The Cover-Up: How Was Movement from Phase I to Phase II Justified?

[Phil Dragoo]

Question:

How were the most powerful people in and around government who, innocent of any involvement in the conspiracy, were told and accepted as being true what today we call the Phase I story, mollified when they asked (and I believe many of them did), "If we go along with this cover-up of Cuban and Soviet complicity for the greater good, how and when will the guilty Cuban and Soviet parties be punished?"


Answer:

I posit no one was under the impression Kennedy was killed by Castro or Khrushchev, hence no one asked when either or both Communist voodoo dolls would be punished.

How does one survive in a bureaucracy such as the Beltway. What is the source of power. How is it recognized and respected.

The men closest to Kennedy did not raise any objection. We know now from Tip O'Neill's Man of the House that Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Powers thought the shots came from the front but gave the Commission what the FBI told them to. That Robert and Jackie sent word to Khrushchev they didn't suspect him.

What would be the mindset of a Lodge, a Rusk, a MacNamara, either Bundy, Acheson--they would have known in an instant.

The generals who so opposed JFK were having their best day, resisting fist-pumping and ribald toasts.

The weeping and gnashing of teeth was for black churches and perhaps even the Republicans described by our late friend at the Boston financial house.

But those were downstream from the seat of power.

In the street for the Nixon Counterinnaugural January 1969 as a Rudd Maoist banged the knocker on the steel door of Justice the shirt-sleeved lawyers on the second floor grinned like idiots and shot the bird.

A deep cynicism informed by instinct dispelled any notion of foreign intrigue.

A dose of logic would finish off the notion of a Russian plot. Johnson would not be giving any "we are all mortal" speeches.

Why would the Russians empower a Texan who was going to teach Ho a lesson?

Certainly none of the Southern three (Boggs, Russell, or Cooper bought a Boris & Natasha cartoon) while Warren wet himself running from Ruby's cell.

I think the act put the fear beyond the fear of God into everyone.

Hence they could take that awkward clause from the draft version of NSAM 273 signed the day after they stabled the riderless horse.

I think the event put the fear of a Stephen King clown into these people whose only previous concern was petty office politics.

For the insiders who knew of an Oswald-like substance dragged through the Cuban and Soviet consulates in DF, CIA was a hot topic.

October 2, 1963, the Washington Daily News wrote, "If the United States ever experiences a `Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA".

And the following day, in the New York Times (from wikipedia):

An article concerning Kennedy's relationship with the CIA was written by journalist Arthur Krock, and published in the New York Times on 3 October 1963. The article, entitled "The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam", quotes a high-ranking official in the government as saying "[t]he CIA's growth was likened to a malignancy" which this "very high official was not even sure the White House could control ... any longer. If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government] it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon." The "agency represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone."

Would Washington insiders suspect first foreign Communists or domestic enemies of the peacemongerer withdrawing advisors from Vietnam?

Now, Buckley accosts Lane in the December 1, 1966, Firing Line program--Buckley throws around the term Communist like a big fish he's landed on his boat, but then admits, "I don't care who killed John Kennedy."

And that, I am certain, was the takeaway of every opponent of the dead president, while his supporters were chilled into silence, knowing the killers were in the woods around them.

Compared to CIA, they're all just Bambi.

[David Josephs]

I created this thread to solicit answers to the following question:

How were the most powerful people in and around government who, innocent of any involvement in the conspiracy, were told and accepted as being true what today we call the Phase I story, mollified when they asked (and I believe many of them did), "If we go along with this cover-up of Cuban and Soviet complicity for the greater good, how and when will the guilty Cuban and Soviet parties be punished?"


David Josephs responds by posing a question I didn't ask:

"Who was aware of this Phase 1 story?"


Don't get me wrong: David's is an interesting question -- one worthy of its own thread. But like so many other responses this thread has generated to date, it contributes nothing of value to the effort to answer my original query.

I beg to differ Charles...

"the most powerful PEOPLE in and around government"... "were told and accepted as being true"

Until you NAME who you are referring to THEY are just some faceless pronouns.... and there is no way to determine when/how Phase 1 becomes Phasse 2 for THESE PEOPLE (your specific request in the statement of your question)...

So I went ahead and looked at WHO these people YOU are referring to, ARE...

"If WE go along with the cover-up...."

Charles, who is WE? and how can NOT DEFINING the "WE" be instrumental in answering your question about "THEM" and their being "mollified"?
Damn Charles... why must everything I post or ask be met with "contributes nothing of value" from you every time? are you truly that reluctant to explain yourself and your pronoun filled "question"?
----------------

According to what I found... the only WE who would even KNOW about Phase 1 being false were in the CIA, Hoover and LBJ... everyone else starting in DALLAS was already making the assumption that OSWALD was part of a commie plot....

Hoover describes the OSWALD IMPERSONATOR as a "SECOND MAN DOWN THERE"... and is not sure how THEY fit into the assassination... and says so in his letter to Sr Staff.

WHO at State or Navy knows about Phase 1 as a result of the CIA Cable on the 10th of Oct claiming the man down there is LEE HENRY OSWALD?
and prior to the FBI report being released, WHO was saying that it was OSWALD ALONE?


IMO, until you address those questions WE HERE cannot determine who knew what and when....


Finally CD, please name someone who actually would be concerned with bringing the guilty Cuban/Soviet parties to Justice... WHO are you talking about..
Otherwise your entire question remains vague and impossible to address with any accuracy other than SPECULATION... which we all know is frowned upon...

[Charles Drago]

Finally CD, please name someone who actually would be concerned with bringing the guilty Cuban/Soviet parties to Justice... WHO are you talking about..
Otherwise your entire question remains vague and impossible to address with any accuracy other than SPECULATION... which we all know is frowned upon...

Nice try, David.

However, I opened this thread not with knee-jerk conclusions based on unsubstantiated speculation.

As clearly stated up front, the premise for my question-as-thread is Peter Dale Scott's three-phase conspiracy model.

Having accepted Scott's hypothesis for the sake of argument, I next offered my own informed speculation and asked questions.

Repeat: I asked questions.

Never did I state that either Scott's viewpoint or my own should be taken as fact "before anyting [sic] else..." as you did with the wholly unsupported-by-fact No Name Key photo ID hypothesis.

Which is to say -- and this remains the all-important point that you cannot or will not concede -- I NEVER objected to your act of speculation; rather I objected then and I CONTINUE to object to your immediate and unjustified conflation of speculation with established fact.

In other words, I dismiss your most recent post as a weak "gotcha" effort.

In it, you state, entirely missing the point, "According to what I found... the only WE who would even KNOW about Phase 1 being false were in the CIA, Hoover and LBJ... everyone else starting in DALLAS was already making the assumption that OSWALD was part of a commie plot...."

My only reaction: Keep looking.

"Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach wrote a revealing memo which stated 'The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.' The memo also noted the rumors of a Communist conspiracy based on Oswald's sojourn in Russia, but also noted: "Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat--too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced."

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.ph...assination


AND LISTENING

"This fascinating conversation between President Johnson and his old mentor Senator Richard Russell is very revealing. Johnson begins by reading to Russell the announcement of the formation of the President's Commission to study the assassination, to which he has named Russell. Not realizing that it's a done deal, Russell complains that he 'couldn't serve on it with Chief Justice Warren--I don't like that man' and pleads with Johnson to reconsider. LBJ tells him that 'Dick, it's already been announced and you can serve with anybody for the good of America, and this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface and we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khruschev [sic] and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour.'

"Toward the end of the conversation, Johnson re-invokes the image of 40 million Americans killed in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, and then tells Russell how he got Warren to serve on the Commission. After Warren refused several times, Johnson called him to the Oval Office and told him 'what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City,' whereupon Warren began crying and told Johnson 'well I won't turn you down, I'll just do whatever you say.'"


http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/l...63_2nd.htm

[Charles Drago]

Damn Charles... why must everything I post or ask be met with "contributes nothing of value" from you every time?

Because I am morally obliged to speak the truth to the degree that I am able to discern it.

[David Josephs]

You have Katzenbach and Russell...

Charles... you ask a very specific question about PEOPLE and then get all miffed when you are asked to NAME THESE PEOPLE.

You come to a conclusion about the nature of these PEOPLE and how they need to me MOLLIFIED (you did write that CD, remember?)

Read what YOU asked:
How were the most powerful people in and around government who, innocent of any involvement in the conspiracy, were told and accepted as being true what today we call the Phase I story, mollified when they asked (and I believe many of them did), "If we go along with this cover-up of Cuban and Soviet complicity for the greater good, how and when will the guilty Cuban and Soviet parties be punished?"

NOBODY asked this question CD... Katzenbach wanted to be sure all roads pointed to Oswald and that the evidence was just too "obvious"...
WHO ASKED THIS QUESTION CD?

Did Katzenbach need to be mollified when the FBI report came out saying Oswald was alone? If anything Katz was HELPING with steering the direction away from Phase 1 and into Phase 2... do you supposed HE was aware of that though?

The Thread's title CD: The Cover-Up: How Was Movement from Phase I to Phase II Justified?

You seem to forget that PHASE 1 was a CIA story, a set-up... nothing else. Whoever was impersonating OSWALD on the phone was not doing a very good job and was easily dismissed... In the months leading up to Nov OSWALD was painted as pro-Castro, pro-shooting, pro-Russia... Duran and Alvarado were also EASILY DISMISSED... With planes screaming towards Cuba, the Situation Room tells us there was NO CONSPIRACY, bring the planes back.

As much as we'd like to think they were all HAWKS, declaring war on a country is no simple thing... you honestly think that if JFK DID go ahead with blowing Cuba off the map he would not have been killed anyway? now THAT thought is naive.

So you ask very simply... how was Phase 1 to Phase 2 JUSTIFIED? The proof linking Castro and Russia with OSWALD was pathetic... it was designed to be pathetic so anyone pulling at the stray strings would unravel it and make everyone look bad... Phase 2 is the story of american history... there are NO CONSPIRACIES in the assassinations of our leaders.... NONE. (ask Joe Streetcorner who killed Lincoln....)

So please Charles if you are going to use pronouns like PEOPLE and THEY and WE, who all need to be "mollified" over their outrage that an obvious Communist-backed Killer kills JFK yet we are presenting him as a LONE NUT KILLER like all US assassins in history... You do us and yourself a disservice by not NAMING who you are referring to.... and explaining WHEN you think they knew these things....

Again, WHO KNEW of Phase 1 and would need to be mollified once that was changed to Phase 2... other than Bobby? and when does PHASE 2 actually begin OTHER THAN with the leaking and publishing of the FBI report. Without identifying WHO you are referring to... you are basically saying very little Charles other than faceless pronouns knowing something you haven't proven and needing to be mollified for something they haven't asked...

I really do not chose to be difficult here CD... but your insistence that you not pony up the evidence that even leads you to the question is a surprise... I've read PDScott and enjoy what he writes. Don't even THINK to treat me like I don't know the subject matter instead of addressing the glaring shortcomings of your question....

How was it justified? There are no conspiracies in the great US of A... that's how.
Now... WHO knew OSWALD was commie backed and wanted their pound of Commie flesh after being "mollified"?

Can't state it any more simply or clearly than that CD.

[Charles Drago]

It is a failing of which I'm not proud -- especially in light of the fact that my dear friend and mentor, George Michael Evica, lived for opportunities to teach and possessed seemingly limitless reserves of patience.

Patience with even the most impenetrable of minds.

Here's my answer, David:

I have neither the temperament nor the patience to attempt to slash my way through what I find to be your impenetrable smilax of interwoven misinterpretation, circular reasoning, and what are either unwitting misstatements of my original posts (the product, I must assume, of an utter lack of sophistication in matters relating to this case) or perhaps even intentional misstatements in service to hostile agendas.

I'll make it simple for you: I have concluded that you either cannot grasp the concepts I put forward, or you refuse to grasp them.

Either way, when you address me you commit the unforgivable sin of boring me.

You shall now accuse me of being evasive. And for once your charge is right on the money.

I am indeed evading further discourse with you for the same reason I might evade opportunities to discuss Wittgenstein with a wallaby.

[David Josephs]

There's an old saying that those who can't teach, coach...

I guess those that can't teach or coach, co-open their own forums so they can say what they want without any recourse or responsibility.

You're question and therefore your thread is full of pronouns and assumptions with no connection to reality... talk about Wittgenstein with a wallaby.

You find yourself unable to point to those needed to be mollified... so you get offensive instead.
You find yourself unable to articulate the question or your assumed solution without using "they", "we" and "people" yet DEMAND a specific answer.

Charles, you take what is a forum chock full of interesting and interested people and denegrate it so you can achieve some ongoing feeling of superiority.

Had you not noticed that NO ONE is playing your game here? That you've had to repeat your poor excuse for a topic and question half dozen times for EVERYONE who has read it...
As if speaking louder, like Fetzer, will aid understanding...

Maybe, just maybe... you're so off base with the question and the inferior way it is repeatedly presented you simply want to distance yourself from such a poor posting?

I've asked an honest question in an attempt for you to show off that big brain of yours... and all you give us is Katzenbach and Russell?

Russell was one of your Phase 1 believers who needed to be mollified? Katzenbach? This is the cornerstone of your argument and as a result, your question....

Can you be bothered to name a single person who felt that Cuban/Russian "PARTIES" (another pronoun) needed to be "punished"? and who these PARTIES are?

Of course you can't... and I'm the one boring you?
That's fine CD... I'm done trying to break thru.... all you seem to care about is strutting like a peacock and insulting others when you are challenged about anything....

Now, get your red Sharpie, look for grammar and spelling mistakes, side step the questions and ad hom your way back into the members good graces...

Holier-than-thou demagogue.... keep it up big man, maybe you can drive away EVERYONE who questions you...
on a site where those who KNOW are supposed to enlighten those who don't.... not spit in their face and run away

[Greg Burnham]

I so wish that I was up to enough strength as to be capable of participating in this fight. David is taking Charles much too literally...about some choice elements
but not nearly literally enough about others. It is a common error--not necessarily connected to Charles, per se--among the thin of skin. Crying "foul" from the
depth of a fox hole does little to deter the enemy especially when the foul was scored as the result of comrades sharing the same too small and uncomfortable
a space while awaiting the inevitability of the real battle to come. My advice FWIW: Place your weapons on safe mode until you see the whites of their eyes.

[Phil Dragoo]

[David Josephs]

Sorry you feel that way Greg....

In My world, pronouns are for people who dont have the information and dont want to bother doing the work.

PEOPLE, WE and THEY in the context of this conversation is worthless...

If CD is to make a statement that PEOPLE will behave in a certain way... and then ask WHY that is so... "How was this movement justified?"

Is it not important to know WHO these "PEOPLE" are in forming a response?
He presents a question with the solution built in... that's called a tautology...

Since "this" is happening, "THAT" must be the response,... and CD is asking "how?"

Asking what evidence there is that "THIS" is happening in the first place - is out of line?
Assuming THAT when "THIS" has yet to be proven is what we are so wary of to begin with, no?

I'm not crying foul Greg.... I am asking the man to qualify his conclusion from which he asks the question...
as I am saying there were no PEOPLE needing to be "mollified" to begin with.

NOt a single soul crys out, "What are we going to do to get back at those Cuban/Russian commies who helped Oswald kill JFK"
And I've already stated that "LONE NUT" only comes into being thru the FBI report's conclusion.

Truth be told.... PEOPLE knew it was the CIA's banana republic take-over team the entire time... and NOBODY was EVER going to ask those questions.

You want to make this more complicated, fine.... but I see CD taking what Peter Scott wrote and twisting it into some strange, pronoun laced question rather than looking at the who/what/where/when and how of Phase 1 and Phase 2 and understanding what was actually taking place.

He knows everything Greg... on every subject and every thread.... and y'all chuckle and look the other way while rolling your eyes... meanwhile those of us who are actually interested in learning something are accused....

He takes the fun and enjoyment out of being inquisitive, of wanting to hear something of substance... out of just being here.
If I'm alone in these feelings... so be it... but if challenging/questioning the man is just not allowed... screw it.

I'm done. :banghead: