Jesse Ventura's JFK Conspiracy Program

[Charles Drago]

Jim,

I was NOT commenting upon Governor Ventura's program. You are conflating my criticism of the "Mastermind" book with an evaluation of JV's show that simply never was offered.

Therefore your previous post is wholly unwarranted and without relevance to my commentary which is included in your most recent attempt at rebuttal.

And by the way, you did not "piss me off." Given my respect for you, I'm not sure you could.

But you have disappointed me by failing to understand our differences vis a vis Nelson's book -- differences that most assuredly are not semantical in nature.

It's all about the "mastermind" argument. Please try to grasp my strong objections to it.

Here's another way in: Compare the key title words chosen by Douglass and Nelson for their respective JFK books: "Unspeakable" and "Mastermind".

The former is poetic, chilling, thought-provoking. It begs understanding, and in so doing it provokes the deepest study and contemplation. It challenges, enlightens, and, if moderately appreciated, bestows the benediction of all-but-hidden knowledge and insight. For the love of God, it leads us to Thomas Merton.

The latter is the stuff of pulp fiction. It provokes cartoon images of Snideley Whiplash, Mini-Me, and Lex Luthor. Far from ushering the Great Unwashed into the realm of truth, it trivializes both the man we honor and respect with our work and the world-historic event that took him from us. It leads us to Tom and Jerry.

Your argument is reminiscent of the utterly discredited "listening to jazz/rock will lead the masses to Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, and Coltrane (now that's a law firm for you!)" canard put forward by the money changers to mitigate their cultural butchery.

The neophytes whose perceptions we are honor-bound to inform will come away from "Mastermind" not with an elegantly simple understanding of the basic deep political reality as it manifests in JFK's murder, but rather with a simple-minded, coverup-supporting, wholly fictional world view predicated on the intentional mis-identification of LBJ as a Kennedy assassination sponsor.

Nonetheless,

In solidarity,

Charles

[Dawn Meredith]

What would be most helpful to me as I read the "mastermind" book are your responses to my previous questions, Jim.

And to these:

What is your model for the JFK conspiracy?

Are you familiar with the Evica/Drago three-tiered (Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic) model?

Was LBJ at the very top of the Sponsorship level of the JFK conspiracy?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to order the hit on JFK?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to take this world-historic action even if the financial, industrial, and military interests who were above Cold War differences objected?

Was LBJ the "mastermind" of the anti-FDR plot broken up by Smedley Butler?

Did LBJ rule the world?

By the way, I define "Sponsor" as, in this case, a master to whom presidents and other grand puppets answer.

I essentially agree with CD's points herein. However just because LBJ did not mastermind the plot does not exclude him from being up to his eyes in it from the start. Many plots were afoot. Which one succeeded will be forever shouded in mystery. People that powerful are not about to confess, inspite of E Howard's little talk to St. John. After seeing his wife Dorothy murdered 12/8/72, I have long suspected the old boy would say something before shuffling off. Some truth mixed in with bs. Spies like him take their deepest secrets to the grave.

Peter, I agree with what you wrote about the backyard pics. Marina is another who could tell much more. But I believe her fear is genuine. As is that of her family. They know many have died for talking or threatening to talk. She has been on "our side" a very long time.

Regardless of what is thought about Jesse Ventura or the content of his tv
show, the fact that he is doing this fills a much needed void on the political wasteland that is tv. I salute him.

Dawn

[James H. Fetzer]

In Charles' language of SPONSORS/FACILITATORS/MECHANICS, all that I have intended by the use of the term "mastermind" is that LBJ was the crucial facilitator, that he had links to all of the forces opposed to JFK, that his burning ambition to become president drove him to engage in the removal of the final obstacle to attaining that pinnacle of attainment after which he had grasped his entire life, and that without LBJ's complicity, which even extended to making sure "all the arrangements" were in place for the assassination, it could not have taken place. He would become the President of the United States and, without his involvement, the plotters would not have thought twice about committing this monstrous crime. He was the one person whose engagement was indispensable to its taking place. Everyone else was "replaceable", even Lee Oswald, except for LBJ. He, after all, was the person who would decide whether the full powers of the government would be unleashed to uncover and expose those responsible. The principal reason Bobby was taken out, after all, is that he had declared he would do exactly that! I would like to believe that this explains my position, which, alas, has not been adequately appreciated by some whom I admire, who have imposed a different meaning than the one I had intended. I hope this clarified the matter and leaves no doubt in anyone's mind by what I and, I have no doubt, Phillip Nelson, whom I have interviewed, have meant by the use of the term "mastermind", which is entirely accurate with regard to what he and I intended.

Thank you, Peter, for your cogent and powerfully stated assessment of LBJ's relative position in the power structure that struck John.

The "Mastermind" book -- which I'm reading -- so far has offered absolutely NOTHING to persuade anyone with intimate familiarity with the evidence in the JFK case in particular and 20th century deep polititics in general that Johnson was anything other than a Facilitator of a conspiracy whose Sponsors were so far above his pay scale as to be as invisible to him as the dark side of the moon.

The author, Phillip Nelson, does offer cogent analyses of LBJ's facilitation efforts. And then repeatedly he makes the leap to "mastermind" without providing a scintilla of evidence to support the charge.

Noel Twyman, the deservedly respected author of Bloody Treason, is quoted on Nelson's website thusly:

"This book is very comprehensive about Lyndon Johnson as related to the JFK assassination. Nelson strips away the restraints and tells all that is known about the criminal character of LBJ. He plunges fearlessly into 'the unspeakable' about him. Nelson deliberately avoids going into scientific and forensic detail, without compromising his story. It is a well written book, easy to read, and exhaustive in its summations of the scores of other writers on this profoundly disturbing time in history."

Noel and I stand in near-total agreement. Alas, Nelson does not come close to telling us "all that is known" about LBJ's involvement in the assassination -- even as he repeatedly tell us more than is known -- and Noel does not see fit to comment on the "mastermind" claim, let alone define "mastermind" in this context.

Also quoted by Nelson is this passage by Jim Fetzer:

"Brilliant and pivotal, bringing coherence to our understanding . . . From first chapter to last, this is a beautifully written, intellectually captivating, and ultimately persuasive account of the role of LBJ in the assassination of JFK."

Alas, Nelson is absolutely incoherent whenever he makes the "mastermind" charge -- one that he leaps to without a shard of supporting evidence. Regarding his work's central conceit, Nelson persuades no one except those predisposed to avoiding the terrible truth revealed by LBJ's role not as "mastermind" of the hit but rather/only as faithful retainer to the true Sponsors of JFK's murder.

Folks, as we near the 50th anniversary of the death of our last president, we shall see paraded before us a platoon of False Sponsors. Prior to the ascendency of LBJ in that role, we were given E. Howard Hunt's deathbed "confession." Anyone care to wager who the next patsy will be?

(It looks like the Leonardo DiCaprio adaptation of Legacy of Secrecy will resurrect the Mob-did-it False Sponsor tale. One waits breathlessly for the endorsers of Nelson to jump on Leo's bandwagon.)

Make no mistake: Both EHH and LBJ conspired to kill John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But neither of them can be placed on the Sponsor level.

One is left mystified by Nelson's lamebrained "mastermind" charge. Why go there?

Here's one possible answer: The best way to bestow historical absolution upon LBJ is to inflate his role in the JFK assassination to the degree of absurdity. Thus all evidence for his complicity in the conspiracy will be flushed down history's toilet along with the patently absurd "mastermind" charge.

Another disastrous side effect of the "Mastermind" endorsements: its boosters' favorable comparison of Nelson's disinformation volume to James Douglass's utterly superb, incisive, and sound JFK and the Unspeakable.

It is Phillip Nelson's JFK: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination that is in all respects unspeakable -- in the Douglass sense of the word.

[Albert Doyle]

I agree with Charles. It's a serious mistake to give too much credit to Johnson. It's like accepting an offer that the other side is all too willing to pay and thinking you got a good deal. You're accepting the "offer" too quickly, and in doing so are allowing some very heavy players off the hook. The value of the credit that is being placed on Johnson, and its tone of importance, rightly belongs on the real players above Johnson. When you make a big issue of Johnson being the mastermind, deserving exposure he has escaped up to now, you expend the energy and surprise needed for those who actually deserve that credit in that way. In effect, you are doing a very damning and valid - yet equally unjust "limited hang-out" which only benefits the real masterminds. When you focus on Johnson you swing the teeter totter towards Johnson's side when it most rightly belongs on the shadow government side with all its diverse players including Angleton, Dulles, the oligarchs, CIA/mob underground, etc.

And, it's a mistake to say Johnson was irreplaceable. Johnson was just a bridge to Nixon, who was the heir apparent all the way back to 1960 when he was expected to be in place but was upset by a young populist president who swung himself into power on the enthusiasm towards a change in the miring politics of the Cold War.

Therefore using the specific word "mastermind" makes the semantic mistake of throwing the switch and giving Johnson credit that rightly and deservedly belongs to others. There's a very simple way to look at this, Johnson is long dead and gone, but the real masterminds are still very much in power, and that's the way you have to look at it. Johnson can be seen as an evil king who killed Kennedy but those who really understand what killed Kennedy know it was a broader inertia and momentum that correctly belongs elsewhere.


Charles is entirely and 100% correct.


.

[Peter Lemkin]

What would be most helpful to me as I read the "mastermind" book are your responses to my previous questions, Jim.

And to these:

What is your model for the JFK conspiracy?

Are you familiar with the Evica/Drago three-tiered (Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic) model?

Was LBJ at the very top of the Sponsorship level of the JFK conspiracy?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to order the hit on JFK?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to take this world-historic action even if the financial, industrial, and military interests who were above Cold War differences objected?

Was LBJ the "mastermind" of the anti-FDR plot broken up by Smedley Butler?

Did LBJ rule the world?

By the way, I define "Sponsor" as, in this case, a master to whom presidents and other grand puppets answer.

I essentially agree with CD's points herein. However just because LBJ did not mastermind the plot does not exclude him from being up to his eyes in it from the start. Many plots were afoot. Which one succeeded will be forever shouded in mystery. People that powerful are not about to confess, inspite of E Howard's little talk to St. John. After seeing his wife Dorothy murdered 12/8/72, I have long suspected the old boy would say something before shuffling off. Some truth mixed in with bs. Spies like him take their deepest secrets to the grave.

Peter, I agree with what you wrote about the backyard pics. Marina is another who could tell much more. But I believe her fear is genuine. As is that of her family. They know many have died for talking or threatening to talk. She has been on "our side" a very long time.

Regardless of what is thought about Jesse Ventura or the content of his tv
show, the fact that he is doing this fills a much needed void on the political wasteland that is tv. I salute him.

Dawn

Dawn, I agree with you about Marina. She and I had many private and a few public exchanges. I like her and we even exchanged letters on NON-JFK-related matters that [to me] showed her to be quite an intelligent, moral and wonderful person.....but she wants to protect herself and more so her children who are also Lee [or is it Harvey?]'s children. Anyway, she loves them as a mother should and they are totally innocent and totally vulnerable to the Beast.

I also agree that Ventura's TV shows have some flaws, but they are NOT big enough to discredit them or him......he is not a researcher, even if a close friend of Russell [one of the best]....and slight mistakes and discrepancies did creep in. What is important is that he got the major themes/facts/who is on what side correctly.

Dawn is also pointing out what others have said [and I believe] that there were many small nascent plots against JFK that grew, coalesced, and finally resulted in the one that succeeded. They have used those that fizzled-out, failed, or didn't join the final successful plot to confuse us...but we are [or should not be] confused!

[James H. Fetzer]

It kinda makes you wonder why Jack Ruby said it wouldn't have happened if somebody else had been vice president. Curious.

