Lifton on DiEugenio on JFK offering the Vice Presidential nomination to LBJ . . .

[Charles Drago]

A fact about Hersh and Dark Side that is all but overlooked:

At one point in the book tour, Hersh was asked by an MSM interviewer if, during his research, he discovered anything so controversial that it could not be included in the final draft.

"I heard things about JFK I didn't want to believe," was his cagey response.

My interpretation: The disinformation boys were telling him that JFK was a witting Soviet agent.

I can't come close to proving any of this, but whenever I hear stories about JFK and blackmail, I go beyond talk of sexual indiscretions and consider the possibility that he was being threatened with exposure of his receptivity to a Soviet intelligence recruitment effort -- or a Western intelligence provocation disguised as a Soviet recruitment effort -- which took place during his brief tenure at the London School of Economics in 1935.

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting for a nanosecond that JFK in fact did become a witting Soviet asset. But even a youthful, idealistic, quickly terminated dalliance with Marxism as championed by Harold Laski (JFK's teacher), for instance, would have been enough to hang over JFK's head in later public years and amount to prime blackmail material.

If run by a Western service, the operation would have been the intellectual/ideological equivalent of a so-called honeytrap.

Something to put in the bank for later use.

Sexual blackmail vis a vis JFK has never cut the mustard for me. There would have had to have been something far more damaging, far more convincing -- at least to a Cold War public.

So convincing, perhaps, that even though totally fabricated, it still has the power to control the actions of the family.

I'm treading very delicately here. Just thinking out loud.

[James H. Fetzer]

DiEugenio is correct that he was "not needed"; indeed, I
imagine he would have been far happier had he not been
there at all. Having just read the complete thread, I found
it fascinating and illuminating on one of the less-explored
aspects of the assassination, namely, how Lyndon managed
to get himself on the ticket. I do not want to prejudge other
opinions, but I recommend this thread in the strongest terms:
"Did LBJ use Sexual Blackmail on JFK to get 1960 Demo VP
Spot?", http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index....17218&st=0

BTW, I really was not even needed on that "LBJ blackmail for the VP slot" thread at Spartacus.

Robert Charles Dunne and Peter Fokkes both put grenade sized holes in Lifton and Nelson's efforts to push it through.

Amazing to me how people like Lifton and Nelson are somehow attracted to Seymour Hersh and his slimy book.

[James H. Fetzer]

So, yes, I did not make an effort to import more from that specific thread. But
I recommend it highly. It has to be one of the most fascinating I've ever read.

Note that Fetzer --the ever so fair and judicious one--did not link to my two posts at EF on this subject.

In the first I explained to Lifton why it is not very wise to use anything from Hersh's book in this case, as he did. And I explained in detail why, since the book has been blown up in so many ways.

Well then Ray Carroll--you know that great researcher--tried to defend Lifton by saying that Schlesinger has completely revised and enlarged the LBJ/JFK VP exchange in his later book on RFK. Like Fetzer's good buddy Phil Nelson falsely attributing an article on Operation Phoenix to Hersh that the CIA stooge did not write, Carroll did not think anyone would look it up. I did, as I did with Nelson. As with Nelson, it did not stand up. Schlesinger was quoting RFK personally. And everyone except maybe Fetzer and Carroll knows how much RFK hated LBJ by the end of his life.

Then Nelson got on again and started doing that Sy Hersh is a hero crap--which is so nutty today that its simply beyond the pale.

This is the kind of stuff that Fetzer actually cross posts--and does so in order to get back at me for exposing his off the wall comparison of Nelson's piece of fiction with Douglass' wonderful 400 pages of hard to come by truth.

That's what happens though when you need to book guests for a radio show.

[Jack White]

DiEugenio is correct that he was "not needed"; indeed, I
imagine he would have been far happier had he not been
there at all. Having just read the complete thread, I found
it fascinating and illuminating on one of the less-explored
aspects of the assassination, namely, how Lyndon managed
to get himself on the ticket. I do not want to prejudge other
opinions, but I recommend this thread in the strongest terms:
"Did LBJ use Sexual Blackmail on JFK to get 1960 Demo VP
Spot?", http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index....17218&st=0

BTW, I really was not even needed on that "LBJ blackmail for the VP slot" thread at Spartacus.

Robert Charles Dunne and Peter Fokkes both put grenade sized holes in Lifton and Nelson's efforts to push it through.

Amazing to me how people like Lifton and Nelson are somehow attracted to Seymour Hersh and his slimy book.

I disagree with everyone on why LBJ was on the ticket.

Remember, NIXON WAS THE FAVORITE TO WIN THE ELECTION!
Lyndon did NOT "use" anything to get on the ticket. He was PUT
ON THE TICKET by powerful forces IN ORDER TO WIN THE
ELECTION. Lyndon had little to say in this matter...it was the
doing of those who wanted him and did not want Nixon.
He was thought necessary on the ticket to win Texas and the
South. He was the beneficiary, not the "mastermind". His
supporters were cronies like Sam Rayburn and H.L. Hunt.

Hey...I was an adult in that era, and most of you were not.
I remember what it was like. Most of you only know what
you have read. LYNDON WAS NECESSARY TO WIN!

