07-09-2009, 08:57 PM
A personal favourite – I met him very briefly at JFK conference in Liverpool in the mid-1990s - two extracts from the short-lived newsletter of Peter Dawnay, the UK publisher of Joachim Joesten. Note his speculation on the fate of Nixon; and a glimpse of Garrison midway through his protracted battle with Shaw and his cohorts:
The Economist, it should be noted, was, and remains, a notorious “front” for the ghastly SIS:
I can’t remember if there was another issue. I have it mind that there wasn't. Anyone know for sure?
Quote:Assassination 68 [Newsletter], Vol.1 Issue 1, (18 October 1968), p.1
Editorial
By Peter Dawnay
This is the first issue of a publication which has a number of specific and very clearly defined aims. The most important is to give its readers the news that is being systematically suppressed by the newspapers and electronic media concerning the developments in the three major political assassination cases that have occurred in the past five years.
It is not possible at this date to give a detailed account of how and why this suppression takes place. No one would be so stupid as to suggest that all editors and journalists are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy but the outlines of the system are beginning to become apparent. I believe that it depends to a limited extent on the outright bribery or blackmail of a few selected or key figures in the news media, but far more importantly it depends on the now highly developed art of news manipulation. This art, in turn, depends for its success on the following known human weaknesses: (1) the shortness of human memory; (2) the rooted objection of the majority to being made to think; (3) the inability of even highly paid newsmen to apply rational criteria to official statements, and (4) the herd instinct.
The last is probably the most important of the four. One of the strongest human instincts is the desire to conform, and this applies as much to fashions in dress as it does to fashions in thought. When Galileo said that the earth went round the sun instead of vice-versa, he was guilty of a heresy for which the penalty was death at the stake. It didn’t matter that he could demonstrate proof positive of his contention. What mattered was that by calling into question the whole authority of the Church and undermining religious faith, he was challenging the power structure of the time.
Every establishment will seek to destroy those who challenge it and in consequence the vast majority will cold shoulder the non-conformists simply because they prefer the safety of the herd and would rather not be associated with those who are courting destruction. The herd will therefore eagerly seize on the slightest pretext for ignoring and forgetting about them. A whisper to the effect that so-and-so is a communist, or a crackpot will be enough. However absurd and demonstrably false the story the herd will prefer it to the uncomfortable and disturbing ideas which may reach it from outside and to the painful necessity of having to think.
History has repeatedly born eloquent witness to this fact. Time and again the stone which the builders reject eventually becomes the head of the corner. Throughout the thirties Churchill warned against the renascence of German militarism but until war actually broke out he was despised and rejected of men.
Today we see a new world system coming into force. The 1939-45 war was the last of the European wars fought between rival colonial powers and it gave birth to the two super powers who will henceforth dominate world affairs and to the two most powerful military forces that the world has ever seen.
Europe is caught between these two gigantic rivals, the one capitalist and the other communist. If it wishes to avoid being crushed between them, it must declare its independence of both.
But how and why does this concern the murders of Luther King and the two Kennedys? The answer is chillingly simple. These murders ensured the end of the policy of peaceful co-existence and non-violence and put into power men determined to solve the problems of the world not by persuasion but by force. The blackman in America is now to be held down by force, hence the cry for ‘law and order,’ and puppet military regimes are to be installed in countries bordering on the communist bloc, as has already occurred in Greece and South Viet Nam.
The arm of the American Government which is most responsible for this policy is the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. It is a huge organisation disposing of billions of dollars and subject to no form of democratic control. It operates secretly in every country in the world, subverting cabinet ministers and eliminating influential people who oppose its policy. Its weapons are blackmail, bribery and intimidation at best, and at worst assassination. But it uses the latter method only when others fail. Its enemies are more usually disposed of by framing them on trumped up charges or otherwise discrediting them.
There are 60 agents of the CIA operating in this country. The cover for their headquarters is a bogus commercial firm with offices at 7, Cleveland Row, just by St. James’ Palace. They tap telephones, they listen, observe, monitor and watch. They infiltrate the news media, they put stories into circulation and attempt with considerable success to influence and control opinion. No doubt they also employ agents provocateurs to discredit left wing groups. And no doubt, they are not above bribing public officials. This editor has first hand experience of their methods.