I agree with Charles. It's a serious mistake to give too much credit to Johnson. It's like accepting an offer that the other side is all too willing to pay and thinking you got a good deal. You're accepting the "offer" too quickly, and in doing so are allowing some very heavy players off the hook. The value of the credit that is being placed on Johnson, and its tone of importance, rightly belongs on the real players above Johnson. When you make a big issue of Johnson being the mastermind, deserving exposure he has escaped up to now, you expend the energy and surprise needed for those who actually deserve that credit in that way. In effect, you are doing a very damning and valid - yet equally unjust "limited hang-out" which only benefits the real masterminds. When you focus on Johnson you swing the teeter totter towards Johnson's side when it most rightly belongs on the shadow government side with all its diverse players including Angleton, Dulles, the oligarchs, CIA/mob underground, etc.

And, it's a mistake to say Johnson was irreplaceable. Johnson was just a bridge to Nixon, who was the heir apparent all the way back to 1960 when he was expected to be in place but was upset by a young populist president who swung himself into power on the enthusiasm towards a change in the miring politics of the Cold War.

Therefore using the specific word "mastermind" makes the semantic mistake of throwing the switch and giving Johnson credit that rightly and deservedly belongs to others. There's a very simple way to look at this, Johnson is long dead and gone, but the real masterminds are still very much in power, and that's the way you have to look at it. Johnson can be seen as an evil king who killed Kennedy but those who really know what killed Kennedy know it was a broader inertia and momentum that correctly belongs elsewhere.


Charles is entirely and 100% correct.

[Peter Lemkin]

It kinda makes you wonder why Jack Ruby said it wouldn't have happened if somebody else had been vice president. Curious.

I agree with Charles. It's a serious mistake to give too much credit to Johnson. It's like accepting an offer that the other side is all too willing to pay and thinking you got a good deal. You're accepting the "offer" too quickly, and in doing so are allowing some very heavy players off the hook. The value of the credit that is being placed on Johnson, and its tone of importance, rightly belongs on the real players above Johnson. When you make a big issue of Johnson being the mastermind, deserving exposure he has escaped up to now, you expend the energy and surprise needed for those who actually deserve that credit in that way. In effect, you are doing a very damning and valid - yet equally unjust "limited hang-out" which only benefits the real masterminds. When you focus on Johnson you swing the teeter totter towards Johnson's side when it most rightly belongs on the shadow government side with all its diverse players including Angleton, Dulles, the oligarchs, CIA/mob underground, etc.

And, it's a mistake to say Johnson was irreplaceable. Johnson was just a bridge to Nixon, who was the heir apparent all the way back to 1960 when he was expected to be in place but was upset by a young populist president who swung himself into power on the enthusiasm towards a change in the miring politics of the Cold War.

Therefore using the specific word "mastermind" makes the semantic mistake of throwing the switch and giving Johnson credit that rightly and deservedly belongs to others. There's a very simple way to look at this, Johnson is long dead and gone, but the real masterminds are still very much in power, and that's the way you have to look at it. Johnson can be seen as an evil king who killed Kennedy but those who really know what killed Kennedy know it was a broader inertia and momentum that correctly belongs elsewhere.


Charles is entirely and 100% correct.

Ruby was in on the lowest level of [one isolated part of the plot[s], IMO,...and might, for that reason, have had a distorted view of who really was in control...of course he had those who controlled him and what they told him...but was that the actual truth...I think not. Ruby got correctly [how could he NOT!] that it was a conspiracy and that conspiracy INVOLVED LBJ, but I don't think Ruby had the bigger picture of who was pulling his, others' and America's 'strings'......
What Ruby has said is important and because it is important, it has been officially and by the MSM ignored. However, I think Ruby only knew a layer or three who directed him - not who the Mr. Bigs were....or he would have died long before he did [by unnatural causes, as it was] - and more in the time-frame of patsy Oswald.

[Charles Drago]

OK, Jim, we're almost home.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, before and after the fact of the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was a knowing member of the assassination conspiracy -- and a damned important one to boot.

And now for finer points I give you:

In Charles' language of SPONSORS/FACILITATORS/MECHANICS, all that I have intended by the use of the term "mastermind" is that LBJ was the crucial facilitator[.]

A "crucial Facilitator" -- absolutely!

"Mastermind" as a synonym for "crucial Facilitator" -- absolutely NOT!

[LBJ] had links to all of the forces opposed to JFK[.]

Again, I believe that you're being far to broad with the use of "all."

