<![CDATA[Deep Politics Forum - Political Assassinations]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/ Sat, 23 May 2026 05:22:19 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[10,000 New RFK Documents released! I think there may be some new leads here!!!]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16438 Fri, 18 Apr 2025 15:27:54 +0000 Peter Lemkin]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16438 Robert Kennedy assassination documents released

Please post any interesting finds and/or analysis here.

What To Look For by Dick Russell

www.Archives.gov/RFK
Apr 18, 2025

The announcement came this morning: 10,000 pages of government documents pertaining to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 are being released and will be searchable online, with 50,000 more pages to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHypOY5gxGM
The video interview link above with CIA Director Tulsi Gabbard indicates that there are no “smoking guns,” but major questions do arise as to the official story that Sirhan Sirhan alone fired shots in the Ambassador Hotel pantry that night.
Here are some key points to look for:
(1) What more is there from Los Angeles Corner Thomas Noguchi, whose autopsy report described four shots being fired at RFK from at most three inches away. Three of the shots appeared to be in contact with the senator’s back and shoulder, with one passing through the back of his head. Sirhan had fired all eight of his bullets from the front, striking other people. Five additional bullets, thirteen in all, were found in a wall and apparently removed by police. The point being, there had to have been a second gunman.
(2) What do we learn about the security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, who was standing behind RFK and admittedly fired, supposedly to protect him.
(3) To this day, Sirhan has no memory of firing his gun, and three doctors testified at his trial that he had likely been hypnotized. Do we learn anything further about the CIA’s MKULTRA program to control human behavior, most of whose files were destroyed in 1973.
(4) A girl in a polka-dot dress was the last person to be seen in Sirhan’s presence before he entered the pantry. She was heard shouting “We killed him!” as; she ran out of the ballroom. Was she ever identified?
My biography, The Real RFK Jr. contains a chapter about his visit with Sirhan in prison and more details pointing to a coverup in the assassination. It will be of particular interest to see what the LAPD files reveal of their investigation. More to come in the weeks ahead.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510776095/?bestFormat=true&k=the%20real%20rfk%20jr%20book&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k1_1_16&crid=XU5H3257H7SF&sprefix=%22the%20real%20rfk%20jr%22

There are many other excellent books on the RFK Assassination and I will try to make a list and post shortly.]]> Robert Kennedy assassination documents released

Please post any interesting finds and/or analysis here.

What To Look For by Dick Russell

www.Archives.gov/RFK
Apr 18, 2025

The announcement came this morning: 10,000 pages of government documents pertaining to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 are being released and will be searchable online, with 50,000 more pages to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHypOY5gxGM
The video interview link above with CIA Director Tulsi Gabbard indicates that there are no “smoking guns,” but major questions do arise as to the official story that Sirhan Sirhan alone fired shots in the Ambassador Hotel pantry that night.
Here are some key points to look for:
(1) What more is there from Los Angeles Corner Thomas Noguchi, whose autopsy report described four shots being fired at RFK from at most three inches away. Three of the shots appeared to be in contact with the senator’s back and shoulder, with one passing through the back of his head. Sirhan had fired all eight of his bullets from the front, striking other people. Five additional bullets, thirteen in all, were found in a wall and apparently removed by police. The point being, there had to have been a second gunman.
(2) What do we learn about the security guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, who was standing behind RFK and admittedly fired, supposedly to protect him.
(3) To this day, Sirhan has no memory of firing his gun, and three doctors testified at his trial that he had likely been hypnotized. Do we learn anything further about the CIA’s MKULTRA program to control human behavior, most of whose files were destroyed in 1973.
(4) A girl in a polka-dot dress was the last person to be seen in Sirhan’s presence before he entered the pantry. She was heard shouting “We killed him!” as; she ran out of the ballroom. Was she ever identified?
My biography, The Real RFK Jr. contains a chapter about his visit with Sirhan in prison and more details pointing to a coverup in the assassination. It will be of particular interest to see what the LAPD files reveal of their investigation. More to come in the weeks ahead.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510776095/?bestFormat=true&k=the%20real%20rfk%20jr%20book&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k1_1_16&crid=XU5H3257H7SF&sprefix=%22the%20real%20rfk%20jr%22

There are many other excellent books on the RFK Assassination and I will try to make a list and post shortly.]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Murder Of Brian Jones By Richard Gilbride]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16430 Sat, 08 Mar 2025 23:20:25 +0000 Brian Doyle]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16430
Good work Richard...Sometimes justice waits for a skilled writer to come along and put it all together...Brian Jones finally bears witness on all those who so wickedly betrayed him...]]>
Good work Richard...Sometimes justice waits for a skilled writer to come along and put it all together...Brian Jones finally bears witness on all those who so wickedly betrayed him...]]> <![CDATA[Assassination of Paul Wellstone - and Why It Likely Was Done!]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16271 Mon, 25 Oct 2021 14:40:42 +0000 Peter Lemkin]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16271 By
Jeremy Kuzmarov
-
October 25, 2021
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10...e/#respond
[/url]




  • [Image: larger-view.jpeg?resize=267%2C177&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and his wife Sheila jog to their campaign bus after casting their ballots in their hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, on November 6, 1990. Wellstone defeated Sen. Rudy Boschwitz in the general election. [Source: minnesota.publicradio.org]
  • [Image: a-group-of-people-in-a-forest-descriptio...C406&ssl=1]Federal investigators sift through debris in this October 27, 2002, file photo, from the twin engine plane that crashed two days earlier near Eveleth, Minnesota, killing Sen. Wellstone, his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia and several others. [Source: twincities.com]
Hailed by The Nation as “the Senator from the Left” and by Mother Jones as “the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate,” he was killed in a 2002 plane crash just 10 days before a crucial election he was likely to win—a win that would have clinched Democratic control of the Senate by a single vote.
Although officially designated an “accident,” could a new investigation reclassify it as an “assassination,” placing Wellstone in the ever-lengthening line of murdered political figures—from John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy—who threatened the status quo?
[Timed for the 19th anniversary of Wellstone’s death, this article continues CAM’s series into political assassinations in the U.S. and marks the beginning of a week of articles on this topic.—Editors]
In the fall of 2002, in the midst of a heated re-election campaign—and after delivering a strong rebuke to the Iraq War in the Senate chamber two weeks earlier—Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone (D) was beginning to pull ahead of his Republican opponent, Norm Coleman.
The Democrats at that point only had a slim 50-49 one-seat advantage in the Senate.
But then, on October 25th, Wellstone’s plane went down, and history was changed.
[Image: pall-bearers-carry-the-casket-of-sen-pau...C608&ssl=1]Pallbearers carry Senator Wellstone’s casket in Minneapolis after his funeral on October 28, 2002. Wellstone’s sons Mark and David are on the lower left. [Source: startribune.com]
With Wellstone dead, the Democrats convinced Walter Mondale—Jimmy Carter’s Vice President—to come out of retirement at age 74 to run against Coleman, but he lost narrowly.
The Republicans in turn reclaimed control of the Senate, which they nailed down with the victory of Saxby Chambliss over Max Cleland—attributed by many to illegal Republican machine manipulation of the vote.
A Democratic Party politician told investigator Michael Ruppert: “I don’t think there’s anyone on the Hill who doesn’t suspect it [that Wellstone was assassinated]. It’s too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious.”[1]
A former CIA operative further told Ruppert: “having played ball (and still playing, in some respects) with this current crop of re-invigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.”[2]
[Image: michael-ruppert-wikipedia.jpeg?resize=143%2C136&ssl=1]Michael Ruppert [Source: wikipedia.org]
The World Socialist Website noted that, after gutting the social safety net and plotting the criminal invasion of Iraq, “to imagine that the neo-fascist GOP leadership would suffer moral “qualms over a conveniently timed plane crash would be naive in the extreme.”
Official Explanation
Wellstone was traveling on October 25th with his wife and daughter to the funeral of the father of one of his good friends and supporters in the Minnesota State legislature, Tom Rukavina.
Official blame for the crash was initially placed on the weather, which was misdescribed as involving freezing rain. The day of the crash was overcast and chilly but above freezing.
The plane was also equipped with a very sophisticated de-icing system which it did not actually need to activate.
When the weather was eliminated as a cause, responsibility for the crash was directed against the pilots, even though the principal pilot, Richard Conry, 55, had 5,200 hours of experience, the highest possible rating, and had passed his Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) “flight check” just two days before the fatal flight.
One former co-pilot who had accompanied him 50 times described him as the most careful pilot with whom he had ever flown.[3]
[Image: it-is-heartbreaking-said-garye-martin-of...C350&ssl=1]“It is heartbreaking,” said Gary Martin of St. Paul, who brought flowers to place on the fence outside of Paul Wellstone’s University Avenue headquarters. [Source: twincities.com]
Early Arrival of FBI Indicates Foreknowledge
The arrival of an FBI team from the Twin Cities in Minnesota at the scene of the crash in Eveleth as early as noon—when the site was only identified an hour earlier and FAA authorities only confirmed the crash at 12:15 p.m.—raises immediate suspicion that they were there to clean up the scene of incriminating evidence.
Jurisdiction over an investigation of this kind was held by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the travel time between the Twin Cities—193 miles from the crash site in a remote area of Eveleth—was at least two and a half hours.
This is a highly conservative estimate, particularly considering the fact that the crash site according to the local sheriff was a “real unpleasant piece of property that required all-terrain vehicles.”[4]
[Image: a-picture-containing-tree-outdoor-ground...C410&ssl=1]Memorial to Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila at the crash scene in a remote area of Eveleth, Minnesota. [Source: minpost.com]
The FBI team would have had to have left the Twin Cities, at the latest, at 9:30 a.m.—and probably well before—to get to the crash scene by noon—an hour before Wellstone’s plane crash and well before there were any signs of problems with the flight.
Never Trust a Spook
By late afternoon, an FBI spokesman, Paul McCabe, issued a statement—repeated in newspapers across the country—that there was no indication the crash had been related to terrorism.
That a definitive conclusion could be rendered so quickly appears to be impossible.
The NTSB nevertheless deferred to the FBI’s judgment—even though it was supposed to have jurisdiction over the investigation—and reiterated the claim that there was no foul play.
A year-long investigation seemingly confirmed the latter conclusion.
The NTSB at the time was headed by Carol Carmody who was a former employee of the CIA.
[Image: a-person-smiling-for-the-camera-descript...C137&ssl=1]Carol Carmody [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
Wellstone had in the past questioned the abuses of the CIA and was skeptical of the intelligence surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Wellstone was also strongly pro-union when Carmody had managed a firm that administered Taft-Hartley pension plans [Taft-Hartley was a notoriously anti-union law passed by Congress in 1947].
[Image: sen-paul-wellstone-d-mn-6-21-44-10-25-02...C207&ssl=1]Not exactly a poster boy for Carol Carmody, the FBI or CIA. [Source: whatwouldjackdo.net]
After the crash, Carmody searched for an in-flight voice recorder—which there was none, or which the FBI removed from the scene and destroyed.
She also breached protocol by announcing that the weather was behind the crash when this was speculation—only factual information is supposed to be released.
James Sanders, author of a book on the 1996 crash of a TWA flight, referred to Carmody as a “political hack willing to accommodate those who can make her a brighter future.”[5]
[Image: a-picture-containing-indoor-ceiling-desc...C155&ssl=1]Ruins of TWA flight 800 that crashed after takeoff from New York’s JFK Airport in July 1996. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Sanders believes that the TWA flight crashed after a bomb went off on board and that Carmody helped to cover this up.
Carmody was also involved in the investigation and apparent cover-up of a plane crash that killed Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan (D) in October 2000 when he was in the thick of a campaign for the U.S. Senate against John Ashcroft ®, who was later appointed as Attorney General by President George W. Bush.
[Image: remembering-gov-mel-carnahan-19-years-af...C865&ssl=1][Source: stltoday.com]
Suspicion Deepens
More suspicion about the possibility of a cover-up was aroused by a) the destruction of records of planes landing in Duluth the morning of the Wellstone crash, b) missing information from logs about those at the crash scene, and c) the NTSB’s cancelation of a public meeting for comments from citizens about the crash.[6]
First responders to the crash scene were ordered not to take photos by the FBI, and even the Associated Press had trouble getting photos—its photographer was only allowed 15 minutes at the crash site, which was unusual.[7]
The NTSB’s year-long investigation was chaired by two public relations specialists—and not aviation experts—appointed by George W. Bush, whose personal dislike of Wellstone was well known and long-standing.
One, Ellen Engelman Connors, worked on Bush’s Homeland Security team, and the other, Mark Rosenker, was director of the White House’s military office. Secret History
The NTSB had a record of covering up aerial terrorism dating back to the Nixon administration.
Sherman Skolnick’s 1973 book, The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage, detailed the sabotage of a United Airlines plane in Chicago in December 1972, a month after Richard Nixon’s re-election.
[Image: the-lost-liazon-the-mystery-of-dorothy-h...C502&ssl=1]Crash scene of United Airlines flight 553 carrying 12 passengers related to the Watergate burglary. [Source: roughdiplomacy.org]
[Image: dorothy-hunt.jpeg?resize=138%2C203&ssl=1]Dorothy Hunt [Source: Spartacus-educational.com]
Twelve passengers related to the Watergate burglary died in the crash, including Mrs. E. Howard Hunt, wife of the Watergate burglar and CIA operative who herself served in the CIA.
According to Skolnick, Ms. Hunt had more than $2 million in valuables, obtained by blackmailing Nixon over his role in the 1963 assassination of JFK.
Skolnick’s team reviewed unpublicized NTSB files which indicated sabotage, and Skolnick accused the NTSB—which headed the investigation—of participating in a cover-up.[8]
[Image: image-result-for-united-airlines-flight-...C957&ssl=1]FBI agents took control of the scene and immediately began sifting through the wreckage looking for something—as in the Wellstone crash. At least one survivor recognized a “rescue worker”—clad in overalls sifting through wreckage—as an operative of the CIA. [Source: roughdiplomacy.org]
What Happened to Wellstone’s Plane
The St. Paul Pioneer reported the day after the crash that there was “no distress call or any indication of trouble before the plane went down about 10:20.”
The pilot’s last transmission occurred at 10:18 a.m. where there was “no evidence from the pilot’s voice that there was any difficulty, no reported problems, no expressed concerns.”[9]
At 10:19 a.m., radar showed that the aircraft began drifting south. The last radar appearance—coming two minutes later—showed that the plane took a curious turn west, away from the runway and then a steep dive, indicating that the plane was out of control.
[Image: larger-view-1.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1]Ruins of Wellstone’s plane. [Source: news.minnesota.publicradio.org]
[Image: text-description-automatically-generated...C500&ssl=1][Source: oilempire.us]
The wing flaps, which should have been fully extended for landing, were extended only to 15 degrees—the setting used for an initial approach descent.[10]
Two eyewitnesses claimed that they heard the engines of the plane cutting out, or going on and off—a phenomenon not in alignment with an aerodynamic stall, which the official investigation claimed.
After the plane cut out, a diving noise was heard, followed by an explosion.
Another witness reported hearing a gunshot going off or loud bang beforehand—indicating a possible sniper attack.
Other eyewitnesses saw blue smoke coming from the crashed airplane—which indicated an electrical, and not fuel, fire—and evidence that the fuselage burned badly, and the wings did not.
The latter was odd because the fuel was in the wing tanks, which had been separated from the fuselage as it went through the trees and should have emitted thick black smoke.
Another oddity was that the wing section was charred but the tree that the plane supposedly clipped was not.
This would indicate that either the wing was moved from the crash site (unlikely and illegal) or the wing was on fire before the plane hit the ground—caused possibly by a bomb–accounting for the lack of damage to the tree itself.
[Image: a-picture-containing-outdoor-tree-person...C410&ssl=1]Investigation of plane crash site. Note the presence of the FBI, although the NTSB was supposed to have jurisdiction. [Source: scribblguy.50megs.com]
Autopsy reports indicate that three of the victims had smoke in their lungs which implied they had survived the moment of impact long enough to be affected by the fire, or that the plane was on fire on the way down.[11]
More Evidence of Foul Play and Cover-up
Jim Ongaro who was within a stone’s throw of the plane, told investigator Jim Fetzer that he received an odd call on his cell phone at about the exact time of the crash in which he heard a cross between a roar and a loud humming noise on the other end. A friend further left him a message which he never received on voicemail.[12]
Ongaro also said that another friend told him that co-workers of his that were pilots said that there was no way that the plane should have burned up the way it did.
When Ongaro emailed the Duluth office of Congressman James Oberstar, Oberstar (D-Minn.) responded by stating that the FBI had already investigated any possibility of foul play and ruled it out.
[Image: a-person-in-a-suit-smiling-description-a...C204&ssl=1]James Oberstar [Source: wikipedia.org]
According to researcher Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, the key to understanding the crash was the complete cessation of communication between the pilots and the control tower in the minutes before the crash.[13]
Pilot error or mechanical problems could not account for loss of communication nor could difficult weather, indicating foul play.
Four Arrows and Fetzer speculate that a small bomb may have caused the crash, or direct energy weapons that the military had developed, or an electromagnetic pulse that police use to stop carjackers during high-speed chases.
Previous Assassination Attempt
Wellstone had survived a previous assassination attempt in December 2000 when he had traveled to Colombia.
At the time, Wellstone was a leading congressional critic of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion program to finance Colombia’s War on Drugs which involved aerial spraying of coca fields by private military contractors who stood to make a huge amount of money.
As Wellstone was traveling from the airport in Bogota after his arrival, a bomb was found along his route. The State Department downplayed the incident and it was thereafter forgotten.[14]
[Image: paul-wellstone-during-his-visit-to-colom...C328&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone during his visit to Colombia in March 2001 where he survived an assassination attempt. Wellstone was a strong critic of Plan Colombia. [Source: politico.com]
The next day, Wellstone and his staff were sprayed with glyphosate, a chemical that has been routinely documented as the cause of a variety of illnesses in the local population. It has left certain regions of Colombia, as one native put it, “without butterflies or birds.”
Manipulation of Pilots?
Despite an excellent reputation, Richard Conry served two years in federal prison for mail fraud in connection with a family business he was running.
This criminal past suggests the possibility that he was manipulated into participating in a conspiracy plot and convinced to carry something on board the plane that he thought was contraband or narcotics but was really a tracking device or bomb.[15]
If that was the case, this would explain why Conry sounded nervous in a routine pre-flight phone call with air traffic controllers about the weather.[16]
Co-pilot Michael Guess, 30, also had a criminal record, so he could have been manipulated as well.
Was the Murder Weapon an Electromagnetic Weapon?
Researchers Four Arrows and Fetzer believe that Wellstone’s plane may have been taken down by an electromagnetic weapon (EMP)—such as a laser beam—that the military applied in Iraq.
EMPs are capable of unleashing in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours, and destroying any electronics within 1,000 feet of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections.
[Image: the-laser-weapon-system-is-designed-to-b...C464&ssl=1]Laser weapon developed by General Atomics and Boeing, designed to be mounted on a variety of platforms. [Source: newatlas.com]
According to Four Arrows and Fetzer, there are a number of ways that EMPs could have been used in the Wellstone crash.
A small incendiary bomb may have been placed in the airplane and activated by radio wave when the plane was near the airport or a pulse bomb could have been fired at the airplane on approach causing the electronics system to go out of control.
Jamming could have been activated and a decoy VHF Omnidirectional Radio Range (VOR) signal sent, tricking the plane’s instruments and pilots into believing the airport was somewhere several degrees off the true course to the runway, with the pilot following that signal into the ground.
The non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming equipment, afterwards would have casually left the area, looking just like any other TV repair truck or moving van.[17]
Two witnesses—Megen Williams and a blond-haired man interviewed on CNN—said they observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane shortly before the crash, giving credibility to the EMP/laser weapon theory.[18]
After being struck by EMP, Wellstone’s aircraft could have functioned more or less normally but without any control systems, instruments or radios. This would account for the assertion that the plane engines were still running when the plane hit the ground.
When the plane crashed, someone may have made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded.[19]
An Idealist in Washington
Paul Wellstone was a rare breed in U.S. politics: an idealist and true progressive who was dubbed “the conscience of the U.S. Senate.”
[Image: senator-paul-wellstone-d-mn-or-sen-paul-...C208&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone as a Tar Heel wrestler. [Source: pinterest.com]
The son of Ukrainian immigrants who stood only 5’5″, Wellstone grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 after writing a thesis entitled “Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence.”
A championship wrestler in high school and college, Wellstone’s political outlook was forged through his participation in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s.[20]
In 1969, Wellstone moved to Northfield, Minnesota, to teach political science at Carleton College where he stayed for the next 21 years.
The FBI took note of the bushy-haired college professor when he was arrested on May 7, 1970, at a protest against the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in downtown Minneapolis.
[Image: from-protester-to-senator-fbi-tracked-pa...C450&ssl=1]Wellstone as a young political science professor at Carleton College. [Source: Minnesota.publicradio.org]
According to a New York Times Magazine profile, Wellstone was often at odds with other faculty and the Carleton administration, and was in his element instigating protests—from fighting Carleton’s investment policies in South Africa to battling banks that were foreclosing on farms.[21]
In 1974, at the age of 28, Wellstone was granted tenure when students and other colleagues rallied to his defense after he was going to be dismissed because he chose not to write for academic journals.[22]
In the early 1980s, Wellstone began his political career working in Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich’s office after helping to organize grassroots opposition to high-voltage electricity transmission lines in rural Minnesota.[23]
[Image: june-10-1990-paul-wellstone-lt-gov-marle...C464&ssl=1]Wellstone with Rudy Perpich, right, in June 1990 after Wellstone wins party endorsement for Senate. Lt. Gov. Marlene Johnson is in the center. [Source: startribune.com]
After a failed bid for state auditor, Wellstone was named in 1984 to the Democratic Party National Committee and, in 1988, became the state campaign co-chairman for Jesse Jackson’s bid for the presidency, and national co-chair of Democratic Party nominee Michael Dukakis.
[Image: 1988-jackson-mounts-a-serious-challenge-...C470&ssl=1]Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson shake hands during the 1988 election. [Source: nbcnews.com]
Casting himself as a political outsider, Wellstone ran for the United States Senate in 1990—using a rickety green school bus, a humorous ad campaign styled after a Michael Moore documentary and a pledge to serve only two terms—and upset the Republican incumbent, Rudy Boschwitz, who outspent Mr. Wellstone by seven times.[24] One of his first acts as a Senator was to stage an emotionally charged press conference at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in which he urged the Bush Sr. administration not to attack Iraq.[25]
Wellstone subsequently established his credentials as a populist in the tradition of Robert La Follette who took on corporate power like almost no one else of his generation.[26]
[Image: nateand39s-nonsense-robert-m-andquotfigh...C551&ssl=1]Wellstone was cut in the mold of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the legendary midwestern populist. [Source: natemaas.com]
Just before his death, Wellstone had proposed putting $2 billion into Minnesota’s schools instead of further tax cuts for the top 1% of incomes.
Wellstone further a) stopped last-minute efforts by drug companies to extend exclusive patents and promoted a strong patients’ rights bill and decent prescription drug benefits; b) said no to privatizing social security; c) helped strengthen and pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill; d) passed laws banning gifts to members of Congress; and e) though Jewish, called on Israel to be more compromising with its Arab neighbors.
[Image: wellstone-shakes-supporters-hands-on-his...C328&ssl=1]Wellstone receiving re-nomination for a second term in the Senate at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Convention in Minneapolis in June 1996. [Source: politico.com]
Wellstone additionally a) helped pass a strong Minnesota-friendly farm bill with amendments that reduced the advantages of corporate agribusiness; b) led the fight to stop Big Oil from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; c) championed tribal sovereignty and native Indian rights; and d) stood up for fair trade against the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO), which eased restrictions on big business.[27]
A Very Convenient Death
After Wellstone’s death, a poll in the St. Paul Pioneer found that 69% of readers felt that Wellstone was killed owing to a GOP conspiracy.
Michael Niman, a professor of journalism at Buffalo State College, wrote that “Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone.”
The day after Wellstone’s death, the GOP transferred $700,000 to be used in the effort to defeat Democratic Party Senator Max Cleland in Georgia, money that the GOP had planned to use against Wellstone in Minnesota.
[Image: max-cleland.jpeg?resize=594%2C396&ssl=1]Max Cleland during his tenure as a Georgia senator. As a wounded Vietnam veteran, he was against the Iraq War and, therefore, the Bushies had to ensure his removal alongside that of Wellstone. [Source: veteransadvantage.com]
The Bush family’s hatred of Wellstone went back to 1991 when, at a reception for new congresspeople, he told then President George H.W. Bush that the country “would be ripped apart if it went to war.” Bush turned to one of his advisers after and asked: “who is this chickenshit?[28]
Subsequently, at a swearing in ceremony in the Senate, Wellstone handed Vice President Dan Quayle a videotape of a Minnesota town meeting where the Bush administration’s war policies were criticized.
[Image: the-new-senator-talks-with-vice-presiden...C328&ssl=1]Wellstone in January 1991 handing Vice President Dan Quayle videotape of Minnesotans criticizing the Gulf War. [Source: politico.com]
In the 2002 election cycle, George W. Bush had made terminating Wellstone’s Senate career his foremost priority.
[Image: john-nichols-or-the-nation.jpeg?resize=198%2C191&ssl=1]John Nichols [Source: thenation.com]
Political reporter John Nichols wrote: “The Bushies despise Wellstone, who unlike most Senate Democrats has been fighting spirited battles against the new administration policies on everything from the environment to the tax cuts for the rich to military aid for the ‘Plan Colombia’ drug war boondoggle. The Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention on ‘Plan Wellstone’—its project to silence progressive opposition.”
[Image: president-george-w-bush-shakes-hands-wit...C180&ssl=1]George W. Bush shakes hands with Minnesota’s then Republican Senator Norm Coleman in 2007 as a young Senator Amy Klobuchar looks on. [Source: georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov]
By October 2002, Bush had visited Minnesota four times to drum up support for his hand-picked candidate, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, a strong supporter of the Iraq War.[29]
Large sums of money were being funneled into the state, including one million dollars for advertisements attacking Wellstone that were put up by an anonymous group calling itself “Americans for Job Security.”
[Image: dick-cheney-wikipedia.jpeg?resize=204%2C232&ssl=1]Dick Cheney issued mafia-style threats to Paul Wellstone on the eve of the Iraq War. [Source: wikipedia.org]
At a meeting with war veterans in Willmar, Minnesota, two days before his death, Wellstone said that Vice President Dick Cheney had told him, “if you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”
Obviously this was no idle threat.
Two weeks earlier, Wellstone had spoken eloquently on the Senate floor against the Iraq War and the “wisdom of relying too heavily on a preemptive go it alone military approach”—prompting a bump for him in the polls that shocked the Bush administration.
[Image: a-picture-containing-diagram-description...C388&ssl=1]Senator Wellstone was slated to win re-election after voting against George Bush’s “war resolution” in Congress. [Source: oilempire.us]
As Chairman of a new Securities Reform Committee, Wellstone was also at the time trying to block the nomination of William Webster, former CIA and FBI head and “best friend of big business and big accounting firms” to be the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) Accounting Oversight Commission.
[Image: a-person-in-a-suit-description-automatic...C204&ssl=1]William Webster as FBI Director. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Wellstone had further tried to bar corporate tax dodgers from being eligible for Defense Department contracts, and successfully amended the Homeland Security bill to bar those companies from getting contracts with the new Department of Homeland Security.
After the November election—and Wellstone’s tragic death—the final version of the Homeland Security bill gutted the Wellstone amendment and corporate lobby groups were able to land billion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq and elsewhere.[30]
As one of the few genuine progressives in Congress, Wellstone would have been a formidable presidential candidate in 2004.
With the increasing exposure of the Bush administration’s corruption in books like Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002) and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men (2004), he would have had a better chance to beat Bush than any other candidate. That is why his plane had to be taken down.
[Image: CAM-logo-circular-20210506b-300.png?resi...2C20&ssl=1]
  1. Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone (El Prado, NM:”Vox Pop, 2004). ↑
  2. Sue Cantrell, who lives a few hundred yards from Camp Peary, the CIA training camp in Williamsburg, Virginia, reported that the night before Wellstone’s death, at around 1:15 a.m., she heard a “large plane take off from the runway [at Camp Peary]. In the previous three years of living here, I have never heard a plane take off in the middle of the night.” ↑
  3. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination. ↑
  4. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 11, 82, 83. ↑
  5. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. ↑
  6. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85. ↑
  7. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85. ↑
  8. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 124, 125. ↑
  9. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. The FAA spokeswoman stated that there were no signs of distress coming from the plane’s crew on its final approach. ↑
  10. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 44. The stall warning on a King Air—which Wellstone flew in—is quite loud. With two pilots and six passengers, it could not have been missed. Thus, there was ample time to regain speed. ↑
  11. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 131. ↑
  12. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 48, 49. ↑
  13. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 61. ↑
  14. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 54. ↑
  15. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. ↑
  16. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. ↑
  17. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101, 146. The authors present a scenario in which the plane ran off course, and the cockpit was zapped, resulting in a pilotless plane. When the decoy VOR was switched off, the plane’s instruments re-oriented to the Eveleth airport causing a sharp right turn. After the plane crashed, someone made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded—as the cable TV/power company/telephone service vehicle made its escape from the scene of the crime. ↑
  18. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 136, 146. ↑
  19. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 146. One other oddity is that Raytheon representatives were on the crash scene after Wellstone’s plane was downed. Not only did Raytheon make the King Air A-100 plane on which he flew but they also manufactured high-tech weapons of the kind that were used to bring the plane down.
  20. See Bill Lofy, Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005); Senator Paul Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda (New York: Random House, 2001). ↑
  21. Dennis J. McGrath and Dane Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington: The Inside Story of a Grassroots U.S. Senate Campaign (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 33, 34. Wellstone made enemies on the Carleton Board of Trustees when in 1971 he urged the removal of its chairman, Edson Spencer, Vice-President of Honeywell Corporation which manufactured anti-personnel bombs used in Vietnam. Wellstone accused Spencer of managing a “criminal corporation.” ↑
  22. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, 34. ↑
  23. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 51; Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal, 9, 10, 11, 17. In 1982, Wellstone was arrested for trespassing at a bank in the central Minnesota town of Paynesville after leading a protest of farmers who were protesting bank foreclosures and seizure of their land after they had been saddled with heavy debt. Wellstone had further supported a strike of meatpackers at the Hormel Company in southern Minnesota in 1985/6. With a gift for oratory and his success as a political organizer, he subsequently emerged as a leader in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). ↑
  24. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington. ↑
  25. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67. ↑
  26. The only black hole in Wellstone’s record was his misguided support for the war in Bosnia and bombing of Kosovo. ↑
  27. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 157-173; McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, xxiii. ↑
  28. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67, 68. ↑
  29. A moderate Republican, Coleman had been part of the hippie counterculture who sold out to the establishment. In the 1980s, he was described by a local journalist as a “clean cut pin striped cigar smoking law and order prosecutor who liked schmoozing with business leaders a whole lot better than with welfare rights activists.” Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 116. After becoming Mayor of St. Paul, Coleman switched from the Democratic Party to Republican and started adopting conservative economic policies, opposed drug legalization and adopted hawkish views on Iraq, Iran and Gaza in alignment with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). After his Senate career ended, Coleman founded the American Action Network, a conservative advocacy organization with ties to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and became a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. ↑
  30. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 33. A mental health reform bill Wellstone championed, requiring insurance companies to provide mental health coverage on par with physical health coverage, was also blocked. ↑
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Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
 
