Kennedys and King Test host626

Tag: WARREN DEFENDERS

  • Hugh Aynesworth: Refusing a Conspiracy is his Life’s Work

    Hugh Aynesworth: Refusing a Conspiracy is his Life’s Work

    hugh
    Hugh Aynesworth

    At the time of the assassination, Hugh Aynesworth was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He has maintained that on November 22, 1963 he was in Dealey Plaza and a witness to the assassination — although there is no photograph that reveals such. At times, he has also maintained he was at the scene where Tippit was shot — although it is difficult to locate a time for his being there. He has also stated that he was at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested — although, again, no film or photo attests to this. Further, he has written that he was in the basement of the Dallas Police Department when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. Like Priscilla Johnson, Aynesworth soon decided to make his career out of this event. As we shall see, it is quite clear that he made up his mind immediately about Oswald’s guilt. Long before the Warren Report was issued. In fact, he tried to influence their verdict.

    On July 21, 1964 Aynesworth’s name surfaced in the newspapers in Dallas in a column by his friend Holmes Alexander. Alexander implied that Aynesworth did not trust Earl Warren and therefore was conducting his own investigation of the Kennedy murder. He was ready to reveal that the FBI knew Oswald was a potential assassin and blew their assignment. He also had talked to Marina Oswald and she had told him that Oswald had also threatened to kill Richard Nixon. Alexander goes on to say that these kinds of incidents show the mind of a killer at work. That “of a hard-driven, politically radical Leftist which is emerging from the small amount of news put out by the Warren Commission. If the full report follows the expected line, Oswald will be shown as a homicidal maniac.” Holmes concludes his piece with a warning: If the Commission’s verdict “jibes with that of Aynesworth’s independent research, credibility will be added to its findings. If [it] does not there will be some explaining to do.” Clearly, Aynesworth contributed mightily to the article, had decided Oswald had done it even before the Commission had revealed its evidence, and was bent on destroying its credibility if it differed from his opinion.

    The story about Marina and Nixon was so farfetched that not even the Warren Commission bought into it (Warren Report pp. 187-188). It has been demolished by many authors; most notably Peter Scott who notes that to believe it, Marina had to have locked Oswald in the bathroom to keep him from committing this murderous act; yet the bathroom locked from the inside. Also, as the Commission noted in the pages above, Nixon was not in Dallas until several months after the alleged incident. Further, there was no announcement in any local newspaper that Nixon was going to be in Dallas at this time period — April of 1963. Since Aynesworth was quite close to Marina at this time (he actually bragged to some friends that he was sleeping with her) it may be that he foisted the quite incredible story on her in his attempt to portray Oswald as the Leftist, homicidal maniac he related to Holmes Alexander.

    Aynesworth was also out to profit personally from the tragedy. In late June of 1964, Oswald’s alleged diary from his Russian days appeared in Aynesworth’s newspaper with a commentary by the reporter. Two weeks later it also appeared in U. S. News and World Report. An FBI investigation followed to see how this material leaked into the press. In declassified documents, it appears that the diary was pilfered from the Dallas Police archives by the notorious assistant DA Bill Alexander and then given to his friend Aynesworth. Aynesworth then put it on the market to other magazines including Newsweek. It eventually ended up in Life magazine also. Alexander, Aynesworth and the reporter’s wife Paula split thousands of dollars. Oswald’s widow was paid later by Life since, originally, Aynesworth had illegally cut her out of the deal. In another FBI report of July 7th, it also appears that Aynesworth was using the so-called diary for career advancement purposes. A source told the Bureau that part of the deal with Newsweek was that Aynesworth was to become their Dallas correspondent. As the Bureau noted, Aynesworth did become their Dallas stringer afterward. (It is interesting to note here that the “diary” has been shown to have been not a real diary at all. That is, it was not recorded on a daily basis but rather in two or three sittings.)

    Right after this, in August of 1964, another trademark of Aynseworth’s Kennedy career appeared: his penchant to attack and ridicule anyone who disagreed with him. Aynesworth published a review of Joachim Joesten’s early book on the case entitled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy. The review is not really a review at all, it is just a string of invective directed at the author for believing such silly notions that Oswald could have been innocent and that he could have been an agent of the FBI and/or CIA. When rumors circulated that Oswald had been an FBI informant, which he apparently was, Aynesworth went to work discrediting them saying that it was all a joke he had made up — even though he was not the source of the quite specific information.

    In December of 1966, Aynesworth surfaced again on the Kennedy case. At this time Life was doing its ill-fated reinvestigation of the murder led by Holland McCombs and Richard Billings. Somehow, probably through McCombs who was a good friend of Clay Shaw, Aynesworth was a part of this investigation. Aynesworth began informing on the intricacies of the probe to the FBI. For instance on December 12th, Aynesworth informed the Bureau that they had discovered a man who connected Oswald with Ruby. Aynesworth turned over a copy of this report to the FBI. He also then told the Bureau that Mark Lane was a homosexual and had to drop his political career because of these allegations. At the end of the interview Aynesworth “specifically requested” his identity and his sources not be disclosed outside the Bureau.

    Billings’ investigation eventually and perhaps inevitably ran into the initial stages of the secret probe being conducted by District Attorney Jim Garrison. And because a mutual acquaintance of Billings and Garrison, David Chandler, was involved, Aynesworth was one of the first people to discover what Garrison was doing. The unsuspecting Garrison actually granted the duplicitous reporter an interview in his home. After the interview, Aynesworth wrote a note to McCombs that they should not let the DA know they were playing “both sides.” Recall, this was the first time they had met face to face! So much for a modicum of objectivity.

    Almost immediately Aynesworth set out to smear Garrison in the national press, to obstruct him by cooperating with law enforcement agencies who were opposed to the DA, and to defeat him in court by extending his services to Shaw’s lawyers. All of the above is readily provable today as it had not been before the releases of the ARRB. It would not be hyperbole to write that no other reporter in recorded history had as much to do in opposing a DA both covertly and overtly as Aynesworth did in New Orleans from 1967-71. Especially when one extends Aynesworth’s actions to connect with his two allies in this effort, namely James Phelan and the late Walter Sheridan. (Significantly, when the ARRB requested the files of Sheridan on the 1967 NBC special he produced, Sheridan’s family sent them to NBC. And the network refused to turn them over.) Aynesworth’s actions are too lengthy to be discussed here but they are recorded in detail in Probe Magazine (Vol. 4 No. 4) and also in the book The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (pp. 24-29). Aynesworth published an attack on Garrison in Newsweek on May 15, 1967 (about a week after Phelan’s broadside had appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.) The “report” was clearly a venomous hatchet job that had one aim: to stigmatize Garrison and, by doing that, to neutralize his investigation by turning the public’s attention away from his discoveries and toward the controversy being manufactured by Aynesworth, Phelan, and NBC’s special which was to follow the next month. The article depicted Garrison as a modern day Robespierre whose investigation had bribed witnesses into making false claims, whose staff had threatened to murder a witness, and finally that Garrison was so possessed he held the entire city in thrall by terrorist tactics.

    We have seen how Aynesworth informed on the Billings investigation with the FBI. On the Garrison case, he extended his reach. Before his article was printed, he forwarded a copy to George Christian who was press secretary for the White House. But not before he had called him and discussed his inflammatory and deceitful article. The actual telegram he sent is interesting in revealing his psychology. He tells Christian that he is informing because he is aware of what Garrison is up to. What, in Aynesworth’s view, is he up to? He is trying “to make it seem that the FBI and CIA are involved in the JFK plot.” But further, “he can —and probably will — do untold damage to this nation’s image throughout the world.” Finally, he tells Christian that although Garrison wants the government to defy him or to pressure a halt to his probe, that is not what they should do, “for that is exactly what Garrison wants.” Of course, he again asked that his role be kept a secret. These last two assertions imply that Aynesworth would serve as the intermediary to obstruct Garrison clandestinely while claiming to be a reporter so that the government could keep its hands clean as he did their dirty work for them.

    Further insight into Aynesworth’s peculiar psychology came in an interview in 1979 on KERA, the Dallas PBS affiliate. He said there, “I’m not saying there wasn’t a conspiracy. I know most people in this country believe there was a conspiracy. I just refuse to accept it and that’s my life’s work.” In other words, what the facts are do not really matter to him. It’s keeping the lid on a conspiracy to commit homicide that matters. (Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Jennings would have confronted Aynesworth with that statement and asked him to explain his view of journalism in light of it?)

    By the 1990’s Aynesworth’s role had been so exposed to those in the know that he couldn’t appear at research conferences. So he did not show up at them himself — as he may have, for surveillance purposes, earlier. Instead he arranged other conferences to eclipse them, as he did in 1993 for the 30th anniversary of the assassination. At this one in Dallas, someone asked him this: Had he ever cooperated with the government on a story prior to its publication? He denied it of course. Then the questioner read him the Christian memo quoted above.

    Why couldn’t Jennings do the same?

  • Letters to The Nation magazine re: Max Holland

    Pennington, NJ

    I’m the author of A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination and the Case That Should Have Changed History, my seventeenth book, whose credibility is attacked by Max Holland. Nation readers might give pause to Holland’s five-year campaign of outright falsehoods about the investigation into the Kennedy assassination by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that have appeared in a range of publications from The Wilson Quarterly, The Atlantic, New Orleans and the Washington Post to, now, The Nation.

    Garrison focused on the clandestine service of the CIA as sponsor of the Kennedy assassination as a result of facts he discovered about Lee Harvey Oswald, specifically Oswald’s role as an FBI informant and low-level CIA agent sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA’s Chief of Counterintelligence, James Angleton, as part of a false defector program. What Garrison had not yet discovered was that Oswald also worked for the US Customs Service in New Orleans.

    Contrary to Holland’s assertions of the innocence of Clay Shaw, the man Garrison indicted for participation in the murder of President Kennedy was indeed part of the implementation of the murder and was guilty of conspiracy. That Shaw was acquitted does not exonerate him for history. New documents indicate overwhelmingly that Shaw did favors for the CIA. On his deathbed he admitted as much. Shaw’s repeated appearances in Louisiana in the company of Oswald demonstrate that Shaw was part of the framing of Oswald for Kennedy’s murder. Shaw took Oswald to the East Louisiana State Hospital in an attempt to secure him a job there, one event among many never investigated by the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

    Holland’s assertion that Garrison based his conclusion that the CIA sponsored the assassination on a series of articles in an Italian newspaper is also incorrect. Garrison had focused on the CIA long before he learned that Shaw was on the board of directors of a CIA-funded phony trade front called Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), based in Rome. Indeed, the newspaper Paese Sera broke the story of Shaw’s involvement after a six-month investigation into CIA interference in European electoral politics, only to discover that Garrison had indicted Shaw a few days before the first article was to appear. Moreover, the new documents reveal that CMC and its parent outfit, Permindex, were indeed CIA fronts.

    The 1992 Assassinations Records and Review Act has disgorged dozens of documents showing that Shaw was a CIA operative. This is directly contrary to what Holland suggests — that Garrison was a willing victim of “the KGB’s wildest fantasy.” To cite one example, Shaw was cleared for a project dubbed QKENCHANT, which permitted him to recruit outsiders for CIA projects. Shaw was no mere businessman debriefed by the CIA. One document reveals that among those Shaw recruited in New Orleans was Guy Banister, former FBI Chicago Special Agent in Charge running an ersatz New Orleans detective agency whose side-door address (544 Camp Street) Oswald used on a set of his pro-Castro leaflets, until Banister stopped him.

    The former editors of the now-defunct Paese Sera, whom I interviewed, from Jean-Franco Corsini to Edo Parpalione, insisted adamantly that neither the Italian Communist Party, nor the Soviet Communist Party, nor the KGB had any influence on the paper’s editorial policy. Outraged by Holland’s accusations, Corsini said that he despised the KGB and the CIA equally.

