McAdams, JFK Facts, and "Moderation"

[Jim DiEugenio]

At Jeff Morley's JFK Facts, John McAdams complained that somehow, his comments were being put on moderation while I was allowed to comment on him with freedom and alacrity.

The professor lives in a solipsistic world as we all know.

I made the following comments about McAdams on various journalists and their connections to Washington, Clay Shaw and Clay Bertrand, and how Allen Dulles got on the Warren Commission over five days ago. It is still being moderated. So I will post it here in hopes that people over there can finally see it:

Errata:

Looking through this thread, McAdams made so many specious claims, I could not address them all.
But let me address just three of them here:

1. As per the evidence that certain journalists were linked with Washington at the same time they were attacking JG, and then lied about that fact, well obviously, in addition to Sheridan and the CIA, there are James Phelan and Hugh Aynesworth.

Again, its hard to believe that the professor does not know about it since its old news. In the nineties, three documents were declassified by the FBI revealing Phelan's informant status on the Garrison case. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 245) Previously, Phelan had continually denied he had done this.
As per Aynesworth, that document is much older and reveals he was an informant to both the FBI and White House on Garrison. (ibid, pgs. 251-52) But further, in a memo to TIme Life, he wrote to Holland McCombs that they should not let Garrison know that they were playing "both sides" at this time. (ibid, p. 251) In other words, milking him for info at the same time they were preparing to rat trap him.

Of course, everyone except the professor knows that Hugh applied for a job with the CIA in 1962. (ibid) Again, this is easy stuff. You just will not find it on the professor's site. Why?

Second, as per Shaw as Bertrand: At Shaw's trial, it was not just Andrews, that makes no sense. Because Andrews never told Garrison Bertrand was Shaw. (Andrews did say this to Weisberg, But Harold did not reveal this until later since it was told in confidence.)

At the trial, Garrison produced officer Habighorst, and Mrs. Jessie Parker of the American Airlines VIP room with the sign in roster, and Russo. All independent of Andrews.
Also, I cannot help but note with amusement: first McAdams says that well, see, in 1967 many cranks and nuts wanted to get in on Garrison's investigation, this is why they said Shaw was Bertrand. But then, why did Shaw's name come up in 1963? (ibid, p. 388) And why did the Justice Department conclude Shaw and Bertrand were one and the same? No one knew about any of that at the time.

Third, as per the RFK/LBJ. Dulles stuff, Willens tried to get away with this in his book. In his review of the book, Martin Hay gave him such a beating on this that in his reply, Willens did not even bring it up. See Martin's critique at http://www.ctka.net/reviews/willens.html


Just to mention two things Martin brings up of many: when LBJ asked Dulles to serve he said, "You've go to do that FOR ME ." (Emphasis added) Evidence by omission.

Second, when Richard Russell "asked LBJ point blank if he was going to let RFK "nominate someone" , he responded with a simple and direct "No." " Evidence by direct affirmation.

Which makes perfect sense in light of the way the two felt about each other.

Looking through the above, I cannot see why this would be moderated. At least for that long. Its footnoted and sourced. The comments are true, and they correct things that had been said which needed to be corrected since they were not accurate and painted a distorted picture. There is a guy there named Peter who does the actual moderation. I tried to email him once, but it bounced back to me.

BTW, and this is not all.

[Jim DiEugenio]

McAdams has a soul brother, Bill Clarke, at JFK Facts who insists that Kennedy was not really going to withdraw from Vietnam. And he also despises any mention of John Newman's groundbreaking book JFK and Vietnam.

He and I went at it a few times. He then started following me around the site on topics that had nothing to do with Vietnam, trying to bait me.

So I dropped the following reply to him. You won't believe this, but this has been on moderation since June 16th, in other words about a month and a half. So in the interests of full disclosure and fairness, I will post it here:


On another thread, Clarke said that somehow he replied to me on this one and then I failed to do so after he pointed out certain things wrong with Newman's masterful JFK and Vietnam.
Well, Clarke is wrong again. Since I have not posted on this thread as far as I can see.

As far as any thing to argue about, Clarke makes the silly non distinction that Advisors are really combat troops. So that he can say that JFK already had combat troops there. Fine. But that kind of shell game belongs on McAdams' site, not here. Because no one buys that subterfuge.

As per RFK saying JFK was going to pull out, he told it to Ellsberg in no uncertain terms. And Ellsberg said this in public at the Harvard Conference in 1993. I was there.
When Clarke points up in an academically genuine way, where Newman did not note an important point, that is with page numbers and paragraphs, I will reply. Until then, I will ignore him on this issue.

For the last time, NSAM 263 was part of the Taylor-McNamara report, which was not written by those two men but by Krulak under JFK's supervision. It specified the thousand man withdrawal as part of a larger plan to get everyone out by 1965. That announcement was in the press many times, including the front page of the Ny TImes. And Kennedy told McNamara to issue a press release on it in October. He did, since he mentions it in his book.

NSAM 273 reversed 263 in the sense that it allowed direct US involvement in the raids in Tonkin Gulf. Which led to the Tonkin Gulf Incident. NSAM 288, signed by LBJ in March, was the total reversal of NSAM 263, which LBJ tried to conceal as shown in VIrtual JFK by Jim Blight. It was NSAM 288 which allowed LBJ to go ahead and bomb Vietnam over one bullet through one hull. So 288 piggybacked on 273.

Again, this is all factual and, if not footnoted, its referenced. And there is new info here since no one there mentioned NSAM 288, which really was the complete reversal of JFK's policy by LBJ and the JCS. Most of this I had proven with documentation in other places. Clarke did not like it. And further, he had never pointed out with references and page numbers where Newman was being inaccurate. So I did not reply since I did not think it warranted any reply.

Therefore I do not understand why this was censored. I cannot say "moderated" since a month and a half is not moderation, its more like elimination.

Eric Alterman once noted that the way Fox News moves the debate to the right is by constantly saying the MSM is "liberal", which is a way of "working the refs". Is this what McAdams did? Did it work?

[Jim DiEugenio]

One last point about JFK Facts.

Whatever my disagreements with Simkin, he did not allow trolling, at least not for long, and neither does DPF.

The worst kind of trolling is when someone assumes a false identity to hide who they really are.

At JFK Facts, Paul May first trolled under the pseudonym "Photon". Other sites had discovered this alias of his. No one expected May to admit this and he did not. Why? Because May is such a rabid Warren Commission zealot, he makes Von Pein look reasonable at times. Gil Jesus actually told me he was thinking of suing him since he got really insulting and personal with him.

Well, now "photon" has died down, and a new moniker is up there "BradR".

Dollars to donuts this is May trolling. Since "BradR" has all of Photon's hallmarks, and is united with McAdams.

There is nothing worse than a troll. Except for a troll who does not have the guts or honesty to admit who he is.

[Albert Doyle]

It makes you wonder about Morley. They might be intellectual poindexters trying to be objective. However when they allow liars like McAdams and Von Pein equal status they give the store away.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That was one of the comments I made, and it got through.

I said I understand that Morley is trying to engage the other side.

But the other side does not usually debate fairly or honestly. And I mentioned a couple of times where McAdams had done this. For instance, with Gary Rowell's letter to Slawson about the Mexico City tapes surviving, and with Clay Shaw and Permindex. In the former, he--no surprise-- agreed with the CIA cover story that no tapes of Oswald survived after the assassination. Well, how did Slawson and Coleman hear them for the WC then? And what was Win Scott playing for them? And what did Angleton fly down and retrieve out of Scott's safe after his death?

Second, he always said that Shaw did not actually fill out the Who's Who in which he himself listed his name on the board of Permindex. Lisa proved that the person fills this out personally, not the company, since they sent her a form. But McAdams just went along on another site and repeated the cover story.

So then, McAdams says, well how can you prove he attended any meetings? The guy fills out the form saying he was a board member and then he goes to no meetings?

But beyond that, an internal Time-Life inquiry found out that Shaw was actually sent to Rome to reorganize Permindex after it was kicked out of Switzerland. This jibes with the info in the first edition of Destiny Betrayed, where I wrote that two backers of Permindex had visited Shaw in New Orleans for advice on how to get the enterprise approved. (p. 211)

Now obviously, today its hard to get those internal house records since 1.) Permindex was a private company 2.) Permindex was also then thrown out of Italy in the early sixties, 3.) There was a big controversy about the company in the press. It was fueled by the fact that one of the directors resigned because he could not figure out the origin of the huge sums of money handled by the company or figure the destination of the funds. He then recommended the company be liquidated. (ibid, p. 372) Permindex left rather than submit to government inspection.

Now, the idea that a company like that would leave its records behind for public inspection after it moved to South Africa, that is so bizarre as to be ridiculous. And McAdams knows this is the case. So he uses this just to distract and create this phony debate he loves to prolong.

BTW, a lot of these deniers have enlisted at JFK Facts to help the professor: in addition to the troll May, there is Clarke, Jean Davison and Von Pein pops in every once in awhile.

Preview: I will be doing a retrospect on Jean's book Oswald's Game soon. Its worse now than it was then. A book only Von Pein could love.

[Albert Doyle]

McAdams is dumb to not realize that, with his Angleton/OSS background, if Shaw entered his name on Permindex's board and never attended any meetings that would make him even more suspicious. But who is McAdams trying to fool? How dare he ignore Shaw's New Orleans, Trade Mart background and its obvious spook aspects. Is he saying Shaw was just an international tradesman? 'Come on. With all the witnessing of spook involvement against Shaw any claim he was innocent is held up on creaking stilts and duct tape sloppily put together by CIA whores like Phelan, Aynesworth, and Rosemary James.


.

[Dawn Meredith]

I don't know what to make of Morley at this point. In fact I was just reading his site. Does he really think the likes of McAdams and May are not paid disinformants? Or is he just naïve?

Dawn

[Jim DiEugenio]

I think Morley is sincere, that he really does want to engage the other side in a debate.

But as I have noted, this has been proven to be rather unproductive since the other side has been proven to be rather less than forthright.

The other thing is that McAdams has shown he does not read anything new from our side. In other words, he sets himself as this JFK know it all and he doesn't even read the new books!

How can you debate someone like that?

[R.K. Locke]

Perhaps someone should tell Jefferson Morley to read this: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/COPA1998EMS.html#s5

[Marc Ellis]

McAdams and Photon - more often than not - get their ***es handed to them in exchanges.
So I don't think Jefferson Morley favors them. They make fools of themselves far to often for
that to be the case.

It is not hard to demonstrate they don't know what they are talking about.
I got McAdams to admit he wouldn't bother to read "Reclaiming Parkland".
What kind of scholar only reads stuff he agrees with?

Photon is even less of a scholar than McAdams. He asked what possible difference
could it make where the pistol Oswald purportedly used to shoot Tippet came from.
Several posters - including myself - ripped him apart on that.

Chain of custody matters - even if a mob guy walks into a police station
and rubs out the accused. It's still worth a look.

They're both locked into a losing argument. They keep defending it.
They're not open to alternative possibilities.

Gary Mack recently seems to be trying to weasel away from Lone Nut Orthodoxy.
But McAdams and Photon are still trying to defend it.