John Newman, Shenon and the declassified Robarge article on DCI John McCone

[Anthony Thorne]

This conversation appeared on John Newman's Facebook page today and I thought the contents were relevant and interesting enough to share - thanks in advance to the participants (the contents are all public on John Newman's wall so hopefully no-one is irked by the reprinting). The participants are Newman, Joseph Backes and Dan Hardway. The discussion references the declassified document DCI JOHN MCCONE AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, linked here.

[URL="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF"]John McCone document
[/URL]
.........

John Newman: Shenon's latest piece in Politico ("Yes the CIA Director was Part of the JFK Assassination Coverup") is a continuation of the newest stagebegun in 2013of the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Robert Kennedy got his brother John killed and then worked to cover it up. The genesis of this new stage was a call from a Warren Commission lawyer to Shenon, who then fed Shenon and used him as the mouthpiece for this outrageous scheme. The Castro-did-it propaganda was part of the true coverup of the plot to kill JFK, and it was in play even before the shots were fired in Dallas. But I knew when I read Shenon's 2015 paper edition of his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, that we would be facing a newer, carefully orchestrated campaign to stick it to the Kennedys right at the time when the battle lines are being drawn to force the releaseas required by the JFK Records Actof the remaining JFK records by October 2017. Now, Shenon takes a recently released internal CIA analysis (which also dates to 2013) about DCI McCone blocking the CIA's anti-Castro plots from the Warren Commission, and uses it to bolster his (Shenon's) baleful version of history. I will comment on that (David Robarge's) analysis after thoroughly reading it. Shenon's Politico piece ends by restating a myth he hopes to make stick: that President Johnson appointed former DCI Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission "at the recommendation of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy." I will hold back here on commenting about this fabrication because David Talbot's new book, The Devil's Chessboard, (to be released next week) so thoroughly (pp. 572-574) demolishes it.

--JN: Shenon's article says Robarge's formerly classified article was quietly released last fall and is available on the CIA's public website. I can't find it. Can anyone else?

Dan Hardway: If you find it please share. Haven't found it yet.

John Newman: Robarge's article was originally published in the classified edition of 9/13 Studies in Intelligence. It is not in the unclassified version which you can see. But Shenon says it was declassified last fall. Robarge has an article on the Congo in that unclassified edition, but nothing on the Warren Commission.

Joseph Backes: Here's the Robarge article:

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49...bb_026.PDF

John Newman: Joe found it (good job)--see his link above. So, Shenon is incorrect--it's on the NSA (‪nsarchive.gwu.edu) website not ‪cia.gov

Joseph Backes: It's based on a book about McCone that Robarge wrote in 2005 that the CIA has classified. So, is there any chance someone somewhere, like Wikileaks, or Anonymous people has a digital copy of that book? Or the NSA folks?

So, on the bottom of page 3, the first paragraph, the citation part, not the main body of text, it says the CIA opened counterintelligence and security files on Oswald in early November, which could be within hours or days of Oswald's defection on October 31, 1959. Is this information that we knew, or is this new information?

John Newman: We know that CI was tracking right away and that the security office had started a "soft file" which was just typed entries on plain white paper with an "S" number. I think it this is an important confirmation of the fact the toe Soviet Russia Division was shut out at this early point.

Joseph Backes: Warren Commission Document #1 is a FIVE volume FBI report. On page 6 of the article Roberge says it's four.

John Newman: I have now read the David Robarge piece. It's actually one declassified chapter from a book he wrote on DCI John McCone's history as the Director of Central Intelligence. The chapter is "DCI McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." It is an important analysis that Shenon has clearly cherry picked through (which is what Shenon did with the HSCA work on the case), taking and spinning sentences that paint McCone as the leader of an effort to steer the Warren Commission away from the critical facts supporting Shenon's theme that RFK got his brother killed. There is no support for this kind of agitprop in the Robarge chapter, although one can wonder about the timing of its declassification and whether McCone's actions at the time (which he later regretted) would help the current campaign to breathe life into the Castro-did-it myth. Researchers will find a lot of important details--names of CIA officers and their roles in the rush of events after the assassination. When you have read this chapter, it is clear that Robarge is not arguing or even implying that Castro killed Kennedy and that RFK was responsible.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Anthony,

Thanks for posting this. Its very important material from three good researchers exposing the fraud that Philip Shenon was and is. He probably deliberately screwed up where the Robarge article was, in order to misdirect any prospective reply to his misquoting it.