    The roots of Holland’s charge that Garrison was a dupe of KGB propaganda may be traced to an April 4, 1967, CIA document titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.” In it the CIA suggests to its media assets that they accuse critics of the Warren Report of “Communist sympathies.” In April 1967 Garrison was at the height of his investigation: He is clearly the critic the CIA had in mind.

    In 1961 Richard Helms had already developed the charge that Paese Sera was an outlet for the KGB and for Soviet propaganda. Helms was indignant, but the truth had appeared in Paese Sera: The attempted putsch against Charles de Gaulle by four Algerian-based generals had indeed been supported by the CIA. Holland has merely picked up where Helms, later to become a convicted perjurer, left off — repeating a scenario developed for him by Helms, with the addition of making the accusation of Soviet influence on Garrison.

    My book is hardly a “hagiography of the DA,” as Holland states. I present a flawed man who exhibited great courage in facing down both the FBI and the CIA in his attempt to investigate the murder of the President. Indeed, Garrison family members were dismayed that I did not present him in a more idealized form. I depicted him as an ordinary man who rose to distinction because of his single-minded commitment to the investigation.

    Among the many errors in Holland’s latest diatribe is that Shaw died “prematurely,” as if somehow Garrison’s prosecution hastened his end. In fact, Shaw was a lifelong chain smoker and died of lung cancer. Holland attacks Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the HSCA, for using acoustic evidence to suggest that there was a conspiracy in the Kennedy murder. In fact, the acoustic evidence of at least four shots being fired has been established scientifically by Donald Thomas in the British forensic journal Science and Justice (see also Thomas’s well-documented paper, available online, “Hear No Evil: The Acoustical Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination,” delivered November 17, 2001).

    Blakey certainly can be criticized for his close relationship with the CIA throughout his HSCA investigation. His letters of agreement with the CIA are at the National Archives. The CIA decided how key witnesses were to be deposed, and Blakey acquiesced in all CIA demands and intrusions upon the investigation.

    Before Blakey was hired, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg considered accepting the job as counsel. Knowing that the CIA had at the least covered up the facts of the assassination and at worst been involved, Goldberg telephoned CIA director Stansfield Turner and asked him whether, should he take the job, he would have full CIA cooperation. Silence emanated over the wires. Goldberg, naïve perhaps, asked Turner if he had heard the question. “I thought my silence was my answer,” Turner said. Goldberg declined the job. Blakey took it. It is no surprise that Holland, who has consistently defended the CIA, does not raise the issue of Blakey’s cooperation with the CIA during his HSCA tenure but focuses instead on Blakey’s conclusion, forced by the irrefutable acoustic evidence, that there was a conspiracy.

    It is one thing for Holland to spread his disinformation in the CIA’s Studies in Intelligence. It is quite another for The Nation to allow him continued access without debate to its pages to obfuscate, slander authors like myself and deny evidence fully established — in particular about Jim Garrison and how the new documents establish his credibility and reveal how close he came to the truth, and in general about the Kennedy assassination’s sponsors and accessories.

    JOAN MELLEN

    Charlottesville, Va.

    It began with a CIA document classified Top Secret. How do I know that? A decade after the assassination of President Kennedy, with the assistance of the ACLU, I won a precedent-setting lawsuit in the US District Court in Washington, DC, brought pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. The court ordered the police and spy organizations to provide to me many long-suppressed documents.

    The CIA document stated that it was deeply troubled by my work in questioning the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The CIA had concluded that my book Rush to Judgment was difficult to answer; indeed, after a careful and thorough analysis of that work by CIA experts, the CIA was unable to find and cite a single error in the book. The CIA complained that almost half of the American people agreed with me and that “Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results.” This “trend of opinion,” the CIA stated, “is a matter of concern” to “our organization.” Therefore, the CIA concluded, steps must be taken.

    The CIA directed that methods of attacking me should be discussed with “liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors),” instructing them that “further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition.” The CIA stressed that their assets in the media should “point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.” Further, their media contacts should “use their influence to discourage” what the CIA referred to as “unfounded and irresponsible speculation.” Rush to Judgment, then the New York Times number-one bestselling book, contained no speculation.

    The CIA in its report instructed book reviewers and magazines that contained feature articles how to deal with me and others who raised doubts about the validity of the Warren Report. Magazines should, the CIA stated, “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics,” adding that “feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.” The CIA instructed its media assets that “because of the standing of the members of the Warren Commission, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.” The CIA was referring to such distinguished gentlemen as Allen Dulles, the former director of the CIA; President Kennedy had fired Dulles from that position for having lied to him about the Bay of Pigs tragedy. Dulles was then appointed by Lyndon Johnson to the Warren Commission to tell the American people the truth about the assassination.

    The purpose of the CIA was not in doubt. The CIA stated: “The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims” of those who doubted the Warren Report. The CIA stated that “background information” about me and others “is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.”

    With this background we now turn to Max Holland’s Nation article, which states that there was a “JFK Lawyers’ Conspiracy” among four lawyers: former Senator Gary Hart; Professor Robert Blakey; Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and later a state judge in Louisiana; and me.

    Before I wrote Rush to Judgment I had never met any of the other three “co-conspirators.” I still have not had the pleasure of meeting Senator Hart, and I know of no work that he has done in this area. I met Professor Blakey only once; he had been appointed chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and at that meeting I told him that I was disappointed in his approach and methods. Not much of a lawyers’ conspiracy.

    Each of the other statements as to alleged fact are false and defamatory. Holland states that I am not scrupulous, that I am dishonest and that I spread innuendo about the sinister delay in the Warren Commission investigation, an assertion not made by me but fabricated in its entirety by Holland. As a silent echo of his CIA associates Holland does not point to one assertion as to fact, of the thousands I have made about the facts surrounding the death of our President, that he claims is inaccurate.

    Finally, Holland strikes pay dirt. He uncovers, are you ready for this, the fact that I had asserted that “the government was indifferent to the truth.” I confess. Is that now a crime under the Patriot Act? Isn’t that what The Nation is supposed to be asserting and proving?

    Holland states that the KGB was secretly funding my work with a payment of “$12,500 (in 2005 dollars).” It was a secret all right. It never happened. Holland’s statement is an outright lie. Neither the KGB nor any person or organization associated with it ever made any contribution to my work. No one ever made a sizable contribution, with the exception of Corliss Lamont, who contributed enough for me to fly one time from New York to Dallas to interview eyewitnesses. The second-largest contribution was $50 given to me by Woody Allen. Have Corliss and Woody now joined Holland’s fanciful conspiracy?

    Funds for the work of the Citizens Committee of Inquiry were raised by me. I lectured each night for more than a year in a Manhattan theater. The Times referred to the very well attended talks as one of the longest-running performances off Broadway. That was not a secret. I am surprised that Holland never came across that information, especially since he refers to what he calls “The Speech” in his diatribe.

    Apparently, Holland did not fabricate the KGB story; his associates at the CIA did. There is proof for that assertion, but I fear that I have taken too much space already. For that information, contact me at mlane777@cs.com.

    Am I being unfair when I suggest a connection between Holland and the CIA? Here is the CIA game plan: Fabricate a disinformation story. Hand it to a reporter with liberal credentials; for example, a Nation contributing editor. If the reporter cannot find a publication then have the CIA carry it on its own website under the byline of the reporter. Then the CIA can quote the reporter and state, ” according to…”

    Holland writes regularly for the official CIA website. He publishes information there that he has been given by the CIA. The CIA, on its official website, then states, “According to Holland…” If you would like to look into this matter of disinformation laundering, enter into your computer “CIA.gov + Max Holland.” You will find on the first page alone numerous articles by Holland supporting and defending the CIA and attacking those who dare to disagree, as well as CIA statements attributing the information to Holland.

    A question for The Nation. When Holland writes an article for you defending the CIA and attacking its critics, why do you describe him only as “a Nation contributing editor” and author? Is it not relevant to inform your readers that he also is a contributor to the official CIA website and then is quoted by the CIA regarding information that the agency gave him?

    An old associate of mine, Adlai Stevenson, once stated to his political opponent, a man known as a stranger to the truth — if you stop telling lies about me I will stop telling the truth about you. I was prepared to adopt that attitude here. But I cannot. Your publication has defamed a good friend, Jim Garrison, after he died and could not defend himself against demonstrably false charges.

    You have not served your readers by refusing to disclose Holland’s CIA association. The Nation and Holland have engaged in the type of attack journalism that recalls the bad old days. If I fought McCarthyism in the 1950s as a young lawyer, how can I avoid it now when it appears in a magazine that has sullied its own history? The article is filled with ad hominem attacks, name calling and fabrications, and it has done much mischief. I will hold you and Holland accountable for your misconduct. I can honorably adopt no other course.

    To mitigate damages I require that you repudiate the article and apologize for publishing it. That you publish this letter as an unedited article in your next issue. That you do not publish a reply by Holland in which he adds to the defamation and the damage he has done, a method you have employed in the past. That you provide to me the mailing addresses of your contributing editors and members of your editorial board so that I may send this letter to them. I am confident that Gore Vidal and Bob Borosage, Tom Hayden and Marcus Raskin, all of whom I know, and many others such as Molly Ivins, John Leonard and Lani Guinier, who I do not know but who I respect and admire, would be interested in the practices of The Nation. In addition, I suggest that ethical journalism requires that in the future you fully identify your writers so that your readers may make an informed judgment about their potential bias.

    If you have a genuine interest in the facts regarding the assassination you should know that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the United States Congress) concluded that probably a conspiracy was responsible for the murder and that, therefore, the Warren Report that Holland defends so aggressively is probably wrong. In addition, the only jury to consider this question decided in a trial held in the US District Court in a defamation case that the newspaper did not defame E. Howard Hunt when it suggested that Hunt and the CIA had killed the President. The forewoman of the jury stated that the evidence proved that the CIA had been responsible for the assassination.

    I have earned many friends in this long effort. Those who have supported my work include Lord Bertrand Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Dr. Linus Pauling, Senator Richard Schweicker, Paul McCartney, Norman Mailer, Richard Sprague, Robert Tannenbaum and also members of the House of Representatives, including Don Edwards, Henry Gonzales, Andrew Young, Bella Abzug, Richardson Preyer, Christopher Dodd, Herman Badillo, Mervyn Dymally, Mario Biaggi and, above all, according to every national poll, the overwhelming majority of the American people. I have apparently earned a few adversaries along the way. Too bad that they operate from the shadows; that tends to remove the possibility of an open debate.

    MARK LANE

    Washington, DC

    While many thought the 1979 report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations was the final word on President Kennedy’s murder, it wasn’t. In 1992 Congress passed the JFK Act. As a result, a huge volume of new materials are available for study.

    One significant revelation is the extent to which the CIA was a focus of the committee’s probe. Another is the discovery by Jefferson Morley, a columnist for WashingtonPost.com, that the CIA corrupted the committee’s probe. The CIA brought former case officer George Joannides out of retirement to handle the committee’s inquiries about the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and DRE, a CIA-funded Cuban exile organization. The CIA never told the committee that Joannides was DRE’s case officer when Oswald and DRE were in contact. Joannides then thwarted committee efforts to obtain CIA records about the DRE-Oswald relationship. Thus, the last official word on the assassination is that of a Congressional committee that was subverted by an agency that itself was a focus of the investigation.

    These facts raise serious issues. The CIA’s conduct undermined democratic accountability and compromised the integrity of Congressional oversight on a matter of national security. Shouldn’t Congress now investigate to determine why the CIA sabotaged the probe? Was it because, as some former committee staffers have said, an element of the CIA was involved in the plot? Or is there some other explanation?

