06-01-2011, 07:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-01-2011, 07:58 PM by Jim DiEugenio.)
May I comment on two important points being addressed here:
1.) There is a natural desire I think to trace the assassination cabal above the perpetrators, that is those who one can make a case against with evidence as being actually involved. When we do this, people like to use the term "deep politics" a phrase coined by Scott which replaced the other term he liked to use, "parapolitics". (He actually used to print a journal that used that title.) In fact, Scott was one of the first to speculate on this subject in his unpublished manuscript, "The Dallas Conspiracy". A work, to be charitable, that has not held up well.
As I said, there is a natural inclination to do this for the simple reason that to pull off a crime this huge, one must feel protected in advance from the wrath of the power elite. I mean we all know what happened when Nixon crossed swords with Katherine Graham.
Its something I have always tried to avoid, for the simple reason that it is not readily provable. I have always believed that in the face we show the public, we can only deal with what is tangible, what we have evidence for. Once we do that, then its their job to take it from there. I once did a talk in Lancaster Pennsylvania in which I laid out all the evidence of conspiracy in the case. Some guy in the back, toward the end, started talking about David Rockefeller as the guy who it all lead back to. Fine. That's as good a choice as any, and better than most. He said it. I did not. I did not even comment on the name.
Why? Because once you have outlined the actual evidence in the case to the highest points e.g. Hoover's atrocious cover up, Angleton's control of Oswald, Helms' lying to the WC about Mexico City, LBJ telling Russell he did not believe the SBT either, then the trail after that dissipates. I mean, one can throw in some very interesting stuff from Donald Gibson e.g. about Alsop, Rostow, and Whitney, which is all verifiable and true. One can talk about the so-called Murchison assassination ball, which is much less verifiable, and IMO, not true.
But why? With what the ARRB has declassified, we can now reach heights that we never thought we could. Why would one want to foul that up with stuff that is not verifiable, and therefore speculative?
I did a talk at Lancer in November that addressed this subject in a roundabout way. I talked about "Farewell America", "The Torbitt Document" and the 'Bush did it' tomes by Baker and Hankey. The first two are clear disinfo jobs. And the first is a provable case. One of the treasures of the Garrison investigation was the inquiry he did on this book. Since everyone tossed Garrison aside after 1969, until 1991, no one ever checked out what he had. I was lucky enough to get a look at this stuff and I found this file. The book was a put up job by Phillipe de Vosjoli. If you look at Mangold's book, he was a renegade SDECE agent and off the shelf operator for Angelton. And the book ends up in utter bombast about something called The Committee, a group of wealthy Texans who sponsored the assassination. The first book to proffer this kind of theory. Jim A., very early, was throwing out the disinfo to cover all the bases.
The Torbitt document covers all the other bases. That is a pamphlet that includes the wildest assassination cabal ever: LBJ, the Mafia, Hoover, the Pentagon, NASA, something called DISC, Division Five of the FBI, Permindex, the American Council of Churches, Albert Osborne, even, for God's sake, Roy Cohn!
There is one exception to this smorgasbord. The CIA. Who today almost no one denies was involved. Jim A. was making sure to throw the dust around everywhere on this one.
Then come Baker and Hankey in the new millenium. In the quest to expand the plot above the CIA they center on George H. W. Bush. To do this, they exaggerate and enlarge the Hoover memo beyond any kind of normal usage--way beyond what McBride did in The Nation. And what Baker did with the Parrott memo is simply unconscionable. In Baker's world, we are actually supposed to believe, that the newly elected GOP Chairman of Harris County took over the plot from say someone like Werbell, Phillips or Morales. Yeah, sure Russ.
This is my point. It is dangerous to do this stuff. We risk falling on our faces. Can one imagine giving John Hankey's film JFK 2 to Craig Watkins?
2.) This relates to my other point. Harold Weisberg once said that no single person could ever master all elements of the JFK case. This is a man who spent 40 years on it, and wrote something like 17 published and unpublished books. Many of us have spent well over a decade studying this case. We don't approach Weisberg.
So when a new guy comes in and makes a list of over 100 books to read and Texas in the Morning is on top of it, well what can one say? We try to chalk it up to newbie enthusiasm. Why? Because that is not a book about the JFK case, as are Meagher, Melanson, Fonzi. Its another "woman who slept with the president" book. And unlike them, it is anecdotal not factual. What a defense lawyer could have done to Madeleine Brown is rather withering.
And that is my point. That is what I am about at this stage. The Fiftieth will probably be the last chance we ever have to reopen this case. The JFK research community has produced some awesome work: John Newman, John Armstrong, Jim Douglass, Jerry McKnight, Bill Davy etc. It is a tremendous tradition. And this is the kind of stuff we should be leading with. And what most of us do.
And I think this helps explain, but not excuse, some of the rather over the top anger CD feels about Morrow. He has been out there in the fields for a long time. So he has loads of experience. And he understands the art and uses of disinformation. Because he has seen it before. Morrow is kind of new. So we get the likes of "Pegasus" etc. (See my essay on Regicide for another example of falling for disinfo.)
It takes a while to really get up to speed in this field. So understand if the vets don't exhibit a lot of patience for the new guys.
1.) There is a natural desire I think to trace the assassination cabal above the perpetrators, that is those who one can make a case against with evidence as being actually involved. When we do this, people like to use the term "deep politics" a phrase coined by Scott which replaced the other term he liked to use, "parapolitics". (He actually used to print a journal that used that title.) In fact, Scott was one of the first to speculate on this subject in his unpublished manuscript, "The Dallas Conspiracy". A work, to be charitable, that has not held up well.
As I said, there is a natural inclination to do this for the simple reason that to pull off a crime this huge, one must feel protected in advance from the wrath of the power elite. I mean we all know what happened when Nixon crossed swords with Katherine Graham.
Its something I have always tried to avoid, for the simple reason that it is not readily provable. I have always believed that in the face we show the public, we can only deal with what is tangible, what we have evidence for. Once we do that, then its their job to take it from there. I once did a talk in Lancaster Pennsylvania in which I laid out all the evidence of conspiracy in the case. Some guy in the back, toward the end, started talking about David Rockefeller as the guy who it all lead back to. Fine. That's as good a choice as any, and better than most. He said it. I did not. I did not even comment on the name.
Why? Because once you have outlined the actual evidence in the case to the highest points e.g. Hoover's atrocious cover up, Angleton's control of Oswald, Helms' lying to the WC about Mexico City, LBJ telling Russell he did not believe the SBT either, then the trail after that dissipates. I mean, one can throw in some very interesting stuff from Donald Gibson e.g. about Alsop, Rostow, and Whitney, which is all verifiable and true. One can talk about the so-called Murchison assassination ball, which is much less verifiable, and IMO, not true.
But why? With what the ARRB has declassified, we can now reach heights that we never thought we could. Why would one want to foul that up with stuff that is not verifiable, and therefore speculative?
I did a talk at Lancer in November that addressed this subject in a roundabout way. I talked about "Farewell America", "The Torbitt Document" and the 'Bush did it' tomes by Baker and Hankey. The first two are clear disinfo jobs. And the first is a provable case. One of the treasures of the Garrison investigation was the inquiry he did on this book. Since everyone tossed Garrison aside after 1969, until 1991, no one ever checked out what he had. I was lucky enough to get a look at this stuff and I found this file. The book was a put up job by Phillipe de Vosjoli. If you look at Mangold's book, he was a renegade SDECE agent and off the shelf operator for Angelton. And the book ends up in utter bombast about something called The Committee, a group of wealthy Texans who sponsored the assassination. The first book to proffer this kind of theory. Jim A., very early, was throwing out the disinfo to cover all the bases.
The Torbitt document covers all the other bases. That is a pamphlet that includes the wildest assassination cabal ever: LBJ, the Mafia, Hoover, the Pentagon, NASA, something called DISC, Division Five of the FBI, Permindex, the American Council of Churches, Albert Osborne, even, for God's sake, Roy Cohn!
There is one exception to this smorgasbord. The CIA. Who today almost no one denies was involved. Jim A. was making sure to throw the dust around everywhere on this one.
Then come Baker and Hankey in the new millenium. In the quest to expand the plot above the CIA they center on George H. W. Bush. To do this, they exaggerate and enlarge the Hoover memo beyond any kind of normal usage--way beyond what McBride did in The Nation. And what Baker did with the Parrott memo is simply unconscionable. In Baker's world, we are actually supposed to believe, that the newly elected GOP Chairman of Harris County took over the plot from say someone like Werbell, Phillips or Morales. Yeah, sure Russ.
This is my point. It is dangerous to do this stuff. We risk falling on our faces. Can one imagine giving John Hankey's film JFK 2 to Craig Watkins?
2.) This relates to my other point. Harold Weisberg once said that no single person could ever master all elements of the JFK case. This is a man who spent 40 years on it, and wrote something like 17 published and unpublished books. Many of us have spent well over a decade studying this case. We don't approach Weisberg.
So when a new guy comes in and makes a list of over 100 books to read and Texas in the Morning is on top of it, well what can one say? We try to chalk it up to newbie enthusiasm. Why? Because that is not a book about the JFK case, as are Meagher, Melanson, Fonzi. Its another "woman who slept with the president" book. And unlike them, it is anecdotal not factual. What a defense lawyer could have done to Madeleine Brown is rather withering.
And that is my point. That is what I am about at this stage. The Fiftieth will probably be the last chance we ever have to reopen this case. The JFK research community has produced some awesome work: John Newman, John Armstrong, Jim Douglass, Jerry McKnight, Bill Davy etc. It is a tremendous tradition. And this is the kind of stuff we should be leading with. And what most of us do.
And I think this helps explain, but not excuse, some of the rather over the top anger CD feels about Morrow. He has been out there in the fields for a long time. So he has loads of experience. And he understands the art and uses of disinformation. Because he has seen it before. Morrow is kind of new. So we get the likes of "Pegasus" etc. (See my essay on Regicide for another example of falling for disinfo.)
It takes a while to really get up to speed in this field. So understand if the vets don't exhibit a lot of patience for the new guys.