People should write Politico and point out what Shenon is up to.

See, this is the really important battle that is going on, which Janney's nonsense is a diversion from.

2017 is shaping up right now. And Shenon is still using the Castro did it, blame the Kennedys, strategy.

[Anthony Thorne]

I'm wondering now what else they'll dump on us in the next 12 months to hinder the declassification. I'm going to mention some of this in my Amazon review of DEVIL'S CHESSBOARD, which I'm reading next week.

David Talbot has also responded:

David Talbot responds to Phil Shenon:

Phil Shenon continues to recycle the myth -- long propagated in CIA circles -- that Fidel Castro was behind the JFK assassination. He now adds another piece of disinformation, asserting that Robert Kennedy also fell for this CIA propaganda line. This is completely false. I interviewed over 150 close friends, colleagues and family members of Bobby Kennedy, including Kennedy administration officials and insiders, for my book, "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years." NONE of them indicated to me that Castro was among Bobby's leading suspects in the assassination of his brother. Instead, they said that RFK immediately focused on the CIA and its ANTI-Castro operation as the source of the plot against President Kennedy. My sources included close advisors of Bobby Kennedy like Adam Walinsky, Frank Mankiewicz, Ed Guthman and Richard Goodwin -- as well as assassination researchers with whom Bobby Kennedy met during his secret search for the truth. I also interviewed the widow and close associates of Walter Sheridan, Bobby Kennedy's top investigator ever since his days as the chief of the 1950s Senate rackets probe. Who are Shenon's sources?

RFK was fully aware of how politically explosive his search for the truth about Dallas was, considering the enormous power wielded by the U.S. security forces that he suspected, and the criminal underworld elements with whom they were aligned. So he was very careful in his public remarks about the Warren Report, which he privately considered a whitewash. It is clear from my research that Bobby Kennedy was biding his time until he could return to the White House, at which point he planned to use the full powers of the executive branch to track down those in Washington who were responsible for murdering his brother.

Shenon also repeats the old canard that RFK urged President Johnson to appoint former CIA director Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission. This bogus story apparently originated with Lyndon Johnson himself, who alleged in his 1971 memoir that Bobby recommended both Dulles and John McCloy, another Republican pillar of the Wall Street-national security world. Johnson, of course, was one of the most notorious fabulists who ever occupied the Oval Office. And his hatred of Bobby Kennedy, who by 1971 was conveniently dead, was one of the core passions of LBJ's life. The notion that Johnson would huddle with his arch enemy to make such a politically delicate choice as the makeup of the Warren Commission is absurd. So is the the idea that Bobby himself would recommend two men who were political enemies of his late brother -- two men with whom JFK had strongly clashed over national security policy. In truth, as close CIA associates of Dulles later revealed, such as Richard Helms, Dulles himself arm-twisted his way onto the Warren Commission, where he and McCloy soon established themselves as the dominant players.

This is one more example of Shenon's gullibility when it comes to covering CIA-related issues. In fact, his new "scoop" in Politico about the Warren Commission is based on newly declassified excerpts from a CIA biography of John McCone, Dulles's successor as CIA director, by CIA historian David Robarge. Shenon treats Robarge's institutional version of this history as an important revelation,when it should be treated with sharp journalistic skepticism. All documents that the CIA freely releases, like Robarge's redacted report on McCone, are made public for a reason. In this case, it's clearly part of the CIA's 50-year campaign to manage public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination.
The mainstream media in this country, from the New York Times (where Shenon once worked) on down, has never had the investigative courage of Bobby Kennedy to deeply examine the true source of the epic crime that took place in Dallas in November 1963. The Washington Post's legendary editor, Ben Bradlee, had the honesty to tell me why, during an interview late in his life. He was afraid it would hurt his rising journalism career, if he dared to open these doors, Bradlee told me.

This is why when Americans search for the truth about the Kennedy assassination, they must look outside these mainstream media circles for the truth, at the pathbreaking work done by independent journalists, historians and citizen researchers.

[Anthony Thorne]

The genesis of this new stage was a call from a Warren Commission lawyer to Shenon, who then fed Shenon and used him as the mouthpiece for this outrageous scheme.

Which Warren Commission lawyer is Newman referring to here?

[Jim DiEugenio]

According to Pat Speer, its Specter.

In other words, Arlen is now haunting us from the grave.

[Anthony Thorne]

It does sound likely that it was him. The inaugural exhibition of the Arlen Specter Centre for Public Service at Philadelphia University (jokes about that title really write themselves) notes two speakers appearing circa the anniversary last year - Shenon with his volume, and former Warren Commission assistant counsel Howard P. Willens with HISTORY WILL PROVE US RIGHT.

http://www.philau.edu/spectercenter/singlebullet.html

[Tom Scully]

Multiple coincidences are not uncommon, even emanating from the tiniest and most unlikely populations, or........ only food for thought.
Our individual credibility seems to amount to finding the devil in the details, or not..... I guess.

From Bakersfield (Lisa Mccubbin, sponsored by Rogers and Anthony Brandon, to The Vineyard, home of the Brandon brothers father, Lawrence Brandon, to The Martha's Vineyard Gazette, owned by James Reston, and his son James, after him, to Philip Shenon, Reston's NY Times intern in 1982, recommended for that opportunity by Steve Rattner.) to the Vineyard, to Op Mockingbird, and what has happened in between?

Lisa McCubbin - Motion Picture Production, Motion Picture ...

aeionline.com/lisam.html
When this spunky mother of two heard that KERN-AM talk radio in Bakersfield, California was looking for a new radio talk show host, she instinctively knew she .... (the Brandon family owned KERN-AM snapped up the housewife with no broadcasting experience)[URL="http://www.americangeneralmedia.com/about/company-history"]

American General Media - Company History[/URL]
www.americangeneralmedia.com/about/company-history
AGM - Company History Following in the footsteps of their father and company founder, Lawrence Brandon, Anthony and Rogers Brandon have spent many

Lawrence Brandon | The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's ...

vineyardgazette.com/obituaries/2010/07/09/lawrence-brandon
Jul 8, 2010 - Lawrence Brandon died peacefully on July 6, one day short of his 67th wedding anniversary to his beloved wife, Carol. He was born on Feb.

'Tom Scully', on 02 May 2012 - 05:16 AM, said:
.......
...Larry Brandon bought all of the available night time hours and with Don Logan, Buddy Blake and Bob Smith began making prerecorded radio shows on 10 inch, one hour tapes which were then mailed by Brandon from Shreveport to Gonzelez in Del Rio who had them delivered to Ciudad Acuña for airplay. According to Logan these programs replaced the preachers and went out from 6pm to 6am, but Logan also says that only six hours of programming was recorded per day and leaves the impression that the tapes were repeated.

Brandon's programming on XERF reached Shreveport which according to Logan presented a conflict of interest for the people who were making them. However, it was on these taped programs that Bob Smith began to morph into Wolfman Jack in order to conceal his real identity from the XERF listeners and from his daytime employers at KCIJ-AM in Shreveport. Logan says that when Smith began to create his gravely voiced character of Wolfman Jack to which he added a howl, he told Bob Smith:

"That howl of yours would wake a dead man and that dead man might be Hank Williams and he, sure as hell, doesn't want you Howling at the Moon'."

Again according to Logan, the taping came to an end when Brandon began offering XERF listeners an autographed picture of Jesus. It was then that Bob Smith took off from Shreveport to visit Arturo Gonzalez at his law office on Pecan Street in Del Rio. It was Gonzalez who sent him across the U.S.-Mexico border each day to do live programs from the studio of XERF at Ciudad Acuña for Inter-American Radio Advertising, Inc., which Gonzalez operated from his law office......
https://web.archive.org/web/201008240620...eople.html
DARK HORSES AND RADIO FREQUENCIES - ..........This angered Gordon McLendon to no end and is one reason why he bought KTBS radio and turned it into KEEL! Before Buddy left KEEL, Marvin Kasofski, known in the south as Marvin Burton came down from Newport News, Va. and bought KCIJ. He found a fellow, named Bob Smith at a carwash, and hired him. When KREB folded, Larry Brandon, bought 6pm to 6am nightly on XERF and made a deal with Bob Smith, Buddy and I to do the 12 hours nightly on tape he needed to program the station. He took all the preachers, who had not been
paying their bills at the station, off the air and kept maybe one or two, who were paying. When, the three of us met in Brandon's office, I could see the envy in Bob's eyes over being there with Buddy.

[URL="https://books.google.com/books?id=HyAStpnw2-IC&pg=PA302&lpg=PA302&dq=steve+rattner+not+folksy+enough&source=bl&ots=3RS9YGQeTk&sig=NJUVN6Lwndf5I5GHaGVDTp_2g0s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMIlrrb8qizyAIVQoI-Ch1rjQGI"]

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.[/URL]
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0385521774
William D. Cohan - 2007 - ‎Business & Economics
He got dinged for "not being folksy enough" for the Vineyard, and so lined up a ... Steve was a natural at the Times, reveling, at all of twenty-three, in his stature as -.1 ... Some of their former Times colleagues believe Rattner, for a time, modeled ...

Hello sweetheart, get me mergers and acquisitions: the rise ...

www.thefreelibrary.com › ... › Washington Monthly › May 1, 1986
In high school Steve was interested in photography, and it was to take pictures .... Philip Shenon, a Brown alum whom Rattner helped get the Reston clerkship, ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical...sachusetts
1960 US Census:
[TABLE="class: wikitable"]
[TR]
[TD]Dukes County[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]5,829[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]County[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Tisbury[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2,169[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Town[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Edgartown[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1,474[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

1970 US Census
[TABLE="class: wikitable"]
[TR]
[TD]Dukes County[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]6,117[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]County[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Tisbury[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2,257[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Town[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Edgartown[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1,481[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Town[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

2010 US Census
[TABLE="class: wikitable"]
[TR]
[TD]Dukes County[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]16,535[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Oak Bluffs[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]4,527[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Edgartown[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]4,067[/TD]
[TD="align: right"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Tisbury[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]3,949[/TD]
[TD="align: center"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

I overcame my reluctance to author this post because of my perspective. My first three visits to the Vineyard were in between the Kopechne tragedy in 1969, and....:

Cronkite Heirs Sell Green Hollow Home | The Vineyard ...

vineyardgazette.com/news/2011/.../cronkite-heirs-sell-green-hollow-hom...
Feb 3, 2011 - ... $11.3 million to longtime summer residents of Katama David and Karen Brush. ... colonial home with the gambrel roof when Dick Cavett set up cameras on the ... for what was the first talk show shot on the Vineyard, in 1974.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/20...story.html
By Carol Stocker Globe Correspondent June 20, 2012
Who ? Phyllis Meras

.......Q. Why did you write this book? [B]A. People come here because they like the blueberries and the beaches and the moors, and then they build their McMansions and destroy what they came for. This is about the eternal aspects of the Vineyard that should be cherished.[/B]
[B] [B]Q. Are you an islander?[/B][/B]
[B][B] [B]A. No. We're now in our fifth generation summering on the Vineyard but you have to be born on the Vineyard to be an islander. I became a full-time resident when I became managing editor of the Vineyard Gazette for six years starting in 1967. I had been an editor at The New York Times and James B. Reston, the revered columnist and editor there, had just bought it from Henry Beetle Hough, who had owned it for 60 years.
[B]Q. What was it like running the island paper?......[/B]

[/B][/B][/B]
............
Q. How have the summer residents changed?
[B]A. The wealthy people when I was young were artists and intellectuals like James Cagney and Katherine Cornell and Thomas Hart Benton. I would meet them at cocktail parties given by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Garson Kanin who collaborated on the production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." People are much richer now, and it's corporate money. There's less discretion and more conspicuous consumption. Now you can pay tens of thousands of dollars for a key to a gated ocean beach. Henry Beetle Hough was the single most important force for conservation on the island, and after he died someone who works for Goldman Sachs tore down his house, which I tried to save, and put up a huge mansion for three months a year. They cut the trees down, too.[/B]
[B] [B]Q. Why the change?[/B][/B]
[B][B] [B]A. Two things. The filming of "Jaws" and Ted Kennedy going off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, which happened at about the same time, brought notoriety to Martha's Vineyard. Before that, Nantucket was much better known. Developers started looking up deeds and buying land. [/B][/B][/B]
[B][B] [B]Q. What will you be remembered for on the island? [/B][/B][/B]
[B][B] [B]A. Writing features . . . and obituaries! I know the people who are dying off and their relationship to the island. I wrote one for Walter Cronkite and one for Beverly Sills, who was very warm and outgoing. I just finished one for Gladys Widdiss, who was the president of the Wampanoag tribe from 1978 to 1987, when they acquired the Gay Head Cliffs and cranberry bog. At 97, she was still making pottery from Gay Head clay.[/B][/B][/B]

