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  • Review of James Douglass’s New Book – Pt 3

    Review of James Douglass’s New Book – Pt 3

    Martyrs to the Unspeakable – Pt. 3

    By James W. Douglass

     

    Because James Douglass wrote an entire volume about the presidency and the assassination of John Kennedy, it is that case which gets the least attention in Martyrs to the Unspeakable. Which is a justifiable decision.

    But, having said that, Douglass still does deal with JFK. He brings up the case first in its relation to our current troubles: That is, President Kennedy’s dispute with David Ben Gurion and Israel. (p. 10) This important issue is finally getting the attention it deserves through writers like Rick Stirling, Ken McCarthy, and Monica Wiesak. Douglass shows that, quite early, Kennedy was aware of the need for America to come to the aid of the Palestinians who had been impacted by the Nakba. He addressed the problem in 1951. (p. 10). Later on, the author shows that Kennedy never stopped supporting that cause. He was trying to pass a UN resolution to grant relief on November 20, 1963– one which Israel vociferously objected to. (pp. 64-67)

    As Kennedy was about to enter the White House, he was alerted by the outgoing Secretary of State, Christian Herter, that there were rumors that Israel might be trying to build an atomic bomb. The problem mushroomed as Douglass notes, because “No American president was more concerned with the danger of nuclear proliferation than John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” (p. 11). The conflict between Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben Gurion began at their first, and only, head of state, face-to-face meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in late May of 1961. At this meeting, Kennedy expressed his curiosity about the size of the atomic reactor at the Dimona site, but Ben Gurion insisted that it was only for desalination. Which, of course, was false.

    Kennedy’s interest was in not starting an atomic arms race in the Middle East. (p. 14). Specifically, he thought the possibility existed that if Israel developed a bomb, the Russians would aid Egypt in doing the same. As Douglass notes, this canard by Ben Gurion would mushroom two years later into a direct confrontation, which would result in Ben Gurion’s resignation.

    Douglass notes an important conversation that JFK had with Amos Elon, an American reporter for Haaretz. As early as 1961, Kennedy was realizing that the American/Israeli relationship was more useful to Tel Aviv than Washington. And he specifically said, “We sometimes find ourselves in difficulty due to our close relations with Israel.” The president said that the important thing was that the Israelis get along with the Arabs. And if that meant Israel adopting a neutralist stance, he would consider it. As long as there would be an Israeli/Arab settlement. (pp. 16-17)

    Douglass now goes to another complicating factor in the Middle East equation. This was Kennedy’s attempt to forge a relationship with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Before his meeting with Ben Gurion, Kennedy wrote to Nasser about a peaceful settlement to the Arab/Israeli conflict and also a viable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, based on repatriation or compensation. (p. 17) This, as JFK knew, was very important to Nasser.

    Ben Gurion was worried about Kennedy’s aim of regular inspection at Dimona. He even encouraged the prominent Jewish lobbyist Abe Feinberg to discourage Kennedy from insisting on this. But Feinberg reported back that Kennedy would not be thwarted. Therefore, as related by former Mossad chief Rafael Eitan, the Israelis built a phony control center over the real one at Dimona, “with fake control panels and computer-lined gauges.” The goal was to make it look like a desalination plant. To top it off, none of the American inspectors spoke Hebrew, which made it easier to conceal the camouflage. (p. 20)

    This all escalated until May of 1963 when Kennedy insisted on scheduling full, unfettered and biannual inspections. And if these were denied, he was threatening to pull funding for Israel. After an exchange of four letters, Ben Gurion resigned. This allowed a delay to take place while a new prime minister was chosen. Two months later, the same ultimatum was issued to Levi Eshkol. Eshkol stalled on Kennedy’s request before agreeing to it. But Kennedy’s assassination then occurred, and, as in many other areas, Lyndon Johnson curtailed, stopped and then reversed Kennedy’s policy on both Dimona and the Palestinian refugee dilemma.

    In fact, as Douglass writes later, there is evidence that CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton actually helped Israel produce its first bomb. Angleton ran the Israeli desk at the CIA. He helped by referring an English scientist named Wilfred Mann to the Israelis. But Angleton denied ever being involved with shipping fissionable materials. In other words, he wanted no part of the NUMEC scandal out of the Pittsburgh area. (p. 58; click here for that story https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/05/25-years-of-cn-how-israel-stole-the-bomb-sept-11-2016/)

    II

    Bobby Kennedy did not forget his brother’s devotion to nuclear non-proliferation. He noted it prominently in his maiden speech in the Senate. In that speech, he specifically mentioned how Israel was a problem in this regard. Although they were little noted in the USA, the comments were noted prominently in Israel. Mainly because of RFK’s support of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which did inspections of nuclear plants. (p. 61) These types of professionals would likely have unearthed the Israeli ruse about Dimona. Tel Aviv wanted no part of that.

    From here, Douglass shifts the focus to Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. Specifically to the lengthy—150 hours– hypnotic sessions sponsored by the legal team of William Pepper and Laurie Dusek. The late Harvard psychologist, Dr. Daniel Brown, concluded that Sirhan was one of the most susceptible hypnosis subjects he had ever encountered. Brown concluded that he was “…the perfect candidate.”(p. 69)

    Sirhan had two disturbing events happen to him in rather close proximity to each other. The first was the death of his sister, who died of leukemia when he was 21. The second event was when he fell off a horse at Granja Vista Del Rio Horse Farm. Sirhan was treated at the Corona Community Hospital emergency room by a Dr. Nelson. He was discharged four hours later. But according to his brother, he was gone for two weeks. (Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail, p. 434). Yet he only received four stitches over one eye. Both his mother and a friend tried to find out where he was. (Douglass, p. 73)

    With Sirhan under hypnosis, Brown discovered that he was in a ward with no windows and with about seven other patients, all with head injuries. Doctors would approach him each day with clipboards, taking urine samples, and asking him how he felt. When he did return, those close to him detected a personality change; he was more reserved and argumentative. (Douglass, p. 74) But further, you only visit a doctor once to get four stitches removed. So why did Sirhan then visit a doctor 13 more times over the next year, from 1966 to December of 1967? (Pease, p. 435)

    III

    From here, Douglass goes into the RFK career and his murder. In my view, this was a real highlight of the book. For the Bobby Kennedy of 1968 was probably the most radical candidate for president since Henry Wallace. Douglass goes into RFK’s disputes with President Johnson on civil rights and Vietnam. For example, Marian Wright of the NAACP wanted to attract political attention to Mississippi, since so many African/American children were suffering from hunger. Bobby Kennedy did go down as part of a small sub-committee on poverty. He was greatly impacted by what he saw and wanted Johnson to declare a state of emergency–which he would not. From there, he went to Indian reservations, Appalachia and New York City ghettoes. He wanted to see firsthand what Michael Harrington called the Other America. (Douglass, p. 88)

    When LBJ would not act on this issue, even after the riots of the summer of 1967, RFK decided that the man who could act was King. He told Marian Wright to tell King to bring the poor to Washington. So while in Atlanta, she did just that. And as she later said, “Out of that, the Poor People’s Campaign was born.” And King decided that this was then going to be the prime focus of his career. (Douglass, p. 91)

    But, as Douglass points out, it was not just this joint opposition to poverty that was worrisome to the Powers That Be. It was also their mutual opposition to the Vietnam War. Kennedy had made a speech against that war in the Senate on March 3, 1967. Almost exactly one month later, on April 4th, King delivered his polemic at Riverside Church in New York.

    Most people in this field are aware of President Kennedy’s conversation with Charles de Gaulle about the Vietnam War. What most people do not know is that the French president had a very similar conversation with Bobby Kennedy about the same subject. And Douglass describes it in detail in this book. (pp. 392-94) RFK took a European tour in late January and early February of 1967.

    He had two important topics he wished to discuss with some of the leaders he met: atomic weapons and the Vietnam War. He quickly found out that each one of the emissaries he met with thought Johnson’s war policy in Vietnam was so misguided as to be termed mad. When RFK met with de Gaulle, they talked for over one hour. And the exclusive subject was Vietnam. The president reminded Bobby of the advice he had given his brother, namely that the USA should not go into Vietnam. He then said that by directly entering that conflict, America’s special place in the world—one of respect and admiration—had been torn to tatters:

    The United States is in the process of destroying a country and a people. America says it is fighting Communism. But by what right does it fight Communism in another people’s country and against their will…. History is the force at work in Vietnam. The United States will not prevail against it. (p. 394)

    When they walked to the door, with the 6’4” de Gaulle hovering over the 5’10” Kennedy, the French president gave the senator some sage advice:

    Do not become embroiled in this difficulty in Vietnam. Then you can survive its outcome. Those who are involved will be badly hurt, because your country will tear itself apart over it. A great leader will be needed to put it back together and lead it to its destiny…. You must be that leader. (ibid)

    How could anyone not be impacted by someone like this? De Gaulle was the man who risked his own life, many times, to get France out of Algeria. Something JFK had advised France to do back in 1957. Douglass had done us all a favor in describing this little-known meeting.

    IV

    Kennedy’s visit to France had some big blowback when he got back to the USA. There was an article in Newsweek saying that he had received a “peace feeler” from Hanoi while in Paris. The senator did not understand what the report was about, and he told his press secretary that. (p. 409)

    What had happened is that on the same day that he had met with de Gaulle, he had a meeting with the Far East desk officer in the French Foreign Office. Kennedy was accompanied by a translator from the American embassy. The desk officer said that North Vietnam was willing to enter negotiations in return for an unconditional bombing halt. The senator did not think this was very important. But the translator did. He cabled his superiors in Washington about the story. And that is how it got in Newsweek. And from there it spread to the MSM, including TV.

    President Johnson was quite offended by this story, as he took almost everything RFK did as a personal affront. He thought that Bobby had leaked the story in order to promote himself as a peacemaker. But it was even worse than that. Because Johnson–under the influence of his Vietnam overall commander, William Westmoreland—thought that he was on the verge of winning in Indochina.

    When RFK got word of this MSM story, he wanted to straighten things out with the president. So he went to see Johnson. This was a mistake. Instantly, LBJ accused him of leaking the story. Kennedy replied with, “I didn’t leak it. I didn’t even know there was a peace feeler. I think the leak came from somebody in your State Department” (Douglass, p. 410)

    Johnson took this reply badly. He said it was not his State Department. It was Bobby’s. Meaning that it was still filled with Kennedy loyalists.

    Kennedy tried to change the subject. He offered him what his plan would be to settle in Vietnam: stop the bombing, go to the negotiating table, do a staged cease-fire and create a coalition government governed by an international commission to hold elections as a final solution.

    About a year from Tet, Johnson was not in a state of mind to listen to any peace agreement. He made no bones about it either. He began with “There’s not a chance in hell I’ll do that.” Then it got worse:

    I’m going to destroy you in six months. We’re going to win in Vietnam by the summer. By July or August the war will be over. You and every one of your dove friends will be dead politically in six months. You guys will be destroyed.

    What is really kind of bizarre about this is that it appears that Johnson believed it. He really thought that General Westmoreland was giving him the right info and predicting the correct outcome. RFK had finally gotten a glimpse into Johnson’s real psyche about the most divisive conflict since the Civil War. He appropriately walked out. He now understood de Gaulle’s advice. There was only one way to end the war. Even if it meant the end of him.

    V

    I would like to close with two sterling episodes from the book.

    The first is another conversation I had never seen before. This was between Bobby Kennedy and Giorgi Bolshakov in May of 1961. (pp. 469-70) Bobby called him in and told the Russian spy that his brother thought there could be a lot more cooperation between their two countries. But Jack was taking over from a former general, namely Eisenhower, as president. Therefore, he was stuck with people like Lyman Lemnitzer as chair of the Joint Chiefs and Allen Dulles as Director of the CIA.

    Now recall, this was after RFK’s duty on the Taylor Commission investigating the Bay of Pigs. He understood how that debacle had occurred. He knew the CIA had deceived the president, and the Joint Chiefs had approved the operation. So he now delivered the punchline: His brother had made a mistake in not firing Dulles and Lemnitzer right away!

    Again, I had never seen this quote before. If you ever wondered where Bobby Kennedy’s later radicalism came from, here it is. He would have gotten rid of Lemnitzer and Dulles on day one. He then expanded on this point:

    These men make outdated recommendations and suggestions which are out of keeping with the president’s new course. My brother has been compelled to go by their mistaken judgments in decision making. Cuba has changed all our foreign policy concepts. For us, the events in the Bay of Pigs are not a flop, but the best lesson we have ever learned. So we are no longer going to repeat our past mistakes. (Douglass, p. 469)

    RFK knew that this attitude by his brother would put a target on the president’s back: “They can put him away any moment. Therefore, he must tread carefully in certain matters and never push his way through.” This remarkable discussion—four hours’ worth– went on until nightfall. When RFK gave Bolshakov a lift home–at or after 10 PM, the Russian could barely sleep. The next morning, he cabled his summary to Moscow. This is what began the secret communications between JFK and Khrushchev. So intricately described in JFK and the Unspeakable.

    If anyone has any knowledge of something similar to this happening since, I would like to hear it. I know nothing like it occurred during the Truman or Eisenhower administrations. It might have been possible under Gorbachev, but Reagan blew that opportunity. Thus paving the way for him to be deposed.

    VI

    As most of us know, the so-called Bobby Kennedy open and shut murder case was not open and shut. But there were signals at the start that the game was going to be rigged. For instance, as Roger LaJaunesse of the local FBI told Bill Turner, both he and the regular command of the LAPD were shoved aside almost immediately. The LAPD Chief of Detectives, Robert Houghton, installed an elite team of his own officers to run that investigation. It was called Special Unit Senator. And the two men who were in charge were Lt. Manny Pena and Sgt. Hank Hernandez. Both of them had ties to the CIA. And they did their best to keep that angle out of the trial and to censor any exculpatory material to the defense.

    But it was actually even worse than that. Thomas Noguchi was the man who performed the autopsy on the senator. He wrote a 62-page report on his findings. The late pathologist Cyril Wecht once called it the finest piece of medico-legal reportage he had ever read. For whatever reason, Noguchi was the last person to testify for the prosecution. In his testimony, both his report and some photographs were admitted into evidence. As Noguchi was beginning to describe the damage to Robert Kennedy’s skull that was revealed during his examination, the lead defense lawyer objected. Grant Cooper said the following:

    Pardon me, Your Honor. Is all of this detail necessary? I would object on the ground of immateriality. I hardly think that this testimony of the doctor is necessary in dealing with the cause of the man’s death. I am not suggesting, Your Honor please…this witness may certainly testify to the cause of death, but I don’t think it is necessary to go into details. I think he can express an opinion that death was due to a gunshot wound. (p. 377)

    This is astonishing. Because it is Noguchi’s findings that exculpate Sirhan as the killer of Robert Kennedy. And here was Sirhan’s defense attorney handing the prosecution their guilty verdict on a silver platter. As anyone who has read some of the better books on the RFK case should know, all the projectiles that entered the senator were from behind, at upward angles, and at very close range. The wound that Noguchi was about to describe was at contact range, about 3 inches away. (Douglass, p. 388) Which means the gun was so close to the head that expelled particles had nowhere to escape into the air. So they created a tattoo ring on the rear of Kennedy’s skull. (Douglass, p. 387) Sirhan was never behind the senator, and no one ever said that his gun arm was aimed upward or that he was in point contact with the rear of Kennedy’s head.

    So why would Grant Cooper object to having the best witness he could have testify to those particular elements of the crime scene?

    The answer is simple: Johnny Rosselli. Cooper was serving as attorney for a cohort of Rosselli’s in the Friars Club case right before he took on the RFK case. Maurice Friedman was a Las Vegas frontman for the mob’s casino ownership. Both Friedman and Rosselli ran a card cheating ring at the club, which was frequented by some high rollers from the entertainment industry, like Phil Silvers. Because of the sophisticated cheating apparatus, Friedman won hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rosselli got a cut since it was on his mob turf. (Douglass, pp. 400-401)

    But on July 20, 1967, the FBI raided the club. The ring was exposed, and Rosselli and Friedman were indicted. They were worried about being convicted, so they bribed a court reporter for the grand jury minutes in their case. A copy of Phil Silvers’ grand jury testimony was found on Cooper’s desk during the trial. At first, Cooper lied and said he had no idea where it came from. (Douglass, p. 404)

    Cooper eventually came clean about what had happened. And it was clear he was facing an indictment. But the inter-agency task force on the Sirhan case was told that this decision would not be made until after the RFK trial. Well, after his less-than-zealous performance for Sirhan, Cooper ended up not being indicted. Defended by a member of the Warren Commission, Joseph Ball, Cooper got off with a slap on the wrist. And a mild one at that. He was fined a thousand dollars. (Click here for the decision https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1827338.html)

    It is quite difficult not to see this in tandem with his horrendous performance in defense of Sirhan. Where he actually stipulated to the prosecution’s evidence.

    Jim Douglass has done a fine job in describing and then defining the epochal impact of the four high-level murders of the sixties. They were not the result of aimless violence by disturbed assassins. They were all cleverly worked out plots, and the net result was a large diversion of American history. Which does not get into textbooks. This book is a worthy successor to JFK and the Unspeakable.

    The book is available here. Editor’s note: An advance copy was provided for this review. The prior link may also be used for preordering, with an expected release date of Oct 28.

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Review of RFK Legacy film

    Review of RFK Legacy film

    Sean Stone and Rob Wilson: RFK Legacy

    Rob Wilson produced JFK Revisited for director Oliver Stone. He has now produced RFK Legacy for director Sean Stone, Oliver’s son. This new documentary seems to me to be unique in its field. Because it deals with three Kennedys: John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Robert Kennedy Jr. And the concentration is on Senator Robert Kennedy: his life, and also his assassination.

    It begins with Robert Kennedy announcing that he is running for president in 1968. It then briefly deals with three primaries in that race: Indiana, Oregon–the first election a Kennedy lost– and the triumph in California on June 4th over Senatorial rival Eugene McCarthy. We see RFK at the podium reciting his now iconic (and final) public phrase, “On to Chicago and let’s win there.” The film then cuts to the aftermath of that victory: the utter shock, disbelief and hysteria of the crowd as some of them see, and the rest of them learn, that RFK has been assassinated. Recall, this is just two months after the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis. And it is the second Kennedy to be assassinated in five years. The grief at what had just happened at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles was almost palpable. The Jungian consciousness behind it all was this: it was the premature burial of the sixties.

    The film follows as RFK’s body was transported from California to a requiem at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, as that was the state from which he was senator. To make the passing of the era even more symbolic, on that plane were not just Ethel Kennedy, but both Jackie Kennedy and Coretta King. Bobby Kennedy had paid a large part of the cost for King’s funeral in April. And the night of King’s murder, he gave what was probably his finest speech—one which prevented Indianapolis from going up in flames, as almost every other major city in America had. Jackie Kennedy strongly objected to RFK running for president. She feared that what had happened to her husband would happen to him. He had become the substitute father to her children.

    What then followed the service was the train ride from New York City to the burial at Arlington Cemetery in Washington, DC. Arthur Schlesinger was on that train. He had originally thought Bobby was a lesser candidate than Jack. He had since changed his mind. At the end, he thought RFK would make an even greater president than his brother. One reason was that he had become more radical than Jack. He wrote in his diary, “We have now murdered the three men who, more than any other, incarnated the idealism of America in our time.” He pledged never to get this close to any other such candidate. It was too tragic. (David Margolick, The Promise and the Dream, pp. 385-86)

    The film flashes back to RFK’s career with commentators like Lisa Pease in the present and Ed Murrow from the past. We see a young Robert Kennedy as lead counsel for the McClellan Committee going up against the likes of Jimmy Hoffa and, later, Sam Giancana. Members of the press now pronounced Kennedy “ruthless’ for exposing the Cosa Nostra so relentlessly. Which is something that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were reluctant to do.

    When his brother won the presidency, RFK continued his crusade against organized crime as Attorney General. He also, like no other previous AG, pursued the breaking down of segregation in the South and civil rights for African Americans. Further, as the film shows, it was RFK who exposed to JFK that the CIA had deceived him about the Bay of Pigs operation. They knew it could not succeed without Pentagon support. In fact, they knew it would fail. But they thought JFK would commit American power to salvage it. He did not. Therefore, JFK fired Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Director of Plans Dick Bissell.

    This split with the Agency was made worse by the fact that the CIA had secretly contracted out with three members of the Cosa Nostra—John Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante—to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is after RFK had ordered a full court press on organized crime, and ordered an almost total surveillance over Giancana. When the FBI (accidentally) discovered these plots and informed Bobby about them, he asked for a briefing by the CIA. The Agency told him the plots had stopped. They had not. And the Agency knew they had not when they lied to him about it.

    By midway through 1961, Bobby became an advisor to JFK on foreign policy. During the Missile Crisis, there was no one more trusted by the president than Bobby. When there was true fear of having to resort to the Greenbrier Underground Shelter –which the film depicts—President Kennedy opted for the blockade alternative. For which he was harshly criticized, especially by the Joint Chiefs. When the Russians communicated a truce agreement, it was RFK who advised his brother on the terms to accept.

    As the film notes, after the double assassinations of JFK and then Oswald, Bobby Kennedy began a metamorphosis. He now became a gentler, kinder, more sensitive politician and person. This was typified by his visits to Mississippi at the request of Marian Edelman, and to California for Cesar Chavez. (I was personally told by the late Paul Schrade that it was Cesar’s idea to approach RFK on this.)

    In keeping with the title of the film, we now shift to RFK Jr. He consciously followed his father’s footsteps by first attending Harvard and then the University of Virginia School of Law. He developed a chronic drug problem after his father’s death, which included running away from home. He was eventually arrested for heroin possession in South Dakota. As part of his probation, he worked for the conservation group the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It was that experience which transformed him into an environmental lawyer of the first rank.

    Some of his successful crusades were his legal actions over pollution of the Hudson River, during which he joined the Riverkeepers group, which had started with fisherman John Cronin. It was this longstanding Hudson River campaign which many feel was the real beginning of the environmental movement in the USA. Kennedy also took on Monsanto and General Electric. He became well known in New York and was featured on the cover of several popular magazines for saving the Hudson River from becoming a cesspool. New York magazine captioned him as “The Kennedy Who Matters”. He wrote a book called Crimes Against Nature, railing against George W. Bush’s environmental policies. This and his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004 got him interviews with Jon Stewart and then Stephen Colbert. He was so in demand that he was doing almost 200 speeches per year.

    The film deals with what eventually caused the MSM to turn on Kennedy. It began with his campaign against mercury in pollution and the fact that it was in some vaccines wrapped in a preservative called thimerosal. He was not the only person to warn about this. Congressman Frank Pallone had done so in 1997. The film also features people like psychologist Sarah Bridges, actress Grace Hightower and essayist Lyn Redwood on the issue. I am not qualified to render any kind of definitive judgment on the subject, so I will not.

    The film then deals with the other issue that turned the MSM against Robert Kennedy Jr. That would be his view of the assassinations of his uncle and then his father. As the film shows, RFK Jr. was first suspicious about his uncle’s death. This was based on the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby. He could not understand why Ruby did what he did in public and in front of TV cameras. He later found out that Ruby was much more than just a patriotic strip club owner. At this point in the film, Sean Stone brings in David Talbot, who does a very nice job describing what happened when RFK heard the news from J. Edgar Hoover that his brother was dead. He immediately suspected a conspiracy, as Talbot described in the early part of his book, Brothers.

    RFK could not stay for the rest of the LBJ term. So after he, Thomas Kuchel and Hubert Humphrey got his brother’s civil rights bill through the Senate, he departed. (As Clay Risen shows in his book The Bill of the Century, what LBJ did on this bill has been greatly exaggerated.) As senator from New York, Kennedy became what author Edward Schmitt called the President of the Other America. He was there for the poor, the young, and the downtrodden.

    He was obviously the candidate to run against Johnson in 1968. After all, as he himself told Daniel Ellsberg, his brother’s policy would not have allowed Vietnam to escalate as under Johnson. (Ellsberg at Harvard JFK seminar in 1993). As Talbot states, by 1968, RFK was going to run on civil rights, poverty and withdrawing from Vietnam. Contrary to popular belief, and as revealed by author Jules Witcover in his book 85 Days, Kennedy had decided before the New Hampshire primary that he would run. McCarthy’s strong showing in that primary, plus the devastating Tet Offensive, forced Johnson out. As Witcover notes, Johnson would have lost in Wisconsin. And he knew that.

    The film closes with two powerful strophes. First is President Kennedy’s advocacy for Rachel Carson. Specifically in her battle against DDT and other pesticides in her 1962 classic Silent Spring. Carson had attended the May 1962 White House conference on conservation. And she testified before JFK’s Science Advisory Committee. She was battling breast cancer at the time, and she passed on in April of 1964. She was viciously attacked by the chemical companies, but she stood her ground.

    The second strophe is the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy Jr admits that he had accepted the orthodoxy on this case until he talked to Paul Schrade. Schrade was one of the victims of the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel that night. When the trajectory of the bullet that hit him was explained, he knew that the LAPD was passing horse manure. He eventually convinced Bobby to read Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report. That did it for RFK Jr. Thankfully, Sean Stone features Lisa Pease in this last segment. There is no better authority on the RFK murder than Lisa. And her book, A Lie Too Big to Fail, is mandatory reading for anyone interested in that case. Stone’s closing twenty minutes or so is quite pointed intellectually and well done artistically. Kudos should also go to Oliver Stone, who did the face-to-face interview with RFK Jr., editor Kurt Mattila, composer Jeff Beal and cinematographer Egor Povolotsky.

    I would recommend viewing the film to our readers. It is being streamed at Angel.com (https://www.angel.com/blog/rfk-legacy/posts/where-to-watch-rfk-legacy).

  • New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files – Part 1

    New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files – Part 1

    New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files – Part 1

    By Lisa Pease, author of A Lie Too Big to Fail

    Having extensively researched CIA and FBI files on both the JFK and RFK assassinations for more than 30 years, I’m uniquely positioned to identify what’s new and important in the recently released RFK files. So far, I have found three big stories in the recently released records. I’ll start with the first story and continue in subsequent articles to illuminate the other two important stories I’ve found. There are also several smaller stories, which I will get to eventually.

    Just before the RFK files were released, a reporter from CBS News contacted several people who have written books about the RFK assassination to ask what they expected to find in the files. I told the reporter I was especially eager to see the CIA files, as I knew they had been involved in the LAPD’s investigation but had only seen portions of the LAPD’s communications, never the responses.[1]

    It’s a fact that the CIA was involved in the LAPD’s assassination investigation. But there could be innocent or sinister theories for why that would be. If the LAPD had invited the CIA into the case, that could indicate the CIA was not involved and was only summoned due to their ability to track down information about the numerous foreigners who became, however temporarily, part of the LAPD’s investigation. However, it could also have been possible that the LAPD invited the CIA into the investigation because they had planned it together. If, on the other hand, the CIA had invited themselves into the investigation, that would reveal a vested interest in the outcome of the investigation and would also appear to exonerate the LAPD in the planning of the assassination.

    So the first thing I wanted to know from the files was simply that: did the LAPD invite the CIA in? Or did the CIA invite themselves in?

    The first semi-answer came from an important CIA file released back in 2021, that I did not see until this year, after my book came out and after the updated paperback version had gone to print, that contained two documents.

    The first page of the 2021-released document was the CIA’s response to Dan Rather’s questions about whether Manny Pena and Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, the two LAPD officers in charge of the conspiracy side of the investigations of “Special Unit Senator,” the Los Angeles Police Department unit formed to investigate RFK’s assassination, had worked for the CIA. The CIA denied any connection, despite the fact that both of them had been credibly linked to the CIA.[2]

    I had seen the first document in the files years earlier and had to laugh upon seeing it again because the CIA has been known, frequently, to lie on the record when people got too close to their ties to the assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, several years back, I saw a comment in a forum where a poster said to his knowledge, the CIA had never lied to the Warren Commission. I was able to find a lie the CIA made to the Warren Commission in five minutes. Helms denied to the Warren Commission that the CIA had ever had any interest in Oswald, a lie that is now completely exposed with previous and current file releases.

    In the recently released RFK files, there is another “big lie” file about Oswald, also in response to the Dan Rather inquiries, in which the CIA goes to great lengths to say they knew nothing about Oswald before the assassination, something proven to be ridiculously false over the years, and something even Dan Rather raised questions about in his special.

    The second document in the 2021 file, however, dropped a bombshell, albeit with lawyerly language:

    Sirhan Sirhan’s security file reflects that he had never been of interest to the Agency prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. On 5 June 1968 when Sirhan was identified as the probable assassin, the Director of Central Intelligence met with the Deputy Chief of the CI Staff, the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, and the Director of Security and directed that the CI staff would be the focal point for action in the Sirhan case. The CI staff was to collect all available information on Sirhan and provide appropriate portions of this material to the Office of Security for release to the Los Angeles Police Department. This material was to be released to the LAPD through the Office of Security’s Los Angeles Field Office.[3]

    (I found the use of “reflects that” telling, as if the file might have had more in it at one time but has been altered to “reflect” a certain version of events.)

    So James Angleton’s CIA Counterintelligence group was designated as the records collection point for the RFK assassination investigation, just as his team had run point for the JFK assassination, and could control what was released to the LAPD from the CIA’s end, by the CIA’s OS LAFO contact:

    Mr. William Curtin, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office, contacted Inspector Yarnell of the LAPD on 5 June 1968 and advised him that the Agency was prepared to cooperate with the LAPD in its investigation of Sirhan.

    From that one sentence, it appeared CIA initiated contact with the CIA first, but I wasn’t ready to declare a conclusion until I read Sirhan’s 815-page 201 file, released in 2025 by the Luna Committee. In there, we find this important bit of information from William Curtin himself:

    When the announcement of the Subject’s [Sirhan’s] identity and foreign background was made public on 5 June 1968, upon instructions from Headquarters, I contacted Inspector Harold YARNELL, in the absence of [LAPD] Chief Tom REDDIN.[4]

    Inspector Yarnell was a member of the LEIU – the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit – a private network of intelligence officers at various police departments across the country. Yarnell had been the Secretary-Treasurer of the LEIU and became the Commander of the LAPD Intelligence Division, where he interfaced with, among others, Lt. Jack Revill of the Dallas Police Department (named chief of the Dallas Intelligence Unit).[5]

    But it’s what Curtin wrote next that proved the CIA had forced its way into the investigation and not been invited:

    Inspector Yarnell was informed of our desire to aid the Los Angeles Police Department in any way that we could in the conduct of their investigation of the Subject. He expressed his appreciation and stated that they would gladly accept any information we wished to pass along to them. However, he advised that their case against the Subject appeared to be airtight and that he did not at that time foresee that they would be calling on us for any assistance.[6]

    In other words, the LAPD’s response to the CIA’s offer of help had been essentially, thank you, but no thank you. That is quite notable. The LAPD didn’t yet know what they didn’t know. But the CIA knew there would be things the LAPD didn’t know, names that would need to be investigated.

    Twelve days later, Inspector Yarnell called William back and set up a meeting with Yarnell, Captain Brown (the Chief of Homicide at LAPD) and Curtin. At this point, Yarnell’s tune changed slightly. Although they felt they had a rock-solid case against Sirhan (which they didn’t—see my book for why the case for Sirhan’s guilt falls flat), Yarnell said they were pursuing a possible conspiracy angle and needed information about Sirhan and possible associates. The CIA’s one request in response is that all mention of their cooperation be kept from the press. And for the most part, it was.

    But I find even this confession of the alliance and circumstances possibly incomplete, because Sirhan had not yet been identified when Chief Reddin gave his 7:00 a.m. press conference on June 5. As I wrote in my book, after viewing the tape from that conference:

    Throughout the press conference, Reddin’s delivery was calm, articulate, and professional, until he came to one particular question. He had just explained that the LAPD was checking with other agencies for any information they might have on the suspect— “the immigration service, the CIA, the Bureau of Customs, Social Security, the Post Office department—”

    “Why the CIA, Chief?” a reporter asked.

    Suddenly, Reddin became visibly rattled and nearly choked as he tried to get the agency’s name out. “The C-A … the C-A … the C-I-A has types of information that might help us identify who the person might be. We’ll give them his picture.” Reddin regained his composure shortly after, but it was a bizarre break—and the only such break—in an otherwise seamless presentation.[7]

    Perhaps Reddin had learned of the CIA’s call to Captain Brown and was planning to share their unknown suspect’s picture with the CIA, but right about this time, Munir Sirhan, the brother of Sirhan who was at his early morning job and watching the TV in the breakroom saw a picture of his brother on TV and went with his brother Adel to the local Pasadena police to identify him. So maybe Curtin’s timeline is an official lie.

    There’s also the weird question the LAPD asked Sirhan about him being married. After the shooting, Sirhan was extensively questioned for a few hours before Reddin heard Sirhan had asked for a lawyer and shut down the questioning. The LAPD and the DA’s assistant who questioned him recognized Sirhan was in some sort of dissociative state. He couldn’t remember what kind of car he drove and couldn’t or wouldn’t give his name. Even his interrogators didn’t believe he was lying. Before his identity had been revealed, one LAPD officer asked Sirhan if he were married (to which Sirhan replied, quite oddly, that he didn’t know).

    It turns out the CIA knew of another man called “Sirhan Sirhan” in the United States who was married, and had been married in 1957 (Sirhan Sirhan had never married and would have only been 13 at the time!), and a reporter with ties to the CIA and Israel named John Kimche had written about him a week after the assassination took place. Kimche thought the Sirhan he was writing about was the Sirhan Sirhan in custody because his source had been right so many times before. The CIA tracked down the man, identified by a friend as “Sirhan Sirhan,” and reported back that he was really Sirhan Salim Sirhan Abu Khadir, a resident of Detroit.”[8] But who told the LAPD within hours after the shooting that the guy in custody might have been married? Might the CIA have planted this story with Kimche after the fact to explain earlier initial misinformation? Had someone from Israel called it in to try to paint Sirhan as someone with ties to Al Fatah (which Sirhan Bishara Sirhan did not have)? Maybe the LAPD just asked if he was married for no reason. But they also asked if his name was “Jesse,” and there was, in fact, a suspect named “Jesse” that apparently had been taken into custody separately from Sirhan and released. So the question may not have been random at all.

    There are still many mysteries in this case. But the CIA pushing their way into the LAPD’s investigation, while not surprising to those who have long assumed a CIA hand in the assassination of RFK, is genuinely new information, with genuinely sinister implications.

    (Part 2 coming soon)

     

    1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-gabbard-rfk-assassination-files-release/

    2. Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), pp. 98-99.

    3. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20INVESTIGATI%5B16011338%5D.pdf, p. 4

    4. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/rfk/releases/2025/0612/07165005_sirhan_sirhan_201.pdf, p. 24

    5. https://afsc.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/1979_NARMIC_Police%20Threat%20to%20Political%20Liberty.pdf, page 52.

    6. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20201%5B16506077%5D.pdf, p. 74

    7. Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), p. 58.

    8. Sirhan 201 file, p. 779.

  • New RFK Film – Rob Wilson, Sean Stone, and Oliver Stone – “Legacy”

    New RFK Film – Rob Wilson, Sean Stone, and Oliver Stone – “Legacy”

    Please see a review of the film here.

  • “Echoes of a Lost America” by Monika Wiesak – A Review

    “Echoes of a Lost America” by Monika Wiesak – A Review

    Echoes of a Lost America

    By Monika Wiesak

    Three years ago, in 2022, Monika Wiesak published America’s Last President. This remains one of the best, if not the best, of all contemporary books on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. If you have not read it, I strongly urge you to do so. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/last-president) Wiesak has now published a book about the assassination of President Kennedy, entitled Echoes of a Lost America.

    I

    She begins her new book by looking at the crime in a macroscopic manner. She describes some of the things that Kennedy was doing as president that likely disturbed people in the higher circles. She labels his foreign policy as anti-imperialist and mentions his attempt to forge a rapprochement with Fidel Castro in 1963. She uses a telling quote on Vietnam by Gen. Maxwell Taylor: “I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against sending combat troops, except one man, and that was the president.” (Wiesak, p. 10; all references to paperback version) She then discusses how, after Kennedy’s murder, LBJ Americanized the Vietnam War and provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. (Wiesak, p. 6) She continues in this vein by mentioning reversals by Johnson of Kennedy policies in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and the Congo.

    Unlike almost all other authors in the field, Wiesak brings in Kennedy’s clashes with Israeli/Zionist interests as part of her overview. For one example, she mentions Kennedy’s backing of UN emissary Joseph Johnson’s Palestinian refugee plan. Kennedy supported this concept until the end of his presidency. It allowed three methods of repatriation for the Palestinians. Either they could stay where they were and be compensated for their loss during the Nakba; they could move elsewhere and the UN would pay for it; or they could return to where they were originally. Secretly, President David Ben Gurion violently opposed the Johnson Plan. (p. 16)

    She also brings in a rather ignored piece of information. Namely, the highly enriched uranium that was used by the Israelis at the Dimona nuclear reactor was very likely stolen from the United States. (p. 21). This data is examined in minute detail by author Roger Mattson in his book Stealing the Atom Bomb. (Click here for a review https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/) She adds that this heist was likely known to James Angleton. She concludes that Kennedy’s Middle East policy was overhauled in almost every aspect by President Johnson. And she adds this telling fact:

    The 92 million in military assistance provided in fiscal year 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948. (Wiesak, p. 23)

    From here, she goes to Kennedy’s economic policies by beginning with an appropriate Kennedy quotation:

    The president must serve as the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society. (p. 26)

    Like many observers on this topic, she points out the importance of the appointment of James Saxon as Comptroller of the Currency. (p. 27). She wisely quotes from the famous interview that Saxon gave to US News and World Report just before Kennedy was killed. Saxon was trying to loosen bank regulations and also encouraging the opening of more state banks. He and Kennedy wanted an easier flow of credit and loans to small businessmen and farmers. This put Saxon at odds with the Federal Reserve Board. As the magazine summed up his policy:

    The Comptroller approved scores of new national banks, and branches, spurred key mergers, revised outmoded rules. Result: keener competition for deposits and customers. (p. 28)

    During this interview, Saxon said something rather bold. In reply to a question about if the Federal Reserve System should be updated or overhauled, his response was–in no uncertain terms–yes. He went as far as to say bank membership in the system should be voluntary. He clearly depicted himself as in opposition to the Fed, but he said he had Kennedy’s backing on this. He added that it was not surprising to him that the big banks in New York, like Chase Manhattan, did not like him. Because he wanted more open competition for deposits. At that time, Chase Manhattan was a Rockefeller controlled bank. This is an important point, and one that few writers have addressed, save perhaps Donald Gibson.

    II

    Amplifying on Kennedy’s economic reforms, she concentrates on Kennedy building a production-based economy—as opposed to a service economy. One way he was trying to do this was through the investment tax credit. In other words, he was giving companies tax credits if they would modernize their plant and equipment, which would result in higher production rates. This would lead to American products being more competitive in foreign markets. (p.29)

    He also tried to help those in need with welfare benefits by doubling the number of people eligible for surplus food, and also signing a bill extending unemployment benefits from 26-39 weeks. He raised the minimum wage and signed off on increased Social Security benefits. (p.29)

    She becomes the first writer to accent the showdown between Kennedy and the steel industry since Gibson. She rightly pictures the conflict as a battle. One between Kennedy trying to control inflation, the steel companies initially agreeing, but then reneging on the deal and confronting the president with an accomplished fact: they were raising their prices.

    As Gibson introduced the episode through John Blair:

    The April 1962 face-off between President Kennedy and US Steel had been described as the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and a corporate management. (John Blair, Economic Concentration, p. 635)

    Kennedy felt he needed the steel company/labor union agreement to keep inflationary forces from spiraling throughout the economy. He figured his increase in minimum wages would be eaten up by what he called “the cruel tax of inflation.” (Wiesak, p 29) Kennedy thought he had an agreement that the workers would not demand higher wages and the company would not raise prices. But four days after the labor contract had been signed, on April 10th, Roger Blough, Chairman of US Steel, visited Washington. He then handed the president a PR release: the company would announce a 3.5 % price increase at midnight. (Gibson, Battling Wall Street, p.10) Kennedy reportedly said, “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.” (Wiesak, p. 30).

    After five other companies joined US Steel to break the agreement, Kennedy decided that, if his economic policy was going to have any impact or credibility, he would have to begin a counter-attack. Which he did. This was through Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The former stated that no company that broke the agreement would be given any more Pentagon contracts. The latter began investigating charges of collusion and price fixing by issuing subpoenas, some at 3 AM. (Ibid). Kennedy also used the bully pulpit to hit back. On April 11th, he said that he thought the American people would find it difficult to accept,

    A situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interest of 185,000,000 Americans. (Gibson, p. 13)

    Within 48 hours of handing over the announcement, big steel had taken back the price rise. Her synopsis of the crisis is fine, I just wish she had done a bit more with the part of Gibson’s book that deals with Kennedy’s struggle against the CFR globalists.

    From here, she goes on to describe Kennedy’s advocacy of Rachel Carson’s work against the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Although Carson was attacked for Silent Spring, Kennedy formed a committee that vindicated the book in May of 1963. (Wiesak, p. 31) Kennedy also backed the work of Dr. Frances Kelsey against the drug thalidomide, and this then led to the FDA having approval over when a drug could be marketed. (ibid., p 32)

    With the banks, steel companies and big pharma, Kennedy was not looked upon as a friend of big business.

    III

    After adroitly laying out this backdrop, Wiesak now shifts over to the assassination itself. She begins with an examination of the alleged assassin, Lee Oswald. Was Oswald really a self-declared Marxist? There is a lot of evidence to indicate the contrary: namely that he was really an agent provocateur. And she wastes little time in mounting a case showing that he was. She includes the puzzle about Oswald’s 201 file, or the lack of the CIA opening one for the first 13 months after he defected to the Soviet Union. (p. 45). She adds that James Angleton’s successor, George Kalaris, gave a possible answer as to why it was finally opened: Oswald had made queries “concerning possible reentry into the United States.” (p. 45) This would suggest that Oswald understood he had failed to gull the KGB and wanted to return for reassignment.

    So once Oswald returned to Texas, he kept up this image by subscribing to communist and socialist newspapers. (p. 48). But at the same time, he is ingratiating himself with the White Russian community in Dallas, who all loathe communism and want a return to a monarchy. In the face of this returned Soviet defector and his strange behavior, inexplicably, the FBI closed their file on Oswald in October of 1962. Then they reopened it in March of 1963, allegedly based on communist periodical subscriptions that the Bureau already knew he had.

    Wiesak discusses the enigmatic figure of George DeMohrenschildt, nicknamed the Baron. Since he figured right into the midst of this whole contradictory White Russian/Oswald milieu. And she notes that the majority of the Baron’s contact with Oswald was during that six-month period when the FBI closed down their Oswald file. She also discusses the Baron’s acquaintance with Jean de Menil, president of the Schlumberger Corporation, which had close ties to the CIA; and through the Agency to the OAS, which was trying to overthrow French president Charles de Gaulle. DeMohrenschildt and his father also met and worked with Allen Dulles. (p. 49) In early 1963, DeMohrenschildt left for a reputed CIA assignment in Haiti. And now Ruth and Michael Paine have become the best friends of Lee and his wife Marina. And she examines their rather interesting connections to the higher circles. (p. 51)

    She concludes that Oswald appears “to be some sort of intelligence asset, either witting or unwitting, who James Angleton closely monitored.” (ibid)

    From here, the book segues into what she calls the “Lead Up to the Crime”. Jim Garrison thought the early announcement that Kennedy would be coming to Dallas, which was in the Dallas Times Herald in late April, marked the beginning of the maneuvering of Oswald away from the White Russians. (p. 53). In a bit over two weeks, Oswald would be looking for a job at Reilly Coffee Company in the Crescent City. She makes note that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison found out how some of Oswald’s cohorts moved on to the NASA base at Michoud. She then adds that Oswald thought he was going there also. (p. 54). Importantly, she also relates the heist by Oswald’s friend David Ferrie of arms from Schlumberger, which was operated by DeMohrenschildt’s friend Jean de Menil. These arms were then rerouted through Guy Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street, an office at which several witnesses saw Oswald. It was also the address that Oswald placed on some of the pro-Castro literature he was handing out that summer.

    She turns to Clay Shaw and notes the fact that he was reliably identified by the local sheriff as being seen with Ferrie and Oswald in the Clinton/Jackson area in the late summer of 1963. (p. 57) Through the work of Whitney Webb and Michelle Metta, she then links Shaw with DeMenil and Canadian lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield through Permindex. About Permindex, she advances the case that it was a hydra-headed creation: CIA, Italian intelligence and the Mossad. She fingers Bloomfield as a key figure in Permindex because he had access to the majority of the shares in that enigmatic company. (p. 59) She also states that those associated with Permindex were globalists in their views of a world economy, e.g., Bloomfield, Edmond de Rothschild and Shaw. She points out, briefly, that this was opposed to Kennedy’s nationalist views.

    She then offers both views of Oswald in Mexico City: that he may have been there, and he might not have been. But when he returned to Dallas, the FBI’s Marvin Gheesling took the FLASH warning on him off the Watch List. (p. 65). If he had not done that, Oswald likely would not have been on the motorcade route. Also, if Ruth Paine had told Oswald about a job offer that came in from Robert Adams of the Texas Employment Commission, he also would likely not have been on the route.

    IV

    About the assassination itself, in Chapter 4, she does a nice synoptic job of gathering the evidence that Kennedy was undoubtedly killed by a conspiracy. She does this in a microscopic way, but says we should always keep our eye on the Big Picture. (p. 83)

    She then turns to Jack Ruby, the slayer of Oswald. We know that Ruby was the original Man for All Seasons. A guy who had connections in many different directions. She connects him to Meyer Lansky, and uses Seth Kantor’s biography to do so. (p. 110) She also notes that Lansky had worked with the ONI and OSS to help create Operation Underworld, where the Mob helped the war effort during World War II. Lansky had large investments in Cuba before the revolution, and she notes he was also involved with the Haganah, a kind of umbrella paramilitary group devoted to the establishment of Israel. (p. 110). Ruby was also known to Mayor Earle Cabell, who ended up being exposed as a CIA asset.

    Wiesak notes the connection between PR man Sam Bloom and Ruby. Ruby had Sam Bloom’s contact information scribbled down on a card in his apartment. Bloom was also the PR man for Judge Joe Brown at Ruby’s trial. Ruby’s lawyer Melvin Belli commented that “Bloom was making legal history—the first public-relations counselor to a judge in the history of jurisprudence.” (p. 115)

    With Oswald dead and the world seeing Ruby as his killer on TV, the media and the Power Elite were able to fashion and snap on a cover-up almost instantly. To say that it was effective and all-consuming does not do it justice. Wiesak discusses the phone calls from Eugene Rostow and Joseph Alsop to the White House urging Johnson to appoint a blue ribbon commission, because no one was believing what was coming out of Dallas. She also writes that Earle Cabell labeled the assassination “the irrational act of a single man.” (p. 122) And, most pungently, how the New York Times labeled Oswald as the assassin of Kennedy after Ruby killed him. This about a man who always insisted on his innocence and never had a lawyer. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach then cooperated with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to close the case in about 48 hours. (p. 125)

    What made that so problematic is that, from the beginning, the case against Oswald was full of question marks. And any serious journalist or investigator could have found them. Mark Lane did so in his article published in The Guardian on December 19, 1963. (Lane, Plausible Denial, pp. 335-60). When Lane asked to represent Oswald before the Warren Commission, he was turned down by J. Lee Rankin, the Chief Counsel. (Lane, p. 22) As Wiesak shows throughout Chapter 6, that was purely a decision made upon expediency, not on proper procedure or in the interests of justice. For the Commission’s case, as she demonstrates, was hapless. It would never have withstood the challenge of a properly prepared defense counsel.

    V

    She closes the book with chapters on the murder of Robert Kennedy, attempts to reopen the JFK case and a brief chapter on John F. Kennedy Jr.

    Her chapter on the facts of the RFK case is sharp and compelling. But I wish she had used more of David Talbot’s book on that issue. To give her credit, she does say at the beginning that critics usually consider the two cases as separate matters; but if one thinks that powerful forces killed JFK, then those same forces should be suspects in the removal of Robert. (p. 140) And she repeats this motif at the end of the chapter. (p. 192). If it had been me, I would have spent some more time on this issue, for example, showing that Bobby knew his brother had been killed by a large domestic conspiracy and that Dallas was the perfect place to execute such an action. Also, that he sent such a message to Moscow pertaining to this. (Talbot, Brothers, pp. 29-34)

    But I should mention something that I think was quite striking and relevant in this chapter. Quoting from the trial, Sirhan was asked what he thought about John Kennedy:

    I loved him, sir. More than any American could have….He was working sir, with the leaders of the Arab governments, the Arab countries, to bring a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. And he promised these Arab leaders that he would do his utmost and his best to force or to put some pressure on Israel to comply with the 1948 United Nations Resolution sir, to either repatriate those Arab refugees or give them back, give them the right to return to their homes. And when he was killed that never happened. (p. 186)

    As we have seen previously, Sirhan was correct on this.

    In her review of attempts to reopen the JFK case, she treats Jim Garrison and his case against Clay Shaw with respect. She then describes the figurative earthquake that took place when ABC showed the Zapruder film in 1975 and how that caused the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). She has notable disdain for the HSCA. Commenting that their version of the Magic Bullet is as bad or worse than the Warren Commission’s. (p. 205) She is one of the very few writers to note the almost thunderous irony of the alleged plot against Jimmy Carter in May of 1979. Which just happened to involve two men: one named Raymond Lee Harvey and the other Osvaldo Espinoza-Ortiz.

    Her chapter on JFK Jr. hits the important points in relation to the topic at hand. She mentions Meg Azzoni, a former girlfriend, who said, “His heartfelt quest was to expose and bring to trial who killed his father and who covered it up.” (p. 213) She also adds that George magazine was really a presidential platform for him. Interestingly, she describes how he was very interested in the Yitzhak Rabin assassination and published an article on that case, which he himself edited, containing lengthy interviews with shooter Yigal Amir’s mother. She believed that Amir had been manipulated by the Shin Bet.

    The capper to all this? JFK Jr. was going to run for governor in 2002. (p. 217)

    She concludes that what Americans have been handed on the JFK case by the MSM and the political establishment is a counterfeit history. One that its citizens should resist. She also says that she has little doubt that America would be a different place if JFK had lived. And she ends in reference to Kennedy more or less what Kennedy said about Dag Hammarskjold before the United Nations, “Let us not allow his efforts to have been in vain.”

  • Rick Perlstein and the Wages of Denial

    Rick Perlstein and the Wages of Denial

    Rick Perlstein and the Wages of Denial 

    Rick Perlstein cannot control his flatulence on the subject of John Kennedy. Perlstein is best known for his four volume set about the rise of the New Right.  This was published from 2001-20. It included the books Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. 

    It is my belief, and also that of authors like David Talbot and John Newman, that one cannot tell that story without discussing the suspicious assassinations and following cover ups of JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. As I wrote in the afterword to the anthology The Assassinations, the relevant question is what would have happened if all four had lived? (See p. 636) To take just one example, all four were involved with the historic 1963 March on Washington. In fact, as Irving Bernstein noted in his book Promises Kept, President Kennedy was the first white politician to endorse that event in public. He then called in his, rather surprised, brother and told him that, as Attorney General, he was going to provide security.  This demonstration had to come off perfectly since they were laying themselves on the line and their enemies would take them apart if it did not. It did come off perfectly and many believe it is the high point of post-war American liberalism.

    Robert Kennedy was looking forward to running against Richard Nixon in 1968.  He very likely would have been the candidate, if he was not killed in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in June of 1968. As Lisa Pease demonstrated in her excellent book on that case, A Lie too Big to Fail, Sirhan Sirhan not only was not his killer, he could not have been the assassin. 

    And unlike what Perlstein has written elsewhere, John Newman has shown that Bobby Kennedy was part of his brother’s plan to withdraw from Vietnam. (JFK and Vietnam, Second Edition, p. 416) Even Mr. Hardball, Chris Mathews has said that Bobby Kennedy would have been the anti-Vietnam candidate in 1968. (Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, p. 311) Hubert Humphrey’s fatal error was in not making this clear early enough in the campaign. Thus separating himself from the man who reversed Kennedy’s Vietnam policy, Lyndon Johnson. It was RFK’s  assassination, and that issue, that brought Richard Nixon his victory in 1968. Without that victory, what would Perlstein’s tetralogy have looked like?

    Make no mistake, as a man of the  doctrinaire left—he wrote for The Village Voiceand The Nation–Perlstein understands his dilemma and the problem it poses for him.  Long ago he decided on a “take no prisoners” stance on it.  At the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s murder he wrote a column for The Nation. (November 21, 2013) Consider how he opened that essay:

    The argument that John F. Kennedy was a closet peacenik, ready to give up on what the Vietnamese called the American War upon re-election, received its most farcical treatment in Oliver Stone’s JFK. It was made with only slightly more sophistication by Kenneth O’Donnell in the 1972 book, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye….

    Note the way Perlstein pens this passage.  First the book he refers to was written by both O’Donnell and Dave Powers. Powers and O’Donnell told House Speaker Tip O’Neill that they heard shots from the grassy knoll area during the assassination. But the FBI talked them out of this testimony. (Man of the House, p. 178) When Kennedy was killed, Powers left the White House but O’Donnell stayed on until 1965. Therefore he was in a position to see how Johnson altered Kennedy’s Indochina policy.

    As per Oliver Stone’s picture–which came well after that book—the film’s Vietnam angle was based on the work of two men: John Newman and Colonel Fletcher Prouty. Prouty worked under General Victor Krulak, who was directly involved with Vietnam policy under both Kennedy and Johnson. Therefore, he was also in position to observe the alterations to Kennedy’s Vietnam policy.  Newman was the first person to write an entire book based on Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam and how it was changed afterwards. This included how Kennedy’s NSAM 263 was neutralized by NSAM 273. That later order was delivered to the White House after Kennedy’s murder.  Newman demonstrated how National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy’s draft of 273 was significantly altered by Johnson, when Bundy thought he was writing it for Kennedy. (Newman, pp. 462-66)

    Newman also included an important quote from Johnson, which he made in December of 1963. This is just one month after Kennedy was killed. At a White House Christmas Eve reception the new president told the Joint Chiefs, “Just get me elected, and then you can have your war.” As writer Monica Wiesak showed in her book on the Kennedy presidency, JFK did not even want the generals visiting Saigon, let alone planning for war there. (America’s Last President, p. 133) 

    As Fletcher Prouty pointed out, there was not one more combat troop in Vietnam on the day Kennedy was killed than when he was inaugurated. And, in fact, Kennedy was at work withdrawing the advisors at the time of his murder. The declassified record of the Sec/ Def conference of May 1963 in Hawaii proves this beyond any doubt.  The Pentagon was shocked in 1962 when they first learned of Kennedy’s plans to remove the advisors. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 120)

    To get around his tract-like thinking, what Perlstein did in 2013 was to rely on Noam Chomsky.. He says that Chomsky insisted that the withdrawal plan was reliant on Saigon winning the war. How this could happen without direct American intervention is a mystery that neither Perlstein nor Chomsky ever explained. And General Maxwell Taylor underlined this reality for all to see:

    I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against sending combat troops, except one man and that was the president. The president just didn’t want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do….It was really the president’s personal conviction that the US ground troops shouldn’t go in. (Wiesak, p. 128)

    U. Alexis Johnson, Dean Rusk’s Deputy, said the same for the record. Kennedy had drawn the line at “no combat troops” in 1961.  And this line was clear and indelible. (Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith, p. 371) 

    But beyond that, as a result of that Sec/Def meeting in Hawaii in May of 1963, General Earle Wheeler stated that any proposal for overt action would be treated negatively by President Kennedy. (Wheeler notes of 5/6/63, Pacific Command meeting). The final hole in Chomsky’s leaking rowboat was applied by Newman when he listened to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s debriefs as he left the Pentagon. In those sessions McNamara said that it did not matter if Saigon was losing or winning.  Once the training period was over, America was getting out.  He and Kennedy had mutually decided on this policy in advance.  (Vietnam: The Early Decisions, edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, pp. 164-67) 

    If anyone needed any more convincing of the difference between Kennedy and Johnson on Indochina just look at the first meeting LBJ helmed on the issue. As CIA Director John  McCone later wrote, the difference between the two presidents was readily apparent. Johnson said he had never been happy with our operations in Vietnam. And any person who disagreed with his policy should be removed. He actually compared losing South Vietnam to losing China in 1949. (Newman, p. 459) To put it mildly, Kennedy did not see it that way.  As he told General Lyman Lemnitzer, if we did not go into Cuba which was 90 miles away, why should we do so in Vietnam which was 8,000 miles away? (Newman, pp. 139-40)

    Johnson’s new policy was enthroned in NSAM 288 in March of 1964. This order is crucial in understanding what happened  to escalate the war in Vietnam. With NSAM 288, Johnson and the Pentagon mapped out an entire air campaign against North Vietnam, with literally dozens of targets, using American planes and pilots. Perlstein has to know about its primacy since two other sources he uses, Edwin Moise and Fredrik Logevall, mention it at length. Echoing the Pentagon Papers, Logevall wrote it was hard to exaggerate the importance of NSAM 288 on the road to direct American intervention in the Vietnam War. (Logevall, Choosing War, p. 129; Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, pp. 24-25)  It is revealing that Perlstein did not mention this milestone in 2013.  Perhaps because it proved that what Kennedy would not do in three years, Johnson did in three months. 

    NSAM 288 was part of a  deliberate planning scheme by Johnson  to escalate the war and insert massive American air and land power into theater. That planning  eventually included a draft for a congressional declaration of war. LBJ placed William Sullivan in charge of this effort at first. (Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, pp 87-91) The obvious question that Perlstein does not want to answer is: If as Johnson always said, his policy was a continuation of Kennedy’s, why would he have to do this? 

    The answer to that question is that LBJ knew Kennedy’s plan was withdrawal and he disagreed with it vehemently.  He even told McNamara this directly: How can you supervise a withdrawal in a war America is losing? (James Blight, Virtual JFK, p. 310) That conversation, which we have on tape, shows just how bankrupt Perlstein is in utilizing a zealot like Noam Chomsky. The war was being lost and LBJ knew Kennedy was withdrawing. The new president was not going to oversee America losing a war.

    Which relates to Perlstein’s opening piece of snark, about Kennedy being a closet peacenik. When did troops enter a combat theater under Kennedy?  There were certainly opportunities for this to happen.  For example at the Bay of Pigs, during the Berlin Crisis, in Laos, in Vietnam, and during the Missile Crisis. Kennedy did not do so in any case.  But we know that past and future presidents would have i.e. Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon. Eisenhower told Kennedy that Laos was the key to all of Southeast Asia, and if America had to, she should intervene unilaterally. (Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 163) Nixon was explicit when he told Kennedy he should declare a beachhead at the Bay of Pigs and send in the Marines. (Schlesinger, p. 288). Lyndon Johnson thought Kennedy was giving away too much in his negotiations over the Missile Crisis and not taking enough action. (The Kennedy Tapes, pp. 590—602, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow). And Johnson sought and received Eisenhower’s approval  for his Vietnam escalations. (Blight, pp. 186-88). 

    Let us take another example. Does anyone think Kennedy would have sent the Marines into the Dominican Republic in 1965 to support a military dictatorship and deny the elected president Juan Bosch his office? Kennedy supported Bosch and began an economic embargo against the military coup. But Johnson sent 25,000 Marines into theater to safeguard Bosch from returning to power—which was a clear reversal of Kennedy’s policy. (Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street, pp. 78-79). But beyond that, Johnson had lied about his reasons for sending in those combat troops.  Senator William Fulbright and his staff grew suspicious of Johnson’s changing stores for the invasion. And they discovered that the “atrocities” LBJ bandied about were either clear exaggerations or, in many cases, simply fictional. (Goulden, pp. 165). This is important because it was Fulbright’s discoveries of these deceptions that led him to think that Johnson was also lying about his reasons for escalating in Vietnam—specifically the Tonkin Gulf incident. This then caused Fulbright to open the damaging senate hearings that the senator held about Vietnam that began to divide the nation and erode the president’s support for his land-air war in Indochina. (ibid, p. 171)

    What Perlstein and his like do is end up being camouflage for Johnson. It was Johnson’s disastrous foreign policy alterations which were largely responsible for splitting asunder the Democratic Party. As senate staffer Carl Marcy, working for Fulbright wrote, his hearings should try and ascertain what happened in the last 24 months to:

    Turn the liberal supporters of President Kennedy into opponents of the policies of President Johnson and the right wing opponents of Eisenhower and Kennedy into avid supporters of the present administration.(Goulden, p. 166)

    This was no less than a polarizing sea change and pretty much spelled the end of the FDR coalition stemming from the 1930’s. It literally exploded at the Chicago convention in 1968. Largely because Robert Kennedy was not there.

    To ignore all the above is simply astonishing.

    But now Perlstein has come back for more.  On December 5, 2024 he wrote another article, this time for The American Prospect. He now says that somehow the high feelings that the American populace has for the fallen Kennedys is a cult. If one can believe it, Perlstein actually uses  a 22 year old blogger named Joshua Cohen to dismiss this “cult”.  He quotes him as saying that baby boomers believed Kennedy was doing some things that others really did not want him to do.  And they took drastic action to stop him; this was followed by the end of the American Golden Age.

    Perlstein says that this was perhaps partly true.  In 1963 Kennedy did make a  fine speech on civil rights and then he did the Peace Speech at American University. Incredibly, this is all that Perlstein can come up with as to Kennedy’s achievements while in office.  He can name not one of Kennedy’s reversals of John Foster Dulles’ foreign policy: in the Middle East, in Indonesia, in Congo to name just three examples.  Or how this all reversed back under Johnson. This is really kind of shocking considering Kennedy’s relationship with Gamel Abdul Nasser and what is happening in the Middle East right now.  And of course he pretty much leaves out Vietnam.   

    I won’t even go into how he gives Kennedy short shrift on civil rights. But I will say that it is provable that JFK did more for that issue than FDR, Truman and Eisenhower combined. And this started on his first day in office.  That night he called up Treasury Secretary Doug Dillon.  He asked him: Why were there no black faces in that Coast Guard parade? Dillon said he did not know. Kennedy told him to find out.  This eventually led to the first affirmative action order in American history in March of 1961.  It is pretty hard to avoid a milestone like that.  But Mr. Historian of the sixties does it. When one links to this series the reader will see the work that I did and Perlstein failed to do. (https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights-how-the-msm-continues-to-distort-history-part-1) 

    What is amazing is how much Kennedy accomplished—for example with the economy– in slightly less than three years.

    Perlstein then gets even worse. He actually mentions Vincent Bugliosi’s oversized and overlong book on the JFK case, Reclaiming History. He says that his book demolished “every existing conspiracy claim”.  One does not know whether to laugh or cry at a statement as stupid as that. Bugliosi’s book was simply and completely a fraud.  And this author himself showed that was the case in a normally sized book length treatment. I demonstrated with footnotes how Bugliosi violated his own opening statement, namely that he would not leave out anything of importance. He did just that and he did it many times. (See The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today) That Perlstein could fully endorse a mirage like that shows what a cheap grandstander he is about the subject.

    About all the evidentiary holes in the Warren Report, like the MSM, Perlstein can chalk that up to fear of expanding the Cold War, “not an assassination conspiracy”.  He even states that this was J. Edgar Hoover’s excuse. Perlstein is unaware he is now in sci-fi land.  He apparently does not know that the FBI report on the JFK case does not include the Single Bullet Theory! But further that Hoover did all he could to cover up the bullet strike to bystander James Tague. Because that would undermine his report’s theory that all the projectiles struck inside the car. (Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 130-38) In other words Hoover knew the lone assassin paradigm was baloney.  And he actually admitted this in private–not once, but twice. (DiEugenio, p. 246)

    How can one explain what the CIA did with the Oswald tale in Mexico City as “the routine passion of bureaucracies to hide their own incompetence”?  That one is a doozy, even for Perlstein. Oswald visited both the Cuban and Russian embassies five times.  So there should be ten pictures of him entering and exiting. In 61 years, the CIA has not produced one. Since both embassies were also electronically bugged, the CIA should be able to produce a tape of the man’s voice. The one they sent to Dallas while Oswald was in detention was not Oswald. This is what drove Hoover to write on the marginalia of a memo that the CIA sold him a snow job on Oswald in Mexico City. (DiEugenio, p. 304)

    There is nothing fanciful about the above.  These are all evidentiary holes in the JFK case.  There is nothing political or “mythic” about  them. But either Perlstein or his buddy Cohen do not know about them, or they do not want to admit them.  Either alternative shows just what a faux historian Rick Perlstein really is.

  • RFK Jr. and the Unspeakable: Why This Historic Moment Matters

    RFK Jr. and the Unspeakable: Why This Historic Moment Matters

    When Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016, he raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in grassroots donations to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. After he dutifully backed out and endorsed the candidate chosen by the party’s super delegates, a lot of his supporters reportedly ended up voting for Donald Trump in November. When a reporter asked him how he felt about ex-members of his camp voting against Clinton, Sanders answered: “Wrong question.” If so many of his followers had decided to turn to someone whose policies were anathema to his own, he asked, then they must have been pretty angry about something, right? The media, he suggested, should figure out what ordinary voters are so mad about instead of blaming him and his populist movement for Hillary Clinton’s defeat.

    While it’s true that the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan has not raised Bernie-levels of grassroots cash, it’s also true that ordinary voters have less disposable income than they did eight years ago. What RFK Jr. did do, however, was gather over a million signatures nationwide through the mobilization of some 100,000 volunteers for access to the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sanders never had to worry about ballot access in the Democratic primaries. For some reason, RFK Jr. was not only shut out of the party’s nominating process; he also had to qualify the “hard way,” as an independent, when he finally gave up on the once-upon-a-time party of his father and uncle. 

    Thus began one of the ugliest and most vicious assaults on a presidential candidate in recent memory. Even though he decided to run as an independent, the Democratic National Committee (DNC)  launched a well-financed “lawfare” campaign through the courts to block him from the ballot in the general election. This was when he was taking more voters away from Trump than Biden! DNC-friendly mainstream media lent this discrimination campaign a helping hand by censoring him from their airwaves as much as possible. Joe Biden disgraced his presidency by denying him Secret Service protection until two days after the assassination attempt on Trump, and nearly 15 months after Bobby announced his own candidacy. Now that he’s formed a coalition with Trump, it’s fair to echo Sanders and say his supporters might have been a bit angry also.

    As someone who has volunteered for Kennedy’s campaign since shortly after he declared his candidacy, I confess to brief shock at the announcement that he was suspending his run, endorsing Trump, and calling on his supporters to refrain from voting for him in about ten “battleground states.” Those ten might include my own, Virginia, where “RFK2”– as he’s sometimes known–polls relatively high. But I’m over it. 

    In 1968, many supporters of his liberal father’s presidential campaign transferred their vote to George Wallace, very possibly in sheer protest at RFK’s untimely and highly suspicious demise. For all his faults, New York real estate mogul Donald Trump is neither the racist Alabama governor nor his running mate, warmongering Gen. Curtis LeMay, who may have been smoking a cigar in the autopsy room during the postmortem exam of President John F. Kennedy, a man he hated. Trump has never smoked, and Wallace would have thoroughly disdained Trump’s Oval Office photo ops with African-American admirers.

    With his stance on tariffs and no taxes on tips or on Social Security, Trump claims the mantle of a populist;  and whether he is or not, elites do not like populists. They did not like Sanders either. But the neocons among the “Never Trump” crowd – e.g. Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz – despise Trump mostly for what they perceive as his “nativism,” which embarrasses them as members of the urban-liberal intelligentsia. Trump’s potential isolationism (he started no new wars) is the worst of it and frightens them to this day. Yet even a populist-nativist isn’t necessarily a “threat to democracy.” I think many people sincerely believe Trump is a threat, and I respect that, but I don’t see it myself. January 6th was a tragedy, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. has described Trump’s actions during that violent, vandalistic riot as “reprehensible.” Personally, I’ve never believed Trump intended or foresaw what happened, even if he bore blame through his recklessness or negligence. 

    Moreover, three and a half years later, we have to ask who poses the greater threat to basic freedoms?  Was it those involved in the insurrection or the authorities cracking down in its aftermath? 

    A recent article by Margot Williams at Jefferson Morley’s JFK Facts (a Substack I write for), explains the excesses of federal law enforcement, which even now is rounding up and arresting people who did no more than enter the Capitol and walk around after a (small) advance mob broke in a door with a battering ram under the eyes of the immobile police. 

    RFK Jr. and the JFK Assassination

    At a fundamental level, ending the toxic polarization of American society over the last decade and figuring out how to end it has always been the main theme of the RFK Jr. campaign. But the causes of our current social crisis are deep-seated, rooted in history, and I think they find their origin in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, before I was even born. After much study, I now hold the sincere conviction that this isn’t just a historical issue but an extremely important current one too. Every historic episode is both a cause and an effect, but many of our problems lead through November 22, 1963, when the fundamental nature of our government changed. Jeff Morley, who has done invaluable pioneering research into the JFK assassination, opines that it isn’t the most important issue facing America today: people have bills to pay, jobs to hold down, kids to put through school. When ordinary folks are thinking day-to-day about making ends meet this week, they aren’t thinking about a violent event from generations ago. I understand that.

    But whatever John Q. Citizen is thinking as he goes about his day, I respectfully disagree with the JFK Facts editor-in-chief. It doesn’t necessarily follow that an issue is less important because most Americans think so. The “Great Crime” must stay alive as an issue in current U.S. politics and society until it’s resolved to the satisfaction of serious historians and researchers at large. Only one campaign now pledges to address that: Donald J. Trump and his new ally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

    The murder isn’t just a fetish for conspiracy freaks and assassination hobbyists. It is a seminal event that still affects us. Thanks mostly to the political and media influence of RFK Jr. this election cycle, it is a live issue now as well. It may be a long shot to expect Trump and the GOP to seriously do any justice to it, but a long shot is better than no shot at all. Maybe a re-elected President Trump will have no power to force disclosure on the 61-year-old atrocity;  because maybe, as some believe, all presidents are only cyphers of the national-security state. But while cynicism makes some people feel superior, it doesn’t do it for me.

    Regarding transparency over the still-withheld files related to the assassination of JFK, Trump has already disappointed “bigly.” His postponement of full disclosure in 2017 only aroused more public discomfort and mistrust. Yet if Trump was bad on the JFK files, President Joe Biden has proven to be worse.  He is not only postponing release of the remaining withheld assassination records but also announcing the “final certification” under the JFK Records Act. Congress’s unanimous passage of that law in 1992 prevented President George H. W. Bush from vetoing it, and Biden himself voted for the law as a senator. Worse, instead of honoring the spirit and letter of the law to serve the public interest–as attorney Andrew Iler showed–Biden devised a new scheme to conceal the records and replace the JFK Act. 

    This scheme, known as the “Transparency Plan,” was devised by the CIA-led national security apparatus and essentially guts the 1992 federal statute by burying its timeframes and requirement of periodic review. By executive order, Biden handed all declassification decisions over to the CIA and other unelected agencies in control of relevant records, washing his hands of the process forever. In doing so, Biden not only grievously abused the public trust. He probably didn’t even see any records before making his fateful decision. Already in cognitive decline, he very likely just signed where he was told to sign and forgot about it. At least Trump claimed he saw something, at least according to Judge Andrew Napolitano. It’s just that what he saw was so bad, he felt he had to bow to the will of the national security state and keep it under wraps. 

    But Biden? Nothing. Now his vice president, the Democratic nominee for his job, is eventually going to have to make her own position known on JFK. Does Kamala Harris even have an opinion? Born after the assassination, she has – to the best of my knowledge – never expressed any view at all. With any luck, the subject will come up in the upcoming Trump-Harris debate, but how will Harris “get out in front” on the issue when her boss has already tried to bury it? Trump will be able to comment first-hand, but I see no cause for optimism from Harris. I therefore have little compunction over favoring Trump right now.

    The issue of transparency in the JFK assassination isn’t the exclusive reason I decided to support RFK Jr. for president, but it’s at least tied for first place. I already knew his position on his uncle’s assassination – as well as his father’s – and that made him a qualitatively different and unprecedented kind of candidate. But on Friday, August 23rd, confronted with the image of him on stage with Donald Trump in Arizona, I admit I trembled a bit. The former president graciously introduced RFK Jr.  as having “lost his father and uncle in service to our country.” He vowed to establish an “independent presidential commission” to revisit the JFK assassination and release all the withheld records. I imagined RFK Jr. standing there, waiting to speak, exhilarated at coming as close as anyone in the last 60 years to doing what Dorothy Kilgallen said she was going to do right before her mysterious death. 

    Maybe Bobby wasn’t thinking that at all, and when he took the podium, he never even mentioned the JFK assassination. He talked, as usual, about public health, endless war, and censorship. But I wanted to believe he was consciously hoping President Trump would speak to that morbid tragedy in Bobby’s own family for him, and that Bobby – like all of us outside the inner circle of the national security state – still put a top priority on finding out what happened to his uncle. This was probably the best chance he had ever had in his lifetime. Whether Trump was only prompted by the recent attempt on his own life seemed immaterial at that moment. The point was: millions of people were watching and listening. It was live.

    Again, full disclosure over JFK’s murder continues to be a matter of vital public interest. Without at least an official rejection of the official history as currently disseminated by government and mainstream media, Americans won’t even have a version of events that is closer to the truth than what their government now peddles to them. We will continue to languish in a social sickness complementary to the physical degradation Kennedy so passionately wants to reverse, and about which he continually warns us. We need the topic of the JFK assassination in the news cycle now more than ever, so that it resonates into the next administration and stays in the public memory, no matter who wins. In Oliver Stone’s JFK, Jim Garrison paraphrases Tennyson: “Do not forget your dying king.” To find out what happened, we have to resist forgetting.