Perhaps through the application of a "degrees of separation" linkage you are technically correct. But "links" as you use the word begs the inference of "close working relationship" -- at least for me.

I understand those "opposing forces" to include Soviet and American traitors within the global political-military-industrial structure who were, in George Michael Evica's term, "above Cold War differences." There is much evidence to support the existence of such a group (I look forward with great anticipation and indeed joy to a Fetzer review of the forthcoming Trine Day edition of Evica's A Certain Arrogance), but absolutely no evidence for LBJ's awareness of it, let alone link to it. For just one example.

[W]ithout LBJ's complicity, which even extended to making sure "all the arrangements" were in place for the assassination, it could not have taken place.

There's that damned "all" again. There is no reason to believe that LBJ knew anything about conspiracy "arrangements" that were not directly connected to the facilitation of his role as a major Facilitator.

An example: Do you have evidence that LBJ knew how the actual killers were recruited and paid? I don't mean Sponsor patsy-supporting fools like Mac Wallace, assorted LCN-types (Harrelson, Cain, etc.), E. Howard Hunt, et al. Rather, I refer to the planet's most savagely gifted hunters of humans -- those responsible for making certain that, once initiated, the crossfire produced fatal results.

An example: Do you have evidence that LBJ was intimately familiar with the apparatus that created the multiple Oswald personalities and ran them for years prior to the assassination?

An example: Do you have evidence that LBJ "masterminded" the doppelganger gambits that run throughout the pre- and post-assassination theatrics?

An example: Do you have evidence that LBJ was any more in control of the CIA than was Richard Nixon?

[LBJ] was the one person whose engagement was indispensable to [the assassination's] taking place. Everyone else was "replaceable", even Lee Oswald, except for LBJ. He, after all, was the person who would decide whether the full powers of the government would be unleashed to uncover and expose those responsible.

I heartily agree. Although I would add the words "as it did" after "taking place."

The principal reason Bobby was taken out, after all, is that he had declared he would do exactly that!

"Principal," like "all" as used above, for me goes too far.

A main reason? No doubt in my mind.

A reason that trumps the need to protect the true Sponsors' most important control and profit operations from assaults by another Gracchi brother?

No way. At least for me.

I would like to believe that this explains my position, which, alas, has not been adequately appreciated by some whom I admire, who have imposed a different meaning than the one I had intended. I hope this clarified the matter and leaves no doubt in anyone's mind by what I and, I have no doubt, Phillip Nelson, whom I have interviewed, have meant by the use of the term "mastermind", which is entirely accurate with regard to what he and I intended.

Throughout our exchange we've been on opposite sides ofthe "mastermind" characterization of LBJ. As stated above, "mastermind" and "crucial Facilitator" are not synonymous under any circumstances when attempting to assign roles to conspirators or, for that matter, to participants in any complex operation.

A "crucial Facilitator" by definition carries out functions devised by a "mastermind." Unless, that is, I should be attending ESL classes.

As always, Jim, I take you at your word regarding your intentions regarding use of "mastermind." But I maintain for the record that the term is entirely inaccurate and, for our shared purposes, terribly counter-productive when used to describe Facilitator LBJ's role in the JFK hit.

I cannot offer the same stipulation in the case of Phillip Nelson, who already is driving the most gullible and underinformed within our community -- not to mention those whose exposure to the evidence in this case is, at best, minimal -- to the ruinously wrong conclusion that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the "mastermind" -- the prime mover, prime designer, and prime beneficiary -- of the JFK assassination.

Nothing could be more distanced from the truth.

[James H. Fetzer]

I'll settle for this out of court. Publishers made decisions about titles, not authors. If you understand what I meant to this extent, then I am not going to debate this further.

Originally posted by James Fetzer:

He was the one person whose engagement was indispensable to [the assassination's] taking place. Everyone else was "replaceable", even Lee Oswald, except for LBJ. He, after all, was the person who would decide whether the full powers of the government would be unleashed to uncover and expose those responsible.

Addendum by Charles Drago:

I heartily agree. Although I would add the words "as it did" after "taking place."

[Charles Drago]

It is so ordered by the court.