04-04-2017, 03:09 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-04-2017, 07:57 AM by Jim DiEugenio.)
SK: The signature conversation at the horse track, the dark and mysterious conversation on the park bench, the ever so popular meeting in the hotel room.
Recall what I said about the use of dramatic license.
1. The first conversations with Jack Martin occurred in Garrison's office.These were absolutely integral to Garrison's understanding of the elements he was about to confront. Because although he found out about Banister's office, he knew very little about who was there besides him. Martin tipped him off to not only Ferrie, who stemmed back to his 1963 inquiry, but also Sergio Arcacha Smith, who proved the lead to the anti Castro Cubans. Martin's information was very broad and deep since he even knew how SAS came to America. Via a Navy plane.
2. These conversations with Prouty took place after the trial of Clay Shaw and they were mostly done via snail mail. But Garrison got much of the same info through Nagell. Who he actually did meet with in a park.
3. That discussion with Ferrie was actually between Ivon and Ferrie. Ferrie did trust Lou. The best rendition I have seen of it is in The Book of the Film.
If you read Garrison's Playboy interview, its pretty clear that he thought that Kennedy was killed because of his overall foreign policy, and how this was a change from previous administrations. Stone's movie, since it used John Newman's book as a source, focuses more on the Vietnam issue. In fact, Newman wrote those scenes and acted in one of them.
As per LBJ, the idea is that through his escalation of the war, his lifelong backers back in Texas, Brown and Root, profited tremendously, as did the Pentagon. When the film quotes him as saying to the generals, "Just get me elected and I will give you your war", that is an accurate quote, from Karnow. And it came true. Right after the 1964 inauguration, Johnson landed troops at DaNang. And as Newman shows in his book, LBJ was working with the generals since 1961 to get combat troops in theater, something JFK vehemently opposed.
As per Nixon: RMN and Kissinger continued the war for four years, KNOWING IT COULD NOT BE WON! They got that info from Abrams in 1969, who had replaced Westmoreland. Knowing it could not be won, they expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia, in a way that was simply unprecedented. The bombings and invasions of those countries was simply unconscionable. They cannot be justified in any way, politically or militarily. Since as Thieu later commented in the book The Palace File, there was no significant difference between the agreement Kissinger finalized in 1972 and the one he was offered in 1969-70. So what was the expansion into those countries all about then? And we all know what happened to Cambodia. One of the worst genocides per capita in history.
In a buried kind of way, the reason for Nixon's fall is his secret attempt to sandbag LBJ's peace negotiations in 1968--which he lied about at the time. Nixon knew that LBJ had the goods on him for this interference. And he thought the files were at Brookings. So, with the help of Colson, he put together the Plumbers Unit to firebomb the place and bring the Plumbers in behind a firetruck to steal the docs. But they actually were not there. Walt Rostow took that file with him and then submitted it to the LBJ library where Bob Parry found it decades later.
In a roundabout way, Vietnam was the cause of Nixon's fall.
Recall what I said about the use of dramatic license.
1. The first conversations with Jack Martin occurred in Garrison's office.These were absolutely integral to Garrison's understanding of the elements he was about to confront. Because although he found out about Banister's office, he knew very little about who was there besides him. Martin tipped him off to not only Ferrie, who stemmed back to his 1963 inquiry, but also Sergio Arcacha Smith, who proved the lead to the anti Castro Cubans. Martin's information was very broad and deep since he even knew how SAS came to America. Via a Navy plane.
2. These conversations with Prouty took place after the trial of Clay Shaw and they were mostly done via snail mail. But Garrison got much of the same info through Nagell. Who he actually did meet with in a park.
3. That discussion with Ferrie was actually between Ivon and Ferrie. Ferrie did trust Lou. The best rendition I have seen of it is in The Book of the Film.
If you read Garrison's Playboy interview, its pretty clear that he thought that Kennedy was killed because of his overall foreign policy, and how this was a change from previous administrations. Stone's movie, since it used John Newman's book as a source, focuses more on the Vietnam issue. In fact, Newman wrote those scenes and acted in one of them.
As per LBJ, the idea is that through his escalation of the war, his lifelong backers back in Texas, Brown and Root, profited tremendously, as did the Pentagon. When the film quotes him as saying to the generals, "Just get me elected and I will give you your war", that is an accurate quote, from Karnow. And it came true. Right after the 1964 inauguration, Johnson landed troops at DaNang. And as Newman shows in his book, LBJ was working with the generals since 1961 to get combat troops in theater, something JFK vehemently opposed.
As per Nixon: RMN and Kissinger continued the war for four years, KNOWING IT COULD NOT BE WON! They got that info from Abrams in 1969, who had replaced Westmoreland. Knowing it could not be won, they expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia, in a way that was simply unprecedented. The bombings and invasions of those countries was simply unconscionable. They cannot be justified in any way, politically or militarily. Since as Thieu later commented in the book The Palace File, there was no significant difference between the agreement Kissinger finalized in 1972 and the one he was offered in 1969-70. So what was the expansion into those countries all about then? And we all know what happened to Cambodia. One of the worst genocides per capita in history.
In a buried kind of way, the reason for Nixon's fall is his secret attempt to sandbag LBJ's peace negotiations in 1968--which he lied about at the time. Nixon knew that LBJ had the goods on him for this interference. And he thought the files were at Brookings. So, with the help of Colson, he put together the Plumbers Unit to firebomb the place and bring the Plumbers in behind a firetruck to steal the docs. But they actually were not there. Walt Rostow took that file with him and then submitted it to the LBJ library where Bob Parry found it decades later.
In a roundabout way, Vietnam was the cause of Nixon's fall.