Dan Rather: Climate of Fear Running Through Newsrooms

by **Watchful Citizen** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:52 pm

(Time-Life first got ahold of the film. Might as well have been Allen Dulles himself.) <a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKzapruderF.htm">www.spartacus.schoolnet.c...ruderF.htm</a> >snip< On 22nd November, 1963, Abraham Zapruder filmed the motorcade of President John F. Kennedy. Zapruder's colour film shows the president being shot and became an important part of the evidence looked at by those investigating the assassination. Soon afterwards Zapruder sold the 26-second film for $150,000 to Time-Life magazine, which published individual frames but did not allow the film to be screened in its entirety. Zapruder later testified before the Warren Commission, and the CBS: The Warren Report. The Zapruder Film was also an important part of the evidence used by the FBI and the Warren Commission. The Zapruder film first appeared on national television in March, 1975. The Zapruder film showed Kennedy's violent backward and leftward movement. This convinced many that the fatal head shot come from the Grassy Knoll. Others used the film to argue that it supported the lone-gunman theory put forward by the Warren Commission. Some writers such as Noel Twyman, David Lifton, Jack White, John Costella and David Mantik have claimed that the Zapruder Film has been tampered with. They have pointed out that the film conflicts with the large number of witnesses who claimed that the limousine stopped after the first shot had been fired. This included the two people standing closest to the limousine, Jean Hill and Mary Moorman, and the four police motorcyclist nearest Kennedy's car. Detailed analysis of the film has revealed that the limousine displays a variety of irregular movements, including travelling only ten feet within 21 frames between Z-197 and Z-218 (this is only about one half of the expected distance). Noel Twyman carried out detailed research into the actions of William Greer in the Zapruder film. He discovered that Greer's rapid head turns between Z302 to Z-304 and Z-315 to Z-317 appeared impossibly fast. Experiments were carried out with athletic subjects repeating Greer's actions. These showed that no one was able to reproduce this angular speed. Twyman concluded that frames of the film had been removed therefore speeding up the actions of Greer.

by **Watchful Citizen** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:06 pm

excerpt #12 at <a href="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKzapruderF.htm">www.spartacus.schoolnet.c...ruderF.htm</a> (K) In recent correspondence with me, Ron cites Dan Rather's description of the film and compares it to what is seen. Rather, of course, was one of the first persons to view the Z-film. Early in his commentary. Rather says the film shows... "The President's automobile was preceded by one other car... (the film does not show this) ... the President's black Lincoln automobile made a turn, a left turn, off Houston Street onto Elm Street (the film does not show this). It got about 35 yards from the corner of Elm and Houston... at the moment the President put his hand up and lurched forward and it was obvious he had been hit." The present film begins with the limo already on Elm at frame 133 and the forward lurch is between frames 188-200. "Governor Connally," Rather continued, "... in the seat just in front of the President, sensed something was wrong... his coat was unbuttoned... and as he turned he extended his right hand toward the President, he exposed his entire shirt front and chest... and was wounded with... a second shot (as Redmon comments, no existing Zapruder frames show the specific action that Rather describes, with the governor in full turn with hand extended toward the President). Rather continues"... the third shot hit the President, and... his head went forward with considerable violence." Was Rather looking at an unaltered different film... or is he just a lousy reporter?

by **proldic** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:15 pm

that's an interesting last line of yours there, because as you probably know, there has been some speculative evidence that shows the Z film may have been the ultimate red-herring of our times. I don't necessarily believe the implications of that evidence, but I'll tell you that I've had a bug up my ass about "first-to-print" Lane, a former hero, since Jonestown. So the idea that it could stretch as deep as that is not impossible for me to understand.

by **Watchful Citizen** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:40 pm

Having read his 1991 book 'Plausible Denial,' I find that he's got the goods on E. Howard Hunt and the other JFK killers just as much as Jim Garrison did. Consider also that the CIA-MI6 collaboration using alleged KGB defector Mitrokhin as a disinfo vehicle in the book 'The Sword and the Shield' claims that the most damaging whistleblowers and researchers against the CIA are really all just KGB dupes. This list of 'dupes' includes: Lee Harvey Oswald Phillip Agee Jim Garrison Mark Lane You see the pattern, right? 'KGB dupe' means truth teller dangerous to CIA. I was stunned to read about Mark Lane's involvement with Jonestown and am still trying to make sense of that. It looks to me like he was drawn into a CIA operation by appealing to his instinct to defend AGAINST the CIA. The CIA was involved in Guyana for a long time and increased its presence in dollars around the time of Jonestown. Perhaps Lane was lured with his penchant for supporting persecuted underdogs (like Oswald's widow) into a discrediting association or even possible elimination. I'm sure he was considered a problem to be solved by the agency. This site brings in every CIA wild card on the table in those days AND makes the most sense to me: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/JONESTOWN.html">www.geocities.com/northst...STOWN.html</a> >snip< Add in the FBI files on the Black Panthers and Weathermen found at the site, an attempt to lure Mark Lane (JFK assassination critic and James Earl Ray lawyer, among other things) and Donald Freed (Lane's sometime JFK collaborator and recent Simpson case investigator who has linked the Brentwood murders to Mafia in the L.A. underworld) to Guyana (which succeeded in having Lane witness the airstrip murders after Jones hired him as a lawyer), and a bizarre plot to kidnap Grace Walden Stephens (a key Martin Luther King assassination witness) and smuggle her to Jonestown, and you have the makings of a full fledge spook operation. One of the strangest CIA connections to Jonestown was the previously mentioned World Vision, an evangelical order which often fronts for the CIA. They performed espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia while Operation Phoenix (the murderous project that left 40,000 people dead) was in full effect. In Honduras, they maintained a presence at CIA contra recruiting camps in the war against the Sandinistas. In Lebanon, the fascist Phalange butchered Palestinians at World Vision's camp. In Cuba, their refugee camps hosted numerous members of the anti-Castro terrorist group Alpha 66 of Bay of Pigs fame. After the Guyana massacre, World Vision developed a scheme to repopulate Jonestown with CIA-linked mercenaries from Laos. Laos, of course, was where the CIA was running it's "secret war" during Vietnam, which for the most part was a smokescreen for a widespread opium trafficking operation. One particularly important World Vision official was John Hinckley, Sr., an oil man, reputed CIA officer, and friend of George Bush. You may have heard of his son. Less than four months before Hinckley Jr. became known as Jodie Foster's biggest fan, another member of the World Vision order, Mark Chapman, gunned down John Lennon in what may have been a practice run for the bigger hit on President Reagan. >snip< Here's another interesting article about a struggle to get CIA documents on Jonestown released under a FOIA request goes on for years in McGehee vs. CIA. . And here we also find Judge Robert Bork ruling for the CIA and we see why Reagan nominated him. : <a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoore/jonestown/AboutJonestown/Articles/mcgehee.htm">www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoo...cgehee.htm</a> The following excerpt from A Sympathetic History of Jonestown: The Moore Family Involvement in Peoples Temple (Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985) provides details of the lawsuit as well as CIA connections to Guyana, to Jim Jones, and to Peoples Temple. Carolyn and Annie believed that the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to destroy Peoples Temple. Don Freed and Mark Lane fueled that belief by uncovering a conspirator. In addition, Freed said that an official in the Guyanese Ministry of Justice knew of a CIA agent working in Jonestown. Annie's last letter to me reflects Freed's influence: "Mom and Dad have probably shown you the latest about the conspiracy information that Mark Lane, the famous attorney in the M.L. King case and Don Freed the other famous author in the Kennedy case have come up with regarding activities planned against us -- Peoples Temple." A few weeks after I received her letter, Annie was dead. Her words about conspiracy still fresh, my husband Mac and I immediately thought of the CIA. It wasn't farfetched to believe the CIA might have been interested in Peoples Temple. A group of 900 Americans, mostly black, had moved to a socialist country, taking millions of dollars with it. The group espoused socialist ideals. Its leaders talked of emigrating to the Soviet Union, and met with Soviet officials in Guyana. We decided to get some evidence from the agency itself through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). On December 6, 1978, nineteen days after the suicides, Mac asked the CIA for all documents in its files relating to: 1. The Peoples Temple which was founded in Indianapolis in the 1960's and which had subsequent addresses in Ukiah, Redwood Valley and San Francisco, California, and Jonestown, Guyana; 2. The Agricultural Project, or Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, in Jonestown, Guyana; 3. Jonestown, Guyana; 4. The late Rev. James Jones, minister of Peoples Temple; 5. The late Carolyn Moore Layton, who died in Jonestown on November 18, and who has been described by several newspapers as the coordinator of Peoples Temple in Rev. Jones' absence; 6. Information on Peoples Temple "defectors," "hit squads," and "assassination teams." An FOIA caseworker at the CIA told us it was one of the most thorough requests filed on Peoples Temple. >snip< Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. State Department responded to developments in Guyana by sending some unusual diplomats to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown. Richard Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission wounded at the Port Kaituma airstrip, was identified as a CIA employee since 1959 in the 1968 edition of Who's Who in the CIA. He moved on to Grenada after Guyana. Robert Ode, the retired Foreign Service officer assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown shortly after the suicides, turned up in another trouble spot less than a year later. He was one of the hostages seized by Iranian militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Richard Welch, the CIA Chief of Station who was assassinated in Athens in 1977, worked with the CIA mission in Guyana in 1966. And in 1983, the U.S. Ambassador to Guyana, Gerald E. Thomas, was described as "the candidate of the right [wing]" for the ambassadorship in El Salvador. >snip< The discoveries John Hanrahan, a private investigator we employed, about Ambassador Burke, his research into other officials working for the American Embassy in Guyana during the years Jonestown flourished, coupled with his conversations with State Department employees and Congressional staff members, made Hanrahan conclude in July 1980 that "all paths seem to lead to the CIA." Others came to that conclusion more rapidly. Within days of the mass suicides, rumors circulated about CIA participation in the tragedy. With little more than vague suspicions and unusual coincidences to go on, leftist writers and publications belittled the CIA's immediate denial and began promoting their own theories. "What kind of covert program has the U.S. been carrying out in Guyana?" Dierdre Griswold asked in the Worker's World. "And what possible relationship might they have had with this fantastic event?" The Black Panther Party answered the questions a week later. "We charge genocide," headlined the editorial in the December 2, 1978 issue of the party's biweekly newspaper. The editors listed salient coincidences in the death of Peoples Temple: the discrepancies in the body count during the first week; the physical appearance of the bodies; and the similarity of drugs found in Jonestown with those used in the CIA MK-ULTRA mind control experiments. The Black Panther newspaper also reported that Dr. Laurence Layton -- father of Larry Layton -- had directed the Army's chemical warfare project at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. In the early 1950s, the paper added, Dr. Layton helped develop nerve gas. The Chicago Defender then charged that one Temple member, Phil Blakey, had served as a mercenary and mercenary-recruiter for the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the CIA-sponsored force in Angola. Blakey allegedly worked in the African country in 1975 and remained in touch with people in the mercenary world. When Leo Ryan's aide picked up publicity on the CIA-Jonestown connection, the rumors suddenly gained respectability. Although most of Joe Holsinger's allegations came straight from the pages of The Black Panther, the aide had a few new ones, too. Holsinger asserted that U.S. Embassy officials Richard Dwyer and Richard McCoy, Temple member Tim Carter, and Guy Spence, one of the pilots at the Port Kaituma airstrip, were agents or informants for the CIA. He also believed that the CIA set up Ryan's assassination because the California Democrat co-sponsored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment -- the law which requires prior Congressional approval of all CIA covert operations. Holsinger claimed in testimony before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that the CIA had conducted a covert operation in Guyana, and that Jonestown was part of it. Holsinger's allegations included: 1. The contention that the CIA conducted a varied range of 'activities' in Guyana; 2. The contention that a CIA agent witnessed Representative Ryan's assassination; 3. The contention that the CIA may have violated the Hughes-Ryan Act by failing to report a covert operation in Guyana; 4. The contention that the CIA made a conscious decision to allow the tragic events of November 18, 1978 to occur in order to avoid disclosure of CIA covert activities in Guyana; 5. The contention that this alleged reporting failure was conscious and calculated because Representative Ryan was a co-author of the Hughes-Ryan Act; and 6. The contention that the CIA was used to promote and protect American commercial interests in Guyana. The aide's accusations led to a second investigation into Jonestown, following the May 1979 U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee report on Ryan's death. The first investigation had found "no conclusive evidence" of CIA involvement. But a Congressional staff member told John Hanrahan that "the CIA pulled a fast one." He explained that the committee had been "restrained" in its initial study. Hence, the enigmatic sentence was "crafted with excruciating care." >snip< much more...

by **proldic** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:55 pm

I was just speculating and airing some darker ideas. He still is a "fallen hero" in many ways, and Plausible Denial is one of my top books. As you know, in there he actually documents a whole domestic campaign against him organized by the CIA. There are some questions I have, specifically in regards to his relationship with and protection of the PT, his dueling-yet-synchronious escape story with Garry, who was a clear CIA-dupe and BAD man, his provacative statements that read in today's light show him to be a tad more than reckless, his basically abducting one of the main witnessess to the MLK assassination who died at Jonestown, first-hand testimony of many who worked w/ him on the Pine Ridge reservation who said he was opportunistic and headline-hungry, and some more I'm forgetting. He's probably just one of those classic '60's characters. Bill Kunstler (the original one) was equally flawed. Thanks for your acute perceptions, though WC. Much appreciated by me.

Dan Rather: Climate of Fear Running Through Newsrooms

Extensive collection of articles on Zapruder film history.

Rather's description of Z. film analyzed by Ron Redmon.

WC

Mark Lane, a "former" hero? He's no friend of CIA.

qualification on Lane

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