16-02-2011, 03:50 AM
A fact about Hersh and Dark Side that is all but overlooked:
At one point in the book tour, Hersh was asked by an MSM interviewer if, during his research, he discovered anything so controversial that it could not be included in the final draft.
"I heard things about JFK I didn't want to believe," was his cagey response.
My interpretation: The disinformation boys were telling him that JFK was a witting Soviet agent.
I can't come close to proving any of this, but whenever I hear stories about JFK and blackmail, I go beyond talk of sexual indiscretions and consider the possibility that he was being threatened with exposure of his receptivity to a Soviet intelligence recruitment effort -- or a Western intelligence provocation disguised as a Soviet recruitment effort -- which took place during his brief tenure at the London School of Economics in 1935.
Let me be clear: I am not suggesting for a nanosecond that JFK in fact did become a witting Soviet asset. But even a youthful, idealistic, quickly terminated dalliance with Marxism as championed by Harold Laski (JFK's teacher), for instance, would have been enough to hang over JFK's head in later public years and amount to prime blackmail material.
If run by a Western service, the operation would have been the intellectual/ideological equivalent of a so-called honeytrap.
Something to put in the bank for later use.
Sexual blackmail vis a vis JFK has never cut the mustard for me. There would have had to have been something far more damaging, far more convincing -- at least to a Cold War public.
So convincing, perhaps, that even though totally fabricated, it still has the power to control the actions of the family.
I'm treading very delicately here. Just thinking out loud.
At one point in the book tour, Hersh was asked by an MSM interviewer if, during his research, he discovered anything so controversial that it could not be included in the final draft.
"I heard things about JFK I didn't want to believe," was his cagey response.
My interpretation: The disinformation boys were telling him that JFK was a witting Soviet agent.
I can't come close to proving any of this, but whenever I hear stories about JFK and blackmail, I go beyond talk of sexual indiscretions and consider the possibility that he was being threatened with exposure of his receptivity to a Soviet intelligence recruitment effort -- or a Western intelligence provocation disguised as a Soviet recruitment effort -- which took place during his brief tenure at the London School of Economics in 1935.
Let me be clear: I am not suggesting for a nanosecond that JFK in fact did become a witting Soviet asset. But even a youthful, idealistic, quickly terminated dalliance with Marxism as championed by Harold Laski (JFK's teacher), for instance, would have been enough to hang over JFK's head in later public years and amount to prime blackmail material.
If run by a Western service, the operation would have been the intellectual/ideological equivalent of a so-called honeytrap.
Something to put in the bank for later use.
Sexual blackmail vis a vis JFK has never cut the mustard for me. There would have had to have been something far more damaging, far more convincing -- at least to a Cold War public.
So convincing, perhaps, that even though totally fabricated, it still has the power to control the actions of the family.
I'm treading very delicately here. Just thinking out loud.
Charles Drago
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene