JFK Research Methodology

[Lauren Johnson]

There has been a number of posts recently that have argued around different research methodologies. I will move some of those posts in this thread.

[James Lateer]

After riding my lawn tractor in the 95 degree heat for an hour, I think I may have solved my own puzzle as laid out above:

The point is that the U.S. DID HAVE A POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS BUREAU (apparently) and it was called Operation Mongoose. Based on that, if I added the names from the indexes of the various books that are about Operation Mongoose (or QJ/WIN), the list should correlate or have the same statistical loadings as all of the JFK books taken collectively (excluding Warren Commission limited books).

Just doing a quick and dirty listing, one would predict that the make-up of Operation Mongoose members would fit the following profile:

1. Castro (Cubans)-Mafia---------------------------------12%
2. Garrison suspects, (Shaw, Ochsner, etc)--------------6%
3. John Birch Society--------------------------------------5%
4. LBJ friends and J E Hoover-----------------------------4%
5. Southern Politicians-(Sen. Smathers, Eastland)------4%

I haven't read any books specifically on Operation Mongoose. Maybe somebody can place an estimate on the profile of Operation Mongoose operatives. We know about Johnny Roselli, possibly Otto Skorzeny, CIA assassins like David Morales and Col. Bob Bishop, various anti-Castro Cubans.

I have also recently been researching a huge link between Roselli, General Julius Klein, General Curtis LeMay and the Jewish Mafia investors in the building of the Tropicana Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas in the days of Jimmy Hoffa. Their leader was Charles Baron of the Illinois National Guard (also an investor in Cuba who lost $$$) As far as I know, Roselli was near the center of Mongoose along with RFK.

Was Mongoose suspected in the assassinations of MLK, Medgar Evers, RFK and Lumumba?
If so, that may explain the Southern Segregationist connections. More to follow.

James Lateer

[Jim DiEugenio]

Maybe this will enlighten you about Baker and her credibility problems

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-k...n-judyth-baker

After this, then read Brown or maybe Anthony will cut and paste some of that here.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Also, Mr. Lateer:

Mongoose did not include assassination plots against Castro. We have almost the complete record on that today. It did not do that because RFK was the ombudsman over it.. And he and his brother were dead set against that sort of thing. Which is why Dulles had to get rid of Lumumba before JFK was inaugurated.

All of this makes me wonder if you have 1.) Spent any time at Kennedysandking.com, or 2.) Read the documentary record of the ARRB.

The ARRB declassified both the CIA Inspector General Report on the Castro plots, and the Church Committee interview with the writer of that report. There is no such evidence that any president approved of the CIA plots, surely not the Kennedys. Because the CIA admitted they lied to RFK about the ongoing status of those plots. And it was all new to him when he was briefed about them for the first time. Three years after they had been in progress. As the CIA briefer said, the longer we talked the harder he was grinding his teeth.

This report in online and you can read it. I am surprised that, in your pursuit of methodology, you have not availed yourself of it.

Books are a decent starting point. But you have to have a solid grounding in the documentary record. Especially today with over 3 million pages now available. There is literally tons of interesting stuff now there for anyone to read.

[James Lateer]

Per Evan Thomas, RFK biographer in Robert Kennedy: His Life and Times at page 149: "Kennedy just pressed on. On January 19, he gave a pep talk to various agency representatives to the new Cuba project, code-named Mongoose, that left no room for doubt about his desires."

Since Mongoose was well-known for the Exploding Sea Shell plan to kill Castro and the Poisoned Diving suit plan to do the same, it's hard to see how RFK did not know of plans to kill Castro. That was the whole idea of Mongoose. A mongoose can kill a snake. Get it?

To say that the Kennedys were too nice to order murders is far from the reality. Unfortunately, the Kennedys were the heirs to the tradition of Hitler, Franco, Joseph McCarthy and other "Christian anti-Communists", also John Foster Dulles and J Edgar Hoover.

JPK ordered a lobotomy on his daughter for political purposes. Rose Kennedy thought God had killed her daughter in a plane crash as "divine retribution" for "religious" reasons.

The close cultural kin of the Kennedys were Whitey Bulger and his associates and former "Mob Attorney" Representative John W. McCormack of Boston.

