The Truth about the WC at Last

[Don Jeffries]

Tracy,

The original source for the Hale Boggs trip to the airport was Bill Clinton himself, in his memoir My Life. Many others have quoted it, of course.

[Albert Doyle]

The CNN JFK Assassination Program was on again tonight.


Caro said with a straight face that Johnson could have been the next target after Connally and Kennedy. Fat chance Caro. LBJ was the safest man in the Plaza. Caro said we lost a president that day but a new one was also born.


When Curry was announcing Jack Ruby's identity there was a suspicious body language between him and the policeman behind him. You know, like is it all right to name our mob pay-off contact now? There was some academy award acting going on that weekend by the Dallas Police.


Rosemary James and Max Holland were allowed to guide the program according to the planned official story theme.

[Peter Lemkin]

Representative and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs (Dem, La)
disappeared while on an airplane flight over Alaska October 16, 1972.
The plane was never found.
It was William Jefferson Clinton who drove Boggs to the airport to catch that plane.


On April 22,1971, according to the Congressional Record,
House Speaker Carl Albert granted Majority Leader Boggs
permission to speak. Here is what Boggs said:


"Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite
and secret police within our system vast new powers over
the lives and liberties of the people. At the request
of the trusted and respected heads of those forces,
and their appeal to the necessities of national security,
we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting
and strict surveillance. And history has run its
inexorable course.....Liberty has yielded.....The power of government has gained commanding ground

.....Mr.Speaker, I submit that 1984 is closer than we think."




On April 4th, 1971 Boggs told Congress (CR):


REP BOGGS: "What I am going to say I say in sorrow, because
it is always tragic when a great man who has given his life
to his country comes to the twilight of his life and fails
to understand it is time to leave the service and enjoy
retirement.
"Mr.Speaker, I am talking about J. Edgar Hoover, the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The time
has come for the Attorney general of the United States to
ask for there signation of Mr. Hoover.
"When the FBI taps the phones of members of this
body and of Members of the Senate; when the FBI stations
agents on college campuses to infiltrate college
organizations, when the FBI adopts the tactics of the
Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo, then it is time
--it is way past time, Mr. Speaker--that the present
Director no longer be the Director. ..."


According to Curt Gentry in his book J. Edgar Hoover;
The Man and His Secrets (New York: The Penguin Group,
1991): 'A few weeks earlier a (phone) tap was found in Boggs' home
by a telephone repair man.'

Hale Boggs had earlier stated that "Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission".

[Jim DiEugenio]

Tracy:

I did not understand your comment above about at number 20, on my original post.

I did not take anything out of context. And anyone can read everything Pat printed and see that the things I quoted are accurate. If they were not, and were contradicted elsewhere, then I am sure you would have shown us how. You did not.

Secondly, why say that Boggs and Cooper were preoccupied with congressional duties? I mean Ford was in congress also. Yet he was the second most active member of the WC. McCloy was running Chase Manhattan for David Rockefeller, he was the third most active member.

And to trot out Russell and the filibuster, I mean, really, that is what Bugliosi does. Without saying that:

1.) McCloy was running Operation Brother Sam, the overthrow of Goulart in Brazil at the time the Commission was meeting. This was done for his boss David Rockefeller. Kennedy refused to meet with Rockefeller in late 1963, because he knew this was what he wanted to talk about. LBJ took that meeting in December. And the coup was then on. With McCloy the lead man flying to Brazil.

2.) Russell, very early in the WC process, voiced objections to Katzenbach's being at the first meeting, Warren seemingly getting private information from the CIA, and how bad the FBI report was. He was so upset, he penned a resignation letter. He complained the Commission was arranging meetings behind his back. Even Burt Griffin told the HSCA how serious Russell was about mounting a real investigation.

Russell then ran his own private investigation, as Dick Russell found out. His conclusions were different than the Commission's. Then, in August, he Boggs and Cooper arranged their own interview with Marina. It is clear that Russell is quite aware of everything Marina has said prior to this. And also, the circumstances of her leaving Russia. So, unlike what you are implying, he was right on the ball about what the WC was digging up. And he was quite sharp in his questioning, as Boggs and Cooper were. In fact, as I have written elsewhere, this questioning of Marina is as close as the WC ever got to actually fulfilling their duties. Its what the WC shoudl have been. And its what the Troika pointedly avoided.

Its no coincidence that neither McCoy, nor Dulles, nor Ford, or Warren was at that interrogation in Texas. Only Rankin was there. And it was about a month before the treachery was pulled on Russell at the last meeting. Which Rankin was in on. Rankin had to have known from this interrogation that these guys were not buying the WC BS about many things, including Lee and Marina.

Willens knew what he meant. The record backs him up.

[Tracy Riddle]

Tracy,

The original source for the Hale Boggs trip to the airport was Bill Clinton himself, in his memoir My Life. Many others have quoted it, of course.

Ok, thanks, I rarely read political memoirs anymore.

[Tracy Riddle]

Tracy:

I did not understand your comment above about at number 20, on my original post.

I did not take anything out of context. And anyone can read everything Pat printed and see that the things I quoted are accurate. If they were not, and were contradicted elsewhere, then I am sure you would have shown us how. You did not.