[Image: cam-whistle-3i-2.png?resize=300%2C206&ssl=1]
[url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/campaigns/donate/]]]> By
Jeremy Kuzmarov
-
October 25, 2021
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10...e/#respond
[/url]




  • [Image: larger-view.jpeg?resize=267%2C177&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and his wife Sheila jog to their campaign bus after casting their ballots in their hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, on November 6, 1990. Wellstone defeated Sen. Rudy Boschwitz in the general election. [Source: minnesota.publicradio.org]
  • [Image: a-group-of-people-in-a-forest-descriptio...C406&ssl=1]Federal investigators sift through debris in this October 27, 2002, file photo, from the twin engine plane that crashed two days earlier near Eveleth, Minnesota, killing Sen. Wellstone, his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia and several others. [Source: twincities.com]
Hailed by The Nation as “the Senator from the Left” and by Mother Jones as “the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate,” he was killed in a 2002 plane crash just 10 days before a crucial election he was likely to win—a win that would have clinched Democratic control of the Senate by a single vote.
Although officially designated an “accident,” could a new investigation reclassify it as an “assassination,” placing Wellstone in the ever-lengthening line of murdered political figures—from John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy—who threatened the status quo?
[Timed for the 19th anniversary of Wellstone’s death, this article continues CAM’s series into political assassinations in the U.S. and marks the beginning of a week of articles on this topic.—Editors]
In the fall of 2002, in the midst of a heated re-election campaign—and after delivering a strong rebuke to the Iraq War in the Senate chamber two weeks earlier—Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone (D) was beginning to pull ahead of his Republican opponent, Norm Coleman.
The Democrats at that point only had a slim 50-49 one-seat advantage in the Senate.
But then, on October 25th, Wellstone’s plane went down, and history was changed.
[Image: pall-bearers-carry-the-casket-of-sen-pau...C608&ssl=1]Pallbearers carry Senator Wellstone’s casket in Minneapolis after his funeral on October 28, 2002. Wellstone’s sons Mark and David are on the lower left. [Source: startribune.com]
With Wellstone dead, the Democrats convinced Walter Mondale—Jimmy Carter’s Vice President—to come out of retirement at age 74 to run against Coleman, but he lost narrowly.
The Republicans in turn reclaimed control of the Senate, which they nailed down with the victory of Saxby Chambliss over Max Cleland—attributed by many to illegal Republican machine manipulation of the vote.
A Democratic Party politician told investigator Michael Ruppert: “I don’t think there’s anyone on the Hill who doesn’t suspect it [that Wellstone was assassinated]. It’s too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious.”[1]
A former CIA operative further told Ruppert: “having played ball (and still playing, in some respects) with this current crop of re-invigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.”[2]
[Image: michael-ruppert-wikipedia.jpeg?resize=143%2C136&ssl=1]Michael Ruppert [Source: wikipedia.org]
The World Socialist Website noted that, after gutting the social safety net and plotting the criminal invasion of Iraq, “to imagine that the neo-fascist GOP leadership would suffer moral “qualms over a conveniently timed plane crash would be naive in the extreme.”
Official Explanation
Wellstone was traveling on October 25th with his wife and daughter to the funeral of the father of one of his good friends and supporters in the Minnesota State legislature, Tom Rukavina.
Official blame for the crash was initially placed on the weather, which was misdescribed as involving freezing rain. The day of the crash was overcast and chilly but above freezing.
The plane was also equipped with a very sophisticated de-icing system which it did not actually need to activate.
When the weather was eliminated as a cause, responsibility for the crash was directed against the pilots, even though the principal pilot, Richard Conry, 55, had 5,200 hours of experience, the highest possible rating, and had passed his Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) “flight check” just two days before the fatal flight.
One former co-pilot who had accompanied him 50 times described him as the most careful pilot with whom he had ever flown.[3]
[Image: it-is-heartbreaking-said-garye-martin-of...C350&ssl=1]“It is heartbreaking,” said Gary Martin of St. Paul, who brought flowers to place on the fence outside of Paul Wellstone’s University Avenue headquarters. [Source: twincities.com]
Early Arrival of FBI Indicates Foreknowledge
The arrival of an FBI team from the Twin Cities in Minnesota at the scene of the crash in Eveleth as early as noon—when the site was only identified an hour earlier and FAA authorities only confirmed the crash at 12:15 p.m.—raises immediate suspicion that they were there to clean up the scene of incriminating evidence.
Jurisdiction over an investigation of this kind was held by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and the travel time between the Twin Cities—193 miles from the crash site in a remote area of Eveleth—was at least two and a half hours.
This is a highly conservative estimate, particularly considering the fact that the crash site according to the local sheriff was a “real unpleasant piece of property that required all-terrain vehicles.”[4]
[Image: a-picture-containing-tree-outdoor-ground...C410&ssl=1]Memorial to Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila at the crash scene in a remote area of Eveleth, Minnesota. [Source: minpost.com]
The FBI team would have had to have left the Twin Cities, at the latest, at 9:30 a.m.—and probably well before—to get to the crash scene by noon—an hour before Wellstone’s plane crash and well before there were any signs of problems with the flight.
Never Trust a Spook
By late afternoon, an FBI spokesman, Paul McCabe, issued a statement—repeated in newspapers across the country—that there was no indication the crash had been related to terrorism.
That a definitive conclusion could be rendered so quickly appears to be impossible.
The NTSB nevertheless deferred to the FBI’s judgment—even though it was supposed to have jurisdiction over the investigation—and reiterated the claim that there was no foul play.
A year-long investigation seemingly confirmed the latter conclusion.
The NTSB at the time was headed by Carol Carmody who was a former employee of the CIA.
[Image: a-person-smiling-for-the-camera-descript...C137&ssl=1]Carol Carmody [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
Wellstone had in the past questioned the abuses of the CIA and was skeptical of the intelligence surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Wellstone was also strongly pro-union when Carmody had managed a firm that administered Taft-Hartley pension plans [Taft-Hartley was a notoriously anti-union law passed by Congress in 1947].
[Image: sen-paul-wellstone-d-mn-6-21-44-10-25-02...C207&ssl=1]Not exactly a poster boy for Carol Carmody, the FBI or CIA. [Source: whatwouldjackdo.net]
After the crash, Carmody searched for an in-flight voice recorder—which there was none, or which the FBI removed from the scene and destroyed.
She also breached protocol by announcing that the weather was behind the crash when this was speculation—only factual information is supposed to be released.
James Sanders, author of a book on the 1996 crash of a TWA flight, referred to Carmody as a “political hack willing to accommodate those who can make her a brighter future.”[5]
[Image: a-picture-containing-indoor-ceiling-desc...C155&ssl=1]Ruins of TWA flight 800 that crashed after takeoff from New York’s JFK Airport in July 1996. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Sanders believes that the TWA flight crashed after a bomb went off on board and that Carmody helped to cover this up.
Carmody was also involved in the investigation and apparent cover-up of a plane crash that killed Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan (D) in October 2000 when he was in the thick of a campaign for the U.S. Senate against John Ashcroft ®, who was later appointed as Attorney General by President George W. Bush.
[Image: remembering-gov-mel-carnahan-19-years-af...C865&ssl=1][Source: stltoday.com]
Suspicion Deepens
More suspicion about the possibility of a cover-up was aroused by a) the destruction of records of planes landing in Duluth the morning of the Wellstone crash, b) missing information from logs about those at the crash scene, and c) the NTSB’s cancelation of a public meeting for comments from citizens about the crash.[6]
First responders to the crash scene were ordered not to take photos by the FBI, and even the Associated Press had trouble getting photos—its photographer was only allowed 15 minutes at the crash site, which was unusual.[7]
The NTSB’s year-long investigation was chaired by two public relations specialists—and not aviation experts—appointed by George W. Bush, whose personal dislike of Wellstone was well known and long-standing.
One, Ellen Engelman Connors, worked on Bush’s Homeland Security team, and the other, Mark Rosenker, was director of the White House’s military office. Secret History
The NTSB had a record of covering up aerial terrorism dating back to the Nixon administration.
Sherman Skolnick’s 1973 book, The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage, detailed the sabotage of a United Airlines plane in Chicago in December 1972, a month after Richard Nixon’s re-election.
[Image: the-lost-liazon-the-mystery-of-dorothy-h...C502&ssl=1]Crash scene of United Airlines flight 553 carrying 12 passengers related to the Watergate burglary. [Source: roughdiplomacy.org]
[Image: dorothy-hunt.jpeg?resize=138%2C203&ssl=1]Dorothy Hunt [Source: Spartacus-educational.com]
Twelve passengers related to the Watergate burglary died in the crash, including Mrs. E. Howard Hunt, wife of the Watergate burglar and CIA operative who herself served in the CIA.
According to Skolnick, Ms. Hunt had more than $2 million in valuables, obtained by blackmailing Nixon over his role in the 1963 assassination of JFK.
Skolnick’s team reviewed unpublicized NTSB files which indicated sabotage, and Skolnick accused the NTSB—which headed the investigation—of participating in a cover-up.[8]
[Image: image-result-for-united-airlines-flight-...C957&ssl=1]FBI agents took control of the scene and immediately began sifting through the wreckage looking for something—as in the Wellstone crash. At least one survivor recognized a “rescue worker”—clad in overalls sifting through wreckage—as an operative of the CIA. [Source: roughdiplomacy.org]
What Happened to Wellstone’s Plane
The St. Paul Pioneer reported the day after the crash that there was “no distress call or any indication of trouble before the plane went down about 10:20.”
The pilot’s last transmission occurred at 10:18 a.m. where there was “no evidence from the pilot’s voice that there was any difficulty, no reported problems, no expressed concerns.”[9]
At 10:19 a.m., radar showed that the aircraft began drifting south. The last radar appearance—coming two minutes later—showed that the plane took a curious turn west, away from the runway and then a steep dive, indicating that the plane was out of control.
[Image: larger-view-1.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1]Ruins of Wellstone’s plane. [Source: news.minnesota.publicradio.org]
[Image: text-description-automatically-generated...C500&ssl=1][Source: oilempire.us]
The wing flaps, which should have been fully extended for landing, were extended only to 15 degrees—the setting used for an initial approach descent.[10]
Two eyewitnesses claimed that they heard the engines of the plane cutting out, or going on and off—a phenomenon not in alignment with an aerodynamic stall, which the official investigation claimed.
After the plane cut out, a diving noise was heard, followed by an explosion.
Another witness reported hearing a gunshot going off or loud bang beforehand—indicating a possible sniper attack.
Other eyewitnesses saw blue smoke coming from the crashed airplane—which indicated an electrical, and not fuel, fire—and evidence that the fuselage burned badly, and the wings did not.
The latter was odd because the fuel was in the wing tanks, which had been separated from the fuselage as it went through the trees and should have emitted thick black smoke.
Another oddity was that the wing section was charred but the tree that the plane supposedly clipped was not.
This would indicate that either the wing was moved from the crash site (unlikely and illegal) or the wing was on fire before the plane hit the ground—caused possibly by a bomb–accounting for the lack of damage to the tree itself.
[Image: a-picture-containing-outdoor-tree-person...C410&ssl=1]Investigation of plane crash site. Note the presence of the FBI, although the NTSB was supposed to have jurisdiction. [Source: scribblguy.50megs.com]
Autopsy reports indicate that three of the victims had smoke in their lungs which implied they had survived the moment of impact long enough to be affected by the fire, or that the plane was on fire on the way down.[11]
More Evidence of Foul Play and Cover-up
Jim Ongaro who was within a stone’s throw of the plane, told investigator Jim Fetzer that he received an odd call on his cell phone at about the exact time of the crash in which he heard a cross between a roar and a loud humming noise on the other end. A friend further left him a message which he never received on voicemail.[12]
Ongaro also said that another friend told him that co-workers of his that were pilots said that there was no way that the plane should have burned up the way it did.
When Ongaro emailed the Duluth office of Congressman James Oberstar, Oberstar (D-Minn.) responded by stating that the FBI had already investigated any possibility of foul play and ruled it out.
[Image: a-person-in-a-suit-smiling-description-a...C204&ssl=1]James Oberstar [Source: wikipedia.org]
According to researcher Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, the key to understanding the crash was the complete cessation of communication between the pilots and the control tower in the minutes before the crash.[13]
Pilot error or mechanical problems could not account for loss of communication nor could difficult weather, indicating foul play.
Four Arrows and Fetzer speculate that a small bomb may have caused the crash, or direct energy weapons that the military had developed, or an electromagnetic pulse that police use to stop carjackers during high-speed chases.
Previous Assassination Attempt
Wellstone had survived a previous assassination attempt in December 2000 when he had traveled to Colombia.
At the time, Wellstone was a leading congressional critic of Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion program to finance Colombia’s War on Drugs which involved aerial spraying of coca fields by private military contractors who stood to make a huge amount of money.
As Wellstone was traveling from the airport in Bogota after his arrival, a bomb was found along his route. The State Department downplayed the incident and it was thereafter forgotten.[14]
[Image: paul-wellstone-during-his-visit-to-colom...C328&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone during his visit to Colombia in March 2001 where he survived an assassination attempt. Wellstone was a strong critic of Plan Colombia. [Source: politico.com]
The next day, Wellstone and his staff were sprayed with glyphosate, a chemical that has been routinely documented as the cause of a variety of illnesses in the local population. It has left certain regions of Colombia, as one native put it, “without butterflies or birds.”
Manipulation of Pilots?
Despite an excellent reputation, Richard Conry served two years in federal prison for mail fraud in connection with a family business he was running.
This criminal past suggests the possibility that he was manipulated into participating in a conspiracy plot and convinced to carry something on board the plane that he thought was contraband or narcotics but was really a tracking device or bomb.[15]
If that was the case, this would explain why Conry sounded nervous in a routine pre-flight phone call with air traffic controllers about the weather.[16]
Co-pilot Michael Guess, 30, also had a criminal record, so he could have been manipulated as well.
Was the Murder Weapon an Electromagnetic Weapon?
Researchers Four Arrows and Fetzer believe that Wellstone’s plane may have been taken down by an electromagnetic weapon (EMP)—such as a laser beam—that the military applied in Iraq.
EMPs are capable of unleashing in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours, and destroying any electronics within 1,000 feet of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections.
[Image: the-laser-weapon-system-is-designed-to-b...C464&ssl=1]Laser weapon developed by General Atomics and Boeing, designed to be mounted on a variety of platforms. [Source: newatlas.com]
According to Four Arrows and Fetzer, there are a number of ways that EMPs could have been used in the Wellstone crash.
A small incendiary bomb may have been placed in the airplane and activated by radio wave when the plane was near the airport or a pulse bomb could have been fired at the airplane on approach causing the electronics system to go out of control.
Jamming could have been activated and a decoy VHF Omnidirectional Radio Range (VOR) signal sent, tricking the plane’s instruments and pilots into believing the airport was somewhere several degrees off the true course to the runway, with the pilot following that signal into the ground.
The non-descript van, full of covert electronic jamming equipment, afterwards would have casually left the area, looking just like any other TV repair truck or moving van.[17]
Two witnesses—Megen Williams and a blond-haired man interviewed on CNN—said they observed a flash of light at the rear of the plane shortly before the crash, giving credibility to the EMP/laser weapon theory.[18]
After being struck by EMP, Wellstone’s aircraft could have functioned more or less normally but without any control systems, instruments or radios. This would account for the assertion that the plane engines were still running when the plane hit the ground.
When the plane crashed, someone may have made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded.[19]
An Idealist in Washington
Paul Wellstone was a rare breed in U.S. politics: an idealist and true progressive who was dubbed “the conscience of the U.S. Senate.”
[Image: senator-paul-wellstone-d-mn-or-sen-paul-...C208&ssl=1]Paul Wellstone as a Tar Heel wrestler. [Source: pinterest.com]
The son of Ukrainian immigrants who stood only 5’5″, Wellstone grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 after writing a thesis entitled “Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence.”
A championship wrestler in high school and college, Wellstone’s political outlook was forged through his participation in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s.[20]
In 1969, Wellstone moved to Northfield, Minnesota, to teach political science at Carleton College where he stayed for the next 21 years.
The FBI took note of the bushy-haired college professor when he was arrested on May 7, 1970, at a protest against the Vietnam War at the Federal Office Building in downtown Minneapolis.
[Image: from-protester-to-senator-fbi-tracked-pa...C450&ssl=1]Wellstone as a young political science professor at Carleton College. [Source: Minnesota.publicradio.org]
According to a New York Times Magazine profile, Wellstone was often at odds with other faculty and the Carleton administration, and was in his element instigating protests—from fighting Carleton’s investment policies in South Africa to battling banks that were foreclosing on farms.[21]
In 1974, at the age of 28, Wellstone was granted tenure when students and other colleagues rallied to his defense after he was going to be dismissed because he chose not to write for academic journals.[22]
In the early 1980s, Wellstone began his political career working in Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich’s office after helping to organize grassroots opposition to high-voltage electricity transmission lines in rural Minnesota.[23]
[Image: june-10-1990-paul-wellstone-lt-gov-marle...C464&ssl=1]Wellstone with Rudy Perpich, right, in June 1990 after Wellstone wins party endorsement for Senate. Lt. Gov. Marlene Johnson is in the center. [Source: startribune.com]
After a failed bid for state auditor, Wellstone was named in 1984 to the Democratic Party National Committee and, in 1988, became the state campaign co-chairman for Jesse Jackson’s bid for the presidency, and national co-chair of Democratic Party nominee Michael Dukakis.
[Image: 1988-jackson-mounts-a-serious-challenge-...C470&ssl=1]Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson shake hands during the 1988 election. [Source: nbcnews.com]
Casting himself as a political outsider, Wellstone ran for the United States Senate in 1990—using a rickety green school bus, a humorous ad campaign styled after a Michael Moore documentary and a pledge to serve only two terms—and upset the Republican incumbent, Rudy Boschwitz, who outspent Mr. Wellstone by seven times.[24] One of his first acts as a Senator was to stage an emotionally charged press conference at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in which he urged the Bush Sr. administration not to attack Iraq.[25]
Wellstone subsequently established his credentials as a populist in the tradition of Robert La Follette who took on corporate power like almost no one else of his generation.[26]
[Image: nateand39s-nonsense-robert-m-andquotfigh...C551&ssl=1]Wellstone was cut in the mold of “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the legendary midwestern populist. [Source: natemaas.com]
Just before his death, Wellstone had proposed putting $2 billion into Minnesota’s schools instead of further tax cuts for the top 1% of incomes.
Wellstone further a) stopped last-minute efforts by drug companies to extend exclusive patents and promoted a strong patients’ rights bill and decent prescription drug benefits; b) said no to privatizing social security; c) helped strengthen and pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill; d) passed laws banning gifts to members of Congress; and e) though Jewish, called on Israel to be more compromising with its Arab neighbors.
[Image: wellstone-shakes-supporters-hands-on-his...C328&ssl=1]Wellstone receiving re-nomination for a second term in the Senate at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Convention in Minneapolis in June 1996. [Source: politico.com]
Wellstone additionally a) helped pass a strong Minnesota-friendly farm bill with amendments that reduced the advantages of corporate agribusiness; b) led the fight to stop Big Oil from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; c) championed tribal sovereignty and native Indian rights; and d) stood up for fair trade against the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and World Trade Organization (WTO), which eased restrictions on big business.[27]
A Very Convenient Death
After Wellstone’s death, a poll in the St. Paul Pioneer found that 69% of readers felt that Wellstone was killed owing to a GOP conspiracy.
Michael Niman, a professor of journalism at Buffalo State College, wrote that “Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone.”
The day after Wellstone’s death, the GOP transferred $700,000 to be used in the effort to defeat Democratic Party Senator Max Cleland in Georgia, money that the GOP had planned to use against Wellstone in Minnesota.
[Image: max-cleland.jpeg?resize=594%2C396&ssl=1]Max Cleland during his tenure as a Georgia senator. As a wounded Vietnam veteran, he was against the Iraq War and, therefore, the Bushies had to ensure his removal alongside that of Wellstone. [Source: veteransadvantage.com]
The Bush family’s hatred of Wellstone went back to 1991 when, at a reception for new congresspeople, he told then President George H.W. Bush that the country “would be ripped apart if it went to war.” Bush turned to one of his advisers after and asked: “who is this chickenshit?[28]
Subsequently, at a swearing in ceremony in the Senate, Wellstone handed Vice President Dan Quayle a videotape of a Minnesota town meeting where the Bush administration’s war policies were criticized.
[Image: the-new-senator-talks-with-vice-presiden...C328&ssl=1]Wellstone in January 1991 handing Vice President Dan Quayle videotape of Minnesotans criticizing the Gulf War. [Source: politico.com]
In the 2002 election cycle, George W. Bush had made terminating Wellstone’s Senate career his foremost priority.
[Image: john-nichols-or-the-nation.jpeg?resize=198%2C191&ssl=1]John Nichols [Source: thenation.com]
Political reporter John Nichols wrote: “The Bushies despise Wellstone, who unlike most Senate Democrats has been fighting spirited battles against the new administration policies on everything from the environment to the tax cuts for the rich to military aid for the ‘Plan Colombia’ drug war boondoggle. The Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention on ‘Plan Wellstone’—its project to silence progressive opposition.”
[Image: president-george-w-bush-shakes-hands-wit...C180&ssl=1]George W. Bush shakes hands with Minnesota’s then Republican Senator Norm Coleman in 2007 as a young Senator Amy Klobuchar looks on. [Source: georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov]
By October 2002, Bush had visited Minnesota four times to drum up support for his hand-picked candidate, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, a strong supporter of the Iraq War.[29]
Large sums of money were being funneled into the state, including one million dollars for advertisements attacking Wellstone that were put up by an anonymous group calling itself “Americans for Job Security.”
[Image: dick-cheney-wikipedia.jpeg?resize=204%2C232&ssl=1]Dick Cheney issued mafia-style threats to Paul Wellstone on the eve of the Iraq War. [Source: wikipedia.org]
At a meeting with war veterans in Willmar, Minnesota, two days before his death, Wellstone said that Vice President Dick Cheney had told him, “if you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”
Obviously this was no idle threat.
Two weeks earlier, Wellstone had spoken eloquently on the Senate floor against the Iraq War and the “wisdom of relying too heavily on a preemptive go it alone military approach”—prompting a bump for him in the polls that shocked the Bush administration.
[Image: a-picture-containing-diagram-description...C388&ssl=1]Senator Wellstone was slated to win re-election after voting against George Bush’s “war resolution” in Congress. [Source: oilempire.us]
As Chairman of a new Securities Reform Committee, Wellstone was also at the time trying to block the nomination of William Webster, former CIA and FBI head and “best friend of big business and big accounting firms” to be the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) Accounting Oversight Commission.
[Image: a-person-in-a-suit-description-automatic...C204&ssl=1]William Webster as FBI Director. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Wellstone had further tried to bar corporate tax dodgers from being eligible for Defense Department contracts, and successfully amended the Homeland Security bill to bar those companies from getting contracts with the new Department of Homeland Security.
After the November election—and Wellstone’s tragic death—the final version of the Homeland Security bill gutted the Wellstone amendment and corporate lobby groups were able to land billion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq and elsewhere.[30]
As one of the few genuine progressives in Congress, Wellstone would have been a formidable presidential candidate in 2004.
With the increasing exposure of the Bush administration’s corruption in books like Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002) and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men (2004), he would have had a better chance to beat Bush than any other candidate. That is why his plane had to be taken down.
[Image: CAM-logo-circular-20210506b-300.png?resi...2C20&ssl=1]
  1. Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) and James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone (El Prado, NM:”Vox Pop, 2004). ↑
  2. Sue Cantrell, who lives a few hundred yards from Camp Peary, the CIA training camp in Williamsburg, Virginia, reported that the night before Wellstone’s death, at around 1:15 a.m., she heard a “large plane take off from the runway [at Camp Peary]. In the previous three years of living here, I have never heard a plane take off in the middle of the night.” ↑
  3. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination. ↑
  4. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 11, 82, 83. ↑
  5. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. ↑
  6. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85. ↑
  7. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 85. ↑
  8. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 124, 125. ↑
  9. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 18. The FAA spokeswoman stated that there were no signs of distress coming from the plane’s crew on its final approach. ↑
  10. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 44. The stall warning on a King Air—which Wellstone flew in—is quite loud. With two pilots and six passengers, it could not have been missed. Thus, there was ample time to regain speed. ↑
  11. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 131. ↑
  12. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 48, 49. ↑
  13. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 61. ↑
  14. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 54. ↑
  15. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. ↑
  16. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101. ↑
  17. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 101, 146. The authors present a scenario in which the plane ran off course, and the cockpit was zapped, resulting in a pilotless plane. When the decoy VOR was switched off, the plane’s instruments re-oriented to the Eveleth airport causing a sharp right turn. After the plane crashed, someone made sure cockpit instruments were consumed in flames—on the remote chance that a serious full inquiry were to be demanded—as the cable TV/power company/telephone service vehicle made its escape from the scene of the crime. ↑
  18. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 136, 146. ↑
  19. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 146. One other oddity is that Raytheon representatives were on the crash scene after Wellstone’s plane was downed. Not only did Raytheon make the King Air A-100 plane on which he flew but they also manufactured high-tech weapons of the kind that were used to bring the plane down.
  20. See Bill Lofy, Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005); Senator Paul Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda (New York: Random House, 2001). ↑
  21. Dennis J. McGrath and Dane Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington: The Inside Story of a Grassroots U.S. Senate Campaign (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 33, 34. Wellstone made enemies on the Carleton Board of Trustees when in 1971 he urged the removal of its chairman, Edson Spencer, Vice-President of Honeywell Corporation which manufactured anti-personnel bombs used in Vietnam. Wellstone accused Spencer of managing a “criminal corporation.” ↑
  22. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, 34. ↑
  23. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 51; Wellstone, The Conscience of a Liberal, 9, 10, 11, 17. In 1982, Wellstone was arrested for trespassing at a bank in the central Minnesota town of Paynesville after leading a protest of farmers who were protesting bank foreclosures and seizure of their land after they had been saddled with heavy debt. Wellstone had further supported a strike of meatpackers at the Hormel Company in southern Minnesota in 1985/6. With a gift for oratory and his success as a political organizer, he subsequently emerged as a leader in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). ↑
  24. McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington. ↑
  25. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67. ↑
  26. The only black hole in Wellstone’s record was his misguided support for the war in Bosnia and bombing of Kosovo. ↑
  27. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 157-173; McGrath and Smith, Professor Wellstone Goes to Washington, xxiii. ↑
  28. Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 67, 68. ↑
  29. A moderate Republican, Coleman had been part of the hippie counterculture who sold out to the establishment. In the 1980s, he was described by a local journalist as a “clean cut pin striped cigar smoking law and order prosecutor who liked schmoozing with business leaders a whole lot better than with welfare rights activists.” Lofy, Paul Wellstone, 116. After becoming Mayor of St. Paul, Coleman switched from the Democratic Party to Republican and started adopting conservative economic policies, opposed drug legalization and adopted hawkish views on Iraq, Iran and Gaza in alignment with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). After his Senate career ended, Coleman founded the American Action Network, a conservative advocacy organization with ties to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and became a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. ↑
  30. Four Arrows and Fetzer, American Assassination, 33. A mental health reform bill Wellstone championed, requiring insurance companies to provide mental health coverage on par with physical health coverage, was also blocked. ↑
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Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
 
