of 1965, Johnson sent 170,000 combat troops to Vietnam. Thus breaking a line that Kennedy had drawn back in 1961. How does the author explain this? He says that the withdrawal plan was flexible and conditions changed. (Selverstone, p. 244) As John Newman explained to me, the only way it was flexible is that Kennedy did not want Saigon to fall before the election. So the outflow of advisors could be adjusted to prevent that. (2020 Interview for Oliver Stone’s film JFK Revisited)

    But that is not at all what happened. And conditions do not change over a space of four days. Which was the space between Forrestal’s talk with JFK and the first meeting Johnson had on Vietnam. One example of the latter: Henry Cabot Lodge had been recalled to Washington for the purpose of Kennedy firing him. (Douglass, p. 374) Not only did that not happen, but the people at that meeting understood that a new martial tone was now being installed. How else does one explain this: “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” (ibid, p. 375)

    As Scott wrote many years ago, this kind of talk in relation to Vietnam was pretty much not part of Kennedy’s lexicon. For New Year’s, a month later, Johnson wrote a letter to the new leader of Vietnam, Duong Van Minh. In that letter LBJ proclaimed “…the fullest measure of support…in achieving victory.” (NY Times, January 4, 1964) Achieving victory? Even the Times admitted that this communication appeared to cancel any deadline for removing American forces by 1965. Clearly, McNamara understood that Johnson was enacting a sea change in policy. For as Scott also adds, McNamara and CIA Director John McCone went to Saigon in mid-December and announced the change to Minh. McNamara told him that America was ready to help “as long as aid was needed.” How could the alteration of JFK’s policy be any more clear? (Government by Gunplay, edited by Sid Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian, p. 183)

    These almost immediate changes could not be due to a sudden reversal of military conditions. Which is what Selverstone wants us to think. This was simply the difference between Johnson and Kennedy. And Johnson was explicit about this: “…the only way to subdue the Viet Cong was to kill them and not to bring the New Frontier to South Vietnam.” (Ibid, p. 155). Again, can anyone imagine Kennedy saying this?

    As delineated by Newman, Selverstone tries to get around Johnson’s alterations to NSAM 273. For instance, he says that any changes Johnson would have made to the draft of the document would likely have been made by Kennedy anyway. (p. 208) This ignores two key points: McGeorge Bundy drew up the draft in anticipation of what he thought JFK would want. Secondly, one of the major changes allowed the CIA and military to actually use US forces in hit and run raids in the north. Bundy knew Kennedy was against that from the start. Which is why he did not include it. LBJ had no such compunctions and altered it. (Newman, pp. 456-57)

    In regards to that overall issue, Selverstone actually writes that “Johnson’s determination to prevail flowed in part from his understanding that it was Kennedy’s as well.” (Selverstone, pp. 205-06) The idea that Johnson did not know that Kennedy was withdrawing in a losing situation, and he was now reversing that policy is undermined by Johnson’s own communications with McNamara. In fact, one reason that, one by one, Kennedy’s advisors left was because they now felt that Johnson was blaming his escalation on JFK. (Blight pp. 306, 309-10)

    The ultimate proof of that difference is NSAM 288. As most commentators agree, this was the beginning of planning for a total war against Hanoi, including massive air power and bombing. It had been urged on and commented on by the Joint Chiefs. (Kaiser, pp. 302-305) , Kennedy did not even want military men visiting Vietnam, let alone drawing up his policy. (America’s Last President, by Monika Wiesak, p. 133) But what JFK refused to countenance in three years, Johnson was now doing in three months.

    For this book, that, and many other things, are not really difference makers. Marc Selverstone’s The Kennedy Withdrawal is so agenda driven, so littered with dubious assumptions, so averse to logic and common sense, that its less a book than a curiosity piece.

  • Arun Starkey Strikes the first Blow for the Sixtieth

    Arun Starkey Strikes the first Blow for the Sixtieth

    As many of us noted a long time ago, the so called online revolution in journalism did not pan out the way we hoped. And we are being constantly reminded of that fact. The latest example is from an online culture ‘zine from London. Founded in 2010, Far Out is supposed to be a cultural journal: music, films and the arts. It was founded in 2010 by a then student Lee Thomas-Mason, who had been a sports reporter. Their contributing reporter, Arun Starkey, is also London based and according to his billing, he tries “to find the political angle in music or cinema whenever possible.”

    It is not very difficult to find a political angle with Oliver Stone’s 2021 documentary JFK Revisited. That film is generally about three things:

    1. John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy ideas and how they differed from those who came before him.
    2. The truly atrocious performance by the Warren Commission in investigating the murky circumstances of his assassination.
    3. The disastrous results of Kennedy’s assassination in both Africa, and Indochina.

    There are other areas one could note, like Kennedy’s showdowns with southern racist governors in Mississippi and Alabama. But for any objective writer looking for a “political angle” in the film, this was it. Those themes are presented with plentiful evidence both in the film and in the book accompanying the documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. Evidently reporter Arun Starkey never bothered to read the book, which contains over 500 footnotes to the statements in the documentary.

    On March 4th he penned an article that, to this writer, looks forward to the upcoming 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder. Why do I say that? Because his ostensible subject, Oliver Stone’s film JFK Revisited, was released in 2021. We are much closer to the 60th anniversary than the release date of the film. And the documentary played in England on the Sky Network.

    Arun begins his piece by saying Oliver Stone has a way of dividing people due to conspiracy theories. He quite naturally mentions the 1991 film JFK, which Stone directed. Are we to really understand that Starkey does not know why JFK was divisive? It is because the entire Establishment jumped on board the Warren Report before it was even published. He then jumps to the 2021 documentary and mentions that Stone stated in that documentary that he was trying to find out what happened on November 22, 1963. What he leaves out is that the film shows how the media swallowed the Warren Report in advance.

    At this point, Starkey performs a neat sleight of hand trick. One would think any fair minded reporter would now go through some of the new evidence Stone presented in the 2021 documentary. For instance, on the Kennedy autopsy, or the ballistics evidence, or Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. And how this contradicted or was ignored by the Warren Commission.

    Starkey does not mention one single evidentiary point from the film. This is incredible, because that is what the film is about. It is clearly focused on the creation and the discoveries of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). That body worked from 1994-98 declassifying a new database of information about the circumstances of a high-level plot which took Kennedy’s life and how several foreign policy reversals followed.

    Incredibly, Starkey never once mentions the ARRB: what it was, who was on it, or what it did. That is quite a negative achievement since the film features three prominent members of that body: Chairman John Tunheim, his deputy Tom Samoluk and Military Records analyst Doug Horne. Can one imagine covering a baseball game and never describing the pitching, hitting, scoring or who won the game?

    Like many who wish to avoid the matter of who killed President Kennedy and why, Starkey now leaps to a conclusion. And, while leaping, he jumps into the arms of the Rolling Stone’s Tim Weiner. Weiner wrote his non-review of the documentary back in November of 2021. So again, this is old news. But Starkey wants to deflect the contents of the documentary and onto why Stone wanted to film Jim Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins back in 1991. This is so off kilter that its almost ludicrous. Why? Because JFK Revisited has next to nothing to do with Jim Garrison. There might be five minutes in the film about that aspect of the Kennedy case. So what is Starkey’s end game?

    He wants to play the same violin solo that Weiner did. But before he does that musical concerto, he admits that what Weiner wrote “has holes”. He has to admit that since both Oliver Stone and myself replied in no uncertain terms to Weiner’s piece of junk review. What Weiner tried to say is that somehow 1.) Oliver Stone fell for a disinformation story out of Moscow about Allen Dulles supporting an overthrow of French president Charles DeGaulle and 2.) Jim Garrison did the same in his indictment of Clay Shaw.

    As Stone and myself both stated, this is double barreled malarkey. On December 2, 2021 Stone posted his reply on his Facebook page. He noted that neither the film, nor its writer, namely me, referred to any such Moscow related sources—specifically the Italian newspaper Paese Sera—for the Dulles/DeGaulle accusations. Stone then listed the sources we did use, like author David Talbot, and The London Observer and the New York Times, among others. This was a grave error for Weiner to make back then. It is even worse for Starkey today because of the publication of the book. Our sources are described in detail on pages 99-100 of the book JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. And we also note there how Weiner fell on his face by claiming we did something that we clearly did not. If Starkey can show how any of those 5 references were Moscow oriented stories or sources, please do. If he cannot then he, like Weiner, has committed a schoolboy howler. Weiner’s article, like Starkey’s, should have been fact checked.

    As Stone further replied, it’s just as ignorant to state that Jim Garrison based his case about the JFK murder on that same Italian newspaper. He based his inquiry on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans that summer, plus the people he discovered Oswald associated with. None of this key information was covered in the Warren Report. Stone’s film discusses this material through authors like John Newman and Jeff Morley. Starkey, like Weiner, does not mention these facts or those two men.

    Garrison had been investigating Clay Shaw since December of 1966! (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 63). And this was because of his relationships with Lee Oswald and Dave Ferrie. Shaw was indicted before any story about him in Paese Sera appeared. I will wait for Starkey to prove that Garrison had a relationship with the reporters working on that story in Italy before that time. I will have a long wait, since none existed. So the idea that Garrison fell for some Russian disinformation to indict Shaw is simply wrong. In fact, in the longest and most widely read interview the DA gave, in Playboy in October of 1967, he never even brought that subject up. (Click here for that interview) Just like he never brought it up at Shaw’s trial.

    Starkey then does something utterly goofy. Relying on Weiner, he writes that Shaw was not a CIA operative. I have to wonder, did Starkey see the documentary? Or did he just blindly crib Weiner? We show the documents in the film that the ARRB declassified on Shaw. Shaw was a longstanding, well paid, contract agent, and he had a covert security clearance. Again, the accompanying book to the film goes into this at more length. But Starkey apparently thought that the referenced facts were irrelevant. (See JFK Revisited, pgs. 64-65; 197-98)

    Mr. Starkey then goes even further with this baloney. Neither he nor Weiner apparently knew that the book publisher who picked up Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins, Sheridan Square Press, did so because the managers—Bill Schaap, and especially Ellen Ray— were longtime friends of the DA. Even on these kinds of simple matters, Starkey slips on a couple of more banana peels. There is no cover up of how Oliver Stone got hold of the book. Ellen gave it to him at a film festival in Havana. That was revealed back in 1991. And it had nothing to do with Stone being an assassination freak, because-at the time— he was not. Ellen thought that since he made some political films, one about Vietnam—Platoon—that the subject would interest him.

    Starkey’s conclusion is absurd. Neither JFK nor JFK Revisited are based on Jim Garrison’s “delusions”. Stone hired a staff of researchers for the first film and they contributed new material that is not in Garrison’s book e.g. like all the Vietnam scenes. (See, 1992’s JFK: The Book of the Film.) As stated above, the 2021 film is not based at all on Garrison’s book. I should know since I wrote the script. It is based on the discoveries of the ARRB—which Starkey does not wish to discuss or even mention. If he had done so, he would not have been able to write his penultimate statement: namely that everything dealing with the JFK murder is “so oblique” and “blurred by subjective readings”.

    No they are not Mr. Starkey. Which is why you did not mention things like autopsy photographer John Stringer denying he took the pictures of JFK’s brain, and the denial by FBI agent Bardwell Odum that he ever showed CE 399—the Magic Bullet,— to the two men who found it at Parkland Hospital. There is nothing oblique or subjective about those facts. What is oblique is the inability and unwillingness of an alleged alternative journal to inform the public about them. If Starkey thinks I am kidding, I will gladly debate him about those facts he chose to avoid. I predict in advance that like James Kirchick and Gerald Posner he will not accept this offer.

  • Dave Emory’s 27-part series on JFK Revisited, with Jim DiEugenio

    Dave Emory’s 27-part series on JFK Revisited, with Jim DiEugenio

    jd emory jfkr

      For The Record #1262 Interview #1 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1263 Interview #2 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1264 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1265 Interview #4 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1266 Interview #5 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1267 Interview #6 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1268 Interview #7 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1269 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1270 Interview #9 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1271 Interview #10 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1272 Interview #11 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1273 Interview #12 with Jim DiEugenio and Dr. Gary Aguilar
      For The Record #1274 Interview #13 with Jim DiEugenio and Dr. Gary Aguilar
      For The Record #1275 Interview #14 with Jim DiEugenio and Paul Bleau
      For The Record #1276 Interview #15 with Jim DiEugenio and Paul Bleau
      For The Record #1279 Interview #16 with Jim DiEugenio and John Newman
      For The Record #1280 Interview #17 with Jim DiEugenio and John Newman
      For The Record #1281 Interview #18 with Jim DiEugenio and David Talbot
      For The Record #1282 Interview #19 with Jim DiEugenio and David Talbot
      For The Record #1283 Interview #20 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1284 Interview #21 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1285 Interview #22 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1286 Interview #23 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1287 Interview #24 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1288 Interview #25 with Jim DiEugenio
      For The Record #1289 Interview #26 with Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease
      For The Record #1290 Interview #27 with Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease
  • Oswald and the Shot at Walker: Redressing the Balance

    Oswald and the Shot at Walker: Redressing the Balance

    Many of those who believe that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F Kennedy, and then killed Dallas Police Officer JD Tippit on 22nd November 1963, also advocate the view that Oswald attempted to shoot and kill General Edwin Walker on 10th April 1963. In fact, it is often presented as a historical fact, and that Oswald used the same Mannlicher Carcano rifle seven months later to murder JFK.

    Oswald’s guilt in the Walker case was largely predicated on the testimony of his wife, photos of Walker’s house found amongst his belongings, an incriminating note attributed to Oswald that predicted an imminent event and, possibly, his own arrest or death arising from it.

    As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Walker shooting incident, this article seeks to summarize some of the key evidence and arguments that cast doubt on Oswald being the mystery shooter who tried to take the General’s life. As we shall find out, it was not a fait accompli by any stretch of the imagination. First though, let’s go back to the night in question and briefly recap the generally known facts.

    It was around 9pm on 10th April 1963. It had been a warm, sweltering Texas day and General Walker was sitting at his desk in the northwest ground floor room of his mansion in the Turtle Creek neighbourhood of Dallas completing his tax returns. This large house on Turtle Creek Boulevard also acted as an HQ for Walker’s political operations. He had, in fact, only just returned a few days earlier from a six-week speaking tour of the US with political sympathizer and evangelical preacher, Billy James Hargis. They controversially called their tour Operation Midnight Ride.

    Suddenly, Walker heard what he initially thought was perhaps a firecracker. He then saw a hole in the wall next to where he had been sitting and realized that someone had just taken a shot at him. The bullet had deflected off the wooden window frame. This changed its trajectory and probably saved Walker’s life. When he knew it had been a shot, Walker told police that he ran upstairs to get his pistol. He heard a car leave but saw no shooter. Walker was lucky. The only injuries he sustained were minor cuts to his lower right arm, possibly caused by fragments of the bullet. Walker reported the incident to the police around 9:10pm. When they arrived at the scene, a mangled bullet was soon found in the next room on stacks of paper.

    During the weeks and months that followed, the police were never able to positively identify who had taken the shot. A Scotsman by the name of William Duff, who was a former volunteer worker of Walker’s but left the house a month earlier, was arrested on 18th April 1963 and considered to be a suspect but this came to nothing (for more on William Duff, click here to see my presentation on him at the Dealey Plaza UK 2022 conference).

    The attempted murder was unsolved until shortly after the assassination of JFK when the finger of suspicion was pointed directly at Lee Harvey Oswald. This started in late November/early December 1963. Of course, by then Oswald was conveniently dead and could not defend himself.

    How did Oswald first become a suspect in the Walker shooting incident?

    It was a right-wing German newspaper called the Deutsche National-Zeitung und Soldaten-Zeitung that first highlighted Oswald’s possible involvement in the Walker shooting incident when they published an article on 29th November 1963. This was based on interviews General Walker had given to the newspaper in the days following JFK’s assassination. It was likely Walker who planted the seed with them about Oswald being the person who took the shot at him.

    We then have Ruth Paine visiting the Irving Police Department on 2nd December 1963 to hand over some of Marina Oswald’s belongings. Included was a Russian book called “Book of Useful Advice.” When the book was inspected by the Secret Service later that day, they found a two-page note inside written in Russian. This note was allegedly written by Oswald with instructions for his wife on what to do if he was killed or taken prisoner. Marina told law enforcement officials the day after the note was found that it was written by her husband, and she had first seen it on the night of the Walker shooting. She said that Lee had arrived home late that night and admitted to taking the shot and burying the rifle, which he would retrieve later.

    From then on, it was a slam dunk! Oswald had shot at Walker, displaying a propensity for political assassination that ultimately led to JFK’s death. That has been the popular narrative ever since.

    Did the note found in the book have another meaning?

    The conventional wisdom has been that Oswald did indeed write the note in advance of the Walker incident, as he was aware that he could have been arrested or killed at the scene, or shortly afterwards. This is the Warren Commission exhibit and English translation of the note originally written in Russian (see original note here).

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    It is clear that whoever wrote the note was planning a dangerous activity. But the note did not mention the specific event. There is no mention of General Walker, and the note is not signed or dated. If Walker had been killed, and Oswald arrested (or worse), it is fanciful to suggest that there would not have been anything about the shooter or the incident in the newspapers. Walker was a high-profile political figure at the time, and this would have been a major national news story.

    The reference to the Embassy probably means the Soviet Embassy. But would they have been quick to come to Marina’s assistance as the note suggests if Oswald had killed General Walker? Isn’t it more likely that they would not have wanted to associate themselves with such a violent and political act on American soil? However, maybe the note referred to a different event.

    It is also interesting that the FBI examined the note in early December 1963 and “seven latent fingerprints were developed thereon. Latent prints are not identical with fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald or Marina Nikolaevna Oswald.” This is an odd finding given that Oswald was the alleged author of the note and Marina had also probably handled it (click here to see the latent print memorandum dated 5th December 1963).

    Sylvia Meagher in her influential 1967 book, Accessories After The Fact suggests though on page 287 that “Oswald wrote the undated letter in relation to a project other than an attack on General Walker – one that also involved risk of arrest or death – and that Marina Oswald was informed about her husband’s plans in advance.”

    Could Oswald have been planning a different dangerous mission or project around the time of the Walker shooting that was completely unrelated, but also involved risk of arrest or death?

    The answer is that he was.

    Oswald, Dallas and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

    Most people with an interest in the JFK assassination are aware of Lee Oswald’s activities in New Orleans on 9th August 1963 and 16th August 1963 when he handed out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) on Canal Street and Camp Street. However, many do not know that it is likely that he had done something similar four months previously while still residing in Dallas.

    On or around 19th April 1963, Oswald wrote a letter to V.T. Lee in New York, who was essentially the head of the FPCC in America. Oswald wrote:

    I do not like to ask for something for nothing but I am unemployed. Since I am unemployed, I stood yesterday for the first time in my life with a placard around my neck, passing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets, etc. I only had 15 or so. In 40 minutes they were all gone. I was cursed as well as praised by some. My homemade placard said, “Hands OFF CUBA! VIVA Fidel.” I now ask for 40 or (50) more of the fine, basic pamphlets.

    The letter was signed Lee H. Oswald (click here to see the letter).

    This would indeed have been an extremely dangerous activity to be involved in. Since Dallas at that time was a political hotbed of right-wing extremism with the John Birch Society very active. The Dallas Morning News made no secret of its contempt for Castro’s Cuba and President Kennedy and, of course, General Walker made Dallas his home after he resigned from the Army and became active in politics. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were accosted by a mob in the city in November 1960. Could the note found in the Russian book on 2nd December 1963 have been written with the FPCC leafleting in mind and the potential for harm to come to Oswald? It is not unreasonable to say so, especially as his letter to V.T. Lee was sent just around a week after the Walker assassination attempt, an event that would have greatly agitated his supporters. This is also a scenario where the Soviet Embassy would have been more likely to assist Marina if harm had come to Oswald.

    Corroboration of the leafleting in Dallas comes from two police officers. Dallas Chief of Police, Jesse Curry, wrote to J. Lee Rankin (General Counsel, Warren Commission) in May 1964 with two reports from Sergeant Harkness and Patrolman Finigan regarding a man passing out pro-Castro literature on the streets of Dallas in early 1963. Finigan wrote the following on 15th May 1964:

    On a day in late spring or early summer of 1963, which was approximately one year ago, I was on the northeast corner of Main and Ervay Streets and observed an unidentified white male on the northwest corner of Main and Ervay Streets. This white male was passing out some sort of literature, and had a sign on his back which read Viva Castro.

    I went to the phone in Dreyfuss & Son and called for Sgt. Harkness to meet me on the corner. While I was waiting for Sgt. Harkness, US Commissioner W. Madden Hill came across the street and said “Something should be done about that guy passing out literature.” Mr Hill seemed to be very angry.

    About this time, Sgt. Harkness drove up on his three-wheel motor-cycle and stopped on the northeast corner where I was standing. As we started to discuss the situation, the white male removed the “Viva Castro” sign and ran into H. L. Green Company. I started after him but was told by Sgt. Harkness to let him go. Another unknown white male told us that when Sgt. Harkness came up, this unidentified white male said “Oh, hell, here come the cops.”

    This unidentified white male was of medium weight and height and had on a white shirt and was bare headed. I can not identify this white male because he was across the street and I was waiting for Sgt. Harkness to make the initial contact with him.”

    (Click here to see Finigan’s statement)

    Sergeant Harkness tells the same story and that he “could not get a good description of the man because he ducked behind a post in the entrance to the store” but that he “appeared to be medium build and he had on a white shirt.”

    (Click here to see full statement from Harkness)

    I think it is fair to speculate that the man Finigan and Harkness saw was Lee Harvey Oswald.

    It’s also interesting to note that the H. L. Green store where the leafleting took place was the first store in downtown Dallas to desegregate their lunch counter. Civil rights protests took place outside the store during the 1960’s so it was probably felt to be a good place to hold the demonstration (see picture below).

    It is wrong to suggest therefore that the note found in the Russian book could only have referred to the Walker incident.

    scott05

    Marina’s Testimony

    It has been well documented over the years that much of Marina Oswald’s testimony against her husband was contradictory, controversial, and selective. It should be acknowledged that shortly after her husband was arrested on 22nd November 1963, and in the months that followed, she would have been under intense pressure and was threatened with deportation if she did not comply with investigating authorities. She was a mother of two young children in a strange land and who hardly spoke the language. She would likely have said anything to protect her children.

    The reader should be aware that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the 1970’s produced a thirty page report called Marina Oswald Porter’s Statements Of A Contradictory Nature. This report included conflicting statements given by her about the Walker shooting, such as when she first found out Oswald had lost his job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall (just prior to 10th April 1963) and when she first saw photographs allegedly taken by her husband of Walker’s house.

    Even Warren Commission lawyers such as Norman Redlich had serious concerns about relying on Marina’s testimony. In February 1964, he wrote “Marina Oswald has repeatedly lied to the Service, the FBI, and this Commission on matters which are of vital concern to the people of this country and the world.” When being questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Redlich added that “she may not have told the truth in connection with the attempted killing of General Walker.”

    When Marina was first questioned about the note by Secret Service officials on the evening of 2nd December 1963, she denied any knowledge of it (Commission Exhibit 1785). However, the next day her story had completely changed, and she admitted to being aware of its existence and meaning.

    Marina had volunteered nothing to authorities about the note or the Walker shooting from the day of the JFK assassination (when she was first questioned) until the 3rd December 1963. She may have been protecting her husband, but it is surely reasonable to at least be skeptical about how and when she began to speak about the note, which was both convenient and suspicious.

    How the incriminating note found its way into the hands of the police, the FBI and Secret Service is also troubling. In her Warren Commission testimony, Ruth Paine advised that officers had come to her house with a search warrant. This was 23rd November 1963. She was about to go grocery shopping but allowed the search to go ahead in her absence. The last thing she saw before she left to go shopping was officers “leafing through books to see if anything fell out but that is all I saw.” Why didn’t the officers find the note during that search? Some have said that they were simply not as thorough as they should have been, but this explanation is hardly credible given the nature of the charges against Oswald at that time and they were specifically “leafing through books.”

    The note was eventually found nine days later on 2nd December 1963 when Ruth Paine took some of Marina’s personal belongings round to the police, including the book where the note was found. This was also only a few days after the German newspaper ran the article alleging a connection between Lee Oswald and the Walker shooting incident. Coincidence or something more sinister?

    Were there any eyewitnesses who saw Oswald shoot at General Walker?

    The answer is no. There were no eyewitnesses who came forward and said they saw Oswald shoot at General Walker. In fact, nobody even said they saw Oswald at the scene of the crime or in the vicinity.

    The best witness to the Walker shooting incident was fourteen-year-old, Walter Kirk Coleman. He lived on Newton, which was just north of Walker’s house and overlooked the Mormon Church and parking lot.

    On the evening of 10th April 1963, he was at home standing in the doorway which led from his bedroom to the outside of the house. He heard a loud noise which he first thought was a car backfire. He immediately ran outside and stepped on top of a bicycle propped up against the fence. This allowed him to look into the church parking lot. The journey from the doorway to the fence would only have taken him a few seconds.

    Coleman was first interviewed by the Dallas Police on 11th April 1963 (click here for Police report). He said he saw a man getting into a 1949 or 1950 Ford who “took off in a hurry.” He saw a second man further down the parking lot at another car, bending over the front seat as if he was putting something in the back.

    When Coleman was interviewed again in June 1964 (click here), he provided additional details. He added that the first man was hurrying towards the driver’s side of the Ford car. The motor was running, and the headlights were on. He saw nobody else in the car. The man glanced back towards him. This time Coleman said the car drove off at a normal speed. The second man was seen walking away from the alley entrance and towards a 1958 two door Chevrolet sedan. Coleman confirmed his initial report that this man was leaning through the open car door and into the back seat area. Was he placing something there? Coleman did not notice if this second man was carrying anything as his attention was mainly drawn to the first man, but it was possible.

    Coleman provided a detailed description of both men. By this time, he must have seen many pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald and stated that neither man he saw on the night of the Walker shooting incident resembled Oswald. It is possible that these two mystery men were leaving the scene because they also heard the shot and were naturally alarmed and concerned by it. The shooter could have gone down the alley in the opposite direction from them and the church parking lot towards Avondale Avenue.

    Sixty years later, the identities of the two men have yet to be uncovered. The attempted assassination of General Walker was big news so it should have been important for the police to follow up on Coleman’s firsthand testimony and try to find them. The men could even have come forward to eliminate themselves as suspects and help the police with their inquiries. They were there on the night and if not personally involved surely saw what was going on.

    Two unidentified men were also seen acting suspiciously around Walker’s house on 8th April 1963. Robert Surrey was a close associate of General Walker and had set up a publishing company with him. It was actually Surrey who was responsible for the Wanted for Treason leaflets distributed around Dallas at the time of JFK’s visit.

    Surrey told police and the FBI that around 9pm to 9:30pm on 8th April 1963, he had just arrived at Walker’s house and was planning to drive up the alley (where the shot was fired two nights later). He observed two men sitting in a 1963 Ford just off the alley. Surrey parked elsewhere and went back to see what these men were up to. He saw them get out of the car and walk up the alley. They went into the area at the rear of the property and looked in windows. Surrey took the opportunity to check their car. There was no license plate. He opened the glove compartment but saw nothing that would help identify the men. About 30 minutes later, the men returned to their car and Surrey followed them in his. He did not follow them long.

    Surrey confirmed that he had never seen the men before or after that night. Like Coleman, he also provided a description to police and confirmed to them in June 1964 that he was of the opinion that neither man was Lee Harvey Oswald (click here for FBI report on Surrey statement).

    Were these the two men that returned to the Walker house two days later and were they the same ones seen by Walter Kirk Coleman? Their identities will probably never be known now, which is just another mystery in this case that has so many.

    Further intrigue, as if we needed any, about the night of the Walker shooting is provided in Chapter Five of Gayle Nix Jackson’s interesting 2016 book, Pieces of the Puzzle: An Anthology. She tells the story of seeing a 2012 video interview with Robert Surrey’s eldest son, David. In the interview, David recalls being at Walker’s house with his father when the shot was fired. Father and son then went out in their car, looking for the shooter. After circling the area for a while, Surrey pulled up behind a car and got out to speak to a guy who got out of his car. Surrey asked the guy, “Did you get him?” The man replied that he missed.

    Coleman and Robert Surrey’s statements are important when assessing if Oswald was involved in the Walker incident or if more than one person was involved. Their statements are rarely told.

    The Bullet and the Photographs

    The bullet that narrowly missed General Walker’s head was retrieved by police on the night of the shooting. It was described in their contemporaneous report as appearing to come from a high-powered rifle and “was a steel jacket bullet.” Presumably, police officers are familiar with identifying different types of bullets. Early newspaper reports, including from the day after the shooting by the Dallas Morning News, also reported the bullet as of 30:06 caliber. They may have been passed this information from sources in the Dallas Police Department.

    Police officers also thoroughly searched the alley at the rear of the house from where the shot was fired with “negative results.” They found no spent cartridges or other evidence of value.

    If Oswald did take the shot at General Walker, he was obviously more careful about cleaning up the scene of the crime than he was when he allegedly shot President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. On those occasions, he left the rifle, cartridges, bullet casings and a wallet behind, even emptying his revolver of the rest of its contents at the Tippit scene. He may as well have left a calling card!

    The police did identify the spot from where they felt the shot at Walker was fired, a lattice fence at the rear of the house and in the alley. This was a distance of roughly 100 feet to the spot where Walker was sitting. Walker’s house was illuminated that night, so there is the obvious question of how the shooter could have missed, especially a so-called sharpshooter like Lee Harvey Oswald. According to the Warren Commission, Oswald successfully pulled off a far more difficult shot, and at a moving target, seven months later from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

    And, in a way similar to how a German Mauser rifle morphed into an Italian Mannlicher Carcano in the hours following the JFK assassination, investigating authorities seemed to want to modify a 30:06 steel jacketed bullet into a 6.5mm copper jacketed bullet and then link it to Oswald. Remember that the bullet retrieved from the Walker house was very badly damaged and in a mangled state (see Commission exhibit CE 573 below).

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    In fact, during the HSCA investigation in the 1970’s, General Walker himself said that the bullet in evidence was not the same bullet that was found in his house on 10th April 1963. He wrote to the Attorney General in February 1979 and said that it was “a ridiculous substitute.” He went on to state that “I saw the hunk of lead, picked up by a policeman in my house, and I took it from him and I inspected it carefully. There is no mistake. There has been a substitution for the bullet fired by Oswald and taken out of my house.”

    We should exercise caution when reviewing statements made by Walker and not necessarily take them at face value. But it cannot be denied that he was there the night the bullet was found and had decades of experience in the military and in handling firearms.

    What we can say with confidence is that it has never been established beyond doubt that the bullet found at the Walker house on 10th April 1963 was fired from the same rifle allegedly used to assassinate President Kennedy. Even the Warren Commission, hardly the biggest defenders of Oswald, recognized that their experts were never “able to state that the bullet which missed General Walker was fired from Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all others.”

    The photographs of Walker’s house found among Oswald’s belonging are also presented as evidence of his involvement in the assassination attempt. We are told that he took these photos weeks before the shot was fired and as he was planning the event. At face value, it looks incriminating. Why would Oswald have pictures of the back of Walker’s house and the alley from where the shot was fired? I would respond initially by saying that just having such photographs in your possession does not prove you fired a shot.

    There has been very credible research carried out over the years that Oswald had assignments as a government agent and was an FBI informant. If Oswald did take these pictures, and it has not been established beyond all doubt that he did or even owned the camera that took them, maybe they were taken in such a capacity. Could Oswald have been keeping tabs on right-wing individuals and groups visiting the Walker house and reporting back to his superiors on all the comings and goings? Is it possible that he was trying to infiltrate such groups? In October 1963, Oswald is said to have attended the Walker inspired “US Day” at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium at which the General was a keynote speaker. He then attended a meeting of the John Birch Society shortly afterwards. Was he involved in such surveillance activities right up until the time of his own death?

    Another piece of vital information that cannot be ignored, is the photograph of the back of Walker’s house with the parked car, identified as a 1957 Chevrolet (see Commission Exhibit 5). The license number of the car has clearly been punched out. When police officers found this picture at Ruth Paine’s house in the days following the JFK assassination, they said that this was how the picture looked and that it had already been mutilated.

    scott03

    However, in 1969 when Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry published his JFK Assassination File it showed on page 113 an exhibit of Oswald’s possessions that included this controversial photograph (see section of photograph below – red arrow added by me). The license number in this picture appeared to be intact. Certainly, the area punched out looks very different in the picture published in Curry’s book. Was evidence tampered with?

    scott04

    If Oswald was a lone gunman, what motivation would he have to punch out the license plate or even hold on to the photographs? Marina stated that he burned pages of a notebook that had plans included for the shooting of General Walker. It doesn’t make sense to retain evidence that would incriminate him, such as the photographs, when he was also burning other evidence that could possibly link him to the crime.

    In Conclusion

    What I have attempted to do in this article is briefly lay out some of the counter arguments to the popular belief that Lee Harvey Oswald definitely took the shot at General Edwin Walker. Anyone who can say this with absolute certainty is either being disingenuous or has information and knowledge about the night of 10th April 1963 that has not been shared yet.

    Even after researching and writing this article, I would not be so bold as to say that Oswald was definitely not involved, either as a lone gunman or as part of some conspiratorial plot. The truth is that nobody really knows who took the shot. It should not though be put exclusively at the door of Lee Oswald when there is so much information to doubt that conclusion. It is unlikely that he would have been convicted in a court of law.

    It has been speculated that the Walker shooting was even a staged event to highlight Walker’s political causes and portray him as a victim. Did the framing of Lee Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy begin with the events of 10th April 1963?

    Much more reading, writing and research has been done, and can be done on the events referred to in this article. I have only scratched the surface. As always with the JFK assassination, there are more questions than answers, but we must keep asking and trying to answer them. Had Oswald not been murdered in police custody, perhaps many of these questions would already have been answered or would never have needed to be asked in the first place.

    Going back to the basketball analogy, rather than Oswald’s guilt in the Walker shooting incident being a “slam dunk,” perhaps we need a “time out” instead for further reflection on the evidence.

    It is time to redress the balance.

  • Sy Hersh Falls On His Face Again, and Again, and Again

    Sy Hersh Falls On His Face Again, and Again, and Again

    Seymour Hersh likes to file what he considers scoops about highly controversial subjects. The doctrinaire left buys him as an investigative journalist so he manages to get air time for his “scoops” on their programs e.g. Democracy Now! The problem with this is simple: as time has gone on, intelligent people who have researched his “scoops” have found them to be rather problematic. In fact, in a few quarters, Hersh has become something of a punching bag.

    His latest is on the Nord Stream pipeline explosions of September 26, 2022. Hersh posted this on his Substack site, where people pay a monthly fee to read his stories. Almost immediately, a partner of mine, Rahul Arya, began to send me a series of e-mails pointing out errors in this so-called expose of how the USA and Norway exploded Nord Stream. For instance, Hersh claimed that the “supreme commander of NATO”, Jens Stoltenberg, was all for it since he “…had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.”

    Rahul commented on this as such: Stoltenberg was born in March of 1959. President Johnson committed the first American combat troops to Indochina in 1965. President Nixon withdrew the last of the American forces in March of 1973. Are we to believe that Stoltenberg was an informant from the time he was 6 until the time he was 14? Kind of young, no?

    Rahul also pointed out that Hersh said that Norway’s navy “was quick to find the right spot”. Which made it sound like all the detonations took place in close vicinity to each other. When, in fact, the distance between where Nord Stream 1 and 2 were exploded was about 77 kilometers.

    Rahul also listened to Hersh on the accommodating Democracy Now! program for February 15, 2023. He pointed out some problems with that talk. Hersh said there were 19 signers to the 1949 NATO treaty. There were actually 12. In fact, even when the USSR dissolved in 1991 there were still just 16 nations in NATO. It was not until 1999 that the alliance would have 19 members. Hersh only missed it by a half century!

    On that program Hersh said the BALTOPs NATO naval exercises—the key to Hersh’s story—had been conducted for the last 22 years. One can go to a number of sources, including Wikipedia, and see that it began in 1971 and there have been over 50 of these. The Russians have been known to shadow the ships involved.

    So this is what makes, in Hersh’s terms, a beautiful cover story? Hersh also said that mine clearing and detection had not been part of the exercise before. Again, one can go to a number of sources and see that mine detection has been a part of BALTOPS before. Would it not be a giveaway to add that to the recent exercise if one was covering a covert operation involving deep diving?

    I am not going to go into all the other critiques of Hersh’s latest. As Aaron Good emailed me, it might be correct that America had a role in all this. But I will refer the reader to Oliver Alexander’s “Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh’s Pipe Dream”, Russ Baker’s Nord Stream Explosion: Plenty of Gas, Not Much Light and Rene Tebel’s “Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream Theory: Fact or Fiction”. After reading through these, the best one can say is that if the USA and Norway did explode Nord Stream, Hersh’s story was a good way to disguise it. And, in fact, the newest explanation is that it was Ukraine who did the subterfuge.

    II

    Democracy Now!, Ralph Nader and others would have been wise to think back to Hersh’s last big “scoop”. This one was about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the man accused of masterminding the 9-11 attacks. The reader will recall that bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda, was killed as part of a raid by the Navy Seals of Seal Team 6. The operation was called Operation Neptune Spear. It was largely a CIA mission but had significant support from the military.

    The assault took place in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011. After the mission, the American forces returned to Afghanistan, identified the body, and then flew hundreds of miles to deposit the corpse in the Arabian Sea, since this was part of Islamic tradition. The Pakistani government was quite disturbed over what they considered a violation of their territory, since President Obama had decided not to consult with them for fear of a leak. The Pakistanis were so disturbed that they initiated a commission to investigate the episode. The result was called the Abbottabad Commission Report.

    There have been two popular accountings of the operation. Both of them released in 2012. There was a book called No Easy Day written by a Seal participant under the pen name Mark Owen (Matt Bissonnette). That book made the New York Times best seller list. There was also a film directed by Katherine Bigelow titled Zero Dark Thirty. That picture grossed well over a hundred million dollars.

    Hersh’s version of what happened first appeared in The London Review of Books; it was then published in a brief book version. His main thesis is that Obama’s refusal to inform Pakistan, and the bad relations between the two countries afterwards- e.g. the forming of the commission, well this was all a pose, something of a cover. Hersh postulated that, in reality, Pakistani intelligence captured bin Laden in 2006, and kept him prisoner with help from Saudi Arabia. He was their leverage against Al-Qaeda. In 2010, the Pakistanis agreed to sell their prisoner to America for increased military aid and a freer hand in Afghanistan. And they agreed to the staging of the elaborate raid by helicopter with Pakistani support. (See Vox, May 11, 2015, story by Max Fisher) In fact, forget about a fire fight, the Seals were escorted to bin Laden’s bedroom by an ISI officer.

    Hersh then adds two kickers. First, the intelligence materials discovered in the compound were manufactured to provide evidence after the fact. Secondly, there was no actual at-sea burial. The body was so decimated by rifle fire that pieces of the corpse were thrown out over the Hindu Kush mountains during the return flight. (ibid)

    Max Fisher notes that all of this is based upon two main sources. One was in Pakistan’s military intelligence from 1990-92. The other was a retired American intelligence officer who knew about the early information on bin Laden in Abbottabad. There are no supporting documents.

    The motivating force for Pakistan to cooperate was undermined by two facts. There was no increase in military aid to Pakistan, and the cooperation in Afghanistan plummeted because of the raid. (ibid).

    Peter Bergen of CNN also chimed in on this supposed trailblazing scoop. He asked: Why on earth would Saudi Arabia pay to upkeep bin Laden while living in Pakistan? One of his key aims was the overthrow of the Saudi family, which is why they revoked his citizenship back in 1994. (Bergen, CNN, May 20, 2015) Bergen asked, if he really was a prisoner of Pakistan, why would the Saudis not pay their allies to look the other way while they sent a hit team in to finish him off. We all remember Jamal Khashoggi, right?

    Bergen also undermined Hersh’s claim that the only shots fired that night were the ones that killed Bin Laden. Bergen blasted this, since he actually visited the compound before the Pakistanis leveled it. He said that, far from no evidence of a fire fight:

    The compound was trashed, littered almost everywhere with broken glass, and several areas of it were sprayed with bullet holes where the SEALS had fired at members of bin Laden’s entourage and family, or in one case exchanged fire with one of his bodyguards.

    Both Fisher and Bergen also questioned Hersh’s idea that the Pakistanis were in reality holding bin Laden, and the raid was really all a set up between them and America. Bergen, who wrote a book on the subject, said that American officials monitored Pakistan’s ISI communications the night of the raid. The top ISI officials were bewildered, since they had not a clue about bin Laden’s presence there.

    Fisher asked: Why would the Pakistanis allow a fake raid that would humiliate their country? If bin Laden was truly a prisoner there had to be other ways to get rid of him without such a spectacular violation of air and territorial space. In fact, when he was trying to sell the story to editor David Remnick at The New Yorker, Hersh was offering a drone strike outside of the compound. (Vox, ibid) As for the fake intel files, bin Laden’s second in command said they were real. (ibid) Was Ayman al-Zawahiri lying? Was he part of the cover-up?

    III

    Max Fisher ended his critique of Hersh’s theory by noting some of the other outlandish ideas Hersh had reported:

    1. An American prospective attack on Iran, perhaps with a nuclear warhead.
    2. In January 2011, Hersh said that top military and special forces leaders were all members or supporters of Knights of Malta, many of them were also Opus Dei. Vice President Cheney’s idea was to bring Christianity to the Middle East.
    3. In 2012, he reported in The New Yorker that the Bush administration was training members of the anti-Iran group MEK in Nevada. Although this was not discredited, it was also never confirmed.

    The above may be why Hersh had to publish his other ‘scoops” in England or on Substack.

    But for those in the JFK field, the reckoning for Sy Hersh came before all these stories. It was back in the nineties. At that time Hersh was working on what turned out to be one of the worst books ever written on John F. Kennedy or his assassination. That was 1997’s The Dark Side of Camelot. That book got into trouble even before it was published. For those knowledgeable about the JFK field and Hersh it was possible to see the origins of the volume.

    As we know from the late Jim Marrs, Random House editor Bob Loomis had convinced Gerald Posner to write a book on the JFK case in time for the 30th anniversary. Posner accommodated Loomis, his boss Harold Evans, and Random House with Case Closed in 1993. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 369). Well, Loomis also backed Sy Hersh in the early part of his career. (ibid) If one looks at the intent of the two books, they are complementary: one was to restore the Warren Report verdict, the other was to smear the image of JFK. Both men got massive media tours with no significant opponent to contest their message.

    But Hersh stumbled out of the starting gate. He encountered a man named Lex Cusack, who was a paralegal in a New York office firm founded by his father. A few years prior to their meeting, a woman named Nancy Greene (aka Maniscalco, aka Cusamano) had approached Lex at the New York firm of Cusack and Stiles. Lex’s father, Lawrence, had been appointed supervisor of the trust fund Marilyn Monroe had set up for her mother, Gladys Baker: “Nancy Greene laid out a tangled claim to the Monroe estate…” David Samuels in The New Yorker theorized that this may have been the germinating idea for Cusack to launch a huge hoax which Hersh fell for: headfirst. (Don McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, pp. 220-26; New Yorker, Nov. 3, 1997) As Samuels wrote, Cusack now searched his father’s files, and this led to the discovery of what was later called the Monroe/JFK trust. Cusack then sold these documents to collectors for a dollar amount well into the seven figures.

    The documents purported to portray a trust agreement between the Kennedys, Monroe and her lawyer Aaron Frosch. The deal was for 600K, to be paid for Monroe’s mother’s upkeeping. In return Monroe would keep quiet about her relationship with JFK, and any Mob figures she observed in his presence. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 365). From reports by Robert Sam Anson, Hersh was overjoyed when he found the papers. He waved them over his head at a restaurant shouting, “The Kennedys were…the worst people!” (ibid, p. 366)

    Hersh had sold the TV rights to his book to ABC. And they had given him more money based on the documents. But when they began to run them by experts, the hoax collapsed. It is hard to understand why and how Hersh could have missed all the problems with the Cusack papers. For instance, Greg Schreiner, a Marilyn authority in North Hollywood, told me the first time he saw the Monroe signature he knew it was not hers. But its even worse than that. Janet DeRosiers was the last living signee to the “trust”. Hersh showed the papers to her and she said that was not her signature, and she never met Monroe. She warned Hersh and his publisher: they were dealing with forgeries. Hersh did what many of the Monroe zealots do: he termed her a Kennedy apologist. (McGovern, p. 224; Newsweek, 10/ 5/97, story by Mark Hosenball)

    But perhaps the worst aspect was this: typing corrections were made in a liftoff ribbon. This is so clear it was visible in the copies for the Samuels article. That ribbon was not available in 1960. And it was not sold until the seventies. How could Hersh, a man who made his living out of his typewriter, have missed something like that? (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 366)

    ABC’s Peter Jennings took the fiasco personally. After all, ABC had paid Hersh and his publisher before any forensic examination. Jennings hosted the Cusack expose program on 20/20 and did what he could to minimize Hersh’s failures in this regard. Jennings actually said that the idea that ABC saved Hersh on this was not really fair.(LA Times, 9/26/97, story by Eleanor Randolph) But if one adds in the above information, especially by DeRosiers, that appears to be what happened. The supposed “crack” reporter was taken for a ride.

    But Jennings and ABC went through with the program based on Hersh’s book. Sure enough, there was another Hersh styled custard pie awaiting on the program. Predictably, Hersh had fallen for the ever mutating stories of Judith Exner. Exner was someone who, by 1997, many in the know suspected of being another prevaricator in an ever expanding field of them. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp.329-38) Since her story about carrying messages between JFK and Chicago don Sam Giancana surfaced so late—well over a decade after her first questioning by the Church Committee—many observers raised their eyebrows at how Exner had radically changed her story for People magazine in 1988, who reportedly paid her the equivalent of well over $100,000 today. Turns out, she was one of those who told so many BS stories she could not keep them straight.

    For Hersh she indeed said that she carried messages back and forth between Kennedy and Giancana. She added that Bobby Kennedy was in on these secret communications. In fact Bobby would tap her on the shoulder and ask, “Are you still comfortable doing this? We want you to let us know if you don’t want to.” (Hersh, pp. 307-08)

    Apparently, ABC and Hersh knew how weak this would look with no corroborating witness: RFK, the Mafia’s living nightmare, sending messages to his number one target, Sam Giancana, who he had surveillance on! So Hersh got a man named Martin Underwood to back stop the tale. (Hersh, pp. 304-05) And Underwood was to appear on the Jennings program. He backed out. The story as to why he backed out did not emerge until the next year, 1998, with the Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board. (ARRB) When confronted with a legal body with subpoena power, Underwood, ”denied that he followed Judith Campbell Exner on a train and that he had no knowledge about her alleged role as a courier.” It turned out Underwood was involved in more than one instance of storytelling, used by both Hersh and Gus Russo. To be kind, they turned out to be flatulent. (ARRB Final Report, pgs. 112, 135, 136) Further—and this is really shocking—Hersh did not realize that on February 4, 1992, Exner appeared on Larry King’s show. When King asked her about any relationship with RFK, she replied with one word, “None.” King asked her to clarify that and she said she probably met him once or twice at a political fundraiser or a party in Los Angeles. That was it. So you had Hersh attaching one fairy tale (Underwood’s) to another fairy tale (Exner’s). Question: How bad is bad?

    IV

    Just because Hersh fell on his face with the Cusack documents, that did not mean he was going to leave the subject of JFK and Monroe alone. Nope, not by a long shot. As anyone can garner, Hersh was writing a hatchet job and the Monroe field is full of that material. But even for a hatchet job, Hersh was so extreme as to be sci-fi.

    Hersh wrote that there were accounts of Monroe being impregnated by Kennedy and having an abortion in Mexico. (Hersh, p. 103) Any hack can report ‘accounts’; but it was trashy so Hersh printed it. The problem is that according to Monroe’s gynecologist, Dr. Leon Krohn, Marilyn suffered two miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy, which she had to terminate. She never submitted to an abortion. (Email communication with Marilyn author Don McGovern, 3/4/2023)

    Hersh also reported that Monroe was at Hyannis Port. (p. 103). Again, today we have both the president’s daily calendar and two Monroe day-to-day books, one by April VeVea and one by Carl Rollyson. That story is not credible either. (op. cit. McGovern) Finally, there is this humdinger: Monroe would call President Kennedy at the White House, with much explicit talk of a sexual nature. (Hersh, p. 454). Kennedy installed the taping system in July of 1962, and the first tapings are from July 30th. Monroe passed away on August 4th, 1962. (ibid). When I ran these by Gary Vitacco Robles, author of a three volume biography of Monroe, he replied that this all struck him as fantasy. (Email of March 4, 2023) It appears that Hersh never double checked anything.

    Why did Hersh insist on using Exner and her phony Washington/Chicago “courier” tall tales? Because he was intent on implicating the Kennedys in the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Castro. What Hersh does in this aspect of his book is a bit astonishing. The Church Committee had investigated this for months on end. They could not come up with any credible evidence that any president was aware of these plots. So Hersh decided to rely on someone the committee simply did not believe: Richard Bissell, CIA Director of Plans. When I say the committee did not buy Bissell, it was bipartisan, both Democrats and Republicans. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 351) For one thing, he was asked six times who called him from the White House to develop such a deadly mechanism. Six times he could not recall. Someone at the White House calls you about a Castro termination project and you cannot recall who it was? (John Newman, Into the Storm, p. 182)

    So why did Bissell prevaricate before the committee? Because in the CIA’s internal report on the matter, it indicates that it was Bissell who initiated the project—before Kennedy was elected! (Inspector General Report, p. 14; Newman, p. 187) In other words, there would be no need for any such call, since Bissell had enacted it already; which was a question the Church Committee posed to Bissell. Hersh has to know this since he refers to the Inspector General report more than once. In other words, Bissell was practicing a CYA exercise, and the committee did not buy it since they knew he was lying. And Hersh keeps this all hush hush. Again, how bad is bad?

    But Hersh also wants to sell the reader on CIA officer Sam Halpern. Halpern was, even more than Bissell, the CIA’s most prolific cover-up artist on the Castro plots. Probably because he was assistant to William Harvey, and Harvey continued the second phase of the plots with help from Ted Shackley. To neutralize those facts, Halpern did something pretty despicable. He used one dead man, Charles Ford, to blame the plots on another dead man, Bobby Kennedy. Again, Hersh had no problem with that. (Hersh, pp. 286-292)

    He should have. For both David Talbot and John Newman have shown this to be another lie. Due to the ARRB—an agency that Hersh never mentions or writes about—we found out what Ford said about this Halpern accusation. When he was asked by the Church Committee to comment he said he had utterly nothing to do with contacting the Mob for any kind of Castro murder plots. He said that, as far as RFK went, his work for him was to try and organize Cuban exile groups in America and to retrieve prisoners from the Bay of Pigs operation. (Talbot, Brothers, pp. 122-23; Newman, pp. 260-67) As Newman shows, we have this information from both sides, RFK and Ford.