Thus the second most important purpose of this newsletter is to make the public aware of the operations of the CIA in this country and to counteract the pernicious lies which they circulate. It will therefore attempt to investigate and bring to light the hidden hand that often lies behind the seemingly inexplicable events that appear from time to time in the newspapers. (For example the kidnapping of Moses Tshombe.)
And the third purpose is to warn the public as to where the present policies of the CIA are leading. The last world war was preceded by smaller wars in Abyssinia and Spain. I believe the Vietnam, the Israeli-Egyptian war and Biafra are the forerunners of the next.
And I also believe that the war party in America, driven more by the necessity to conceal its former crimes as much as anything else, will resort to desperate measures to consolidate its control of the political machine. It therefore follows that there will be either no election (the assassination of Humphrey followed by deliberately incited riots could postpone it indefinitely), or that the next President will be assassinated if he steps out of line. Since this is likely to be Nixon, it is worth remembering that Spiro Agnew, his running-mate, is a stooge of the CIA.
The Economist, it should be noted, was, and remains, a notorious “front” for the ghastly SIS:
Quote:Assassination 68, Vol. 1 Issue 1, (18 October 1968), pp.2-3
Stalling of Justice
By Peter Dawnay
In its issue of July 20, 1968, the London Economist blandly suggested that Jim Garrison, the DA of New Orleans, may be “losing interest” in his case against Clay Shaw because the long-awaited trail “has not yet taken place.” This comment is typical of the systematic distortion of every aspect of the Garrison enquiry the press constantly indulges in, both in the US and abroad.
It is certainly not Garrison’s fault that the Shaw trial has not yet taken place. He had done everything in his power to bring the defendant to trial within a reasonable time after his March 1, 1967, arrest, but normal disposition of the case has been blocked time and again by the tricky legal manoeuvering of Shaw’s lawyers.
Originally, the trial had been scheduled to take place in October 1967, but on September 26 of that year the defence applied for six months’ cooling-off period on account of the publicity surrounding the case. The court granted a 4 months’ stay of execution and the trial was then set for February 13, 1968. As this date approached, however, Shaw’s lawyers moved for a change of venue, asking that the case be tried in a place at least 100 miles from New Orleans. After a lengthy hearing of prospective jurors, Judge Edward A. Haggerty ruled on April 14 that Shaw could get a fair trial in New Orleans and denied the motion for a change of venue. The ruling was promptly appealed by Shaw’s lawyers but on April 23, the Louisiana Supreme Court, by a unanimous decision, turned down this appeal.
The stage now seemed definitely set for the start of the long-delayed trial. On May 8, Garrison, through his aid, Assistant DA James Alcock, issued a statement that said: “Now that Mr. Shaw’s defence attorneys have exhausted their pretrial actions, the law permits the state to set the case for trial. Today we have set the trial of Clay L. Shaw for June 11, 1968. Trial of this case has been delayed unduly long and it is our hope that we can go to trial on this date. The state is ready for trial and will oppose any more attempts to postpone the trial.”
At the moment, however, Shaw’s lawyers were already all set for their most massive attempt yet to prevent the case from ever reaching the trial stage. On May 27, they filed a petition in Federal District Court for a temporary restraining order, to be followed by a permanent injunction barring the DA’s office from prosecuting Shaw further. The petition challenged the constitutionality of Louisiana’s conspiracy law and contended that Garrison, through a “reign of terror,” was depriving the defendant of his constitutional rights. Not content with this humbug, the defence asked the federal court to rule the Warren Report “valid, accurate, binding and controlling upon all courts in the United States.”
Thus a patently spurious document, concocted in a flagrantly nonjudicial proceeding, by a panel that had deliberately set aside all guarantees of due process, was to be made for all time a binding instrument of American jurisprudence. And that of course would have been the end of the Clay Shaw case, without a trial.
As soon as Garrison learnt that Shaw’s lawyers were about to move into the federal courts system, he issued a statement in which he said that “the federal courts have as much jurisdiction over this case as the courts of England or India.” When Federal District Judge Frederick J.R. Heebe issued the temporary restraining order on May 28, Garrison issued another and very lengthy prepared statement (on May 29), in which he declared that the federal government had a special interest in the outcome of the Shaw case because it does not want “it known that it conducted a fraudulent inquiry, using altered evidence and false evidence to fool the people of this country.”
He went on to say: “Another reason that the federal government has a special interest in this case – and should therefore keep its large nose out of it – is the very deep involvement of agents of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“The concealment of the involvement of the CIA was the major objective of the false federal investigation and the false inquiry by the Warren Commission. Many people in this country still do not know that CIA – which is completely uncontrolled by Congress – has been engaged in the assassination business for some years.
In the same statement, Garrison made the specific allegation that President Kennedy, after he had begun removing troops from Vietnam and had made other moves toward ending the Cold War, “and began to institute controls on the previously uncontrolled CIA, was killed in an ambush by men connected with the Department of Covert Activity.” Needless to say, this most important statement, about the frankest that Garrison has ever made concerning the role of the CIA in the assassination, found no echo in the corrupt press of America outside New Orleans, nor indeed was it reported abroad.
In the same context, Garrison pointed out that his detractors, who constantly reiterate that he has “no case” against Shaw, could easily prove their point in a court of law. “If the case of the State of Louisiana is as fraudulent as Shaw’s attorneys pretend,” he said (and he might well have added, as the news media keeps pretending) “why not let him go to trial and be acquitted? Why is there suddenly such a loss of faith in trial by jury?”
While Judge Heebe could and did issue the temporary restraining order on his own, he was compelled under federal procedure to ask the Chief Judge of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to designate two other judges to sit with him in considering the petition for a permanent injunction. Judges Robert A. Ainsworth and James A. Comiskey were then appointed to hear the case with him.
The next move by Shaw’s lawyers was to file a motion on June 13 designed to bring US Attorney General Clark into the case by alleging that the purpose of the Garrison investigation was to discredit the Warren Report. Therefore, the lawyers argued, Clark should be made a party to the suit “to protect the interests and integrity of the United States,” by which of course they meant the interests and pseudo-integrity of President Johnson and his henchmen.
On July 23, the three judges handed down a unanimous decision rejecting every single point in the defence motion. “As a matter of law,” the ruling noted, “plaintiff Shaw’s request for relief in the Federal Court is premature, for under our system of Federalism in the circumstances presented here, he must first seek vindication of his rights in the state courts as to his pending prosecution…We entertain serious doubts about the appropriateness of stopping a pending state court prosecution to consider a request of plaintiff for a declaratory judgement as to the constitutionality of …the conspiracy statute under which he is being prosecuted.” Such a procedure, the court held, “would open the door to a constant disruption of state court criminal proceedings.” The judges also rejected Mr. Shaw’s plea for a ruling that the Warren Report should be valid and binding on all courts.
Thereupon Judge Haggerty on August 1 once again set the date for the start of Shaw’s trial for September 10, but within a few days the proceedings were once again obstructed. The defence lawyers filed notice with the District Federal Court announcing their intention to appeal the ruling of three judges to the US Supreme Court. Despite the firm tone with which they had made their own decision, the three judges acceded, and on August 13 they granted a further stay of the trial pending the hearing of the appeal by the United States Supreme Court.
Not surprisingly, Jim Garrison was once again up in arms. After all, Shaw was in effect running for protection to Earl Warren, the very man whose Report was designed to put the lid on all further investigations of Kennedy’s assassination. Garrison therefore announced that he would challenge Warren’s right to take any part in hearing the appeal. And he also aimed some heavy artillery at another Supreme Court Justice, Abe Fortas, a life long friend of President Johnson from whom he received his judge’s robes. (Incidentally, one of the first people whom Johnson called on the telephone after the assassination was Abe Fortas, and the lawyer was dutifully waiting at the airfield when Air Force One touched down that evening.)
“Justice Fortas,” Garrison said, “helped work out for the President the creation of the Warren Commission whose finding have now been totally discredited.” And it turned out to be “an excellent device for falsifying the truth…and prevented the appointment by Congress of its own investigating committee.” This could have been catastrophic for the government.” And then turning to Johnson, Garrison once more accused him of actively “concealing vital evidence with regard to the murder of his predecessor.”
It may now perhaps be clear to the reader why Johnson tried so desperately to have his nomination of Abe Fortas, as Chief Justice and Chairman of the Supreme Court, confirmed by the Senate. Having failed he will have to resort to measures of utter desperation. That is why another assassination is in the air.
CONTINUED in next issue
I can’t remember if there was another issue. I have it mind that there wasn't. Anyone know for sure?