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[url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/campaigns/donate/]]]> <![CDATA[From JFK to MLK to RFK to 911 to today....a continuum.]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16260 Thu, 02 Sep 2021 06:47:09 +0000 Peter Lemkin]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16260
New Evidence Implicates CIA, LAPD, FBI and Mafia as Plotters in Elaborate “Hit” Plan to Prevent RFK From Ever Reaching White House
By
Jeremy Kuzmarov
-
September 1, 2021
7
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[url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/09/01/new-evidence-implicates-cia-lapd-fbi-and-mafia-as-plotters-in-elaborate-hit-plan-to-prevent-rfk-from-ever-reaching-white-house/#]
[Image: RFK-and-guns10.jpg?resize=600%2C435&ssl=1][Source: washingtonpost.com; collage courtesy of Steve Brown]
Yet even after over 50 years, high government officials like Vice President Kamala Harris are still trying to cover up the truth about his murder.
[California parole commissioners recommended on August 27th that Sirhan Sirhan should be freed after spending more than 50 years in prison for assassinating Robert Kennedy. Strong evidence suggests that Sirhan was not the real killer and would be exonerated in any new and objective trial. This article is another in CAM’s series on political assassinations.—Editors]
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “The Freedom to Kill,” 1970. Wrote:“The color of the Statue of Liberty
Grows ever more deathly pale
As, loving freedom with bullets,
You shoot at yourself, America.”
On June 5, 1968, a few minutes after midnight, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while walking through a narrow serving area called “the pantry.” Kennedy had just won the California primary and was on his way to a room where print media reporters were waiting to hear him speak.
[Image: a-poster-with-a-persons-face-on-it-descr...C427&ssl=1][Source: jesus4rebels.blogspot.com]
In early March, Lyndon B. Johnson had thrown open the race by announcing that he would not seek re-election because of the failure of his Vietnam policy. Kennedy emerged as a leading contender by energizing the youth wing of the party with his calls for sweeping social change.
Kennedy was in many ways a strange liberal icon because he grew up idolizing Herbert Hoover, was closest in his family to his father, Joseph, the millionaire business tycoon, began his career supporting Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, called for victory against communism in Vietnam in the early 1960s, and oversaw a terrorist campaign designed to overthrow the Cuban government.
[Image: Screen-Shot-2021-09-01-at-3.55.09-PM.png...1024&ssl=1]Bobby Kennedy listens to his brother’s presidential victory speech with his father Joseph Kennedy, Sr. [Source: pinterest.com]
Nevertheless, by the latter part of the 1960s, Kennedy had evolved into a crusader for the poor and dove on Vietnam who was trying to ride the wave of the protest movement into the White House.[1]
Biographers Lester and Irene David wrote that Bobby was the Kennedy who “felt deepest, cared the most, and fought the hardest for humanity—crying out against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, championing the causes of blacks, Hispanics, and Mexican-Americans, and crusading against the suffering of children, the elderly and anyone else hurt or bypassed by social and economic progress.”[2]
[Image: bobby1.jpg?resize=696%2C369&ssl=1]Kennedy reaching out to Black children prior to his assassination. [Source: lithub.com]
After Kennedy’s death, the Democratic Party became a shadow of its former self, with six of the next nine presidents being Republicans. The Party in this period abandoned its core base—union laborers, minorities, and blue-collar workers—and started catering to Wall Street.[3]
[Image: a-picture-containing-text-newspaper-desc...1000&ssl=1] Newspaper headline announcing Kennedy’s death. [Source: pri.org]
Official Version of Assassination
According to the official version, Kennedy was shot and killed by a lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-born Jordanian citizen who was allegedly aghast by Kennedy’s recent decision to send 50 jet bombers to Israel to do harm to the Palestinians.
According to his mother, Sirhan had been traumatized as a child by the violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His family home in East Jerusalem was destroyed by an Israeli bombing raid and he had witnessed the death of his older brother, who was killed by a Jordanian military vehicle that was swerving to escape Israeli gunfire.[4]
[Image: the-assassination-of-bobby-kennedy-was-s...C432&ssl=1] Sirhan Sirhan being arrested after Kennedy’s assassination. [Source: washingtonpost.com]
Professional football player Roosevelt Grier and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a struggle.
Subsequently, he was arrested and convicted of the murder.
The prosecution during his trial—led by World War II hero Lynn “Buck” Compton who was subsequently appointed by Governor Ronald Reagan as Justice of the California Court of Appeals[5]—showed that Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel on June 3, two nights before the attack, to learn the building’s layout, and that he visited a gun range on June 4.
[Image: a-person-sitting-at-a-desk-description-a...C337&ssl=1][Source: metnews.com]
Alvin Clark, Sirhan’s garbage collector, testified that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy—a fact seemingly confirmed by diaries that Sirhan kept which showed premeditation.
Sirhan initially confessed to the killing but later claimed to have no memory of it. After the events transpired, he had appeared calm, but not “in complete control of his mind.”
Sirhan’s death sentence was commuted to a life prison sentence and he was denied parole fifteen times, though recommended for release on August 27, 2021 after over fifty years behind bars.
RFK Jr. Believes Sirhan Is Innocent
In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said that he traveled to meet with Sirhan at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional facility in San Diego County, and, after a relatively lengthy conversation, believed that Sirhan did not kill his father and that a second gunman was involved. Kennedy Jr.’s view is shared by his sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and by Paul Schrade, regional director of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and one of Bobby’s closest advisers, who was shot the night that he was killed.
[Image: a-picture-containing-person-indoor-group...C463&ssl=1]Paul Schrade, a Kennedy family confidante since JFK’s presidency, being interviewed after recovering from being shot on the night Kennedy was killed. [Source: prospect.org]
In 2016, Schrade testified in support of Sirhan’s parole, stating his belief that a second shooter killed Kennedy and that Sirhan was intended to be a distraction from the real gunman by an unknown conspiracy.
[Image: a-picture-containing-text-person-person-...C480&ssl=1]Sirhan Sirhan in mugshot. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Kennedy Jr. has pointed out that Sirhan’s appointed lawyer at his original trial, Grant Cooper, was Johnny Rosselli’s personal lawyer. “Roselli,” he said, “was the mobster who ran the assassination program for the CIA against Castro. Cooper pressured Sirhan to plead guilty so that there was no trial.”
[Image: rfk12a.jpg?resize=696%2C605&ssl=1]Sirhan Sirhan listening to his lawyer Grant Cooper who stands to his right. Co-defense attorney Russell E. Parsons looks on on his left. [Source: murderpedia.org]
[Image: johnny-roselli-or-mafia-wiki-or-fandom.j...C353&ssl=1]Johnny Roselli [Source: mafia.wiki.org]
Kennedy believes the real assassin was Thane Eugene Cesar, an employee of Lockheed’s Burbank facility—which manufactured the CIA produced U-2 spy plane—and previously Hughes Aircraft who was moonlighting as a security guard for Ace Security Services.
After the shooting, Kennedy Sr. was photographed with Cesar’s clip-on tie next to him, which he had apparently yanked off.
Cesar had told police that he had a hold of Bobby’s right arm when Sirhan began firing at him, and then pulled his gun and grabbed the Senator and fell backwards. Later, however, Cesar changed his story and said that he was shoved by an unknown individual after Sirhan opened fire and drew his gun only after he scrambled to his feet.[6]
In one interview Cesar said he did not see Kennedy get shot and in another—given right after the shooting when doctors had not yet examined Kennedy or issued any statements—stated that he saw Kennedy get shot four times, in the head, chest and shoulder.[7]
[Image: rfk14a.jpg?resize=248%2C283&ssl=1]Thane Cesar [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
Cesar considered the Kennedys “the biggest bunch of crooks that ever walked the earth” and worked for the presidential campaign of Alabama’s segregationist Governor, George C. Wallace.[8]
Before the killing, he had been seen in Las Vegas in the company of a Florida hit man. The man who saw him said Cesar was “owned by Howard Hughes” and was “as tough as they come.”[9]  
Hughes was the owner of a major aerospace company and “godfather of Las Vegas” with deep connections to the Republican Party and CIA.[10]
[Image: howard-r-hughes-or-howard-r-hughes-colle...C301&ssl=1]Howard Hughes [Source: univ.edu]
Jim Yoder, who bought the alleged assassination weapons from Cesar after Kennedy’s death, claimed that Cesar worked in off-limits areas at Lockheed, to which only special personnel had access. These areas were under the control of the CIA.
RFK Jr. believes that Cesar was the one that shot his father in the back of the head after hiding in the pantry and waiting for his appearance in the pantry or, alternatively, that he held his father and shot him three times under the arm, while another assassin—a man dressed in a busboy outfit, fired the two shots to Kennedy’s head that killed him—with a gun that was disguised or small enough to remain hidden.[11]
Planning at one point to visit Cesar in the Philippines until he demanded a payment of $25,000, RFK Jr. stated: “With 77 people in the pantry, every eyewitness said Sirhan was always in front of my father at a 3-6 feet distance. Sirhan fired two shots toward my father before he was tackled. From under the dog pile, Sirhan emptied his 8-chamber revolver firing 6 more shots in the opposite direction 5 of them striking bystanders and one going wild.”
[Image: photo-sen-robert-kennedy-addressing-a-cr...C392&ssl=1]Sen. Robert Kennedy addressing a crowd from a stage with his wife Ethel moments before his assassination on June 5, 1968. [Source: abcnews.go.com]
“Cesar was a bigot who hated the Kennedys for their advocacy of Civil Rights for blacks. By his own account, Cesar was directly behind my dad holding his right elbow with his own gun drawn when my dad fell backwards on top of him. Cesar repeatedly changed his story about exactly when he drew his weapon.”
“According to the Coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, all 4 shots that struck my father were ‘contact’ shots fired from behind my dad with the barrel touching or nearly touching his body. As my dad fell, he reached back and tore off Cesar’s clip on tie.” 
“Cesar sold his .22 to a co-worker [Yoder] weeks after the assassination, warning him that it had been used in a crime. Cesar lied to police claiming that he’d disposed of the gun months before the assassination.”
Kennedy Jr. concluded, “Police have never seriously investigated Cesar’s role in my father’s killing,” adding that the LAPD unit which investigated his dad’s assassination was “run by active CIA operatives” who “destroyed thousands of pieces of evidence.”[12]
[Image: rfk17a.jpg?resize=224%2C262&ssl=1]
Thane Cesar [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
A Lie Too Big to Fail
The case against Sirhan being the lone gunman can be summarized in six key points:
1. More Bullets Were Fired Than Were in Sirhan’s Gun
Sirhan’s gun had eight bullets in it. According to officials, three of Sirhan’s bullets hit Kennedy (a fourth went through his coat), and five bullets struck the other victims.
But one bullet was also lost in the ceiling space. And crime scene photos show investigators pointing to bullet holes circled in doorframes and a ceiling panel.
Investigators found twelve points of entry in the six victims, with three bullet holes photographed in the ceiling.[13] LAPD criminalist DeWayne Wolfer said “it’s unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling.”[14]
[Image: did-l-a-police-and-prosecutors-bungle-th...C435&ssl=1]Charles Wright, a police technician, and LAPD officer Robert Rozzi inspect a bullet hole found in a doorframe in a kitchen corridor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles near where Robert F Kennedy was shot. The bullet was still in the wood. [Source: mercurynews.com] [Image: marked-bullet-holes-in-door-frame.jpeg?r...C306&ssl=1]Marked bullet holes in doorframe. [Source: riversong.wordpress.com]
An audio tape made by Polish journalist Stanislaw Pruszynski recorded thirteen shots. Analysis of the tape found that it showed the gunshots to be coming from two separate directions.[15]
2. Kennedy’s Killer Shot Him from the Back, Not the Front
L.A. County Coroner Thomas Noguchi’s report—which mysteriously went missing from the LAPD’s final report—found that Kennedy had been hit by three bullets from the rear, including one in his head behind his right ear. This conclusion rules out Sirhan who was identified by all witnesses as having shot at Kennedy from the front.
[Image: bullet-wound-trajectories.jpeg?resize=460%2C306&ssl=1]Bullet wound trajectories. Note all three of the bullets believed to have caused his death came from behind him, not in front, ruling out Sirhan as Kennedy’s killer. [Source: riversong.wordpress.com]
3. Kennedy’s Killer Shot Him from Close Range—Sirhan Was Too Far Away
Noguchi, Wolfer and Pasadena criminalist William Harper, drawing on forensic and eyewitness evidence, all concluded that the shots which killed Kennedy came from close range—a point of near direct contact.[16] Sirhan never got anywhere near that close—he was at least three feet away.[17]
4. Two Guns and Two Shooters
Sirhan’s gun was never matched to the bullets that killed Kennedy. William Harper, who survived an assassination attempt on the eve of his scheduled testimony before a grand jury investigating the handling of firearms evidence, concluded that two .22 caliber guns were involved in the assassination.[18]
Evan Freed, a photographer who was standing near Kennedy when the shooting started, said that another man besides Sirhan—who looked like Sirhan but was wearing darker clothing—fired the first shot at Kennedy and that a man made a failed attempt to grab him afterwards and he ran out of the pantry.[19]
[Image: Screen-Shot-2021-09-01-at-10.04.48-PM.pn...1024&ssl=1] Documentary film made by Ted Charach pointing to a second gun. [Source: jesus4rebels.blogspot.com]
Other witnesses confirm the same story, observing a man with a gun under a newspaper and a woman with a polka-dotted dress running out of the room.[20]
Donald Schulman, a runner for Los Angeles TV station KNXT, reported on the air minutes after Kennedy’s assassination that, after Sirhan fired his gun, a security guard—referring to Cesar—fired back and struck Kennedy three times.
Schulman also stated that he spotted two revolvers other than Sirhan’s and that both had been fired—an observation confirmed by testimony and statements introduced at an official hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court.[21]
[Image: rfk-assassination-evidence-was-there-a-s...C180&ssl=1] Don Schulman being interviewed on CBS News after the assassination. [Source: heavy.com]
5. Karl Uecker
One of the most important witnesses was, Karl Uecker, a maitre d’ at the Ambassador Hotel, who was the first one to grab Sirhan during the shooting in an attempt to subdue him. He told filmmaker Ted Charach that Sirhan could not have been the killer. He stated:
“Sirhan at no time was firing from behind Senator Robert Kennedy. No! No! Not an inch from Kennedy’s head—I don’t believe that it was Sirhan’s gun firing back from an upward direction. I think I would have seen it. I was the closest one. In order for Sirhan to get that close to Senator Kennedy from behind he would have had to pass me and didn’t pass me at that point. I had him very tight, pushed against the steam table while Senator Kennedy staggered back and Mr. Schrade dropped to the floor first. So this does not fit with what Mr. Fitts [prosecuting attorney later promoted by Governor Reagan to California’s Superior Court] told the jury.”[22]
[Image: get-the-gun-get-the-gun.jpeg?resize=653%2C540&ssl=1] Karl Uecker in bowtie as he and others subdue Sirhan Sirhan. [Source: rfktapes.com]
Uecker also said that he saw a guard—Thane Cesar—who brandished a gun which was odd. He testified that he had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, not the fourth shot—which would further prove the existence of a second shooter because Kennedy was shot three times under the arm and twice in the head, and seven bullets were recovered from six victims.[23]
Investigator Lisa Pease wrote that, “if Uecker had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, then someone else had to have shot Kennedy at least twice, as Kennedy had provably been shot four times from near-contact range.”[24]
6. Kennedy Was Killed from an Elevated Position
Not only was Kennedy shot from the back, but witnesses saw someone shooting at him from an elevated position twelve to sixteen inches above Kennedy’s head, with knee or body on a steam table.
This could not have been Sirhan who was identified by four credible witnesses, including Uecker, as shooting at Kennedy from the floor on a slightly upward trajectory, which made sense since Sirhan was four inches shorter than Kennedy.[25]
Uecker specified further that he pushed Sirhan up on a table after he grabbed him in a headlock; he was not on a table before.
Richard Lubic, a 31-year-old television producer and campaign aide, heard a voice—“Kennedy you son of a bitch”—and then heard two shots from what sounded like a starter pistol at a track meet.
The shots came from a man who had his knee on a small table or air conditioning vent and lifted himself up on his knee to obtain elevation while shooting. He had bare arms when firing; Sirhan was wearing long sleeves.[26]
[Image: rfk24a.jpg?resize=187%2C202&ssl=1] Richard Lubic [Source: tehachapinews.com]
Sirhan As “Magician’s Assistant”
Some witnesses thought Sirhan was firing a cap gun. The real assassins appear to have waited until Sirhan fired the first shot and people focused on him, and then moved quickly to get the job done.
Sirhan’s function was that of a “magician’s assistant.” He provided the distraction by firing blanks—which were designed to deceive the mind and eye.[27]
[Image: 3069350_orig.jpg?resize=253%2C595&ssl=1]Recreation of the girl with the polka-dotted dress. [Source: robscholtemuseum.nl]
The fact that the shooter was elevated would have also been part of the plan, since people’s natural instinct in a crisis is to look around them and not upward.
The Girl with the Polka-Dot Dress
After the shooting, Sandra Serrano, a 20-year-old Pasadena City College student, observed a twenty-something “Hispanic-looking” man wearing a gold sweater and a dark-haired Caucasian girl with a “good figure” and “funny nose” wearing a white dress with black polka dots. The two were running down a hallway to a fire exit.
Serrano had seen the pair with Sirhan earlier in the night, while Vincent Di Pierro said he saw Sirhan and the girl in the polka-dot dress just before Kennedy was shot with wicked smiles.
As the girl was running to the fire exit, she turned to Serrano, laughing, and said. “We shot him! We shot him.” Astonished, Serrano asked “who did you shoot?” and she replied “Senator Kennedy!”
  • [Image: 5-the-girl-in-the-polka-dot-dress-the-rf...C512&ssl=1]Sandra Serrano [Source: rfktapes.com]
  • [Image: 5-the-girl-in-the-polka-dot-dress-the-rf...C512&ssl=1] Replica of polka-dotted dress worn by girl who boasted of shooting Kennedy. [Source: rfktapes.com]
An elderly couple named Bernstein witnessed this exchange and told LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga, who put out an all-points bulletin on the pair.
At that point, however, a police radio blackout commenced which, according to Sharaga, lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes.[28]
[Image: image-2.png?resize=207%2C252&ssl=1] LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga [Source: oocities.org]
Afterwards, Detective Inspector John Powers ordered a cancelation of the description of the two suspects, saying that “we don’t want to make a federal case out of it. We’ve got the suspect in custody.”[29] These comments suggest a police cover-up that was planned beforehand.
“Criminal Equivalent of a Potemkin Village”
Tim Tate and Brad Johnson, authors of the 2018 book The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime, Conspiracy and Cover-Up—A New Investigation, wrote that the LAPD:
“constructed the criminal equivalent of a Potemkin Village [Soviet model villages that masked underlying brutality of the Soviet system]—a Hollywood style set whose façade concealed the truth that evidence was overlooked, destroyed or suppressed, and witnesses were ignored or intimidated into silence. After which L.A. law enforcement locked the whole sorry saga away, hiding their misdeeds and incompetence behind impenetrable walls of official secrecy for two full decades.”[30]
As an example of police malfeasance, no effort was made to perform a ballistics test on Thane Cesar’s .22 caliber gun to see whether the bullets matched those that killed Kennedy.
In addition, a) bullets were planted in Sirhan’s car; b) the crime scene area was never properly roped off; c) hotel employees were allowed to mop up blood from the kitchen floor right after; and d) the LAPD burned more than 2,400 photographs from the crime scene and investigation in a medical waste incinerator before Sirhan’s trial.[31]
[Image: bonus-the-trial-of-scott-enyart-the-rfk-...C340&ssl=1]Scott Enyart, a high school photographer who had snapped photos immediately after the shooting, being interviewed after the assassination. The LAPD seized Enyart’s camera and only returned some of the photos later, refusing to give him back others. [Source: rfktapes.com]
The LAPD task force set to investigate the killing—the “Special Unit Senator” (SUS)—was headed by 22-year LAPD veteran Lt. Manuel Pena, who reportedly killed eleven people in the line of duty—more than any other officer in the history of the department.[32]]]>