    Halpern knew he was lying to Hersh because he signed off on one of Ford’s memos, since Ford was working under Bill Harvey and Halpern in 1961 at CIA. So how could he have been working for RFK? One of the worst lies Halpern told Hersh was that Bobby was using Ford because Harvey could not find someone to help him kill Castro. Bobby was not doing any such thing, and Harvey had found someone, namely John Roselli. And the CIA had lied to Bobby about the existence of that plot. (Newman, p. 279)

    V

    As stated above, the Church Committee had access to the CIA’s IG Report on the Mafia plots to kill Castro. That 145 page document concludes that the CIA conducted the plots with no presidential approval. (pp. 132-33). If anyone can find where Hersh quotes that part of the report, please let me know.

    But Hersh performed a similar stunt with the milestone article “The Confessions of Allen Dulles” (Diplomatic History, Fall 1984). He placed it in an on page footnote, very vaguely described it, and said that the author buried the lead, namely that the Castro plots happened to be going on at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion. (Hersh, pp. 203-04) That was old news since it had emerged with the Church Committee back in 1975. What Hersh did not tell the reader is what was startlingly new for 1984. In papers discovered at the Princeton library Dulles admitted that he knew the Bay of Pigs invasion would likely fail. Which was not what he was telling the president. In fact, the CIA kept this secret from Kennedy. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 14) Why? Because they thought that once Kennedy saw the invasion was lost “…any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail.” (Vandenbroucke, Diplomatic History.)

    In other words, it was Hersh who buried the lead. And by doing so, he kept hidden the reason that JFK fired Dulles, Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell. Kennedy had been deliberately mislead about the prospects of Operation Zapata all along. And as the CIA internal review of the operation makes clear, assassination was not part of the actual invasion agenda. (James DiEugenio and Robert Parry, iF Magazine, May-June 1998, p. 5) Larry Hancock has informed me that it was never even orally discussed with the covert ops oversight group. (Hancock email of March 4th) . So when Hersh sources Robert Maheu that it was, he is using someone who was never part of the Bay of Pigs planning. (ibid) Again, with Hersh its one piece of malarkey stacked atop another.

    Hersh of course fell for the whole mythology of the Mob, especially Sam Giancana, helping secure the 1960 election for Kennedy. This idea was put to bed once and for all with a microanalysis by John Binder. (Click here) The raw numbers proved the opposite of what was needed for it to be true. There was no evidence in the Mob-oriented wards that Giancana delivered any advantage to Kennedy in 1960. In fact, the final numbers were below the average, which indicates that, if anything, the advice was to stop Kennedy.

    What about West Virginia? Well, the deal was to send Skinny D’Amato to West Virginia to help Kennedy win the primary there. (Giancana, Double Cross, p. 284; Hersh pp. 100-01) Attorney Dan Fleming searched high and low for any trace of D’Amato in West Virginia. He interviewed over 80 people, and went to some rather unsavory locales to find any evidence of his whereabouts. There were none. But further, there were three formal inquiries into that election. The last by Barry Goldwater who hired an FBI agent to conduct the inquiry. Nothing came up. I wonder why. Further, I wonder why Hersh does not mention any of this. (Fleming, Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960, pp. 107-12; 170-71)

    Let me make one last comment about this whole Giancana Double Cross fable. As Garry Wills noted in his blistering review of The Dark Side of Camelot: Why can no one get their story straight about it? In Double Cross, the agreement was set up by Joe Kennedy calling Giancana directly. (Giancana pp. 267-69) As noted previously, according to Exner, it was she who was the messenger. As Wills pointed out, for Hersh it was done through a mob lawyer, Robert McDonnell, who set up a meeting with a since deceased judge named William Tuohy. But as Wills also pointed out, according to Tina Sinatra, the connection was through her father. Rummaging through all this, Wills noted: Was there anyone in America who was not involved in this alleged connection? (The New York Review of Books, 12/18/97)

    The reason no one can get it right is because, as with Underwood and Exner, it did not happen. Double Cross is a novel. The idea that Joe Kennedy needed help to win the election in as poor a state as West Virginia is ludicrous. Or that Richard Daley would not be enough to secure Chicago? It’s all as absurd as the multi-millionaire Joe Kennedy wanting to be a bootlegger. When in fact he made tens of millions in the movie business, real estate and stocks. So much that be bought the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. (Click here for details)

    As Wills summed up the book and Hersh:

    It is an astonishing spectacle, this book. In his mad zeal to destroy Camelot, to raze it down, dance on the rubble, and sow salt on the ground where it stood, Hersh has, with precision and method, disassembled and obliterated his own career and reputation.

    ADDENDUM

    On February 22nd, Hersh tried to paste his Nord Stream theorem back together in a rather outlandish way. On his Substack site he posed the question of: why Norway? And he replied that it was because that country had a “long and murky history of cooperation with American intelligence.” He then brings up the Gulf of Tonkin incident in relation to that “cooperation”.

    Cooperation? America purchased several Nasty class ships from Norway for one reason. They were larger than what the USA had and could therefore accommodate more men to perform the raids against the north. (Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, p. 12) There were some sailors also recruited from Norway, but these were just one nation out of a rotating cast in order to keep Americans out of the direct line of fire. As Edwin Moise notes, one other country’s mercenaries were from Germany, another was China. Did China have a long history of cooperation with American intelligence?

    People who understand just what a bad reporter Hersh is have informed me of something that is startling. At his Substack site, Hersh is still writing about President Kennedy. And he is still trying to sustain his (proven) malarkey.

    On March 1st, Hersh wrote a column about Kennedy and Vietnam. Hersh writes that in 1962 Kennedy decided he had to take a stand in Indochina and “confront the spread of communism there.” He also writes that Kennedy increased the number of troops in Vietnam. Sy, there were no troops in Vietnam, only advisors.

    So what was really happening?

    In late 1961, Kennedy had sent John Kenneth Galbraith to Saigon to write a report countering the vociferous hawks who wanted him to send combat troops to Indochina. Galbraith wrote the report. When the ambassador to India was in Washington in April, Kennedy sent him to brief Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, 2017 edition, pp. 234-36) Kennedy and Galbraith got the message through and the next month McNamara met with General Harkins, the supreme commander in Vietnam. He called him aside after a meeting and told him to devise a plan to dismantle the American role in Vietnam. Reportedly, Harkins chin hit the table. This was the beginning of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan. (James Douglass, JFK and The Unspeakable, pp. 119-22)

    Can someone tell Hersh: This was in 1962.

    Hersh also tries to say that the strategic hamlet program was started by the Kennedy administration, specifically Roger Hilsman. It was actually begun by General Lionel McGarr and President Ngo Dinh Diem. (Newman, p. 179)

    The second column concerns his relationship with Dan Ellsberg. Ellsberg talks about his duty in Vietnam with Ed Lansdale. Hersh uses this to bring up the investigation of the Church Committee and Operation Mongoose. Hersh again writes that the orders to assassinate Fidel Castro “clearly came from Jack and Bobby Kennedy.” As we have proven this is utter cow dung. And the CIA admitted it in its own review of the matter. (IG Report, pp. 132-33)

    Further, as anyone who has read the declassified record on Mongoose knows, Castro’s assassination was never part of the program. In fact, when Senator George Smathers tried to bring the subject up with him, Kennedy exploded and smashed a dinner plate over the table. He then said he never wanted to hear that talk again. (Alleged Assassination Plots, p. 124)

    None of the above will stop shows like Democracy Now! from having Hersh on again. And they will not question him about any of the above.

    Go to Part 2

  • Mark Shaw’s Fighting for Justice

    Mark Shaw’s Fighting for Justice

    Mark Shaw has (ostensibly) written six books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Four of those have been published in the last seven years. Which means his current output is one book on an average of less than two years. This reviewer has written, or co-written, four books on the case in thirty years. If Shaw wrote books based on the newly declassified documents that have been dripping out due to the strictures of the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act, then fine. But as we shall see, such is not the case.

    When I reviewed Shaw’s Denial of Justice, I noted that for all that was new in that book, Shaw could have simply written a long blog post on his website. (Click here for that review) To expand his parameters what Shaw has done is added another subject—which was hinted at in that book. So instead of Dorothy Kilgallen and John Kennedy, Shaw opened up a new area of inspection in his next book, Collateral Damage. That new area was Marilyn Monroe. As Don McGovern showed in his two part review, Shaw’s writing was remarkably unconvincing about the late film star. (Click here for that review) As Don demonstrated at length, not only did Shaw reveal a lack of analytical insight, he could not even interpret photographs accurately. His excuse for glomming on to Monroe was that she was allegedly a close friend of Kilgallen. As McGovern explained, among many others Shaw made, that statement was inaccurate.

    In his new book, inaptly named Fighting for Justice, Shaw now says he has gotten literally hundreds of letters asking if there was any connection between the deaths of JFK, Kilgallen and Monroe. (Shaw, p. 149) Which is an odd statement. For example, this reviewer has been researching the JFK case full time for the last three decades. I never got one such question, let alone a letter, asking me about that topic. I have attended literally dozens of conferences, and I never heard anyone from the audience ask anything like that. I have been a semi-regular on Len Osanic’s Black Op Radio program for over ten years, and have fielded hundreds of questions from the audience—but never that one. As we shall see—and as McGovern hinted—there appears to be another reason for Shaw’s insistence on now including the Monroe case in his writing.

    Some people like to hear themselves talk. Shaw apparently likes to type. But typing is not writing. About the first fifty pages of this book have little or nothing to do with the alleged subject matter. It is purely autobiographical. So if you want to hear about why Mark Shaw moved from Indiana to Colorado to California, this is your book. Since I was not interested, to me this was just filler.  

    The last part of the book, Chapters 20 and 21—where Shaw excerpts a long phone call between President Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—could have been cut at least in half. And that is not all that should have been cut. For Shaw repeats much of his prior biographical work on Dorothy Kilgallen. He also recycles his half-baked—if that—ideas on the JFK assassination. For instance, he praises the HSCA for examining every nuance of the Kennedy and Oswald killings. (p. 65) Many would disagree. He then writes that there were three shots fired, with the second and third bullets hitting Kennedy. (p. 66) Yet everyone knows the HSCA concluded there were four shots, based upon the acoustics evidence. He now repeats an allegation he made in Denial of Justice that the HSCA report said the Kennedys went after organized crime because mobsters impinged on the success of their father’s bootlegging.(p. 66) I read the HSCA volumes on organized crime, Books 5 and 9, and found no such thing. Let me quote myself:

    If one goes through those volumes, especially volumes 5 and 9, where this Mafia angle is explored, the reader will find no mention of Joe Kennedy’s alleged bootlegging. But in book five, it is noted that, by 1963, the Mafia was falling apart due to Bobby Kennedy’s unrelenting pressure tactics. (HSCA, Vol. 5, p. 455) And make no mistake, the House Select Committee pulled out all the stops in investigating this Mob-did-it angle. They used all kinds of official records, not just in Washington, but also from various local police departments. Again, did no one do any editing of this book?

    So Shaw wanted to write another book. And apparently it did not matter how he filled in the pages. So how does he do it? He prints and then replies to questions and comments from people who read his books, or watched his online presentations. And from what I could discern, the quality of the comments did not matter. There is a letter from a man whose father knew Joe Cody, a former police officer in Dallas. It turns out that Cody bought Jack Ruby the revolver he used to kill Oswald. After relating this information, Shaw pats himself on the back for uncovering “an historical piece of evidence”. (p. 125)

    It would have been natural of Shaw to have clicked his search bar. If so he would have found out that this “historical’ piece of evidence has been around since at least 2008. Since it was described in two obituaries for Cody, one in the Dallas Morning News of July 7th and one at the TV site for KTBS on July 3rd.

    I don’t even want to talk about another one which features Carlos Marcello, Mac Wallace, and Jack Ruby in the same restaurant in Dallas in the summer of 1963. It then gets better. A show girl with Marcello calls Shaw’s witness later in 1977. She says she has a picture of the real JFK assassin emerging from a sewer. Uh, OK. (pp. 119-20).

    But it’s not just stuff like this that Shaw uses to fill in pages of what is supposed to be a book. He now goes back to older books and describes them. One of them is from 1973 and is called The Kennedy Neurosis by Nancy Clinch. If a negative book on the Kennedys gets blasted by The New York Times well, that is notable. (See review by Robert Claiborne of 2/25/73) The book is what Clinch called psychohistory. As Claiborne wrote, this is tough to do even when one has the credentials to do so. Clinch majored in Political Science and did studies of housing in South Korea while in Army intelligence. She tried to explain the Bay of Pigs fiasco by saying it was due to “psychic dynamics” and “unconscious motivations” were “a typically American overconfidence and a typically American indifference toward the responses of the enemy.”

    Claiborne properly labels this as nonsense. But we know what happened with the Bay of Pigs today. It had nothing to do with a “Kennedy neurosis”. It had everything to do with the president being deliberately lied to by the CIA, namely Director Allen Dulles and Director of Plans Dick Bissell. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, by James DiEugenio, pp. 34-56)

    But strangely, this is something that is almost off limits to Shaw. You will see very little, if anything, about Kennedy’s disputes with the Pentagon or the CIA in any of his books. Even though this particular deception by the CIA caused Kennedy to fire Dulles, Bissell and Charles Cabell, the Deputy Director. I would personally think that would be more important than an ancient story about Joe Cody. Especially when its combined with the fact that the CIA also betrayed Kennedy by assassinating Patrice Lumumba, and backing an overthrow of Charles DeGaulle in 1961. (See David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pp. 382-89; pp 412-24) This all gets the back of Shaw’s hand, rendered unimportant. Even though when Dulles was appointed to the Warren Commission, at their first executive session meeting, he passed out a book saying that all American presidential assassinations were the work of one man. (David Lifton, Document Addendum to the Warren Report, pp. 89-90)

    What is important to Shaw? Not the new documents. He sloughs those off in a couple of pages. And when I say slough, I mean it. He finds credible a CIA document saying that Sam Giancana was still running the Chicago outfit in December of 1977. Uh Mark, Giancana was killed in 1975. That is almost as bad as him buying into a CIA document from 1998 negating any connection of Oswald to the Agency’s “Office of Operations.” (pp. 106-07) Apparently Shaw is ignorant of what Malcolm Blount did with the papers of the HSCA’s Betsy Wolf. And how her work resulted in CIA officer Pete Bagley declaring that Oswald was a witting false defector in 1959. (Click here, and see John Newman’s speaking of Bagley in Oliver Stone’s JFK : Destiny Betrayed)

    As the reader can see, Shaw is not an astute or prolific researcher on the newly declassified documents. So what does he build his book around? Two things. First, what he broadcasts as an utterly momentous, earthquake type of discovery. It is this: he thinks that Warren Commissioner John Sherman Cooper gave Dorothy Kilgallen the Commission’s Ruby testimony in advance, which she printed in her newspaper. Shaw spends about a dozen pages on this toward the end. He has no direct source, its an inference and a circumstantial case through a man named Morris Wolff. He then uses this as some kind of springboard that Cooper did not buy the Warren Commission from the start.

    Mark we kind of knew that. And the work has been done through more than one person on Cooper’s cohort Senator Richard Russell. Russell, Cooper and Hale Boggs made up the southern wing of the Commission, as opposed to the Wall St./Washington troika of Dulles, Jerry Ford and John McCloy. I wrote about this at length many years ago. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 315-320). This is why there was no stenographer at the last meeting of the Commission to record the southern wing’s dissent. And why Cooper said in a British documentary, way back in 1978, that he did not buy the Single Bullet Theory. Cooper as dissenter is not hot news. And I am still trying to figure out what the impact was of printing Ruby’s testimony early? As I am still trying to figure out how Kilgallen cracked the case if no one knows what she had in her files?

    Let us go to the other key point that Shaw insists on writing about. His new point of interest, which is really quite old: the alleged cover-up around the death of Marilyn Monroe. As Don McGovern showed in his review of Collateral Damage, Shaw went as far as misinterpreting photos implicating Bobby Kennedy in the death of Monroe. McGovern and Donna Morel pretty much wrecked Shaw’s new witness on the Monroe case: actor Gianni Russo. Russo had a hard time getting his age straight as to when he began his alleged relationship with Monroe—at first it was when he was about 12. This did not seem to bother Shaw. And neither did the problem of where Russo said Marilyn was living in 1959, Russo said it was the Waldorf Astoria. It was not.

    To put it mildly, Russo presented some problems for Collateral Damage. So now Shaw brings in writers like Sy Hersh and Frank Capell. But he does not give the reader the proper information about these two men. Hersh fell for a fraudulent legal document that was supposed to be signed by Marilyn and the Kennedys. More than one person said the signatures attached to the document were questionable. Hersh went forward with it anyway until it was shown that zip codes did not exist when the document was executed. (Click here)

    Frank Capell was brought up on charges, along with two other men, in a conspiracy to commit libel against Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel. Prior to that, Capell had been arrested twice for accepting bribes as a government employee. (Click here) I don’t recall Shaw writing about any of these compromising incidents in relation to Capell or Hersh. I find it hard to comprehend he would not know of them.

    But alas, Shaw uses the testimony of LAPD officer Jack Clemmons to say there was no drinking glass in Monroe’s room the night she overdosed. (Shaw, p. 156) As McGovern has proven there was such a glass in her room. (Click here for proof)

    Clemmons was an accomplice in the libel conspiracy charges that Capell was charged with and had to settle. As part of the settlement, Clemmons left the force. Again, this seems to me to be important information and Shaw should have revealed it before committing the factual error with the glass.

    But that is not all. Shaw continues to use a CIA memorandum allegedly signed off on by James Angleton concerning Marilyn, JFK and UFO’s. Many years ago, John Newman, a former intelligence officer, showed how that memo had to be a fake. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 360-61). In his devastating critique of Collateral Damage, McGovern brought in another source, Nick Redfern, who also shows the document to be a forgery. So why is Shaw still using it? Or Russo for that matter?

    Another problem: Shaw says that years after Monroe’s death, when her dwelling was purchased by actress Veronica Hamel, it was discovered that the FBI had installed a listening system in the roof of the home. ( Shaw, p. 171) Don McGovern told me that Monroe’s home had no attic, so was the wiring in the walls? How could Marilyn have not known about it then? (Email of 2/24/23) I got in contact with Gary Vitacco Robles, one of the most credible biographers of Monroe. He informed me that in the third volume of his book Icon, which is coming out soon, he will show that this really was a rewiring of the home, due to the fact that the phone wires were antiquated. After all the house was built in the twenties. (Email communication with Gary, 2/24/23)

    I am not going into the scenario that Shaw puts together as to how Robert Kennedy was actually in Los Angeles the day Marilyn passed on. He was not, and this is provable. (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 186-87) Neither will I critique his scenario about a rectal enema theory, which McGovern showed was simply not plausible. Or the accompanying “spillage” that Eunice Murray was busy machine washing when the police arrived. As McGovern showed, there was no washer/dryer in the home; Monroe sent everything out to be dry cleaned and pressed. (McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, p. 550) When an author continually makes these kinds of factual errors, and then trusts unreliable sources and documents—I won’t even talk about the book by June DiMaggio that Shaw uses—one begins to wonder about what his true agenda is. Its pretty clear that Shaw has gone around the bend on the MM imbroglio. He has joined the ranks of Milo Speriglio, Robert Slatzer, and Jeanne Carmen.

    And for him to say that somehow Monroe would not have taken her life or not have died from an accidental overdose, this is more Slatzer-like fruitiness. (Shaw, pp. 280-83) As every serious biographer of Monroe has admitted, she tried to take her life at least four prior times. (McGovern, pp. 8-9) She was, plain and simple, a barbiturate abuser. In the less than 2 months before she died, she had gone through about 790 pills. (McGovern, p. 533) Including, among others, Seconal, Tuinal and Nembutal. Tuinal is not available in the USA today; and Nembutal is used for euthanasia by veterinarians. She had a blank check at Schwab’s so to speak. Monroe had been married and divorced three times before she was 35. She had been through three psychoanalysts in about five years. To put it mildly, she did not have an idyllic childhood: she never met her half-sister until she was 18, she likely never met her father, her mother was institutionalized. And she did not like Hollywood. Which is one reason she and her third husband, Arthur Miller, moved to the east coast. I fail to see how any of the above was due to Robert Kennedy.

    What one feels at the end of this book is not Shaw fighting for justice. If so, why did he leave out the above in lieu of a likely forged UFO document, Clemmons and Gianni Russo? An informed reader is disturbed at the almost boundless and unwarranted vitriol aimed at John and Robert Kennedy. Who cannot reply. But Shaw’s publisher at Post Hill, Anthony Ziccardi, was part of Newsmax Media. So Shaw has now found a home for his venom, and his all too frequent—and quite dubious—books.

    Update

    Mark Shaw’s latest is such a hapless effort that it made me go back and look at his career from the beginning. As we all know he has taken on the cause of Dorothy Kilgallen with all the fervor of a jihadic warrior. Exalting her to a degree so extreme that, at times, he seems just silly.

    But what is odd about all this sound and fury is this: Mark Shaw did nothing of the kind in his first two books, which, in their latest editions, amount to about 700 pages. In his first book, a biography of Melvin Belli, he hardly mentions her. (see page 148) What makes that unusual is that there, since Belli was his defense counsel, Shaw writes five chapters about the trial of Jack Ruby. Kilgallen attended that trial and met with Ruby twice privately. Yet Shaw could only muster 49 words on his (later) Joan of Arc journalist.

    In his next book on the case, there was a slight uptick. He devotes a bit more than two pages to Kilgallen—all of it from Lee Israel’s biography.

    This begs the question: What happened in Shaw’s writing career that made him, literally, alter course? The best and most logical answer I can come up with is this: the reprint of Sara Jordan’s long article on Kilgallen’s death in Midwest Today. That fine piece originally ran in 2007. But it was reprinted with a much more graphic, illustrative format in 2015 for the anniversary of Kilgallen’s death. (Click here for that essay) Jordan was assisted by investigator Kathryn Fauble in that version. By the end of the next year, Shaw began his four book series on the reporter. And in that first effort, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, he gave Jordan and Fauble credit. As time has gone on, he does that less and less.

    With all this in mind, an incident of Shaw’s self-righteousness about Kilgallen stands out even more. Before his book came out, he appeared at a JFK Lancer Conference which I attended. I recall him saying how he thought Kilgallen had been ignored by the critics and he took a personal blast at Jim Douglass for not writing about her in his book. With what we know today, we could ask Mark: if not for Jordan and Fauble, would you have written books on Kilgallen? Your first two volumes do not indicate that.

    The problem with that subject though is this: Once you get outside the parameters of Kilgallen’s mysterious death, there just is not very much there. Shaw likes to say that when she went to New Orleans it was to investigate Carlos Marcello. This is just guesswork on his part. At the trial of Jack Ruby, Kilgallen wanted to know why there was so little being presented on Oswald. She complained about that in one of her columns. Since Oswald lived in New Orleans that summer of 1963, she could just have easily have been inquiring about what he was doing there.

    Realizing that he was at a cul de sac with Kilgallen, Shaw decided to add Marilyn Monroe to his mix. His excuse, that they were friends, has been undermined by Don McGovern and biographer Gary VItacco Robles. As McGovern noted at length, there are so many holes in Shaw’s work on Monroe that you could drive several 16 wheeled semis though it. (Click here) As I pointed out in my article on Sy Hersh, the whole Giancana election rigging scenario from Double Cross—which Shaw relies on– is so faulty that no one could keep their story straight about it. Plus it does not hold up by its own numbers.(Click here) If you add in what McGovern noted what was wrong about Monroe in that book—the Mob never owned her contract—Double Cross has been reduced to a novel.

    Between his reliance on that fairy tale book, his running out of gas on Kilgallen, and his appalling work on Monroe, what does Mark Shaw have to offer to the critical community? How can he say he is fighting for justice? That Coast to Coast maintains him as their semi regular guest on the JFK case is inexplicable. I, for one, think their 3 million listener audience deserves better. A lot better.

  • JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass – Book Review

    JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass – Book Review

    Since the start of the year I have read more books about the JFK assassination, including Uncovering Popov’s Mole by John Newman, which should be a subject of a future book review (for now let me say simply that it is a must read). But belatedly I read JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by James DiEugenio, the subject of this review.

    I purchased this book half a year ago as part of a package that included three versions of the documentary, mostly because I participated in the film, which I have viewed a number of times. I was never in a rush to actually read it, because I assumed that it could not add much to what was revealed in the film.

    Boy was I wrong!!!

    From pages 15 to 220, we have transcripts of the actual documentaries (annotated 2-hour version and annotated 4-hour version). I did not read these. What I had underestimated, was the monumental importance of the last 200 pages which are excerpts from the interviews of some of the world’s top experts conducted over months of production by a legendary director Oliver Stone, guided by the leading authority of our times on the subject, Jim DiEugenio.

    Oliver Stone’s record of prize-winning movie and documentary production is unparalleled when it comes to historical, political and societal significance. Thanks to his movie JFK, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Record Collections Act of 1992. This led to the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). This in turn led to the declassification of millions of pages of documents that have helped researchers put together the pieces that paint a much better picture of what really took place in and around JFK’s assassination. What other movies have initiated so much change?

    Jim DiEugenio is arguably the most important expert on the assassination in our community. The landmark book and film JFK Revisited is a culmination of a lifetime of research, analysis, writing and networking he has performed during the last decades that has raised his stature to encyclopedic. Through his website Kennedysandking, as well as his groundbreaking books The Assassinations, Destiny Betrayed, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, he has archived perhaps the most important collection of writings on the political assassinations of the sixties ever assembled.

    The documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, when all is said and done, will be regarded as a milestone by independent-minded historians, and will materialize memories of Jim, Oliver , producer Rob Wilson and the participants in this film– despite poison tipped arrows being shot at it by career-obfuscators. Through the Looking Glass is a documentary form bookend to 30 some years of revelations that took place since JFK was viewed by millions, and lays out what we have learned through declassification, rendering the tired old platitude of criticism: “There is nothing new here folks” the summum of ridiculousness. In fact, viewers, got to hear from some 30-world leading specialists dismantling the lone-nut Warren Commission fairy tale, point by point by point. It also buries forever the war-mongering/Vietnam instigator persona that ignorant historians have attempted to lamely paint JFK with.

    Among the contributors–through recent interviews or archive footage and references through articles–audiences got to hear from irreproachable investigation insiders who played leading roles in the various investigations including the Warren Commission (Commissioners Senators Cooper, Russell, and Congressmen Boggs and even Ford), the Church Committee (Senator Schweiker), the HSCA (Richard Sprague and Robert Tannenbaum) and the ARRB (Doug Horne, Judge John Tunheim, Thomas Samoluk) . These are the people who had subpoena power, questioned witnesses who were under oath, had access to classified documents, examined evidence and were hired to do exhaustive, independent work. Well they certainly did not help proponents of the impeached Warren Commission version of events.

    Added to these solid sources, we can add physicians, lawyers, historians, criminalists and others who provided solid arguments that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt for the audiences that there was in fact a conspiracy in the assassination, that JFK was going to desist from Vietnam and that there was a major cover-up. I can state this with confidence because I witnessed first hand reactions of nearly 1000 audience members who attended events during Oliver and Jim’s promotional tour in Quebec City last June.

    Now I ask, who comes across as more QAnonish? Those who prefer putting their confidence in some of the more vociferous nay-sayers like the late John McAdams and who deny the record put forth by people of the likes of Senator Schweiker? Or those who believe the documented affirmations of the leading investigators hired by the US Government. In other words, this documentary has turned the tables on those who are the real theorists and obfuscators by placing them squarely at the opposite end of official records!

    As I was reading the second half of the book, it began to dawn on me: I could not recall getting so much insight from a book at such a trailblazing speed. By the end I concluded that JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is perhaps the most underrated book about the assassination I have ever read. In hindsight I should have known that what was in there is pure gold. Sort of a rare glimpse of the very best insights from some of the very best experts in the field within two hundred pages.

    Another way to look at this is that if about 30 researchers had been, like myself, interviewed for between 1 and 2 hours on average, in order to end up with 4 to 5 minutes on average of actual screen time, we can conclude that over 90% of the interview content had been left out so as to be able to produce 4 hours of content which also includes an introduction, narration, stock footage that are not interview-based. While reading my part and the others in the excerpt section, I estimate that the author added some 15% of the total interview content of that 90 %.. While I guess that many of the points in these interviews might be found in previous speeches or writings of the experts, the fact that one can find so much power-packed content coming from almost 30 different sources, all within 200 pages, is simply unheard of and certainly worth the ride.

    After pointing out some recommendations on how I would improve this tour de force, I will give readers samples of some of the statements that really should mark people who were unaware of these, including those who saw the documentary.

    JFK Revisited the Book: Its Weaknesses

    As a preface to this section, it is important to note what a monumental task it must have been to produce, with limited means, two versions of the documentary for broadcast, a third one with commentary by Oliver and Jim, create a kit with DVDs, a poster, and the book, all to be launched through a minefield of resistance orchestrated by the usual suspects of disinformation artists and saboteurs.

    I personally witnessed attempts to torpedo the Quebec City events first-hand. And most of us know the price Oliver Stone paid for his movie JFK. Anyone willing to invest three years of their lives into this project deserves two thumbs up for a job well done. Kudos to Jim, Oliver and producer Rob Wilson.

    That there are so few weaknesses is surprising in this critic’s view, but there are some over and above a small number of typos that made their way in the writings.

      1. One of the extremely persuasive demonstrations made in the documentary was of how the chain of custody around the magic bullet, the conflicting documentary timelines, how this missile simply could not have created the damage it is given credit for and how key witnesses deny the validating statements it was claimed they had made. This convinced audiences overwhelmingly that the CE399 flight trajectory was one the biggest shams by the Warren Commission. One of the claims made in the documentary, that Elmer Lee Todd of the Secret Service had not initialed the projectile when he handled it, seems to be false. This error is repeated in the book. This was graciously admitted to by the authors during the CAPA 2022 conference in Dallas. The significance of this is minimal in the overall picture painted in the documentary: There can be no doubt that CE399 would have been thrown out in a court proceeding, or even turned into an object of ridicule for the benefit of the defendant.
      2. Jim and Oliver were both asked why they chose to keep the Lopez report and Oswald in Mexico City out of the documentary. To most of us, the revelations around this highly suspicious episode represents one of the highlights of declassification. The answers were that tough choices had to be made in order to respect constraints and that Mexico City would have been simply too complex for less knowledgeable audiences. Still, what happened there is so explosive and informative, I feel an opportunity was missed to lob a Molotov cocktail into the discourse that no historian, journalist or lone-nut officiado can counter. The audience could have heard HSCA investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez reveal how: Oswald was likely impersonated in order to make him look unhinged and under Castro’s control and in talks with Russia’s western hemisphere assassination tsar; investigators were forced to downplay and reverse this scheme; Intelligence agents Anne Goodpasture and David Atlee Phillips lied their heads off; how Hoover and others proved that the claim that recordings of an Oswald impersonator in Mexico City were routinely destroyed by the CIA was a boldfaced lie; how in fact Hoover confirmed that agents who questioned Oswald after his arrest stated that they had heard at least one recording and that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s… and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Honestly, if I had to choose between this event, and the one I covered around prior plots, I would have tried to find a way to get this one in, at least in the four-hour version and in the book.
      3. The reason this book has not reached the star status level it deserves is perhaps due to what I would humbly describe as a tactical error. Almost half of the book is dedicated to providing the transcripts of the documentary. This may have created a perception, that it was a derived product: some sort of merchandising throw-in. In this writer’s view the full first half of the book is a buzz-killing rehash of the documentary without the star power, imagery, music or any added value. Contrary to serving the reader by providing entertainment, it detracts from both the film version and the second half of the book. Why read this if we can view the superior documentary? One of the effects of this is that it gave secondary status to the all the explosive information buried somewhat in the second half. The other is that it turned this book into a 450-page behemoth. Clearly this collector’s item, would have benefited marketing and content-wise by exposing even more the high-level information that did not make its way in the documentary: Including 10% more from each expert, the Mexico City episode, author and producer commentary and complementary add-ons. Why not have a chapter or two on the making of accompanied with wonderful anecdotes and pictures accumulated over the years of production and promoting: Jim in Washington, Oliver in Quebec City, participants in interviews.
      4. Finally, one of the great features of the film version, was the use of compelling visuals that supported the presentations every step of the way. The book Absolute Proof by Robert Groden gives us a clinic on how this can be effective. For instance, in the excerpts section, Doug Horne describes a sketch made by autopsist Dr. Boswell of JFK’s head wound that is so incriminating that it compelled me two look for it on the web:

    autopsy drawingCombined with Doug Horne’s description of the three-dimensional version Boswell drew, you will see later, that we are talking about smoking gun evidence that could have used the same level of graphics support the film production-team put together in the documentary.

    JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass – The New Reference for Assassination Expertise

    Decades from now, Jim DiEugenio’s scholarly accomplishment will serve as a time capsule benchmark for the evolution of the research in what is still a cold case. Today, it provides those of us who are clearly on the right side of history with the most up to date rebuttals to those who have fossilized their jargon in the 1963 cover story peddled by the Warren Commission. I would love to see a keen student of history challenge his or her brain-washed teacher with some of the material I will present in this section. The answers, if honestly replied, would be “I am sorry I was not aware of that”. I know this because I have researched history books and exchanged with the writers. Out of over twenty respondents to my questions, ninety percent were not aware of the HSCA investigation into the assassination. So, try and imagine how they would explain the following excerpt samples from the second half of Jim’s book.

    The following is just a miniscule part of what you may not be aware of if you have not read this book:

    Jefferson Morley (Veteran Journalist) on Oswald’s seemingly manufactured fight with DRE local leader Carlos Bringuier:

    Oswald goes public and the two organizations in New Orleans that give him his publicity are instruments of the CIA: The Cuban Student Directorate was paid $50,000 a month… and INCA which also publicized Oswald’s group, was also in league with the CIA.

    Aaron Good (PhD, Author, Editor) on Henry Luce:

    … It was implicit when he writes things like there’s a lot of money that’s going to be made in Asia… This was his big disagreement with Kennedy… What form should decolonization take?

    Barry Ernest (Journalist, author) on Victoria Adams (The Girl on the Stairs):

    When they interviewed her in February 1964, the Dallas Police were no longer involved in the investigation… And in that Dallas Police interview, that was the first time she mentioned seeing Billy Lovelady and William Shelley on the first floor, a comment that was repeated two months later in her Warren Commission testimony… she continually told me that she never made that statement… And that she actually felt those words were inserted in her testimony to specifically make her appear wrong.

    Professor Bradley Simpson (University of Connecticut professor of history, author) on US support to Indonesia regime changes under Eisenhower:

    Alan Pope was captured… It was later revealed that Alan Pope worked for the CIA. The revelation of the US support for these regional rebellions really helped to radicalize Sukarno and to convince many Indonesians that the United States was working to overthrow Sukarno.

    Brian Edwards (Instructor in Criminal Justice at Washburn University) on investigation anomalies:

    I confronted Jim Leavelle… I asked him point-blank, why didn’t you take notes of what this guy (Oswald) is saying? And you know what he told me? It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the case. This is the day before Oswald got shot.

    And…

    There was a Dallas postmaster Harry Holmes who was an FBI informant… He was invited into the Dallas Police headquarters interrogation room to interview Oswald. Oswald is charged with murder. Why would a postal director have any business being in there? He doesn’t.

    Dr. Cyril Wecht (Forensic pathologist) on missing evidence and pathologist Jim Humes destroying his autopsy notes and his first draft:

    In addition to some photos and some X-Rays that are missing (at the National Archives), there’s a large metal box that obviously contained the brain listed in ‘65, no longer listed in ‘66… There were some microscopic tissue slides missing too. And by the way, tissue slides are important when you’re looking at gunshot wounds to try to differentiate entrance from exit…

    Humes did something that would undoubtedly lead to a murder case being thrown out.

    Dr. Wecht on JFK possible neuromuscular reaction:

    But the decerebrate and decorticate do not fit. You don’t see the features- an arched back? A protruding chest? And with decerebrate, the arms then out and flexed in, and decorticate, the arms extended outward. Neither of those are shown with Kennedy’s position in the car.

    Dr. David Mantik (Radiation oncologist, Ph.D. in physics) on the CE399 trajectory and the Harper fragment:

    But I personally spoke to John Ebersole, the radiologist (at Bethesda autopsy) … and he said it was probably T4 (entrance wound). So if that’s true, then the magic bullet is a total loss. It’s impossible…

    Either you run into the lung and the lung would be punctured, but we know that did not happen. Or the bullet runs into the cervical vertebrae… But we know from the X-Rays that did not happen either.

    Altogether three pathologists saw this Harper Fragment and they all agree that it was from the occipital area.

    David Talbot (Author of Brothers and the Devil’s Chessboard and founder of Salon) on Allen Dulles:

    In reality, Allen Dulles recovers very quickly (after being dismissed by Kennedy). He retreats to his home in Georgetown and he begins basically to set up a government in exile there…. So, people like Richard Helms, James Angleton still feel they are part of the Allen Dulles circle. Dulles is not only seeing his old CIA lieutenants, but generals, admirals, the national security network.

    Dr. Gary Aguilar (Ophthalmologist and college instructor at UC San Francisco) on the HSCA treatment of the back of the head wound, mainstream media bias and the CE399 stretcher:

    They said that all the witnesses at the autopsy, they all agreed to those autopsy photographs (showing no damage to the back of JFK’s head). But they suppressed the witness statements themselves. When the ARRB came along, and out come those witness statements, out comes the diagrams. And lo and behold, it turns out that the witnesses at the autopsy all agreed with the doctors at Dallas: That the defect involved the rear of the head. They basically lied about what was there…

    So here you have the New York Times assuring the public that all the documents have been released and no question remains unresolved. In the absence of having seen any of the 26 volumes of supplementary evidence… They admit they are working with the Warren Commission…

    To the great shame of my organization, the American Medical Association by the Journal of the American Medical Association. They published some articles that were laughably absurd and were ultimately repudiated even by members of the mainstream media.

    The stretcher that it (CE399) was supposed to be found on was almost certainly not John Connally’s stretcher.

    Dr. Michael Chesser (Neurologist) on the skull X-Rays:

    The fragment trail does not fit the conclusions of the Clark Panel or the HSCA… So, it’s impossible for a shot here, in the back of the skull, to result in all the tiniest bullet fragments in the frontal region…

    The bright object (supposed bullet part) suddenly shows up between the Bethesda autopsy and the Clark Panel. I think it was most likely… placed there shortly after the autopsy…

    Chesser explains later that it is not credible that this had been missed, and also that Ebersole (the radiologist) refused to talk about this.