However, I do suspect Hoover had secret files which may
have been used as a threat and was glad to help his neighbor
LBJ get the job. So I would say Lyndon's cronies got him
on the ticket, which he could not have done on his own.
At that point they were more powerful than he was.

Jack

[Jim DiEugenio]

I generally agree with this Jack.

And it turned out to be correct.

Kennedy lost something like five states in the Democratic Solid South that year. I suspect it was because of the phone call he made at Harris Wofford's request after King was arrested.

[Phil Dragoo]

Jim DiEugenio at post 44 notes "the Law book is a good book," and I agree as I "hear" Dennis David relating to William Matson Law the arrival at 6:35 pm the black hearse with plain gray shipping casket, prior to the 6:55 pm arrival of the gray Navy hearse with the 400-pound bronze viewing casket.


Dennis David relates visiting his friend and mentor William Pitzer in the latter's office as he edits a 16mm black and white film of the autopsy and shows two photos of the back of the head, the first with a sprung or avulsed 1-1/2 inch by 2-1/4 inch wound, the second clean and neat with hair in place.


I found Charles Drago's suggestion that disinformation agents had convinced Hersh that JFK "was a witting Soviet agent" resonating with a remark by our friend a veteran of Army intelligence just after the Korean War tasked with establishing the Chinese order of battle.


"Kennedy was a very dangerous mana very dangerous president."


I have broached the assassination with a retired high officer of the Air Force. "It's a settled matter," uttered with disgust and finality as though the last blast door swung shut, twenty tons of steel.


I am certain that permeated the services.


The services must stand and deliver their proofs; concurrent with the shrieking fairies of slander, Posner, Bugliosi, Hersh, Blaine, et al.


All by way of a Salem witch trial with Arlen Specter as Cotton Mather.


We haven't come such a long way after all, Baby.

[Trowbridge H. Ford]

Just incredible stuff from two posters who I know all too well - Jim D and Jim F.

Jim F wrote in the copy of Assassination Science that he sent me that if LHO was sipping a Coke in the TSBD's refreshment room when JFK was being assassinated, he couldn't have been a shooter in the assassination, though Jim F ultimately was so confident that he had scapegoat Oswald that he had the temerity to print a portion of the Altgens' photograph of the scene with a closeup of what one of the bullet fragments had done to the Presidential limo windshield with LHO standing in the background at the TSBD entrance!

And Jim D, are you still happy with the special edition of Probe magazine in January 1996 where you claimed that I was the agent, with J. David Truby's assistance, behind Nixon's undoing as President - what was to explain away the Agency's attempt, with the help of the Portugese SIS, to kill me by minute portions of ricin, it seems?

At the time Ja magazine was putting together a put-down of my claims about the Dallas assassintaion which highlighted Harvey's role, and was published in June, hoping my death would look like some kind of suicide, accident or stroke.

One really needs a covert program to know really who are the good guys, and who are the bad.

[Dawn Meredith]

As though DiEugenio's credibility were not already tangled and torn, anyone who does not understand that the massive research compiled by Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), vindicated Lifton's major thesis regarding body alteration (including the theft of the body, the multiple casket entries, surgery to the head, and altering the throat wound) is completely out of it. I understand his desperation in trying to save face when his positions on so many issues have been dismantled and destroyed--see "RFK: Outing the CIA at the Ambassador", for a nice illustration--but this completely irresponsible attack on BEST EVIDENCE (1980) demonstrates conclusively that he is not a responsible scholar when it comes to JFK research. No one should take JimmyD seriously after his repeated and ongoing displays of incompetence. For a lightweight like him (and others who show up from time to time) to disparage Lifton's brilliant and pioneering studies is both deplorable and absurd. Anyone who has read just the Prologue to HOAX (2003) knows better. There is evidence-based research and then there is dogma-driven. The latter, alas, appears to be DiEugenio's style, which he has patented. It would be laughable were it not so serious.

Yes Martin, there are people who still do take BE seriously.

Even today.

For example Jim (everything in this case is fake, including Dealey Plaza) Fetzer, and Ray (Jim Garrison thought Oswald did it) Carroll.

This, even after the work of people like Gary Aguilar, David Mantik, and William Law and Bob Groden on the subject. (BTW, the Law book is a good book. I understand it is being updated.)

I have reported this post.

Fed up with the ad homs.

You have been warned repeatedly and do not stop.
If you want to put down other researchers go someplace else.

Dawn

[Charles Drago]

I recommend this thread in the strongest terms:
"Did LBJ use Sexual Blackmail on JFK to get 1960 Demo VP
Spot?", http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index....17218&st=0

By all means read its author's words. Share them widely.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[Charles Drago]

And Jim D, are you still happy with the special edition of Probe magazine in January 1996 where you claimed that I was the agent, with J. David Truby's assistance, behind Nixon's undoing as President - what was to explain away the Agency's attempt, with the help of the Portugese SIS, to kill me by minute portions of ricin, it seems?

At the time Ja magazine was putting together a put-down of my claims about the Dallas assassintaion which highlighted Harvey's role, and was published in June, hoping my death would look like some kind of suicide, accident or stroke.

One really needs a covert program to know really who are the good guys, and who are the bad.

And who the dangerous and disturbed guys are.

Perhaps it was Portuguese rice 'n beans???