I personally don't think that the Kennedy family kicked the habit of borderline criminal ruthlessness until the 70's in the person of Edward M. Kennedy. Teddy finally got it right, and the nation should be grateful. You can see in his memoir True Compass what a great guy EMK truly was.

But of course, JFK and RFK also did some unique and unequaled great things for the country with which we all are familiar.

But angels?

James Lateer

[Jim DiEugenio]

Mr Lateer, this is just what I mean.

You did not go to Kenendyandking.com, if you had you would have read my review of American Dynasties: The Kennedys. There I explain why Evan Thomas is not credible on the subject.

Secondly, the exploding seashells were not part of MONGOOSE, they were part of the CIA/mafia plots. You would have understood that had you read the IG report.

MONGOOSE was approved by JFK in late November of 1961. It was activated in February of 1962. The CIA/Mob plots had been ongoing for two years at that time.

I am not sure if the following sentence by you is meant to be satirical or serious: Unfortunately, the Kennedys were the heirs to the tradition of Hitler, Franco, Joseph McCarthy and other "Christian anti-Communists", also John Foster Dulles and J Edgar Hoover.

​If the former, its not funny. If the latter, then its libel and you have disqualified yourself as any kind of commentator on this case.

So goodbye.

[James Lateer]

My previous post is influenced by the trend of information (including on CNN) about the Kennedy Dynasty which puts that dynasty in a less and less favorable and less of a "Camelot" light. The death of JFK hit everyone like a death in our own family and still does after 55 years.

That being said, there has come to light more and more information which tends to paint a less of a Camelot image on that Presidency. That last thing I would intend would be inaccurate malicious slander or libel. But, sadly, more researchers are being put in the "kill the messenger" situation. However, we can't back away from the truth, no matter how much the truth may be disturbing.

I am genuinely respectful of people on this site who have been working on JFK research four or five times as long as I have and, like Mr. DiEugenio, have an encyclopedic knowledge of JFK's foreign policy and other esoteric but nevertheless important JFK subjects.

But alleging libel? Things are getting a little emotional here. I'm not sure that it's possible to libel the Kennedy Brothers because (1) they are deceased and (2) they are public figures under New York Times v. Sullivan and this would require me to know the falsity of my statement or be stating something with malicious intent. I, for sure, had no malicious intent in my posting. I'm not even sure what malicious intent would look like for a person criticizing a deceased President or Senator.

I can tell you for a fact that President George Bush's starting the Iraq War was as much of a war crime as those Germans who were convicted of "starting a war of aggression." Is that libelous? Yes? No? And George Bush is still living. This is all very confusing, isn't it?

And I feel the basic connection of the Kennedy's to fascism in general, at least at certain times, is not false or unrealistic. And not even that much of a big deal. And not the basis for a libel suit or even to be called libelous.

Criticizing past Presidents, Senators or members of their cabinets is (as far as I know) just an exercise of free speech. By the way, George Washington did not chop down the cherry tree, I'm pretty sure. That wouldn't be libel.

One can't divorce the Kennedys from McCarthy since they were the closest of friends. McCarthy's close ally, Senator Pat McCarran regularly called for the Franco government to be included in the Marshall Plan and NATO. In my opinion, McCarthy would have been in agreement with McCarran on that issue (and might have even said so). That is just my opinion. And the connection between Hitler and Franco is not subject to serious question due to Hitler's and Mussolini's military intervention on behalf of Franco.

Look, for instance, at this quote:

From:

Seeking Meaning, Seeking Justice in a Post-Cold War World,
edited by Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski

“In the US, the pro-Franco lobby that included Senator Joe McCarthy and the US military succeeded in persuading President Truman to establish a new economic and military relationship with Franco, despite his [Truman’s] longstanding purported aversion to the Spanish dicator”.

In my sincere opinion, there has been a cover-up on the facts regarding the post-World War II role of fascists worldwide and specifically in the JFK assassination. I am hopeful that The Skorzeny Papers by Ganis will further illuminate that situation. And Skorzeny may have been QJ/WIN which would place a very close associate of Hitler in the Kennedy's murder plots, be they Mongoose, CIA/Mafia or ZR/RIFLE. Not that I intend to libel Hitler. Let's get that clear.

As for the criticism of Evan Thomas as an author, the only problem which I saw reported that might discredit Evan Thomas, was criticism of one particular footnote which referred to an author who was arguably unreliable. I mean, ONE FOOTNOTE??? And I should add that I did read the critical analysis of the CNN series on the Kennedy's and I thing I posted something regarding it. I thought it to be an excellent review.

And I would think that relying on anything written by a CIA Inspector General would be naive, to me. I'm not sure it would be worth the time it would take to read it.

And regarding the Mongoose question: I have not focused that much on Mongoose, but I probably should have. Whether the plot to kill Castro was under the CIA-Mafia Plot, Operation Mongoose, the ZR/RIFLE program, etc. doesn't seem to change the basic question which started this issue: was there a US "Department of Political Assassination" which had a defined list of people involved? If all of these "plots" and "operations" amounted to a "Department of Political Assassination" then it should be possible to correlate this list of operatives to the citations in the JFK research materials. That's all I was saying.

LBJ put it this way:

"I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger," ... Johnson thought such a conspiracy had formed in retaliation for U.S. plots to assassinate Fidel Castro; he had found after taking office that the government "had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean."

I'm not sure why I would be using either Kennedys and King website, the James Fetzer website or any other such source, especially over and above such sites as Deep Politics Forum. As in the discussion above about author Evan Thomas, there often seems to be nit-picking involved in many arguments on a lot of such well-known sites. This applies especially to these arguments about Judyth Vary Baker. It (seemingly) all comes down to whether she was in an automobile at a certain time at a certain place. Kind of like trying to demolish author Evan Thomas over ONE FOOTNOTE.

If an expert has important criticisms about Baker, in my opinion, such criticisms should be on the tip of his tongue and not be buried is a second-hand article someplace. But that's just how I would try to respond. As I have said, what Baker fails to explain, in my opinion, is how she had such a "photographic recall" of everything she did on a daily basis over a three month period, 50 years in the past. It seems like she must have had a diary, a journal or a lot of detailed letters and correspondence to work from. Maybe she had such a thing but was fearful that it could be subject to subpoena. Just guessing.

By the way, please don't criticize my wife, my mother or my dog Copper in these pages. I would take offense. But feel free to criticize my favorite dead Presidents. I don't have any problem with that.

James Lateer

[Jim DiEugenio]

I don't know who he is talking to.

Not me that is for sure.

[Phil Dagosto]

My previous post is influenced by the trend of information (including on CNN) about the Kennedy Dynasty which puts that dynasty in a less and less favorable and less of a "Camelot" light. The death of JFK hit everyone like a death in our own family and still does after 55 years.

And a lot of that is either scurrilous claptrap that has been debunked by serious researchers (see the chapter The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy in the book The Assassinations edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease both of whom have considerably more credibility than you on the subject) or deals with Kennedy's personal life which is irrelevant to his presidency.

That being said, there has come to light more and more information which tends to paint a less of a Camelot image on that Presidency. That last thing I would intend would be inaccurate malicious slander or libel. But, sadly, more researchers are being put in the "kill the messenger" situation. However, we can't back away from the truth, no matter how much the truth may be disturbing.

First you have to establish, with actual evidence, that you know the truth. Then you can talk about being the "messenger".

I am genuinely respectful of people on this site who have been working on JFK research four or five times as long as I have and, like Mr. DiEugenio, have an encyclopedic knowledge of JFK's foreign policy and other esoteric but nevertheless important JFK subjects.

