17-01-2011, 12:33 AM
Nice overview, Phil. And of course I agree that that remark was unfortunate, but it is mild compared to what some sources would claim. Thanks for such a nice summary.
Phil Dragoo Wrote:I've had my 48-page USA Today Special Edition JFK's America: 50 Years After Kennedy's Election, His Legacy Endures (on sale through November 8, 2010) for a couple of months.
It is a very positive reflection with photos and rembrances favorable to the man.
Pages 21-3 bear the heading Conspiracy theories live long after JFK's death, with the data that within days of the shooting Gallup showed just more than half thought others were involved.
After the release of the Warren Commision report 87% said they believed the official version that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The 1970's brought a cynicism of government prompted by Watergate, and the first broadcast of Abraham Zapruder's home movie of the shooting, spawning new interpretations of the event. The result: A near total reversal of public opinion: 81% told Gallup they believed in a conspiracy.
Gallup 2003: 90% of 18-to-29-year-olds said they believed in a conspiracy.
Older respondents blame Cuba or Soviet Union; younger blame Mafia or CIA.
I posit the article states the very muddling Jim DiEugenio warns against, the very cognitive dissonance Charles Drago describes, when it cites Lindsay Porter, author of Assassination: A History of Political Murder, "The more alleged data that's accumulated, the more muddled things become. It's now become a dialogue separate to the event itself. . . .The death overshadows the life, to the extent that for a lot of people it kind of obliterates it."
To which I would reply, in your dreams, Lindsay. And those of the beetles of Langley.
Through the work of careful researchers from Weisberg to Douglass as Jim so aptly frames the arc, the picture is of a grand thing, designed by a few geniuses, subscribed to by a horde of Cold Warriors.
Angleton's work with Oswald's files is like Nero Wolfe's fetish for orchids. One doesn't rush into the finer points without a world of experience.
The fact of Johnson's exit in two stages: March, 1968, in his whimpering; then, in 1973, when his carcass hit the deck. And yet the symphony was a work in progress before his entrance to the national stage, and its coverup continues to this daysee the dark destruction by the Secret Service of its 1963 records in full defiance of the JFK Act.
So, to that end should the work continue.
In my view, Johnson strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage, and a right bastard he was, just not the king, Ladies and Gentlemen, nor a Merlin or Rasputin.
And Oswaldthe man was not a communist, not a gunman, not alonefor he was involved with three intelligence agencies as well as David Ferrie, Jack Ruby, David Atlee Phillips, and more people than could fit on the bus on page 22:
Welcome to Big "D": National Headquarters Dr. Pepper Company, American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages--
And that's where Nixon was. But Nixon was only Ike's liason to the Agency, and the brothers Dulles, and the defense-intelligence establishment that had been running our foreign policy before, during and after the assassination.
A consortium of interests. We're not just going to leave a source of heroin, and a golden goose of helos and ports, quit changing inconvenient regimes like socks, or turn over strategic decisions to someone who sends personal letters to the other side of the looking glass.
If someone thought he would replace the pursuit of naked power with that of peace, he would be out of his mind, and his mind would be on the back of his limousine for all the world to see.
Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is every bit JFK's America even unto this very day.