    In 2004 and 2005 the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) held conferences to discuss the JFK assassination. On the issue of conspiracy, two scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discredited the last remaining basis for the single bullet theory (SBT), which theorized that both Kennedy and John Connally were hit by the same bullet, fired from Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle — the sine qua non for the lone assassin theory. These eminent scientists said that due to scientific advances not only can the SBT not be substantiated but the fragments tested could have come from one — or as many as five — bullets, including a Remington or some other rifle. Holland mentions none of this.

    Holland denounces the acoustics evidence proving there was a conspiracy. He misrepresents acoustics as being the only evidence the committee had of a conspiracy and mistakenly says that it is uncorroborated. In fact, the first acoustics panel was corroborated by the second. Both were further corroborated and strengthened by Donald Thomas’s study. Holland doesn’t mention Thomas, but does obliquely refer to the work of Richard Garwin.Thomas debated Garwin at the AARC conference. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Lardner reported, Thomas “upstaged” Garwin, showing “how the noises coincided precisely with frames from the Zapruder film and echoes off buildings in Dealey Plaza reflecting the gunfire.” Lardner also noted that Garwin said he “had not studied the echoes.” Again, none of this is in Holland’s account.

    Holland, winner of a CIA award for Studies in Intelligence, has been working on a book since 1993 defending the Warren Commission. In applying for an Anthony Lukas work-in-progress award in 2001, he said that as a result of his study “the Commission can emerge in a new light: battered somewhat but with its probity and the accuracy of its findings intact.” He also stressed that he had spent a full year researching “the remarkable effort of KGB disinformation on Garrison’s probe.” Holland debated this thesis with Gary Aguilar at the 2004 AARC conference. In my view, Holland lost hands down (a DVD of the conference is available through aarclibrary.org). In advancing his thesis, Holland relies on dubious materials, including the word of former CIA director Richard Helms, who was charged with perjury but copped a plea of withholding information from Congress.

    Holland now uses the AARC’s 2005 conference to theorize that a vast conspiracy of lawyers “less scrupulous” than those at the Warren Commission spread KGB disinformation and convinced Congress and the American people that the Warren Report was wrong. This is a McCarthyite tactic for discrediting the AARC conferences and Warren Commission critics generally. It seems no one ever saw the Zapruder film showing JFK thrown violently to the left rear, no one ever looked at the Magic Bullet and concluded it was so undeformed it could not have done all the damage alleged. No, it was them bloody KGB disinformation lawyers that brainwashed them.

    In 1967 the CIA directed its stations to tamp growing criticism of the Warren Report by discussing it with “liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and “point out that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.” The dispatch further instructs that stations “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics,” saying that “book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

    Holland’s piece on our conference looks as if it were written to specification. While I had not expected favorable coverage from Holland when I overrode the advice of friends and associates and honored The Nation’s request that he be given journalistic privileges and courtesies, I hadn’t expected an attack of this character. The general opinion of attendees, repeatedly expressed to me personally, was that the 2005 conference was the best ever on the subject. Max Holland echoed this in an e-mail to me: “Having Garwin, Hart and Blakey give presentations made the conference superior to any I’ve attended. I’ll do my best to get an article in.”

    JIM LESAR, president, AARC

    Vallejo, Calif.

    Max Holland has engaged for years in propagating disinformation on behalf of the CIA concerning the investigation of its role in the official execution of John F. Kennedy. Holland’s Nation article expatiates upon his fabricated thesis that Jim Garrison’s evidence of the CIA’s role in the Kennedy murder derived from a series of articles in Paese Sera in 1967.

    I sent those articles to Jim Garrison in my capacity as director of the Who Killed Kennedy? committee in London, whose members and supporters included Bertrand Russell, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Arnold Toynbee, Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck and Lord Boyd Orr. The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, of which I was then executive director, had conducted an extended investigation of the role of the CIA in fomenting and coordinating brutal repression, disappearances and assassinations, which culminated in a military putsch in Greece. Our Save Greece Now Committee unearthed concrete data regarding the role of the CIA and the Greek colonels that helped mobilize the movement for which Deputy Grigoris Lambrakis paid with his life. In the aftermath, our committee and its Greek leader, Michael Peristerakis, led a demonstration of more than 1 million that brought down the regime.

    CIA activity across Europe led Paese Sera to undertake a six-month investigation into the role in Italy of the CIA, with its plans for a military coup. The CIA colonels’ coup in Greece unfolded shortly after Paese Sera’s prescient series. Prominent writers and intellectuals, including Rossana Rossanda, K.S. Karol, Lelio Basso, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, supported Paese Sera.

    This investigation was entirely unrelated to events in the United States or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was fortuitous that the CIA front organizations in Italy that emerged from CIA plans to overthrow the Italian government included Centro Mondiale Commerciale and Permindex, of which Clay Shaw was a director in New Orleans.

    Jim Garrison was well on the trail of Shaw and his role as a CIA handler of Lee Harvey Oswald before Paese Sera published its series of articles. When I sent them to Garrison, he had already charged Shaw in relation to the murder of Kennedy. Jim found the Paese Sera series confirmatory and important, but the articles were not admissible as evidence in court.

    Holland has written repeatedly that Paese Sera was a “communist” paper and a conduit for KGB disinformation. In fact, Paese Sera was not unlike The Nation before Holland’s infiltration of it as a contributing editor (except Paese Sera was less inclined to defend the leaders of the Soviet Union than was The Nation during the decades since the 1930s). The Paese Sera fiction is real intelligence disinformation arising not from the KGB but from an April 7, 1967, directive by Helms to CIA media assets, “How To Respond to Critics of the Warren Report.”

    What emerged from the investigative work of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and Paese Sera was the full evidence of the forty-year campaign of the CIA in Italy, now known as Operation Gladio, a campaign of terror that included the kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the bombing of the Bologna railway station.

    I worked with Jim Garrison for twenty years and sent him many documents, e.g., Secret Service Report 767, which cites the disclosure by Alan Sweat, chief of the criminal division of the Dallas Sheriff’s Office, of Lee Harvey Oswald’s FBI Informant Number S172 and Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade’s citation of Oswald’s CIA number 110669.

    Finally, Philip Zelikow, national security adviser to both Bush administrations and appointed by George W. Bush to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board immediately after the 9/11 attacks, has endorsed Holland’s specious charges in Foreign Affairs, even as he and Holland were colleagues at the Miller Institute. Zelikow, as head of the 9/11 Commission, has been a point man in covering up the role of US intelligence in the planning and implementation of the events of September 11.

    It is fitting that the very individuals who protect the treason at the top that defines the official assassination of President Kennedy are performing that role in relation to the events of 9/11 — a precise correlative to Operation Gladio, first exposed by the investigative work of Paese Sera, which linked the CIA murder apparatus in Italy to the one that murdered the head of state in America.

    Holland seeks to present the investigators into official murder in America not as people of principle and daring but as disinformation tools of an intelligence service. When it comes to being a pimp for the imperium, Mr. Holland, Physician, heal thyself!

    RALPH SCHOENMAN

    Kirtland, NM

    I commend The Nation for publishing Max Holland’s insightful article. In 1963 I worked in New Orleans as a cameraman for WDSU TV, and I met and talked with Lee Harvey Oswald on three occasions. I also knew Jim Garrison, and I knew the Cuban refugee Carlos Bringuier, who scuffled with Oswald on Canal Street on August 9, 1963. Three days later I photographed Oswald and Bringuier coming out of court after their “disturbing the peace” trial, and on August 16, I photographed Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets in front of the International Trade Mart on Camp Street.

    In 1968 Garrison phoned me in San Francisco, where I was living, and asked if I would sell him a copy of my Oswald Trade Mart footage. I told him I’d gladly give him a copy. Then he went on to tell me a wild story about how the FBI was keeping WDSU and NBC News from providing him with a copy of the film because the bureau had had secret spies or agents with Oswald at the Trade Mart, directing his activities as part of a government “conspiracy.” Garrison said the Feds didn’t want him to see my film, since he might identify the government spooks with Oswald.

    I was so shocked by that story that a day or so later I called a supervisor at the San Francisco FBI office and asked if he would call an appropriate person at the Washington headquarters to see if they would not want me to release the film to Garrison. I indicated that I might not release it if it involved “national security.” My objective was twofold: to find out if Garrison was wrong about the FBI trying to cover up my film, and to find out if he was right. If he was right, that was indeed a big story. But the supervisor called me back a day or two later and said that the guys in Washington didn’t care whether or not I gave Garrison the film. So I sent it to him, and after several months of studying it, the net result was that neither Garrison nor any of his investigators was able to turn up any FBI or other spooks with Oswald in the footage.

    I worked and talked with Garrison many times when I was a news cameraman, and I always thought of him as an intelligent and sensible man. But after he began working on the JFK case and trying to invent bizarre government conspiracies about it, I came to realize the guy was going a bit bonkers and was apparently in the process of having a long, slow nervous breakdown.

    Thirty-seven years after his phone call to me, a retired history professor found in some archives a copy of an FBI memo about my 1968 telephone call to the San Francisco FBI supervisor, and the professor fraudulently referred to it in his JFK conspiracy book as “documentation” that I had worked as an “FBI informant” in New Orleans in 1963!

    Of course I had not, and the memo does not suggest in any way that I did. The professor’s story was simply fabricated, like hundreds of other phony JFK “conspiracy” stories. I was a young liberal/leftist in 1963, and I didn’t have any feelings of ill will toward Oswald at that time, nor did I have any contacts in the FBI. I thought Oswald was a little goofy and something of a crackpot to be handing out pro-Castro leaflets in a conservative Southern city just ten months after the Cuban missile crisis. But I learned in the news business long ago that crackpots do what crackpots think they need to do to modify the world in some way, and Oswald did what he thought he needed to do.

    As I have carefully studied the JFK case myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that Oswald did act alone, and that President Kennedy might still be alive today if he had never made that trip to Dallas, or if Oswald had still lived in New Orleans on November 22, 1963. But the chance event of President Kennedy riding in an open limousine slowly down a street right in front of a building where a crackpot worked, especially a crackpot who owned a rifle with a telescopic sight, was just too much of an opportunity for the crackpot to pass up.

    I’ve also come to realize that so many of these stupid, inaccurate and idiotic “conspiracy” stories are a waste of time and a distortion of history. Every minute wasted on pursuing a 1963 “conspiracy” while ignoring current important ongoing conspiracies is a minute lost.

    And the conspiracy buffs who condemn honest, hard-working journalists like Holland remind me of the old 1950s film clips of Senator Joe McCarthy. I would hate to think that truth in historical reporting might be adversely influenced today by the use of such McCarthyite tactics against journalists like Holland who stick their necks out to report the truth about the JFK case and Jim Garrison’s ridiculous investigation of it.

    J.W. RUSH

    HOLLAND REPLIES

    Washington, DC

    Apparently, a word needs to be said about the article I wrote for Studies in Intelligence, a journal published by the CIA. The first iteration of this story, which exposed the impact of Soviet disinformation on Jim Garrison’s persecution of Clay Shaw, actually appeared in the Spring 2001 Wilson Quarterly. However, the Quarterly, like The Nation, does not run footnoted articles, and I wanted a fully documented version to appear, since I had conducted extensive interviews and research in Italy, and into CIA documents at the National Archives. There are only four English-language journals that print scholarly articles on intelligence (and if one is so inclined, it is a snap to “prove” they are all CIA-connected). Studies is the oldest, and I went there first. That’s the whole story, except that, yes, the article (available online) then also won an award.

    Now to some brass tacks in the space I have available. Both Joan Mellen and Mark Lane make much of a CIA document that sounds very sinister — until you actually read it and put it into context. The document was written in April 1967, the height of the bout of madness otherwise known as the Garrison investigation. As one of the government agencies now being accused of complicity in the assassination, the CIA was very concerned about having such allegations gain widespread acceptance abroad in the midst of the cold war. “Innuendo of such seriousness affects…the whole reputation of the American government,” observed the CIA. So the agency launched a campaign, using its media assets abroad, to counter criticism of the Warren Report by the likes of Mellen, Lane and others. Is that really shocking?

    Joan Mellen’s penchant for accuracy can be summed up in the fact that she cannot even bother to spell correctly (here or in her book) the names of Gianfranco Corsini and Edo Parpaglioni. Ordinarily, this would be nit-picking, but in this instance her elementary sloppiness is as good a window as any into the miasma of bald lies, misrepresentations and truthiness that she calls a book.

    The claim that Paese Sera’s lies about Shaw were the fortuitous result of a “six-month investigation” is a belated fiction embraced by Mellen and other Garrison acolytes. The co-author of the articles in question, Angelo Aver, claimed no such thing when interviewed in 2000, nor did any Paese Sera editors I contacted (including Corsini).

    I find it illuminating that Lane has taken no legal action (not even in Britain!) against the authors (Christopher Andrew and KGB archivist-turned-defector Vasili Mitrokhin) and publishers of the 1999 volume that revealed “the [KGB’s] New York residency sent [Lane initially] 1,500 dollars to help finance his research” through an intermediary. That doesn’t necessarily mean it came in a lump sum. And neither Andrew/Mitrokhin nor I alleges that Lane was a witting recipient, just a useful one.

    All the reliable forensic and scientific evidence developed around the JFK case either positively supports or does not negate the findings of the Warren Report. An explanation of the so-called acoustic evidence can be found at mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell.

    Jim Lesar has often attempted to impede The Nation’s coverage of AARC conferences when I have been designated to cover them. On this go-round he hinted (before backing off) that a press credential would not be forthcoming unless The Nation guaranteed there would be an article. After the conference, impressed as I was by AARC’s ability to attract the likes of Dr. Richard Garwin, former Senator Hart and Professor Blakey, I wanted to assure Lesar that I would do my best to submit an article that the editors would deem worthwhile, even though it’s harder than ever to get into the magazine when writing about a largely historical subject. That didn’t mean, however, that I had checked my brains at the door.

    MAX HOLLAND

  • Gus Russo

  • Gerald Posner: Did He Get Anything Right?

    Gerald Posner: Did He Get Anything Right?

    posner toon

    Prior to the 30th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, relatively few people had heard of or purchased the books by attorney Gerald Posner. Then in 1993, a tsunami of publicity announced the coming of the volume that would finally silence all of the doubts about and critiques of the Warren Commission. Entitled, rather pretentiously, Case Closed, it was published by major publisher Random House, and it was accompanied by a publicity machine that started with a featured spot on an ABC newsmagazine where– Posner was served up softballs by Lynn Scherr; and a cover story in U.S. News and World Report, which, somehow, could not find one major fault in the book (as we shall see that is an amazing negative accomplishment.)

    Posner’s was clearly meant as an unmitigated, no holds barred, almost venomous prosecution brief against Lee Harvey Oswald. No doubt was expressed, no slack was cut, no ambiguity fit in to Posner’s work. How could it considering the title? This was doubly confounding to skeptics since at the time his book was published, the Assassination Records Review Board had not begun its work yet. There were literally millions of pages of documents no one had seen so how could Posner be so sure he was correct? As we shall see, he wasn’t sure and he had to be corrected. But that has not altered his opinion of anything. When major evidence changes, yet the prosecution insists it was correct, then clearly an agenda is in place, and justice is not part of it. This is why we have judges to overrule overly zealous prosecutors.

    One of the notable things about Posner’s book is how much of a personal attack it is upon Oswald. Who does he rely upon for much of this personal vitriol? None other than Priscilla Johnson… Another source is Ruth Paine. Another is John Lattimer. As the reader can see from other profiles, these are not the most unbiased or credible sources. Posner just used them indiscriminately. He also used Hugh Aynesworth. In the profile on this site of Aynesworth, we mention the “attempt’ by Oswald to do away with Richard Nixon. We showed how this was probably foisted on Marina Oswald by Aynesworth sometime in 1964. We also showed why not even the Warren Commission could accept it. Guess what? Posner did. In the paperback edition of his book (p. 119) he treats this episode straightforwardly, without reservations. The tell-tale sign that he got it from Aynesworth is that he uses the same newspaper heading that Aynesworth gave to his friend Homes Alexander for his 1964 article. Alexander noted in 1964 that an article in the Dallas Morning News featured a story that was headed “Nixon Calls for Decision to Force Reds out of Cuba”. This is precisely the story that Posner uses. He then adds that Nixon was not in Dallas “the day” Marina said he was, implying that Marina was off by a day or two when she was actually off by nearly seven months. He also discounts the fact that there was never any announcement of Nixon arriving around this time by saying that there was an announcement that Johnson was and Oswald confused the two. Finally he argues that Marina was strong enough to keep Oswald barricaded in the bathroom by bracing herself against the opposite wall. This is ludicrous to anyone who has ever met Marina. She is positively petite, actually dainty, being a little over five feet tall and, at the time of the assassination and probably about 120 pounds. Posner never notes the Alexander/Aynesworth column, the then association between Aynesworth and Marina, Aynesworth’s mercenary and clearly ideological aims, or Marina’s plight and later recantation of much of what she said when she was under the influence of Aynesworth and Priscilla Johnson. He could have done all of this. He mentioned none of it.

    Posner is just as bad and irresponsible on the medical evidence as he is about Oswald. In the chapter entitled “He Has a Death Look” he uses people like Michael Baden to discredit the doctors in Dallas who say they saw a large hole in the rear of Kennedy’s head. Posner is intent on getting rid of that hole because it would give strong evidence of there being a shot from the front of Kennedy’s car. In fact, he admits this himself about the hole in the back of the head: “If true, this not only contradicted the findings of the autopsy team but was evidence that the President was probably shot from the front…. (ibid. p. 307) He then spends pages trying to discredit the doctors and attendants at Parkland Hospital who say they saw this hole. The agenda being that if he does so, there will be no evidence for it left.

    But the problem for Posner was that he spoke too soon. When the ARRB declassified the House Select Committee on Assassinations medical files, we found out something Posner did not know and had not bothered to query about. (Understandable, considering what he was trying to do.) The doctors who examined the body in Bethesda, and who had it most of the night, agreed with the doctors in Dallas about the wound in the rear of the head. In fact, nearly as many witnesses at Bethesda agreed with the witnesses at Parkland. Gary Aguilar tallied them all up and it now comes to over 40 witnesses, fairly equally distributed between the two locations. So Posner’s thesis, which he spends over six pages developing, is undermined by the new files. So much for his title.

    Then there was the pronouncement in his book about there being no evidence that connected Ferrie with Oswald (p. 426) This was simply wrong as we show elsewhere. But when Posner was confronted with a photo of the two together, he had a hard time swallowing it and so he tried to weasel out of it by saying that it probably came from Jim Garrison’s office and that the DA had been shown to have doctored two other photos. This is in keeping with his penchant in smearing personages when the evidence turns against him. The problem here is that 1.) Garrison never had the photograph in question, and 2.) There is no evidence of him altering photographs.

    Finally to show how indiscriminate and undiscerning, how cynical Posner is about what his audience knows, toward the end of his book he quotes Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel of the HSCA, about what was in the classified files that he helped lock up for over 50 years: “I know everything in those files, and there is no smoking gun in there. People who expect major revelations will be disappointed. Everything of importance got into our report.” (ibid p. 469) This is an amazing quote for Posner to use on several counts:

    1. Just five pages earlier, Posner spent a long section on his book discrediting Blakey and his conclusions about a Mafia conspiracy. Now he trots out the man he just discredited as an authority on what he did not reveal.
    2. Blakey has just told him that he “knew everything in those files”. Posner does not challenge the statement. Yet, even at the time Posner’s book was written the National Archives had estimated that there were about two million pages of classified files they had to work on declassifying. The actual number turned out to be even higher. Yet Posner does not question the astounding claim that Blakey read all this stuff and still-15 year later– “knew everything” in it.
    3. It was Blakey’s report that covered up the point above about the Bethesda doctors agreeing with the Parkland doctors on the wound in the rear of Kennedy’s head. A tenet that their own (hidden) documents and interviews contravened. The two major authors of the Final Report were Blakey and Richard Billings.
    4. It was Posner himself who wrote, as we have seen, that this wound placement would constitute evidence that Kennedy was hit from the front. Meaning the fatal shot came from there and Oswald could not have fired it.

    Without exaggeration, today, almost every page of Case Closed abounds with quotes, comments, or deductions as flatulent as this one. To go through the entire book and correct them all, as I have here, would literally take a volume longer than Posner’s original work. Yet as we show here, in our links, the critiques of his indefensible book abound on the Internet. Yet, Jennings and Obenhaus either never bothered to look them up, or they were never interested. Which is worse according to a journalist’s credo?

  • How Gerald Posner Got Rich and Famous: Or, Bob Loomis and the Anti-Conspiracy Posse

    Although Gerald Posner had written several books prior to 1993’s Case Closed, he had never achieved any kind of broad notoriety, broadcast exposure, or large sales prior to that book. And although there had been other Warren Commission volumes circulating at the time, e.g. Jim Moore’s Conspiracy of One, none ever became nearly as famous, or infamous, as Posner’s. Why?

    The answer is: Robert Loomis.

    To understand who Loomis is and how far his reach extends in the publishing business, one must go back and study the origins and sad end of one of the very best books written on the Robert Kennedy assassination. That book — The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy — was written by Bill Turner and Jonn Christian and was published in 1978 by Random House. The book had been a special project of Jason Epstein, one of the more literate, intelligent, and creative editors on the publishing scene. The book that emerged was an excellent one in the field. Epstein was quite content with the result. He wrote attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who played a feature role in the book, “I hope you are as pleased as we are with the way it turned out. The jacket looks great, but more important is the tough case that is made between the covers.” And Epstein had plans for a good publicity campaign, which never really materialized.

    In an unexpected reversal the book, for all intents and purposes, was withdrawn from circulation. No paperback rights were sold. Random House used the possibility of a lawsuit by an organized crime figure mentioned in the book as the excuse. But the book had already been vetted by Random House’s lawyers for libel and the lawsuit never was filed. When a friend of Turner’s, Betsy Langman, called Epstein about the book’s reversal of fortune, he replied, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    But someone at Random House did know what happened to the book. He was the man who had shepherded Robert Houghton’s previous book on the case, entitled Special Unit Senator, through Random House. Houghton had been in charge of the secret investigation of the RFK case inside of LAPD. An investigation that, by any objective standard, was a complete and shameful cover-up of the true facts of that murder. Houghton’s sponsor at Random House was named Robert Loomis. Loomis had told others that the Turner/Christian book had been withdrawn and burned. When alerted to the possibility of a lawsuit, he brushed it off cavalierly with words to the effect of: “So what?”

    Perhaps no other person in the publishing world has been more vigilant against any real investigation of the assassinations of the sixties, or of exposes of conspiracies in general, than Robert Loomis. Another client of his was the late James Phelan. Phelan was always friendly with the intelligence community and was exposed in the nineties as having done journalistic assignments for the government, like informing on Jim Garrison to the FBI. In the seventies, he did a book for Loomis entitled Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years. There had always been rumors and indications that Hughes had been working closely with the CIA, so many were interested as to what had happened to the eccentric millionaire in his later years and the odd circumstances of his death. Loomis made Phelan’s book a top secret project for Random House. Only Loomis and one other person at the firm knew about it. All dealings between New York City, and Naples, California (where Phelan rented a cottage to write the book) were done either in person or by hand-delivery. There was no mail or phone contact. The two mains sources for Phelan were two lower level employees in the Hughes empire.

    Phelan’s book is pretty much worthless today. It basically set the rather deceiving model of the bizarre lifestyle of the long-haired fruity Hughes who got more and more neurotic as time went on. None of the intricate ties between Hughes and the CIA, for example, in regard to the use of an island for Cuban exile training, or, another example, his connection to the Watergate scandal is touched upon. Phelan wrote another book for Loomis called Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels, an anthology of essays which includes a section on the JFK case which is basically a rehash of his anti-Garrison writings that had appeared in 1967.

    In the nineties, four more books emerged dealing with Oswald and the Kennedy assassination, Kennedy’s presidency, and the death of Martin Luther King. All were sponsored by or directly related to Loomis and his clients. All received a lot of hype, which the Turner-Christian book did not. Loomis sponsored Case Closed for Random House. He apparently knew Posner through an earlier effort of his entitled Hitler’s Children. As one can clearly discern through reading the footnotes, Posner’s Kennedy assassination book was a rush job that was done in the wake of the furor surrounding Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK. Posner told Jim Marrs after a debate in Dallas that Loomis approached him about the book at that time and told him he would have the cooperation of the CIA on the project. This explains how Posner got access to KGB turncoat Yuri Nosenko, who was put on a CIA retainer in the late seventies. The book was timed for release on the 30th anniversary of JFK’s death which explains why it was such a clear hurry-up job. (See attached articles for a chronicle of only some of the many, many errors is this hapless book.) Loomis also commissioned Norman Mailer’s concoction of a book Oswald’s Tale, done with longtime FBI informant on the Kennedy case Lawrence Schiller. Mailer tried to make the case that the book was warranted by his access to some of the Russian files on Oswald that he had access to from the newly formed government of Belarus. Yet, according to John Tunheim of the ARRB, there is an approximately five foot high stack of documents that no one has seen on Oswald. Not even the ARRB. Mailer got nowhere near the majority of these files. Predictably, Mailer’s book presented the probability of the case against Oswald as the lone assassin.

    Further on into the nineties, Posner came out with another book on an infamous assassination of the sixties. This one was on the Martin Luther King case. It was called Killing the Dream and also made the same single-minded case against James Earl Ray as Posner did against Lee Harvey Oswald. He told one interviewer: “There is no question. Ray was the shooter. That’s how I see the evidence, how anybody objective has to see the evidence.” To put it mildly, this is a rather gross overstatement as can be seen by reading any credible book on the King murder, like say Harold Weisberg’s Frame-Up or Ray’s own Who Killed Martin Luther King? Let us not forget that in the only two real trials of this case, the jury decided for conspiracy; namely the HBO mock trial in 1993, and the civil trial held in Memphis by the King family vs. Loyd Jowers in 1999.

    Finally, let us consider Seymour Hersh and his embarrassment of a book on the Kennedy presidency, The Dark Side of Camelot. Hersh is a darling of the so-called liberal print media. People like Jacob Weisberg and Eric Alterman defended his career and his awful book when it was being attacked in so many quarters when it came out in 1997. These commentators, and just about everyone else, ignored the fact that Hersh’s career has always been quite questionable in his relationship to the CIA and his reliance on sources there. Also, that from the beginning Hersh’s book publishing career has been advanced by Bob Loomis. This whole rather strange career with Loomis and the questionable judgments and maneuvers Hersh has done in that career are examined in The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (pgs. 364-373).

    If one calls Loomis’ office one will learn from his secretary that he spends a lot of time in Washington D.C., even though Random House’s main offices are in New York. This probably began because his former wife Gloria had once worked for the CIA. She was the personal secretary to none other than James Angleton, the legendary counter-intelligence chief of the Agency for 20 years. He is also the man who many writers and researchers, like John Newman and Lisa Pease, believe was handling the Oswald file in the CIA. This undisclosed fact would then explain how Posner got the CIA clearances to talk to people no one has access to. It also helps explain why Loomis does what he does. But wouldn’t it have been more honest to the reader of Posner’s book if he would have explained that it had been commissioned by someone whose former wife had worked for the man who was probably running Oswald as an intelligence agent?

    Did Posner make a Faustian deal with Loomis? A quid pro quo in political parlance? Consider the similarities between these two quotes dug up by attorney and longtime Kennedy researcher Roger Feinman: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in the government, and that, to me, is a crime.” (Bob Loomis, Publisher’s Weekly, 5/3/93) “But I also think that the conspiracy theorists have made us lose faith in government.” (Gerald Posner, Dallas Morning News, 11/21/93).

    Coincidence or conspiracy?

  • Gus Russo: ABC’s Unsurprising Choice As Research Consultant

    As a longtime student of the death of the 35th President, I wish I could say I was surprised to learn ABC had chosen Gus Russo as one of its research consultants for its broadcast commemorating the fortieth anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination. It would have been a surprise if ABC had chosen more wisely. Uneven scholarship by the mainstream media on that murder is almost an established tradition.

    By way of background, I am a practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco. I am also one of the few non-government physicians ever allowed by the Kennedy family to examine the still-secret JFK autopsy X-rays and photographs. I testified before the Assassinations Records Review Board [ARRB] and was mentioned by name in the ARRB’s Final Report. [1] With Pittsburgh coroner, Cyril Wecht, MD, JD as my co-author, I wrote a 100+ page section of a book published in 2002 by one of the Dallas physicians who treated JFK in Dallas. [2]

    While there is no gainsaying that, as author of the book Live by the Sword, as lead reporter for Frontline’s 1993 documentary on Oswald, and as a reporter for ABC’s Dangerous World documentary, Russo has earned considerable respect among some in the mainstream as a JFK assassination authority. But Russo, unfortunately, hasn’t earned that respect from many careful students of the topic, both pro- and anti-conspiracy. And for good reason.

    As an example of the latter, I offer Max Holland, a Warren Commission loyalist and a contributing editor to The Nation magazine. Besides his contributions to The Nation, Holland’s writings on the Kennedy case have been published in American History, The Wilson Quarterly, The Boston Globe, and American Heritage Magazine, to name but a few. [3]

    Holland has written that Russo, “appears to be nearly incapable of discrimination and not much inclined to take a hard look at sources he likes … Russo is so intent on proving his thesis, which is that Oswald acted because the Kennedy brothers were trying to get Castro, that he routinely recites half-truths, and on occasion even bends a quote to mean something entirely different from what was intended.”

    Holland provides this telling example: “[I]n testimony before the Warren Commission, Michael Paine, whose wife had befriended Marina Oswald, told of a conversation he had with Oswald about Lee’s subscription to The Daily Worker, official newspaper of the US Communist Party. Oswald, ‘said that you could tell … what they [the party] (sic) wanted you to do by reading between the lines,’ Paine testified. In Russo’s book, Oswald’s remark to Paine becomes, ‘You could tell what they (the Kennedys) (sic) wanted to do [i.e., reinvade Cuba] (sic) by reading between the lines.” [4]

    Holland concludes that, “Russo leaves out anything and everything that contradicts his preferred thesis,” and that, “Russo has one foot firmly planted in the camp of those who use the assassination as a political cafeteria, taking a fact here and a fact there, but only insofar as they further a thesis.” [5] Since Holland, like Russo, is decidedly pro-Warren Commission, his assessment cannot blithely be dismissed as mere crankiness from a conspiracy crackpot. Moreover, the pattern Holland has identified is readily apparent in Mr. Russo’s handling of JFK’s medical and autopsy evidence, a subject with which I have some familiarity.

    ‘The Kennedys attempted to limit the extent of the autopsy, and to rush those performing it’ [6]

    Arguing that Robert and Jackie Kennedy set out to thwart an honest investigation of Jack’s death, Russo claims that perhaps even the shortcomings of JFK’s autopsy were the family’s fault because of constraints they put on the surgeons in the morgue. Mr. Russo’s evidence? Not official documents and credible witness accounts, which tell a different story entirely, but the uncorroborated, and contradicted, hearsay comments of a physician-witness to JFK’s autopsy, Dr. Robert Karnei. Tellingly, Mr. Russo did not interview Dr. Karnei himself. Instead, he credits statements attributed to Dr. Karnei that were supposedly recorded in 1991 by the controversial, pro-conspiracy author, Mr. Harrison Livingstone: “Robert [Kennedy] (sic) was really limiting the autopsy … [the pathologists] were really handicapped that night with regards to performing the autopsy.”[7]

    Borrowing from Holland, Russo leaves out anything and everything that contradicts his preferred thesis, including the abundant official evidence that the Kennedy family did not interfere. That includes the contradictory account from the very source of Russo’s allegation, Dr. Karnei! In a memo written four years before the hearsay interview Russo proffers, an attorney for the House Select Committee counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported officially that Dr. Karnei had “said he didn’t know who was running things,” and that Dr. Karnei said he did not, “know if any limitations were placed on how the autopsy was to be done.” [8]

    Ironically, Mr. Russo undermines his own case by recounting a statement from the only forensic pathologist to attend JFK, Dr. Pierre Finck: “The Kennedy family did not want us to examine the abdominal cavity, but the abdominal cavity was examined.” [9] The source for this quote, which Russo does not give, was an interview with Dr. Finck published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993. [10] Since JFK suffered no abdominal injuries whatsoever, even if Dr. Finck’s memory was true this particular family request doesn’t seem all that sinister. And in any case, the military ignored this alleged demand – Kennedy was completely disemboweled. [11]

    So, if Russo has settled anything it is not that RFK/Jackie lacerated the autopsy, but that they were so powerless they couldn’t even budge the military to keep its scalpels away from the uninjured parts of JFK’s corpse. Setting Finck’s comment aside, Russo ignores evidence that undermines his preferred thesis of family meddling. Examples abound:

    • The House Select Committee reported that during an interview with the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, “[Admiral Calvin B.] Galloway said that he was present throughout the autopsy,” and that, “no orders were being sent in from outside the autopsy room either by phone or by person.” (my italics) [12]
    • In a sworn affidavit executed for the HSCA on November 28, 1978, JFK’s personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, claimed, “I directed the autopsy surgeon to do a complete autopsy and take the time necessary for completion.” [13]
    • Under oath to the ARRB, JFK’s chief autopsist, Dr. James H. Humes, admitted that Dr. Burkley, the supposed conduit of the family’s constrictions, seemed keen to move things along, but “as far as telling me what to do or how to do it, absolutely, irrevocably, no.” [By way of explanation, Humes made the obvious point that, since Burkley was not a pathologist, “he wouldn’t presume to do such a thing.”] [14]
    • Dr. Humes’ second-in-command, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, told the ARRB that they were “not at all” in any rush or under any compulsion to hurry. [15] “It was always an extension of the autopsy,” that was encouraged, “rather than further restrictions.” [16]
    • As an important legal matter, RFK left blank the space marked “restrictions” in the permit he signed for his brother’s autopsy.

    Finally, Mr. Russo never mentions that in 1978 the Select Committee explored the question of the family’s role in detail, concluding that, other than (reasonably) requesting the exam be done as expeditiously as possible, the Kennedys did not interfere with the autopsy. [See full HSCA quote in the footnotes.] [17] All this material is in the open record, yet to read Mr. Russo one would not know it even existed.

    Would that the above example did not typify Russo’s scholarship. But in just what I know of JFK’s medical/autopsy evidence, I must side with Holland.

    The bent fibers at Kennedy’s shirtfront proved a bullet had exited his throat

    Mr. Russo wrote, “Kennedy’s shirt displayed a bullet hole in the front of the neck band with the fibers splayed out — still more evidence of an exiting bullet.” [18] Unwisely, Mr. Russo takes at face value what Mr. J. Edgar Hoover wrote the Warren Commission in 1964: “The hole in the front of the shirt was a ragged, slit-like hole and the ends of the torn threads around the hole were bent outward. These characteristics are typical of an exit hole for a projectile.” [19] Could Mr. Russo really not know that FBI and House Select Committee officials had long since debunked Mr. Hoover about this? “The FBI laboratory’s initial description,” the HSCA reported, “did not offer evidence concerning the direction of the fibers.” [20] The FBI’s initial lab report preceded Hoover’s March 23, 1964 letter. In other words, when the FBI lab first examined JFK’s shirt, it did not report fibers were bent. The bent-fibers story premiered in Hoover’s letter. But as Warren skeptic Mr. Harold Weisberg has noted, even in 1964 the Bureau was so cautious about this “evidence” that it essentially contradicted the head of the FBI. [21]

    During his Warren Commission testimony, FBI agent Mr. Robert Frazier said that the outward bend of the shirt fibers was indicative of exit only “assuming that when I first examined the shirt it was … it had not been altered from the condition it was in at the time the hole was made.” [21a] In 1978, the Select Committee’s forensic experts echoed agent Frazier’s caution: “[T]he panel itself cannot assess evidentiary significance to the fiber direction because of the numerous intervening examinations.” [22]

    Thus, Mr. Russo has selected evidence he needs and has kept his readers in the dark about inconvenient evidence that is much more compelling.

    The abrasion collar at his throat wound gives forensic proof a bullet exited there

    In an extraordinary example of his [and his editors’] carelessness, Mr. Russo proffers flawed forensics to argue a bullet exited JFK’s throat. He writes, “Exit wounds leave distinct ‘abrasion collars’ (sic) which were detected in the Kennedy photos of his throat (the tracheostomy had left one edge of the exit wound intact.) (sic).” [23]

    Hilariously, Russo has it exactly backward.

    Exit wounds do not have abrasion rings, or “collars” as they are sometimes called; entrance wounds do. One needn’t have any profound grasp of forensics to appreciate this simple and key distinction, only some minimal familiarity with one of the better-known controversies surrounding JFK’s autopsy evidence. It was the presence of an abrasion ring in Kennedy’s back wound that was said by the forensic experts of the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee to be evidence a bullet had entered JFK through his back. [24]

    Overlooked evidence

    Though touching repeatedly on the subject of Kennedy’s autopsy, Russo ignores many pro-conspiracy facts unearthed by the Assassinations Records Review Board. For example, on August 2, 1998, the Associated Press reported an important ARRB finding: “Under oath [before the ARRB], Dr. Humes, finally acknowledged under persistent questioning – in testimony that differs from what he told the Warren Commission – that he had destroyed both his notes taken at the autopsy and the first draft of the autopsy report.” [25] In other words, Kennedy’s pathologist had destroyed invaluable original autopsy notes and lied to the Warren Commission about it. [26]

    The ARRB also discovered that JFK’s pathologists and one autopsy photographer had signed an affidavit asserting that none of JFK’s autopsy photographs were missing [27]despite the fact that all of JFK’s pathologists, both autopsy photographers, a White House photographer and a National Photographic Center employee later testified that photographs taken at Kennedy’s autopsy were missing; [28] that the government had issued misleading public statements regarding two aspects of JFK’s controversial autopsy photographs: First, that witnesses who were present at JFK’s autopsy had endorsed the images [29] when, declassified files show, they had, in fact, refuted them. [30] Second, that Kennedy’s autopsy photographs had been authenticated when suppressed files showed that the extant images failed the only authentication test ever conducted on the pictures. [31] And, finally, the ARRB concluded that there was evidence that there had been two brain examinations, of two, different JFK brains. [32] Given the enormous complexity of the Kennedy case, one can appreciate that, inevitably, some errors and oversights are bound to occur in even the most carefully researched book. Allowance for such shortcomings is necessary and appropriate. But the errors and omissions I’ve identified here I believe reflect more than just the momentary lapses that commonly occur during a gigantic and painstaking task. They reflect precisely what Max Holland has so astutely described as Mr. Russo’s unfortunate penchant for using the assassination as a political cafeteria, taking a fact here and a fact there, but only insofar as they further a thesis.

    With the press so often accused these days of carelessness in fact-checking it is, alas, scarcely surprising to see ABC settling for an author with so proven a record of carelessness that it is as obvious to Warren Commission loyalists as it is to Commission skeptics like me.

    Gary L. Aguilar, MD San Francisco, California 6 December 2003

    Notes

    1. Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998, p. 131.

    2. Gary L. Aguilar, MD, Cyril Wecht, MD, JD. The Medical Case for Conspiracy. In: Trauma Room One, by Charles Crenshaw, MD. New York: Paraview Press, 2001, p. 170 – 286.

    3. Max Holland. After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination. Reviews in American History 22(1994).

    Max Holland. The Key to the Warren Report. American Heritage Magazine. November, 1995.

    Adam Pertman. Researcher says Cold War shaped Warren Commission conclusions. The Boston Globe, 12/8/98.

    Max Holland. Paranoia Unbound. Wilson Quarterly, Winter, 1994. (See also Max Holland. The Key to the Warren Report. American Heritage Magazine. November, 1995, p. 50.)

    Max Holland. Stokers of JFK Fantasies. Op-Ed. The Boston Globe, 12/6/98, p. D-7.

    4. Max Holland. The Docudrama that is JFK. The Nation. 12/7/98, p. 30.

    5. Max Holland. The Docudrama that is JFK. The Nation. 12/7/98, p. 30 – 31.

    6. Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    7. Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    In arguing that Robert Kennedy limited JFK’s post mortem examination. Russo quotes, in High Treason, [1992, p. 182] that Robert Karnei, MD–a Bethesda pathologist who was in JFK’s morgue but not part of the surgical team–claimed the Kennedys were limiting the autopsy.

    8. In the ARRB-released, 8/29/77 memo from the HSCA’s D. Andy Purdy, JD [ARRB MD # 61], Purdy writes: “Dr. Karnei doesn’t ‘ … know if any limitations were placed on how the autopsy was to be done.’ He said he didn’t know who was running things.”) (p. 3).

    9. Gus Russo in: Live by the Sword. Baltimore. Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    10. Dennis Breo. JFK’s death, part III – Dr. Finck speaks out: ‘two bullets, from the rear.’ JAMA Vol. 268(13):1752, October 7, 1992.

    11. Breo, Dennis. JFK’s death – the plain truth from the MDs who did the autopsy. JAMA, May 27, 1992, vol. 267:2794, ff.

    12. Interview of Admiral Calvin B. Galloway by HSCA counsel Mark Flanagan, 5/17/78. HSCA Record Number 180 – 10078 – 10460, Agency File # 009409.

    13. Sworn affidavit of Vice Admiral George G. Burkley. HSCA record # 180 – 10104 – 10271, Agency File # 013416, p. 3.

    14. ARRB testimony James H. Humes, College Park, Maryland, p. 32 – 33.

    15. ARRB testimony J. Thornton Boswell, College Park Maryland, 2/26/96, p. 29.

    16. ARRB testimony J. Thornton Boswell, College Park Maryland, 2/26/96, p. 30.

    17. HSCA. Vol. 7:14:

    “(79) The Committee also investigated the possibility that the Kennedy family may have unduly influenced the pathologists once the autopsy began, possibly by transmitting messages by telephone into the autopsy room. Brig. Gen. Godfrey McHugh, then an Air Force military aide to the President, informed the committee that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth O’Donnell, a presidential aide, frequently telephoned him during the autopsy from the 17th floor suite. McHugh said that on all occasions, Kennedy and O’Donnell asked only to speak with him. They inquired about the results, why the autopsy was consuming so much time, and the need for speed and efficiency, while still performing the required examinations. McHugh said he forwarded this information to the pathologists, never stating or implying that the doctors should limit the autopsy in any manner, but merely reminding them to work as efficiently and quickly as possible.” (emphasis added)

    18. (Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 468.)

    19. Excerpt of letter from Hoover to Warren Commissioner General Counsel J. Lee Rankin reproduced by HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:90. Full letter reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, p. 600.

    20. HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:91.

    21. Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, pp. 599-601.

    21a. Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, pp. 599-601. Frazier’s Commission testimony appears at: 5H61.

    22. HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:91.

    23. (Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 468.)

    24. A good discussion of “abrasion rings” and entrance wounds is to be found in a book by the noted forensic authority Vincent DiMaio, MD entitled, “Gunshot Wounds.” London: CRC Press, 2000, p. 70 -71. Discussions of the meaning of an abrasion ring in JFK’s back wound are to be found in the 1968 Clark Panel report, in the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report and in the 1978 House Select Committee’s report – available by request.

    25. Mike Feinsalber, “JFK Autopsy Files Are Incomplete.” Associated Press, August 2, 1998, 11:48 a.m. EDT.

    26. See “CERTIFICATE” signed by “J. J. Humes,” 11/24/63, and cosigned by George Burkley, MD. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem. Frederick, Maryland, 1975, p. 524.

      See “CERTIFICATE” signed by “J. J. Humes,” 11/24/63, and cosigned by George Burkley, MD,. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem. Frederick, Maryland, 1975, p. 525

    27. Report of Inspection by Naval Medical Staff on 11/1/66 at National Archives of X-rays and Photographs of President John F. Kennedy. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem, p.573.

    28. In formerly secret testimony first taken 20 years ago, Dr. Finck described to the Select Committee how he had photographed the beveling in JFK’s skull bone to prove that the low wound in occipital bone was an entrance wound. As he explained, only images of bone, and not soft tissue (scalp) images, would have shown cratering, or beveling. (Soft tissue will not demonstrate beveling, just as a BB “wound” through a carpet will not show the beveling of one through a plate of glass.) In the following exchange, Dr. Finck was being asked by the Select Committee’s forensic consultants whether the images being shown were those Dr. Finck had claimed were missing:

    (HSCA counsel D. Andy ) Purdy: “We have here a black and white blow up of that same spot (a spot on the rear of JFK’s scalp he claimed was the location of the bullet’s entrance). You previously mentioned that your attempt here was to photograph the crater, I think was the word that you used.”

    Finck: “In the bone, not in the scalp, because to determine the direction of the projectile the bone is a very good source of information so I emphasize the photographs of the crater seen from the inside the skull. What you are showing me is soft tissue wound (sic) in the scalp.”

    A few moments later, the following exchange occurred:

    Charles Petty, MD: “If I understand you correctly, Dr. Finck, you wanted particularly to have a photograph made of the external aspect of the skull from the back to show that there was no cratering to the outside of the skull.” Finck: “Absolutely.”

    Petty: “Did you ever see such a photograph?”

    Finck: “I don’t think so and I brought with me memorandum referring to the examination of photographs in 1967… and as I can recall I never saw pictures of the outer aspect of the wound of entry in the back of the head and inner aspect in the skull in order to show a crater although I was there asking for these photographs. I don’t remember seeing those photographs.”

    Petty: “All right. Let me ask you one other question. In order to expose that area where the wound was present in the bone, did you have to or did someone have to dissect the scalp off of the bone in order to show this?”

    Finck: “Yes.”

    Petty: “Was this a difficult dissection and did it go very low into the head so as to expose the external aspect of the posterior cranial fascia (sic – meant “fossa”)?”

    Finck: “I don’t remember the difficulty involved in separating the scalp from the skull but this was done in order to have a clear view of the outside and inside to show the crater from the inside … the skull had to be separated from it in order to show in the back of the head the wound in the bone.” (HSCA interview with Finck, p.90-91. Agency File 013617)

    Evidence that these key documentary photographs of JFK’s fatal wound were indeed taken dates to the Warren Commission. During his Commission testimony, while discussing the beveling that was visible in the bone where the bullet entered, Commander Humes claimed, “This wound then had the characteristics of wound of entrance from this direction through the two tables of the skull.” Arlan Specter: “When you say ‘this direction,’ will you specify that direction in relationship to the skull?”

    Humes: “At that point I mean only from without the skull to within … and incidentally photographs illustrating this [beveling] phenomenon from both the external surface of the skull and from the internal surface were prepared.” (Warren Commission Vol.2:363)

    (Another witness supported Finck’s contention that he had worked with the photographer that night. Dr. Robert Karnie, MD, a Bethesda pathologist who was present during the autopsy, was interviewed by the HSCA. It reported, “He [Karnei] said he does ‘remember him [Finck] working with probes and arranging for photographs.’” – HSCA Agency File # 002198, p. 6.)

    The fact no such skull photographs currently exist is a problem whose significance was apparently realized very early on. Dr. Humes’ testimony about these missing images appears to have been what was being referred to in a suppressed 1967 LBJ memo that reported, “There is this unfortunate reference in the Warren Commission report by Dr. Hinn (almost certainly Humes, there was no “Dr. Hinn,” or any other doctor with a name like it) to a(n autopsy) picture that just does not exist as far as we know.” Alternatively, the memo may have been referring to photographs of the interior of JFK’s chest which Humes also discussed with the Warren Commission, and which are also missing. (Source is from memo titled, “President Johnson’s notes on Conversation with Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark – January 26, 1967 – 6:29 PM.” Obtained by Kathy Cunningham from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Copy available by request.)

    In a once-secret memo, HSCA counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported that chief autopsy photographer, “(John) STRINGER (sic) said it was his recollection that all the photographs he had taken were not present in 1966 (when Stringer was first saw the photographsHSCA rec. # 180-10093-10429. Agency file # 002070, p. 11. Stringer apparently was not satisfied with the explanation given him for the missing photos, for the HSCA reported, “He (Stringer) noted that the receipt he had said some of the film holders (sic) had no film in one side of the cassettes. He said the receipt said this happened in two or three of the film holders where one side only was allegedly loaded. He said he could understand it if the film holders were reported to have poorly exposed or defective film but could not believe that there were any sides on the film holders which were not loaded with film….”

    There are no photographs of the interior of Kennedy’s chest in the “complete” set of autopsy images at the National Archives. However every autopsy participant who was asked recalled that photographs were taken of the interior of JFK’s body, as they should have been to document the passage of the non-fatal bullet through JFK’s chest. Stringer told the HSCA he recalled taking “at least two exposures of the body cavity.” A. Purdy. HSCA rec. # 180-10093-10429. Agency file # 002070, p. 2.

    An HSCA memo reported that James Humes, MD, JFK’s chief autopsy pathologist, “… specifically recall(ed photographs) … were taken of the President’s chest … (these photographs ) do not exist.” HSCA record # 180-10093-10429), Agency file # 002070, p. 17.

    Regarding J. Thornton Boswell, MD, the pathologist who was second in command after Humes, the HSCA claimed “… he (Boswell) thought they photographed ‘… the exposed thoracic cavity and lung …’ but (he) doesn’t remember ever seeing those photographs.” A. Purdy. HSCA rec# 180-10093-10430. Agency file # 002071-p. 6

    Robert Karnei, MD, a physician witness who was not a member of the autopsy team, told the HSCA, “He (Karnei) recalls them putting the probe in and taking pictures (the body was on the side at the time) (sic).”A. Purdy. HSCA, JFK Collection. RG #233, file #002198, p.5.

    Floyd Reibe, the assistant autopsy photographer, was reported to have told the HSCA, “he thought he took about six pictures–‘I think it was three film packs’–of internal portions of the body.” In: David, Lifton, Best Evidence. New York: Carroll ∓ Graf, 1980, p. 638.

    29. The question naturally arises, did anyone ever see autopsy images that have since disappeared? The answer, apparently, is Yes. In a previously suppressed interview, former White House photographer, Robert Knudsen, told the HSCA he developed negatives from JFK’s autopsy which he examined in the course of his work on November 23, 1963. During the HSCA’s investigation, he was shown the complete photographic inventory. Kundsen repeatedly insisted, against pressure, that in 1963 he saw at least one image not in the inventory he was shown in 1978 – an image with a metal probe through JFK’s body that entered the back at a lower position than it exited through the throat wound. HSCA Agency File # 014028, and HSCA Agency File # 002198, p. 5.

    30. House Select Committee on Assassinations, vol. 7:36-39.

    31. See extensive discussion in essay by G. Aguilar and C. Wecht entitled, “The Medical Case for Conspiracy,” in: Crenshaw, C. Trauma Room One. New York: Paraview Press, 2001, pp. 208 – 211 and pp. 230-232.

    32. Lardner, George. Archive Photos Not of JFK’s Brain, Concludes Aide to Review Board. Washington Post, 9/29/98, p. A-15. Available at:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfk/jfk1110.htm”

  • Gus Russo’s Phantom Pulitzer Nomination

    Gus Russo’s Phantom Pulitzer Nomination

    pulitzer

    In three places on the Internet plus the jacket of his second book, it is proclaimed that Live by the Sword was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. There is a problem with this alleged fact. The people who hand out the Pulitzer nominations aren’t aware of it.

    If you go to their site, you will see that no book by Gus Russo has ever been officially nominated for a Pulitzer. If you call up the people at Columbia University School of Journalism, who administer and maintain the Pulitzer Prize nominations, they aren’t aware of it.

    If you ask them about the process, they will tell you they have a board that hands out nominations in certain categories. That is an official nomination. They will also tell you that many authors and publishers will submit a book for a nomination. This is not a nomination to them. It is a submission. By the same logic, if a film is submitted for an Oscar nomination and is turned down, one cannot say then that it was nominated, no matter how ardently the nomination was pursued.

    Many, many people brought this misrepresentation to the attention of David Westin and Peter Jennings at ABC. They had to have known about it. They have yet to acknowledge it.

    Everyone else can see the irony of hiring a man to investigate the crime of the century who is mendacious about his own book and credentials. Would it have been hard to predict the result of his investigation?

    russo pulitz 2

  • “Peter, Meet my friend and assistant Gus Russo”

    “Peter, Meet my friend and assistant Gus Russo”

    jennings
    Peter Jennings

    Why did ABC, Peter Jennings, and executive producer Tom Yellin use Gus Russo as their chief consultant on this program and how did Russo originally come to their attention? Why did they then allow Russo to bring in his pal Dale Myers and his already discredited computer simulation?

    The answer to that question appears to be: Seymour Hersh.

    As many recall, about seven years ago ABC bought the TV broadcast rights to Hersh’s book on John Kennedy entitled, The Dark Side of Camelot. From most reports, the main reason they purchased the book was because of a supposed sensational document which showed a secret deal involving Marilyn Monroe, mobster Sam Giancana, and members of the Kennedy clan including JFK.

    Upon release, the book was nearly universally panned, most notably by Gary Wills in The New York Review of Books. Only two reviews were in any way positive. After panning the book in an initial review, The New York Times brought in longtime CIA flack Thomas Powers to do a more sympathetic review which concluded that Kennedy deserved to get his head blown off in Dealey Plaza. The New Yorker, which also has a history of obfuscating the facts about the assassination, brought in Gore Vidal. Vidal has been a Kennedy basher since Bobby Kennedy banned him from the White House for reportedly drunken behavior and lewd language. That was about it for the reviewing accolades.

    There was a good reason for the mostly negative reception. Hersh used an array of questionable tactics in his research and reporting to perform what any objective reviewer would have to call a hatchet job. These were exposed prior to the book’s publication by Robert Sam Anson in the November 1997 issue of Vanity Fair. Others were discovered by various reviewers like Dr. David Wrone. To use some new examples (Hersh’s shoddy work provides endless opportunities for this sort of thing) in his book (pgs 426-428) Hersh writes that Kennedy asked Air Force General Ed Lansdale to go to Saigon to arrange the assassination of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. There is no evidence of this in the Church Committee Report on this subject or in any serious examination of the last few months of Diem’s regime by any noted scholar of the subject. Hersh got this info secondhand with almost no corroboration so he knew he was fishing. He called up David Kaiser who was working on a monumental history of American involvement in Vietnam from 1960-65 eventually called American Tragedy. In the footnotes of this fine book, Kaiser notes Hersh’s call to him about this piece of gossip. Kaiser wrote that he informed Hersh that he had seen nothing to support it in his research. In fact the White House calendar demonstrated that Lansdale never met with Kennedy in 1963. (Kaiser p. 531)

    Hersh trotted out Judith Exner for another appearance before she died. Hersh never informs the reader of any of the problems that Exner presented as a witness. As was his style in the book, he simply listed in his notes that he interviewed her and refers the reader to other articles on her. Exner’s credibility problems are there for anyone to see and they were listed in Probe Magazine (Vol. 4 No. 6), and in the books Questions of Controversy by Mel Ayton, and The Assassinations edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease. Hersh ignored all of her contradictions and deceptions. He actually added more to the long and winding list. He used a man named Martin Underwood to backstop a story about her delivering payoffs between Giancana and Kennedy. In the ABC special based on the book, Jennings told the audience Underwood would not appear on the show. He did not tell why. The Assassinations Records Review Board did tell us why in their Final Report. Chief Counsel Jeremy Gunn heard of this story and called Underwood in to testify. He said he knew nothing about these Exner trips as to Chicago and Giancana. Another part of Exner’s story had serous problems. She told Hersh that Bobby Kennedy was “very much a part of all of this.” She is referring to the money transfers from JFK to Giancana. She adds, “Bobby would come in and bring the information in a manila envelope to Jack. And they would discuss a little bit about it. And Bobby often would put his hand on my shoulder and ask, `Are you still comfortable doing this? We want you to let us know if you don’t want to.’ Hersh then further quotes Exner as saying the Kennedys “were very smart in the way they handled this …. I was this little bauble.” She goes on to add that they seemed at ease as they discussed the contents of the papers and the envelope in front of her. (Pgs. 307-308)

    Hersh should have been more careful with Exner. Or her handlers should have coached her more. Evidently she could not recall all the different stories she told over the last 25 years of her life on this subject. She couldn’t keep them all straight. It is hard to believe that Hersh was not aware of Exner’s appearance on Larry King on February 4, 1992. When King asked her about any relationship she had with RFK, she replied very succinctly with the word, “None.” King was surprised at this response, so he asked her to clarify it. She stated that she probably met him once or twice at a political fundraiser or a party in Los Angeles. That was it. Hersh’s book came out five years later and he says he researched it with various assistants for five years. Yet he was not was not aware of this blatant contradiction noted by Mr. Ayton (p. 158). Or if he was he chose not to reveal it.

    But the biggest pratfall made by Hersh was with the above mentioned Monroe/Kennedy documents which he obtained from a man named Lex Cusack whose father supposedly had the documents. When ABC bought the rights for the book they did something that Hersh, incredibly, did not do. They brought them to forensic experts who tested both the typing and the writing. They found they could not have been made when Cusack said they were or with the instruments available at that time. So why did Hersh not hire his own experts? He has replied at various times that a) It was expensive to hire these experts, and b) the tests take a long time to perform (See Eric Alterman in Salon in October of 1997). Concerning the first, Hersh got a huge advance for the book, well into the six figures by a major publisher, Little Brown and Company. He hired several assistants to help him. He could not afford the rather small amount of money the testing would have entailed? Little, Brown could not afford it either? As for the time factor, it is even weaker. As noted, Hersh said he took five years to complete the book. CBS tested the documents after ABC did and it took them a matter of just a few weeks. Researcher John Armstrong got in contact with one of the ABC experts and asked him to do a test for him on another matter. He said he could do it in about a month.