http://archives.library.illinois.edu/ead...0120f.html

An Inventory of the James B. Reston Papers at the University of Illinois Archives.
...........
[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 3"]Reston's Clerks[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1961-62[/TD]
[TD]Jonathan Yardley[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1962-63[/TD]
[TD]Christopher Willoughby[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1963[/TD]
[TD]Donald E. Graham[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1964-65[/TD]
[TD]Steven V. Roberts[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1965-66[/TD]
[TD]Craig R. Whitney[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1966-67[/TD]
[TD]Iver Peterson[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1967[/TD]
[TD]David K. Shipler[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1967-68[/TD]
[TD]James P. Sterba[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1968-69[/TD]
[TD]Linda Greenhouse[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1969-70[/TD]
[TD]Rick Edmonds[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1973-74[/TD]
[TD]William Hamilton[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1974-75[/TD]
[TD]Steven Rattner[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1975-76[/TD]
[TD]David W. Dunlap[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1976-77[/TD]
[TD]Matthew L. Wald[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1977-78[/TD]
[TD]John Hough, Jr.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1978-79[/TD]
[TD]James Brooke[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1980-81[/TD]
[TD]Nis Kildegaard[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1981-82[/TD]
[TD]Philip Shenon[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1982-83[/TD]
[TD]Sam Howe Verhovek[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1983-84[/TD]
[TD]Eric Schmitt[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1984-85[/TD]
[TD]Amy Wallace[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1985-86[/TD]
[TD]James Newton[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1986-88[/TD]
[TD]Hilary Stout[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1988-89[/TD]
[TD]Jack Steinberg[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1989-90[/TD]
[TD]Richard Coe[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]1991[/TD]
[TD]Stewart Yerten[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Shenon's mentor, the father:

James Reston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Reston

For his son, also a journalist and author,, see James Reston Jr.. ... In 1942, he took leave of absence to establish a U.S. Office of War Information in London.

JAMES RESTON A Reporter's Way of Thinking | News | The ...

www.thecrimson.com/.../james-reston-a-reporters-...
The Harvard Crimson
James Reston entered journalism of a golf. ... following year he took three months off from the Times to organize the U.S. Office of War Information in London.

The son, Reston, Jr.:
The Accidental Victim - The Thirteen Obsessions of James ...

www.jrobsessions.com/the-accidental-victim.html
James Reston Jr. makes an intriguing argument for a psychological rather than a ... I believe that John Connally, not John F. Kennedy, was Oswald's primary ...

'I REMINDED EVERYBODY OF LYNDON' - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../i-reminded-everybody-of-lyn...
The New York Times
Nov 26, 1989 - THE LONE STAR The Life of John Connally. By James Reston Jr. Illustrated. 691 pp. New York: An Edward Burlingame Book/Harper & Row.

Vineyard Gazette sold for $2 millon - Cape Cod Times

www.capecodtimes.com/article/20101127/NEWS/11270318
Nov 27, 2010 - The Restons co-owned the Gazette properties along with Richard Reston's brothers, author James Reston Jr. and lawyer Thomas Reston.
[URL="http://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/11/25/vineyard-gazette-sold-island-philanthropists"]
Vineyard Gazette is Sold to Island Philanthropists | The ...[/URL]vineyardgazette.com/.../2010/.../vineyard-gazette-sold-island-philanthrop...
Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg are the Gazette's new owners. ... Thursday, November 25, 2010 - 5:23pm ... Scotty Reston, a seasonal Island resident and New York Times columnist who twice won the Pulitzer Prize, and his wife, Sally Fulton ...

Jerome Kohlberg Jr., Businessman Who Challenged Wall ...

vineyardgazette.com/.../jerome-kohlberg-jr-businessman-who-challenge...
Aug 1, 2015 - "My goal is to give back to the Vineyard and to the Gazette," he said at the time. Jerome Kohlberg bought the Gazette in 2010. .... N.Y. They bought the Gazette in November 2010 from the Reston family with great excitement ...

