Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed

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Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Adele Edisen - 04-09-2012

Peter Lemkin Wrote:
Adele Edisen Wrote:I asked Mr. Fonzi why had there been no reply, and he said, "They didn't want to open that door..."

But Gaeton DID help to open 'the door' a bit more, for all of us in America and the World - just enough so we could peek in and see they were lying their asses off and covering up the truth! Thank you G. Fonzi!

Peter, Mr. Fonzi was referring to the door that was specifically 'my door', not the general door or the other doors that he did help to open. I am not being critical of him; he was telling me something very important and true. Obviously he and others knew something of what I would be saying from the contents of my attorney's letters to Chairman Louis Stokes and Subcommittee Chairman Richardson Preyer. According to him, that information was not meant to be heard or read by the the open hearings of Congress and the people of the United States. That was what he was telling me, and I want this to be clearly understood.

Adele

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Peter Lemkin - 04-09-2012

Adele Edisen Wrote:
Peter Lemkin Wrote:
Adele Edisen Wrote:I asked Mr. Fonzi why had there been no reply, and he said, "They didn't want to open that door..."

But Gaeton DID help to open 'the door' a bit more, for all of us in America and the World - just enough so we could peek in and see they were lying their asses off and covering up the truth! Thank you G. Fonzi!

Peter, Mr. Fonzi was referring to the door that was specifically 'my door', not the general door or the other doors that he did help to open. I am not being critical of him; he was telling me something very important and true. Obviously he and others knew something of what I would be saying from the contents of my attorney's letters to Chairman Louis Stokes and Subcommittee Chairman Richardson Preyer. According to him, that information was not meant to be heard or read by the the open hearings of Congress and the people of the United States. That was what he was telling me, and I want this to be clearly understood.

Adele

Adele, I'm aware of that and believe that is what he meant. I used his analogy to point out that he did open a crack the larger door to the hidden facts and deeds about the events surrounding Dallas. Yes, in your conversation with him, he was saying they [committee] did not want to open the door that behind lay your testimony and truth....they didn't want to open any doors leading in that direction! Who was it that said during the WC that 'at this time we should be closing doors, not opening new ones'...or something to that effect? I didn't mean to take away anything from his comments directed at you by GF!

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Charles Drago - 04-09-2012

If only Gaeton had held up four fingers and delivered a petition or two, that door would have swung wide ...

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Peter Lemkin - 04-09-2012

Charles Drago Wrote:If only Gaeton had held up four fingers and delivered a petition or two, that door would have swung wide ...

ah, you must be referring to DPA - Deep Political ACTION!:crutch:

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Albert Doyle - 04-09-2012

Sadly the reality seems to be useless action vs intelligently considered Deep Political action - both of which meet a tightly closed door.

If incredible Shakespeare is performed behind a closed door or doggerel who would ever know the difference?

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Adele Edisen - 05-09-2012

Peter Lemkin Wrote:
Adele Edisen Wrote:
Peter Lemkin Wrote:
Adele Edisen Wrote:I asked Mr. Fonzi why had there been no reply, and he said, "They didn't want to open that door..."

But Gaeton DID help to open 'the door' a bit more, for all of us in America and the World - just enough so we could peek in and see they were lying their asses off and covering up the truth! Thank you G. Fonzi!

Peter, Mr. Fonzi was referring to the door that was specifically 'my door', not the general door or the other doors that he did help to open. I am not being critical of him; he was telling me something very important and true. Obviously he and others knew something of what I would be saying from the contents of my attorney's letters to Chairman Louis Stokes and Subcommittee Chairman Richardson Preyer. According to him, that information was not meant to be heard or read by the the open hearings of Congress and the people of the United States. That was what he was telling me, and I want this to be clearly understood.

Adele
Adele, I'm aware of that and believe that is what he meant. I used his analogy to point out that he did open a crack the larger door to the hidden facts and deeds about the events surrounding Dallas. Yes, in your conversation with him, he was saying they [committee] did not want to open the door that behind lay your testimony and truth....they didn't want to open any doors leading in that direction! Who was it that said during the WC that 'at this time we should be closing doors, not opening new ones'...or something to that effect? I didn't mean to take away anything from his comments directed at you by GF!

Peter,

Referring to your last sentence: I don't thnk you took anything away from Gaeton Fonzi's remarks directed at me. I merely wanted to keep others from misunderstanding what he was talking about, because my attorney's letters briefly summarized what I had to tell the Committee and Subcommittee. Those two letters were passed around and apparently it was decided that they would not investigate this matter (because they might have solved the JFK murder case). As a result, years later an FBI agent sent my information under his cover letter to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., and that ended up in the hands of the ARRB and is now housed in a file at the JFK Collection of the National Archives (NARA II).

You are correct in saying that the Warren Commission's purpose was to close doors. It had to name Lee Harvey Oswald, who never shot at anyone that day, as the assassin of JFK and Tippit. Despite the fact that the HSCA concluded that there had been a second shooter on the grassy knoll, the Justice Derpartment and FBI refused to follow the mandate given to them by the House Committee (HSCA) to continue to investigate further. When an agent called Headquarters to ask if there was an ongoing investigation at the time, he was told to shut up if he valued his job. Well, private citizens are still investigating a murder case that could have been easily and honestly solved within a year or two after it happened.

I think Gaeton Fonzi was a real hero, an investigator who was doing his job and doing it well. He opened a door to the CIA and the Oswald connection to the CIA, and more.

Adele

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Peter Lemkin - 05-09-2012

Adele Edisen Wrote:I think Gaeton Fonzi was a real hero, an investigator who was doing his job and doing it well. He opened a door to the CIA and the Oswald connection to the CIA, and more.

Adele

...yeah...as we say in the USA...'what a concept!!!!'....[an investigator ACTUALLY doing his job honestly, and in a manner towards wherever the facts lead! He was not a conspiracy theorist...he was a factual investigator!..and a damn good one at that...and was not afraid to speak truth to power when he found some uncomfortable truths he knew would not get him easy treatment from TPTB nor the MSM et al.

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Seamus Coogan - 06-09-2012

Bor Tribute Show. Old Fonzi Interview.

http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2012.html

In case you missed first time around and missed last nights. It would have been good to have had some more people on
who worked with him and some points about his career. But full credit to Len for the interview. I hope he can get Jim to do a segment next week
as well.

Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed - Greg Burnham - 09-10-2012

I just received this from Gordon Winslow:

Kennedy assassination investigator Gaeton Fonzi dies in Manalapan* at 76

By PAUL VITELLO
The New York Times

Gaeton Fonzi, one of the most relentless investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, whose final report to the panel concluded in 1979 that President John F. Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy," died Aug. 30 in Palm Beach County. He was 76.Fonzi died of complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in Manalapan, his wife, Marie, said.

In Florida, Fonzi worked for Miami and Gold Coast magazines, writing investigative articles. He also wrote several other books, including a biography of the media mogul and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. But the Kennedy assassination remained the story that consumed him, and former colleagues recalled the impatience he displayed in his pursuit of the story.

They called him Ahab.

Of course the assassination was a conspiracy, insisted Fonzi, a journalist recruited mainly on the strength of scathing magazine critiques he had written about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But who were the conspirators? What was their motive? How could the committee close its doors without the answers?

Fonzi nailed those questions to the committee's locked doors, figuratively, in a long article he wrote in 1980 for Washingtonian magazine and in a 1993 book, The Last Investigation. In both, he chronicled the near-blanket refusal of government intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, to provide the committee with documents it requested. And he accused committee leaders of folding under pressure from congressional budget hawks, political advisers and the intelligence agencies themselves just as promising new leads were emerging.

"Is it unrealistic to desire, for something as important as the assassination of a president, an investigation unbound by political, financial or time restrictions?" he asked in Washingtonian.
He never got the answer he had hoped for. Congress never authorized a follow-up to the work of the committee, which, from 1977 to 1979, also re-examined the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., concluding that it, too, "likely" resulted from an unspecified conspiracy.

But historians and researchers consider Fonzi's book among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and credit him with raising doubts about the government's willingness to share everything it knew. The author Jefferson Morley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, said The Last Investigation had refocused attention on a handful of reported contacts between CIA operatives and Oswald tantalizing leads that had long been fascinating to conspiracy buffs but that had never been fully scrutinized by a veteran investigative reporter.

The CIA has denied that any such contacts occurred, and Fonzi spent most of his two years with the committee crisscrossing the world trying to prove otherwise. He considered it impossible that the CIA had never made contact with Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, repatriated with his Russian wife and baby in 1962, and settled in Dallas, where he openly espoused Communist views.

"We called him Ahab, because he was so single-minded about that white whale," said G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and staff director of the House committee, now a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. The white whale for Fonzi was the meaning of those supposed contacts.

Blakey was criticized by Fonzi as overly deferential to the CIA, and he now concedes that Fonzi was probably right on that score. Blakey said he was shocked in 2003 when declassified CIA documents revealed the full identity of the retired agent who had acted as the committee's liaison to the CIA. The agency never told Blakey that the agent, George Joannides, had overseen a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Dallas in the months before the assassination, when Oswald had two well-publicized clashes with them.

At the time of the revelation, the CIA said Joannides had withheld nothing relevant from the committee. Joannides died in 1990.

"Mr. Joannides obstructed our investigation," Blakey said. Asked how that had affected the committee's work, he added: "We'll never know. But I can say that for a guy like Gaeton, a guy who really wanted to know what happened to Kennedy, it kind of tortured him."

Gaetano Fonzi was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 10, 1935, to Leonora and Gaetano Fonzi, a barber. (He later shortened his first name.) After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he was a reporter and editor at Philadelphia Magazine. In one article, he and a co-author revealed that a former star reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Harry J. Karafin, had extorted money from local businessmen with threats of unflattering coverage.

Fonzi is survived by his wife, four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"He thought the murder of President Kennedy was a turning point in history," his wife said. "He said it was the point when the American people stopped trusting their government."