countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Nov 15, 2013 1:03 am

Great interview with DiEugenio - nice summary of the whole thing.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HSSuMo7hBw
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby Elvis » Sat Nov 16, 2013 4:37 pm

For what it's worth -- tonight on the radio:

JFK & LBJ
Date: 11-16-13
Host: John B. Wells
Guests: Roger Stone
Combining decades of insider political knowledge with cutting edge JFK assassination research, political operative, Roger Stone, joins John B. Wells to lay out the case that Lyndon Johnson manipulated the situation in Dallas on November 22, 1963.


Website(s):
stonezone.com
Book(s):
The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2013/11/16

I wish they'd dump John B. Wells; for one thing, he says he starts his news-gathering day at Drudge.
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby fruhmenschen » Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:47 am

see link for full story
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/do-3-tramps- ... fk-murder/

Do 3 'tramps' hold key to solving JFK murder?
Men arrested near scene shortly after assassination
November 16,2013
author-image Jerome R. Corsi About | Email | Archive
Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is the forthcoming "What Went Wrong?: The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time."



In 1966, JFK-assassination researcher Richard E. Sprague came across seven unpublished photographs taken by newspaper photographers in Dealey Plaza between 2:20 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. local time – approximately two hours after the shooting – showing three unidentified “tramps” being escorted by two armed Dallas policemen past the Texas School Book Depository and across Houston Street to the sheriff’s office.

Further research indicated the three unidentified men had been found in a railroad freight car in the railroad yard behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll, above the triple underpass.

Dallas Police Sgt. David V. Harkness told the Warren Commission (Vol. VI, page 312) that he pulled “some people” he identified as “tramps and hoboes” off a long freight train in the railroad yard. Harkness testified the men were arrested and “taken to the station and questioned.”

Deputy Sheriff Harold E. Elkins, in an affidavit given Nov. 22, 1963, (Warren Commission, Vol. XIX, page 540) stated, “A little while later a Dallas policeman came to our office with three prisoners who he had arrested on the railroad yards. I took these three to the city jail and turned them over to Capt. Fritz.”

In 1966, law enforcement authorities in Dallas were unable to produce any records of the arrests, and the identity of the “three tramps” seen in the unpublished Dallas newspaper photographs could not be determined.

In the 50 years since the JFK assassination, researchers have produced evidence suggesting the men were key assassination operatives attempting to escape Dealey Plaza, hoping they would be dismissed as vagrants.

Problems identifying the ‘tramps’

In a 1992 release of thousand of pages of Dallas police arrest and investigation reports regarding the JFK assassination, an arrest report filed by Dallas police officer W. E. Chambers documented the three “tramps” were Howard Doyle, John F. Gedney and Gus W. Abrams. The three were arrested as “investigative prisoners” charged with vagrancy and robbery.

Chambers’ report vaguely recorded the three men were “taken off a boxcar in the railroad yards right after President Kennedy was shot.” He noted they were “passing through town” and had “no means of support.” The three were kept in Dallas Police custody until 9:25 on the morning of Nov. 26, 1963, and then released.

An FBI interview with Harkness June 29, 1992, reported: “Harkness had an opportunity to view four photographs of the three individuals identified as Doyle, Gedney, and Abrams. Harkness identified them as three of the individuals who were removed from the train on Nov. 22, 1963.”

Viewed critically, the language appears to sidestep a direct statement that Harkness had positively identified the three men in the photographs as Doyle, Gedney and Abrams

The FBI report added, “On the day of the assassination there were several individuals from the train other than the three individuals previously identified.”

Chambers, in a signed statement given to the FBI on March 3, 1992, indicated he did not recognize the three names on the arrest records.

The FBI further indicated Chambers did not remember filling out arrest reports for Doyle, Gedney and Abrams, although he did acknowledge the handwriting on the forms was his.

“Chambers indicated that on the day of the assassination, a number of people were brought into the Police Department as a result of a police dragnet,” the FBI report said. “Chambers speculated that the three were brought to the station by uniformed officers, and that those officers had not filled out any type of paperwork regarding their detention.”

Chambers also noted that no arrest number or identification number appeared on any of the reports filed for Doyle, Gedney and Abrams, indicating the Dallas Police jail would most likely not have any booking information on any of the three individual.

Other contradictions in the record involve three different FBI reports dated 1992 indicating Doyle had been arrested on a gondola known as a coal car, while Dallas Police records indicate the “three tramps” seen in the seven unpublished Dallas newspaper photographs had been arrested in a railroad freight box car. Gedney claimed he was arrested on a flatbed railroad car that was transporting large sheets of steel. Yet a third FBI report says Doyle, Gedney and Abrams were arrested in a grain car on the freight train.

An additional continuing problem is that the physical resemblance between Doyle, Gedney and Abrams appears tenuous, at best, with no credentialed face-recognition experts affirming a match with the men seen in the seven “tramp” photographs in question.

The controversy over the “three tramps” intensified in 1975 when investigative reporters Alan Weberman and Michael Canfield in their 1975 book “Coup d’Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” argued the men in the photographs do not look like tramps. All three were clean-shaven and two had recent haircuts.

“All of them looked well-fed and their shoes were not worn,” Weberman and Canfield wrote.

Weberman and Canfield speculated the two of the tramps resembled Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, while the third resembled an Oswald-double identified under the alias Daniel L. Carswell.

Chauncey Holt comes forward

In 1991, Chauncey Holt, a criminal with ties to organized crime figures Meyer Lansky in Miami and Havana, as well as with Peter Licavoli in Detroit, who additionally claimed to have worked for the CIA as a contract agent, came forward to identify himself as one of the three men in the photographs.

In an autobiography Holt published this year titled “Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel,” Holt claimed he played a role in the JFK assassination by forging Secret Service credentials that he transferred on Nov. 22, 1963, to a contact who distributed the them to mobsters and CIA agents participating in the assassination.

Holt identified the other two men as known mob-related murderers Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers (aka Richard Montoya).

Holt’s claim gained attention when Lois Gibson, a widely recognized forensic artist and facial expert who works for the Houston Police Department, conducted an analysis in which she affirmed her certainty the three men were Holt, Harrelson and Rogers.

According to Holt’s account, on Nov. 22, 1963, he was instructed to wear work clothes and was provided with the location of a boxcar in which he was supposed to hide, containing weapons and firearms. Holt was carrying credentials identifying him as an undercover agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, U.S. Treasury Department.

Holt described how he had driven Charles Nicoletti and Leo Moceri, two well-known gunmen with the Licavoli crime family in Detroit, from Tucson, Ariz., to Dallas in an Oldsmobile station wagon.

Leaving Tucson on Nov. 20, 1963, Holt explained a windstorm in El Paso, Texas, forced them to stop, delaying their arrival in Dallas to the early hours of Nov. 22, 1963.

Arriving late in Dallas, Holt’s instructions were to drop Nicoletti and Moceri at a downtown Dallas hotel and then drive to the parking area behind Dealey Plaza. He was to find a pickup truck with Texas license plates into which he was to place a briefcase containing the false Secret Service identification papers and lapel pins he had forged and falsified.

“One out of area car, a Chevrolet, with Arizona plates drove into the lot, circled the entire area and parked very near the railroad tower,” Holt wrote on page 171 of his autobiography. “Almost immediately, Richard Montoya and Charles Harrelson approached me. I had identification and hand guns, which I was instructed to deliver to them.”

Holt also wrote that he observed a vintage Ford in the parking lot behind Dealey Plaza, driven by a man he recognized as Aldo Vera, an anti-Castro Cuban activist.

“Vera appeared to be listening to a handheld transceiver,” Holt noted.

After the shooting, Holt climbed into the freight train boxcar, as instructed, finding that Montoya and Harrelson were already there.

“At about 1:30 the train moved out, and I gave a deep sigh of relief, although I was still in shock over what had apparently taken place,” Holt wrote on page 177.

Suddenly, the train came to a halt; Dallas Police searching the boxcar apprehended the three men.

“We were ordered out of the boxcar, without any opportunity to present our credentials, or explain that we were engaged in an official investigation for the ATF, at the time all of the excitement continued,” Holt continued. “Shortly thereafter, I arrogated myself to the position of spokesman and explained our cover story to Sgt. D. V. Harkness and he ordered the army of police officers to search the rest of the train. He then turned us over to a pair of portly officers, who escorted us to the Dealey Plaza command post.”

Holt continued his narration: “We were marched south along the railroad tracks, to west of the Texas School Book Depository; then across Elm street and up to the corner of Houston Street to the command post, that had been set up at the Criminal Courts Building. We were turned over to a deputy sheriff, who called [Dallas Police Department Captain] Will Fritz, a man I knew we could trust. Fritz came over from the police station, said a few words to the deputy sheriff and ordered that we be turned over to the resident agent of the FBI, who was Gordon Shanklin.”

Holt explained: “Shanklin turned us loose, at once, and there was no record kept of our ‘detainment.’ The only record of this incident is the photographic record of us crossing the plaza [Dealey Plaza].”

Holt further explained that of the eight or 10 persons arrested in the railroad yard, arrest records were kept for everyone but Holt, Montoya and Harrelson.

How credible is Chauncey Holt?

Holt’s account is remarkable in that he identified in Dallas four individuals suspected of being gunmen in the JFK assassination: Charles Nicoletti and Leo Moceri, as well as Richard Montoya and Charles Harrelson.

Zack Shelton, a retired FBI agent who has spent years since his retirement investigating leads in the JFK assassination, explained to WND that he considered Holt’s testimony credible, not only because of the Lois Gibson’s facial recognition analysis, but also because various details of Holt’s accounts are corroborated by other testimony independently given by known eyewitnesses to the JFK assassination.

Lee Bowers, a “tower man” for the Union Terminal Company who was in the railroad yard tower, elevated some 14 feet above the railroad yard with windows permitting a clear view on all four sides, testified to the Warren Commission in Dallas on April 2, 1964 (Warren Commission Volume VI, page 284).

Bowers testified that among the three vehicles he observed in the parking lot on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, was a 1959 blue-and-white Oldsmobile with out-of-state license plates and a Goldwater bumper sticker.

Bowers also testified he observed a 1957 black Ford with a Texas license plate “with one male in it that seemed to have a mike or telephone or something that gave the appearance of that at least.”

Pressed by Joseph Ball, the Warren Commission assistant counsel questioning him, Bowers further explained: “He was holding something up to his mouth with one hand and he was driving with the other, and he gave that appearance. He was very close to the tower. I could see him as he proceeded around the area.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/do-3-tramps- ... X5E2bDd.99
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby MacCruiskeen » Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:07 pm

Peter Dale Scott, Mathias Bröckers & Lars Schall; audio discussion posted to YouTube on 13th Nov. 2013:

"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby Elvis » Sun Nov 17, 2013 6:33 pm

Elvis » Sat Nov 16, 2013 1:37 pm wrote:For what it's worth -- tonight on the radio:

JFK & LBJ
Date: 11-16-13
Host: John B. Wells
Guests: Roger Stone
Combining decades of insider political knowledge with cutting edge JFK assassination research, political operative, Roger Stone, joins John B. Wells to lay out the case that Lyndon Johnson manipulated the situation in Dallas on November 22, 1963.


Website(s):
stonezone.com
Book(s):
The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2013/11/16


Okay, I tuned in a few minutes late and didn't hear the introduction, nor had I read the guest blurb, thus listening to the first couple of hours not realizing that the author is this Roger Stone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone
Roger J. Stone, Jr. is an American political consultant,[1] lobbyist and strategist, noted for his use of opposition research, usually for candidates of the Republican Party.[2] He is currently a member of the Libertarian Party.


I was quite surprised to learn this; in the interview, Stone mentions having late-night drinks with Richard Nixon, being pals with Arlen Specter (although contentious with Specter on the "magic bullet" which Stone rightly calls claptrap) and on and on, working with Reagan, Bush 41 et.al. When finally, well into the interview, I looked him up online, I had to double-check to make sure it was that Roger Stone.

Sure enough, it's "ratfucker" GOP operative Roger Stone. I was surprised because I think his JFK research is good and, with a remarkable degree (for Stone) of objectivity, he makes a case against not only Johnson -- this is important in assessing Stone's theses because the book's surface publicity is all "Johnson did it" -- but also the whole milieu of righwing CIA & FBI elements, Cuban exiles, Texas oil, and not least the Mafia.

I must say, breathing in the interview, I did not smell disinformation. Disinfoteers (or plain stubborn dimwits) usually make themselves obvious by how they emphasize or omit certain things. I know a 'fair amount' from diverse sources about the JFK assassination, and I didn't hear Stone pull any punches, knowingly cover up for anyone, deliberately omit key facts, twist events to fit a preconceived explanation or, even, get that much wrong. He's done his homework, drawing from old sources as well as more recently released documents ('courtesy' of the Assassination Records Review Board).

Stone gives 'credit' due to CIA (lots on George Mohrenschildt), FBI (particularly Hoover), the Mafia in addition to the Texas oilmen who hated Kennedy (Billy Sol Estes e.g. figures heavily in the backstory, and we can toss in Johnson himself with that lot). He places George H.W. Bush in Dallas that day and strongly suggests G.H.W. played a role in the assassination. This fairly blows my mind, hearing it from Roger Stone (who now has apparently disassociated himself with the GOP).

Stone's identification of LBJ as "The Man Who Killed Kennedy" is slightly misleading, however. He places Johnson, really, on the coattails of the existing plot; Johnson, he says, not trusting the plotters to "get it right," arranges for his own hitman to be at Dealey Plaza to assure success. Stone further believes that it was LBJ's man's shot that killed the President. Thus, in that sense, 'Johnson did it', but by no means does Stone does short-shrift guilt of the other players.

(Many comments around the Web have dismissed Stone's theses on the basis that it's a hard-right Republican mindfucker blaming an iconic Democrat for JFK's murder -- but from this interview, I just don't see that. I might even buy the book.)

Also, when host John B. Wells (what a bore!) framed a question assuming Oswald killed Officer Tippit, I was pleased when Stone responded with a very cogent explanation of why he doesn't believe Oswald killed Tippit (or killed anyone, for that matter).

(To Wells' credit this time, he mostly shut up and let Stone talk at length.)

If anyone else heard this interview (I see there are many others on YouTube but perhaps not a 3-hour program like 'Coast'), or has read Stones' book, I'd love to hear your take on it. Because I didn't hear a sleazy Republican trickster ideologue, I heard a fairly objective researcher who had his shit together.
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Re: Harrison Ford dislikes social networking

Postby MinM » Mon Nov 18, 2013 10:37 am

Image@pattonoswalt: This Friday is the 50th anniversary of the deaths of JFK, Aldous Huxley & C.S. Lewis, all of whom died inside an 8 hour span of time

Ben Mankiewicz ‏@BenMank77: @pattonoswalt The Warren Commission totally whitewashed the Aldous Huxley investigation.

IanEye » Thu Oct 31, 2013 11:50 am wrote:
Image


Elliot Gould @ 33:55 talks about producing and starring in the film "Little Murders".

Image


Image


Michelle McNamara, in the midst of relating an anecdote about her husband Patton Oswalt being on an episode of Jerry Seinfeld's "Cars & Coffee" show, lets slip that she and Patton have "Mossad level security" at their house involving ex IDF soldiers because of her work researching serial killers.
Later on they mention Charles Manson and a litany of currently at large serial killers in California.

Image


Image


A woman named Monika shares with another man named Gould the intimate first hand details of experiencing the shootings at KCRW located on the campus of Santa Monica College.
Adding to the confusion, the POTUS was in town.

Image


Image


A man named Wells takes a trip through time to discuss a hero from a 1000 places with the mythical Joseph Campbell.

Image

a touch of evil mockingbird


Harrison Ford hangs out with a bunch of nerds, where he gives his opinion of the internet, "I think it's very useful for the gathering of misinformation and wasting time." @ about 47:30

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14564
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tellin' tall tales of how it used to be

Postby IanEye » Thu Nov 21, 2013 1:23 am

*


@ 07:40 "The Company"

Mockingbird Mastering

*


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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby H_C_E » Fri Nov 22, 2013 1:40 am

Kinda' funny, considering Bob Weir is a member of Bohemian Grove.
Abdul, wax the beach with postal regret portions. Nevermind the o-ring leader he got not the cheese duster from the dachshund dimension or even pillow frighteners.
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby MinM » Fri Nov 22, 2013 9:25 am

Is that Rafael (Chi Chi) Quintero?
Image
No .. it's beloved 78 year old pro golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez.

Image@johnsimkin: I believe that Rafael (Chi Chi) Quintero was one of the gunmen who killed John F. Kennedy. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKquintero.htm
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Brampton comes a lie?

Postby IanEye » Tue Dec 10, 2013 11:33 am

Image

Marc Maron talks with Barry Crimmins about the nexus between political activism and comedy.

Paul Gilmartin talks with Scott Thompson about growing up as a gay youth in Brampton, Ontario.

H.G. Wells talks with William S. Burroughs about different types of cream pies.

David Feldman talks with Peter Ludlow about the concept that just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.
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Re: Brampton comes a lie?

Postby brainpanhandler » Tue Dec 10, 2013 3:24 pm

IanEye » Tue Dec 10, 2013 10:33 am wrote:
Marc Maron talks with Barry Crimmins about the nexus between political activism and comedy.

Paul Gilmartin talks with Scott Thompson about growing up as a gay youth in Brampton, Ontario.

H.G. Wells talks with William S. Burroughs about different types of cream pies.

David Feldman talks with Peter Ludlow about the concept that just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.


Thanks for this. I've listened to the Marc Maron interview so far.

Merry xmas man.
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:25 pm

Who Really Killed Kennedy? by Jerome Corsi
Reviewed by Vasilios Vazakas

Posted December 16, 2013
I. Introduction

Jerome Corsi is the senior staff reporter for online conservative news giant World Net Daily (WND). He has now written a book called Who Really Killed Kennedy? It is his take on the most controversial subject in American history: the JFK assassination. Because of the scope of Corsi's reach, his effort should not go unnoticed.

Corsi, who holds a Harvard Ph.d in political science, is best known for his two New York Times best sellers, The Obama Nation and Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak out against John Kerry. I did not have the chance to read these two books so I will judge the author without prior bias. I will base my critique only on his work on the JFK assassination. According to the book's description, Corsi has read almost every book written on the case and thousands of documents – including all twenty six volumes of the Warren report – plus films and photographs. The book is the culmination of years of meticulous research.

It consists of seven chapters plus a conclusion at the end, followed by notes and index. Chapters one, two and three deal mostly with a micro-study of the case, like ballistics, trajectories, witnesses, the grassy knoll, medical evidence and, in general, the crime scenes of the Kennedy and Tippit murders.

Chapters four, five, six and seven deal with a macro-study of the case. Corsi now investigates Oswald's life, the Mafia, the CIA, politicians like LBJ and Nixon, all in his quest to find out who really killed Kennedy. The book is fully documented and well sourced. The author has included in his notes the works of some of the best assassination researchers like James Douglass, Jim DiEugenio, Gaeton Fonzi, David Talbot, Josiah Thompson, Mark Lane, and Sylvia Meagher. But he also uses the work of some less credible researchers, like Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, plus a dubious former Soviet bloc intelligence official.

The publisher states "that the book will set a new standard for JFK assassination research, demanding that future researchers understand the deep, and unfortunately sinister, political forces, that led up to an unthinkable event that marked a profound change in America and the world." Has the book lived up to its promise? This is something that we will now try to find out.
II. Ballistics, trajectories and medical evidence

In Chapter 1, Corsi tries to deconstruct the single bullet theory. He does that in a very concise manner. He first discusses Paul Mandel's infamous article in the December 6, 1963 issue of Life Magazine. That article said that JFK was looking back toward the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting. This is how he got an entrance wound in the front of his neck from the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Corsi does this to show that, from the very beginning, there was an attempt to feed journalists information that would refute the medical evidence observed by the doctors at Parkland Hospital. Although the article's purpose was to prove that Oswald was the lone assassin, somehow it had a different effect: to raise questions of conspiracy. Mandel described that, according to the doctors, a bullet had entered the President's throat from the front and to justify how this could have happened he lied to the American people. He claimed that the Zapruder film showed that the President had turned his body far around so his throat was directly exposed to the sniper's nest. Mandel was following the FBI's official theory that three bullets were fired, of which, two struck the President and one hit Connally.

Corsi begins with the missed shot that hit bystander James Tague's cheek. This goes to show that the FBI's theory was flawed, and how it helped make Arlen Specter invent the single bullet theory with the help of the pristine bullet that was allegedly found on the stretcher where John Connally was lying. Based on Josiah Thompson's work, he then goes on to prove that bullet CE399 was probably planted by Jack Ruby on that stretcher. Examining John Connally's wounds he shows that it would have been impossible for the pristine bullet to have caused the wounds to both Kennedy and Connally as described by the Warren Commission. Both the doctors who examined Connally and the ballistics experts who ran tests testified that the pristine bullet would have been severely deformed if it had caused the damage attributed to it. The position of the president's back and throat wounds prove that the single bullet theory was not valid, and Governor Connally, to the end of his life, maintained that he was hit by a separate shot.

In Chapter 2 he examines the Grassy Knoll area and the possibility that an assassin might have fired a shot from behind the stockade fence. He refers to Craig Roberts book Kill Zone to prove that Oswald could not have fired the shots attributed to him and to successfully hit his target. He explains that the medical evidence proves that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza, and he quotes witnesses like Bowers and Newman to support the conclusion that there was a shooter on the Grassy Knoll. He also discusses the presence of Secret Service agents with false credentials on the Grassy Knoll, and one of them could be suspected of being part of the hit team.

He continues in this Commission critique effort to prove that Oswald was not in the sixth floor window. Key witness, Howard L. Brennan, is the only person who claimed that he saw Oswald firing from the infamous sniper's nest. The police gave the description of the suspect as white, slender, weighing about 165 pounds, about 5'10" tall, in his early thirties. Reputable researchers like Sylvia Meagher and Gerald McKnight have proved that it was impossible for Brennan to have a clear view to provide such a detailed description and he had also first failed to identify Oswald as the shooter in a police line up.

Corsi believes that the headshot that killed JFK was a double shot and he bases his conclusion on the work of Josiah Thompson and his book Six Seconds in Dallas. After analyzing the Zapruder film, Thompson concluded that "JFK's head moved forward violently beginning in frames 311-312, only to be driven violently back and to the left, beginning in frames 313-314." (p. 73). Thompson explained that JFK was struck by two shots, the first at Z312 hitting in the back of the head and immediately afterwards, at Z313, a second shot from the front struck him on a tangent that caused his head to move back an to the left.

If Corsi had waited for Thompson's presentation at the October 2013 Wecht Symposium before publishing his book,he would have known that Thompson no longer holds to that theory. He now believes that there was no shot from the back at Z312 and that JFK was hit from the front at Z313 but there was a second shot from the back much later, at frame Z329.

Corsi seems to agree with David Lifton's theory of a secret autopsy as described in his 1980 book Best Evidence. It would have been wiser if Corsi hadn't proscribed to Lifton's theory. It is very controversial at best, and for many, has lost credibility.

Corsi then proceeds to show that the rifle initially found on the sixth floor of the TSBD was a Mauser and not a Mannlicher-Carcano, and that Oswald was in the lunch room at the time of the shooting. He is up to date with the latest developments in this regard. He uses Barry Ernest's book The Girl on the Stairs where Victoria Adams, a TSBD employee who, after the shooting, came down the same stairs to the first floor as Oswald. She testified that she never heard or encountered Oswald. Unfortunately the Warren Commission enlisted other witnesses to negate her deposition and alter its meaning.

On the whole, Corsi does a decent job in presenting evidence that Oswald was innocent of the crime attributed to him, that he was never on the south east window, that he never fired any shot and that the single bullet theory was a fraud.

In chapter 4 he tries to show that Oswald did not shoot Officer J. D. Tippit. He draws on material from books written by notable researchers like Sylvia Meagher, Mark Lane, John Armstrong but also from the lone nut propagandist Dale Myers. I believe that he could have made his case without using Myers as a source.
III. Oswald a KGB Agent?

If Corsi wanted to find the best sources available to examine the Soviet defection of Oswald and if he was recruited by the KGB he would have chosen, for example, John Newman's Oswald and the CIA and/or John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee. Strangely enough, Corsi has chosen to listen to Ian Mihai Pacepa, a deputy chief of Romania's Intelligence Service (DIE). I consider this to be a big mistake. Most of the information here comes from Pacepa's book Programmed to Kill and email exchanges between Corsi and Pacepa.

Pacepa believed that the Soviets recruited Oswald when he was stationed in Atsugi, Japan. To substantiate his claim, he refers to Edward Jay Epstein's book Legend: The Secret War of Lee Harvey Oswald. At this point Corsi makes an error and refers to Epstein as "Lifton", who we all know is a different researcher. Somehow, the editor of the book didn't notice. According to Epstein the Soviets used an attractive hostess that worked at the Queen Bee bar to lure Oswald under the KGB influence. Why anyone would believe Epstein and Pacepa is anybody's guess. If Corsi had conducted his research correctly, he would have known that Epstein was fed information by none other than James Angleton, the master of deceit, the head of CIA's counterintelligence. If he had read Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much (p. 457), he would have known that Oswald was frequenting the bar with the possible mission to help a Soviet Colonel Nikolai Eroskin to defect, but this was aborted. Oswald was part of a U-2 operation called Detachment C, a secret unit that had the mission to collect vital data for intelligence that flew over Russia, China and Taiwan (see Newman, Oswald and the CIA p. 30-31). Pacepa argues that, humiliated by his defeat during the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev decided to have Kennedy killed as an act of revenge, and so KGB gave Oswald the mission to assassinate Kennedy. Any serious student of the assassination would know better than to fall for Pacepa's nonsense. His book provides zero evidence to support his thesis. It is well known that rivals in the Communist party, liker Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Antropov were waiting on the wings to overthrow Khrushchev and replace him as premier. Why Khrushchev would risk an international incident and his position to replace Kennedy with someone like LBJ who was a hardliner is beyond belief. After all Pacepa had defected to USA so it was to his benefit to perpetuate a myth that would only serve those who killed Kennedy. It is like he was reading everything he claimed from a script written by James Angleton himself.

The whole story is ludicrous since all researchers like Newman, Phil Melanson, Jim Douglass, Lisa Pease, Jim DiEugenio, Russell, Armstrong, among others, have made a strong case that Oswald went to the USSR as a US intelligence operative, part of a false defectors' program orchestrated by the US intelligence agencies and the military.

According to Pacepa, Khrushchev had a change of heart and decided to call off the hit on Kennedy. So he ordered the KGB to deprogram Oswald so as not to assassinate Kennedy. Oswald was not happy with the turn of events so he went to Mexico City to meet with the KGB officers to convince them to let him carry on with the assassination as planned. Again, Corsi should have known that Oswald or an Oswald impostor more likely had gone to Mexico as part of a CIA-FBI operation to embarrass the FPCC abroad were it had support (see, for instance, John Newman, Oswald and the CIA). Pacepa continues that the KGB decided to stop him from assassinating Kennedy by silencing him forever. However he does not explain why this never materialized. If one reads the HSCA's Lopez Report, it is hard not to conclude that Oswald was impersonated by some unknown party to leave a trail in the official files that the Cubans and the Soviets were controlling Oswald. And also to show that Oswald met with Valeri Kostikov, the head of the KGB assassinations unit, the notorious Department 13. As we all know there were never any photographs of Oswald taken in Mexico and the voice on the tapes given to FBI did not correspond to his voice. As Newman showed, the purpose of the Mexico impersonation was to dim the lights so the intelligence community would not sound an alert that a former Soviet defector met with Kostikov, the head of the KGB assassinations unit, Department 13. This would have resulted in putting Oswald on the FBI's watch list and as a result he would have never been allowed to be in a building above the Presidential route. The real Oswald could not be captured on film or seen by witnesses in Mexico. His handlers could not risk Oswald's detection or his possible accidental murder since his survival was vital to the plot's success.

It was Ruth Paine who produced much of the suspect evidence that Oswald was in Mexico. Even after the police had searched her house and they had not come up with anything. Yet, Ruth Paine found some incriminating evidence that the Police could not find (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 284). This is the same woman who arranged for Oswald's job at the Texas School Book Depository in October 1963. Ruth Paine had also claimed to have seen, on November 9, 1963, Oswald typing a letter referring to his meeting in Mexico with agent Kostin, apparently another name for Kostikov. This letter was sent to the Soviet Embassy in Washington (Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 233). Some think the letter is a forgery, planted in order to incriminate Oswald. The Warren Commission accepted the genuineness of this letter. Largely because of corroborating evidence in the form of a rough draft, said to be in Oswald's handwriting, which Ruth Paine also allegedly discovered. What is particularly suspect about the November 9th Kostin letter is its timing. After being intercepted by the FBI on its way to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, the letter was summarized and communicated to Dallas, where the news arrived on November 22nd (see Peter Scott, Deep Politics III).

To make things worse, Pacepa claims that George DeMohrenschildt was a KGB agent. To his credit, Corsi acknowledges that the evidence that DeMonhreschildt was a CIA agent " ...is as strong and important counterweight to Pacepa's suggestion that DeMohrenschildt was a KGB agent assigned to be Oswald's handler in Dallas" (p. 163). Despite that he comes back to repeat Pacepa's claim about DeMohrenschildt being a Soviet agent since Pacepa had first hand experience in the upper ranks of the Soviet intelligence network.

