My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Tracy Riddle]

Nice video, Joseph. How old was Tippit's father when you interviewed him?

There's an old Larry Ray Harris article in this newsletter about the laundry tag in the jacket. He also reveals that Westbrook and Stringer were not involved in the jacket discovery as the DPD claimed.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%...m%2027.pdf

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks, Tracy. I appreciated the opportunity
to do this episode on J. D. Tippit for Len Osanic's informative and valuable series
50 REASONS FOR 50 YEARS.

As I mention in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE (p. 268),

"One of the key, previously unexplored research sources I
found was Tippit's father, Edgar Lee Tippit, whom
I interviewed at his modest home in rural Clarksville
[Texas] in December 1992, when the elder Tippit was a vigorous ninety years old
(he lived until 2006, at age one hundred and four). . . . Edgar Lee told me he
had never been interviewed before ([Dale K.] Myers wrote in
one of the footnotes in his 702-page book [WITH MALICE: LEE
HARVEY OSWALD AND THE MURDER OF OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT, 1998],
published while Edgar Lee was still living, 'Little is known about
Tippit's parents, Edgar Lee and Lizzie Mae Tippit'). Edgar Lee
and I had a wide-ranging interview for several hours."

[Peter Lemkin]

5.0 out of 5 stars The Downhill Slide of Democracy, July 23, 2013
By
Judy Schavrien "professor, psychotherapist" (Oakland, CA United States)



This review is from: Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (Paperback)
Regarding the NSA scandal--what one might call the surveillance conspiracy--Jimmy Carter recently said in Der Spiegel (July 17, 2013) that "America has no functioning democracy at this moment." He has also praised Snowden's courage, hoping it would give the United States a salutary shakeup. When did the tipping point occur? When did democracy's downhill slide begin? According to Joseph McBride, playing journalistic and scholarly tour guide as he takes us Into the Nightmare, it began with the successful killing of JFK--and of Officer J.D. Tippit as well--on November 22, 1963, gaining momentum with a seemingly well-orchestrated coverup in the wake. Luckily, Professor McBride accomplishes an astonishing feat in offering his reinterpretation, one that profits from his three decades of diligent research on the topic and his interdisciplinary and encyclopedic ability to remember and arrange.

If you think Professor McBride is one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, be sure to read his chapter on the CIA's campaign, memos and all, to throw doubt on any who might come to question the Oswald-only version of the assassination, who might instead argue that there were a number of killers, e.g. Grassy Knoll marksmen as well. It is possible you will recognize, as you read the CIA memo, tag lines that hang out in your own or a friend's mind, the prefab objections to conspiracy theorists. On the other hand, Watergate, Iran/Contra, NSA may float to the surface of your mind and you may have to admit that conspiracies do happen. If they can happen from the governmental side, why not from the side of the assassins? Or were the two sides one and the same?

Some players include the CIA, the anti-Castro Cubans, big oil and the mafia: LBJ and even the elder Bush (Chapter 10) would have a fair amount to explain as well. The doubts regarding such players are by no means wildly raised, but very carefully, very systematically. "Paranoid" is one of the buzzwords the CIA had suggested for its campaign against conspiracy theorists: It is right there in the memo that McBride documents. But the McBride book gives not only evidence that confirms its theories but also that which disconfirms: good research.

I refer, in this case, to the evidence bearing on the Warren Commission report's "lone nut" version of the killings, with Oswald having been responsible for not only Kennedy's death and Governor Connally's injury--including using just one bullet that got them both, no less--but also for Officer Tippit's death en route to Oswald's own attempted escape. This book is, henceforth, a must-read for any with an ongoing interest in what remains an open case. That it does remain an open case is proven by the simple fact that the Warren Commission report, with Oswald as the "lone nut," has been later contradicted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, which finally concedes that two shooters must have been active.

McBride himself points out unique contributions as he goes along, the biggest one being his new and telling research on the J.D. Tippit death, research that begins to link Tippit with Ruby and the mafia, big oil, and the extreme right wing. It must be remembered as well, which McBride demonstrates, that, should LBJ have been involved in the JFK assassination, which is not proven, although there is documentation of his involvement in the coverup, he profited enormously from reversing JFK's intentions to gradually withdraw from Vietnam, since he owned substantial stock in Kellogg, Brown & Root, which had been absorbed in 1962 into Halliburton, both of which enjoyed a pile of non-competitive contracts for the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. With the death of JFK, LBJ also ducked a scandal about his own finances which would have burst upon the scene any minute. Oddly enough, then, solving the Tippit death accurately, rather than throwing that one on Oswald as well--who cried out when being led off "I'm just a patsy!"--is crucial.

Finally, McBride fashions this book of non-fiction, this history, as a Bildungsroman. The "Bildung" or education of an idealistic youth he tells in all its idiosyncracy: The author began as an ardent believer in Catholicism, America, and its free media, with two journalists for parents; he gradually lost that bloom of innocence, resisting along the way, and acquired the wound of experience; he tells the story so vividly that it becomes the American journey itself. Luckily, the wound does not prevent his own dogged progress, patriotic even or especially in its deeply skeptical approach. Blood, however, stains the pages. Without not only McBride's wakeup call but also the many other calls that are right now sounding, both about a political shadow government and even (cf. Catherine Austin Fitts) a financial shadow system as well, and without our actively heeding those calls, there will be, at home and abroad, more blood to come. Hannah Arendt has said (University of Chicago, lecture series, early `70's) that Americans at the founding wanted to be free from governing and concern with government rather than free to exert themselves in self-governing. This is a luxury we can no longer afford, perhaps could never afford. May it soon be said again, in a voice not of innocence but of experience, that America has a functioning democracy.

[Joseph McBride]

http://thecommentarytrack.com

Just online, an interview I did with Frank Thompson for
his podcast site The Commentary Track. Frank is an erudite
film historian and historian of American culture whose many
books include works on The Alamo and Abraham Lincoln. We
discuss John F. Kennedy's expert use of the media, film and
television coverage of and reflections of his life and death,
and the issues I discuss about his assassination and administration
in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS
OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT.

[Joseph McBride]

I just returned from two days of shooting in Dallas for director-producer
Ryan Page's documentary on the assassination and related
events, DALLAS IN WONDERLAND, which is scheduled to be
released this year, followed by his feature film about a fictional
director making the same documentary. It's a fascinating
project that has expert research from Joseph Green and James Page, who are coproducers of the documentary and
wrote it with the director. Among the other interviewees so
far have been Richard Belzer, Jim DiEugenio, Dick Russell,
and Dr. David Mantik, with more to follow shortly. I did another interview earlier with
the filmmakers in San Diego. In Oak Cliff we covered the Tippit
murder, Tippit's hunt for Oswald before Oswald was officially
known to the Dallas Police Department, and the capture
of Oswald at the Texas Theatre. We also filmed in Dealey Plaza, where
I went over the geography of the assassination and the shooting
locations and the trajectories of the shots.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Joseph just a couple of comments first.

On Vietnam I think you understate the case that JFK was getting out of Vietnam. Books by David Kaiser, Gareth Porter, Howard Jones, Gordon Goldstein have combined to make a much stronger case that JFK was resistant to a land from day one. Also on page 59 your mentioning of nuclear weapons in the context of JFK's "extraconstitutional" bellicose rhetoric -- citing Gary Wills-- is, IMO, misplaced given that in many cases such as Laos and the 1961 Vietnam advisor increase, what JFK was specifically seeking to bargain away was the JCS's insistence on keeping the nuclear option as one more quiver in their quill.

Secondly one of the weaknesses in this otherwise excellent book is IMO , a general failure to outline the degree to which the CIA was actively undermining JFK in foreign policy . You do make some occasional points on this re for example Cuba; but the systematic nature of CIA disregard for JFK's policies fails to come through.

This is not surprising considering how difficult it is to write a book that covers BOTH policy and the details of the assassination as yours does.

Also you quote Theodore White on LBJ the day of the assassination: "On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, leaned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick" That phrase ending in "guiding the quick" is that an allusion to some famous quote that I am missing? Also what do you think White means when he says guiding the quick. Does he offer any specifics there?

[Charles Drago]

Also you quote Theodore White on LBJ the day of the assassination: "On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, leaned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick" That phrase ending in "guiding the quick" is that an allusion to some famous quote that I am missing? Also what do you think White means when he says guiding the quick. Does he offer any specifics there?

It's "quick" as in "the quick (the living) and the dead."

[Joseph McBride]

Joseph just a couple of comments first.

On Vietnam I think you understate the case that JFK was getting out of Vietnam. Books by David Kaiser, Gareth Porter, Howard Jones, Gordon Goldstein have combined to make a much stronger case that JFK was resistant to a land from day one. Also on page 59 your mentioning of nuclear weapons in the context of JFK's "extraconstitutional" bellicose rhetoric -- citing Gary Wills-- is, IMO, misplaced given that in many cases such as Laos and the 1961 Vietnam advisor increase, what JFK was specifically seeking to bargain away was the JCS's insistence on keeping the nuclear option as one more quiver in their quill.

Secondly one of the weaknesses in this otherwise excellent book is IMO , a general failure to outline the degree to which the CIA was actively undermining JFK in foreign policy . You do make some occasional points on this re for example Cuba; but the systematic nature of CIA disregard for JFK's policies fails to come through.

This is not surprising considering how difficult it is to write a book that covers BOTH policy and the details of the assassination as yours does.

Also you quote Theodore White on LBJ the day of the assassination: "On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, leaned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick" That phrase ending in "guiding the quick" is that an allusion to some famous quote that I am missing? Also what do you think White means when he says guiding the quick. Does he offer any specifics there?

Nathaniel, Thanks for your detailed comments. "The quick" is an old-fashioned
way of referring to people who are alive and well.

I agree that JFK was generally resistant to widening the U.S. involvement
in Vietnam, and that he was trying to disengage in 1963, but he tried to play both sides
while temporizing until his expected 1964 reelection and issued
conflicting statements on the subject to preserve his options and/or keep
the opposition from becoming too strong (a failed attempt, since
his death changed everything). John Newman's
book JFK AND VIETNAM is precise and authoritative on Kennedy's complicated
efforts to keep us from a wider war, the one that he was resisting and
was set in motion by his death.

As for the Kennedy rhetoric I personally heard in April 1960, he was
reiterating what Garry Wills has analyzed as the unilateral
(and unconstitutional) presidential claim post-Hiroshima to sole authority
to wage war. It's not inconsistent with trying to keep the
control of nuclear weapons out of the hands of the military and
keep it under control of the executive branch. But as Wills notes,
presidents since 1945 have bypassed Congress in waging
war, the right reserved to Congress in the Constitution. We haven't had a declared war since World War II, although
some presidents have gone for phony kinds of fig-leaf resolutions
to back them up, most notoriously the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

I no doubt could have gone into much more detail on the CIA and its opposition to JFK,
but in a long book focused on the assassination and related
events, I had to take a compressed approach to the wide picture
and focus on incidents and events and statements, including those of the
CIA and their affiliated groups, that most
directly related to Kennedy's death. I tried at every turn to
keep an eye on the "deep politics," as Peter Dale Scott
calls it, and I hope I succeeded.

Thanks again for your close reading.

[Joseph McBride]

http://intothenightmare.com


My website for my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE
KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT
has now been expanded and updated with much new coverage
over the last few weeks, including a video I did on Officer Tippit for Len Osanic's 50 REASONS FOR 50 YEARS series,
numerous radio interviews, print interviews and reviews, and news about
my appearances in conjunction with the book. It's
hard to keep up with all this highly gratifying response, and I've also heard
from many readers who identify with my journey as a young
person in the 1960s gradually learning, over time, how our
country really works, as I've investigated these events for decades.

[Norman Nelson]

Dr. McBride -- I'm about to purchase your book on Amazon. However. it indicates that it is a paperback. My eyesight isn't as sharp as it once was, so the print in an ordinary paperback is difficult for me to read. Is your book by chance the size of a trader paperback?

Thanks for any clarification you can offer.

Norman