New Evidence Implicates CIA, LAPD, FBI and Mafia as Plotters in Elaborate “Hit” Plan to Prevent RFK From Ever Reaching White House
By
Jeremy Kuzmarov
-
September 1, 2021
7
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[url=https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/09/01/new-evidence-implicates-cia-lapd-fbi-and-mafia-as-plotters-in-elaborate-hit-plan-to-prevent-rfk-from-ever-reaching-white-house/#]
[Image: RFK-and-guns10.jpg?resize=600%2C435&ssl=1][Source: washingtonpost.com; collage courtesy of Steve Brown]
Yet even after over 50 years, high government officials like Vice President Kamala Harris are still trying to cover up the truth about his murder.
[California parole commissioners recommended on August 27th that Sirhan Sirhan should be freed after spending more than 50 years in prison for assassinating Robert Kennedy. Strong evidence suggests that Sirhan was not the real killer and would be exonerated in any new and objective trial. This article is another in CAM’s series on political assassinations.—Editors]
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “The Freedom to Kill,” 1970. Wrote:“The color of the Statue of Liberty
Grows ever more deathly pale
As, loving freedom with bullets,
You shoot at yourself, America.”
On June 5, 1968, a few minutes after midnight, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while walking through a narrow serving area called “the pantry.” Kennedy had just won the California primary and was on his way to a room where print media reporters were waiting to hear him speak.
[Image: a-poster-with-a-persons-face-on-it-descr...C427&ssl=1][Source: jesus4rebels.blogspot.com]
In early March, Lyndon B. Johnson had thrown open the race by announcing that he would not seek re-election because of the failure of his Vietnam policy. Kennedy emerged as a leading contender by energizing the youth wing of the party with his calls for sweeping social change.
Kennedy was in many ways a strange liberal icon because he grew up idolizing Herbert Hoover, was closest in his family to his father, Joseph, the millionaire business tycoon, began his career supporting Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, called for victory against communism in Vietnam in the early 1960s, and oversaw a terrorist campaign designed to overthrow the Cuban government.
[Image: Screen-Shot-2021-09-01-at-3.55.09-PM.png...1024&ssl=1]Bobby Kennedy listens to his brother’s presidential victory speech with his father Joseph Kennedy, Sr. [Source: pinterest.com]
Nevertheless, by the latter part of the 1960s, Kennedy had evolved into a crusader for the poor and dove on Vietnam who was trying to ride the wave of the protest movement into the White House.[1]
Biographers Lester and Irene David wrote that Bobby was the Kennedy who “felt deepest, cared the most, and fought the hardest for humanity—crying out against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, championing the causes of blacks, Hispanics, and Mexican-Americans, and crusading against the suffering of children, the elderly and anyone else hurt or bypassed by social and economic progress.”[2]
[Image: bobby1.jpg?resize=696%2C369&ssl=1]Kennedy reaching out to Black children prior to his assassination. [Source: lithub.com]
After Kennedy’s death, the Democratic Party became a shadow of its former self, with six of the next nine presidents being Republicans. The Party in this period abandoned its core base—union laborers, minorities, and blue-collar workers—and started catering to Wall Street.[3]
[Image: a-picture-containing-text-newspaper-desc...1000&ssl=1] Newspaper headline announcing Kennedy’s death. [Source: pri.org]
Official Version of Assassination
According to the official version, Kennedy was shot and killed by a lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-born Jordanian citizen who was allegedly aghast by Kennedy’s recent decision to send 50 jet bombers to Israel to do harm to the Palestinians.
According to his mother, Sirhan had been traumatized as a child by the violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His family home in East Jerusalem was destroyed by an Israeli bombing raid and he had witnessed the death of his older brother, who was killed by a Jordanian military vehicle that was swerving to escape Israeli gunfire.[4]
[Image: the-assassination-of-bobby-kennedy-was-s...C432&ssl=1] Sirhan Sirhan being arrested after Kennedy’s assassination. [Source: washingtonpost.com]
Professional football player Roosevelt Grier and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a struggle.
Subsequently, he was arrested and convicted of the murder.
The prosecution during his trial—led by World War II hero Lynn “Buck” Compton who was subsequently appointed by Governor Ronald Reagan as Justice of the California Court of Appeals[5]—showed that Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel on June 3, two nights before the attack, to learn the building’s layout, and that he visited a gun range on June 4.
[Image: a-person-sitting-at-a-desk-description-a...C337&ssl=1][Source: metnews.com]
Alvin Clark, Sirhan’s garbage collector, testified that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy—a fact seemingly confirmed by diaries that Sirhan kept which showed premeditation.
Sirhan initially confessed to the killing but later claimed to have no memory of it. After the events transpired, he had appeared calm, but not “in complete control of his mind.”
Sirhan’s death sentence was commuted to a life prison sentence and he was denied parole fifteen times, though recommended for release on August 27, 2021 after over fifty years behind bars.
RFK Jr. Believes Sirhan Is Innocent
In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said that he traveled to meet with Sirhan at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional facility in San Diego County, and, after a relatively lengthy conversation, believed that Sirhan did not kill his father and that a second gunman was involved. Kennedy Jr.’s view is shared by his sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and by Paul Schrade, regional director of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and one of Bobby’s closest advisers, who was shot the night that he was killed.
[Image: a-picture-containing-person-indoor-group...C463&ssl=1]Paul Schrade, a Kennedy family confidante since JFK’s presidency, being interviewed after recovering from being shot on the night Kennedy was killed. [Source: prospect.org]
In 2016, Schrade testified in support of Sirhan’s parole, stating his belief that a second shooter killed Kennedy and that Sirhan was intended to be a distraction from the real gunman by an unknown conspiracy.
[Image: a-picture-containing-text-person-person-...C480&ssl=1]Sirhan Sirhan in mugshot. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Kennedy Jr. has pointed out that Sirhan’s appointed lawyer at his original trial, Grant Cooper, was Johnny Rosselli’s personal lawyer. “Roselli,” he said, “was the mobster who ran the assassination program for the CIA against Castro. Cooper pressured Sirhan to plead guilty so that there was no trial.”
[Image: rfk12a.jpg?resize=696%2C605&ssl=1]Sirhan Sirhan listening to his lawyer Grant Cooper who stands to his right. Co-defense attorney Russell E. Parsons looks on on his left. [Source: murderpedia.org]
[Image: johnny-roselli-or-mafia-wiki-or-fandom.j...C353&ssl=1]Johnny Roselli [Source: mafia.wiki.org]
Kennedy believes the real assassin was Thane Eugene Cesar, an employee of Lockheed’s Burbank facility—which manufactured the CIA produced U-2 spy plane—and previously Hughes Aircraft who was moonlighting as a security guard for Ace Security Services.
After the shooting, Kennedy Sr. was photographed with Cesar’s clip-on tie next to him, which he had apparently yanked off.
Cesar had told police that he had a hold of Bobby’s right arm when Sirhan began firing at him, and then pulled his gun and grabbed the Senator and fell backwards. Later, however, Cesar changed his story and said that he was shoved by an unknown individual after Sirhan opened fire and drew his gun only after he scrambled to his feet.[6]
In one interview Cesar said he did not see Kennedy get shot and in another—given right after the shooting when doctors had not yet examined Kennedy or issued any statements—stated that he saw Kennedy get shot four times, in the head, chest and shoulder.[7]
[Image: rfk14a.jpg?resize=248%2C283&ssl=1]Thane Cesar [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
Cesar considered the Kennedys “the biggest bunch of crooks that ever walked the earth” and worked for the presidential campaign of Alabama’s segregationist Governor, George C. Wallace.[8]
Before the killing, he had been seen in Las Vegas in the company of a Florida hit man. The man who saw him said Cesar was “owned by Howard Hughes” and was “as tough as they come.”[9]  
Hughes was the owner of a major aerospace company and “godfather of Las Vegas” with deep connections to the Republican Party and CIA.[10]
[Image: howard-r-hughes-or-howard-r-hughes-colle...C301&ssl=1]Howard Hughes [Source: univ.edu]
Jim Yoder, who bought the alleged assassination weapons from Cesar after Kennedy’s death, claimed that Cesar worked in off-limits areas at Lockheed, to which only special personnel had access. These areas were under the control of the CIA.
RFK Jr. believes that Cesar was the one that shot his father in the back of the head after hiding in the pantry and waiting for his appearance in the pantry or, alternatively, that he held his father and shot him three times under the arm, while another assassin—a man dressed in a busboy outfit, fired the two shots to Kennedy’s head that killed him—with a gun that was disguised or small enough to remain hidden.[11]
Planning at one point to visit Cesar in the Philippines until he demanded a payment of $25,000, RFK Jr. stated: “With 77 people in the pantry, every eyewitness said Sirhan was always in front of my father at a 3-6 feet distance. Sirhan fired two shots toward my father before he was tackled. From under the dog pile, Sirhan emptied his 8-chamber revolver firing 6 more shots in the opposite direction 5 of them striking bystanders and one going wild.”
[Image: photo-sen-robert-kennedy-addressing-a-cr...C392&ssl=1]Sen. Robert Kennedy addressing a crowd from a stage with his wife Ethel moments before his assassination on June 5, 1968. [Source: abcnews.go.com]
“Cesar was a bigot who hated the Kennedys for their advocacy of Civil Rights for blacks. By his own account, Cesar was directly behind my dad holding his right elbow with his own gun drawn when my dad fell backwards on top of him. Cesar repeatedly changed his story about exactly when he drew his weapon.”
“According to the Coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, all 4 shots that struck my father were ‘contact’ shots fired from behind my dad with the barrel touching or nearly touching his body. As my dad fell, he reached back and tore off Cesar’s clip on tie.” 
“Cesar sold his .22 to a co-worker [Yoder] weeks after the assassination, warning him that it had been used in a crime. Cesar lied to police claiming that he’d disposed of the gun months before the assassination.”
Kennedy Jr. concluded, “Police have never seriously investigated Cesar’s role in my father’s killing,” adding that the LAPD unit which investigated his dad’s assassination was “run by active CIA operatives” who “destroyed thousands of pieces of evidence.”[12]
[Image: rfk17a.jpg?resize=224%2C262&ssl=1]
Thane Cesar [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
A Lie Too Big to Fail
The case against Sirhan being the lone gunman can be summarized in six key points:
1. More Bullets Were Fired Than Were in Sirhan’s Gun
Sirhan’s gun had eight bullets in it. According to officials, three of Sirhan’s bullets hit Kennedy (a fourth went through his coat), and five bullets struck the other victims.
But one bullet was also lost in the ceiling space. And crime scene photos show investigators pointing to bullet holes circled in doorframes and a ceiling panel.
Investigators found twelve points of entry in the six victims, with three bullet holes photographed in the ceiling.[13] LAPD criminalist DeWayne Wolfer said “it’s unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling.”[14]
[Image: did-l-a-police-and-prosecutors-bungle-th...C435&ssl=1]Charles Wright, a police technician, and LAPD officer Robert Rozzi inspect a bullet hole found in a doorframe in a kitchen corridor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles near where Robert F Kennedy was shot. The bullet was still in the wood. [Source: mercurynews.com] [Image: marked-bullet-holes-in-door-frame.jpeg?r...C306&ssl=1]Marked bullet holes in doorframe. [Source: riversong.wordpress.com]
An audio tape made by Polish journalist Stanislaw Pruszynski recorded thirteen shots. Analysis of the tape found that it showed the gunshots to be coming from two separate directions.[15]
2. Kennedy’s Killer Shot Him from the Back, Not the Front
L.A. County Coroner Thomas Noguchi’s report—which mysteriously went missing from the LAPD’s final report—found that Kennedy had been hit by three bullets from the rear, including one in his head behind his right ear. This conclusion rules out Sirhan who was identified by all witnesses as having shot at Kennedy from the front.
[Image: bullet-wound-trajectories.jpeg?resize=460%2C306&ssl=1]Bullet wound trajectories. Note all three of the bullets believed to have caused his death came from behind him, not in front, ruling out Sirhan as Kennedy’s killer. [Source: riversong.wordpress.com]
3. Kennedy’s Killer Shot Him from Close Range—Sirhan Was Too Far Away
Noguchi, Wolfer and Pasadena criminalist William Harper, drawing on forensic and eyewitness evidence, all concluded that the shots which killed Kennedy came from close range—a point of near direct contact.[16] Sirhan never got anywhere near that close—he was at least three feet away.[17]
4. Two Guns and Two Shooters
Sirhan’s gun was never matched to the bullets that killed Kennedy. William Harper, who survived an assassination attempt on the eve of his scheduled testimony before a grand jury investigating the handling of firearms evidence, concluded that two .22 caliber guns were involved in the assassination.[18]
Evan Freed, a photographer who was standing near Kennedy when the shooting started, said that another man besides Sirhan—who looked like Sirhan but was wearing darker clothing—fired the first shot at Kennedy and that a man made a failed attempt to grab him afterwards and he ran out of the pantry.[19]
[Image: Screen-Shot-2021-09-01-at-10.04.48-PM.pn...1024&ssl=1] Documentary film made by Ted Charach pointing to a second gun. [Source: jesus4rebels.blogspot.com]
Other witnesses confirm the same story, observing a man with a gun under a newspaper and a woman with a polka-dotted dress running out of the room.[20]
Donald Schulman, a runner for Los Angeles TV station KNXT, reported on the air minutes after Kennedy’s assassination that, after Sirhan fired his gun, a security guard—referring to Cesar—fired back and struck Kennedy three times.
Schulman also stated that he spotted two revolvers other than Sirhan’s and that both had been fired—an observation confirmed by testimony and statements introduced at an official hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court.[21]
[Image: rfk-assassination-evidence-was-there-a-s...C180&ssl=1] Don Schulman being interviewed on CBS News after the assassination. [Source: heavy.com]
5. Karl Uecker
One of the most important witnesses was, Karl Uecker, a maitre d’ at the Ambassador Hotel, who was the first one to grab Sirhan during the shooting in an attempt to subdue him. He told filmmaker Ted Charach that Sirhan could not have been the killer. He stated:
“Sirhan at no time was firing from behind Senator Robert Kennedy. No! No! Not an inch from Kennedy’s head—I don’t believe that it was Sirhan’s gun firing back from an upward direction. I think I would have seen it. I was the closest one. In order for Sirhan to get that close to Senator Kennedy from behind he would have had to pass me and didn’t pass me at that point. I had him very tight, pushed against the steam table while Senator Kennedy staggered back and Mr. Schrade dropped to the floor first. So this does not fit with what Mr. Fitts [prosecuting attorney later promoted by Governor Reagan to California’s Superior Court] told the jury.”[22]
[Image: get-the-gun-get-the-gun.jpeg?resize=653%2C540&ssl=1] Karl Uecker in bowtie as he and others subdue Sirhan Sirhan. [Source: rfktapes.com]
Uecker also said that he saw a guard—Thane Cesar—who brandished a gun which was odd. He testified that he had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, not the fourth shot—which would further prove the existence of a second shooter because Kennedy was shot three times under the arm and twice in the head, and seven bullets were recovered from six victims.[23]
Investigator Lisa Pease wrote that, “if Uecker had grabbed Sirhan after the second shot, then someone else had to have shot Kennedy at least twice, as Kennedy had provably been shot four times from near-contact range.”[24]
6. Kennedy Was Killed from an Elevated Position
Not only was Kennedy shot from the back, but witnesses saw someone shooting at him from an elevated position twelve to sixteen inches above Kennedy’s head, with knee or body on a steam table.
This could not have been Sirhan who was identified by four credible witnesses, including Uecker, as shooting at Kennedy from the floor on a slightly upward trajectory, which made sense since Sirhan was four inches shorter than Kennedy.[25]
Uecker specified further that he pushed Sirhan up on a table after he grabbed him in a headlock; he was not on a table before.
Richard Lubic, a 31-year-old television producer and campaign aide, heard a voice—“Kennedy you son of a bitch”—and then heard two shots from what sounded like a starter pistol at a track meet.
The shots came from a man who had his knee on a small table or air conditioning vent and lifted himself up on his knee to obtain elevation while shooting. He had bare arms when firing; Sirhan was wearing long sleeves.[26]
[Image: rfk24a.jpg?resize=187%2C202&ssl=1] Richard Lubic [Source: tehachapinews.com]
Sirhan As “Magician’s Assistant”
Some witnesses thought Sirhan was firing a cap gun. The real assassins appear to have waited until Sirhan fired the first shot and people focused on him, and then moved quickly to get the job done.
Sirhan’s function was that of a “magician’s assistant.” He provided the distraction by firing blanks—which were designed to deceive the mind and eye.[27]
[Image: 3069350_orig.jpg?resize=253%2C595&ssl=1]Recreation of the girl with the polka-dotted dress. [Source: robscholtemuseum.nl]
The fact that the shooter was elevated would have also been part of the plan, since people’s natural instinct in a crisis is to look around them and not upward.
The Girl with the Polka-Dot Dress
After the shooting, Sandra Serrano, a 20-year-old Pasadena City College student, observed a twenty-something “Hispanic-looking” man wearing a gold sweater and a dark-haired Caucasian girl with a “good figure” and “funny nose” wearing a white dress with black polka dots. The two were running down a hallway to a fire exit.
Serrano had seen the pair with Sirhan earlier in the night, while Vincent Di Pierro said he saw Sirhan and the girl in the polka-dot dress just before Kennedy was shot with wicked smiles.
As the girl was running to the fire exit, she turned to Serrano, laughing, and said. “We shot him! We shot him.” Astonished, Serrano asked “who did you shoot?” and she replied “Senator Kennedy!”
  • [Image: 5-the-girl-in-the-polka-dot-dress-the-rf...C512&ssl=1]Sandra Serrano [Source: rfktapes.com]
  • [Image: 5-the-girl-in-the-polka-dot-dress-the-rf...C512&ssl=1] Replica of polka-dotted dress worn by girl who boasted of shooting Kennedy. [Source: rfktapes.com]
An elderly couple named Bernstein witnessed this exchange and told LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga, who put out an all-points bulletin on the pair.
At that point, however, a police radio blackout commenced which, according to Sharaga, lasted between fifteen and twenty minutes.[28]
[Image: image-2.png?resize=207%2C252&ssl=1] LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga [Source: oocities.org]
Afterwards, Detective Inspector John Powers ordered a cancelation of the description of the two suspects, saying that “we don’t want to make a federal case out of it. We’ve got the suspect in custody.”[29] These comments suggest a police cover-up that was planned beforehand.
“Criminal Equivalent of a Potemkin Village”
Tim Tate and Brad Johnson, authors of the 2018 book The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime, Conspiracy and Cover-Up—A New Investigation, wrote that the LAPD:
“constructed the criminal equivalent of a Potemkin Village [Soviet model villages that masked underlying brutality of the Soviet system]—a Hollywood style set whose façade concealed the truth that evidence was overlooked, destroyed or suppressed, and witnesses were ignored or intimidated into silence. After which L.A. law enforcement locked the whole sorry saga away, hiding their misdeeds and incompetence behind impenetrable walls of official secrecy for two full decades.”[30]
As an example of police malfeasance, no effort was made to perform a ballistics test on Thane Cesar’s .22 caliber gun to see whether the bullets matched those that killed Kennedy.
In addition, a) bullets were planted in Sirhan’s car; b) the crime scene area was never properly roped off; c) hotel employees were allowed to mop up blood from the kitchen floor right after; and d) the LAPD burned more than 2,400 photographs from the crime scene and investigation in a medical waste incinerator before Sirhan’s trial.[31]
[Image: bonus-the-trial-of-scott-enyart-the-rfk-...C340&ssl=1]Scott Enyart, a high school photographer who had snapped photos immediately after the shooting, being interviewed after the assassination. The LAPD seized Enyart’s camera and only returned some of the photos later, refusing to give him back others. [Source: rfktapes.com]
The LAPD task force set to investigate the killing—the “Special Unit Senator” (SUS)—was headed by 22-year LAPD veteran Lt. Manuel Pena, who reportedly killed eleven people in the line of duty—more than any other officer in the history of the department.[32]]]> <![CDATA[Another one Dead......McAfee - of anti-virus fame.]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16253 Fri, 25 Jun 2021 08:04:50 +0000 Peter Lemkin]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16253 Deep State True Believer McAfee Dead, as He Predicted
Chris Roberts
06/24/21
[/url]

[url=https://whowhatwhy.org/justice/criminal-justice/deep-state-true-believer-mcafee-dead-as-he-predicted/?utm_source=WhoWhatWhy+Now&utm_campaign=2883f5011e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2_1_2021_16_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b3f79a618-2883f5011e-251507385#shared-counts-email]
John McAfee said that if he ever ended up dead by suicide in prison he was in fact whacked by the US government, which was pursuing him for tax evasion. He even got himself a tattoo to that effect. And so, after McAfee was found dead on Tuesday in a Barcelona jail cell hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the US to face tax evasion charges, the internet faithfully responded with a round of conspiracy theories. 
As McAfee predicted, authorities called his in-custody death an apparent suicide.
Well before this, McAfee — who founded the antivirus software company that still bears his name though he sold it in 1994 — invited comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein. He was a freewheeling hedonist, internet entrepreneur, and intercontinental fugitive from justice with a demonstrated taste for drugs, cryptocurrency, guns, and underage women.
Quote:He posted this MEME on his Instagram. Isn’t it odd that both Epstein and McAfee “died” in a prison? Similar scenario…THOUGHTS? pic.twitter.com/kT9b19JnoM
— 404_Not_Found (@4_04_Not_Found) June 23, 2021

The idea that the 75-year-old McAfee would take his own life rather than spend the rest of his days bored out of his mind in prison makes sense on its face. That’s neat and easy; that’s also boring. So the living McAfee ensured whenever Epstein was mentioned, “John McAfee” would also appear in the dark corners of minds and the internet.
McAfee embraced the idea that Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker, financier, and Friend of Bills (Clinton, Gates) didn’t kill himself. He also sowed doubts about any future in which John McAfee was reported dead by suicide in a jail cell.
“If I suicide myself, I didn’t. I was whackd,” McAfee posted on Twitter in 2019, displaying a fresh tattoo inked on his right arm: $WHACKD, it read. (Which, conveniently, was also the name of a crypto token McAfee very briefly promoted.)
Quote:Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm.$WHACKD available only on https://t.co/HdSEYi9krq:) pic.twitter.com/rJ0Vi2Hpjj
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 30, 2019

A few months before he was arrested at the Barcelona airport while en route to Turkey last year, McAfee also embraced the idea of a “deep state,” which by his definition is a “conspiracy theory … defined as the people within the government or military who are in secret control of government policy.” (That included the FCC and SEC, just the kind of bugaboos that would plague an internet guy who wanted to make lots of money and never pay taxes, as well as the CIA.)
Quote:July 20, 2020 John McAfee published this video calling out the so called US deep state. One week later they issued a warrant for his arrest and he was arrested in Spain. Less than a year later he’s dead in a Spanish prison pic.twitter.com/l86DntBqFU
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) June 23, 2021

And, finally, McAfee appears to have prepared a final provocation from beyond the grave: An hour after his death was announced, the @officialjohnmcafee Instagram account posted an image of a single letter: “Q,” an obvious reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Okay, so what happened here? Was John McAfee “Q”? Not according to any of the exhaustive investigations conducted by QAnon experts. McAfee was never even a part of the conversation, until he put himself there.
Quote:Rumour confirmed. McAfee Q pic has a cryptographic KEY embedded in the image file. I was able to view this in Photoshop.
And Epstein didn't kill himself.
Instructions: FBMD23000965010000290400004b0400009d0400007a0c0000f90d0000af1000005e1200000414000068170000 pic.twitter.com/vCep3o5Bwz
— RefuseNikRed (@RefusenikRed) June 23, 2021

Was McAfee murdered? Not according to any current, publicly available evidence, though the Catalan regional government hasn’t released information revealing the cause or manner of death beyond “suicide.”
Did McAfee have any apparent ties to, say, national intelligence services or pedophilia rings? The guy ran for the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States twice and played Russian roulette for a reporter from Wired who paid him a visit in 2012. While out on the lam, he also allowed himself to be contacted, located, and then photographed by young millennial reporters from Vice, who betrayed their source by posting a photo of the then-fugitive, complete with metadata.
Preening for the camera and for clout? None of this seems like something an intelligence asset would do. It definitely seems like something someone with impulse control problems and a narcissistic/authoritarian streak might do — someone who openly slept with underage women, someone who hired a private army to rid a town near his Central American hideout of drug dealers, someone who was never convicted of murder but who was found civilly liable for the death of Gregory Faul, his neighbor in Belize who was found dead from a single gunshot wound in 2012.
The internet entrepreneur and publicity hound was a fabulist — enough, in the Alex Jones kind of way, to incite and to provoke. As was the way McAfee died Tuesday — which, at least outwardly, appears to be exactly the way he openly planned it.]]> Deep State True Believer McAfee Dead, as He Predicted
Chris Roberts
06/24/21
[/url]

[url=https://whowhatwhy.org/justice/criminal-justice/deep-state-true-believer-mcafee-dead-as-he-predicted/?utm_source=WhoWhatWhy+Now&utm_campaign=2883f5011e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2_1_2021_16_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b3f79a618-2883f5011e-251507385#shared-counts-email]
John McAfee said that if he ever ended up dead by suicide in prison he was in fact whacked by the US government, which was pursuing him for tax evasion. He even got himself a tattoo to that effect. And so, after McAfee was found dead on Tuesday in a Barcelona jail cell hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the US to face tax evasion charges, the internet faithfully responded with a round of conspiracy theories. 
As McAfee predicted, authorities called his in-custody death an apparent suicide.
Well before this, McAfee — who founded the antivirus software company that still bears his name though he sold it in 1994 — invited comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein. He was a freewheeling hedonist, internet entrepreneur, and intercontinental fugitive from justice with a demonstrated taste for drugs, cryptocurrency, guns, and underage women.
Quote:He posted this MEME on his Instagram. Isn’t it odd that both Epstein and McAfee “died” in a prison? Similar scenario…THOUGHTS? pic.twitter.com/kT9b19JnoM
— 404_Not_Found (@4_04_Not_Found) June 23, 2021

The idea that the 75-year-old McAfee would take his own life rather than spend the rest of his days bored out of his mind in prison makes sense on its face. That’s neat and easy; that’s also boring. So the living McAfee ensured whenever Epstein was mentioned, “John McAfee” would also appear in the dark corners of minds and the internet.
McAfee embraced the idea that Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker, financier, and Friend of Bills (Clinton, Gates) didn’t kill himself. He also sowed doubts about any future in which John McAfee was reported dead by suicide in a jail cell.
“If I suicide myself, I didn’t. I was whackd,” McAfee posted on Twitter in 2019, displaying a fresh tattoo inked on his right arm: $WHACKD, it read. (Which, conveniently, was also the name of a crypto token McAfee very briefly promoted.)
Quote:Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm.$WHACKD available only on https://t.co/HdSEYi9krq:) pic.twitter.com/rJ0Vi2Hpjj
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 30, 2019

A few months before he was arrested at the Barcelona airport while en route to Turkey last year, McAfee also embraced the idea of a “deep state,” which by his definition is a “conspiracy theory … defined as the people within the government or military who are in secret control of government policy.” (That included the FCC and SEC, just the kind of bugaboos that would plague an internet guy who wanted to make lots of money and never pay taxes, as well as the CIA.)
Quote:July 20, 2020 John McAfee published this video calling out the so called US deep state. One week later they issued a warrant for his arrest and he was arrested in Spain. Less than a year later he’s dead in a Spanish prison pic.twitter.com/l86DntBqFU
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) June 23, 2021

And, finally, McAfee appears to have prepared a final provocation from beyond the grave: An hour after his death was announced, the @officialjohnmcafee Instagram account posted an image of a single letter: “Q,” an obvious reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Okay, so what happened here? Was John McAfee “Q”? Not according to any of the exhaustive investigations conducted by QAnon experts. McAfee was never even a part of the conversation, until he put himself there.
Quote:Rumour confirmed. McAfee Q pic has a cryptographic KEY embedded in the image file. I was able to view this in Photoshop.
And Epstein didn't kill himself.
Instructions: FBMD23000965010000290400004b0400009d0400007a0c0000f90d0000af1000005e1200000414000068170000 pic.twitter.com/vCep3o5Bwz
— RefuseNikRed (@RefusenikRed) June 23, 2021

Was McAfee murdered? Not according to any current, publicly available evidence, though the Catalan regional government hasn’t released information revealing the cause or manner of death beyond “suicide.”
Did McAfee have any apparent ties to, say, national intelligence services or pedophilia rings? The guy ran for the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States twice and played Russian roulette for a reporter from Wired who paid him a visit in 2012. While out on the lam, he also allowed himself to be contacted, located, and then photographed by young millennial reporters from Vice, who betrayed their source by posting a photo of the then-fugitive, complete with metadata.
Preening for the camera and for clout? None of this seems like something an intelligence asset would do. It definitely seems like something someone with impulse control problems and a narcissistic/authoritarian streak might do — someone who openly slept with underage women, someone who hired a private army to rid a town near his Central American hideout of drug dealers, someone who was never convicted of murder but who was found civilly liable for the death of Gregory Faul, his neighbor in Belize who was found dead from a single gunshot wound in 2012.
The internet entrepreneur and publicity hound was a fabulist — enough, in the Alex Jones kind of way, to incite and to provoke. As was the way McAfee died Tuesday — which, at least outwardly, appears to be exactly the way he openly planned it.]]> <![CDATA[Another Confirmation Malcolm-X Killed by FBI/NYPD conspiracy]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16242 Sat, 27 Feb 2021 05:59:50 +0000 Peter Lemkin]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16242
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The FBI and New York police departments are facing new calls to finally open their records related to the assassination of Malcolm X, shot dead 56 years ago at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, February 21st, 1965. This comes after the release of a deathbed confession of a former undercover New York police officer who admitted to being part of a broad New York police and FBI conspiracy targeting Malcolm. In the confession, the former officer Raymond Wood, who died last year, admitted he entrapped two members of Malcolm’s security team in another crime, a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, just days before the assassination. On Saturday, Ray Wood’s cousin Reggie Wood read the letter at a news conference at the Shabazz Center in Harlem.
Quote:REGGIE WOOD: It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime, so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s Audubon Ballroom door security on February 21st, 1965.
AMY GOODMAN: In his letter, Raymond Wood also revealed he was inside the Audubon Ballroom at the time of Malcolm’s assassination. At least one other undercover New York police officer, Gene Roberts, was also inside after infiltrating the security team of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, the group Malcolm founded after leaving the Nation of Islam. Both officers, Wood and Roberts, were part of the Bureau of Special Services and Investigations, or BOSSI, a secretive political intelligence unit of the NYPD nicknamed The Red Squad.
Following Malcolm’s assassination, police arrested three members of the Nation of Islam for his murder, but questions about the guilt of the men have lingered for decades. In his letter, Raymond Wood openly says one of the men, Thomas Johnson, was innocent and was arrested to quote “protect my cover and the secrets of the FBI and the NYPD,” unquote. Ray Wood’s letter echoes claims in recent books by Manning Marable and Les Payne that some of Malcolm’s actual assassins were never charged. In a moment, we will be joined by Raymond Wood’s cousin Reggie Wood, who released his deathbed confession. But first, I want to turn to the words of Malcolm X himself, speaking after his home in Queens was firebombed just a week before his assassination, February 14th, 1965.
Quote:MALCOLM X: My house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Now, they had come around toÑthey had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They covered the front completely, the front door. Then they had came to the back. But instead of getting directly in the back of the house and throwing it this way, they stood at a 45-degree angle and tossed it at the window so it glanced and went onto the ground. And the fire hit the window and it woke up my second-oldest baby. But the fire burned on the outside of the house. But had that fire, had that one gone through that window, it would have fallen on a six-year-old girl, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. And I’m gonna tell you, if it had done it, I’d have taken my rifle and gone after anybody in sight. I would not wait! And I say that because of this: the police know the criminal operation of the Black Muslim movement because they have thoroughly infiltrated it.
AMY GOODMAN: “Because they have thoroughly infiltrated it.” Those are the words of Malcolm X right before his assassination, right after his home was firebombed in February of 1965. Just days later, he was shot seconds after he took the stage at the Audubon Ballroom.
We are joined now by Reggie Wood, the cousin of Raymond Wood, author of the new book The Ray Wood Story: Confessions of a Black NYPD Cop in the Assassination of Malcolm X. Still with us, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who attended that news conference with Reggie Wood at the Audubon Ballroom, now the Shabazz Center, where Malcolm X was assassinated 56 years ago. Reggie, thank you so much for joining us. You read parts of the letter this weekend. Talk about your cousin Ray Wood and what you understand happened, the conspiracy he alleges that he was a part of by the FBI and the New York Police Department to assassinate Malcolm X.
REGGIE WOOD: Good morning. Thank you for having me. Ray was a complicated man. I think based on his past experiences, he lived with a lot of fear and caution on a daily basis, which he instilled in me over the past ten years. But Ray was a person that lived as aÑhe lived as a very quiet and reserved person because of what he had experienced. He witnessed some horrible things firsthand and also realized that he was a part of it after the fact. And so therefore, Ray was told by his handlers not to repeat anything that he had seen or heard or he would join Malcolm. Therefore, for 46 years, Ray separated himself from the family in fear that he would put us in danger. Ray lived alone many years, and he finallyÑin his final years, when he realized that his cancer was reoccurring, he wanted to reconnect with family because he didn’t want to die alone. So I volunteered to move him to Florida so that my wife and I could take care of him and get him back and forth to his cancer treatments and things of that nature. Therefore, he trusted me enough to reveal this information. Asked me not to say anything until he passed away, but at the same time, not to allow him to take it to his grave.
AMY GOODMAN: You write in your book, Reggie Wood, “He had spent years living in relative obscurity wanting to ensure the cops wouldn’t preemptively act to silence him. He also feared retribution from society, especially the Black community. Ray was ashamed of what he’d been a part of and felt he had betrayed his own people. Due to his lugubrious feelings about his actions and fear for what might be done to him in retaliation, this 2015 article deeply impacted Ray.” And he is talking about this news coverage from FebruaryÑhe was talking about the article by Garrett Felber in The Guardian that really laid out your cousin’s seminal involvement here and the FBI police involvement in the assassination.
REGGIE WOOD: Yes. That book really details everything that happened. I felt that after consulting with Mr. Crump, I was looking for the best way to put this information out there. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to turn it over to authorities. Therefore, I just wrote everything that Ray told me into this memoir and made it available to the world so that everyone would see it and hear it at the same time. And I think that’s the best way to do it. It’s a load off of my back because I’m no longer in fear of the government trying to quiet me as well.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to news coverage from February 1965 about the police-orchestrated plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty. This was just days before Malcolm X’s assassination. This might be news to a lot of people, even old-time activists. In the video, Raymond Wood is seen being promoted for his role in that plot.
Quote:PERSON: The happy ending to the plot was written by a rookie policeman who had been on the force only eight months when he infiltrated the extremist group. His work led police to a quiet New York residential area where the dynamite had been hidden. Another arrested was Khaleel Sayyed who police say went to the Statue of Liberty to buy a model and further the plot with the fourth conspirator, Walter Bowe. The hero cop, his face hidden for future undercover work, is promoted on the spot to the rank of detective, a happy climax to a bizarre story.
AMY GOODMAN: The arrests were carried out on February 16th, just days before Malcolm X was assassinated. And this is very significant, Reggie Wood, as you know, this so-calledÑ
REGGIE WOOD: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: ÑStatue of Liberty plot, because these men who were arrested were the security team of Malcolm X, meaning he wouldn’t have them there February 21st, a few days later when he was assassinated.
REGGIE WOOD: That’s correct. That’s correct. As we were doing our research, my research assistant, Lizzette Salado, really helped me put the pieces together. We whiteboarded everything that Ray said and attempted to connect it to facts that the FBI had released and that historians had pulled out. And we worked closely with some historians to try to corroborate the information that was there. And once we were able to do that, we were able to present that information to Mr. Crump and show that this was a legitimate situation that needed to be brought to light.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the 2015 article in The Guardian, historian Garrett Felber reveals notes written by the late Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama. At a meeting held in 1965, she identified Ray Wood to be at the scene of Malcolm X’s assassination. She wrote, quote, “Ray Woods [sic]”Ñshe wrote, with an “s”Ñ”Ray Woods [sic] is said to have been seen also running out of Audubon, was one of two picked up by police, was the second person running out,” Yuri wrote. This appears to substantiate some of the accounts of a second man taken into police custody after the assassination. I spent many hours with Yuri Kochiyama talking to her at an assisted-living facility at the end of her life in Oakland before she died. Can you talk about what happened at the assassination? Because Yuri is right here. She was very close to Malcolm X, up on the stage with him as well, at the end, after he was shot. That your cousin ran out and was taken away by police?
REGGIE WOOD: Yes. What Ray basically explained to me was that once he saw what was going down and he realized what had actually happened, after spending time with Mr. Sayyed and Mr. Bowe, he was there and he reminisced or thought about the situation with him coming into the Audubon without being checked. He thought about the fact that those guys were in prison as we spoke. And he decided he needed to get out of there.
And as he was leaving, some individuals that knew him from his other undercover workÑand he had been exposed somewhat from the bombing caseÑsaw him and they attempted to grab him. As they were grabbing him, trying to restrain him, a police officer intervened and grabbed Ray and took him into the police car. And from there, they took him to the precinct and put him into a cell where he sat there for three to four hours not knowing what was going on. The only information that he had was listening to the chatter on the radio while they were transporting him to the police station.
And later that afternoon, the same two gentlemen that told him to go to the Audubon came and removed him from his cell and drove him back home and told him, quote, “Do not speak of this again or you will face similar consequences.”
AMY GOODMAN: Did he know Gene Roberts, the other undercover officer, or at least one other that we know of who was there?
REGGIE WOOD: No, he did not. He did not know him. He did not know he was an undercover. He assumed he was part of Malcolm X’s team.
AMY GOODMAN: So Ben Crump, you ended the last segment where we want to talk at the end of this segment, and that is the issue of what evidence is out there that the police or the FBI is hiding and what you are calling for. It’s interesting that last week a judge ruled, a court ruled that the disciplinary records of New York police going back for years must be released. De Blasio said they’re releasing them, the mayor of New York. Not clear if they are being released at this moment. That’s disciplinary records. And the police unions have been fighting this tooth and nail. What are you calling for in this case?
BENJAMIN CRUMP: Well, Amy, thank you for covering this important matter as well. And to Reggie Wood who has put forth this dying declaration letter from his cousin, Ray Wood, and documented all the corroborating evidence, and the memoir that he and Lisette researched to show that everything in that letter is true. It is legitimate. And that is very important to help exonerate all of those Black people who were wrongfully convicted by Ray Wood’s work. All those people who have been conspired against by the NYPD and the FBI, whether that be Walter Bowe, Khaleel Sayyed, whether it be Thomas Johnson who was picked upÑwho wasn’t even at the Audubon Ballroom, but to ensure that Ray’s cover would not be blown, was arrested and served almost three decades in prison for a crime of killing Malcolm X that they all knew he did not do.
And also Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, part of the Panther 21, who Ray Wood testified against saying that they tried to blow up New York monuments and therefore, quite literally, she was imprisoned when she had her prince [sp] Tupac Shakur, because of NYPD and the FBI were conspiring to wrongfully convict them.
And as Ray Wood said in his letter, their job was to discredit civil rights organizations and Black leaders. And that’s why we are calling for a Malcolm X Commission to be convened by the United States Congress so his daughters but also the people who was affected by these felonious actions of NYPD and the FBI to target Black people can be exposed. Because, Amy, the past is prologue. As Reggie Wood and I have often talked, the same way they targeted Malcolm X for saying that Black people deserve equality by any means necessary, they are targeting young Black Lives Matter activists today, labeling them as Black identity extremists. And so we need to have our federal government be held to account for trying to stop Black people from exercising their First Amendment rights, but more importantly, for being able to declare that Black Lives Matter over and over again.]]>
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The FBI and New York police departments are facing new calls to finally open their records related to the assassination of Malcolm X, shot dead 56 years ago at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, February 21st, 1965. This comes after the release of a deathbed confession of a former undercover New York police officer who admitted to being part of a broad New York police and FBI conspiracy targeting Malcolm. In the confession, the former officer Raymond Wood, who died last year, admitted he entrapped two members of Malcolm’s security team in another crime, a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, just days before the assassination. On Saturday, Ray Wood’s cousin Reggie Wood read the letter at a news conference at the Shabazz Center in Harlem.
Quote:REGGIE WOOD: It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime, so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s Audubon Ballroom door security on February 21st, 1965.
AMY GOODMAN: In his letter, Raymond Wood also revealed he was inside the Audubon Ballroom at the time of Malcolm’s assassination. At least one other undercover New York police officer, Gene Roberts, was also inside after infiltrating the security team of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, the group Malcolm founded after leaving the Nation of Islam. Both officers, Wood and Roberts, were part of the Bureau of Special Services and Investigations, or BOSSI, a secretive political intelligence unit of the NYPD nicknamed The Red Squad.
Following Malcolm’s assassination, police arrested three members of the Nation of Islam for his murder, but questions about the guilt of the men have lingered for decades. In his letter, Raymond Wood openly says one of the men, Thomas Johnson, was innocent and was arrested to quote “protect my cover and the secrets of the FBI and the NYPD,” unquote. Ray Wood’s letter echoes claims in recent books by Manning Marable and Les Payne that some of Malcolm’s actual assassins were never charged. In a moment, we will be joined by Raymond Wood’s cousin Reggie Wood, who released his deathbed confession. But first, I want to turn to the words of Malcolm X himself, speaking after his home in Queens was firebombed just a week before his assassination, February 14th, 1965.
Quote:MALCOLM X: My house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Now, they had come around toÑthey had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They covered the front completely, the front door. Then they had came to the back. But instead of getting directly in the back of the house and throwing it this way, they stood at a 45-degree angle and tossed it at the window so it glanced and went onto the ground. And the fire hit the window and it woke up my second-oldest baby. But the fire burned on the outside of the house. But had that fire, had that one gone through that window, it would have fallen on a six-year-old girl, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. And I’m gonna tell you, if it had done it, I’d have taken my rifle and gone after anybody in sight. I would not wait! And I say that because of this: the police know the criminal operation of the Black Muslim movement because they have thoroughly infiltrated it.
AMY GOODMAN: “Because they have thoroughly infiltrated it.” Those are the words of Malcolm X right before his assassination, right after his home was firebombed in February of 1965. Just days later, he was shot seconds after he took the stage at the Audubon Ballroom.
We are joined now by Reggie Wood, the cousin of Raymond Wood, author of the new book The Ray Wood Story: Confessions of a Black NYPD Cop in the Assassination of Malcolm X. Still with us, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who attended that news conference with Reggie Wood at the Audubon Ballroom, now the Shabazz Center, where Malcolm X was assassinated 56 years ago. Reggie, thank you so much for joining us. You read parts of the letter this weekend. Talk about your cousin Ray Wood and what you understand happened, the conspiracy he alleges that he was a part of by the FBI and the New York Police Department to assassinate Malcolm X.
REGGIE WOOD: Good morning. Thank you for having me. Ray was a complicated man. I think based on his past experiences, he lived with a lot of fear and caution on a daily basis, which he instilled in me over the past ten years. But Ray was a person that lived as aÑhe lived as a very quiet and reserved person because of what he had experienced. He witnessed some horrible things firsthand and also realized that he was a part of it after the fact. And so therefore, Ray was told by his handlers not to repeat anything that he had seen or heard or he would join Malcolm. Therefore, for 46 years, Ray separated himself from the family in fear that he would put us in danger. Ray lived alone many years, and he finallyÑin his final years, when he realized that his cancer was reoccurring, he wanted to reconnect with family because he didn’t want to die alone. So I volunteered to move him to Florida so that my wife and I could take care of him and get him back and forth to his cancer treatments and things of that nature. Therefore, he trusted me enough to reveal this information. Asked me not to say anything until he passed away, but at the same time, not to allow him to take it to his grave.
AMY GOODMAN: You write in your book, Reggie Wood, “He had spent years living in relative obscurity wanting to ensure the cops wouldn’t preemptively act to silence him. He also feared retribution from society, especially the Black community. Ray was ashamed of what he’d been a part of and felt he had betrayed his own people. Due to his lugubrious feelings about his actions and fear for what might be done to him in retaliation, this 2015 article deeply impacted Ray.” And he is talking about this news coverage from FebruaryÑhe was talking about the article by Garrett Felber in The Guardian that really laid out your cousin’s seminal involvement here and the FBI police involvement in the assassination.
REGGIE WOOD: Yes. That book really details everything that happened. I felt that after consulting with Mr. Crump, I was looking for the best way to put this information out there. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to turn it over to authorities. Therefore, I just wrote everything that Ray told me into this memoir and made it available to the world so that everyone would see it and hear it at the same time. And I think that’s the best way to do it. It’s a load off of my back because I’m no longer in fear of the government trying to quiet me as well.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to news coverage from February 1965 about the police-orchestrated plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty. This was just days before Malcolm X’s assassination. This might be news to a lot of people, even old-time activists. In the video, Raymond Wood is seen being promoted for his role in that plot.
Quote:PERSON: The happy ending to the plot was written by a rookie policeman who had been on the force only eight months when he infiltrated the extremist group. His work led police to a quiet New York residential area where the dynamite had been hidden. Another arrested was Khaleel Sayyed who police say went to the Statue of Liberty to buy a model and further the plot with the fourth conspirator, Walter Bowe. The hero cop, his face hidden for future undercover work, is promoted on the spot to the rank of detective, a happy climax to a bizarre story.
AMY GOODMAN: The arrests were carried out on February 16th, just days before Malcolm X was assassinated. And this is very significant, Reggie Wood, as you know, this so-calledÑ
REGGIE WOOD: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: ÑStatue of Liberty plot, because these men who were arrested were the security team of Malcolm X, meaning he wouldn’t have them there February 21st, a few days later when he was assassinated.
REGGIE WOOD: That’s correct. That’s correct. As we were doing our research, my research assistant, Lizzette Salado, really helped me put the pieces together. We whiteboarded everything that Ray said and attempted to connect it to facts that the FBI had released and that historians had pulled out. And we worked closely with some historians to try to corroborate the information that was there. And once we were able to do that, we were able to present that information to Mr. Crump and show that this was a legitimate situation that needed to be brought to light.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the 2015 article in The Guardian, historian Garrett Felber reveals notes written by the late Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama. At a meeting held in 1965, she identified Ray Wood to be at the scene of Malcolm X’s assassination. She wrote, quote, “Ray Woods [sic]”Ñshe wrote, with an “s”Ñ”Ray Woods [sic] is said to have been seen also running out of Audubon, was one of two picked up by police, was the second person running out,” Yuri wrote. This appears to substantiate some of the accounts of a second man taken into police custody after the assassination. I spent many hours with Yuri Kochiyama talking to her at an assisted-living facility at the end of her life in Oakland before she died. Can you talk about what happened at the assassination? Because Yuri is right here. She was very close to Malcolm X, up on the stage with him as well, at the end, after he was shot. That your cousin ran out and was taken away by police?
REGGIE WOOD: Yes. What Ray basically explained to me was that once he saw what was going down and he realized what had actually happened, after spending time with Mr. Sayyed and Mr. Bowe, he was there and he reminisced or thought about the situation with him coming into the Audubon without being checked. He thought about the fact that those guys were in prison as we spoke. And he decided he needed to get out of there.
And as he was leaving, some individuals that knew him from his other undercover workÑand he had been exposed somewhat from the bombing caseÑsaw him and they attempted to grab him. As they were grabbing him, trying to restrain him, a police officer intervened and grabbed Ray and took him into the police car. And from there, they took him to the precinct and put him into a cell where he sat there for three to four hours not knowing what was going on. The only information that he had was listening to the chatter on the radio while they were transporting him to the police station.
And later that afternoon, the same two gentlemen that told him to go to the Audubon came and removed him from his cell and drove him back home and told him, quote, “Do not speak of this again or you will face similar consequences.”
AMY GOODMAN: Did he know Gene Roberts, the other undercover officer, or at least one other that we know of who was there?
REGGIE WOOD: No, he did not. He did not know him. He did not know he was an undercover. He assumed he was part of Malcolm X’s team.
AMY GOODMAN: So Ben Crump, you ended the last segment where we want to talk at the end of this segment, and that is the issue of what evidence is out there that the police or the FBI is hiding and what you are calling for. It’s interesting that last week a judge ruled, a court ruled that the disciplinary records of New York police going back for years must be released. De Blasio said they’re releasing them, the mayor of New York. Not clear if they are being released at this moment. That’s disciplinary records. And the police unions have been fighting this tooth and nail. What are you calling for in this case?
BENJAMIN CRUMP: Well, Amy, thank you for covering this important matter as well. And to Reggie Wood who has put forth this dying declaration letter from his cousin, Ray Wood, and documented all the corroborating evidence, and the memoir that he and Lisette researched to show that everything in that letter is true. It is legitimate. And that is very important to help exonerate all of those Black people who were wrongfully convicted by Ray Wood’s work. All those people who have been conspired against by the NYPD and the FBI, whether that be Walter Bowe, Khaleel Sayyed, whether it be Thomas Johnson who was picked upÑwho wasn’t even at the Audubon Ballroom, but to ensure that Ray’s cover would not be blown, was arrested and served almost three decades in prison for a crime of killing Malcolm X that they all knew he did not do.
And also Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, part of the Panther 21, who Ray Wood testified against saying that they tried to blow up New York monuments and therefore, quite literally, she was imprisoned when she had her prince [sp] Tupac Shakur, because of NYPD and the FBI were conspiring to wrongfully convict them.
And as Ray Wood said in his letter, their job was to discredit civil rights organizations and Black leaders. And that’s why we are calling for a Malcolm X Commission to be convened by the United States Congress so his daughters but also the people who was affected by these felonious actions of NYPD and the FBI to target Black people can be exposed. Because, Amy, the past is prologue. As Reggie Wood and I have often talked, the same way they targeted Malcolm X for saying that Black people deserve equality by any means necessary, they are targeting young Black Lives Matter activists today, labeling them as Black identity extremists. And so we need to have our federal government be held to account for trying to stop Black people from exercising their First Amendment rights, but more importantly, for being able to declare that Black Lives Matter over and over again.]]> <![CDATA[MLK/FBI documentary]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16239 Mon, 08 Feb 2021 08:12:50 +0000 Jim DiEugenio]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16239
It at least will introduce the subject to a wider audience.  

https://kennedysandking.com/martin-luthe...ws/mlk-fbi]]>
It at least will introduce the subject to a wider audience.  

https://kennedysandking.com/martin-luthe...ws/mlk-fbi]]> <![CDATA[Sirhan's Upcoming Parole Hearing]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16229 Wed, 30 Dec 2020 02:38:45 +0000 Jim DiEugenio]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16229
Sirhan, even if you do not argue the facts of the case, should have been paroled decades ago since he has been a model prisoner and the average term in prison for his crime has turned out to be about 16 years. Not just in California, same thing in, for example, Maryland.

Thanks.

https://kennedysandking.com/robert-f-ken...le-hearing]]>
Sirhan, even if you do not argue the facts of the case, should have been paroled decades ago since he has been a model prisoner and the average term in prison for his crime has turned out to be about 16 years. Not just in California, same thing in, for example, Maryland.

Thanks.

https://kennedysandking.com/robert-f-ken...le-hearing]]> <![CDATA[Karen Silkwood: Political murder?]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16131 Wed, 09 Oct 2019 00:21:52 +0000 Richard Booth]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16131
A brief summary:

Karen Silkwood worked the Kerr-McGee Cimmaron plutonium processing facility in Oklahoma in the early-to-mid 70s. She worked in quality control and began to observe inadequate safety protocols and violations at the plant which put people's lives in danger.

She spoke up about it, and became a 'target' for that--was viewed as 'disloyal' and 'a complainer' by management. Not long after that she became contaminated through her work. This got the attention of Kerr-McGee's corporate security, who, taking a page from William Sullivan's FBI, began a character assassination campaign. This former National Honors Society student and highly committed quality control employee was branded as a 'slut' and a 'drug abuser' via whisper campaign. Her phones were tapped. She was under surveillance. Company shills insinuated Silkwood had poisoned herself, to make the company look bad. Which makes no sense at all: why would you expose yourself to something that causes cancer in order to make the company that cuts your paycheck look bad? It just doesn't track.

The company's director of security even suggested that she was making things up and contaminated herself 'because she's bisexual, and lesbians don't care. They'll do anything!'. What a piece of work, and that's just surface detail, this rabbit hole is a dark one. (recommended reading at the bottom of this post for more details)

Silkwood was on to something. She began to gather evidence. She obtained proof of fraud in testing samples at the facility and documented safety lapses. Through her work, she also discovered that 30+ pounds of weapons-grade plutonium was missing. Gone. This is what I believe got her killed. More on that:

Silkwood arranged to meet with a journalist w/ the NY Times and a union official to show them her evidence. Before meeting them she stopped at a local diner, showing a couple trusted friends her 3-ring binder of evidence that she had prepared to produce to the journalist and union official. Then she hit the road to drive just 30 miles to Oklahoma City for her scheduled meeting.

Karen Silkwood never made it to her meeting.

She was found dead in her Honda Civic, smashed into a culvert. A single-car accident, Lee Bowers style.

The documents she had with her? Gone from the vehicle. Which essentially confirms, to me at least, that it was a murder.

Investigators found that the bumper of her vehicle had damage to it that indicated a metal-on-metal contact, suggesting she was rammed from behind or possibly forced off the road.

There is much more to this story, so much awful skullduggery by the OSBI (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation), FBI, Kerr-McGee security, you name it. Even Congress was pressured to drop efforts to investigate. Clearly this was a very sensitive issue. A whistleblower exposing lax safety precautions simply does not explain the level of corruption and pressure shown in this case. So, what was so sensitive about Karen Silkwood and her investigation?

Well, what got my attention was the missing plutonium. 30 pounds of weapons grade plutonium. For reference, it takes 13 pounds to make a nuclear weapon.

This is not exactly the sort of thing that organized crime would go after or trade in. So who would be the culprit? Well, certain nation-states certainly wanted plutonium and uranium. A gamut of intelligence agencies would have loved to have got their hands on plutonium in 1974: Israel, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, you name it. Out of these foreign intelligence services which would be the most skilled in carrying out operations inside the United States, targeting Americans? I would venture to say Israel, by a huge margin, for a number of reasons.

In fact, as revealed in one of the better parts of Jeff Morley's book on James Angleton, "The Ghost," Israel procured uranium from a company called NUMEC. NUMEC, like the company Silkwood worked for (Kerr-McGee) had the contract with the Atomic Energy Commission to provide nuclear materials for the Hanford nuclear program. They provided fuel rods and fissile material. The two sources for this material were NUMEC, and Kerr-McGee. Morley's book details how over 160 kilograms of uranium had gone missing from a NUMEC plant. As it turns out, the material was being surreptitiously transferred to Israel through the actions of Jim Angleton, the Mossad, and some sympathetic company men at NUMEC. (see pgs 166-167 of 'Ghost' by Jeff Morley for details).

It is noteworthy to me that at the time of Karen Silkwood's murder, and the missing Kerr-McGeee plutonium (1974), Jim Angleton was still head of CI at CIA and the Israeli desk.

* Was Kerr-McGee targeted for illicit diversion of nuclear materials like their competitor NUMEC had been?
* Was Karen Silkwood's whistleblowing a threat to exposing the large cache of missing plutonium at Kerr-McGee? (A resounding 'YES')
* Was Karen Silkwood 'neutralized' because her efforts threatened to expose the missing plutonium? (A resounding 'YES')

Based on what we know about NUMEC and the transfer of fissile material from their plants to Israel, is it a stretch to suggest that Kerr-McGee might have similarly been a conduit?

And if so, would that not then make the key suspects in her murder those responsible for the transfer of nuclear material, who had every reason to keep that secret concealed at all costs.

The idea that the CIA--let's say, through a vestpocket operation by Angleton for his Mossad friends--was involved in obtaining plutonium from Kerr-McGeee and then killed Karen Silkwood because she threatened to expose it stands to me as one that isn't unreasonable. In fact, it's about the only thing that makes sense. I can't see Kerr-McGee security, as dirty and rotten as they were, actually murdering someone over safety violations. Much less possessing the sophistication necessary to carry out a targeted assassination and make it look like an accident. But we do know there are people capable of that, and those people are found within the operations division of intelligence agencies.

The more I read about Silkwood's death and the missing plutonium the more suspect Israel and Angleton might have been behind it. I had never thought of this years past--I was not aware of the NUMEC uranium smuggling until reading about that in Morley's book. The NUMEC/uranium operation makes me wonder in a similar operation was underway at NUMEC's competitor, Kerr-McGee. Is this the key to Karen Silkwood's murder?

Further reading:
The Killing of Karen Silkwood by Richard Rashke (https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Karen-Sil...080148667X)
The Ghost by Jefferson Morley]]>
A brief summary:

Karen Silkwood worked the Kerr-McGee Cimmaron plutonium processing facility in Oklahoma in the early-to-mid 70s. She worked in quality control and began to observe inadequate safety protocols and violations at the plant which put people's lives in danger.

She spoke up about it, and became a 'target' for that--was viewed as 'disloyal' and 'a complainer' by management. Not long after that she became contaminated through her work. This got the attention of Kerr-McGee's corporate security, who, taking a page from William Sullivan's FBI, began a character assassination campaign. This former National Honors Society student and highly committed quality control employee was branded as a 'slut' and a 'drug abuser' via whisper campaign. Her phones were tapped. She was under surveillance. Company shills insinuated Silkwood had poisoned herself, to make the company look bad. Which makes no sense at all: why would you expose yourself to something that causes cancer in order to make the company that cuts your paycheck look bad? It just doesn't track.

The company's director of security even suggested that she was making things up and contaminated herself 'because she's bisexual, and lesbians don't care. They'll do anything!'. What a piece of work, and that's just surface detail, this rabbit hole is a dark one. (recommended reading at the bottom of this post for more details)

Silkwood was on to something. She began to gather evidence. She obtained proof of fraud in testing samples at the facility and documented safety lapses. Through her work, she also discovered that 30+ pounds of weapons-grade plutonium was missing. Gone. This is what I believe got her killed. More on that:

Silkwood arranged to meet with a journalist w/ the NY Times and a union official to show them her evidence. Before meeting them she stopped at a local diner, showing a couple trusted friends her 3-ring binder of evidence that she had prepared to produce to the journalist and union official. Then she hit the road to drive just 30 miles to Oklahoma City for her scheduled meeting.

Karen Silkwood never made it to her meeting.

She was found dead in her Honda Civic, smashed into a culvert. A single-car accident, Lee Bowers style.

The documents she had with her? Gone from the vehicle. Which essentially confirms, to me at least, that it was a murder.

Investigators found that the bumper of her vehicle had damage to it that indicated a metal-on-metal contact, suggesting she was rammed from behind or possibly forced off the road.

There is much more to this story, so much awful skullduggery by the OSBI (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation), FBI, Kerr-McGee security, you name it. Even Congress was pressured to drop efforts to investigate. Clearly this was a very sensitive issue. A whistleblower exposing lax safety precautions simply does not explain the level of corruption and pressure shown in this case. So, what was so sensitive about Karen Silkwood and her investigation?

Well, what got my attention was the missing plutonium. 30 pounds of weapons grade plutonium. For reference, it takes 13 pounds to make a nuclear weapon.

This is not exactly the sort of thing that organized crime would go after or trade in. So who would be the culprit? Well, certain nation-states certainly wanted plutonium and uranium. A gamut of intelligence agencies would have loved to have got their hands on plutonium in 1974: Israel, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, you name it. Out of these foreign intelligence services which would be the most skilled in carrying out operations inside the United States, targeting Americans? I would venture to say Israel, by a huge margin, for a number of reasons.

In fact, as revealed in one of the better parts of Jeff Morley's book on James Angleton, "The Ghost," Israel procured uranium from a company called NUMEC. NUMEC, like the company Silkwood worked for (Kerr-McGee) had the contract with the Atomic Energy Commission to provide nuclear materials for the Hanford nuclear program. They provided fuel rods and fissile material. The two sources for this material were NUMEC, and Kerr-McGee. Morley's book details how over 160 kilograms of uranium had gone missing from a NUMEC plant. As it turns out, the material was being surreptitiously transferred to Israel through the actions of Jim Angleton, the Mossad, and some sympathetic company men at NUMEC. (see pgs 166-167 of 'Ghost' by Jeff Morley for details).

It is noteworthy to me that at the time of Karen Silkwood's murder, and the missing Kerr-McGeee plutonium (1974), Jim Angleton was still head of CI at CIA and the Israeli desk.

* Was Kerr-McGee targeted for illicit diversion of nuclear materials like their competitor NUMEC had been?
* Was Karen Silkwood's whistleblowing a threat to exposing the large cache of missing plutonium at Kerr-McGee? (A resounding 'YES')
* Was Karen Silkwood 'neutralized' because her efforts threatened to expose the missing plutonium? (A resounding 'YES')

Based on what we know about NUMEC and the transfer of fissile material from their plants to Israel, is it a stretch to suggest that Kerr-McGee might have similarly been a conduit?

And if so, would that not then make the key suspects in her murder those responsible for the transfer of nuclear material, who had every reason to keep that secret concealed at all costs.

The idea that the CIA--let's say, through a vestpocket operation by Angleton for his Mossad friends--was involved in obtaining plutonium from Kerr-McGeee and then killed Karen Silkwood because she threatened to expose it stands to me as one that isn't unreasonable. In fact, it's about the only thing that makes sense. I can't see Kerr-McGee security, as dirty and rotten as they were, actually murdering someone over safety violations. Much less possessing the sophistication necessary to carry out a targeted assassination and make it look like an accident. But we do know there are people capable of that, and those people are found within the operations division of intelligence agencies.

The more I read about Silkwood's death and the missing plutonium the more suspect Israel and Angleton might have been behind it. I had never thought of this years past--I was not aware of the NUMEC uranium smuggling until reading about that in Morley's book. The NUMEC/uranium operation makes me wonder in a similar operation was underway at NUMEC's competitor, Kerr-McGee. Is this the key to Karen Silkwood's murder?

Further reading:
The Killing of Karen Silkwood by Richard Rashke (https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Karen-Sil...080148667X)
The Ghost by Jefferson Morley]]> <![CDATA[RFK And Watergate]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16040 Mon, 18 Mar 2019 06:38:00 +0000 James Lewis]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=16040
Reading Lisa Pease's "A Lie Too Big To Fail", a thought crossed my mind. Something that's been bubbling in my mind for quite a while now.

In the last part of the book, she makes a case for Robert Maheu being the Mastermind behind the assassination of Robert Kennedy. And it's a very good case indeed. Down to Maheu telling Don Nixon, Richard's brother, that the deed was done. And that brings me to...wait for it...Watergate. You see, it's important to remember whose papers were being sought in that break-in.

Those were the papers of Larry O'Brien, who was at the time chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The official story says that the burglars broke in looking for dirt on various candidates. But what is not mentioned is this: At the time of RFK'S assassination, Larry O'Brien was working with the Howard Hughes operation. With Robert Maheu. And if I'm not mistaken, they shared an office at the time.

From "A Lie Too Big To Fail":

"Bob Maheu called to ask about the Don Nixon meeting and suggested 8:30 for breakfast at the Desert Inn Country Club. I went to the club. Maheu was all smiles, and Don Nixon walks in all smiles."

"What followed next had to be seen to be believed. They embraced each other and Don Nixon said, 'Well, that prick is dead," and Maheu said, "Well, it looks like your brother is in now." At the time I did not even know what they were talking about.

"Maheu joked that they should now be calling Don Nixon 'Mr. Vice President'."

"I still did not realize that Robert Kennedy had died and when they saw that I was unaware Maheu told me, 'John, you are out of it. Why don't you go home and Don and I will carry on without you'"

The above was from John Meier's diary. Meier was very close to both Maheu and O'Brien. And Howard Hughes himself. To wit: Don Nixon knew that Maheu had conspired to kill Robert Kennedy. And if Don Nixon knew, Richard Nixon CERTAINLY knew. The two were extremely close.

Which leads us to WATERGATE. I believe that those "burglars" were looking for O'Brien's papers for a far different reason than the official story opines. They weren't looking for dirt on candidates. They we're looking for dirt on ROBERT MAHEU. Robert Maheu and possibly Larry O'Brien. They were looking to erase any connection between Maheu, O'Brien, and the Hughes organization to the RFK assassination.

Nixon, as I stated before, almost CERTAINLY knew about this. And it may explain why he then used the JFK assassination to try to strong-arm the CIA into helping to cover up Watergate. "Bay Of Pigs=JFK assassination". My personal feeling, just based on years of research on both Kennedy assassinations and Richard Nixon's career, is that Nixon had intimate knowledge of BOTH assassinations. I have detailed his knowledge of the RFK assassination above.

And why do I think he had deep knowledge of the JFK assassination?

Simple. It's spelled "Allen Dulles".

Nixon and Dulles were close. VERY close. And it has been reported that Nixon and Dulles were in Dallas around the same time, a week before JFK'S assassination. David Talbot makes an excellent case in "The Devil's Chessboard" for Dulles being the brains behind the assassination.

Larry O'Brien had also been postmaster general. And he had prior dealings with the CIA. It would not have been unfamiliar turf for him at all.

To sum up:

Robert Maheu was likely the contractor behind the RFK assassination. Larry O'Brien worked with Maheu closely during the time when RFK was killed. Don Nixon, Richard's brother, knew this through Maheu himself. Richard Nixon likely knew what went down through his brother. And those so-called "burglars" were looking for anything related to O'Brien's relationship with Maheu and anything having to do with RFK'S assassination.

Their purpose was to totally erase any connection between Maheu, the Hughes organization (Hughes=CIA), and the Robert Kennedy assassination. And it's likely that Larry O'Brien was a major linchpin between the above mentioned events.

Richard Nixon, knowing most of the specifics of both assassinations, attempted to use the JFK assassination to bludgeon the CIA into going along with the Watergate cover-up. Both killings were the SOLE reason that Nixon was President. And the CIA then had Nixon removed from the presidency.

Just my two cents 😉]]>
Reading Lisa Pease's "A Lie Too Big To Fail", a thought crossed my mind. Something that's been bubbling in my mind for quite a while now.

In the last part of the book, she makes a case for Robert Maheu being the Mastermind behind the assassination of Robert Kennedy. And it's a very good case indeed. Down to Maheu telling Don Nixon, Richard's brother, that the deed was done. And that brings me to...wait for it...Watergate. You see, it's important to remember whose papers were being sought in that break-in.

Those were the papers of Larry O'Brien, who was at the time chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The official story says that the burglars broke in looking for dirt on various candidates. But what is not mentioned is this: At the time of RFK'S assassination, Larry O'Brien was working with the Howard Hughes operation. With Robert Maheu. And if I'm not mistaken, they shared an office at the time.

From "A Lie Too Big To Fail":

"Bob Maheu called to ask about the Don Nixon meeting and suggested 8:30 for breakfast at the Desert Inn Country Club. I went to the club. Maheu was all smiles, and Don Nixon walks in all smiles."

"What followed next had to be seen to be believed. They embraced each other and Don Nixon said, 'Well, that prick is dead," and Maheu said, "Well, it looks like your brother is in now." At the time I did not even know what they were talking about.

"Maheu joked that they should now be calling Don Nixon 'Mr. Vice President'."

"I still did not realize that Robert Kennedy had died and when they saw that I was unaware Maheu told me, 'John, you are out of it. Why don't you go home and Don and I will carry on without you'"

The above was from John Meier's diary. Meier was very close to both Maheu and O'Brien. And Howard Hughes himself. To wit: Don Nixon knew that Maheu had conspired to kill Robert Kennedy. And if Don Nixon knew, Richard Nixon CERTAINLY knew. The two were extremely close.

Which leads us to WATERGATE. I believe that those "burglars" were looking for O'Brien's papers for a far different reason than the official story opines. They weren't looking for dirt on candidates. They we're looking for dirt on ROBERT MAHEU. Robert Maheu and possibly Larry O'Brien. They were looking to erase any connection between Maheu, O'Brien, and the Hughes organization to the RFK assassination.

Nixon, as I stated before, almost CERTAINLY knew about this. And it may explain why he then used the JFK assassination to try to strong-arm the CIA into helping to cover up Watergate. "Bay Of Pigs=JFK assassination". My personal feeling, just based on years of research on both Kennedy assassinations and Richard Nixon's career, is that Nixon had intimate knowledge of BOTH assassinations. I have detailed his knowledge of the RFK assassination above.

And why do I think he had deep knowledge of the JFK assassination?

Simple. It's spelled "Allen Dulles".

Nixon and Dulles were close. VERY close. And it has been reported that Nixon and Dulles were in Dallas around the same time, a week before JFK'S assassination. David Talbot makes an excellent case in "The Devil's Chessboard" for Dulles being the brains behind the assassination.

Larry O'Brien had also been postmaster general. And he had prior dealings with the CIA. It would not have been unfamiliar turf for him at all.

To sum up:

Robert Maheu was likely the contractor behind the RFK assassination. Larry O'Brien worked with Maheu closely during the time when RFK was killed. Don Nixon, Richard's brother, knew this through Maheu himself. Richard Nixon likely knew what went down through his brother. And those so-called "burglars" were looking for anything related to O'Brien's relationship with Maheu and anything having to do with RFK'S assassination.

Their purpose was to totally erase any connection between Maheu, the Hughes organization (Hughes=CIA), and the Robert Kennedy assassination. And it's likely that Larry O'Brien was a major linchpin between the above mentioned events.

Richard Nixon, knowing most of the specifics of both assassinations, attempted to use the JFK assassination to bludgeon the CIA into going along with the Watergate cover-up. Both killings were the SOLE reason that Nixon was President. And the CIA then had Nixon removed from the presidency.

Just my two cents 😉]]> <![CDATA[RFK Assassination Resources?]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15998 Fri, 11 Jan 2019 23:02:05 +0000 Matt Grantham]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15998
I called in Thom Hartmann's radio program and spoke about the RFK assassination. I give Thom for at least taking the call and advocating for a new investigation, but his question to me was whether I had heard about Thane Cesar having had Mafia connections. I said I had not. It just seems odd Thom wants to give this a Mafia spin rather than any mention of the CIA.]]>
I called in Thom Hartmann's radio program and spoke about the RFK assassination. I give Thom for at least taking the call and advocating for a new investigation, but his question to me was whether I had heard about Thane Cesar having had Mafia connections. I said I had not. It just seems odd Thom wants to give this a Mafia spin rather than any mention of the CIA.]]> <![CDATA["A Lie Too Big To Fail", by Lisa Pease]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15996 Tue, 08 Jan 2019 09:49:45 +0000 James Lewis]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15996
Buy this book. YESTERDAY. And be sure to follow Lisa on Twitter.]]>
Buy this book. YESTERDAY. And be sure to follow Lisa on Twitter.]]> <![CDATA[Bill Barry RFK bodyguard passed away this week any thoughts ?]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15946 Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:45:34 +0000 Edwin Ortiz]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15946 <![CDATA[The Long Ides of March of Aldo Moro]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15905 Sun, 26 Aug 2018 10:44:04 +0000 Paul Rigby]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15905
The Long Ides of March of Aldo Moro

by LUCIANA BOHNE

How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er,
In states unborn, and accents yet unknown.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Quote:"Beware the Ides of March"or even the day after. On the morning of 16 March 1978 in Rome's central via Fani, the Red Brigades (BR) kidnapped Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, head of the Christian Democratic Party (DC), killing five agents of his entourage. The fifty-five days of his detention in a secret "people's prison" and eventual assassination by his captors on 9 May 1978 marked the climax of over thirty years of internal and external opposition to post-fascist Italy's chartering its own political and economic course by "parallel convergences." It is worth revisiting this long and twisted story as an early template for the bad faith with which the US Empire deals with the world today. It is not a story for conspiracy-phobes.

The plot of all plots: whodunnit?

Moro himself coined the phrase, "parallel convergences," hinting at dark forces behind the facade of the legitimate state. The executors of Moro's death are not in doubt. The BR condemned him to death on 29 April 1978 for "advancing counterrevolutionary programs in the service of bourgeois imperialism," shooting eleven bullets into his body curled up in the trunk of a red Renault on 9 May. Moro's phrase "parallel convergences" challenged translators at the time. Today, we understand it, in part, as the network of economic international elites, whose interest state intelligence structures servethe CIA first among peers. I asked Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and exhaustive histories of CIA, DEA, FBI, what the phrase meant as Moro used it. Valentine said, "A CIA/military intelligence guy I knew well, Col. Tully Acampora, told me that JFK's station chief in Rome starting mid-1963, Bill Harvey, was sent there to help . . . General Giovanni di Lorenzo, head of Italy's military intelligence and security services, subvert the government of Leftist Prime Minister, Aldo Moro."

"Leftist"? Aldo Moro had toyed with the idea of joining the Socialist Party, but he was a devout Catholic and chose the DC instead. He was, however, interested in national sovereignty, the relief of emigration from the underdeveloped South, and an autonomous energy policy of trade with the Middle East. Only a year before the arrival in Rome of CIA station chief, Bill Harvey, the Mafia murdered Italian Energy Minister, Enrico Mattei, a close associate of Moro's, after Mattei's fruitful overtures for fair trade with oil-rich, Third World countries. Behind the Mafia lurked the "Seven Sisters," as Mattei dubbed the cartel of the American oil companiesand the services of the CIA together with Italian secret services. The Italian director, Francesco Rosi, made a film about this dramatic event, titled, The Mattei Affair. The journalist who helped him with research disappeared, presumed killed by the Mafia.

Cold War: Italy's "Stability" Must Be Secured

Italy's vassalage to the US in the Cold War mattered tremendouslymore than Americans know. One of the earliest directives by the then-recently established US National Security Council made no bones about Washington's intentions should the Italian Communist Party win the parliamentary elections in 1948. The US, the directive punctuated, would intervene "even at the cost of a civil war."

Throughout the Cold War, the US considered Italy a front-line state. The "iron curtain" ran vertically north south from Poland's Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Italy's Trieste on the northeast tip of the Adriatic Sea. Italy's eastern neighbor was communist Yugoslavia (until 1948 allied with Moscow) and further south, across a narrow stretch of sea, communist Albania, also allied with Moscow until 1961. Indeed, as NATO and American military bases grew to dot Italy over the decades, their missiles pointed east, at Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Furthermore, Italy's central Mediterranean location, especially Sicily's, provided the US with a key asset location for control of the Middle East. US policymakers were determined to preserve this essential geopolitical asset in their sphere of influence. As they saw it, one thing only threatened American hegemony in Italy: the vastly popular and respected Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest communist party in Western Europe, which had been one of the two "hero" parties of the Resistance against the Nazi-fascist occupation in WW II from 8 September 1943 to 25 April 1945. In 1948, the PCI, allied with all left parties as the Popular Front, would almost certainly have won the parliamentary elections without the funding of a red-scare campaign by the CIA and the fomented fatal incidents and violent clashes at party rallies that seemed to sound the thunder of a coming civil war. Intimidated, the people voted a majority to the he DC, 48% of the vote; close behind came the Popular Front with 30% of the vote. "Without the CIA. The Communist Party . . . would surely have won the elections in 1948," writes Jack Devine, former CIA chief-of-station in Rome, in his book, Good Hunting.

In the early 1950s, Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and Ambassador to Italy, Claire Boothe Luce, insisted that the PCI be outlawed. All Italian political parties, from extreme right to left, refused. They, justifiably pointed out that, because the PCI had been one of the main forces of the Resistance, there would be civil war in Italy if such a measure were enacted. For the Americans, communists in power endangered the security of NATO and the policy of control of the Middle East. When in 1953 William Colby became director of the CIA in Italy his task was to direct clandestine political actions to contain the influence of the PCI. As he wrote in his memoirs, "My task was to prevent that Italy fall in communist hands at the next elections." Keeping the PCI out of the executive was made a condition, agreed upon by President Harry Truman and Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi (DC), for the distribution of funds through the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Italy. Still in the 50s, a secret accord, "Plan Demagnetize," stipulated a close collaboration between the intelligence services of the US and Italy's to set back the influence of communism on Italian society.

In the Pre-Dawn of the Cold War: Mustering Their Mafia and Fascist Battalions

This communist threat had been identified and organized against as early as the allied landing in Sicily, in July of 1943. The OSS (predecessor to the CIA), founded in 1941 with 13,000 agents by OSS chief "Wild Bill" Donovan, had assigned the "Italian Section" to James Jesus Angleton, who came from a masonic family and would head the CIA's Israeli desk by 1950. Angleton recruited a "Mafia Circle"so denominated in CIA documentsto help with the allied landing in Italy. The circle was made up of Mafiosi (including Michele Sindona, who would become notorious for the crack-up of the Franklin National Bank in 1979) suggested by the gangster, Lucky Luciano, whom American naval intelligence approached in prison in Clinton, New York. The "Mafia Circle," however, was not dissolved after the Allies' smooth landing; it widened. The circle rushed to liberate other Mafiosi long imprisoned by Mussolini's regime. Officials of the American occupation put the " liberated "Mafiosi in important positions of administrative, police, and military power throughout Sicily to function as an anti-communist network of collaborators. As mayors, for example, the appointees would eventually exert regional influence on the elections and policies of senators and deputies in the parliament in Rome throughout the life of the first Republicand close ties with the Interior Ministry and its secret services.

Nor did Angleton's anti-communist recruitment stop at the Mafia. He began to gather exponents of the fascist regime, storing them as future assets in allied-occupied Sicily. Chief among them, was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, commander of a frogman flotilla unit in the Italian Royal Navy until 1943, expert marine saboteur, collaborator from 1943 to 1945 with the Nazi puppet regime of the Repubblica of Salo', on on Lake Garda, in Northern Italy. After 1945, Borghese was convicted of Nazi-collaboration but not of war crimes, though it was certainly known that his quasi-private army participated with the SS in some of the most brutal massacres in central Italyperhaps 10,000 victims in what is known as "the war against civilians." When the partisans of Resistance leader, General Cadorna, arrested Borghese in Northern Italy on Liberation Day, 25 April 1945, Angleton drove up north in his jeep on 30 April, took charge of Borghese, dressed him in an American uniform, and took him safely to Rome. In a report to OSS, Angleton wrote that Borghese "represented a long-term interest at the heart of our work." For good measure, Borghese and his loyal army were later absorbed into "Gladio," NATO's super-secret select group of paramilitary operatives but that is another story.

In Sicily throughout the fifties, fascists, through the largesse of funding by the US, organized themselves into neo-fascist groups, with ties to the Italian secret services. The twinning of mafia and fascists, con-joined by the OSS in the 1940s, would prove a formidable force of destabilization in the 1970s, setting off an ideological war in the streets between provocateur neo-fascist groups and extra-parliamentary revolutionary communist formationsa "strategy of tension," as the violence initiated by the right came to be known. That this "tension" broke out at a moment of increasing gains by the left, threatening a communist electoral victory or a share in the executive could not have been a coincidence, Italian public opinion maintains to this day. Italy's strictly limited sovereignty as US client or asset state was being defied by gains in social democracyand the expanding popular democracy was a threat to Italy's "stability" as US vassal.

Italian Reds Are Winning

On the morning of 16 March, this threat was about to become a reality.

Aldo Moro was scheduled to call for a vote of confidence on the proposed new government of "national solidarity"a power share with the Communist Party in the cabinet and the executive branch, a first in Italy, a first in Western Europe. This was the culmination of negotiations for the compromesso storico ("historic compromise") between the DC and the PCI to make the government more representative of the electorate. Three agencies were not pleased: Moscow, because Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the PCI had recognized NATO in order to make power-sharing possible in a NATO-dominated Western European country; Washington, because from long date it had opposed the accession of the communists to the executive; and the Red Brigades, because 1) they thought the PCI should remain an opposition party 2) they regarded the compromesso as a further betrayal or weakening of the PCI's commitment to class struggle initiated by the Resistance and subsequently thwarted by too many PCI "compromises" with the ruling bourgeois parties, and 3) because the compromesso would dent the drive toward the social and political revolution to which they aspired. This was the turbulent local and geopolitical climate on that fatal morning in March.

Killed as a symbol of the liberal state or its sacrificial gravedigger?

Did the BR kill Moro as a symbol of the "bourgeois, liberal-imperialist" state, as claimed? Franco Bonisoli, with Mario Moretti and Lauro Azzolini, a member of the executive command of the Red Brigades at the time of Moro's sequestration, declared in 1998 that for the BR the state consisted of the Christian Democratic Party with Moro at its head. Since the BR by then was aiming at the heart of the state, Moro was the intended symbol. Mario Moretti, who alone among the brigatisti interrogated Moro in prison, said the assassination was the ultimate expression of their Marxist-Leninist line.

But in 1998, Aldo Moro's son, Giovanni, who had been twenty-years old when his father was killed, gave an interview to La Repubblica, insisting that Moro could not have been killed as a mere symbol but to end his political project:

Our impression [in the family] was unanimous: we all felt that he wasn't targeted as a symbol, as later maintained. What was done was a surgical intervention on Italian politics. Moro was the architect of the encounter with the communists. He was a subject at risk. And, anyway, it's enough to look at the years of the bombs. When Moro is marginalized, the bombs, too, are marginalized. His political line is strictly connected to this piece of Italian history.

The "years of lead" and the "strategy of tension": rightists and leftists target the state

To be sure, the year 1978 marked nearly a decade of assaults on members and symbols of state institutions, the media, and the judiciary, a campaign of the left. On the right, the targets were civilians massacred across Italy ("We will bury democracy under a mountain of corpses," wrote a flyer, acknowledging a massacre by Ordine NeroBlack/Fascist Order, a neo-fascist group). Liberal and left public opinion in Italy then and now holds that this terror by the right was planned and carried out in order to destabilize the multi-party state and supplant it with a decidedly rightist, pro-American, and anti-communist one. The opinion was bolstered by the findings of interminable trials and countless judiciary and parliamentary investigations into subversive activities by the neo-fascists in collusion with organs of the state, operating as extensions of external actors. In this opinion, the "years of lead," as the season of violence came to be dubbed in Italy, were the expression of a "strategy of tension," intended also neutralize the Communist Party, which commanded over 34.4% of the popular vote in 1976. The massive support for the Communist Party and its representation in Parliament led, among other progressive measures, to the addition of a Workers' Bill of Rights, enshrined in the constitution in 1970. For the Red Brigades, this wasn't enough, but it was more than enough for anti-proletarian neo-fascists.

In fact, almost simultaneously with the pending enactment of the Workers' Bill of Rights in 1970, the season of terrorism began in earnest in Milan with the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank in Piazza Fontana on12 December 1969, killing seventeen people and wounding 80. The anarchist railway worker, Giuseppe Pinelli, was detained on suspicion, committing suicide by defenestration during a break in interrogations. The absurdity of this reported account provoked the writer Dario Fo (Nobel Prize for Literature) to dramatize it as a farce in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (1970), the most famous and acclaimed of his plays. Movimento Ordine Nuovo, a far-right, neo-fascist organization, was suspected of planting the bomb, but in a series of chaotic trials lasting until 2005 no one was ever punished for the massacre, though a court identified two neo-fascists as the terrorists.

Only three days before the Piazza Fontana bombing, a secret neo-fascist coup, code-named "Tora, Tora," had been called off for reasons never revealed, though three trials followed the disclosure in March 1971 of the plot by the left paper Paese Sera.

In the final trial in 1984, all the accused were found not guilty of conspiring against the state. The plot is known in Italy as the golpe Borghese (the Borghese coup) because Angleton's "asset" Junio Valerio Borghese, the fascist aristocrat, known as "The Black Prince," was central to it (the Spanish word golpe gained currency in Italy after the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973). By the time of the failed golpe Borghese in 1969, Borghese's fascist-era, quasi-private army had been being trained in the US since Angleton's time in Sicily in 1943at first twenty saboteurs; later many more. President Francesco Cossiga, who had been Interior Minister during Moro's sequestration, declared in an interview years later that the "role of the CIA was to fund anti-communist neo-fascist groups." However, in the midst of assaulting the Interior Ministry in Rome, Borghese called the operation off. Conjectures suggest that a neo-fascist coup in Italy was not exactly what Washington desired or needed at the time.

Nevertheless, the bombing in Piazza Fontana and the botched coup, with US and NATO warships allegedly waiting on the ready in the Mediterranean, were followed by a relentless frenzy of terrorist attacks. Here is a select list of the bloodiest, perpetrated by the neo-fascist groups:

1970 Gioia Tauro, Calabria: 6 dead; 27 wounded

1972 Peteano di Sagrado, Venezia Giulia: 3 dead, 1 wounded

1973 Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan: 4 dead; 46 wounded

1974 Piazza della Loggia, Brescis: 8 dead; 94 wounded

1974 Train Italicus (between Florence and Bologna): 12 dead; 48 wounded

1980 Bologna Train Station: 85 dead; 200 wounded

What role the "Parallel State"?

Something was really rotten in Italy. Traumatic attacks on civilians, subversions, coups, and false-flags prompted the writer, Pier Paolo Pasolini, to write, shortly before his own murder in 1976, a j'accuse in the pages of the Corriere della Sera: "I know the names, but I have no proof." Justice was slow or reluctant to catch up with the neo-fascist killers (there was better success with the left). Moreover, members of the secret services, the Interior Ministry and military intelligence derailed pursuit, trials, and investigationsa practice that came to be known as depistaggio, or "throwing off course." This was not all that surprising. Mussolini's secret police, army brass, and intelligence, were seamlessly integrated into the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the military of the new Republic, under the supervision of the American occupation and, after 1949, NATO (and NATO's "stay behind," secret program of communist containment). This virtual continuity of the fascist regime, now interlaced with the Mafia, unopposed by the Vatican, supported by shadowy secret societies and Masonic lodges, within the new organs of power popularized the phrase "parallel state" among the Italian public during the "years of lead"one post-fascist, democratic government on show for unsuspecting citizens; another, neo-fascist, in the shadows undermining national sovereignty. Particularly the intelligence services were known to protect members of neo-fascist groups, thwarting the judiciary under the rubric of "state secret."

Pasolini's vatic words rebounded two years later over the fifty-five days of Moro's captivity and murder, when the whole political classfrom the Christian Democrats to the communists, from the socialists to the Vatican his friends, partners, and allies throughout the life of the republic, ignored the written appeals from his cell to negotiate his release. The government took the hard line: no negotiating with terrorists. The Communist Party agreed, fearing to be lumped in the same terrorist bag with the BR if they did. Pope Paul VI, from a window on St Peter's Square called for Moro's release "without conditions." The refusal to negotiate was as if Italy's politicians understood that Moro's fate was sealedthat he was already dead. The Red Brigades' condition for freeing Moro required that the state release from prison a number of their group, a not unreasonable request in cases of political sequestration, Moro noted in his letters. However, the BR also insisted on the recognition by the state of the BR as a political counterpart, as an armed political party, as a fighting force. No state could legitimize the force that would overthrow it. It was a demand that could not be met. This both closes and opens the mystery: on the one hand, the BR made an offer which was refused, and they killed him; on the other hand, they made an offer so intractable that they knew it would be refused, so his death was pre-ordainedby whom?

Giovanni Moro accuses all parties of shielding the truth:

There is still no truthhistorical, judiciary, or political . . .. Moro was killed for his political project. Even the brigatisti have not told the truth: why didn't they make public all that my father revealed under interrogation? In the letters found in 1990those never made public at the timemy father mentions Gladio for the first time. With the revelation of Gladio, the BR could have caused embarrassment to the DC, but they kept it secret. It could have destroyed the image of the state as integral and solid. Why didn't the brigatisti use it? I am sure they are lying to this day. And why did they kill him precisely when a glimmer of hope opened within the DC [for negotiations]? And, finally, why did the state do nothing to save him? Giulio Andreotti {DC] was the political head of the state . . . Francesco Cossiga (DC) was the Minister of Interior. In any other country, a Minister of the Interior to whom such a disaster happened would have been sent to cultivate roses. Instead, he became twice Prime Minister and once President of the Republic.

Losers and Winners

Who, in fact, benefitted from Moro's death? Not the BR, as the state came down hard and opportunistically on Italian leftists of all stripes, arresting 12,000, and inducing 600 to escape to foreign parts, virtually destroying the historic nucleus of the BR. Not Italy, which ditched the compromesso storico, its chance to form a coalition of national unity, representative of the whole spectrum of Italian voters. Not the two historic parties of the Resistance, the parents of the Republic, and the articulators of its progressive constitution, "founded on labor." Morally compromised by their refusal to negotiate Moro's release, both the Communist Party and the Christian Democrat Party lost the confidence and respect of the voters, plunging Italy gradually in its present-day political vacuum, a "failed state" in all but name, a virtual NATO/American military base. The right certainly benefitted, as Mussolini's old party, Movimento Sociale Italiano, morphed into Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) to rule, in tandem with racist, anti-immigrant, separatist Lega Nord (Northern League), and with the party of opportunist media magnate, Silvio Berlusconi. The PCI became the Democratic Party of the Left and then plain Democratic Party (DP). This association of retrograde political forces together with a (counter-) reformist, neo-liberal, mutilated left rules in coalitions on and off as a virtual tributary state and logistical outpost in the American "War on Terror."

Prime Suspect: "Et tu, Kissinger?"

We must recall that only five years before Moro's assassination, Salvador Allende's government was overthrown by a coup, overseen by the CIA. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had justified the action in part by saying, "If we allow Chile to go communist, then Italy will follow." Moro's widow testified that "a high ranking United States political figure" had threatened her husband's life, while on an official visit to Washington with the Italian delegation in 1976. She testified at the parliamentary inquest that the official said, "Either you stop your political line, or you will pay dearly." Moro's close friend and party associate, Minister Giovanni Galloni, identified the official as Henry Kissinger, at the time US Secretary of State. Textually, the words recorded in the documents of one of five trials, read like this:

"Onorevole, lei deve smettere di perseguire il suo piano politico per portare tutte le forze del suo Paese a collaborare direttamente. Qui, o lei smette di fare questa cosa, o lei la pagherà cara. Veda lei come la vuole intendere"

("Your honor, you must stop pursuing your plan of getting all the political forces of your country to collaborate directly. Either you stop this thing, or you will pay dearly. It's up to you how to interpret.")

Giovanni Moro recalls his father's theory of "parallel convergences" when he says:

I insist on repeating it: my father was the man who wanted to move Italy beyond the Cold War. There were oodles of people in Italy and outside Italy who considered him dangerous. This is the explanation that takes into account so many possible involvements.

Conclusion

What should resonate for readers in this old story is the similarity to aspects of presentday American "foreign policy." Think of the "strategy of tension" implicit in "color revolutions," planned, funded, and staged by US entities (including NGOs), aimed at effecting "regime change." Think of the mustering, arming, training, and funding of reactionary forcesfundamentalist Islamists or Neo-Nazisto "destabilize" a place by sowing terror. Think of how funding terrorist rightist groups in Italy evoked the terrorist response of the leftclassic "divide and conquer" imperial strategyand apply it to any place the US interventions have destroyed as integral statesIraq, Libya, and now Ukraine, with ongoing attempts in Syria.

What do you see? Not only parallel stories but "parallel convergences" maybe?

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu

Notes.

On Giulio Andreotti

https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/08/...f-il-divo/

On reopening the Moro case (2013)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ju...tery-italy

Giovanni Moro's interview

http://www.repubblica.it/online/dossier/.../moro.html]]>
The Long Ides of March of Aldo Moro

by LUCIANA BOHNE

How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er,
In states unborn, and accents yet unknown.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Quote:"Beware the Ides of March"or even the day after. On the morning of 16 March 1978 in Rome's central via Fani, the Red Brigades (BR) kidnapped Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, head of the Christian Democratic Party (DC), killing five agents of his entourage. The fifty-five days of his detention in a secret "people's prison" and eventual assassination by his captors on 9 May 1978 marked the climax of over thirty years of internal and external opposition to post-fascist Italy's chartering its own political and economic course by "parallel convergences." It is worth revisiting this long and twisted story as an early template for the bad faith with which the US Empire deals with the world today. It is not a story for conspiracy-phobes.

The plot of all plots: whodunnit?

Moro himself coined the phrase, "parallel convergences," hinting at dark forces behind the facade of the legitimate state. The executors of Moro's death are not in doubt. The BR condemned him to death on 29 April 1978 for "advancing counterrevolutionary programs in the service of bourgeois imperialism," shooting eleven bullets into his body curled up in the trunk of a red Renault on 9 May. Moro's phrase "parallel convergences" challenged translators at the time. Today, we understand it, in part, as the network of economic international elites, whose interest state intelligence structures servethe CIA first among peers. I asked Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and exhaustive histories of CIA, DEA, FBI, what the phrase meant as Moro used it. Valentine said, "A CIA/military intelligence guy I knew well, Col. Tully Acampora, told me that JFK's station chief in Rome starting mid-1963, Bill Harvey, was sent there to help . . . General Giovanni di Lorenzo, head of Italy's military intelligence and security services, subvert the government of Leftist Prime Minister, Aldo Moro."

"Leftist"? Aldo Moro had toyed with the idea of joining the Socialist Party, but he was a devout Catholic and chose the DC instead. He was, however, interested in national sovereignty, the relief of emigration from the underdeveloped South, and an autonomous energy policy of trade with the Middle East. Only a year before the arrival in Rome of CIA station chief, Bill Harvey, the Mafia murdered Italian Energy Minister, Enrico Mattei, a close associate of Moro's, after Mattei's fruitful overtures for fair trade with oil-rich, Third World countries. Behind the Mafia lurked the "Seven Sisters," as Mattei dubbed the cartel of the American oil companiesand the services of the CIA together with Italian secret services. The Italian director, Francesco Rosi, made a film about this dramatic event, titled, The Mattei Affair. The journalist who helped him with research disappeared, presumed killed by the Mafia.

Cold War: Italy's "Stability" Must Be Secured

Italy's vassalage to the US in the Cold War mattered tremendouslymore than Americans know. One of the earliest directives by the then-recently established US National Security Council made no bones about Washington's intentions should the Italian Communist Party win the parliamentary elections in 1948. The US, the directive punctuated, would intervene "even at the cost of a civil war."

Throughout the Cold War, the US considered Italy a front-line state. The "iron curtain" ran vertically north south from Poland's Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Italy's Trieste on the northeast tip of the Adriatic Sea. Italy's eastern neighbor was communist Yugoslavia (until 1948 allied with Moscow) and further south, across a narrow stretch of sea, communist Albania, also allied with Moscow until 1961. Indeed, as NATO and American military bases grew to dot Italy over the decades, their missiles pointed east, at Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Furthermore, Italy's central Mediterranean location, especially Sicily's, provided the US with a key asset location for control of the Middle East. US policymakers were determined to preserve this essential geopolitical asset in their sphere of influence. As they saw it, one thing only threatened American hegemony in Italy: the vastly popular and respected Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest communist party in Western Europe, which had been one of the two "hero" parties of the Resistance against the Nazi-fascist occupation in WW II from 8 September 1943 to 25 April 1945. In 1948, the PCI, allied with all left parties as the Popular Front, would almost certainly have won the parliamentary elections without the funding of a red-scare campaign by the CIA and the fomented fatal incidents and violent clashes at party rallies that seemed to sound the thunder of a coming civil war. Intimidated, the people voted a majority to the he DC, 48% of the vote; close behind came the Popular Front with 30% of the vote. "Without the CIA. The Communist Party . . . would surely have won the elections in 1948," writes Jack Devine, former CIA chief-of-station in Rome, in his book, Good Hunting.

In the early 1950s, Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and Ambassador to Italy, Claire Boothe Luce, insisted that the PCI be outlawed. All Italian political parties, from extreme right to left, refused. They, justifiably pointed out that, because the PCI had been one of the main forces of the Resistance, there would be civil war in Italy if such a measure were enacted. For the Americans, communists in power endangered the security of NATO and the policy of control of the Middle East. When in 1953 William Colby became director of the CIA in Italy his task was to direct clandestine political actions to contain the influence of the PCI. As he wrote in his memoirs, "My task was to prevent that Italy fall in communist hands at the next elections." Keeping the PCI out of the executive was made a condition, agreed upon by President Harry Truman and Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi (DC), for the distribution of funds through the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Italy. Still in the 50s, a secret accord, "Plan Demagnetize," stipulated a close collaboration between the intelligence services of the US and Italy's to set back the influence of communism on Italian society.

In the Pre-Dawn of the Cold War: Mustering Their Mafia and Fascist Battalions

This communist threat had been identified and organized against as early as the allied landing in Sicily, in July of 1943. The OSS (predecessor to the CIA), founded in 1941 with 13,000 agents by OSS chief "Wild Bill" Donovan, had assigned the "Italian Section" to James Jesus Angleton, who came from a masonic family and would head the CIA's Israeli desk by 1950. Angleton recruited a "Mafia Circle"so denominated in CIA documentsto help with the allied landing in Italy. The circle was made up of Mafiosi (including Michele Sindona, who would become notorious for the crack-up of the Franklin National Bank in 1979) suggested by the gangster, Lucky Luciano, whom American naval intelligence approached in prison in Clinton, New York. The "Mafia Circle," however, was not dissolved after the Allies' smooth landing; it widened. The circle rushed to liberate other Mafiosi long imprisoned by Mussolini's regime. Officials of the American occupation put the " liberated "Mafiosi in important positions of administrative, police, and military power throughout Sicily to function as an anti-communist network of collaborators. As mayors, for example, the appointees would eventually exert regional influence on the elections and policies of senators and deputies in the parliament in Rome throughout the life of the first Republicand close ties with the Interior Ministry and its secret services.

Nor did Angleton's anti-communist recruitment stop at the Mafia. He began to gather exponents of the fascist regime, storing them as future assets in allied-occupied Sicily. Chief among them, was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, commander of a frogman flotilla unit in the Italian Royal Navy until 1943, expert marine saboteur, collaborator from 1943 to 1945 with the Nazi puppet regime of the Repubblica of Salo', on on Lake Garda, in Northern Italy. After 1945, Borghese was convicted of Nazi-collaboration but not of war crimes, though it was certainly known that his quasi-private army participated with the SS in some of the most brutal massacres in central Italyperhaps 10,000 victims in what is known as "the war against civilians." When the partisans of Resistance leader, General Cadorna, arrested Borghese in Northern Italy on Liberation Day, 25 April 1945, Angleton drove up north in his jeep on 30 April, took charge of Borghese, dressed him in an American uniform, and took him safely to Rome. In a report to OSS, Angleton wrote that Borghese "represented a long-term interest at the heart of our work." For good measure, Borghese and his loyal army were later absorbed into "Gladio," NATO's super-secret select group of paramilitary operatives but that is another story.

In Sicily throughout the fifties, fascists, through the largesse of funding by the US, organized themselves into neo-fascist groups, with ties to the Italian secret services. The twinning of mafia and fascists, con-joined by the OSS in the 1940s, would prove a formidable force of destabilization in the 1970s, setting off an ideological war in the streets between provocateur neo-fascist groups and extra-parliamentary revolutionary communist formationsa "strategy of tension," as the violence initiated by the right came to be known. That this "tension" broke out at a moment of increasing gains by the left, threatening a communist electoral victory or a share in the executive could not have been a coincidence, Italian public opinion maintains to this day. Italy's strictly limited sovereignty as US client or asset state was being defied by gains in social democracyand the expanding popular democracy was a threat to Italy's "stability" as US vassal.

Italian Reds Are Winning

On the morning of 16 March, this threat was about to become a reality.

Aldo Moro was scheduled to call for a vote of confidence on the proposed new government of "national solidarity"a power share with the Communist Party in the cabinet and the executive branch, a first in Italy, a first in Western Europe. This was the culmination of negotiations for the compromesso storico ("historic compromise") between the DC and the PCI to make the government more representative of the electorate. Three agencies were not pleased: Moscow, because Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the PCI had recognized NATO in order to make power-sharing possible in a NATO-dominated Western European country; Washington, because from long date it had opposed the accession of the communists to the executive; and the Red Brigades, because 1) they thought the PCI should remain an opposition party 2) they regarded the compromesso as a further betrayal or weakening of the PCI's commitment to class struggle initiated by the Resistance and subsequently thwarted by too many PCI "compromises" with the ruling bourgeois parties, and 3) because the compromesso would dent the drive toward the social and political revolution to which they aspired. This was the turbulent local and geopolitical climate on that fatal morning in March.

Killed as a symbol of the liberal state or its sacrificial gravedigger?

Did the BR kill Moro as a symbol of the "bourgeois, liberal-imperialist" state, as claimed? Franco Bonisoli, with Mario Moretti and Lauro Azzolini, a member of the executive command of the Red Brigades at the time of Moro's sequestration, declared in 1998 that for the BR the state consisted of the Christian Democratic Party with Moro at its head. Since the BR by then was aiming at the heart of the state, Moro was the intended symbol. Mario Moretti, who alone among the brigatisti interrogated Moro in prison, said the assassination was the ultimate expression of their Marxist-Leninist line.

But in 1998, Aldo Moro's son, Giovanni, who had been twenty-years old when his father was killed, gave an interview to La Repubblica, insisting that Moro could not have been killed as a mere symbol but to end his political project:

Our impression [in the family] was unanimous: we all felt that he wasn't targeted as a symbol, as later maintained. What was done was a surgical intervention on Italian politics. Moro was the architect of the encounter with the communists. He was a subject at risk. And, anyway, it's enough to look at the years of the bombs. When Moro is marginalized, the bombs, too, are marginalized. His political line is strictly connected to this piece of Italian history.

The "years of lead" and the "strategy of tension": rightists and leftists target the state

To be sure, the year 1978 marked nearly a decade of assaults on members and symbols of state institutions, the media, and the judiciary, a campaign of the left. On the right, the targets were civilians massacred across Italy ("We will bury democracy under a mountain of corpses," wrote a flyer, acknowledging a massacre by Ordine NeroBlack/Fascist Order, a neo-fascist group). Liberal and left public opinion in Italy then and now holds that this terror by the right was planned and carried out in order to destabilize the multi-party state and supplant it with a decidedly rightist, pro-American, and anti-communist one. The opinion was bolstered by the findings of interminable trials and countless judiciary and parliamentary investigations into subversive activities by the neo-fascists in collusion with organs of the state, operating as extensions of external actors. In this opinion, the "years of lead," as the season of violence came to be dubbed in Italy, were the expression of a "strategy of tension," intended also neutralize the Communist Party, which commanded over 34.4% of the popular vote in 1976. The massive support for the Communist Party and its representation in Parliament led, among other progressive measures, to the addition of a Workers' Bill of Rights, enshrined in the constitution in 1970. For the Red Brigades, this wasn't enough, but it was more than enough for anti-proletarian neo-fascists.

In fact, almost simultaneously with the pending enactment of the Workers' Bill of Rights in 1970, the season of terrorism began in earnest in Milan with the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank in Piazza Fontana on12 December 1969, killing seventeen people and wounding 80. The anarchist railway worker, Giuseppe Pinelli, was detained on suspicion, committing suicide by defenestration during a break in interrogations. The absurdity of this reported account provoked the writer Dario Fo (Nobel Prize for Literature) to dramatize it as a farce in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (1970), the most famous and acclaimed of his plays. Movimento Ordine Nuovo, a far-right, neo-fascist organization, was suspected of planting the bomb, but in a series of chaotic trials lasting until 2005 no one was ever punished for the massacre, though a court identified two neo-fascists as the terrorists.

Only three days before the Piazza Fontana bombing, a secret neo-fascist coup, code-named "Tora, Tora," had been called off for reasons never revealed, though three trials followed the disclosure in March 1971 of the plot by the left paper Paese Sera.

In the final trial in 1984, all the accused were found not guilty of conspiring against the state. The plot is known in Italy as the golpe Borghese (the Borghese coup) because Angleton's "asset" Junio Valerio Borghese, the fascist aristocrat, known as "The Black Prince," was central to it (the Spanish word golpe gained currency in Italy after the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973). By the time of the failed golpe Borghese in 1969, Borghese's fascist-era, quasi-private army had been being trained in the US since Angleton's time in Sicily in 1943at first twenty saboteurs; later many more. President Francesco Cossiga, who had been Interior Minister during Moro's sequestration, declared in an interview years later that the "role of the CIA was to fund anti-communist neo-fascist groups." However, in the midst of assaulting the Interior Ministry in Rome, Borghese called the operation off. Conjectures suggest that a neo-fascist coup in Italy was not exactly what Washington desired or needed at the time.

Nevertheless, the bombing in Piazza Fontana and the botched coup, with US and NATO warships allegedly waiting on the ready in the Mediterranean, were followed by a relentless frenzy of terrorist attacks. Here is a select list of the bloodiest, perpetrated by the neo-fascist groups:

1970 Gioia Tauro, Calabria: 6 dead; 27 wounded

1972 Peteano di Sagrado, Venezia Giulia: 3 dead, 1 wounded

1973 Via Fatebenefratelli, Milan: 4 dead; 46 wounded

1974 Piazza della Loggia, Brescis: 8 dead; 94 wounded

1974 Train Italicus (between Florence and Bologna): 12 dead; 48 wounded

1980 Bologna Train Station: 85 dead; 200 wounded

What role the "Parallel State"?

Something was really rotten in Italy. Traumatic attacks on civilians, subversions, coups, and false-flags prompted the writer, Pier Paolo Pasolini, to write, shortly before his own murder in 1976, a j'accuse in the pages of the Corriere della Sera: "I know the names, but I have no proof." Justice was slow or reluctant to catch up with the neo-fascist killers (there was better success with the left). Moreover, members of the secret services, the Interior Ministry and military intelligence derailed pursuit, trials, and investigationsa practice that came to be known as depistaggio, or "throwing off course." This was not all that surprising. Mussolini's secret police, army brass, and intelligence, were seamlessly integrated into the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the military of the new Republic, under the supervision of the American occupation and, after 1949, NATO (and NATO's "stay behind," secret program of communist containment). This virtual continuity of the fascist regime, now interlaced with the Mafia, unopposed by the Vatican, supported by shadowy secret societies and Masonic lodges, within the new organs of power popularized the phrase "parallel state" among the Italian public during the "years of lead"one post-fascist, democratic government on show for unsuspecting citizens; another, neo-fascist, in the shadows undermining national sovereignty. Particularly the intelligence services were known to protect members of neo-fascist groups, thwarting the judiciary under the rubric of "state secret."

Pasolini's vatic words rebounded two years later over the fifty-five days of Moro's captivity and murder, when the whole political classfrom the Christian Democrats to the communists, from the socialists to the Vatican his friends, partners, and allies throughout the life of the republic, ignored the written appeals from his cell to negotiate his release. The government took the hard line: no negotiating with terrorists. The Communist Party agreed, fearing to be lumped in the same terrorist bag with the BR if they did. Pope Paul VI, from a window on St Peter's Square called for Moro's release "without conditions." The refusal to negotiate was as if Italy's politicians understood that Moro's fate was sealedthat he was already dead. The Red Brigades' condition for freeing Moro required that the state release from prison a number of their group, a not unreasonable request in cases of political sequestration, Moro noted in his letters. However, the BR also insisted on the recognition by the state of the BR as a political counterpart, as an armed political party, as a fighting force. No state could legitimize the force that would overthrow it. It was a demand that could not be met. This both closes and opens the mystery: on the one hand, the BR made an offer which was refused, and they killed him; on the other hand, they made an offer so intractable that they knew it would be refused, so his death was pre-ordainedby whom?

Giovanni Moro accuses all parties of shielding the truth:

There is still no truthhistorical, judiciary, or political . . .. Moro was killed for his political project. Even the brigatisti have not told the truth: why didn't they make public all that my father revealed under interrogation? In the letters found in 1990those never made public at the timemy father mentions Gladio for the first time. With the revelation of Gladio, the BR could have caused embarrassment to the DC, but they kept it secret. It could have destroyed the image of the state as integral and solid. Why didn't the brigatisti use it? I am sure they are lying to this day. And why did they kill him precisely when a glimmer of hope opened within the DC [for negotiations]? And, finally, why did the state do nothing to save him? Giulio Andreotti {DC] was the political head of the state . . . Francesco Cossiga (DC) was the Minister of Interior. In any other country, a Minister of the Interior to whom such a disaster happened would have been sent to cultivate roses. Instead, he became twice Prime Minister and once President of the Republic.

Losers and Winners

Who, in fact, benefitted from Moro's death? Not the BR, as the state came down hard and opportunistically on Italian leftists of all stripes, arresting 12,000, and inducing 600 to escape to foreign parts, virtually destroying the historic nucleus of the BR. Not Italy, which ditched the compromesso storico, its chance to form a coalition of national unity, representative of the whole spectrum of Italian voters. Not the two historic parties of the Resistance, the parents of the Republic, and the articulators of its progressive constitution, "founded on labor." Morally compromised by their refusal to negotiate Moro's release, both the Communist Party and the Christian Democrat Party lost the confidence and respect of the voters, plunging Italy gradually in its present-day political vacuum, a "failed state" in all but name, a virtual NATO/American military base. The right certainly benefitted, as Mussolini's old party, Movimento Sociale Italiano, morphed into Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) to rule, in tandem with racist, anti-immigrant, separatist Lega Nord (Northern League), and with the party of opportunist media magnate, Silvio Berlusconi. The PCI became the Democratic Party of the Left and then plain Democratic Party (DP). This association of retrograde political forces together with a (counter-) reformist, neo-liberal, mutilated left rules in coalitions on and off as a virtual tributary state and logistical outpost in the American "War on Terror."

Prime Suspect: "Et tu, Kissinger?"

We must recall that only five years before Moro's assassination, Salvador Allende's government was overthrown by a coup, overseen by the CIA. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had justified the action in part by saying, "If we allow Chile to go communist, then Italy will follow." Moro's widow testified that "a high ranking United States political figure" had threatened her husband's life, while on an official visit to Washington with the Italian delegation in 1976. She testified at the parliamentary inquest that the official said, "Either you stop your political line, or you will pay dearly." Moro's close friend and party associate, Minister Giovanni Galloni, identified the official as Henry Kissinger, at the time US Secretary of State. Textually, the words recorded in the documents of one of five trials, read like this:

"Onorevole, lei deve smettere di perseguire il suo piano politico per portare tutte le forze del suo Paese a collaborare direttamente. Qui, o lei smette di fare questa cosa, o lei la pagherà cara. Veda lei come la vuole intendere"

("Your honor, you must stop pursuing your plan of getting all the political forces of your country to collaborate directly. Either you stop this thing, or you will pay dearly. It's up to you how to interpret.")

Giovanni Moro recalls his father's theory of "parallel convergences" when he says:

I insist on repeating it: my father was the man who wanted to move Italy beyond the Cold War. There were oodles of people in Italy and outside Italy who considered him dangerous. This is the explanation that takes into account so many possible involvements.

Conclusion

What should resonate for readers in this old story is the similarity to aspects of presentday American "foreign policy." Think of the "strategy of tension" implicit in "color revolutions," planned, funded, and staged by US entities (including NGOs), aimed at effecting "regime change." Think of the mustering, arming, training, and funding of reactionary forcesfundamentalist Islamists or Neo-Nazisto "destabilize" a place by sowing terror. Think of how funding terrorist rightist groups in Italy evoked the terrorist response of the leftclassic "divide and conquer" imperial strategyand apply it to any place the US interventions have destroyed as integral statesIraq, Libya, and now Ukraine, with ongoing attempts in Syria.

What do you see? Not only parallel stories but "parallel convergences" maybe?

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu

Notes.

On Giulio Andreotti

https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/08/...f-il-divo/

On reopening the Moro case (2013)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ju...tery-italy

Giovanni Moro's interview

http://www.repubblica.it/online/dossier/.../moro.html]]> <![CDATA[The RFK Tapes]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15866 Wed, 27 Jun 2018 19:00:57 +0000 Lauren Johnson]]> https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/showthread.php?tid=15866
Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-...0413054092

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfyN1c9mI7A]]>
Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-...0413054092

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfyN1c9mI7A]]>