Secondly, why say that Boggs and Cooper were preoccupied with congressional duties? I mean Ford was in congress also. Yet he was the second most active member of the WC. McCloy was running Chase Manhattan for David Rockefeller, he was the third most active member.

And to trot out Russell and the filibuster, I mean, really, that is what Bugliosi does. Without saying that:

1.) McCloy was running Operation Brother Sam, the overthrow of Goulart in Brazil at the time the Commission was meeting. This was done for his boss David Rockefeller. Kennedy refused to meet with Rockefeller in late 1963, because he knew this was what he wanted to talk about. LBJ took that meeting in December. And the coup was then on. With McCloy the lead man flying to Brazil.

2.) Russell, very early in the WC process, voiced objections to Katzenbach's being at the first meeting, Warren seemingly getting private information from the CIA, and how bad the FBI report was. He was so upset, he penned a resignation letter. He complained the Commission was arranging meetings behind his back. Even Burt Griffin told the HSCA how serious Russell was about mounting a real investigation.

Russell then ran his own private investigation, as Dick Russell found out. His conclusions were different than the Commission's. Then, in August, he Boggs and Cooper arranged their own interview with Marina. It is clear that Russell is quite aware of everything Marina has said prior to this. And also, the circumstances of her leaving Russia. So, unlike what you are implying, he was right on the ball about what the WC was digging up. And he was quite sharp in his questioning, as Boggs and Cooper were. In fact, as I have written elsewhere, this questioning of Marina is as close as the WC ever got to actually fulfilling their duties. Its what the WC shoudl have been. And its what the Troika pointedly avoided.

Its no coincidence that neither McCoy, nor Dulles, nor Ford, or Warren was at that interrogation in Texas. Only Rankin was there. And it was about a month before the treachery was pulled on Russell at the last meeting. Which Rankin was in on. Rankin had to have known from this interrogation that these guys were not buying the WC BS about many things, including Lee and Marina.

Willens knew what he meant. The record backs him up.

Jim, I didn't say you took anything out of context, and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. I just wanted to read all of the Willens entries for myself. I don't think they reveal anything that earth-shattering; we've known for a long time that the WC was split 3-4 on these things. And Russell was in fact fighting the civil rights legislation; that's true even if Bugliosi says it. One reason Russell is not a great hero in my book. I have no doubt his theory of the assassination would have blamed Castro or the KGB or both.

The most significant thing about those entries to me was that Dulles wanted to take the SS's powers away and give them to the Justice Department, something both Hoover and RFK wanted to do (though in different ways).

Edit: as a matter of fact, here is something I found in my files: Russell said that he felt the WC hadn't uncovered Oswald's possible relations to Soviet or Cuban intelligence. (The Lone Star, T.R. Fehrenbach, 1968 p620). Also, in a late 60s newspaper interview, he said that "whoever fired that second shot was a better shot than Oswald." Which means he still accepted that Oswald was one of the assassins. So how good was his private investigation, really?

[Albert Doyle]

Once Russell's communist suspicions were disproven the only available option would be the Boggs route that would be backed by Garrison. In the late 60's Senator Russell could hardly get away with saying neither shooter was Oswald.

[Tracy Riddle]

Once Russell's communist suspicions were disproven the only available option would be the Bogg's route that would be backed by Garrison. In the late 60's Senator Russell could hardly get away with saying neither shooter was Oswald.

There are still people today pushing the Castro-did-it theory. Sen. Richard Schweiker leaned toward that theory in the mid-70s (he was going to be Reagan's running-mate if he had gotten the GOP nomination in 1976). Al Haig and James Hosty flirted with the Castro theory into the 80s and 90s. You can't "disprove" anything to people like that; they are impervious to real evidence.

[Albert Doyle]

People are still pushing the Oswald did it theory lol...

[Jim DiEugenio]

Who, in 1964, was going to say that the CIA killed Kennedy?

Certainly not LBJ's close friend, and it was LBJ who personally cajoled Russell into being on the WC.

But if you read Dick Russell's book, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, or the memoirs of Alfreda Scobey, you will see that Russell's private inquiry was much more skeptical about the case and much more incisive than the Troika was. I mean if you read that aforementioned questioning of Marina you will see that it comes as as close to anything in the WC volumes to saying that Oswald was an agent, and Marina was a counter agent. And Scobey was blunt about Marina's perjury to Russell. And the fact that in a real legal forum, her testimony would likely not be allowed.

I have never held out Russell as any kind of role model or political hero. But there is little or no doubt that when it comes to the collection of louts, stiffs, and criminals on the WC, his performance at the time--boycotting the Commission for the most part, threatening to resign, and running his own private inquiry--was the best of the seven.

As per Schweiker, look, this was after Garrison. Just as Russell's enlightment about the treacherous last meeting of the WC was in 1968. These guys saw JG being tarred and feathered in public for saying what he did: that it was an inside job.

Bob Tanenbaum told an audience in Chicago, and myself personally, what Schweiker told him in private quarters. He handed him Gaeton Fonzi's file on Bishop/Phillips. As he did so, he said words to the effect, The CIA killed President Kennedy.

I mean, just add it up, if Schweiker was hot on the trail of Phillips --and he was--then how could that lead to Fidel Castro? But he was not going to say that in public. Too careful.