Corsi states that DeMohrenschildt was an important link to several pieces of evidence that the Warren Commission used to conclude that Oswald killed Kennedy. Some of it had to do with the Gen. Edwin Walker shooting incident that occurred on March 10, 1963. At 9 pm that evening a bullet penetrated General Walker's window and slammed into the wall, only narrowly missing his head. De Mohrenschildt testified to the Commission that he had joked to Oswald if he was the guy who shot Walker. Although Oswald never said yes, the Baron saw guilt in his face. In 1967, four years after the assassination, and four years after the infamous backyard photos showing Oswald holding a rifle were found in Ruth Paine's garage, another backyard photo was found in DeMohrenschildt's storage unit. This backyard photo was signed "To my friend George from Lee" and dated "5/IV/1963, the Cyrillic version of April 5, 1963 (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 82). This photo, because of its different boundary at the edge and finer resolution, is suspected of being a plant, in order to incriminate Oswald for the Walker shooting. Pacepa believes that this is a further proof that DeMohrenschildt knew more about the Walker incident than he ever admitted. Yet George was puzzled as to how is showed up in his belongings so many years after the fact.

Two pieces of physical evidence implicated Oswald in the Walker shooting. Photos of Walker's house, which were found in Ruth Paine's garage, and a handwritten note in Russian allegedly left from Lee to Marina. Pacepa found telltale clues in this note proving that Oswald was a KGB agent. He claimed that in that letter Oswald instructs Marina what to do in case he is arrested. In that note Pacepa recognized KGB codes like "friends" a code for support officer and "Red Cross" a code for financial help.

Pacepa is really stretching things. He then stretches further. He constructs a myth to demonstrate that Oswald shot at Walker. The truth is that both the picture and the note were surfaced by Ruth Paine after the assassination. Again, the police had searched her house for two days after the murder and had failed to recover the items. After they got it, the Secret Service had the note returned to Ruth because they thought it was from her. (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, pp. 77-78). It is fairly evident that DeMohrenschildt and Ruth Paine were CIA assets. And it was Ruth who was the person that produced the most incriminating evidence that convicted Oswald in the public mind as the president's killer. This included evidence that Oswald was in Mexico, the Kostin letter, and the Walker photographs and note. Yet Corsi sidesteps her great importance in the case and chooses to listen to Pacepa. None of the crucial information above regarding Ruth Paine is reported in his book. In fact, Corsi seems to accept the idea that Oswald actually shot General Walker. As Gerald McKnight wrote in his book Breach of Trust , the bullet fired into the Walker house was a steel-jacketed 30.06 bullet. But after the assassination the FBI changed the bullet to a 6.5 copper jacketed bullet. Even the bullet stored in the National Archives today is copper jacketed (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 76).

The Pacepa story is not over yet. Corsi seems to believe Pacepa's claims that the KGB advised all the Eastern Bloc Intelligence services to spread the rumors that the CIA and LBJ had killed JFK so as to divert world attention away from the Soviet Union. To prove Pacepa right, Corsi brings up the case of Vasili Mitrokhin, a retired KGB officer who claimed that the KGB had financed Mark Lane, among others, to promote the JFK assassination conspiracies. There are many writers who think that the possibility exists that Mitrokhin, an dother former KGB officers, were used by western intelligence agencies after the fall of the USSR for their own agendas. Why Corsi would choose to waste so many pages on Pacepa's story is something I can't figure out. Especially since the Soviet Union and KGB do not figure in his list of conspirators at the end of his book. I believe he could have done himself a great favor if he had omitted this whole Pacepa section.

Corsi then tries to tie Oswald in with China by connecting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) organization to the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Oswald was corresponding with Vincent T. Lee, the national director of FPCC who was also a member of the PLP. Corsi wonders what would have happened if Oswald had been killed immediately after the assassination. The CIA would have claimed that he was a kGB agent who had become disillusioned with Russian Communism and had turned now to Maoist China. Corsi provides no evidence to support this except Allen Dulles who during the Warren Commission hearings said out of the blue "It would have been a blessing for us if (Lee Harvey Oswald) ... had taken his passport and gone to China as he may have contemplated" (p. 157). Unfortunately Dulles is not the most credible source, and the China angle is classic disinformation by Dulles to mud the waters and false sponsor China for the crime.
IV. The Mob, CIA and the French Connection

Corsi then informs the reader that we cannot lay all the blame on KGB alone. If we do then we make the KGB responsible for launching multiple look-alike plans to assassinate JFK. Plus we ignore recently discovered evidence of the involvement of the mob and the CIA in the assassination plots.

To make his point, Corsi goes on to evaluate the two plots to assassinate JFK that were thwarted before they could happen. The Chicago Plot on November 2, 1963 and the Tampa Plot on November 18, 1963. Both were eerily similar to the one in which succeeded in Dallas.

According to Corsi, in writing his book, he did extensive research that included reading almost every previous book. So what was his source upon which to base his information for these two plots? When I saw the name of the book and its authors I froze in disbelief. I looked at my calendar to see if it was the 1st of April. But the cold outside reminded that it was December and Corsi was not trying to fool me. Sadly enough, his source was Ultimate Sacrifice, the book by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann. Recall, this pair had concluded that the Kennedy brothers were planning to invade Cuba on December 1, 1963, with the help of Castro's General Juan Almeida. Unfortunately for them the top conspirator Almeida was scheduled to travel to Africa at about that same time. Ultimately, this fact did not deter them. They followed up with a sequel titled Legacy of Secrecy.

In both books, they maintained that it was the Mafia with help of CIA rogue agents that killed Kennedy. They have been discredited since and their books are considered, at best, fiction and at worst, disinformation. Author James DiEugenio did a stellar job in pointing out the many serious problems with Waldron's and Hartmann's thesis. You could read both of his detailed reviews on CTKA.

Why am I so critical of Corsi's choice of source material? Because if he had done his homework, he would have known that everything we know about the Chicago plot is due to the great investigative journalism by Chicago reporter Edwin Black of the Chicago Independent. To be fair to Corsi, he also does refer to JFK and the Unspeakable to examine the Chicago Plot. If the readers want to find out more about the Chicago Plot, they should read Black's original article, "The Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago."

The plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago involved a patsy by the name of Thomas Vallee. Like Oswald, he was an ex-Marine. But unlike Oswald, he was afflicted with mental problems due to a combat injury. Again, like Oswald, he served at a U-2 base in Japan, was involved with Cuban exiles and worked in a place overlooking the Presidential route from a building next to a difficult left turn, like the one in Dallas, on Elm Street. Vallee had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, something that Oswald had not been. If one examines the Clinton-Jackson incident, one would think that Shaw and Ferrie were planning to have Oswald work in a mental hospital. The plan did not materialize. But if Oswald had secured a job there, it would have been easy after JFK's assassination to switch the files to show that Oswald was a patient at the Jackson hospital.

Besides their similarities, Oswald and Vallee had some important differences. Vallee had not visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City. Therefore, there was no indication he had met with Valeri Kostikov. If the Chicago plot had succeeded, it would have been much more difficult for the plotters to have been able to blame Cuba and/or the Soviet Union, and use that as leverage to force a cover up. Which is what LBJ used to force Earl Warren and Sen. Richard Russell to go along with the cover up.

When it comes to the plot in Tampa, Corsi again enlists the help of Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann to describe it. According to them, the patsy set to take the blame was a young Cuban American named Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. Who, like Oswald, was a member of the Miami FPCC, had been to Mexico and wanted to travel to Cuba. On November 25, 1963 Lopez entered Mexico via Nuevo Laredo and on November 27 he was photographed by the CIA at the Mexico City airport and flew to Cuba. Unfortunately we don't have much reliable information about the Tampa plot, and most people have a hard time relying on Waldron/Hartmann and questionable sources in this regard. After all, both men believed that it was the Mafia that planned both plots, Sam Giancana in Chicago and Santo Trafficante in Tampa.