But alleging libel? Things are getting a little emotional here. I'm not sure that it's possible to libel the Kennedy Brothers because (1) they are deceased and (2) they are public figures under New York Times v. Sullivan and this would require me to know the falsity of my statement or be stating something with malicious intent. I, for sure, had no malicious intent in my posting. I'm not even sure what malicious intent would look like for a person criticizing a deceased President or Senator.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't really weigh in on the libel claim (seems like a stretch in my layman's opinion). However, if the standard is, as you say, knowledge of the falsity of your statement could you seriously defend the claim that you didn't know that your assertion that "Kennedys were the heirs to the tradition of Hitler, Franco, Joseph McCarthy and other "Christian anti-Communists", also John Foster Dulles and J Edgar Hoover." was false after claiming that you've read all those books and mathematically analyzed the data they contained? You couldn't find more devoted enemies of the Kennedys than the Dulles brothers and Hoover! And including Hitler and Franco in this is statement is just beyond the pale. I'm not sure anyone is the the "tradition" of Hitler, not even Stalin! You'd have to go to guys like Pol Pot to find someone like that. And Franco was a dictator whose most likely comparables are the South American dictators of the 50s and 60s who were certainly no friends of the Kennedys. McCarthy was a deplorable, clownish self-promoter who needlessly destroyed a lot of lives but are you seriously comparing him to a guy who murdered millions and was responsible for starting a world war? This is why I can't take you seriously - its not just that you make wild assertions based on little more than your opinion its that you don't seem to have any sense of proportion.

I can tell you for a fact that President George Bush's starting the Iraq War was as much of a war crime as those Germans who were convicted of "starting a war of aggression." Is that libelous? Yes? No? And George Bush is still living. This is all very confusing, isn't it?

And I feel the basic connection of the Kennedy's to fascism in general, at least at certain times, is not false or unrealistic. And not even that much of a big deal. And not the basis for a libel suit or even to be called libelous.

Well, at least here you're admitting that this is just a "feeling" of yours. But I hate to be the one to tell you that the Kennedys "connection to fascism" is no more than that of millions of Americans of the post-WWII Red Scare era including most of the political establishment. In fact I would say it was less since JFK recognized early on that western colonialism was just as evil as Soviet communism and would in fact hand the developing world to the communists.

Criticizing past Presidents, Senators or members of their cabinets is (as far as I know) just an exercise of free speech. By the way, George Washington did not chop down the cherry tree, I'm pretty sure. That wouldn't be libel.

One can't divorce the Kennedys from McCarthy since they were the closest of friends. McCarthy's close ally, Senator Pat McCarran regularly called for the Franco government to be included in the Marshall Plan and NATO. In my opinion, McCarthy would have been in agreement with McCarran on that issue (and might have even said so). That is just my opinion. And the connection between Hitler and Franco is not subject to serious question due to Hitler's and Mussolini's military intervention on behalf of Franco.

Again, here, you're overreaching. McCarthy was a friend of the Kennedy family but the situation with RFK and JFK during McCarthy's assault on free speech and due process is a lot more complicated than you're painting it. And then you go off on a tangent about McCarran and Franco and asserting by extension that Kennedy must have been in favor of their plan. Do you have any actual documentary evidence that this was the case? But even that's not enough for you. You again have to drag Hitler into the discussion. If I understand you correctly, because JFK's family was friends with Joe McCarthy and McCarthy's ally McCarran wanted Franco's Spain to be in the Marshall plan and because Hitler supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War then John Kennedy had to be a fascist. QED! The ill-logic of that argument is truly breathtaking.
Look, for instance, at this quote:

From:

Seeking Meaning, Seeking Justice in a Post-Cold War World,
edited by Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski

“In the US, the pro-Franco lobby that included Senator Joe McCarthy and the US military succeeded in persuading President Truman to establish a new economic and military relationship with Franco, despite his [Truman’s] longstanding purported aversion to the Spanish dicator”.

In my sincere opinion, there has been a cover-up on the facts regarding the post-World War II role of fascists worldwide and specifically in the JFK assassination. I am hopeful that The Skorzeny Papers by Ganis will further illuminate that situation. And Skorzeny may have been QJ/WIN which would place a very close associate of Hitler in the Kennedy's murder plots, be they Mongoose, CIA/Mafia or ZR/RIFLE. Not that I intend to libel Hitler. Let's get that clear.

There were no "Kennedy murder plots". The CIA/Mafia plots were an Eisenhower administration project that was discontinued either before JFK took office or shortly thereafter and was withheld from the Kennedys. ZR/RIFLE was a CIA operation under William Harvey (a passionate Kennedy opponent) that would not have been initiated by the Kennedys or discussed with them. Harvey also revived the Mafia assassination plots without the Kennedys' knowledge after RFK shut them down. Mongoose was an an umbrella for anti-Castro operations conducted by Cuban exiles that specifically did not include assassination plots.

As for the criticism of Evan Thomas as an author, the only problem which I saw reported that might discredit Evan Thomas, was criticism of one particular footnote which referred to an author who was arguably unreliable. I mean, ONE FOOTNOTE??? And I should add that I did read the critical analysis of the CNN series on the Kennedy's and I thing I posted something regarding it. I thought it to be an excellent review.

And I would think that relying on anything written by a CIA Inspector General would be naive, to me. I'm not sure it would be worth the time it would take to read it.

No, what's naive is your lack of understanding of the significance of the CIA's IG report that you dismiss without having even read it. And that begs the question of what exactly you are relying on besides your obsession with Nazis and Fascists.

And regarding the Mongoose question: I have not focused that much on Mongoose, but I probably should have. Whether the plot to kill Castro was under the CIA-Mafia Plot, Operation Mongoose, the ZR/RIFLE program, etc. doesn't seem to change the basic question which started this issue: was there a US "Department of Political Assassination" which had a defined list of people involved? If all of these "plots" and "operations" amounted to a "Department of Political Assassination" then it should be possible to correlate this list of operatives to the citations in the JFK research materials. That's all I was saying.

LBJ put it this way:

"I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger," ... Johnson thought such a conspiracy had formed in retaliation for U.S. plots to assassinate Fidel Castro; he had found after taking office that the government "had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean."

I'm not sure why I would be using either Kennedys and King website, the James Fetzer website or any other such source, especially over and above such sites as Deep Politics Forum. As in the discussion above about author Evan Thomas, there often seems to be nit-picking involved in many arguments on a lot of such well-known sites. This applies especially to these arguments about Judyth Vary Baker. It (seemingly) all comes down to whether she was in an automobile at a certain time at a certain place. Kind of like trying to demolish author Evan Thomas over ONE FOOTNOTE.

If an expert has important criticisms about Baker, in my opinion, such criticisms should be on the tip of his tongue and not be buried is a second-hand article someplace. But that's just how I would try to respond. As I have said, what Baker fails to explain, in my opinion, is how she had such a "photographic recall" of everything she did on a daily basis over a three month period, 50 years in the past. It seems like she must have had a diary, a journal or a lot of detailed letters and correspondence to work from. Maybe she had such a thing but was fearful that it could be subject to subpoena. Just guessing.

By the way, please don't criticize my wife, my mother or my dog Copper in these pages. I would take offense. But feel free to criticize my favorite dead Presidents. I don't have any problem with that.

James Lateer

My replies in blue.

[James Lateer]

The above response to my posting was WAY, WAY better thought through than my own posting was to start with. I admit I'm groping my way along in trying to thoroughly understand the JFK murder. Since my posting was admittedly over-the-top, all I can say is many thanks for Mr. Dagosto for bringing my thinking more into focus.

The posting, then the dissent are like the two blades of a scissors. You need both to cut through these historical issues. Thanks for your patience.

The big picture, for me, is this: (1) you start with the intense desire by RFK to work for the McCarthy Committee in 1953 and (2) you end up with Edward M. Kennedy who was the gold standard for Liberalism in the 1970,s and up to the 21st century. How did this extreme transition take place? This, in a nutshell, may be the whole story of 60 years of American history.

I am still puzzling over the libel issue. How could you prove malicious intent in libeling a dead President? Maybe if someone was also caught throwing empty beer bottles at Mount Rushmore!!! (Just kidding). Another interesting question is whether accusing a person of libel without any basis whatever could itself be considered libel? Something internet gurus might puzzle over.

For my next read, I'm starting "Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism, the Jews and the Myth of Conspiracy" by Lorna Waddington (2012). Maybe I'll get better information about the Hitler movement relative to other things.

I'm also trying to figure out how to get a copy of The Skorzeny Papers by Ganis without being put on a waiting list.

If anyone has successfully received their copy, I would be interested to know.

James Lateer