    Doug Horne (Military Records Analyst for the ARRB, author of Inside the ARRB) on Bethesda autopsists Drs. Boswell and Humes, and on Oswald’s earnings:

    Horne also explained that, contrary to other depositions done of the autopsists during other investigations, the ARRB questioned Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell separately. This yielded a stunning result: “While Humes contended under oath that there was no bone missing in the back of JFK’s skull, Boswell said there was bone missing in the rear skull and actually made a sketch on a three-dimensional skull model (now at the archives) showing missing bone skull from the top of the head, part of the right side, and the entire right rear of the cranium.”

    Boswell admitted that there was an “incised wound” in the forehead of JFK that Horne interpreted the following way: “Tells me there was an entrance wound right there, which other people saw in photographs. The photographs that did make it into the official record. There was a small entrance wound… removed with a scalpel before the autopsy started”… And also that he did not see the entrance wound (in the back of the skull) that they described so carefully in the autopsy report…. “So, the autopsy of John F. Kennedy is probably the evidentiary mess of the twentieth century….”

    But the FBI report says that the entrance wound has a steep downward trajectory of forty-five to sixty degrees. That is not in the autopsy report… This three-hit scenario [instead of two] is undoubtably the content of the first draft [destroyed by Humes] of the autopsy report…

    Oswald’s last quarter of earnings in the United States before he defected to the Soviet Union should have been paid by the Marine Corps. And they weren’t… That has serious implications to me because of the speculation that he was a fake defector.

    James Galbraith (University professor, author, essayist on Kennedy’s Vietnam withdrawal plan) on his father and JFK:

    He (his father) admitted many times… Kennedy knew what he wanted and he knew that my father would deliver what he did. Which was a detailed skeptical report about the deficiency of the South Vietnamese government. If … an army of a quarter of a million people could not prevail against less than 20,000 insurgents at that time, it was not a situation in which an outside force stood much chance of changing the outcome…

    Jim Gochenaur (Church Committee witness) on Elmer Moore’s feelings about JFK and Jack Ruby:

    He was giving away everything he could to the Russians… His father was an appeaser. Just like he was…

    Gochenaur also said that Moore showed him an autopsy photo of JFK. Moore also confirmed that he had to shut down Ruby when he began opening up about shooting Oswald, fearing it would imply premeditation.

    John Newman (University professor of history and respected author) on executive action, Northwoods:

    Eisenhower got very impatient with Allen Dulles. He had told him to get rid of Lumumba. And it wasn’t happening. So, he got very frustrated in the middle of an NSC meeting and just blurted out an order to kill.

    He (Lansdale) inserts the false flag operations to kill our own people: sink our ships, attack Miami, all that stuff was later Northwoods. Way back in January, Lansdale inserts it as a Mongoose thing because he is actually acting as a stalking horse for Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He is siding with them… and going against the orders of President Kennedy.

    Judge John Tunheim (Chief Judge of the US District of Minnesota, Chairman of the ARRB) on assassination records:

    I think it is pretty clear Angleton destroyed records before he was summarily dismissed from the CIA.

    He (Connick) was embarrassed because he said all the files (Garrison) had been preserved, and turned everything over to us. When in fact he had ordered the records to be destroyed. And they weren’t destroyed.

    We were misled by the CIA about Joannides as was the HSCA.

    Tuenheim also noted the destruction of autopsy records and Secret Service files, how the CIA and President Bush opposed the release of classified documents and how Trump did not respect the law by stalling declassification and finally how the CIA is resisting the release of the Joannides files.

    Lisa Pease (Co-editor of Probe magazine, author of A Lie Too Big to Fail) on the Church and Pike committees:

    The Church Committee and the Pike Committee, it’s really the only investigations the CIA had really ever had. The only in-depth ones where their operations were analyzed and really looked at. Both Pike and Church came to the conclusion that the CIA was a rogue elephant operating independently of the president. (She points out that these committees were kind of the end of Pike’s and Church’s respective careers).

    Under the JFK Act… they (the Church Committee) realize at no point did they (the CIA) ever have presidential authority. (To murder Castro) (This is according to the CIA’s own reports.)

    Henry Lee (Commissioner of Public Safety for the State of Connecticut-1998-2000, chair professor in Forensic Science University of New Haven) on the second Magic Bullet, the head shot, and the forensic research into the JFK assassination:

    Somehow the trajectory (head-shot) turned in a ninety-degree angle… The Third Shot, the most important shot, entered the back-right side of the head (according to the WC), and came out the front right. So, the bullet actually turned that angle…

    He also deplored that the brain was not sectioned to analyze trajectory, and that one could have no idea what happened based on the messy work.

    Paul Bleau (MBA, college professor, essayist KennedysandKing) on case linkage:

    For the excerpts selected from my interview with Oliver Stone, let me simply state that one should conclude that no case linkage analysis was performed by investigators and there was destruction of files around prior plots. But what we can piece together surely indicates that there was a template, contingencies, and a mission to remove JFK before the end of 1963. They also suggest an angle that should be used to build an offender profile in the assassination.

    Dr. Philip Muehlenbeck (George Washington University instructor, author). On JFK anti-colonization credo:

    He (diplomat Edmund Gullion) had told Kennedy that the French were actually losing the war. That the war was unwinnable and that, if the U.S. were to replace the French in the war, the US would also lose the war.

    After he (JFK) made his Algeria speech, the French were very upset with Kennedy…

    He took a full-page advertisement (promoting the book The Ugly American) in the New York Times. He bought a copy of the book to give to every member of the senate.

    Thomas Samoluk (Deputy Director and Press Officer of the ARRB) on intel resistance and Northwoods:

    … the intelligence agencies kind of adopt that approach, that they (the ARRB) will eventually go away. The Review Board will not last forever. We’ll still be here.

    The Northwoods records are really, I have to say, bizarre… the military creating situations that would make it look like Cuba had committed terrorist acts, had downed a US jet-liner as a pretense to invade Cuba.

    The records have not been released in total, and I don’t think any good reasons have been given.

    Dr. Robert Rakove (Professor of history at Stanford, author) On Nasser:

    Eisenhower and Dulles had edged onto a course of confrontation with Nasser… after he opened relations with China, they canceled a loan that Nasser depended on to build the Aswan Dam. This set the Suez crisis in motion as Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

    Kennedy discerned he was actually quite modern, quite rational, quite forward looking…. Open to Western investment in commerce. He saw religious fundamentalism as a step backward… They could kind of achieve mutual harmony together.

    Richard Mahoney (Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University, author) on UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld and on Kennedy being left in the dark:

    Hammarskjöld was appealing to Kennedy to basically get Lumumba out of a military base and into UN hands so he wouldn’t be killed. So, Kennedy agreed… What he did not know was that the Eisenhower administration had already decided that he should be assassinated.

    Mahoney shows how Kennedy was not even told about the murder by Dulles as he found out about 4 weeks after it occurred:

    They moved quickly to execute this man… they didn’t tell President Kennedy at all.… As soon as Mobutu takes power, the Belgian commercial and clandestine interests and the CIA are back in business big time. And for three decades, he brutalizes his country, murders wantonly, profits at an incredible rate and becomes one of the worst dictators in the world.

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (author, chairman of the Children’s Health Defense group) on his father and uncle:

    My uncle and father knew that US policies towards Latin America were anti-democratic and US policy was especially driven by the economic interests of American corporations…

    My grandfather opposed World War I because he thought it would only benefit the bankers.

    My father was horrified at the US intervention in the Dominican Republic… Jack had an interest in Cuban history… Jack was very aware of the corruption of the Batista regime.

    It’s very clear from the autopsy reports and the police reports that Sirhan could not have killed my father.

    Edwin Lee McGehee (Possible last surviving witness of the Clinton Jackson incident) on Officer Frances Fruge, Oswald:

    Edwin McGehee did not appear in the documentary. By going over the excerpts in the book of Jim’s interview with him, the reader will understand why the HSCA found the connections between Oswald, Ferrie and Clay Shaw to be credible. He will also see why evidence was made to disappear… How DA Harry Connick became visibly upset when he met McGehee… and that it became common street knowledge that Oswald had been in Clinton-Jackson.

    Debra Conway (Owner of Lancer Productions and Publications) on the shells in the TSBD and Tom Alyea: the first reporter on the sixth floor:

    The shells looked like they were placed in some sort of pattern on the floor. They did not look like they were ejected from the rifle. They were very close together… Much later people started questioning, you know, I’ve shot a rifle and I couldn’t even find my shells… It became important because it looked like the scene was staged… I would say that he (Alyea) was a friend of the Dallas Police, he worked as a photographer on many crime scenes and he probably knew most of the officers that were there.

    Dr. Donald Miller (Professor emeritus University of Washington, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery) on Malcolm Perry and George Burkley:

    He (Perry) said it (Kennedy’s throat wound) was an entrance wound, unquestionably an entrance wound… and then in front of the HSCA a year later, he once again said it was consistent with an exit wound… the main reason he changed his testimony (WC) and publicly agreed it was an exit wound is a Secret Service agent put the pressure on him, and that person was Elmer Moore.

    He (Burkley’s son and Miller’s friend) said his dad was a close hold on his professional life and he wouldn’t talk about the assassination. That the only thing he would say was that he couldn’t understand why the Warren Commission never asked him to testify…

    Burkley’s signature (on the face sheet) and his writing “verified” has been erased…

    Dr. Randy Robertson (Radiologist who testified before congress on the JFK case. Member of the Board of Directors of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington) On the limousine bullet and James Young:

    He (Young) was a physician (White House) who ordered Chiefs Mills and Martinell, their assistants, to go to the White House and retrieve what they knew were skull fragments at that time… He was the first one at the autopsy to see these materials recovered from the limousine… He described a bullet (among the materials) brass-colored with a bent tip, he described as five millimeters in diameter… They said it was in the back seat…

    He thought he would go to Bethesda to relieve Dr. Burkley who was sixty-something at the time.

    He further reveals how Young was ignored by Gerald Ford, Arlen Specter and some at the ARRB, and how he was shunned because he mistakenly referred to the Limousine as the Queen Mary instead of the SX 100X presidential limousine.

    Conclusion

    In this review I have revealed only seven pages out of a total of over two hundred, less than five percent of the content. I can assure you that what was not included is just as revealing. In a way, researchers will find out a lot more in these pages than what documentary viewers did.

    I challenge anyone to suggest another book that included the quantity and quality of experts who spoke freely in this book. You cannot find better interviewers than Oliver and Jim. Compare the credentials of these highly educated lawyers, judges, criminalists, journalists, professors, doctors, investigation insiders with the Warren Commission apologists and tell me who you would most associate the word nutcase with… an insult spat up in the air by so many of the lone nutters who are now seeing it fall back on their faces. Not one of the participants got involved for the money… none was offered. No, they all share at least one trait… their pursuit of the truth.

    The other element that is clear is that there is a high-level of corroboration throughout the second half of the writings, and that the author did a lot of fact-checking before publishing. The experts clearly do something that most nay-sayers avoid. They get down and dirty in their research and analysis and base their affirmations on solid foundations. How many WC apologists actually questioned Young, McGehee, Moore, Sandy Spencer, John Stringer, Galbraith, Burkley’s son… Not one. Never has the contrast between the current crop of lone scenario defenders and the network of real researchers been so evident. The current cast of nay-sayers sound somewhat like Joe McCarthy when he was left babbling drunkenly after having been torn down decisively by attorney Joseph Welch… empty cans that make a lot of noise.

    The tables are now turned: To say that Lee, Tunheim, Samoluk, Horne, Morley, Sprague, Schweiker, Tanenbaum, Blakey, Russell, Cooper, Boggs, Robertson, Edwards etc… somehow are involved in a false flag operation, and are quacks, says more about those dishing out these mindless insults and turns the lights on who the real QAnonish conspiracy theorists are.

    JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass has already convinced the hundreds of thousands who have seen it that the JFK assassination was the result of a conspiracy. Abraham Bolden thanked Oliver Stone and Jim for the effect the documentary had on getting him a pardon. The jury is out: Jim, Oliver and Rob have prevailed already.

    And now mainstream media in the US, after yet more illegal delays in declassifying records, has even begun spreading doubt about the “official version”… Tucker Carlson comes to mind.

    This book on its own destroys both the lone-nut and JFK Cold Warrior myths that history books peddle to high school students. They now have both the sources and arguments to counter these mouthpieces… who have begun to come crashing down like a house of cards. What’s next… perhaps the release of the interviews in their entirety! Hopefully!

    Jim DiEugenio is known as one of the most knowledgeable researchers of the assassinations of the sixties. His real secret to success however is his ability to network with researchers, producers, podcasters… and now international media who have come to respect him, listen to him and recognize his accomplishments, which will echo down the halls for a very long time.

    Publisher’s Note: This review was not in any way initiated by the editor of the book, James DiEugenio. It was, as is stated, completely initiated by Paul Bleau. He was truly shocked by the sheer amount of information contained in the interviews that were left out of Stone’s two films. That is the reason he wrote it and asked to have it posted.