Early August, 1999 :

JFK Jr-"SKY FLASH" REPORTER UNAPPROACHABLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aug. 5, 1999

I just phoned the Martha's Vineyard Gazette and spoke with a
woman there. I asked her about the statement -- in the July 17th
United Press International report of the John F. Kennedy Jr.
plane crash http://www.upi.com/corp/news/jfkjr3.html
-- that a reporter for the Martha's Vineyard Gazette had
witnessed an explosion in the sky around the time of the crash.
She replied, "Oh, that story was completely bogus. What really
happened was that someone was shooting off fireworks on Falmouth."
"Falmouth?" I said, "Is that an island?" "Falmouth," she said,
"is the closest point to Martha's Vineyard."
I said, "But this reporter witnessed an explosion in the SKY."
She countered, "Well, they were shooting rockets up in the
air, or something like that."

Fearing that she might hang up if I continued to contradict her,
I asked, "May I speak with the reporter who witnessed this?"
"Oh, no," she replied nervously, "we can't do that."
I said, "Oh, that's strange. What could be the problem with
speaking to a reporter?" She repeated, "We can't permit that."
I said, "Okay, can you at least give me his name?"
"No, we can't do that, either," she persisted." Then she added,
"He no longer works for us," almost as if she were making it up,
just to get me to give up. Then when I responded with a surprised
"Ohhh", she suddenly realized that her comment had made matters
worse and, in a jolt of vexation, she sputtered, "Oh, no, no!
It has nothing to do with that incident. He went back to school."
"Oh," I said, "so is he a journalism student?" After an
answerless pause, I thanked her and said goodbye.
I think she was relieved.

What do you make of this, folks? What questions would
you have asked if you had called the Martha's Vineyard
Gazette, at (508)627-4311? Would you have asked if the
reason why the UPI quote (of his statement that he saw a
"big white flash" in the sky off Philbin Beach at about
the time of the crash) was expunged from ALL subsequent
news reports from ALL news outlets was because this
reporter had personally called United Press International
and told them that he had made a mistake -- that the
"big white flash" he saw in the sky off Philbin Beach
at about the time of the crash was REALLY caused by
someone shooting rockets into the air from Falmouth?
And if he would have ever made such an absurd retraction,
then how is it that no other news outlet ANYWHERE has, after
July 17th, repeated the reporter's sighting ANYWAY, considering
that news outlets feed off of one another (e.g. WCVB-TV said
this, and UPI said this, and so on)? How is it that this
media magical disappearing act could have been pulled off so
neatly, without ONE SINGLE news outlet breaking the code of
silence?

And so, we come, full circle, to that unnamed, unidentifiable,
unapproachable reporter: the unreporting reporter.
If his retraction was so widely recognized throughout all
the cutting rooms of mass medialand ... then why in the hell
can NO ONE be allowed to speak with him, much less, even find
out his name?

And how does the Vineyard Gazette KNOW that its reporter
definitely saw fireworks off of Falmouth, and not a "big white
flash" off of Philbin Beach? Did the reporter later reflect on
his sighting, replay his mental videotape, and say to himself,
"Gee, that wasn't a big white flash in the sky off of Philbin
Beach. It was rockets shooting up in the air off of Falmouth."
Is that how the human mind functions? You just go back and
replay the tape in your head, and see what actually happened?
Or, did someone ELSE tell the Vineyard Gazette that the reporter
saw fireworks off of Falmouth at around the time of the Kennedy
plane's plunge into the ocean? -- and that they had better stick
to that story!

Furthermore, did you ever hear of anyone going "back to school"
before August 5th (the date of my phone call to the Gazette)?
Doesn't school start in September?

And furthermore still -- someone notified me that Falmouth is in
the opposite direction from Philbin Beach. The UPI report indeed
stated that the Vineyard Gazette reporter sighted the "big white
flash" off of Philbin Beach. Well, that's easy enough to
check out. Is Philbin Beach near the line-of-sight of Falmouth?
Would you check it out for me and let me know? Thanks.

John DiNardo jdinardo@idt.net

[Jim DiEugenio]

BTW, I should add how Pat figured that out about Specter.

If you look at the acknowledgements in the book, you will see the name of one of Specter's staff members from the senate in there.

Pat was not familiar with the name, so he searched it and figured out that is who he was and put two and two together.

I think its revealing that Shenon does not come out and admit Specter was the guy who got him into this cover up.

According to Shenon, Specter called him because he liked a book he did previously on 9/11 and many people think that is also a cover up book.