    Kennedy, Trump, and Harris

    Whatever the political fallout from the Trump-Kennedy coalition (liberal MSM commentators quickly united in their attacks), I have no regrets about supporting RFK Jr.’s campaign. The dominant experience of working with other RFK Jr. volunteers was, primarily, an absence of hate. Plenty of fellow campaign workers had voted for Biden in 2020, and plenty of others for Trump. But when handing out campaign literature or soliciting signatures for ballot access, the only hate we ever encountered came from obvious Biden supporters. They would hiss at us, sometimes spitting inadvertently in the process, their faces red as tomatoes, telling us we were a “disgrace” or “dangerous” or should be “ashamed.” Trump supporters would sometimes refuse to sign our petition forms, but they were never mean or unhinged. The “Bidenista” passers-by were manifestly contemptuous, sometimes calling us “nuts” or “crazy” even as they boiled over right in front of us.

    How different from that experience could Bobby Kennedy’s have been at the level of the DNC high grandees? He and running mate Nicole Shanahan both said that the Biden-Harris people had refused even to speak to them, whereas the Trump campaign was at least willing to meet. Under these circumstances, why would anyone blame RFK Jr. for giving up on cooperation with the arrogant Biden-Harris cabal? Would anyone passionate about issues of vital public interest, who meets a brick wall from one side and an ajar door from the other, go on bashing his head repeatedly against the bricks and mortar? 

    Maybe a significant percentage of RFK Jr. supporters now refuse to back him for endorsing Trump as a means of advancing his own agenda of peace, public health, and free speech. I haven’t met any yet. But at the end of the day, faced with the Democratic Party’s well-financed litigation drive to keep him off the ballot, plus censorship by overwhelmingly DNC-friendly mainstream media, Bobby evidently felt he had to choose between doing something or doing nothing. He decided to do something, to take a chance on Donald Trump honoring an agreement to prioritize the issues closest to him. Even if Trump reneges on his pledge of full disclosure in the JFK assassination, I think Bobby did the right thing. 

    The drab, uninspiring Democratic Party long ceased to be the party of RFK Jr.’s uncle and father. It is not the party of FDR, JFK and RFK. It is the party of LBJ, a corrupt, brutal scoundrel desperate to use the White House for the public adulation he craved. The long-term symptom of LBJ is the Democratic Party of today. And the DNC hit squads are part of this LBJ apparatus. (NY Times, May 2, 2024 online edition or May 4, 2024 print edition, article by Michelle Cottle: “The Drive to Tell Voters What They Don’t Know About R.F.K. Jr.”)

    It is largely a party made up of elites.  Nancy Pelosi ushered out Biden, and after, there was no competition from anyone to take the spot.  Not even a token of a debate took place. And, if one recalls, there was no debate during the Democratic primaries, or what passed for primaries. Harris was anointed, she was not in any way elected.  How interesting that process becomes when compared with how Robert Kennedy Jr. was treated in the media. This is democracy?

    The censorship Kennedy speaks about is not conspiracy theory. It’s real and palpable, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg now confirms publicly that “deep state” goons pressured him to censor content related to COVID-19 and other subjects. Moreover, the “censorship-industrial complex” (as RFK Jr. calls it) traces its roots to November 22, 1963. In interviews, Bobby has repeatedly recommended James Douglass’s influential book, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008), which refers to a systemic evil, a “void” permeating official policy and discourse, making it soulless and hollow. The assassination put a kind of “final seal” on what had built up over the previous decade and a half, as an unaccountable “deep state” acquired more and more power at the expense of elected authorities. That power manifests itself everywhere, particularly through censorship. Scholarly writers, researchers, and historians of the JFK assassination are marginalized and deprived of the big, lucrative book deals and promotions, as well as prestige. There is no meaningful difference between “muzzling” these writers and state censorship.

    Ironically in the so-called “information age,” the idea that certain things are “unspeakable” is still strong. Six decades after the assassination of JFK, and 56 years after the murder of RFK, Bobby Kennedy Jr. has exhumed a range of issues buried under a mass of mainstream media talking points developed over generations. Possessed of a collective blindness residual of the Cold War, most Americans have ignored the “forever wars,” dietary and environmental toxicity, the waste of our economic resources, and the decline of our civic consciousness. A drug-addled, unhealthy nation, we’ve received a big wake-up call from RFK Jr., who has brought issues of vital public interest back into popular discourse. For instance, the revolving door between big pharma and public health agencies.

    The issues that Kennedy leads with – (1) the war in Ukraine, (2) chronic illness and disease, and (3) the mainstream-media censorship regime – are all the product of the rise in power of the unelected national-security apparatus, which secured its dominance over the political system after passage of the National Security Act of 1947. President Truman signed it into law, giving official birth to the Central Intelligence Agency. As soon as President Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sat about writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, essentially lamenting the effects of a law he was responsible for enacting. He suspected the CIA was involved in the murder of his young successor, and that suspicion permeates his op-ed. 

    The CIA had gradually accumulated more and more power under President Eisenhower, who would warn the public about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell speech in January 1961. By the time JFK attempted to resist its power, it was too little, too late. The title of David Talbot’s book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government  (2015) is no cliché. Our unaccountable “secret government” is the biggest open secret in America today. Only one candidate talked about any of this in any detail, and that is RFK Jr. It was probably that, plus his opinion of Anthony Fauci that sealed his fate at the starting gate.

    The Biosecurity Agenda and the ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ Pejorative

    One issue remains largely “unspeakable,” as mainstream media and government barriers to talking about it are still mostly intact. It is what RFK Jr. calls the “Biosecurity State.” The most recent manifestation is the attempt by governments worldwide to restrict freedom in societies over which they preside. The method is known as “PPR” – pandemic preparedness response. The World Health Organization declares a “pandemic,” and national governments stand ready to impose a series of measures, including lockdowns, school closings and other mandates, thus curtailing basic liberties. Behind PPR and restrictions on human freedom stands the obscenely profitable pharmaceutical industry – “Big Pharma” – which rolls out “cures” as soon as it can scare everyone enough. The gravy train is then off and running again. Anyone who dismisses as “conspiracy theory” the idea that Big Pharma is irretrievably corrupt should read a book by a bête noire of Warren Report dissenters everywhere, Gerald Posner’s Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (2020). When Kennedy calls Big Pharma a “criminal cartel,” he’s being gentle.

    Many educated people seem to shrug all this off, but many of us are sincerely alarmed. RFK Jr.’s recent book,  The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race (2023), traces the historical continuity between Pentagon and CIA experimentation and abuses at Fort Detrick, Maryland.  This began around the late 1940s,and it spread to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in 2020. Which is where former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci took his “gain of function” research after the Obama administration imposed a temporary moratorium on that dangerous activity within the United States. Kennedy’s previous book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (2021), gives scholarly content to a now-widespread perception that the longtime, powerful, and highly-paid NIAID chief is corrupt, self-serving, and responsible for serious public health policy abuses in service to the bottom line of both himself and Big Pharma e.g. the whole disastrous AZT as a cure for AIDS debacle. Fauci has never even hinted at suing Kennedy despite the book becoming an instant bestseller. And it is not just RFK Jr. who has made these charges against Fauci.  Senator Rand Paul has done the same against both Fauci and Gates. Senator Paul wanted to charge Fauci for lying to congress about gain of function research and how this caused the breakout of CV 19 in Wuhan.

    Although RFK Jr. has never led with the issue specifically, he is not shy about explaining his vaccine safety advocacy in the face of accusations that he is a “nut” or (per the first sentence of his Wikipedia page) a “conspiracy theorist.” Most citizens of the industrialized West have been vaccinated for different things at various points in their lives, and I make no exception of myself. Neither does RFK Jr. But the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in tyrannical new rules about the subject.

    RFK Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (CHD) advocacy group and its online periodical, The Defender, offered scholarly analysis for anyone entranced by the three-letter public health agencies’ scare-mongering for Big Pharma. But they had to be aware of CHD in the first place. CHD should have acquainted everyone with the “Biosecurity State” before censorship of mass media and internet in the democratic West really ramped up, since Kennedy had been warning of it for years. But social media – to say nothing of the MSM – suppressed it. Those of us who had never felt blunt censorship in America could see social media “moderating” or deleting posts for even questioning public health policy by the end of 2020. The words “false” and “falsely” became mantric in MSM, intensifying after President Trump publicly charged that the 2020 election result reflected fraud. 

    The censorship situation in the West became extreme after the “warp speed” rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, when even wire services openly branded anyone daring to question their safety or efficacy “conspiracy theorists” promoting dangerous views. RFK Jr. became super-prominent among the targets of coordinated attacks by legacy outlets of America’s ostensibly “free press.” The pharmaceutical industry’s power over supposedly neutral organizations like Reuters and AP had been more subtle, but by the end of 2020, the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power” was brazenly and frighteningly visible every day. Another target was author Naomi Wolf, who had written more than one bestseller and was an advisor to both Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

    Friends’ acceptance of my choice to rely on my innate immune system in confronting COVID-19 has, at least, reassured me. Others have been less fortunate. The family of an unvaccinated American friend overseas told him if he wanted to come home for Christmas, he had to be COVID-jabbed. He spent Christmas of 2021 alone in a country that doesn’t even celebrate it. 

    As time has passed, and more and more vaccinated friends have contracted COVID: Jim DiEugenio contracted it twice. The realization that people like me aren’t as loony as they first imagined has become more ingrained. The full symptoms of my own bout with COVID-19 lasted four or five days. After no longer testing positive, I felt even more confident of the benefits of strengthening natural immunity. 

    Even vaccine enthusiasts have to admit to a level of adverse side effects never seen before, since this is a matter of official record, not theory. It isn’t necessary to indulge in conspiracy theory to conclude that the COVID-19 vaccines have never been proven totally safe. The CDC’s own Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has received more reports from the COVID-vaccinated than for all previous vaccines combined, yet in the late 1970s, the “swine flu” vaccine was withdrawn after a tiny number of recorded Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) cases. Many more GBS cases have been recorded for the COVID-19 jabs. Again, the best explanation for why the COVID-19 vaccines survived is record levels of state and corporate stipulation. No matter how much others claim to “believe in” the COVID-19 vaccines, there is no basis for “trusting” the companies producing them. They trade in year-end profits, not long-term public health. Whatever COVID vax advocates argue, skeptics have the right to remain skeptical, especially since we cause no increased harm to anyone by remaining “jab free.”

    Warp Speed and Political Orthodoxies

    One does not have to conceive of a “plandemic” designed and implemented by a “high cabal” to reduce the world’s population through vaccine mandates. Corruption and greed can explain what happened, and why it should not happen again. After all, Operation Warp Speed broke several rules in its haste to come up with a vaccine. But there is still an important point to be made, and I felt it most intensely when I attended RFK Jr.’s “Defeat the Mandates” protest in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in early 2022, with SWAT teams on the roof and police helicopters circling loudly overhead. That point is, no matter how much our friends, family, or anyone else may show tolerance toward our refusal to be vaccinated for COVID-19, if universal mandates were ever imposed, the overwhelming majority of these “friends” wouldn’t lift a finger to defend our right to refuse them. One can easily picture them, instead, shrugging, wishing us “good luck,” and sauntering off to comply with the latest Biosecurity-State rule. In short, we have to defend our own civil rights, and RFK Jr. is the most powerful tribune for our cause. 

    Among those of us who have never availed ourselves of the COVID-19 vaccines, the sense of freedom to speak more loudly about our personal choice is much stronger today, in no small part thanks to RFK Jr. His supporters – vaccinated and unvaccinated – overwhelmingly oppose mandates, and the diversity of his base reflects a healthy political realignment, resurrection of wholesome social values, and reintroduction of vital interests to public discourse. 

    As people like Jimmy Dore have shown, the  MSM relies on Big Pharma accounting for a disproportionately large share of its ad revenue. Consequently, it  has already trotted out more pharmaceutical execs posing as “independent experts,” telling us we need to mask up and get the next shot. But yet, neither Peter Hotez nor Jake Tapper for two, would debate Robert Kennedy Jr. Robert Kennedy’s response to Hotez was that he was not talking about a conspiracy, he was talking about an orthodoxy which had taken hold, one that stated silence was the best course; so many smart and moral people decided that the best road was to keep your head down and move forward.

    Reportedly Trump has offered Kennedy a role in his transition team, one in his health program, and one on a commission to declassify all the records on the JFK assassination. These negotiations began right after the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. At the start the Vice Presidency was on the table, which Kennedy refused outright. Two of the go betweens in the talks were Calley Means, a preventivve health care advocate, and Tucker Carlson who had Kennedy on his much watched program. (NY Times, 9/2/24, story by Maggie Haberman).

    It is interesting of course that these negotiations began after Butler, since RFK was the only candidate talking about the subject of assassinations for months on end. And reportedly it was Carlson—who has famously defied the MSM orthodoxy in the JFK murder– who first connected the two candidates via text message. (ibid). As former RFK manager Dennis Kucinich has noted, the DNC had shown no such outreach to the candidate.  In fact, they had done all they could to sabotage him, similar—and perhaps worse–than what they did to Sanders. (Ibid, NY Timesarticle by Michelle Cottle) The DNC started 9 nuisance lawsuits to keep Kennedy/Shanahan off state ballots; they sandbagged particular events; and according to a talk show interview by VP candidate Nicole Shanahan, they even sent in double agents to certain offices. (Click here for this revealing interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAqVn5lRdes). And the whole time, Kennedy was denied Secret Service protection, thus forcing his campaign to spend hundreds of thousands per month on private security. This was startling,  considering the history of that family.

    If the alliance with Trump does not, in the end, produce meaningfully greater transparency in the assassination of JFK, RFK Jr. can’t be blamed. The struggle will continue. The “Justice for Kennedy Act” introduced in the House by a Republican congressmen in early 2023 is apparently dead, but the lawsuit of Mary Ferrell Foundation v President Biden and the National Archives has now reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, already well known for unpredictable decisions. Hopefully, the Democrats will feel forced to confront the assassination issue, perhaps with another legislative initiative, since Biden’s presidency was such a failure on the topic. So even if Trump’s executive-branch “commission” disappoints us, activism elsewhere could compensate for another letdown. There is, in sum, ample cause for hope, attributable in no small part to the influence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. We now have Trump on tape in front in front of multiple cameras saying so.

  • How JFK Tried to Prevent our “Lesser Evil” Elections

    How JFK Tried to Prevent our “Lesser Evil” Elections

    Many Americans feel disenfranchised and are tired of voting for the “lesser evil.” But why does every election cycle offer so few decent options? While many factors are at play, perhaps the reason for this lack of choice that supersedes all others is money in politics. After all, if political officeholders were accountable to the American people rather than to their donors, then the policies they implement would align far more closely with the interests of the average American. One man tried admirably to address this issue.

    John F. Kennedy felt deeply that the duty of the American president was to “serve as … the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society.” [1] He understood the grave challenges that money in politics placed on that obligation. And he made it clear that he would not succumb to those financial pressures. In a May 1961 press conference, he declared:

    I made it clear in the campaign and I make it clear again … that while we’re glad to have support, no one should contribute to any campaign fund under the expectation that it will do them the slightest bit of good and they should not stay home from a campaign fund or dinner under the slightest expectation that it will do them a disservice. [2]

    He understood, however, that such strict ethical adherence would be much easier achieved if financial pressures were taken off public officials. As such, he added to his statement that the U.S. needed “to try to work out some other way of raising funds for these presidential campaigns … and as long as we can’t get broader citizen participation, I think it ought to be done through the national government, and I would support that strongly if the Congress would move in that direction.” [3]

    To help guide Congress, JFK created a Commission on Campaign Costs in October 1961 to review and recommend alternate ways of financing campaigns. In his announcement of the commission, he proclaimed:

    To have Presidential candidates dependent on large financial contributions of those with special interests is highly undesirable, especially in these days when the public interest requires basic decisions so essential to our national security and survival.

    … Traditionally, the funds for national campaigns have been supplied entirely by private contributions, with the candidates forced to depend in the main on large sums from a relatively small number of contributors. It is not healthy for the democratic process—or for ethical standards in our government—to keep our national candidates in this position of dependence. I have long thought that we should either provide a federal share in campaign costs, or reduce the cost of campaign services, or both. [4]

    In April 1962, the commission issued its findings. [5] On May 29, 1962, JFK wrote a letter to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House, stating, “It is essential to broaden the base of financial support for candidates and parties. …” JFK indicated that this could be accomplished via an incentive system. He specifically recommended a tax incentive that would give each taxpayer the choice of receiving a 50 percent tax credit on their contribution amount, up to $10 annually (valued at approximately $100 in 2024), or a reduction in taxable income, up to $750 annually. If that was not acceptable to the legislators, he suggested that the government match all contributions under $10. So, for every $10 donated by a citizen, the government would contribute another $10 to the citizen’s chosen candidate. He also requested that all large donors be required to disclose their donations. [6] He resubmitted a similar letter to the Senate and the House on April 30, 1963, declaring, “The people of the United States are entitled to know their candidates for public office and to be free of doubts about tacit or explicit obligations having been necessary to secure public office.” [7] He urged them again to consider his proposed legislation.

    JFK opposed setting contribution limits, not because he felt they were unnecessary, but because he thought that practically, they could never be enforced. The commission explained to him that placing limits would only increase the number of political action committees (PACs). PACs are generally formed by corporations, labor unions, trade associations, or other organizations or individuals. [8] They fund campaign activities and are subject to federal limits. Super PACs are independent expenditure-only political committees that raise money to influence elections through advertising and other efforts. They cannot directly contribute to or work with a campaign. Their donations are not subject to federal limits. [9]

    The commission pointed out that “there is doubt whether individuals could be prohibited from making certain expenditures, instead of contributions, if the latter were effectively limited, in view of constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression.” [10] In place of limits, JFK proposed the “establishment of an effective system of disclosure and publicity to reveal where money comes from and goes in campaigns.” He declared that in the commission’s view “full and effective disclosure … provides the greatest hope for effective controls over excessive contributions and unlimited expenditures.” [11]

    JFK proposed these legislative changes in 1962 and again in 1963. There is no guarantee that he would have been able to pass the legislation, but he would likely have continued to try, and it is not uncommon for legislation to take several years to be enacted into law successfully. When considering that JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, may have been elected as president after him, had he not been assassinated while running for the presidency in 1968, it is pretty likely the legislation would have eventually passed. Instead, we got the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which set hard limits on financial contributions and did not create an incentive system to encourage vast numbers of small, federally financed donations. The act had the end result of accomplishing what the commission predicted such policies would accomplish: a vast increase in the number of PACs and multiple Supreme Court decisions striking down parts of the law as unconstitutional. [12] It failed to broaden the base of political contributions or remove the influence of wealth on political campaigns.

    The first Supreme Court decision to strike down parts of the Federal Election Campaign Act was Buckley vs. Valeo in 1976. The court declared that placing limits on campaign expenditures was unconstitutional as it infringed on the right to political speech. The court upheld the limits on campaign contributions, saying that individuals could still contribute independently, outside the official campaign, preserving their free speech rights. One can promote a candidate without contributing to his official campaign. [13]

    In the 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case, the Supreme Court determined that laws preventing corporations or unions from using their funds for independent “electioneering communications” violated the First Amendment. [14]

    Had JFK lived, his proposed campaign finance laws would likely have passed in place of the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act. His legislation would have led to a much broader base of campaign contributors. This, in turn, would have led to the election of officials who were more pressed to serve the small donor, which would have spawned policy decisions that were beneficial to the average American. Wealth would have still greatly influenced campaigns but less so than today. There would have been some degree of balance.

    Notes

    1. Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street (New York, NY: Sheridan Square Publications, 1994), 19.
    2. News Conference 11, May 5, 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-11.
    3. News Conference 11, May 5, 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-11.
    4. Office of the White House Press Secretary Press Release, October 4, 1961, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Departments and Agencies, Commission on Campaign Costs, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfkpof-093-002#?image_identifier=JFKPOF-093-002-p0029.
    5. News Conference 31, April 18, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-31.
    6. Letter to the President of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House Transmitting Bills to Carry Out Recommendations of the Commission on Campaign Costs, May 29, 1962, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-president-the-senate-and-the-speaker-the-house-transmitting-bills-carry-out-0.
    7. Letter to the President of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House Transmitting Bills to Carry Out Recommendations of the Commission on Campaign Costs, April 30, 1963, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-president-the-senate-and-the-speaker-the-house-transmitting-bills-carry-out.
    8. Michael Levy, “Political Action Committee,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-action-committee.
    9. “How Does Campaign Funding Work?” Caltech Science Exchange, https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/voting-elections/campaign-funding-finance-explained.
    10. Report of the President’s Commission on Campaign Costs, pg 17, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Departments and Agencies, Commission on Campaign Costs, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfkpof-093-002#?image_identifier=JFKPOF-093-002-p0018.
    11. Letter to the President of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House Transmitting Bills to Carry Out Recommendations of the Commission on Campaign Costs, April 30, 1963, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-president-the-senate-and-the-speaker-the-house-transmitting-bills-carry-out.
    12. Clifford A. Jones, “Federal Election Campaign Act,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Federal-Election-Campaign-Act.
    13. Clifford A. Jones, Buckley vs. Valeo, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Buckley-v-Valeo.
    14. Brian Duignan, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Citizens-United-v-Federal-Election-Commission.

  • Adam Walinsky, key assistant to Robert Kennedy in the senate and a major part of his 1968 campaign, passed on in November without notice in the MSM

    Read more here.

  • Brad Pitt, Joyce Carol Oates and the Road to Blonde: Part 2/2

    Brad Pitt, Joyce Carol Oates and the Road to Blonde: Part 2/2

    As noted in Part 1, although Robert Slatzer was an utter and provable fraud, he clearly had an influence in the Marilyn Monroe field. People like Anthony Summers and Donald Wolfe used him quite often in their tomes. He influenced Fred Guiles also. In the revised version of his first book on Monroe—entitled Legend and published in 1984—he now seems to abide by the Slatzerian myth that Bobby Kennedy was having an affair with Monroe which President Kennedy encouraged. (pp. 24-25, reference on p. 479) This angle is absent from his first Monroe biography, Norma Jean, published in 1969. But it’s Guiles’ second book that Oates references in her notation section for Blonde. Summers also accents this RFK angle. And he uses a woman that Slatzer also used in his second book, The Marilyn FIles (1992). That woman was the late arriving Jeanne Carmen —who was nowhere to be seen prior to the eighties.

    I

    As Don McGovern astutely points out, it is quite revealing that Slatzer does not mention Carmen in his first book, published back in 1974. What makes this odd is that Slatzer claimed a years-on-end relationship with Monroe as her best male friend. Carmen claimed the same as her best female friend. Yet they never crossed paths? (McGovern, p. 131). This is a key point because as both Sarah Churchwell and McGovern comment, Carmen created most, if not all, the wild stories about Monroe’s alleged affair with the Attorney General. (McGovern, p. 132; Churchwell, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, p. 293) Carmen also was influential in bringing the Mob into the Monroe field i.e. Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana.

    But from the very beginning of her story, Carmen presents a plethora of problems that recall Slatzer. But, like Slatzer, she got a lot of exposure—31 TV appearances —for a very problematic witness. For instance, she says in her posthumously published book that she met Monroe at a bar near the Actor’s Studio in New York in the early fifties. But yet, as April VeVea points out, the first time Monroe met anyone connected to the Actor’s Studio was in late August of 1954 on the set of There’s No Business Like Show Business. Monroe then met stage producer Cheryl Crawford who introduced her to Actor’s Studio impresario Lee Strasberg. But this was in 1955 and that is when she enrolled in the famous school. Up until that point, Monroe relied on acting coach Natasha Lytess. (VeVea, “Classic Blondes”, 4/9/18)

    In the tabloid, Globe Carmen said she and Marilyn attended a pool party at Peter Lawford’s during the Democratic Convention of 1960 in LA. (1/17/95) Again, quite dubious, since Monroe was in New York at the time. (McGovern, p. 148)

    But the wildest, nuttiest stories that Carmen was responsible for were the associations between Monroe and the Mob. As VeVea noted in her posting, Carmen actually said that Sam Giancana was murdered by Roselli—over Marilyn! According to Carmen, right before he shot him Johnny said, “Sam, this is for Marilyn.” Which is preposterous. No responsible author on the Giancana case has ever intimated any such thing e.g. William Brashler or Bill Roemer. (Click here for an overview of Giancana) As VeVea notes there is no photographic evidence of any such Mafia association by Marilyn, no evidence of this in her address or phone logs, and no credible biography has ever had Monroe associated with any mobsters. But not only did Carmen know that Marilyn and Giancana were intimate, she even knew how Giancana fornicated with her. (For the prurient reader it was “doggie style”.)

    But if you can comprehend it, Carmen then got even wilder. She later told David Heymann that she herself had an affair with President Kennedy. (Icon, Part 1, p. 64) She also said that her apartment was ransacked the evening of Monroe’s death. Fred Otash then walked in and threw her to the floor. He pointed a gun at her and pulled the trigger, but it did not go off. He told her Giancana had Marilyn murdered by a team of assassins. They wanted to kill Carmen also, but he persuaded them not to do so. And, by the way, one of Sam’s four man hit team anally raped Eunice Murray. (McGovern, pp. 498-99).

    It is difficult to even write these things without suppressing a combination of laughter and disbelief at the circus the field had become. Yet these are the kinds of people who occupy the pages of Goddess (p. 238), and Slatzer’s The Marilyn FIles (pp. 30-33). For the record, Gary Vitacco Robles, Randy Taraborrelli and Don McGovern all agree that there was no romantic or sexual relationship between Monroe and RFK.

    II

    Before getting to the novelization of Monroe by Joyce Carol Oates, I would like to deal with two more stories about her death which many people also find dubious. First from a man named Jack Clemmons who was the first responding officer to arrive at Monroe’s home the night she passed. As April VeVea shows on her site, Clemmons was, to be frank, a dirty cop. (See Marilyn: A Day in the Life, “Jack Clemmons”.) Clemmons was another rightwing fanatic who let his ideology color his duties, or as his supervisor said, “His outside political interests distracted from his job interest.” (Icon, Vol. 2, p. 189) Predictably, he was close to the other rightwing extremist Frank Capell. As VeVea notes, Clemmons told Summers that Eunice Murray was using the washer/dryer on the sheets when he arrived. This was his first whopper. Because as Gary Vitacco Robles and Don McGovern show, and VeVea notes, Monroe did not have this unit, she sent everything out. He also said that he thought Monroe’s dead body was posed since drug overdose deaths usually end in convulsive spasms. (Slatzer, The Marilyn Files, p. 5) This is also not true, as pathologist Dr. Boyd Stephens told assistant DA Ron Carroll’s threshold inquiry in 1982. (Icon, Vol. 2, p.320) Clemmons told Slatzer that there was no drinking glass in Monroe’s bedroom. This was another whopper, as police photos from the scene showed there was one at the base of the nightstand. (McGovern, p. 547). Anyone can figure what Clemmons was doing by painting this false scenario. As McGovern notes, Clemmons had little problem corrupting the truth, and as Don points out, he did it in more than once instance.

    Finally, there is a former wife of Lawford. She said that Lawford went to Monroe’s house after her death to remove evidence of her association with the Kennedy family. (Icon, Part 1, p. 401; Summers pp. 361-62)

    The reason many people find this wanting is that the story did not surface until decades after Monroe’s death, from a wife who was not married to Lawford until 1976. And, according to Vitacco-Robles, they separated after 2-3 months of marriage. (Ibid) Yet all the witness testimony and evidence from the time—that is in 1962—conflicts with this visit happening. In fact, when one follows that testimony a quite different picture emerges.

    On the day she died, Lawford had invited Monroe to a dinner party at his home in Santa Monica. The guests there were talent manager George Durgom, and TV producer Joe Naar and his wife Dolores. (Icon, Pt. 1, p. 394). Lawford invited Monroe to this gathering but she ended up declining since she said she was tired. Lawford was worried because of the tone of her voice: she sounded despondent, her voice was slurred and he knew she had a drug problem. He tried to call back but could not get through. He then called his agent Milton Ebbins and told him to call Monroe’s attorney Milton Rudin. This resulted in a call to Eunice Murray who—not knowing about Monroe’s slurred tone to Lawford — said Monroe was alright. (Icon, Part 1, p. 398, p. 403) Even after he was notified of this, Lawford still wanted to check on Monroe himself; but Ebbins said Murray would tell him the same thing. Reluctantly, and arguing with Ebbins in still a later call, Lawford did not go. According to Ebbins, Lawford felt horrible about not trusting his instincts. It turns out that Ebbins had a hidden agenda. He knew that Monroe was a pill addict and therefore how bad it would look if his client, the president’s brother-in-law, was at her home when paramedics had to be called.

    There are about six corroborating witnesses to this, and Vitacco-Robles uses them all. Ebbins said that later, since he felt guilty, Lawford talked to Dr. Greenson about it. Greenson told the actor that this was just the most recent of five attempts by Monroe. No one could help the woman. (ibid, p. 408). Ebbins told Tony Summers that Lawford never mentioned the Attorney General during that evening, or after he told him she was dead. He concluded with: “If anyone thinks Marilyn killed herself over either one of the Kennedys, they’re crazy, they are absolutely insane.” In a long and comprehensive analysis which he ends by quoting this dialogue, Vitacco-Robles points out that Summers did not include this interview in his 2022 Netflix special about Monroe’s death. (ibid, p. 413)

    III

    With a menagerie like the above, the Summers/Slatzer/Wolfe axis resorted to cries of an official cover up in the Monroe case. For instance, Summers once wrote that the Ronald Carroll inquiry of 1982 did not even interview the first detective at the scene. According to Vitacco-Robles, they did interview Det. Byron who was the detective in charge. One of the things he told them was that there was no credible evidence that RFK was in LA that day. (Icon, Pt. 1, p. 393) If Summers means Clemmons, they talked to him also. (Icon Part 2, p. 184). In fact, they also talked to the con artist Slatzer, who Summers found so bracing. (ibid, p. 108) The difference being that questioners like attorney Carroll, and professional investigators Clayton Anderson and Al Tomich knew what standards meant in these types of investigations. And they understood how worthless witnesses like Slatzer and Clemmons would be before a grand jury. With people like Lionel Grandson one would be edging into the area of comedy. Grandison was a clerk in the coroner’s office who was fired for forgery and stealing credit cards from corpses. (Ibid, p. 211) This ended up being part of a ring to buy auto parts and he was later found guilty in court. It turned out that his eventual story about discovering Monroe’s diary was influenced by a meeting with Robert Slatzer. (ibid, p. 208) When asked to take a polygraph exam by Tomich he initially agreed but then backed out. He needed a lawyer’s advice.(ibid) As I have noted, Monroe did not have a diary. It was a notebook, which was not discovered until much later.

    Another aspect of the “cover-up” was the story that Police Chief William Parker seized the Monroe phone records and hid them since Bobby Kennedy had promised to make him head of the FBI. It turns out that the LAPD did have her phone records and they investigated them, and so did the Carroll inquiry. The calls made to the Justice Department went through the main switchboard. (Icon, Part 2, p. 592) The reason for these calls was very likely Monroe wanting Bobby Kennedy to help her in her dispute with Fox studios which had fired her over her absence from the set of Something’s Got to Give. There are both documents and credible testimony—from publicist Rupert Allan—on this point. (Ibid, p. 535)

    But Robert Slatzer never stopped crying cover up. Not happy with the results of the Carroll probe—which could find no reason for a new inquiry —he now tried to manipulate a grand jury into reopening the Monroe case. To put it mildly, the other jurors did not agree. They requested that Sam Cordova—the juror who Slatzer was working through—be removed. Superior Court Judge Robert Devich agreed to the request. (UPI story of October 29, 1985, by Michael Harris.). Then there was Roone Arledge at ABC News. He vetoed a 20/20 story that Geraldo Rivera and Sylvia Chase were promoting based on Summers’ book with Slatzer as a consultant. Arledge said it was “gossip column” stuff. (ibid) He was correct but maybe too kind. April VeVea has been more frank and calls Goddess an atrocious book. (VeVea, op. cit.). In his acknowledgements, Summers praised attorney Jim Lesar for attaining valuable FBI documents. But Randy Taraborrelli, who wrote a later biography, said the contrary. He said that the FBI files on Monroe were fascinating because they are just so untrue; they do not hold up to modern journalistic analysis. He concluded that J. Edgar Hoover had such animus against the Kennedys “that I think that he allowed a lot of information to be put into those files that just was not true.” (McGovern, p. 351)

    The above was what Joyce Carol Oates was working with when she arrived on the scene. She was going to do a roman a clef novel based on five books about Monroe. Three of them were Guiles’ Legend, Summers’ Goddess, and Marilyn, by Norman Mailer. But after reading Blonde, she seems to have gone to even further extremes than these men.

    IV

    Blonde has been filmed twice. The first version was aired by CBS in 2001, just a year after the book’s publication. That two-parter was directed by Joyce Chopra, and starred Poppy Montgomery as Marilyn. It landed a cover story for TV Guide. Chopra once made a good film, Smooth Talk in 1985. The picture was produced by Robert Greenwald, who is supposed to be an intelligent and discerning man and who I once talked to. The combination of the two make the dull and disappointing result a bit surprising.

    But considering the source material, perhaps that was inescapable. As Sarah Churchwell noted in her study of the field:

    As we shall see, biographies about Marilyn Monroe have a very problematic relationship to fiction. Although biography depends upon an implicit contract with the reader that documented fact is being accurately represented, in Monroe’s case this obligation is rarely, if ever met. (Churchwell, p. 69)

    Well, what happens if one takes it a step further and one makes a novelization of some of these books? As Churchwell notes about Oates: there are no entirely fictional major characters in the book. For example, The Playwright is obviously Arthur Miller, her third husband; Bucky Glazer is James Dougherty, her first husband. As she also observes, the portrait of Monroe drawn by Oates is so one dimensional that its artificial. Instead of an archetype we get a stereotype. She specifically writes about Oates, “Someone who skims across the surface of a life should not be surprised to find superficiality.” (Churchwell, pp. 120-21). Or as reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote about the book:

    Now comes along Joyce Carol Oates to turn Marilyn’s life into the book equivalent of a tacky television mini-series…Playing the reader’s voyeuristic interest into a real-life story while using the liberties of a novel to tart up the facts. (ibid)

    In fact, one cannot fully blame the excesses of the more recent version of Blonde

    on Dominik and Pitt. Because, as Churchwell notes: 1.) the book depicts Daryl Zanuck sodomizing Monroe in his office 2.) a year’s long menage a trois affair between Monroe and the sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G Robinson and 3.) her sexual tryst with President Kennedy at the Carlyle Hotel in New York via Secret Service agents. (Churchwell, pp. 120-23; Oates, pp. 699-708)

    And she continues:

    Oates’ Blonde is one of the most gratuitously conspiratorial of all the Monroe texts, positing as it does a voyeuristic sniper/spy/spook who is at once an aberrant acting alone and the puppet of a governmental plot: the more fictional the take, the more it can toy with the pleasure of a conspiratorial ‘solution” to the mystery. (Churchwell, pp. 317-18)

    What Oates does here is to call this assassin a sharpshooter but he actually kills Monroe via hypodermic. (Oates, p. 737) As Churchwell points out, titling him a sharpshooter is clearly meant to recall the murder of John Kennedy.

    But even before that, Oates actually suggests that Monroe had a secret tryst with Achmed Sukarno of Indonesia for the Agency. (p. 735). With this kind of junk as part of the source material, what chance did these two films have? Not much, but they really did not try very hard to counter the excesses of Oates.

    The first version is not quite as offensive. Since it was a network broadcast it could not be as explicit as the Pitt/Dominik version. But still, overall, it’s a quite mediocre effort, both as written and as directed. The one exceptional aspect of the film is Ann Margaret’s performance as Marilyn’s grandmother. Everything else is pretty prosaic, and this includes the acting of Montgomery as Monroe and Griffin Dunne as Arthur Miller.

    Because of the lowbrow nature of the book, both films deal with the three-sided relationship that allegedly went on for years between Monroe, Chaplin III and Robinson Jr. Monroe authority Don McGovern read both of their books. Chaplin said he only went out with Norma Jean Baker (Monroe’s real name) early in her career. The relationship did not last once she ascended into the film world. (My Father, Charlie, Chaplin, p. 250) In Robinson’s book he never notes that he was romantically involved with Monroe. (My Father, My Son, Chapter 29) McGovern asks just how did this all materialize then? Because, according to Summers, Chaplin actually impregnated Monroe back in 1947 and she got an abortion. (Email of 2/11/23) The problem with this is that, according to her gynecologist, Leon Krohn, Marilyn never had an abortion. Yet both films, borrowing from Oates, play this threesome up to the hilt—and beyond. And both films show Monroe getting an abortion. In the Dominik version the CGI fetus actually talks to Monroe and blames her for getting past abortions! Talk about a cartoon.

    Both films begin with Monroe’s childhood relationship with her mentally unbalanced mother. How Gladys was so unstable that she had to be institutionalized and young Norma Jean was taken to an orphanage. (I should note here, the one exceptional aspect of the Dominik film is Lily Fisher’s convincing performance as the child Baker.). One major difference between the two is that Dominik’s film cuts almost everything that happened afterwards out — until Monroe started her Blue Book modeling career under Emmeline Snively. It then jumps to producer Daryl Zanuck and agent Johnny Hyde and we are rather quickly in the movie business.

    Both films use the Chaplin/Robinson nexus, and the Dominik film is pretty explicit about it. In both films her “abortion” causes her great psychic pain which the directors use as fantasy scenes to recall painful memories from her childhood, like sleeping in a dresser drawer. In both films the marriage to Joe DiMaggio is dealt with briefly and both include the passing of nude pictures of Marilyn to the athlete, and this precipitates serious problems—physical violence — in the ten-month marriage.

    Both films shift to Marilyn in New York trying to get away from Hollywood. Which leads to her meeting with Arthur Miller and taking classes at the Actor’s Studio. The Dominik film is much more explicit about her drug, pill and alcohol excesses. And her erratic behavior on film sets, the latter actually has her driving into a tree.

    The first film has her mentioning her “talks” with President Kennedy, if you can believe it, about Fidel Castro. The second film follows Oates in that it has her taking a plane ride back east, and she is escorted into a hotel room with JFK laying down in bed talking to J. Edgar Hoover, who is relaying him information about rumors of his affairs. There, after walking by a dozen people, she performs fellaltio on Kennedy while he is on the phone. To say this scene did not occur is putting it too mildly—it’s out of an Arthur Clarke novel.

    The first film ends with her singing performance of Happy Birthday to Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, leaving out the fact that there were 17 other performers there that night. The second film ends quite differently. It has Monroe being transported back to California after saying words to the effect, it was not just sexual. Alone in her home, Eddie Robinson calls to tell her Chaplin is dead. She gets a package that tells her that it was Chaplin writing letters from her father, who many think she never met. She starts taking pills, and the last scenes we see are the phone off the hook and her having a fantasy about her father. The camera pulls back from the bed and her dead body; fade to black.

    I should add, the Dominik film transitions from color to black and white quite often. And, for this viewer, I could not really figure any kind of logical or aesthetic scheme for it. Perhaps Mr. Dominik will call me and explain it.

    V

    The reaction to the Pitt/Dominik version was rather strongly negative. In fact, some called the film “unwatchable”. They could not view it for even 20 minutes. Critic Jessie Thompson called it degrading, exploitative and boring, while adding it had no idea as to what it was trying to say. Some commentators called it a “hate letter” to Monroe. Another begged: please leave Marilyn alone. (9/30/22, story by Louis Chilton, The Independent.)

    This is all quite justifiable about both films, but especially the second one. One has to wonder, did Pitt even read the script? I actually hope he did not. Since I think he is a brighter guy than to agree to such a ridiculously reductive film that is simply a caricature of both Monroe’s life and the woman herself. As Sarah Churchwell wrote, Dominik promoted his picture by saying that Monroe’s films are not worth watching. (The Atlantic, 10/21/22). Which is very odd since most critics consider Some Like It Hot to be one of the best American comedies of the sound era. About her modeling career, Emmeline Snively said:

    She started out with less than any girl I ever knew. But she worked the hardest. She wanted to learn, wanted to be somebody, more than anybody I ever saw before in my life. (ibid)

    As Churchwell adds, Monroe studied literature at UCLA at night, she really wanted to be a good actress, she supported racial and sexual equality, she despised McCarthyism and protested the House Un-American Activities Committee. Further, she disliked Richard Nixon who she called cowardly, and did not like Mailer because he was too impressed by power; she added you could not fool her about him. She admired the Kennedys because of their progressive agenda. She once even asked Robert Kennedy about his civil rights program vs Hoover. (Icon, Pt. 2, p. 565). But it is this Monroe who is now forgotten due to the likes of Oates and Dominik.

    The first film of Oates does not really deal with the circumstances of her death, while the second tries to say her house was being monitored for sound at that time. This is another urban legend which VItacco Robles has cast severe doubt upon. (Ibid, Chapter 24). With the work of Don McGovern and Gary VItacco Robles we can now see her tragic demise a lot more clearly. All of the sound and fury created by Slatzer and his followers served to disguise the fact that her death was really a harbinger. One that looked forward to the Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson cases.

    Slatzer did not give one iota about the true facts of her death. To him she was a meal ticket. The amount of drugs that were available to her in the last two months of her life are simply staggering. (ibid, pp. 452-457). And it’s clear that she had additional suppliers besides her own doctors e.g. Lee Siegel for one. The total amount is well over 800 pills. Which comes to over 13 pills per day. The combination of Nembutal (47) and Chloral hydrate (17) is what killed her, and these were ingested not injected, as pathologist Dr. Boyd Stephens described to Ronald Carroll. (McGovern, pp. 494-95, see also Icon Part 2, p. 620) As mentioned, she had tried to end her life 4-5 times previously. The most recent attempt being about ten months prior to August of 1962. (Icon, pt. 2, p. 443)

    As seems clear from the evidence, Dr. Engelberg lied about his prescriptions to Monroe, perhaps to cover up his own culpability. And Siegel’s prescriptions were not covered by the coroner’s office. (ibid, p. 458) Another illustrious pathologist, Cyril Wecht, agreed with all this. He dispelled certain disinformation about the autopsy spewed by Slatzer; saying for example that no, Nembutal does not leave a dye color, and that drugs dissolve much faster than food in the stomach, so the lack of dye and the stomach being empty was not at all odd. (Icon, Part 2, p. 351)

    But he further added that the amount of drugs Engelberg supplied were simply “out of the ballpark”. He also ridiculed the statement by Engelberg that he was weaning her off drugs. He then delivered the capper:

    I believe that he well could have been charged. It would be manslaughter. It could rise to third degree murder. But certainly manslaughter. Think about Conrad Murray in the Michael Jackson case….That is feeding an addiction…If it occurred today, a district attorney would make a move due to a celebrity involved and quantity of drugs involved. (ibid, p. 361)

    Wecht also disagreed with the combination of Nembutal and chloral hydrate. He did not think she should have been given both. When asked why her doctors were not charged, Wecht replied it was a different world back then and the media was much more quiet. He concluded by saying that he agrees with Thomas Noguchi’s finding, and the 1982 Ronald Carroll review: “I see no credible evidence to support a murder theory.” (Ibid, p. 367) When one has three pathologists the stature of Noguchi, Stephens and Wecht, with that much experience, I will take them any day over the likes of Slatzer, Mark Shaw and their ilk.

    Let me end with two quotes that sum up the Marilyn Monroe case and its aftermath. The first is by the estimable Don McGovern:

    While the initial motivation to engage in The Kennedys-Murdered-Marilyn farrago was a political one, it quickly transmogrified into a financial one, most certainly influenced, arguably even fomented by the financial success of Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller. There is little doubt that money motivated Robert Slatzer and Jeanne Carmen along with the obvious fact that both were camera and fame whores. (Icon, Vol. 2, p. 32)

    I don’t think one can get more accurate than that about what has become a continuous cesspool of character assassination. Therefore, let us give Marilyn, the victim of this constant calumny, the last word; since the public seems to prefer the voices of Oates and Slatzer to the real person.

    What I really want to say: that what the world really needs is a new feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers…Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. (Marilyn Monroe, Graham McCann, p. 219)

    Maybe that quote is how we should remember her.

    Go to Part 1 of 2