Corsi then discusses another mysterious person, Miguel Casas Saez, who according to the CIA was a Castro agent. On November 22, 1963 Saez had arrived at the Mexico City airport with a private two engine airplane and boarded a Cubana Airlines flight to Havana, Cuba.

It is difficult to believe that Lopez or Saez were involved in an assassination plot to kill the American President. James Jesus Angleton the head of CIA's Counterintelligence "maintained that Castro sent three DGI agents to Dallas in the days before November 22. In Angleton's theory agents Policarpo and Casas, plus a third man whom Angleton would not name, separately worked their way to Dallas, where they met up and carried out the assassination" (Joe Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, p. 266). Now it is obvious that the man who invented the "Wilderness of Mirrors" strategy where everything is possible but nothing is certain, was trying to falsely implicate Castro in the assassination. The same man who John Newman believes was the man who designed the Mexico City plot and choreographed "Oswald's" moves during his visit to the embassies.

Corsi then tries to explain, with Waldron's help, how the Mafia got the idea of using a Communist patsy. According to him the CIA assassinated Guatemala's President Armas in 1957 and blamed the murder on Romeo Vasquez Sanchez an alleged Communist sympathizer. Waldron believes that mobsters Rosselli and Marcello would remember from the 1957 assassination the importance of having a patsy to quickly take the blame. Corsi continues to quote Waldron. And he even uses the alleged Carlos Marcello prison "confession", the one he made as he was becoming senile, to the effect that he had ordered the assassination of President Kennedy to an FBI undercover agent placed in the same cell with him. To make things worse, Corsi then refers to Chuck Giancana's book Double Cross to support the view that the Mafia had killed JFK. Chuck was the brother of Chicago Mafia boss, Sam Giancana. According to Chuck, he had confessed to him his part in the assassination. Giancana explained to his brother that they had overthrown governments in foreign countries, and he outlined the plot and the people he used. Among them were Jack Ruby, John Rosselli and Charles Nicolleti. Then Corsi goes even further in this vein. He chooses to believe Frank Ragano, Santo Trafficante's lawyer. Ragano wrote a book about the JFK assassination after the deaths of Jimmy Hoffa and Santo Trafficante where he claimed that both Hoffa and Trafficante had been involved in the assassination. As Jim DiEugenio discussed in his review of Legacy of Secrecy, it is almost certain that Ragano was lying.

Corsi refers to the famous Nixon warning to the CIA during the Watergate scandal that "E. H. Hunt was involved ... and will make him look bad and it is likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs ..." (p. 233). H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's aide, said some years later that when Nixon was talking about the "Bay of Pigs" he really meant the JFK assassination. Nixon had worked with the CIA and suggested help from the Mafia to prepare an invasion of Cuba when he was Eisenhower's Vice President. It is peculiar that most of the Watergate burglars were also part of the Bay of Pigs operation, among them E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis.

As he was dying, Hunt confessed to his son that he was a benchwarmer on a CIA plot to assassinate JFK, the "big event" as they called it. Hunt named LBJ, Cord Meyer, David Phillips, David Sanchez Morales, William Harvey and a French Gunman named Lucien Sarti as the plotters. Hunt, who didn't like Harvey and considered him to be an "Alcoholic Psycho", claimed that Harvey was the man who handled the Executive Action program ZR/RIFLE, and had recruited Corsican assassins from the "Marseilles drug traffickers also known as the "French Connection" to assassinate JFK. In an article I co-authored with Seamus Coogan and Phil Dragoo titled "Evaluating the Case against Lyndon Johnson," there is a section devoted to E. Howard Hunt and his deathbed confession where we discuss that his confession as a limited hangout to divert attention from the real conspirators like Jim Angleton, Allen Dulles and those above them.

To understand the role of the "French Connection" one should read Henrik Kruger's excellent book The Great Heroin Coup where he unravels Nixon's plan to develop a new drug superagency to control world heroin trade. Nixon's public declaration in June 1971 of his war on heroin promptly led to his assemblage of White House Plumbers, Cubans, and even "hit squads" with the avowed purpose of combating the international narcotics traffic. The "great heroin coup" – the "remarkable shift" from Marseilles (Corsican) to Southeast Asian and Mexican (Mafia) heroin in the United States – was a deliberate move to reconstruct and redirect the heroin trade, rather than to eliminate it. And that Cuban exiles, Santo Trafficante, the CIA, and the Nixon White House were all involved. The major points from Kruger's book are:

Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein began the war against the Corsican mafia in southeast Asia and paved the way for the CIA and Trafficante in that area.

Lansky and Trafficante made all the necessary arrangements in southeast Asia to assume control of the opium production with the help of CIA.

In 1971 the great heroin coup was underway. Cuban exiles were involved in the White House drug operation with E.H.Hunt and Lucien Conein. The US drug enforcement agencies waged an all out war against the Corsican/Marseilles/Turkey/USA drug network, i.e. against the French Connection. The French connection network was run by CIA's arch-enemies, the French intelligence SDECE who were loyal to DeGaulle, and were competing with CIA over the control of the world heroin trade. The CIA achieved two things with the heroin coup. To take over the heroin trade from the French and second with the help of their ally, Pompidou the new French President, to crush the old Gaullist intelligence network.

The CIA faction associated with the heroin coup was the China/SE Asia/Cuba lobby, and E. H. Hunt was the main representative of that lobby.

When the French network was defeated, heroin began flowing into the USA from SE Asia and Mexico. And the man Hunt named as a shooter behind the picket fence, Lucien Sarti was one of the victims of this war when he was killed in Mexico on April 1972.

From the above, one could conclude that the CIA, in their effort to crush this Corsican and SDECE network, blamed them for the assassination of JFK, labeling them as false sponsors of the plot. This is evident in Steve Rivele's original false theory, the one that ran on the first installment of The Men Who Killed Kennedy. It may be echoed in E. H. Hunt's deathbed confession that Lucien Sarti was the shooter behind the picket fence. Lamar Waldron names Michel Victor Mertz as one of the assassins, a man who was a member of SDECE and an enemy of OAS, the organization that tried to murder Charles DeGaulle, the same man that saved DeGaulle's life. Which makes Corsi's reliance on Waldron and this idea that the Diem heroin dynasty, the American and Marseille mafia were responsible for the assassination look kind of silly.

Corsi discusses the French Connection and a CIA released document confirming that a French assassin was apprehended in Dallas on November 1963. The memo names this assassin as Jean Souetre, a.k.a. Michel Roux, a.k.a Michel Mertz. Now Corsi makes the mistake of repeatedly calling him a Corsican hit man. In reality neither of these men were Corsican, but Frenchmen from the mainland. The OAS hated JFK for supporting Algerian independence. Eugene Dinkin a US army code breaker referred to in Dick Russell's, The Man who Knew too Much, discovered a message that JFK was to be assassinated in November. Dinkin was stationed in Metz, France and one of his duties was to decipher cable traffic originating with the OAS.

Souetre gave an interview later which confused things even more. He claimed that he was in Spain that day, not Dallas, and that he could prove it. He said that a man named Michel Victor Mertz, a narcotics smuggler and SDECE agent, was actually impersonating him in order to leave a trail that could lead, not back to Mertz, but to his enemy Souetre. Of course it could have been the other way round: it was Souetre who was impersonating Mertz. Michel Victor Mertz was an agent of SDECE, the agency that was competing with the CIA for the control of drug supplies. James Jesus Angleton was in contact with SDECE and especially a man named Phillipe de Vosjoli, who many believe was spying against his country for Angleton.

A third alternative is that neither Mertz nor Souetre were involved in the assassination. And this dual confusion of two men using each other's name was deliberately designed to confuse researchers and again create a cognitive dissonance were everything is possible but nothing is certain. We recognize again the so familiar wilderness of mirrors strategy of "CIA's Magicians" at work.
V. Cui Bono?

When it comes to the crucial question of who was responsible for the assassination Corsi names LBJ, Nixon, the CIA, the Military Industrial Complex and Organized Crime. They were those who stood to gain from Kennedy's removal by replacing him with Johnson in order to alter his policies. JFK planned to withdraw from Vietnam and LBJ reversed that policy. Thereby escalating the war, which meant huge profits from military contracts and the heroin trade. Corsi argues that LBJ, Nixon and the Military Industrial Complex lacked the operational capabilities to plan the assassination so they asked the help of those who could, namely the CIA and the Mafia. Needless to say LBJ was not the "Mastermind" of the assassination and he did not conceive, instigate and plan the assassination. He was just a puppet who covered up the crime after the fact and later as President continued the Cold War, as John Newman and James DiEugenio showed in their books, JFK and Vietnam and Destiny Betrayed. The article I mentioned earlier, "Evaluating the Case against Lyndon Johnson," tried to disprove the theory that LBJ was the man that instigated the crime. Books like Philip Nelson's LBJ: the Mastermind of the Assassination have been discredited and scorned by many researchers. Corsi considers the Bobby Baker scandal as important. Baker had been a close associate and aide to LBJ in the senate and if he was convicted and imprisoned he may have tried to take LBJ with him. It was Life magazine that exposed the Baker scandal and Corsi believes that it was Robert Kennedy himself who fed information to their reporters.

I am convinced this was not the case. For the simple reason that Henry Luce, the owner and founder of the magazine, was quite anti-Kennedy and anti-Communist. And he felt that Kennedy was not doing enough to liberate Cuba. Luce and his wife Clare Booth Luce were financing the Cuban exiles in their war against Castro and were very critical of Kennedy's failure to do more in that regard. At one point they walked out of a White House dinner after disagreeing with JFK when he tried to convince them to cool it down over Cuba. After the assassination it was C.D. Jackson, publisher of Time, and Luce's personal friend and emissary to the CIA , who purchased the Zapruder film and Life kept it locked up for many years. That way Life was able to control vital information in the film that would have proved conspiracy. To believe that Luce would help the Kennedys destroy LBJ seems a bit unlikely. It would make more sense that conspirators of the assassination used Life to corner and weaken LBJ in order to use him as an accessory to cover up the crime committed in his Texas backyard.

Nixon has been named as one of the conspirators by some researchers. Corsi uses the fact that Nixon was in Dallas the day of the assassination for a Pepsi conference to join them. Unfortunately this is not enough to make him a conspirator and there is no credible evidence to prove that he was. Same goes for George H.W. Bush who was in Texas the same day in the small city of Tyler. Researchers like Jim Fetzer who claim he was involved in the plot refer to a photo of a man standing outside the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination that allegedly bears a striking resemblance to Bush. Unfortunately for them an enlargement of the photograph reveals the features of a man that does not look like Bush. Others claim that one of the boats that were part of the Bay of Pigs operation was named Zapata after Bush's company Zapata Oil. While the truth is that Zapata was the name of the peninsula where the Bay of Pigs was located. I take a different approach and I don't believe that Nixon or Bush were part of the conspiracy but may been in Dallas, or the area, to set them up as false sponsors. This made it easier to manipulate them later as presidents.

We now come to Allen Dulles. Corsi has used the latest information found in Jim DiEugenio's book Destiny Betrayed, where the author makes a good case to prove that Dulles was one of the high level conspirators. Corsi continues that good work by using other material from Destiny Betrayed, especially the part were he examines JFK's split with the Eastern Establishment over his foreign policy. For more information on this you can read DiEugenio's article, "JFK's Embrace of Third World Nationalism."

Ultimately, Corsi blames the "New World Order" as the sponsor of the assassination. This group wanted to use military force to preserve private business interests around the world, instead of the genuine interests of the United States. In a sense he is right but I disagree with his term "New World Order." Those interests were as old as recorded history. And they have a strategy to conceal their identities by manipulating the pubic's sense of wonder and the thirst for the mysterious, the occult and the mystical. They try to convince people of the inevitability of their actions guided by something divine and mystical. I have a different name for the "New World Order". It is "The Money Trust", and it functions like the board of a huge global corporation. It has many different factions and views to gain the same end, and some interests have one or more seats and votes on the board. Although at times the board has conflicting interests they have the same end goal: power, and the control of the many by the few.
VI. Conclusions

It is true that Corsi relied too much on the likes of Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartmann and the allegations of Pacepa. If had done the meticulous search that he promised he would have thought twice before using them for references. He should have been aware that the research community has disproved the Waldron/Harmtann theories. In the case of Pacepa I am convinced that Corsi does not really believe him because he does not include Pacepa's allegations in his conclusions. I believe that he wanted to make a difference by using information given to him by Pacepa in private emails, in order to make a sensation. I also feel that his chapters were not very well connected to each other but spread out irregularly. It seems that Corsi gathered too much information from so many sources that it became difficult to put it all together in the best way possible.

Despites its mistakes this is a decent enough book for the novice and general public who are not aware of the machinations of deep politics and JFK assassination case. Corsi is a NY Times best selling author and he can help attract a wider audience that is not familiar with case. Afterwards the readers can take some of the good sources of his book like Douglass, DiEugenio, Fonzi, Newman among others to broaden their knowledge and realize how deep the rabbit hole actually is.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby Elvis » Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:07 pm

Vasilios Vazakas wrote:
Corsi is a NY Times best selling author and he can help attract a wider audience that is not familiar with case. Afterwards the readers can take some of the good sources of his book like Douglass, DiEugenio, Fonzi, Newman among others to broaden their knowledge and realize how deep the rabbit hole actually is.


Usually I'm leery of Jerome Corsi, but, judging by this review, his book sounds at least 'okay' and if, on the basis of a wealth of facts alone, it will send a wider audience down the bibliographical rabbit hole, then I'm for it.



P.S. What's with the right-wingers writing fairly decent JFK books?? see also Roger Stone's contribution: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34625&p=527348&hilit=JFK+book+GOP#p527348
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the silence of Kim Cascone

Postby IanEye » Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:06 am

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Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

Postby MinM » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:50 pm

Image
Wednesday, September 24,2014
Case closed?
EAST LANSING COMICS WRITER DAN MISHKIN JUMPS FROM WONDER WOMAN TO THE WARREN COMMISSION


There are hundreds of books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Do we need another?

“The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation,” written by East Lansing comics creator Dan Mishkin, makes the case that we do.

It´s a drastic turnaround for a veteran writer of escapist fantasy. Mishkin has worked on dozens of characters in a 30-year career, including a threeyear stint writing “Wonder Woman.” He´s used to letting his imagination run amuck.

“Comics immediately transport you to another world with so much possibility,” he enthused. “You can do anything in comics.”

While sifting through reams of testimony and evidence for the JFK book, he often wished he could go back to fantasyadventure, where “nothing has to be true except the characters´ emotions.”

But Mishkin, 61, is on a lifelong mission to show that comics can do things text alone cannot.

“I´m in love with comics,” Mishkin said. “I can´t describe it adequately. The first time I opened up a comic, it changed my life.” (The comic was Sheldon Mayer´s “Sugar and Spike,” about two toddlers who spoke a language adults didn´t understand.)

It´s a truism by now that comics have come of age as a vehicle for adult nonfiction. The bookstore shelves are full of graphic tomes on heavy topics, from journalist Joe Sacco´s shattering reports on Bosnia and Palestine to Ann Arbor comic artist Matt Faulkner´s “Gaijin: American Prisoner of War,” about Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, published this month.

Only last week, Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” and author of several incisive graphic memoirs, received a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant.”

In the Warren Commission book, Mishkin joins his passion for comics to a lifelong interest in the JFK assassination, which has nagged at him since he was 10 years old.

The 152-page book, out this month to mark the 50th anniversary of the official report on JFK´s death, explores the main highways, side roads and back alleys of the Kennedy case in ways only a comic book can.

The book is published by Abram ComicArts.

“Comics can´t supply facts that are unknowable, but they can fix your attention on what can be known, and how things relate to each other,” Mishkin said.

One of its most effective tricks is rendering gunman Lee Harvey Oswald in ghostly black and white, while the objects and people around him are in color.

“He is ultimately unknowable, he´s a mystery we´re never going to be able to solve,” Mishkin explained. “Anybody who colors him in is doing so according to their own lights, expressing an opinion.”


When witnesses disagree, the same scene appears over and over, from slightly different angles. Time speeds up, slows down, or loops in frustrating circles. The book is packed with maps, charts, dottedline bullet trajectories, eyewitness testimony and a lot of worried and shocked faces, frozen on the page, each worth a thousand words.

The book faults the Warren Commission for many sins of omission and commission, but suggests that its conclusion that Oswald acted alone may nevertheless be true.

I´m sympathetic to the Warren Commission and the people who have defended them over the years and to its challengers,” Mishkin said. “Let´s call them the lone-gunmen and the conspiracy theorists. I´m sympathetic to them all because the evidence is incomplete.”


Burning desire

On the day of Kennedy´s assassination, Nov. 22, 1963, Mishkin was 10 years old, living on Long Island.

“I was a cub scout whose great moment was to be the flag bearer in the Memorial Day parade,” Mishkin said. “This was before Vietnam, so my relationship to my own patriotism was more straightforward.”

On Nov. 22, Mishkin was almost finished reading a book about Kennedy´s World War II exploits on PT boat 109.

The heroic story, along with the toothy Cliff Robertson film “PT-109,” released that year, fit right in with the superhero stories he was reading. ”I put Kennedy up there with Batman and Superman in my pantheon,” he said.

In the comics Mishkin loved, and the ones he wrote as an adult, evil was usually dispatched by the last page. To a flag-waving young boy, Kennedy´s persona was part of that idealism.

“You can´t read comic books, especially of that era, and not associate them with American Build-your-own greatness and the six-packs urge and from capacity to do good brews in the world,” Mishkin said.

Nobody used the word “closure” in 1963, but that´s what We always the adventures offer 10% of off Superman, on 6 bottles Batman, the bottles G.I.s of and wine, cowboys mix/match and the rest of the comics heroes were about. You went for a ride and had an adventure, but you always came back home to your peanut butter sandwich.

Two years ago, as the 50th anniversary of Kennedy´s assassination drew closer, Mishkin realized he still hadn´t gotten over Kennedy´s death.

“That feeling of senselessness never really left,” Mishkin said. “I never got a satisfactory explanation and I still wanted one.”

To handle the sensitive job of rendering his script, Mishkin turned to his old collaborator on “Amethyst,” New York-based artist Ernie Colón.

“Ernie works with a drawing tablet attached to his computer — pretty impressive for an 83-year-old man,” Mishkin said.

Colón´s own non-fiction book, “The 9/11 Commission: A Graphic Report,” gave Mishkin the idea to do something similar with the Warren Report.

“I knew it couldn´t be a straight adaptation, like the 9/11 book, because there is so much controversy about the assassination and the report and I couldn´t ignore that,” he said.

Mishkin has fond memories of his free-wheeling collaboration with Colón on “Amethyst.” While drawing the pages, Colón would place the word balloons and fill them in with temporary dialogue, with the villains spouting unprintable obscenities.

The cursing streaks often moved Mishkin to change the dialogue he had written.

“We obviously couldn´t use that dialogue, but it often captured something about the personality of the character,” he said.

When it became clear that the Warren Commission book was too big a project to finish by deadline, a second artist, Ann Arbor´s Jerzy Drozd, was brought in to help. Together, Drozd and Mishkin run a nonprofit organization called Kids Read Comics, which sponsors a free, annual two-day event in Ann Arbor where kids create their own comics and librarians and teachers learn how to use comics to promote reading and learning.

All three creators worked so closely together that “it´s hard to tell who did what,” Mishkin said.

“There were many times when I had an idea that was visualized so much better than I thought possible,” he said.

In one sequence re-creating the six seconds before the shooting, Mishkin suggested that stopwatches run straight down the page. Colón exploded the page and drew the stopwatches in five disorienting sizes, juxtaposed with circular rifle scopes and eyeballs, with one stopwatch seeming to drop out of the book.

“I got the page back and I realized, that´s why he´s an artist and I´m not,” Mishkin said.

In one panel of the book, Oswald is rendered in multiple colors, dramatizing the incompatible array of motivations attributed to him by the various conspiracy theorists. (It´s also a neat tribute to “Eight Elvises,” the Andy Warhol print with Elvis Presley slinging a gun).

A pair of double-page spreads are strikingly similar, with small differences. One spread depicts the experience of witnesses who thought they heard shots coming from the Texas School Book Depository. The next shows witnesses who thought they heard shots coming from the grassy knoll.

"That is meant to show you how little it takes to go from one reality to another," Mishkin said. "That´s comics."

Even the sound of the fateful gunshot was cause for careful thought. On the drawn pages, artist Colon made it go "KA-POW," but Mishkin changed it to "P-KOW." To his ear, it sounded more realistic and less comic-book like.

No closure

As he sifted facts and theories that have accumulated in the past half century, Mishkin realized that he still had a “huge emotional connection” to his 10-year-old self.

“I never shook the experience of being a 10-year-old who had the rug, or the world, or whatever, pulled out from under me,” he said.

But closure was not in the cards, for Mishkin or anyone else, despite the efforts of the blue-ribbon commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren that investigated the assassination. A 2013 poll shows that half the American people still think the killing was part of a larger conspiracy.

The book gives all the major suspects a turn, from Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who was targeted for assassination by Kennedy, to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, bent on payback for the humiliation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to extreme right wingers who hated Kennedy for his politics and Catholic religion, to a vengeful Mafia, hawks in the U.S. military and the CIA itself.

The book concludes that while there are serious problems with the Warren Commission´s methodology, none of the other camps have an open-and-shut case, either.

At the end of the book, Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy´s successor and the man who convened the Warren Commission, is shown, musing in retirement, that Oswald may not have acted alone.

“Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro was trying to get to him first,” Johnson is quoted in a 1968 interview.

After almost two years in the JFK rabbit hole, Mishkin feels he´s gotten the assassination out of his system.

“I have to — and I can — live with the uncertainty,” he said. He feels for the conspiracy theorists, but can´t let himself go there.

“If I could wave a wand and change two things about human nature, it would be: a greater tolerance for uncertainty and a willingness to accept that the other person is acting in good faith,” he said.

Mishkin and Drozd are researching another non-fiction book, on the Apollo 12 mission, the second manned moon landing. Then it´s feet back off the ground with more “kid adventure” stories, including one with dinosaurs.

Writer Dan Mishkin and artist Jerzy Drozd

“The Warren Commission Report” 40-minute slide show, Q&A and signing 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30 Schuler Books Eastwood Towne Center
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