    But there is more to it. In a story in The New York Times (9/27/97), reporter Bill Carter revealed that Hersh had previously tried to peddle the documentary rights to his book to NBC. And this sale was based on the sensational, ersatz Monroe documents. NBC sent some experts to look at the documents also and Warren Littlefield, an NBC executive, told Hersh that in their opinion, the documents were questionable. This was in the summer of 1996. Littlefield added that NBC’s lawyers were more specific about the questions in talks with Hersh’s attorneys. So Hersh could hire attorneys for the sale of the documents, yet he could not hire experts to test the documents.

    When ABC did a 20/20 segment (9/25/97) exposing the documents Hersh appeared on camera for very, very little time. The segment focused on the forensic debunking of the documents and Cusack’s role in it. The previous testing of the documents by NBC was not mentioned at all. David Westin had approved a million dollar budget for Hersh’s longtime friend Mark Obenhaus to produce a special based on the book. It was left to Anson and Charles Samuels in an article in The New Yorker (11/3/97) to detail that Hersh had planned to cut in Cusack after the sale of the book for the use of the documents, upon which the sale apparently relied. So the possibility was that Hersh did not want the documents exposed and did not tell ABC about the previous testing. And since Obenhaus and Hersh have been friends awhile, it may be that Obenhaus and Jennings were protecting Hersh on this score to, in turn, protect Westin’s unwise investment.

    The seeds of the Russo-Jennings meeting come from this rather inauspicious origin. For when Debra Conway called ABC they said that two of the producers on the assassination special are Obenhaus and Edward Gray who were the producers of the Hersh special. Russo helped Hersh on his book as he is mentioned on page 476 of the Acknowledgements. According to Anson, Obenahus had wanted to make a special on the JFK assassination in 1993 but it fell through. So now ABC did do the actual assassination special and they went back to some of their original team that produced this less than stellar-to say the least -previous one.

    Some people do not learn from past errors. The whole thing reminds me of the press angle as represented by the Danny DeVito character in the film LA Confidential. This time, the corpse in the hotel room is Kennedy’s.

  • Gus, Will You Please Make Up Your Mind?

    Gus Russo has been at work on the JFK case for the past 15 years. To those around him, he has jumped around in his conclusions quite frequently and violently. So much so, that it is hard to measure what he really believes about this case and why or why not. This is particularly puzzling because since 1998 there have been approximately 2 million pages of new files that have been released by the Assassination Records Review Board. Many of these new documents have been very important in resolving disputes that have existed for a long time. For example, Chief Counsel Jeremy Gunn’s investigation of the medical evidence — that is, the interviews he conducted with some very important people at President Kennedy’s autopsy in Bethesda, Maryland — are extraordinarily illuminating to anyone seriously investigating a homicide. Yet, if one examines Russo’s book there is not a mention of them in the entire text. This is important for what it tells us about the book and Russo, but also because it tells us why Russo arrived at where he did on his long and digressive and interesting journey.

    In the late 1980’s Russo was friendly with Boston area researcher Edgar Tatro. (This relationship would be sustained up until the issuance of JFK: The Book of the Film. Russo worked on this book with Oliver Stone’s chief researcher, Jane Rusconi. He promised Tatro he would be credited prominently in the book since he called him many times for information. Tatro was not mentioned as often as he should have been and this began their split.) As anyone who knows him will attest, Tatro is a prime proponent of the school that Lyndon Johnson was behind the John Kennedy assassination. At this time, Russo befriended Tatro and asked if he would be willing to take a sabbatical from his educator’s position to serve as the consultant to a documentary film he was proposing to several financial backers. According to Tatro, Russo actually got as far as presenting the idea to these backers, but for some reason the proposal fell through. So, one could assume that since Russo was pushing this idea he probably believed it. But wait.

    In the early 1990’s the word got out that Oliver Stone was producing a big-budget film based on Jim Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins. Now anyone who knew Garrison, or his publisher, Sheridan Square Press, would know that the book had to propose that the Central Intelligence Agency —especially the so-called Old Boys Network within it — was the main perpetrator behind the Kennedy assassination. At this time, Russo was investigating the shadowy European trade company PERMINDEX, of which Clay Shaw was a member. He was also extolling the fact that he had outfoxed a clerk at the National Archives and had listened to a previously classified tape of the so-called Fenton Report. This referred to a suspect in the Garrison investigation who had been tracked down by House Select Committee investigators Cliff Fenton, Bob Buras, and L. J. Delsa and had discussed his role in an apparent meeting, and other actions, at which the murder of JFK had been discussed. As mentioned above, Stone later hired Russo to help Rusconi produce the book which contained much of the backup material for the screenplay. So many deduced from all this that Russo believed the CIA was the prime force behind the killing of Kennedy. But wait.

    At a conference in Dallas in 1992, Russo discussed the story of Delk Simpson, a military officer who had been mentioned by writer Robert Morrow and had been pursued reportedly by attorney Bernard Fensterwald. He actually made a presentation with former military intelligence analyst John Newman. Newman’s book JFK and Vietnam mainly blamed the military for the intelligence deception that Kennedy had seen through when he decided that the U.S. would have to withdraw from Vietnam. So now people assumed that Russo had shifted gears and thought the assassination was led by the military with perhaps a hand from the CIA. But wait.

    A year later, at a conference in Chicago, Russo now ridiculed the idea that Oswald could have been an intelligence operative. This basically knocked out the idea of a military-intelligence type of conspiracy. He now said that the research community should be following leads that pertained to the Mafia and the Cuban exile community. Sort of what people like Robert Blakey — Chief Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations — may have proposed today. Yet, at the same time, someone read him his blurb for Robert Morrow’s final book on the case, First Hand Knowledge. Russo essentially said that he stood by the positive blurb. The problem here was that Morrow’s book included a conspiracy of the Mafia, the Cubans and the CIA, which was led on the ground by Clay Shaw. So perhaps now Russo was advocating a kind of “grand conspiracy” theory crossing through two or three different structures. But wait.

    In the same year, Russo was one of the two reporters on the PBS Frontline special, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” This show was erratic and unfocused yet by the end it clearly went along with the verdict of the Warren Commission, i.e. that Oswald did it alone. Was Russo now throwing all his years of hunting for an antidote to the Warren Commission away? Was he now embracing the thoroughly discredited Warren Commission? It appeared that way. But wait.

    In 1998 Russo penned his book which was supposedly based on the declassified files of the ARRB. Now he twisted the Warren Commission thesis a bit. He now seemed to be saying that Oswald was not really a demented sociopath, which is what the Warren Commission leans on. He now seemed to be saying that he was manipulated by agents of Fidel Castro into believing that Kennedy felt that Castro’s regime had to be removed. The pro-Castro Oswald could not stomach that thought and he did what he did in Dealey Plaza.

    If you have been counting, depending on what you make of Russo’s performance at the Chicago Conference, that is either six or seven camps that Russo has been in. Yet he discounts each step of his Pilgrim’s Progress. He forgets his previous beliefs as quickly as a good cornerback forgets the 70 yard touchdown completed over his head. This is OK for football, but it is not OK for investigative journalism which tries to build an edifice that recognizes and tries to reconcile into an understandable paradigm all the evidence about a complex and important event. There is no sign of this in Russo’s work. Or else he would not have ignored the vital medical evidence mentioned above. What makes it even worse is that Russo does not even mention his previous beliefs today. For instance, it is difficult to find anywhere where he mentions that he worked on the Stone book with Rusconi. The only way one can find out about the LBJ phase is through Tatro. No one can recall him mentioning it at any talk he gave at a national researcher’s conference in the nineties.

    The natural question is: Did he believe any of these himself? Or when he found he could not find a foolproof theory did he then decide that it was easier and more lucrative to side with the Establishment and the Warren Commission, knowing that people like Peter Jennings and David Westin would never divulge his past conspiracy delvings, or maybe not even ask about them?

    Unfortunately for Jennings and Westin, some people knew Russo way back when he was a musician, before Jennings and Westin started flying him around the country first class for their “exhaustive” and “irrefutable” investigation.

  • ABC Lies

    ABC Lies

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     Why did David Westin and Peter Jennings hook up with Gus Russo for November 22, 2003? In order to keep the myth alive about this man:

     

     

     

     

     

    Introduction

    The following articles are meant to examine and explore the relationship between the three men above and the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. How did it come to pass that ABC President David Westin, the late Peter Jennings, and writer and researcher Gus Russo met, approved and then decided to concoct a huge deception that is meant to recycle and resuscitate a forty year old lie that very few people believe? We try to do that here in order for the reader to fully understand what and why ABC did on November 20, 2003.

    We trace and describe some previous network specials on the subject and how they were influenced and controlled by high officials inside and outside the government. Former Warren Commissoner John McCloy exerted enormous influence over a four-part 1967 CBS special on the assassination itself, and the CIA and Sarnoff family (owners of NBC at the time) had direct ties to a 1967 NBC special on Jim Garrison. We also trace the recent history of ABC, especially the momentous event that Andy Boehm and Jim DiEugenio describe in the 2003 Introduction and original 1987 article entitled “The Seizing of the American Broadcasting Company.” This piece describes in detail an example of how the government can influence what is shown — and not shown — on the broadcast airwaves that are theoretically controlled by the citizens of this country. We suggest the reader examine this bloc of articles first.

    We then move on and show as directly as we can how ABC came to the lamentable decision to produce a documentary that is simply insupportable by the facts, circumstances, and evidence. This bloc of articles includes a profile of ABC News President David Westin — how he came to power and how his regime has differed markedly from his legendary predecessor Roone Arledge. We then describe the career of a reporter who sets a paradigm and precedent for ABC’s actions on this case, reporter John Stossel who, although billed originally as a consumer advocate, is something short of that. We then examine aspects of the career of the chief consultant on this special, Gus Russo: his career in the Kennedy research field, his differing beliefs at times, and his dubious claim of a Pulitzer nomination. We then connect Russo to the main players behind the November 20th special, Jennings and Mark Obenhaus. We do this through the previous production of theirs based upon the controversial and specious book by Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot.

    Finally, we begin to dissect some of the work of Russo and his friend Dale Myers, upon whom ABC has relied. We especially try to examine the work of Myers on the computer simulation he has had for sale for many years, and Russo’s work on the most important aspect of any murder case, the medical and autopsy evidence. These are the most important aspects of any serious inquiry into a murder case. If those conclusions are faulty, everything that follows from it must be wrong.

    The questions we ask here are two quite serious ones. Did ABC, through Westin, Jennings, and Obenhaus rig the deck to arrive at a preconceived conclusion? And if they did, why did they?

    But also, through this detailed inquiry we hope to posit some wider, broader, more universal queries about the media itself. Is it possible for any huge network which works so closely with the government to be expected to tell the truth about any highly controversial and influential event in which it plays a controlling role? Who do people at the top of the network ladder serve today? And if they do not serve the public, what alternative does the public have in pursuing factual truth about these events? And does this pursuit of facts not available through the mainstream media, automatically place them in opposition to the media and the government? The exploration of those questions based on accurate information are meant to encourage a democratic debate about the state of our media today.

    Articles

    The Networks and the Politics of the JFK Case This link leads to several articles demonstrating the media’s shoddy history in covering the JFK case:

    JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story exposes the media’s shameful performance in the decades since President Kennedy’s assassination.

    Shoot Him Down: NBC, the CIA and Jim Garrison examines NBC’s hatchet job on then-Orleans Parish District Attorney Garrison when the DA’s assassination investigation was in full swing.

    Why ABC? A group of articles examinating ABC and some of those associated with the ABC News special.

    Gus Russo Articles examining ABC’s chief consultant, and a surprising turn by Arlen Specter.

    These Are Your Witnesses? An analysis of Peter Jennings and his witnessess, and what ABC did not disclose about them and why.

    The “irrefutable” Mr. Myers Critiques of Dale Myers’ “irrefutable” computer simulation.